To Tempt a Rebel (The Scarlet Chronicles, #4)

by Shana Galen

  Montagne shook his head. “We can’t trust any of them.” He was too handsome with his glossy dark hair, his deep eyes, and his soft lips. His cultured French was so smooth she likened it to the best brandy she’d ever had. Even though she called him Montagne or occasionally Laurent, she still thought of him as Monsieur le Marquis. And his life was in danger every single moment he stayed in Paris. But he would not leave—none of them would leave—until the little son of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI was safe. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “But there are still members of the king’s retinue in Paris. We might contact one of the loyal kitchen maids—”

  “We shan’t need a washerwoman or to gallivant about Paris looking for people who do not want to be found,” Ffoulkes said, his shoulder braced casually on the doorjamb. “Citoyen Chevalier will help us.”

  Alex and Montagne had been sitting at the table, but now she rose. “Are we back to this again? My lord, I have spent considerable time with Tristan Chevalier, and believe me when I say he would go to the guillotine before aiding any member of the nobility, especially Louis Charles.”

  Ffoulkes nodded sagely. “You made a direct appeal on behalf on Louis Charles, did you?”

  “Yes!” She stabbed a finger on the table. “And he was quite unmoved. He...” Her hand went limp and she rested it on the table. “How do you do that?”

  Ffoulkes strolled into the attic and sat on one of the beds. “I’m a spy. It’s my job to ferret out information.”

  Alex sank into her chair. “I know I was not supposed to say anything. I didn’t mean to. What has happened? Has he reported to Robespierre? Has Louis Charles been moved?”

  Ffoulkes shook his head. “On the contrary, I believe your appeal affected Monsieur Chevalier. He will visit the Temple Prison tonight.”

  Alex jumped up again. “What? Why?”

  “The reason he stated when he applied for the pass was”—he dug in his coat—“I have it here somewhere. Ah. To ascertain the child’s health and well-being.”

  Alex stared at him. “You did not know I told Chevalier. You assumed because he applied for a pass to the Temple.”

  “And you confirmed my suspicions.” Ffoulkes rose from the bed. “And the only reason I am not charging you with insubordination and sending you home this moment is because telling the man of the boy’s plight seems to have worked. If my assumption is incorrect, you can be assured I will banish you back to England and see you placed—forcibly, if need be—on the first packet.”

  Alex swallowed. She had no reason to assume Chevalier would be moved by Louis Charles’s circumstances. He might very well go to the Temple and inform the guard of the plot to rescue the boy king. But she couldn’t believe that. She’d seen compassion in him. He too had been a boy abused by those more powerful than he. Surely he would have pity on Louis Charles.

  She couldn’t believe it for another reason as well. If she were wrong, she would be returning to England. Though she still thought of it as home, she had not lived there in ten years. She’d come to Paris with her parents and never looked back. Even when they’d returned at the start of the revolution, she had stayed behind. Paris was home. The People’s Theater was home. There was nothing for her in England.

  Nothing and no one, for if her parents still lived, Alex had no idea where they lived or if they even cared to ever see her again.

  Her family—Dewhurst, Honoria, Montagne, and even Ffoulkes—was here in this house. If Ffoulkes sent her back to England, he would be doing more than stripping her of her place in the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. He would be taking away the only family she had left.

  She could not allow that to happen. “I have to go out,” she said, and not waiting for a reply, gathered her skirts and started for the door of the attic.

  Ffoulkes beat her to it. “Not a good idea, Miss Martin. I do not want you anywhere near the Temple.”

  She glared up at him. “I don’t intend to go to the Temple.”

  “Then what do you intend?” Montagne asked.

  “I will visit Citoyen Chevalier at his residence. If I go now, I will be there when he returns from the prison.”

  “If you go now, you will not be able to return before the curfew,” Montagne pointed out.

  But Ffoulkes said nothing. Alex looked at him. “Do you not have some objection?”

  Ffoulkes shrugged and stepped aside. “If you want to see the man again, I doubt I can prevent it.”

