The Forbidden Rose (23 page)

“There is no sparrow who could put so many names together on so many different routes. Only one of us.” She had hung a towel across her shoulders to keep the wet of her hair from soaking into the robe. She took it off to rub at her face. “It’s someone as close as my eyelids. Who do I trust the most? That’s the one who betrayed me.”

“We knew this might happen someday. We’re ready. Your people have taken new names. New stations. We’ll start replacing the passwords. We go on.”

“And the traitor goes on with us. You will have more sparrows for me soon.”

“Not soon. Today. A family of five. Their arrest has been ordered for tonight. Owl is moving them into the loft at the brothel.”

“I can’t—”

“They leave Paris with the laundry wagons at dawn. Who will you send to meet them?” Jean-Paul’s eyes fixed on the wall behind her, an imitation of white marble with black veins in it. “The son is fourteen. Old enough to go to the guillotine with his father.”

The pipes in the baths were never entirely silent. One could hear the force of water in them as a burr. A throb. A low hum. “You are saying I have no choice. Even now, with this risk to all of us, we go on.”

“Or I can tell the sparrows to find their own way out of France.” He waited. Jean-Paul had come a long way from the boy she once knew.

Bertille had said it. No one in La Flèche did this to be safe. “Linnet. I will send Linnet. Tell Olivie to pass the message herself. With her own hand.”

She brooded upon the ten thousand catastrophes that might come of this and could think of no way to avert them. Jean-Paul waited patiently for her to finish.

Her people would not draw back. Their part was to be the heroes they were. Her part was to send them into danger.

“Nothing has changed,” Jean-Paul said. “Not from the first night when you named us La Flèche. We can’t turn back.”

“Then we are very stupid. And up to our necks in sparrows. Robespierre will make Paris a city of the dead if he has his way. Oh, I will tell you a clever scheme I came up with while I was waiting for disaster to fall upon me at the
barrière
this morning.” She combed her hair and outlined a plan that involved sparrows marching out the gate at dawn, dressed in the uniform of army recruits. “The boots will be the greatest problem. There are no boots exactly like army boots.”

“We can steal them.”

She shook her head. “We will commission them quite openly and say they are a shipment for Lyon. You will forge some orders. No one knows what is happening in Lyon. Not even the army. They are in sufficient turmoil in Lyon that we could commission petticoats for the army and they would not—”

Very faintly, in the corridor outside she heard something. There might have been the click of opening and closing. There might have been the sound of feet.

Then the door to the room swung back. Guillaume LeBreton stood in the doorway with the light behind him.

GUILLAUME WORE THE WHITE ROBES OF THE house. He did not look like a man at leisure. He looked like a particularly deadly centurion at the Roman baths, one who had seen service against the barbarians until he was half a barbarian himself.

“You’re in the wrong room, dolt.” Jean-Paul moved in front of her. “Get out.”

“Well, well, well . . .” Guillaume looked from her to Jean-Paul and then back again. “I was right about you meeting somebody. I was wrong about who. Introduce me, Maggie.”

“I do not want you to know each other. Do not come in.”

But he was already in. His hair slicked forward over his forehead, wet, which increased his resemblance to an ancient Roman. The scar was white, stark and shiny on his cheek. She had forgotten how intimidating he was.

Jean-Paul reached smoothly to his jacket where it was hung over the back of the chair. He came out with a long knife, the sort used in kitchens.

Jean-Paul with a knife. “Stop that.” She turned the other way. “Guillaume, do not hurt him. I mean it.”

“Me?” Guillaume spread his hands. They were empty, which made them no less dangerous. “I’m not carrying weapons.”

“And do not look stupid. I am all out of patience with you looking stupid. Jean-Paul, will you put that away before Guillaume tears you apart.”

“He won’t tear me apart,” Jean-Paul said.

“When did you start carrying a knife around with you? We are not bandits and Mohawks upon the streets. What do you need a knife for?”

“I use it to pry open specimen boxes,” he said, being Jean-Paul and literal. “And to separate rhizomes.” He was watching Guillaume, not her. She had not realized Jean-Paul could look so cold.

“Then you should leave your knife to prying boxes and not wave it in people’s faces. What do you think you will do? Hold off a column of dragoons with it? You are being ridiculous.”

“I’ve used it twice, Marguerite.”

She knew, then, that he was saying he had killed. He held the knife the way that boy did. Hawker. He cradled it close to his body and pointed upward. Jean-Paul had changed one day, when she was not looking. He had become a man she did not entirely know.

Guillaume closed the door behind him. The bathing cabinet was a small room when he was in it.

“This descends to the level of farce.” She stood between them. “Guillaume, you are to do nothing, do you understand? Jean-Paul, I cannot imagine why this man is here, but he is harmless to me.”

Guillaume looked Jean-Paul over, being meditative and calm about it. Guillaume, being meditative, was like a mountain wondering if it should fall on someone. There was the same impassivity and inevitability. “This would be a friend of yours.”

“You’re the one she was with in Normandy. The book dealer.” Jean-Paul ran his gaze up the mass of muscle that was Guillaume LeBreton. “You were described to me.”

“Then you know I didn’t hurt her. You want to put that pig-sticker away before I break your wrist?” Guillaume glanced at the knife.

“Marguerite hasn’t said anything about you. Why is that, I wonder?” But Jean-Paul lowered the knife.

Guillaume said, “She didn’t talk about you either. I’d guess you’re an old friend.”

“We are very old, very good friends. The kind of friend she entertains in private.”

“I’m the kind of friend she walks across Normandy with.”

They were ignoring her. “I am prepared for the scandal of meeting a man at the baths. I am not prepared for the scandal of meeting two men at the baths. It would make goats blush. I would like both of you to just go away. Now.”

