1939912059 (R) (13 page)

“Did you just—” She turned her shoulder and head toward him. “I rather liked that bonnet. I—” She captured his gaze, realizing their faces were almost cheek to cheek. Her heart skid.

Why was it even her pulse betrayed her? What was it about this man that made her want to give him everything every time she looked at him?

His jaw tightened. His blue eyes through the slits of the velvet mask flicked past her features back to the road ahead of them. “What was it you were going to say? It seemed important.”

She stiffly turned back. “It was not.”

“Ah.”

They rode in silence for a long time. So long, the dirt path turned into a cobbled one and sloped them down a small hill leading toward a massive sprawl of overcrowded buildings with smoking chimneys that stretched beyond sight in and around a river.

Paris. Her eyes widened. It looked nothing like the city she used to visit.

Random, billowing black plumes of burning buildings smeared and hazed the vast blue-grey sky, blocking any view of the valley beyond it.

“Are those fires from the riots?” she rasped in disbelief.

“Yes.” He sighed. “New ones break out every few weeks depending on the mood these idiots are in. I keep writing to the Legislative Assembly about it, but they do nothing. They encourage it. Which tells you they care nothing about the people. Because they are putting everyone in danger.
Everyone
.”

A shaky breath escaped her. “France has lost the last of its mind thinking it can burn down Paris. After all, who under heaven is going to be able to
live
in that city once everything is burned? Maybe I ought to visit a few places before it all goes.”

“I would,” he muttered. “I plan to leave France once I oversee this mess. Because there will be nothing but ash left by the time they are done.” He was quiet for a moment. “Maybe you and I could go to Russia together? You know…see those Russians chew glass? I could wrap you up in furs and take you through the snow of Saint Petersburg. We could even live there for a while. Would you like that?” The tips of his gloved fingers nudged away her braid from her shoulder, grazing her throat. He skimmed her shoulder.

A shiver rippled through her body straight down to her inner thighs.

This man was dangerous. He knew how to make her body and her soul tingle in too many places. He knew how to control her very breath.

She couldn’t allow herself to love him. She couldn’t. For she knew full well what happened to women who knelt to
real
passion. Her poor mother ended up with eleven children because of it. Something she swore she would never do. Even the idea of one child scared her.

She had
always
been ungovernable in nature. Having sex with a complete stranger was proof of that. But she certainly didn’t need to push herself into the realm of insanity by falling in love with a man intent on putting out the fires of Paris with his bare hands.

She gently tapped his gloved hand. “I would rather you not do that.”

His hand stilled against her arm. “I would be forever grateful,
ma biche
, if you could forgive me. I will refrain from ever drinking around you again.”

Damn him for wanting to amble into
her
life with promises he wouldn’t be able to keep. “It will take more than a promise. I have met men like you back in Giverny. There is not an hour you do not think about drinking your beloved brandy.”

“True, but—” He nudged her. “I thought you wanted those diamonds and those pearls.”

Of all the—

He shifted against her. “I was thinking.”

“Should I be worried knowing that?”

He flicked a finger at her shoulder. “Cease being rude. I was thinking you and I ought to…well…get to know each other more. Outside of being lovers. If we become parents, after all, we should be on good terms for the sake of our child. Do you not think?”

Why did he have to be a drunk? He was too beautiful for that. “Perhaps I am not ready to get to know a man who has no desire of ever marrying me even if I do end up pregnant.”

He sighed. “Thérèse. My father would never allow for it. His disdain for the lower classes aside, he and I barely get along. He forgives me nothing and holds everything against me. Everything.”

A breath escaped her knowing he was not on good terms with his father. Whilst, yes, she had left her own family behind in less than good circumstance, they had all loved each other very much. She knew her parents would eventually forgive her. In a year or two or three. That was what people did when they sought to love each other.

They…forgave each other.

She paused. He
wanted
her to love him and forgive him anything. And he
wanted
to do it in a most unconventional way: without any guarantees of her ever seeing matrimony.

He hesitated. “Honor me by giving me another chance, Thérèse. Please. The very thought of not ever being able to kiss you again is…”

She closed her eyes, determined not to be swayed. “I am not interested in ending up with a child after raising ten of them for my parents.” She opened her eyes. “This is my time to finally embrace everything I want out of life and I will not expose my body to your drunken advances that are clearly unreliable.”

He gripped her waist hard. “I will never engage you whilst drunk again. I swear it.”

“Even if you could uphold such a promise, we are both overly passionate and such things are not bound to end well.” Her throat tightened. “What if we become too attached to each other? What happens then? There is danger in us wanting each other too much. Especially given who you are. You are third cousin to the king!”

His voice darkened. “I hardly need to be reminded who I am.”

A shaky breath escaped her. This was getting too complicated for them to even try to make it work. “I am giving you permission to engage other women.”

He said nothing.

His silence poked her into asking the one thing that had bothered her all of last night. “How many others were there before me?”

He shifted in the saddle, adjusting her against himself. “Four.”

“Were you in love with any of these women?”

“One.” He was quiet for a long moment. “She was married. Her name was…Madame Poulin.”

She blinked. “Did you know she was married?”

He dug his chin into her head. “No. I have a stupid tendency to let passion blur common sense.”

A vivid flash of seeing his nude body and bunched muscles savagely pounding his hips into another woman made her want to smack him off the horse for making her jealous. She hated being made to feel as if she was fourteen.