  “I want to discuss Louis Charles with him, sway him to our cause—”

  “You want to go to bed with him,” Foulkes interrupted.

  “That’s not what I had in mind,” she said, color rising to her cheeks because the thought wasn’t altogether alien. “And when did you become my guardian?”

  He held up his hand to ward off more spluttering objections. “I simply want to remind you that what you do is purely your choice and should not be done on behalf on the league.”

  She stabbed her hands on her hips. “Because we are too lofty for such tactics?”

  Ffoulkes rose. “Because they do not work. No man likes to feel he has been used. No more than any woman. Bed him for your own pleasure, not for the sake of Louis Charles. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly,” she said icily.

  Ffoulkes opened the door and brushed past her. Alex did not follow. Instead, she turned back to the room and found Montagne looking at her.

  “You are playing a dangerous game,” he said.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “I don’t think any of us has quite so much to lose.”

  He was not talking about her life. His was as much at risk as hers. He was speaking of the life of Louis Charles. One misstep could damn the boy.

  “Then I suppose I had better win.”

  She swept out of the room and went straight to her room to wash and dress. She did not intend to go to Chevalier’s bed, but she doubted she could resist if he asked.

  TRISTAN ARRIVED AT the Temple Prison after dark. Robespierre did not like for anyone to be seen going in and out, and one of the stipulations of his visit was that he go after dark and alone. Another was that he not pay a visit to Citoyenne Capet, the daughter of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, who was also a prisoner in the Temple.

  Tristan agreed. After all, it was Louis Charles he wanted to see, though as he stepped from his carriage, he wondered why Alexandra Martin had not expressed any concern over Marie-Thérèse. Why did she only worry for the welfare of the former king’s son?

  The head of the guard came forward and saluted. Though he’d been told of Tristan’s visit, he still asked to see his papers. Tristan handed them over to the small man with broad shoulders and a wide chest, then looked about him as the guard studied the papers by torchlight.

  The Temple structure had been built in the Middle Ages by the Knights Templar. It was by no means pleasing to the eye, not like Notre-Dame or Versailles. Its imposing gray walls, with the narrow slits that he supposed served as windows, or in periods of war as defensive positions for archers, had stood the test of time. Tristan thought one of the former king’s brothers, perhaps d’Artois, had lived in the Temple when he’d resided in Paris. The royal residence had been lavishly appointed and was undoubtedly comfortably furnished. But Louis Charles was certainly not being held in those apartments. He was held in one of the forbidding stone towers, and Tristan had no idea the condition of those buildings.

  Finally, the captain of the guard had finished his perusal of Tristan’s papers. The compact man shoved them back at Tristan. “Citoyen Simon won’t be pleased.”

  Tristan assumed he meant Antoine Simon, the former shoemaker who had been given charge of the orphan. “And why is that?”

  “Because the boy should be asleep. And Citoyen Simon doesn’t like Citoyen Capet awakened unless he does it himself.” He gave a malicious smile then, and Tristan wondered what he had missed.

  “But orders is orders. Come on then.” He gestured toward Tristan. “I’ll t
ake you to him.”

  He led Tristan across a dark yard, lit only by the occasional torch. The shadow of the towers seemed to all but obliterate the night sky and the walls around the structure muted the sounds of the city. Tristan could almost believe that he had stepped back in time to a Paris of several hundred years before.

  Finally, he was presented to a guard outside one of the towers. The guard moved aside, and the captain fished a large key from his coat and placed it in the lock. With an audible creak, the lock turned and the door swung open.

  “This way,” the captain said, moving into the dark tower. He started up the stairs, but after a few steps looked over his shoulder. “Wait here. I had better have Citoyen Simon wake the boy. He can tell you the boy’s daily routine.”

  Tristan agreed and shoved his hands into his pockets while he waited for the captain to return. The tower was drafty and cold, which was not unexpected. It had been used as a prison before, and Tristan had never thought anything of it. But now he considered the children living here, and the accommodations seemed rather harsh.

