Hearts Beguiled (5 page)

Max had followed her over to the desk to stand close beside her. His presence seemed to fill the shop, and with every breath she took the tangy, masculine scent of him filled her head. She could feel his hooded eyes watching her.

Her hands trembled as she opened the strongbox and counted out ten livres. Without looking up, she held the money out to him. His fingers brushed hers as he took the coins, and the muscles low in Gabrielle's stomach tightened and her breath caught.

Dieu, she thought. What is there about him that does this to me?

"Gabrielle . . ."

She sighed. Looking up, she searched his face. It was relaxed, smiling.

"Tomorrow is Sunday. Will you come with me to the Jardin des Plantes? I want to show you another aerostat that I'm building. A full-sized one." His lips twitched. "I promise I won't let it blow up in your face."

"Well ... I don't think ... My son. I must take him to Mass."

"After Mass then. We'll bring the boy with us. He'll love the Jardin des Plantes." His voice took on the silky purr that seemed to imbue even the simplest words with a deep, significant meaning. "Say yes, Gabrielle. Please."

Her face broke into a smile and her heart soared.

"Yes," she said.

❧

"Maman!" Dominique cried, bursting into the shop a few minutes behind the departing figure of Maximilien de Saint-Just. "I rolled the hoop all the way to the Place du Carrousel. There was a bear there. A dancing bear! I rode on its back."

Agnes laughed at the appalled look on Gabrielle's face. "It was a very old bear. And toothless, too. Look," she said, unwrapping a small package bound with twine. "We stopped by Madame Tussard's. I got us some new fichus." She held up one of the thin muslin kerchiefs. "See. She was practically giving them away."

Gabrielle exclaimed over Agnes's bargain. "I can wear it tomorrow," she said, "When I go—when I go to Mass."

Agnes's eyes opened wide. "Ah-hah! So he's going to be in church tomorrow, is he?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Agnes. Unlike you, I go to church to worship our savior, not to ogle the neighborhood rakes."

Agnes laughed. "Since when do the neighborhood rakes go to Mass? And you aren't going to change the subject that easily, Gabrielle. I happen to remember a little talk we had the other night . . ."

Bored with this conversation, Dominique drifted to the back of the shop. He burrowed under the rack of coats, pretending to be a mouse. But since Monsieur Simon wasn't there to chase him out with a broom, this game soon palled. He saw that there was some paper and a charcoal stick on the desk and thought he might draw a picture of the bear so Maman could see how brave he was to ride it, for it had been a very big bear.

He was reaching for the charcoal stick when he saw a shiny blue rock in a ring. He snatched this prize up eagerly. He had started collecting rocks that week. Monsieur Simon had given him a round, smooth one that was good for skipping across the pond in the Tuileries, and yesterday he had found a red one with yellow stripes. He had collected a few more this morning in the garden, but this blue one was the prettiest yet. He dropped it into his pocket with the others.

Dominique's stomach rumbled. How long would it be before dinner? He ambled over to his mother, who was holding her new fichu up to the light of the window, examining the stitching.

"We'll have to dress your hair for Mass tomorrow morning," Agnes was saying, her brown eyes twinkling mischievously. "We'll crimp it with the iron and perhaps lighten it with a bit of flour . . ."

Dominique stared up at his mother's preoccupied face. "Maman, may I have some bread and jam?"

"Of course, petit," Gabrielle replied absently, and Dominique dashed into the kitchen before she could change her mind.

Gabrielle cut off Agnes's teasing suggestions as to which dress she should wear to church tomorrow, saying she wanted to straighten the shop before Simon returned. She locked the strongbox and replaced it in the desk. She picked up the drawing she had made, smiling at the memory of Max's teasing voice and mocking smile. Folding the paper in half, she stuffed it into the pocket of her skirt. Then her smile faded.

Hadn't she set Martin's ring down here?

She searched the row of cubbyholes along the top of the desk, then bent over to scan the floor. She unlocked the strongbox and looked through the coins and bank notes. She shut her eyes.

She could picture herself walking to the desk, Max beside her. Hadn't she set the ring down then, beside the caricature and charcoal stick? No, she must have put it back in the case. She hurried over to the counter—

"Why, the thieving bastard!" Gabrielle cried.

Agnes, on her way back to the kitchen, whirled around. "What's happened?"