Tightening her hold on her basket, she coolly offered, “Was she pretty?”

“Not as pretty as you,” he breathed out against her ear.

She unwittingly tilted her ear into those lips that clearly sought to lure her. “I assume it ended badly.”

“More than you will ever know.” He heaved out a breath. “The whole thing was staged by her husband. She was coerced into making me believe our relationship was real. The whole moon and the stars sort of nonsense. After she and I fell into bed a few times, her husband made himself known and demanded half a million
livres
from my father.”

Thérèse felt her throat tighten in disbelief.

His tone became ragged. “This mudsill of a tailor had the audacity to tell me if I did not pay it in full, he would publicly demand satisfaction. My father was anything but understanding. When I told Poulin to piss off, the man demanded satisfaction, and in an effort not to kill the
fils de salope
, I aimed at his leg. Only I shot off his hand. A hand he can no longer use to support his family. So he and the wife I thought I knew and loved, along with their three children, ended up in an almshouse because of me. So what did I do? I gave them ten thousand to ensure they lived well. And they do. Believe me, they still do. They have carriages and a house and go shopping for things they do not need and merrily live off my guilt going on a few years now. Just like they planned. And the best part? This tailor now stands on the street with a sign that says, ‘
The Duc de Andelot’s son raped my wife and took my trade and my hand
.’”

Her heart skidded. She jerked her head toward him, her lips parting in disbelief.

He didn’t meet her gaze. “He parades my shame, after he and his wife orchestrated it, openly spits on my name thinking I deserve nothing less. And
that
is the direction this country is going in.
That
is why this city is burning. Because some people would rather see everything burn than admit we are all equal in our sins. Long live your kind and the revolution.”

Tears stung her eyes. “He is not my kind.”

He shifted his jaw, still refusing to look at her.

She swallowed. Holding up a trembling hand, she gently touched the side of his masked face, wishing he was not wearing it. “I am sorry that was done to you.”

He shrugged. “I earned it.”

“How can you say that?”

He said nothing.

Maybe this was why she came into his life. Brandy aside, he clearly lacked the faith in trying to save himself because he was too busy saving the world. “I appreciate you sharing that with me. I cannot imagine it was easy to say aloud.”

He tugged her closer against himself, tightening his hold on her to the point of digging his fingers into her gown and the skin beneath. “Paris is ahead. Listen well as I will not have a chance to repeat myself lest we risk someone overhearing it.”

He gripped her braid and wagged its end. “I will take you straight to your cousin’s theatre, after which we will no longer see very much of each other. My mask will come off and I will resume my regular way of life. In the next few days, a dark-eyed gentleman by the name of Serge Naudet will call on you. Only he will know of our association. So trust no one but him. Aside from delivering you money, Naudet will supply a weekly list of people you ought to talk to and will funnel whatever messages you and I have for each other. Do you remember the address where the blue ribbon is supposed to go to if you need me?”

This all became too real. “Yes. Five Luxembourg.”

“Good.” He released her braid. “As for us, the next time we see each other, we will no longer be allowed to be anything to each other but strangers in public, so I suppose you and I are lovers no more, much like you want. In truth, I hardly earned it and ask that you not forgive me. I have to learn to be more responsible.”

Her throat tightened. Now she felt bad.

Dragging in a breath, Thérèse nestled herself against his broad, muscled frame trying not to revel in his warmth
too
much. It was so odd to think that she, a mere daughter of a third generation butcher, was riding into Paris on a steed in the arms of an aristocrat worth ten million.

This revolution was creating a form of equality even she had not been prepared to embrace.

The dense, angled cobbled streets were so overcrowded with people, the horse had to be guided off the actual road and through narrow pathways in between torched buildings and small courtyards strewn with shattered glass, bricks and charred pieces of furniture.

Men and women in bundled rags gathered before the small window of a dilapidated print shop where an unshaven man in a red cap bearing a tricolor cockade, stood on a wooden crate with a newly printed pamphlet. He shook it at those around him.

“Despite countless pleas from our own voices at the esteemed Assembly, our basic needs are
still
not being addressed!” he yelled. “It says here due to the continued shortage of food, all bread prices will remain the same. At fifteen
sous
a loaf. Fifteen! What,
I ask you
, are these loaves made of?
Sa Majesté’s breeches
?! Or the queen’s two tits?”

Laughter and disgruntled shouts echoed within the narrow space of the street.

Gérard shifted his jaw, chanting to himself that beating the blood out of a man for insulting his godparents was pointless. Because then these strutting turkeys would only cluck to each other about how
violent
aristocrats were toward them.

Which was why he trained his pride to ride by the jargon and never engage. He was not his father who always got into the faces of these people on the street.

He also wasn’t alone.

In truth, he barely noticed the rumbling chaos the way he usually did. How could he? His hands were sweating beneath his gloves and his body felt as if it was being assaulted by fire. Even after everything that had been said between them, the woman still nestled against him as if they were back to being on good terms.

She was exhausting the hell out of him.

With her blonde head tucked against his chest and the warm softness of her voluptuous body folded into his arms, all he could think of was how the hell he was going to survive not making love to her body again.

Thérèse sat up against him, bumping his chin and pointed at the young man yelling about the bread prices. “Whatever is that idiot wearing?” she echoed. “He has no sense of fashion. Absolutely none. That red hat makes him look like a troll.”