Royal 02 - Royal Passion (39 page)

The mob was closing in, surrounding them. Trude, her eyes alight with the fire of battle, called out, “Back to back! We can hold them!"

In a smooth movement, Mara and Juliana turned, and the three of them formed a triangle with their backs together, guarding each other from attack from the rear.

There was another charge, and another. Again and yet again, they fought the rabble back. Two men lay dead or dying at their feet. Another had crawled to one side where he twitched and moaned, holding a hole in his neck. The attack slowed, fell away.

The mood of the mob that crowded around them on all sides had gone past the mass ill will that had exploded into an urge to chastise three well-dressed aristocratic women, to frighten them into some respect for the precariousness of life by stripping them and applying a few blows with sticks. It was now uglier by far, murderous with the need for revenge for blood spilled, for being made to look small by mere women. In it was the same vicious hysteria that had, less than a hundred years before, caused such a mob to cut literally to pieces the Princess Lamballe, confidante of Marie Antoinette.

"Stone them!” a woman cried. “Let's see if they can fight stones with their swords!"

The cobbles of the street were easily prized up. Heavy cubes of stone, denser and larger than bricks, they were of a size that could be quickly piled into a strong barricade or flung by a man. If thrown with only reasonable force, they could break bones; with rage and hatred behind them, they had stood off armies and routed squadrons. They were the weapons of the proletariat.

If the women stood where they were, they would be battered to their knees in a matter of seconds. If they tried to run, they would be chased down and mangled like hapless vixens caught by the hounds. There was only one defense.

"Charge?” Mara asked quietly.

"Charge,” Trude said.

They looked at each other, the three of them, their eyes filled with rage and resolve and terror. Perspiration trickled from their hairlines due to their exertions, and their legs trembled. There was blood matting Juliana's streaming tresses, and Trude's uniform sleeve was torn away at the shoulder seam. The hems of Mara's and Juliana's skirts and Trude's trousers were soaked with grease and unspeakable filth. Their swords were bloodied, disgusting, and the muscles of their shoulders and arms so cramped they might never again move in smooth answer to the commands of their brains.

Suddenly, they grinned and, as abruptly as released springs, leaped, screaming, into a dead run straight at the thickest group of their attackers.

The men and women scattered, wild-eyed, scrambling, dropping their weapons and spreading out as they ran. But behind the trio came the thud of running feet, closing in, gathering for the kill. They whirled.

The men behind them skidded to a stop, recoiling, flinging up their hands, which held the lethal lengths of swords. Their uniforms, white and unsullied, glinted platinum bright in the sunlight.

Estes, who had Trude's blade touching between his eyes, bleated an oath.

Luca, his gaze upon Juliana hungry and searching, shook his head in admiration.

"
A moi?"
Roderic said and, after one comprehensive look at the stunned, almost angry faces of the three of them, burst out laughing.

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"They were magnificent, invincible! A trio of amazons,” Estes declared, holding forth that evening before the rest of the cadre, along with Rolfe and Angeline.

"All for one, and one for all,” Juliana quipped.

"So well in hand did they have the situation, they hardly needed our help at all."

Mara, a wry smile of remembrance curving her mouth, shook her head. “I wouldn't say that."

"Never will I forget the absolute horror of the moment that vile-smelling urchin came running up to us holding your beaded purse, Mademoiselle Mara, and shouting ‘
A moi! A moi!'
at the top of street-crier lungs as we rode into the courtyard. I thought my heart would stop."

"Vile-smelling?"

"He reeked to the rooftops of the most abominable scent."

"Grandmère's perfume! It must have broken when I threw down the reticule. I forgot all about it."

"How could you?” Roderic, standing behind Mara's chair, murmured.

Trude, nearby, looked at him with stern displeasure in her light blue eyes. “With good reason."

"Swift as the wind, we raced to the aid of Mademoiselle Mara, without stopping to ask why or how or who might be with her,” Estes went on. “Imagine our dismay to find all three ladies beleaguered, surrounded by dead men but in deadly peril. Before we could make our presence known, the ladies charged straight at the enemy. Never have I seen anything so gallant, so stirring, so—"

"So foolhardy?” Roderic suggested.