"He's stolen it! My ring."

"Which ring?"

"My ring."

Agnes flew over to the case to see for herself. She had heard at least a dozen times Simon's strange story of the day Gabrielle had come into his shop to pawn a sapphire ring.

"Well!" she huffed. "That'll teach you to leave it lying about where just anyone can steal it. How could you allow this to happen?"

"I didn't allow it to happen. That—that wretch plucked it right out from under my nose." My stupid, infatuated nose, she thought, feeling a tight ache in her chest.

"What wretch?" asked Agnes. "Who stole it?"

"A man," Gabrielle hedged, unable to admit the awful truth of her gullibility, even to herself.

Agnes waved her hand as if shooing away a bothersome fly. "Oh, of course. A man. Well, what could be easier? We'll simply search all of Paris for a man, and when we And one we'll summon the gendarmes and demand they arrest him for a thief."

"I know who he is," Gabrielle said between clenched teeth. "His name is Maximilien de Saint-Just. He's that mad, insufferably arrogant scientist who lives above the Cafe de Foy. He came in here to ... to buy a gift for one of his light-of-loves and he walked out with my ring."

Agnes glanced again at the glass case. "Oh, but this is awful, Gabrielle. Think of Monsieur Simon, how hurt he's going to be when he hears of it. You know how much that ring means to him."

Gabrielle felt a stab of guilt. She hadn't thought at all of Simon. She'd been too busy wondering why Maximilien de Saint-Just had taken her ring. He didn't strike her as a common thief. Was it possible he had recognized the ring as once belonging to the duchesse de Nevers? She prayed to God that was not the case, for if it was, she and Dominique were already doomed.

No, no, he'd only fancied it—hadn't he admitted as much? And since she wouldn't sell it, he had simply taken it. He wanted to give it to one of his women. She imagined a beautiful courtesan with expensive tastes wearing the sapphire ring, perhaps to a tout or ball in the ducal palace, and someone—someone who knew the noble family Nevers, who had once seen the ring on the old duchesse's finger—recognizing, exclaiming, pointing it out. And Louvois would hear of it; his spies were everywhere. He would question the courtesan, and then he would question Maximilien de Saint-Just, and then-She would have to get it back. Get it back this instant or take Dominique and disappear. Leave Simon and Agnes and her home here above the pawnshop in the Palais Royal and start running again.

"I must get it back," she said aloud, desperation making her voice fierce and hard.

Agnes gave her a strange look. "Gabrielle . . . how ever are you going to get it back?"

"He stole it from me. I'm going to steal it back."

Agnes snorted. "You steal? This I should like to see."

"I've stolen before. When I had to. But this time it won't really be stealing. I'll merely be recovering my own—or rather, Simon's—property."

"This time! By the wounds of Saint Sebastien, do you mean to tell me you really have stolen before?" Agnes looked astounded. It had always amused Gabrielle that Agnes believed she possessed virtue something on the order of the saints Agnes frequently called upon.

"Don't curse ... I have a plan," Gabrielle said.

Agnes rolled her eyes in mock horror.

"It's very simple," Gabrielle explained. "We'll watch his apartment this afternoon and the next time he leaves, you'll waylay him and borrow the key—"

"Borrow!"

"Pick the key out of his pocket, damn you . . . Then you give the key to me and I'll run up and get the ring." Unless he takes it with him. Dieu, she thought, what if he takes it with him?

"I don't like it," Agnes said.

"I'm not asking you to like it and, besides, what's wrong with it?"

"What if he catches me trying to pick his pocket? I could wind up at the whipping post in the Place de la Greve." Agnes spread her fingers in front of her face, flexing them and frowning. "I haven't had much practice lately."

Gabrielle gave her a skeptical look.

Placing her hand over her heart, Agnes made her eyes look round and innocent. "I swear by my virginity—"

"What kind of a lying oath is that?"

"May a brace of devils broil me over an open pit if I've stolen so much as a single sou since that day I saved your ungrateful life."

Gabrielle seized the girl's hands. "Then you'll do it for me, Agnes?"

Agnes's lips quirked up into a mischievous smile. "Will I do it? By Saint Bartholomew's tit, I wouldn't miss this for the world—" Her eyes suddenly opened wide and her mouth fell open. "This thief of yours, he wouldn't by any chance be the man who's managed to put you into such a fever these last two days?"

