The English Heiress (33 page)

“You never gave me a chance,” she said, pouting playfully.

“What?”

“I was going to show you that you didn’t need to look elsewhere for more lively entertainment, but you seem to have found out for yourself.”

“What are you talking about?” Roger lifted himself on one elbow and winced at the marks he had made on Leonie’s white skin. She had been smiling at him wistfully, but now her lips tightened.

“I am talking about your taste for trulls, and I wish you would do me the favor of according me a modicum of intelligence. When a man who has given every sign of contentment—good humor, eager hands and lips, loving looks—suddenly turns sour and turns his back in bed too, he has seen another woman he likes better.”

“You are mad,” Roger breathed. “There is no other woman. I am not that kind.”

“No? I suppose you learned what you just showed me from a group of holy celibates! And no doubt you want to get me out to the house so that you can better practice religious austerities.”

Roger bit his lip in chagrin at giving way to his temper and again exposing Leonie to fear, but she did not look frightened. From the yellow glare in her eyes, he realized that she did not believe him. He did not know whether to laugh or cry. Not only was Leonie jealous, but it was quite clear she did not object to the “religious austerities”, only to his practicing them with someone else. And now that he had a woman who wanted him, he had to lose her.

“Leonie, there isn’t anyone else. There never will be. I love you. I swear it.” He spoke in English. It was impossible for Roger to speak of love in French. It was nearly impossible for him to speak the words at all, associated as they were with years of misery.

The shift in language brought conviction to Leonie. Somehow she was sure Roger would not lie in English. The light of rage in her eyes softened. “Then we will speak no more of my going away,” she said, also in English. “And since you say you love me, I will also be discreet and ask no questions about where you learned to do such delightful things. After all, it is not really my affair what you did before we came together.”

Roger was looking at her most oddly, with such intensity that it seemed as if he never expected to see her again. It occurred to her that if Roger had told the truth and his withdrawal was not because he was tired of her, something else must be seriously wrong. Nonetheless, at this moment it could not be important. A more compelling concern was absorbing her. It would not be possible if Roger really did love her to make a jealous scene every time they made love. Nor did she wish to return to her passive, innocent role. Also, it was true that, however sincere Roger was at this moment, variety was a spice that kept love strong. She touched his face.

“We will not talk about where you learned, but you will teach me—yes? It is not fair that you should know so much what will give me pleasure and I should know so little what to do for you.”

“Sweet—” Roger began,

“Not so sweet,” Leonie chuckled. “I wish to know for your sake, yes, but also for mine. You have too great an advantage this way.”

Roger swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “I wish I could. I swear I would gladly give my whole life, religiously, to teaching you. But tomorrow you must go. It is too dangerous for you to stay here.”

He was deadly serious. It was not a desire for freedom but really fear for her. “Has someone recognized me?” Leonie asked, switching back to French.

“No, it is not that—” Roger stopped abruptly.

He could have kicked himself for missing such an opportunity. He would not have needed to explain everything, and Leonie would have had no reason to be afraid either for herself or for him. It was such pain, such joy, so mixed together with physical exhaustion that he could not sort reason from emotion or seize an idea when it was presented to him. Leonie, however, was not subject to the same confusion of mind and picked up his answer before he could cover it.

“Then why should it be more dangerous for me to stay here than for you?” she asked briskly.

“It is not that, my love.” Roger’s voice trembled a little on the last words. How often had they been spat back at him with insults and mockery.

“What is it?” Leonie murmured, reaching for him.

“Nothing, nothing now, only—it is hard for me to say ‘I love’. It seems to me that as soon as I dare say it, I lose what I love.”

“You will not lose me,” Leonie assured him; then teasingly, “Not even when you wish you could.”

“But I must. I told you. Tomorrow you must go.”

“But I do not wish to go, and I will not.”

