French Leave (19 page)

“Ma’mselle Foliot!” Gabriel looked away from Jacques’s gun and regarded Mab with dismay. “Would you have me violate the principles in which we both believe?”

Mab was becoming of the opinion that even principles had their proper place, which wasn’t in her studio. “I’d have you do whatever this man wants,” she said crossly. “Because it is obvious that if you do not, he will probably grow very angry and shoot the lot of us.”

Jacques’s white teeth flashed in a ferocious smile. “
Oui.”

Gabrielle was shocked by Ma’mselle Foliot’s selfishness. He had been very mistaken in her, it seemed. Still, she had been wounded in her service of her principles, and one wished to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Perhaps you do not understand the importance of these papers, ma’mselle. They must not fall into the wrong hands.”

Mab regarded her bandaged arm and reflected that she had already made her efforts along those lines.

“It is you who do not understand,” interrupted Jacques. “The papers are in the wrong hands now. I insist you give them back.” He waggled his pistol in a most menacing manner. “Consider the alternatives. I could take the paper from you. Or I could shoot you outright.”

Gabriel cared for neither of these suggestions. A compromise seemed wise. “I do understand the urgency of these papers. You may trust me to pass  them along. We are not enemies. We seek the same end, my friend.”

Jacques was not impressed by this pledge of fraternity. “I know your kind. You are filled with hot air.”

Gabriel’s cheeks reddened. “You do not know to whom you speak. My father fought for the Revolution under the Tricolor.”

Again came Jacques’s ferocious smile. “Mine was a regicide.”

Gabriel thrust out his handsome chin. “I’m sure my father would have been also, had he the chance. You are too quick to dismiss me as an ally. My efforts have not gone unnoticed. I am known to the police.”

Jacques was unimpressed. “Revolution is made not with the pen but with the sword. Have you walked past the Place de la Concorde and remembered when it was the Place de la Revolution, and so much human blood was shed there that a herd of oxen refused to cross it because of the stench from the scaffold? Have you sent bullets whizzing past the ears of M’sieur Le Duc de Vilainton, or the Duc of Angoulême?”

Gabriel’s chagrined expression made clear his failure. “Not, I think,” murmured the Duc.

Gabriel was growing very annoyed by the Duc’s disrespect. That annoyance gave him an idea. “
Non
,” he said, “and
non.
But you, I think, have not held a Duc to ransom, m’sieur!”

That Jacques had not. Still, he was inclined to be skeptical. “What Duc?” he inquired with a glance around the studio.

“Not I!” said Conor, who still stood at the easel, unfortunately—in his opinion—in Jacques’s direct line of sight.

And not the
domestique
whom Jacques had held at gunpoint and who still had not recovered from his swoon. That left only one candidate. “Aha!” Jacques said.

“Oui. C’est moi,”
sighed Edouard. “Or so I am told.”

Jacques frowned. He read the newspapers and had also seen the likeness of a certain missing Duc. What he had
not
read was any mention of a ransom demand.

“Yes, well!” said Gabriel when apprised of this fact. “That is because we haven’t written it yet. I haven’t, that is. The time didn’t seem right.”

“The time she is ripe now, eh?” Jacques was almost genial. If there was any one thing he liked better than making revolution, it was holding
aristos
to ransom. “I will help you write this note.”

Mab was trying to determine whether Gabriel could possibly have acted from noble motives. She decided he could not. “You—you Judas!” she said bitterly. “I wish I had never given you that packet.”

Jacques was briefly distracted from his search for materials with which to pen a ransom note. “You gave him the packet? Never mind! I don’t wish to know the details. Are there no pen and ink in this place?”

Of course there were. Mab, however, chose not to reveal their whereabouts. “I am an artist!” she said haughtily. “Not a scribe.”

Gabriel trailed Jacques around the studio. Upon hearing Mab’s disrespectful reference to scribes, he cast her a reproachful glance. Mab glowered at him in return.

Jacques paused by the easel.
“Eh bien!”
he said.

Jacques’s tone was almost approving. Barbary wondered why. The canvas at which he stared had won no one’s admiration even before it had been embellished by amateur attempts with paint and brush.