Gabrielle assumed a mystified look. "Really, Agnes, I haven't any idea what you're talking about. I've never felt better."

❧

Gabrielle hovered around the newspaper vendor across from the Cafe de Foy, pretending to be engrossed in a pamphlet expounding the virtues of peasant life. Every few seconds she peeked over the row of papers displayed for sale—clipped with clothespins on a long string—to study the entrance to Maximilien de Saint-Just's apartment.

She was so tense that when he finally did come out she almost yelped aloud with the shock of it. She whirled around, bumping into Agnes, who hovered at her elbow.

''There he is," she said breathlessly.

Agnes stood on tiptoe to peer over the string of papers. "Jesu. You forgot to tell me he is such a handsome devil. I have a better idea. Instead of picking his pocket, why don't I go with him up to his rooms? Then I can search for the ring afterward, while he's asleep."

Gabrielle shoved her in the small of the back. "Quit acting like a Saint-Denis whore. Hurry up. He's getting away."

Agnes fluffed her short, wispy curls and loosened her fichu, exposing an expanse of white bosom that made Gabrielle feel a decided twinge of envy. Then Agnes picked up the basket at her feet—it was filled with withered violet posies—and joined the flow of traffic in front of the Cafe de Foy, her hips swaying saucily.

Max was walking fast, a look of intense concentration on his face. When Agnes was but a few feet away from him, she turned abruptly and took two steps backward while gesticulating with her fist and shouting at a mysterious someone behind her, calling him a cuckoldy, cow-hearted mongrel-Max slammed into her.

The basket flew out of Agnes's arms, dumping posies into the dirt. Agnes began to wail.

"Ow! And look what you've done, you gouty lummox. Who taught you to walk, a blind man with no feet? You've ruined my flowers, you cursed son of a poxed whore!"

"A thousand pardons, mademoiselle," Max said politely as he bent to gather the posies back into the basket.

"And may a thousand devils carry you off to hell, you're trampling all over them with your big feet!" Agnes exclaimed. She jerked the basket out of his hands, lurching into him.

Max steadied her. "And I think you're a little drunk," he said, laughing and casting an appreciative eye at the girl's heaving and half-bare breasts.

"I most certainly am not!" Agnes huffed with indignation, her bosom swelling provocatively.

Then she spoiled the effect by belching and swiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. She began to sidle away from him. Max watched her a moment, his face relaxed with amusement, before he shook his head and, turning, went on his way.

Gabrielle had moved to a nearby bench in the gardens to wait for Agnes because the newspaper vendor had started to eye her suspiciously. She felt sick with disappointment. Why couldn't she fall in love with a simple man—a farmer or a shopkeeper? Instead first she had chosen Martin de Nevers, a duc's only son and heir to one of the most powerful houses in the kingdom. And now this Maximilien de Saint-Just . . . At best he was a thief. And at worst-She almost shouted with relief at the sight of Agnes running through the trees.

Agnes pressed a heavy black key into Gabrielle's hand. "Here it is," she said breathlessly, glancing back over her shoulder. "I think he suspects something."

"Why should he suspect anything?"

"I don't know ..." Agnes gave her a worried look. "Don't dawdle, Gabrielle. Get the ring and get out. He could return at any moment and, well, he has a look about him, around the eyes. I think he's a man who could be very, very dangerous if crossed."

Gabrielle nodded once and swallowed hard. "You should go back to the shop, Agnes, in case Simon and Dominique come back early and wonder where we are." She had gotten them out of the way that afternoon by sending them off with a pair of poles to do some fishing at the river, ushering them quickly out the door after dinner before Simon could notice the empty space in the jewelry case.

Squaring her shoulders, Gabrielle stood and began to walk with jerky movements toward the apartments above the Care de Foy.

The stairway still smelled of the same perfume, but this afternoon there was no rattle of a dice box and no woman's laughter. The building seemed strangely empty, although she could hear snatches of conversation and voices raised in argument from the cafe below.

Her hands shook so badly trying to fit the key into the lock that for one heart-stopping moment she thought he must carry more than one key and Agnes had picked the wrong pocket. Then suddenly it slid smoothly into the hole, the lock turned, and the door clicked open. Gabrielle darted inside and quickly shut the door behind her.

