Passion and Pride (A Historical Romance) (26 page)

“What was
that
all about?” he asked.

“That was you passing an arm’s breadth from Death,” she hissed.

“He’s a lieutenant,” Evan scoffed.

In England, military officers – though respected – were nothing to be feared by the average Englishman. Unless that average Englishman happened to have a young, pretty daughter who might be seduced by a smart uniform and a handsome face.

“It is rumored that people who displease Villars have a curious way of dying,” Marian whispered.

Evan stared at her. “He is a murderer?”

Marian glanced around her. “Could you perhaps not use that word? And so loudly?”

“He should be reported to his superiors!”

“Why? They would only commend him, perhaps even promote him. In case you haven’t heard, people are dying at an alarming rate in Paris these days. One more is of no account – especially if he is an Englishman.”

“This is madness!”

“Yes – and you were doing your best to incite it.”

Evan took a second to compose himself, then sighed. “Well… then I suppose I owe you a great debt of gratitude.”

She glared up at him. “Actually, yes you do, but you can repay me with a simple answer: what the hell are you doing here?”

Evan groaned inwardly. This was not going as well as he had hoped.

“I have come to escort you back to England.”

She stared at him, her face utterly shocked. Then she let out a single laugh.

“Are you serious?
You?
After all this time, you’ve come to take me back home?” she asked mockingly.

“Pemberly thinks that – ”

Immediately her face hardened. “Ah, Pemberly
.
I should have known
he
was the one concerned about me, and
not you.
”

The vitriol in her voice took Evan by surprise.

“
I
was the one who traveled four days to get here, not Pemberly – and I was the one who braved that murderous lieutenant of yours – ”

“And who had to be rescued by yours truly,” she hissed.

“Well… yes,” he admitted.

“What I can’t determine is why on Earth Pemberly would send
you
, of all people.”

“He thought you might listen to me.”

Here Marian sailed into a gale of laughter, and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Apparently he miscalculated,” Evan snarled, his face reddening.

“
Apparently
. No – not just ‘apparently,’ but conclusively. Completely. Stupendously.”

“I get the general idea, Madame Thesaurus.”

“No, I don’t think you
do
. I have half a mind to march you back in there in front of Villars’ one-man firing squad and – ”

“Um, excuse me?” a plaintive little French voice spoke up. “I, uh, am not interrupting?”

They both looked over – Marian in high dudgeon, Evan in relief – at Dardanelle fidgeting a few feet away.

Marian sighed loudly, her anger momentarily abating. “Laurent, did you willingly participate in this folly?” she asked in French.

“I am sorry,
cherie,
I did not think you would be so extraordinarily opposed to seeing the gentleman,” Laurent said, abashed.

Marian crossed her arms. “I expect stupidity from Pemberly, but not from you, Laurent.”

“Again, my most sincere apologies,
cherie.
”

Marian scowled as she glanced at Evan, then turned back to Dardanelle. “You know why he is here?”

Laurent looked around as though to make sure Villars was not eavesdropping. “I do, Marian, and I cannot say that I disapprove. Paris is not safe.”

“Then why aren’t
you
leaving, Laurent? What of little Cecile and Guillaume, and your wife? If Paris is so dangerous, why are you not taking them and leaving?”

“I do not think the authorities would let me leave. They would accuse me of fleeing my country. But you – your home is England. You have a reason to leave.”

“This is my home now, Laurent. There is nothing for me in England.”

As she said it, she cast a bitter look at Evan that stabbed his heart.

The publisher shook his head. “You can go anywhere and be
L’Anglaise,
Marian. The world is your home. Me, all I know is publishing in France. What would I do in England? Start again with nothing, at my age? Everything I have is here – my property, my mother and father and sister and brothers… I cannot leave for fear of what might befall them. And I am a Frenchman in France. You are an Englishwoman. Despite your fame, your beauty, and your money, it is more dangerous for you than for me.”