Wearily, Roger tried to think of a rational explanation for a situation that would be dangerous for her but not for him. He supposed there must be many things that could produce such a result, but he could not think, only feel the wrenching loss, foretaste the misery of the empty bed. And the whole thing was made worse by the fact that Leonie cared for him. If he were accused with Toulon and guillotined, she would grieve. That was almost sweet enough to mask its bitterness, but more bitterness lay behind. If he died, Leonie would be without protection. Fouché would do what he could—perhaps.

“I am so tired, Leonie,” Roger sighed. “Let us leave it for the morning.”

Chapter Seventeen

By the morning Roger had regained his wits, but it was too late; Leonie had regained her strength. The preceding night, exhausted as she was, Roger might have played on her fears, on her memories, and convinced her to go into hiding. In the clear light of morning, well rested, and with buoyant spirits riding the crest of Roger’s confession of love, no specious excuses could satisfy her. Roger had begun while they were dressing. He had started to withdraw to do that in his usual way, but Leonie had called him back. He tried first to convince her that he had not clearly understood her question the previous night, that someone had recognized her as an aristocrat. Leonie listened to him with her hands on her hips in unconscious imitation of the wife of the fishmonger next door when she was in an aggressive mood.

“Blather!” she exclaimed succinctly.

Roger barely restrained himself from taking her over his knee and spanking her. Here he was, preparing to tear out his heart to save her from harm, to protect her from fear and grief and guilt, and she dismissed what he was saying as “blather”.

 
“Very well,” he snapped, “I did not wish you to feel guilty, but I must tell you plainly that one of the commissioners has conceived a desire for you. You must go away before he demands that you yield to him.”

Leonie considered that. Roger’s irritation lent it some verisimilitude, and she did not discount the power of these common, trumped-up officials. Such a fact would accord well too, with Roger’s behavior. She could understand that he might be both angry and jealous. Perhaps he thought she had encouraged the man, whoever it was. Two small doubts tickled her mind, however. She had not been much in the shop since they had moved, and she could not remember any man who had paid the slightest attention to her. Certainly no one had tried to engage her in conversation, and even these common clods would not try to obtain a woman by asking her husband for her. Also, she could not see the point in bringing another woman into the house to replace her. That last stuck in her craw.

“There is no need to have another woman here,” Leonie said slowly. “In fact, if we are to tell a reasonable tale, such as I have gone to attend a sick relative, it would not be reasonable for you to have another woman in the house.”

Roger could not say that the purpose of the other woman was to convince people that Leonie had not left. “Am I to starve and the house become a pigsty?” he countered.

“I will arrange with one of the woman on the street to come and do for you,” Leonie offered, then nodded. “Yes, and that will establish that I am coming back and that there is an innocent reason for my going. We must not frighten Toulon, you know. Yes, you can eat at an inn or get meals from a cafetier—and you can come to visit me and my ‘sick relative’. That would only be natural.” Her eyes laughed at him, hot and golden. “I would not wish to fall behind in my lessons before I even start. It will not be for long. In a few days, or at most a week or so, Toulon’s escape must take place. Then—”

When Leonie provided so reasonable an answer to Roger’s last proposal, he wondered for an instant if he could somehow make the exchange of women by force. Then her suggestion that he should visit her seized his mind. He rejected it as impossible, but loss stabbed him and he began to reconsider. Open visits to a “sick relative” were impossible. He would be followed and Leonie’s hiding place discovered. However, if the exchange worked and Leonie was still thought to be in the house, he might pretend he was making a delivery to the place. While he tried to convince himself that it would not endanger Leonie, her remark about Toulon hit him with the force of a physical blow. Before he could control it, his face twisted. Leonie’s voice cut off midsentence and she stared at him, her skin slowly crimsoning.

“No one wanted me,” she said. “You think Toulon’s plot will fail and that he, or others will confess we are involved and we will be guillotined. You would have dragged some innocent person—”

“No. She would have known nothing and—”

“You know innocence is no defense in these times. What were you thinking of?” Leonie asked furiously.