"What would you have us do?” his sister demanded. “Stand and be stoned? Kneel and pray? There was no other choice."

"I would have had you remain safe within these walls."

"So you would not have to be worried,” his sister replied with a flounce in her seat.

"It was my fault,” Mara said. “I had no idea it would be so dangerous."

"Nor I,” Juliana agreed.

Trude lifted her chin. “Nor I."

"'All for one—'” Roderic quoted softly.

There was a moment of silence. Estes filled it. “And then when we had dismounted and joined our force to theirs to rout the crazed ones drunk on looted wine and liberty, they turned on us, these viragoes, as if they would slice out our hearts for ending their sport."

"And you laughed,” Trude accused.

The Italian count looked offended. “Roderic laughed. Luca and I merely joined him for politeness."

"It was the relief that they were unharmed.” Luca, unexpectedly, joined the discussion.

"Don't anyone believe it,” Juliana said with a sound suspiciously like a snort. “It was the bedraggled appearance we presented."

"Bedraggled, beleaguered, and infinitely dear."

Juliana, turning in surprise to look at the gypsy, flushed suddenly at something she saw in the depths of his dark eyes.

Jacques and Jared looked at each other and sighed. “Why is it,” Jacques said to his brother, “that we never get to rescue the maidens in distress?"

"You're always too busy distressing them yourselves,” Michael told them with brutal frankness.

Roderic quelled such comments with a single opaque glance."I did not,” he said quietly,"speak in jest or to hear the clattering in my windpipe. Henceforth, no woman will leave this house without an adequate escort of at least two, preferably three, of the cadre, and even then only in a carriage. Members of the cadre will ride out in twos only. No exceptions."

Angeline leaned forward, a frown between her eyes. “Is this really necessary, all for a few street riots?"

Her son turned to her, but his face did not soften. “Last night the Comédie Française closed its doors."

The Comédie Française, the official and leading theater of Paris, closed down for nothing short of disaster. Paris had learned to keep an eye on it in the past decades of political upheaval as a reliable gauge. When the theater shut, the citizens of the city battened down the hatches and waited for the storm.

"And I, my son?"

The query came from Rolfe. He sat in a high-backed chair with one booted foot thrust out and his elbow resting on the chair arm, supporting his chin on one knuckle. If there was a challenge in the words he spoke, Roderic declined to rise to it.

"You, sir, will, of course, do as best pleases you. But I would like to consider you as one of the cadre, available for escort if necessary and for any other duty."

Mara expected an explosion. She had underestimated both the king of Ruthenia and the understanding of his son. Rolfe's question had not, apparently, been made out of concern for his dignity, but from a determination to participate in the crisis. That he was satisfied was obvious from his ironic nod.

It was Juliana who next sought Roderic's attention."What of Mara's perfume? Even if we scrape the galleries and beg for chaperons, I'm not certain an outing to replace it has any appeal."

"Is she sure she wants it?” Estes exclaimed in pretended disbelief.

Roderic disregarded the count. “I'll get it for her."

"That isn't necessary,” Mara said hastily. “I can go myself, if someone, perhaps Jared and Jacques, will bear me company."

"I will get it."

So steely was Roderic's voice as he repeated the words that she subsided. Let him go then! Pigheaded man. She certainly had no wish to make the excursion; the very thought of it made the muscles of her stomach clench. He could not know that, naturally. Could he?

She sent him a swift glance from under her lashes. He was watching her, his gaze resting on the thin line of her lips, and the expression in his dark blue eyes was armored with tender humor.

Trude, observing the byplay, shifted in her seat before averting her eyes with a fierce frown. Estes sighed.

It was dinnertime when Roderic, true to his word, brought the perfume to Mara. She was sitting with Grandmère Helene. He tapped on the door of the salon, then let himself in and turned to usher in a cavalcade of servants. The first of these bore on a pillow of blue velvet a large, frosted-glass flacon with a hand-blown stopper shaped like a gardenia containing over a pint of perfume. The second carried an enormous bouquet of hothouse flowers, yellow jonquils and white narcissus and pink quince, in a crystal vase. The third held a guitar in a polished wooden case. The fourth was burdened with a silver wine stand in which a long-necked bottle of champagne cooled. The remaining servants were weighed down with trays containing covered silver dishes, stands, compotes, and a variety of china, crystal, and silverware.