“Laurent, you worry far too much.”

“I fear you do not worry enough,
cherie.
”

“All will be well.” Her jaw set, and she glared at Evan. “But I want you to take this… this
fool
away from my sight, and keep him away. As long as he stays in Paris, he is a danger both to me and himself. Do you understand me, Laurent? I do not want to see him again.
Ever.
”

“It shall be as you say,
cherie,
” Dardanelle agreed, and lightly tugged on the arm of Evan’s jacket. “Come, Monsieur Blake.”

Evan resisted. “Marian – for God’s sake,” he pleaded in English, “you must see the danger you are in – be reasonable!”   

Suddenly her face flushed red, and her eyes glittered like the fires of hell themselves.

“‘Be reasonable’? Be
reasonable?”
She laughed bitterly. “Do you
forbid
my staying in Paris, perhaps?”

He paused, taken aback by her fury. “I do not know where this sudden anger has come from – ”

“Recall our last conversation – nay, our last words – in England, sir, and you might understand,” she whispered, her rage barely contained, before she stalked off into the salon, leaving Evan and Dardanelle to stare after her.

Marian, stop – be reasonable!

I forbid it.

If you truly do love me… if ever you did… then let me go.

He remembered it now. He remembered it all.

Evan groaned inwardly. He could not have used a worse choice of words.

The carriage clattered away from the salon, just ten minutes after his fight with Marian.

“So, that did not go as planned,” Dardanelle said neutrally.

“Not as well as it could have, no.”

“She loves you, though,” Dardanelle remarked, as though he were discussing the weather.

“Don’t you mean
‘loved’?
Past tense?”

“There is a saying in the village I grew up in. ‘If the iron still burns, the metal is still hot.’”

Evan looked at him blankly.

Dardanelle sighed, like a teacher disappointed with a slow student. “If a woman loses a man but is still in love with him, her anger still remains.”

Evan frowned and thought back to their entire exchange that evening.

In the larger group, Marian had affected a cool, mocking tone of voice.

But when she first saw him, she had looked shaken to the core.

And when they were alone, she was full of fury.

Passionate.

That insight was like a lightning bolt striking him, and convinced him of a truth beyond all doubt:

She still loved him.

Both Pemberly and Dardanelle were right.

“Where does she live?” Evan asked the publisher.

“Um… why?”

“Where does she live?” Evan pressed.

“La Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, near the Rue Vivienne.”

Evan put his arm outside the carriage and banged on the side. “Driver! La Rue Neuve des Petits Champs near the – what was it?”

“Rue Vivienne,” Dardanelle said worriedly.

“ – Rue Vivienne!” Evan finished shouting.

“
Oui,
Citizen,” the driver called out. Within a minute, he had directed the horses down a side street.

“This is a very bad idea,” Dardanelle fretted.

“We have a saying in England, Dardanelle: ‘strike while the iron is hot.’”

Dardanelle frowned.

“Oh,” Evan said, realizing Dardanelle might think he was going to hit someone. “Perhaps it does not translate well into French. It means to seize an opportunity while events still proceed in your favor.”

“And you think events this evening were in your favor?” Dardanelle asked, his voice full of amused disbelief.

“Not the events so much as the fact that the iron is still hot. And I have fanned the fire, my friend.”

“I think you may have thrown lamp oil on it.”

Evan laughed. “If I wait to see her until tomorrow or the next day, her emotions will have cooled.”

“Perhaps that is a good thing.”

“Not if she walls off her heart.”

Dardanelle sighed unhappily. “She will have me hanged for an accomplice…”

“Nonsense.”

“Perhaps you should rethink your strategy.”

“Why?”

Dardanelle tried to be as delicate as possible. “What if she returns to her apartment… with someone accompanying her?”

Evan had not considered that, and the possibility filled him with pain. He thought for a minute.

“If she does, then I was wrong, and I will depart without speaking to her.”

Dardanelle looked relieved. “I shall leave the key for you. It will be under the third stone on the right side of the path.”