“That I love you,” Roger said helplessly. “That I cannot bear you should be hurt or frightened. That your life—you are so young, Leonie, you have hardly lived at all—was too precious to lose.”

“I cannot think why you should have such feelings about so depraved a person as myself,” Leonie raged, “a person who would desert her lover at the first sign of danger, who would consent to the execution of a perfectly innocent and unknowing bystander in her stead. Not to mention a person who was such a fool as not to realize that once her protector was guillotined—”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Roger began to laugh. “But obviously I didn’t believe any of those things or I wouldn’t have nearly choked on my lies trying to hide the true facts from you. No, Leonie, listen—”

“Not to any such nonsense. I do not wish to die, but I do not wish to live with such things on my soul either.”

Roger recalled suddenly how Leonie had said, the night before, that she could have escaped from prison but would not leave her family behind, that if Marie Antoinette had consented to escape without her children and her sister-by-marriage she would be a monster. He stared at Leonie, biting his lips with anxiety.

“Very well,” he said slowly, “I have one more idea.”

“If it means being apart, I will not listen,” Leonie warned.

“Only for a few hours—”

“No. I don’t trust you. You wish to save me from myself.”

“Leonie, be reasonable.”

“I am reasonable. What will I do, alone in this city, without protection or papers of identification? How long can I survive?”

“Fouché—”

“He owes me nothing, not even friendship. Perhaps for your sake he would try to help me, but what if that should bring him into trouble? Besides, I have no one in the world except you, Roger. I—” She stopped suddenly and then went on, “I don’t even know why you are so sure Toulon will fail.”

Sighing, Roger told her, and Leonie was forced to nod in acknowledgment. She was not nearly as pessimistic as Roger, but she did realize there was a good chance that the plot would be exposed. Again, she was not certain that they would be involved, but that too, was possible. To Leonie’s mind, however, it was not a strong enough probability to make it worthwhile to flee, leaving behind Roger’s valuable stock in trade and her own few, but therefore precious, things.

“If we were accused,” she said slowly, “they would send three or four men to take us, would they not?”

“Or more,” Roger replied grimly. “This involves the royal family, and they would not wish any sympathizers to escape.”

“Then we will have warning,” Leonie pointed out. “It is not often that more than one or two men would come together to have a gun worked on. And they will send men to the back door also—so we will know their purpose.”

“Yes. Now you can see why—”

“Then we must leave the house another way,” Leonie interrupted, not paying attention to him. “If we—”

“Flew out the window like birds?” he asked bitterly, but even as he spoke he realized the remark was not foolish. The houses were all joined together, and they could escape over the roofs. What a fool he had been to be trapped in his own mind. Anything that threatened Leonie turned him so frantic that he seemed unable to think. Hopelessness gone, Roger could laugh at himself. The house did not have an existing way out of the roof, but that was all for the best. No one would suspect that they could get out that way.

That night he began the work and finished it the following night. It was a crude job, but it would let then out and that was all Roger cared about. If the roof leaked, well, that was too bad. Leonie, meanwhile, had prepared a strong sling into which Fifi could be fastened so that she could be carried. Everything else would have to be abandoned, of course. Leonie signed, but not deeply. The clothes she had were better than the rags she wore in prison, but she had no greater affection for them. When they got to England, she would show Roger that she was not naturally a dowdy person.

And then—nothing. For a week their tension was intense, and since Roger sat up a good part of every night expecting either the escapees or a group to arrest them, there were no “lessons” for Leonie. The next week, Leonie insisted on sharing the watch with him, because he was getting so tired that his work was suffering, and that would rouse suspicion. And still nothing happened. Another week dragged past—March was over.

“The attempt has fallen through,” Roger said to Leonie and she agreed, although there was no outcry, no outward sign of conflict among the commissioners.