Guillaume settled his back against the doorjamb and folded his arms across his chest. “Fair enough. Do you need protecting from me, Maggie?”

“I am perfectly capable of dealing with you. I can deal with you with one hand tied behind my back. You are not—”

“Do you want me to go away?”

“It is finished between us.”

“You said that a couple of times. Do I go or stay?”

She had no idea what she would say to him when they were alone. Sometimes one throws oneself into the river, assuming one will learn to swim after hitting the water. “Stay.”

“Then I’ll stay.” He stepped aside, leaving an unencumbered path to the door. It did not lessen by one ounce the threat he presented. He was being symbolic. To Jean-Paul, he said, “You can leave me with her. She’ll pick up that stool and knock me over the head if I annoy her.”

Jean-Paul studied him. “She’ll do worse than that. She’ll yell and you’ll have thirty half-dressed women at the door, asking what you’re doing here.”

“Ah. Now that would call for undiluted terror on my part, so I’m hoping she don’t do it.”

Jean-Paul took a moment longer. Then he made some decision that did not involve picking up his ridiculous, dangerous knife, which was good. He sat in the chair to pull his boots on. “I’m not needed here.”

“Neither of you are needed,” she said. “In fact, I will get dressed and go down to the gardens of the baths and sit in the shade. I will let the maids bring me medicinal teas and little iced cakes. I feel the need for soothing.”

“You detest tea and cakes. Ask for lemonade.” Jean-Paul did not stay to dress properly but only gathered up his clothing to carry away with him. He slipped the knife he so unexpectedly carried into the hidden sheath inside of his jacket. One could not ask one’s tailor to make such an alteration. It must be Gabrièlle who sewed that for him.

“You are deserting me,” she said.

“I am escaping. Call me cowardly, but I have no wish to stand between the two of you.” He kissed her, unnecessarily, on the forehead and left. Smiling.

She was alone, suddenly, with Guillaume LeBreton.

He stood, being inscrutable, which was one of his talents. In the stark white robe he became dark and exotic. The long folds and draped sleeves made a mandarin of him.

How does he pass unnoticed through the streets of the city? It is as if a lion joined a pack of dogs and none of them remarked upon it.
“Did you follow me from my house?”

“Something like that. You didn’t make any secret where you were going.”

“It was a perfectly useless thing to do, following me. It is over between us. We know it is impossible. We said farewell.” She ran out of words abruptly.

“I changed my mind.”

He did not move, except to breathe. He was like an idol that was made of smooth, brown stone, but also alive. His hands were in the knot of his belt. It was a little to the side and tied twice. He would take less than a moment, untying it.

She picked up her comb to have something to do with her hands. Set it down again. She would feel more comfortable if he talked more.

“I see your plan,” she said. “You do not want me to regret parting with you. You have come to give me another hour of your company so I shall become delighted not to see you again. There is a logic in this. If we were to live cheek by jowl for a week, I would wish you in Parthia or on that island in the Pacific where the birds are the size of dogs and have never learned to fly.”

He paid no attention to what she was saying. He loosened the knot that tied the belt of his robe.

“There is no reason to take your clothing off in that menacing and improper way. We will do nothing whatsoever that requires a lack of clothing. When I said you should stay, I . . .”
I was not looking at your body. I was not thinking about it. I cannot think clearly when you are nearby.
“I meant that we should talk.”

His robe was loose in long, strong lines down his body. Like columns. He took three slow steps and he was beside her. She did not try to move. He lifted her toward him until their skin touched.

Fragile restraints broke everywhere in her mind. She placed her hands flat upon his chest and shoved cloth aside so she could kiss him there.

She could not speak. Not at all. Her muscles made decisions without consulting her brain. Her body flared into fire. Heat raced through her blood, curled low in her belly, rushed to fill the empty spaces of her mind.

He was warm and naked. Her hands fumbled with the edges of his robe, opening it upward, across his shoulders, deciphering the message of dark hairs and brown skin and the ridges of bone and muscle that were the body of Guillaume LeBreton. If she thought too much about this, she would push him away and stop this. She did not want to let him go, so she did not think.

Where had her robe gone? How had it become untied?

It did not matter in the least.

She was distracted. So distracted. It was as if her fingers could see color. The deep tans of his face. As if the rough prickles of his neck became visible when she explored him there. He was too vivid for mere feeling. He consumed every sense.

I should not do this . . .
She did not say that aloud. She did not even think it loudly.

He stroked her body, all the way up and down the length of her. He spread his hands on her hips. Rough palms molded her skin, held to her bone, as if she were sculpted and he were the artist. Awe spoke from his hands. He found her beautiful. More than beautiful. It was as if he worshipped.

He was sweet and forbidden fruit. Forbidden to her in ten thousand ways. A single desperate indulgence. She had set him aside and walked away in pain, knowing the exact limits of her freedom. Now she came home to find forbidden fruit growing, unexpectedly, in her garden. Guillaume.

Kisses deep inside her mouth. Kisses that traveled happily across her lips. Kisses that strayed over her face and down her throat so that she raised her head, eyes closed, and gasped for air. Anticipated, anticipated, waited with every stitch of her being for the next small nip, the next lap of his tongue. He was a man who understood many nuances of loving a woman with his mouth. She trembled, thinking that, and pressed herself against him and she was lost in him.

He was simply so strong. She felt no effort in his muscles when she was lifted, carried, set upon the cool wood of the sideboard. Objects shuffled aside, falling to the floor. None of it important. She slid her fingers deep into his hair. It was warm, coarse in texture, smooth, reassuring to hold on to.