Jacques was no connoisseur of art. However, he knew what he liked. And he liked very much this painting of the Duc upon a divan. Better than a regular ransom demand, this. The Duc’s family would receive his portrait, and the intelligence that the model could be redeemed for a certain considerable amount. Jacques squinted at the painting. It could be a trifle more realistic. He picked up the paintbrush.

Jacques’s attention was focused on the painting. Now was the moment in which to act. The Duc reached for the gun that Mab had dropped. She clutched at his arm and shook her head no.

How good it was of her to concern herself for him. However, Edouard could not allow himself to be ransomed. He removed his arm from her grasp. Conor stood between Edouard and the easel, partially obstructing Jacques’s view of the divan.

Slowly, gingerly, the Duc sat up. His head swam. Best act now, before he also swooned, he thought.
“Ah ça!”
he said and raised the gun.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Madame Gabbot ran a strict establishment. Not much that concerned her tenants escaped her disapproving eye. Therefore she was very curious about the procession of strange visitors which this day climbed her stairs. The English gentleman, the peasant in his blue smock and floppy hat, they had been unusual enough. But this last arrival, so large and villainous-looking—not only Madame Gabbot’s curiosity but her suspicions were aroused.

In that she was not alone. Inspecteur Ollivant also considered these proceedings bizarre. For that reason Madame Gabbot and Inspecteur Ollivant and Fifi followed the villainous-looking individual up the stairs. It was necessary to maintain a discreet distance, or so Inspecteur Ollivant insisted, and therefore they lagged behind a great deal farther than Madame liked. They were not close enough, for example, to see the cause of the sounds of scuffle. Now they could hear no more than an indistinct murmur no matter how firmly they pressed their ears against the door.

One thing was certain: There was a commotion under way. Madame Gabbot did not approve of commotions. Without asking Inspecteur Ollivant’s approval she raised her hand and knocked at the door. There was no response from within. She knocked again.

Inspecteur Ollivant was on the scent, he knew it. He was not to be deterred by a mere barred door.
“Pardon!”
he said, and pushed Madame Gabbot aside; then took a few steps back and hurled himself at the door.

It did not yield. Inspecteur Ollivant had gained for his efforts only a sore shoulder. He would not so easily concede defeat. He drew himself up for a second assault.

Much as Madame Gabbot might enjoy this display of masculine pigheadedness, she could not allow Inspecteur Ollivant to further assault her property. She fit her passkey into the lock.

Inspecteur Ollivant hurried forward. Madame Gabbot followed him into the studio. They both stopped to stare.

A togaed gentleman sprawled unconscious on the floor. Ma’mselle Foliot lay weeping on his breast. Both the gentleman’s head and Ma’mselle Foliot’s arm sported bandages. Inspecteur Ollivant’s attention was distracted from this interesting circumstance by the other occupants of the studio. The English manservant was also stretched out senseless, near him a second female dressed in black who looked amazing like Ma’mselle Foliot. Or perhaps she
was
Ma’mselle Foliot, and it was not Ma’mselle who had been shot. Beneath the interested gaze of a blue-smocked peasant, the English gentleman struggled with the brigand.

It was a very violent struggle. Inspecteur Ollivant felt no desire to interfere. His dedication to duty was not such that he would hurl himself into such a brawl.

Gabriel had a much stronger sense of duty. However, he was not entirely certain in which direction his duty lay. Jacques shared his republican ideals but at the same time had expressed only contempt for himself. The Englishman, on the other hand, had expressed very little, and Gabriel had no good notion of his politics. Except, he thought, it was most unusual to find a brother revolutionary so well-dressed. Whatever his politics, the Englishman was good with his fists. Jacques must take care or he would go down to ignominious defeat.

Gabriel could not allow that to happen. For Jacques to be bested by an Englishman would be as bad as France’s defeat by perfidious Albion. Gabriel would hurl himself into the fray and tip the scales. He pulled off his floppy hat and prepared to advance. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view—Barbary had just as keen an interest in the struggle and its outcome. She snatched the canvas off its easel and brought it down over Gabriel’s head.

It was at this point in the proceedings that Tibble deemed it time to awaken from his swoon. He sat up just in time to see Conor land a forceful blow, and then another. Now it was Jacques who sprawled unconscious on the floor. “Oh, well done!” cried Tibble. “Popped one right over his guard, you did, sir! Planted him a leveler! Drew his cork!” Barbary offered her husband a paint rag with which to wipe his damp brow.