The only confirmation Roger had of his guess was that Toulon and Lepitre did not come into his shop again and, more important, the men who had been watching Leonie and himself disappeared. He breathed more freely after that, but not for long. On April third Roger and Leonie went to Fouché’s office to deposit a sum of money. Roger’s account was now substantial enough so that Fouché could give special attention to so valuable a client without arousing the curiosity of his less-trusted employees. He passed along the news that his cousin was seriously worried about events. On April first the convention had passed a resolution repealing the inviolability of the deputies.

Roger’s blue eyes blazed. “You cannot mean what I think I hear,” he said. “Are you telling me that those—er—patriots—” The window was open and Roger had no intention of being overheard calling the members of the convention idiots, but the word stood large in his expression. “They have made themselves liable to prosecution for political acts?”

“That is so,” Fouché agreed. “My cousin said,” his eyes fixed Roger’s with an intensity that belied his casual and approving tone, “that he too, voted for the decree because men should be willing to support their opinions with their lives, and if their lives are not at stake, they will be inclined to make their decisions lightly.”

“If,” Leonie whispered in Roger’s ear, “they do not become incapable of making any decision at all.”

“I see the point,” Roger remarked, his lips twisting wryly. “How noble-minded they are, to be sure!” He turned his head toward Leonie. “You are cold,” he whispered.

On cue, she complained rather loudly, “Oh, do forgive me, but I am afraid my shawl is too thin. It is so strange. I was warm enough while walking outside, but now, sitting here, I am growing cold. Would it be possible, Citizen Fouché, to shut the window?”

That done, they were able to speak more plainly. “What the hell brought on this lunacy?” Roger asked.

“The army was defeated very badly at Neerwinden, and Dumouriez has gone over to the Austrians. So far, it is being kept a secret.”

“I cannot believe that so good a general as Dumouriez—”

“Oh, he did not wish to go into Holland, but the convention forced him with some crazy order about liberating the people of the Netherlands.”

“Since the people of Holland have been electing their rulers for some hundreds of years, and having in the past fought the French viciously to maintain that privilege, it seems the wrong nation to attack,” Roger remarked caustically.

Fouché shrugged. “I am a good Frenchman. I love my country,” he sighed, “I approved of the doings of the Estates-General with my all heart. I approved of the constitution with all my heart. Now… Monsieur St. Eyre, I am come to the point where I have begun to wonder whether France would be better conquered by foreigners than free.”

“I cannot doubt that it would,” Leonie snapped. “At least we would be rid of this government. A republic—that I do not like, but it is possible. It has worked among the Swiss and it seems to be working among the Americans. But it is not possible to have a republic governed by homicidal maniacs.”

“Hush!” Roger protested. He agreed heartily with the sentiments, but it was not his place to say anything, being, as it were, a member of the enemy camp. “I am afraid I am concerned more with personal matters,” he said apologetically. “It seems to me that the situation is growing worse, and I must make an effort to get Mademoiselle de Conyers to England if I can. Do you think it would be safe to approach you cousin with a request for a passport to Brittany? From there I can manage.”

“I will mention to him that I have a client who wishes to know whether it is safe to travel to Brittany and whom to approach for a passport, but Joseph will do nothing. He was a teacher of physics, you know, and he judges things by action and reaction. He says the pendulum has not reached its full swing, and there will be more violence. At the moment he will do nothing for anyone that could bring any attention to himself. Perhaps he will recommend someone who might be willing…” Fouché’s voice trailed away. It was obvious that he did not believe his cousin would even go so far as that for fear his name might be mentioned. Joseph was not a man to take a chance—not any chance at all.

On their way home, when they were sure no one could overhear, Roger and Leonie discussed the problem in lowered voices. This time Leonie was willing to go if they could find a way. Roger’s avowal of love had given her confidence. She thought that when she was dressed and perfumed and bejeweled and freed by her “lessons”—which still had not started because the starvation imposed by anxiety had made both of them too eager for refinements—from the pose of an innocent young girl, she could hold her own. Englishwomen, she had heard, were cold and correct, propriety being necessary to obtain a husband in that country. But she was not interested in propriety or a husband as long as she could have Roger.