“But I’m not wrong,” Evan insisted. “You can keep your key, I won’t need it.”

Dardanelle smiled wanly. “Third stone… right side of the path. Just in case.”

Marian leaned her head on her hand and watched the streets of Paris go by in the dark as the carriage rattled home after the salon.

He is back!

She could not tell whether the thought terrified, infuriated, saddened, or exhilarated her. In truth, it was a combination of all four.

She could not believe it.
Almost two years with no word at all, and he suddenly shows up out of nowhere.

Her mind was thrown into chaos. All the old wounds reopened, all the old pains resurfaced. Yesterday she would have said her heart had mended long ago; now it felt on the verge of breaking once more.

Why would he do this to me?

She knew why – but Pemberly’s concern was overly paranoid.

True, acquaintances had told her horrible stories about the fall of the Bastille – how heads had been paraded around on pikes, how people had been murdered in the streets. Then there was the attack of the mob on Versailles, which had forced the French King and Queen to live at the Tuileries Palace… but all that had happened in ’89, before she arrived in France.

Now there was an incredible energy that rippled through the city, a feeling that anything could happen. Some of it was wonderful, like the people taking back power from the aristocrats; some of it was bad, like the food riots in the streets just months ago.

But more than anything, Paris felt
alive.
The talk, the people, the art, the writing… it was like an electric current coursing through the streets.

Pemberly was not here to feel the sensation. He was like a doting grandmother, shuttered up in stodgy London, watching from a distance and wringing his hands.

And now Grandmother Pemberly had sent an unwelcome visitor.

Although, if she were to be honest, Blake was not entirely unwelcome.

When she had grabbed Blake’s arm and led him away from Villars, her entire body had tingled with pleasure. Her heart remembered what Blake had meant to her.
Other
parts of her had remembered what he had been able to do to her. What he had made her feel.

In all her time in Paris – despite the number of lovers she had had – no one had been able to touch her so deeply. To inspire such passion in her, such pleasure.

Not one had made her fall in love with them.

She had, on more than one occasion, wondered if Evan Blake had ruined her for all other men. Not in the sense of virtue or purity: she was
L’Anglaise,
after all, not some blushing schoolgirl straight from the convent.

No, it was that no man she had met had been able to measure up to Blake. Not in the emotions they shared, that feeling of deep connection between souls. Not in handsomeness. Not in prowess in bed.

And most importantly of all, not in the way she loved him.

The carriage dropped her off in front of her building. She paid the driver and proceeded to the shadowy courtyard.

She was almost to the front door when she heard a voice in the darkness:

“Marian!”

Her heart stopped within her chest.

Blake.

She whirled around with a tiny cry. He was there by the wall, inside the gate, barely visible in the shadows.

How dare he!
she immediately thought.
After all he’s done, after the shock he gave me at the salon – how dare he come here!

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

He walked towards her slowly. His expression looked chastened… but also determined.

“I thought about what you said when we parted tonight, and you were right,” he said. “I came to apologize.”

“Apology excepted. Now
leave.
”

“I cannot do that. Not without you.”

Now that he was here in front of her, all the terror, sadness, and exhilaration had departed, and only the anger remained.

“You lost any hold you had on me two years ago, sir. So – goodnight and goodbye.”

As she turned to go, he grabbed her wrist.

His bare skin on hers thrilled her – but the action infuriated her. She wrenched her arm away and turned on him, livid. “How dare you!”

“Two years ago, I was wrong to do what I did. When I lost you, I lost the only thing in my life that was worthwhile. You were the only person who loved me, and I threw that love away.”

Her heart was thudding harder inside her with every passing second. She wanted to scream,
Yes you did!
and weep at the same time. She felt unsteady on her feet.

But she could not give in. She could not let him see how badly he had wounded her so long ago.

“How nice that you have seen the error of your ways,” she said coldly. “Too bad that it comes so late.”