Conor took the rag. He didn’t know what to make of his wife. Here was her cousin weeping buckets over her
inamorato
, and she didn’t even blink. He could only conclude that Barbary was a great deal less jealous than she had used to be.

Even as he thought it, she turned to Mab. “Is he all right?”

“All right?
All right?”
Mab cradled the Duc’s head against her breast. “How can you ask? Edouard was excessively brave to try and defend us even when I tried to tell him the gun wouldn’t work!”

Tibble stared at the Duc. “Jupiter! He ain’t—”

“Dead? I think not.” Barbary’s tone contained an element of doubt. “When the gun would not go off, Edouard threw it at Jacques, and then he passed out.” Tibble hurried forward to bend his ear to the fallen man’s chest.

“So would you have passed out if you had been through what poor Edouard has,” Mab said crossly, and leaned back so that Tibble might better perform his inspection of the Duc’s person.

Tibble nodded, satisfied. “He’ll do.”

Mab had been much happier when her gaze was fixed on the Duc’s pale face. What she saw now caused her to say, “Oh,
merde!”

“You need not swear at us!” retorted Barbary. “At least half of this trouble may be laid at your own doorstep. If you will recall,
you
were the one who—” She broke off. “Mab, what the devil is wrong with you? You look as if you’d seen a ghost!”

What Mab saw was worse than a ghost. Words failed her. She pointed.

Barbary turned and looked behind her at Inspecteur Ollivant and Madame Gabbot. Not hysterics, but an apoplexy loomed. “How long have you been here?”

Inspecteur Ollivant was not so foolish as to answer that question. The details of the entry were unimportant. The results were the main thing. These results were such that Inspecteur Ollivant fancied he would be welcomed with open arms into the Sûreté. “You are all under arrest.”

Conor finished tying the unconscious Jacques to a chair. “On what charges, pray?”

Inspecteur Ollivant advanced farther into the room. He was on the alert, least one or another of these miscreants try to catch him off guard. “The charges they are obvious.”

Mab clutched the Duc all the harder. “You can hardly arrest an unconscious man.”

“Me, I can arrest whom I please,” Inspecteur Ollivant announced. “You there! What are you doing at that stove?”

Tibble started nervously. “Just making some chocolate, sir!”

Mab brightened. “What an excellent idea.”

Incomprehensible, these
Anglais.
“Keep an eye on him,” Inspecteur Ollivant said to Madame Gabbot, in a dictatorial manner that immediately got her back up. Fifi growled. Madame put down the cat.

Conor picked up Jacques’s discarded pistol from the floor. “So you are arresting us all. Foolish as it may be in me to quibble over such a matter, I still wish you would tell me why.”

Inspecteur Ollivant wished the Englishman would put down that pistol. “It is clear to me, m’sieur, that here we have a nest of Jacobin spies.”

“A nest of— Oh, mercy!” Barbary sighed.

Mab wished her cousin would do something other than moan and sniff her vinaigrette. At least Conor had sufficient sense to pick up the gun. Although Perhaps she was being unfair to them both. It was Mab who had involved them with Jacobins.

Yes, and it was Mab who must protect them now from paying the penalties for her crimes. Not that she wished to, particularly, but principles were at stake. “This is not a nest of anything. The only Jacobins here are Jacques—” She broke off with a squeal, having experienced a sharp pinch. “Edouard, you are not dead after all!!”

“Lor’, Miss Mab, I told you that!” said Tibble from the stove.

“Did you really think I was dead,
ma petite?”
The Duc smiled at Mab. “Is that why you clutched me so hard?”

Mab flushed. “You misunderstand. Merely I did not wish you to hit your head upon the floor.”

“Ah. You are kind. My angel, do you think you might help me to sit up?
Merci!
As Ma’mselle Foliot was saying, Inspecteur, this brigand is the only ruffian among us.” He pointed at Jacques. Mab hoped that Gabriel possessed sufficient sense to remain silent. She looked around the studio, but Gabriel had gone. The ruined painting leaned against the wall near the door, a gaping hole in its center. She recalled how absurd he had looked with the painting round his neck, and felt unusually in charity with her cousin for having put it there.

She was less in charity with Inspecteur Ollivant. “You have found your Jacobin, m’sieur. Now you may go away and leave us in peace.”