  Or perhaps that was Alexandra Martin speaking. She would have every noble dining on sweetmeats and drinking brandy while reclining on silk-upholstered chaises longues. These children were the offspring of the former king and queen and as such dangerous to the new republic. They must be kept imprisoned, and surely they had food and a fire and daily fresh air. It was more than many of the poorest in the land could boast.

  Finally, the captain returned with a large red-faced man who reeked of wine and tobacco. Tristan nodded at him. “Citoyen Simon?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I am sorry to disturb you, but I am here on behalf of the republic. I need to take a look at the boy.”

  Simon spat on the floor, narrowly missing Tristan’s boot. “Seems to me you might have waited until after I’d finished my dinner. I deserve a few minutes’ rest, I do. I work hard all day.”

  Tristan wondered how much trouble one young boy could be, but he schooled his face into a sympathetic expression. “I will only take a few moments of your time.”

  Simon blew out a breath and started up the steps. He huffed and puffed as he climbed the steps. Tristan followed and the captain brought up the rear. On the next level, Simon stopped and pointed toward the apartments. “The girl is in there. I don’t have nothing to do with her. Her aunt shares her rooms.”

  “I don’t have a pass to see Marie-Thérèse,” Tristan replied, though he was curious to see the eldest child of the dead monarchs. She was not deemed as important as Louis Charles because France had always been ruled by Salic law, meaning only men could inherit the throne. Thus, even if the royalists did manage to mount a coup and regain power, the princess could not sit on the throne. This meant she had been largely ignored and would probably continue to be so.

  Louis Charles was another matter entirely. Though a boy, he was the rightful king of the nation in the eyes of anyone still loyal to the monarchy. In the right hands, Louis Charles could pose quite a danger to the new republic.

  “Right,” Simon said, taking a breath and starting up the steps again. “Citoyen Capet is one floor up.”

  “I had heard he was separated from his sister and aunt,” Tristan said more out of a desire to break the silence than from any real interest. “How often does he see his family?”

  “Never,” Simon grunted out.

  Tristan stopped and the captain of the guard almost plowed into him. “Our orders are to keep them apart. We don’t want the little brats plotting.”

  “Plotting?” Tristan let out a short laugh. “They are children.”

  Simon turned and looked at him, his face rather menacing in the dim, flickering light. “They might be children, but they are canny. Don’t trust them or turn your back on them.”

  Tristan, who had grown up with a younger sister and brother plus innumerable cousins, could only raise a skeptical brow.

  Finally, they reached the apartments of the young would-be king. The door was guarded by a tired-looking thin man, who saluted and moved aside when he saw Simon. Simon stepped to the door and grasped a small wooden knob about three-fourths of the way up. Using the knob, he slid a wooden panel aside and stepped back.

  “There he is. Sleeping in his bed.”

  Tristan stepped to the panel and peered in. He did not know what he’d expected to see, but the sight that greeted him shocked him to his very bones. He had to step back and look again because he did not quite believe it at first glance.

  The room was tiny and dark. The illumination from the torches on this side shed some light into the darkness, but not much. There was a high barred window in the room but no fire. The room was small with only a mattress on the floor, a table, and one chair within. No rugs softened the cold stone floors, no paintings brightened the plain stone walls.

  All of this was bad enough, but worst of all was the stench. Tristan covered his nose with his sleeve and turned to Simon. “What is that stink?”

  Simon waved a hand, appearing unconcerned. “The door is padlocked. That way we don’t have to worry about the boy being rescued. He doesn’t keep the room very clean. Messy little brat, he is. Thinks he’s too good to clean his own shit. I tried to knock some of that haughtiness out of him, but he’s irredeemable.”

  Tristan stared at the man for a long moment, trying to comprehend. Finally, he took a shallow breath. “Are you telling me the child is locked in the room with his own waste? Does no one remove it?”