She didn't feel so nervous once inside his apartment, perhaps because there was already a familiarity about it. The broken glass from the windows and mirrors had been swept into one comer, but all his scientific paraphernalia—what hadn't been shattered by the explosion—still littered the shelves and tables of the large room.

She peered through the microscope, first with one eye and then with the other, but could make nothing out. She looked through the telescope and saw a square of blue sky. She tilted the instrument toward the galleries across the way, focusing on the newspaper vendor. His seamed and pitted face jumped before her, startlingly close, and she watched for a moment, fascinated, while he dug the wax out of his ear with a twig.

One end of the room was dominated by a large fireplace equipped with a spit and trivet for cooking, but there were no ashes in the grate. He probably eats all his meals in the cafe downstairs, she thought, and felt strangely sad to realize he had no one to cook for him.

A set of heavy mahogany bookcases lined the wall beside the door. He had, she saw, every single one of the thirty-six volumes of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle, as well as a complete set of Diderot's Encyclopedic Most of his books were scientific tomes, or treatises on travel and geography. But here and there she spotted a novel, mostly untranslated English titles, and she was pleased to see her favorites by Fielding and Defoe. Next to the bookcases, maps of the stars and constellations had been tacked onto the wall. She saw that the charts had been corrected where he had made discoveries of his own.

The slam of a door downstairs startled her, making her suddenly aware of the passage of time. She looked around the cluttered room with despair, if the ring was in here she would never find it.

She decided to look for it in the bedroom first.

His bed was a large but plain, uncurtained affair, fashioned simply with a bolster and a good feather quilt. An impressive, classically styled armoire filled one wall. Opposite squatted a marble-topped commode table with two drawers faced with mother-of-pearl marquetry. The top of the commode was empty but for a large silver candelabra. The only incongruous note in the room was a stuffed owl on a perch near the window facing the gardens. In contrast to the laboratory, this room was sparse and neat.

She laid the door key on top of the commode and pulled open one of the drawers—

Oooooh.

Gabrielle whipped around, so startled by the strange noise that she emitted a tiny, high-pitched shriek. She pressed a shaking hand to her chest in case her heart decided to burst right out of it, but the room was empty and now utterly silent.

"Who's there?" she called tentatively, then cursed herself for a fool. After all, she was the intruder here.

A breeze drifted through the broken panes of the window, cooling Gabrielle's sweating face. The feathers stirred on the neck of the stuffed owl. Then, slowly, his two glazed yellow eyes blinked at her.

Warily she approached the bird. She started to reach out to touch him, to see if he was real, when he blinked again.

Gabrielle snatched back her hand, then began to laugh. It was just like the man, she thought, to keep an owl for a pet. Like a wizard straight out of English folklore. She pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth to stop the laughter, sure she was getting hysterical. Resolutely she turned her back on the bird and began to search the drawers of the commode, although it was difficult to do with an owl watching her, well . . . owlishly, she thought with another warbling, nervous giggle.

Her ring was not in the top drawer, but she did find something that made her pause. It was a case filled with mercury molds used to make copies of the red wax seals which closed letters. She wondered whose secret correspondence Maximilien de Saint-Just had been steaming open and then resealing.

In the second drawer she found a large Chinese wooden casket elaborately carved with warriors in strange armor fighting with swords. She lifted the hinged lid. Inside was a heavy black pistol gleaming with oil. It looked well cared for, and used. She hefted it. Was it loaded?

A small velvet bag lay in the casket with the pistol. She emptied the contents on top of the commode. A scattering of foreign coins, a man's diamond stock pin, a miniature of a young woman. And a single ring—the ruby ring he bought that morning.

She picked up the miniature.

It was of a girl at the first bloom of womanhood. Her hair was very pale, powdered probably, for her eyes were a deep rich hazel. She had a round, full mouth that quirked up at the corners, dimpling one cheek. There was something familiar about the girl, but Gabrielle couldn't place her. She wondered if this was the girl destined to receive the ring, or if she was an old love; if she, perhaps, was the reason for the cynical glint in Max's sooty gray eyes.

She stared at the miniature a moment longer, then gently slipped it back inside the velvet bag. Her fingers closed around the ruby ring—

"Looking for something?"