"You have come to cheer the invalid. How splendid!” Grandmère Helene called through the open bedchamber door.

He moved at once to the bedside to bow over her hand and raise it to his lips. His smile enigmatic, he answered, “Among other things."

Grandmère Helene, her fine old eyes keen, gave him a quick, hard glance. “If you are thinking I may fall asleep early after a glass or two of champagne, I may fool you."

"I hope you may,” he returned.

She gave a short laugh. “Prevaricator."

"How can you think it?"

"You forget, I knew your father. It gives me an advantage."

"Something you have never needed, surely?"

She pulled her hand away, slapping at his, but there was no displeasure in her smile.

The food was wonderfully prepared and beautifully presented, delicate enough to tempt an invalid, but substantial enough to sate the most voracious appetite. The servants laid everything out, checked it for completeness, then went away.

Grandmère opened the perfume and applied it lavishly so that the air in the room was heavy with its scent combined with that of the flowers. While they ate, she had to hear once more the tale of the first small bottle and what had become of it, of the part Mara had played and the last-minute rescue. Mara tried to warn Roderic with a shake of her head, but he seemed to pay no attention. Still, listening to the tale he spun as she helped her grandmother eat her meal, she hardly recognized the sugarcoated events. She gave him a grateful smile above Grandmère Helene's head, but to that, too, he made no response.

He set himself out to please, however, presenting Grandmère with an only slightly embroidered version of the political situation, spicing it with snatches of gossip, wit, and drollery. He also kept her wineglass refilled. When they had finished the last bite of their dessert, a creme custard with almond sauce, and the remains of the feast had been taken away, he picked up his guitar. He played the clear and complicated melodies that had been fashionable in Grandmère's youth and the old, faintly risque love songs of the
ancien régime.
His supple fingers wandered from Mozart to a Spanish bolero, trailed into a Norman serenade that dated from the time of the Crusades, and ended with the stately and softly fading measures of Haydn's “Farewell."

He lifted his hands from the strings. The sweet vibrations died away. Mara looked at her grandmother. The elderly woman lay with her eyes closed, gently snoring. Together Mara and Roderic rose and eased from the room, drawing the door between the bedchamber and the salon closed behind them.

"You are a devil,” Mara said, her voice low.

"Because I lulled a lady with wine and music, and sent her dreaming?"

"You did it on purpose!"

"What purpose, Mara? To make love to you on that desperately uncomfortable settee? To steal you away to my seraglio, supposing I had a seraglio? To use the ancient wisdom that the way to a girl's heart is through that of her grandmother?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Not I,
chère.
If I were to woo you, it would not be with perfidy. Nor would it be with heavy perfume or serenades or bunches of indiscriminate flowers.” He reached out to touch her cheek with one knuckle. “It would be rather with something rare and fragile and without blemish."

It took fully as much courage to meet his gaze as it had taken to face the mob. She expected to find derision there, or perhaps irritation; instead, there was translucent patience.

"Then I must thank you for entertaining Grandmère this evening and for—for all the lovely gifts, not the least of them your music. It was kind of you to give us so much of your time, and I'm truly grateful."

"A charming speech,
chère
, or it would be if your gratitude was what I wanted."

He paused, expectant. Her wariness, the stiff control he sensed inside her, hurt him in some inexplicable way, as did the dark shadows under her eyes and the blue stain of a bruise on her neck. He wished he knew what she was thinking.

The obvious question echoed in her mind:
What is it you want then?
But she could not force it to her lips. The answer was not one she was sure she wished to hear.

A grim smile touched his mouth. He took her hand and raised it to his lips, then, with a soft good night, left her.

Mara stood where she was for a long moment. With a turn so swift it sent her skirt belling out around her, she moved back toward her grandmother's room. She banked the fire and set the screen in place, then turned down the lamp that burned behind a frosted rose globe on the bedstand. Tucking the covers close around the sleeping woman, she leaned to kiss her forehead, then moved into her own bedchamber that lay on the other side of her grandmother's.