  Now the captain of the guard stepped in. “As Citoyen Simon said, the room is padlocked. Only I have the key. A temporary precaution against the recent unrest in the city.”

  “How long has the boy lived like this?” Tristan asked.

  “Not long, not long,” Simon said, but judging from the stink, Tristan did not believe him.

  “And what about food?”

  Simon gestured to the lower half of the door, where there was a small door that could be opened and then closed and locked from without. “We push it through there. He doesn’t eat much of it, though. Little brat.”

  “What about a fire? I’m half frozen standing here. The child must be cold.”

  Simon and the captain exchanged an uneasy look. Finally, Simon said, “The stove must have gone out. We light it from the adjoining room. It’s not safe to give the little brat fire, but it keeps him warm enough.”

  “And how often does it go out?” Tristan asked.

  Now Simon’s brows drew down, and he looked as though he might lift one of his meaty hands and slam it on Tristan’s head. “Maybe you want to bring him a velvet blanket and some of that fancy fruit. We could have servants dress him in furs and pet his blond head.”

  “I’m not suggesting that.”

  “He’s an enemy of the republic,” the captain of the guard said. “He has food and shelter, and he is safe from any who might do him harm. What else does Citoyen Robespierre want to see?”

  Tristan’s jaw tightened. Robespierre hadn’t sent him at all. In fact, the short man had looked at Tristan rather queerly before signing the pass. Robespierre remarked that he’d gone to see Marie-Thérèse and found her quite as disdainful and haughty as her parents had been. The rumor was she had not even deigned to say a word to him. Robespierre had no interest at all in Louis Charles other than glancing at the weekly reports Simon sent.

  These reports all said the same thing: the boy could not be reformed. Simon had tried—and now Tristan wondered at his methods—to persuade the boy of the evils of the ancien régime and the merits of the new republic. And though the boy had repeated what he’d been told and even testified against his mother at her trial, the verdict was that the boy had not really changed his ways.

  On paper all of this seemed reasonable, but standing on the other side of the child, the stink of the boy’s own feces making him gag, Tristan began to see the whole thing as ridiculous. This was a child. It was unconscionable to treat a child in this manner. Even the worst abuses of the n
obles did not compare to this.

  “And what of the boy’s mental state?” he asked. “Does he not have any interaction with others?”

  “We don’t coddle him,” Simon said. His eyes narrowed. “Do you have some love for the aristos? Perhaps you want to see the boy sitting on the throne at Versailles?”

  “No!” Tristan said a bit too quickly. He had stepped onto a slippery slope. He should take his leave now before Simon or the captain of the guard reported him to Robespierre or accused him of being a royalist. He should leave the boy and think no more about him.

  But he could not.

  “I want to see him,” he said.

  Simon gave Tristan a dark look. The man obviously took Tristan’s request as a direct challenge to his authority. Simon was a short, compact man with the body of a pugilist. His forearms, visible where his coarse shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow, were corded with muscles. He flexed his fists and the muscles bunched and released. Tristan imagined the man was considering plowing a fist into Tristan’s face.

  Instead, Simon moved closer to the door and pushed the torch near the panel in the door. “He’s right there. In the bed.”

  Bed? Tristan had seen the small figure under a coarse blanket lying on the mattress on the floor. And he knew the thing under the blanket was alive because it shivered with cold. The stone floor under the mattress must have been ice cold, and with very little between the child and the floor, he would probably shiver all night.

  Tristan did not want to feel compassion—not for this son of the most privileged in the land—and if he walked away now, he might be able to put the boy from his mind. He might be able to tell himself that the fire really had gone out and would be lit again as soon as he’d left. The excrement would be cleaned. The boy living in a room with only a tiny barred window would be allowed to walk in the sun on occasion.

  He did not want to see the form under that thin blanket because if he looked into the boy’s eyes, he might not be able to walk away so easily. Alexandra Martin and the traitors she associated with had already affected him more than was safe. If he walked away now, he could forget about this boy. He could go back to his work for the republic.