The Forbidden Rose (28 page)

“It sounds like someone who writes down old tales. That’d make a good fable.”

“Perhaps. But I came here because I do not want to go home. I could not sleep. This café was the last thing you said to me and I have not yet banished it from my mind. So my feet came in this direction without consulting me.” She drank a mouthful and swallowed. “You must be careful what you say to me.”

Every damn motion was beautiful. Probably she wasn’t actually the loveliest creature on earth. He’d lost his objectivity.

She set the cup down. “It takes a while for me to sweep your words from the doorstep of my mind. I am led to unconsidered acts. You would not wish me to undertake such things.”

“I wouldn’t want that.”

“I am foolish. I come to your accustomed place and still I am surprised to see you here. Every time we are together I think it will be for the last time. It utterly confounds me when I see you again.”

“It’s never been the last time. This isn’t the last time, either.”

“I think it may be. I wish I liked this coffee better.” She rolled the cup between her hands. “But at least it is warm to hold. I have old friends—women I know—who have taken many lovers. They enjoy the drama of it. The flirtatious approach, the hurried, passionate meetings, the mad planning, the jealousy, the accusations . . . the inevitable betrayal. It would make me exhausted, so much emotion. I become weary just listening to them.”

“I’m all for the quiet life.”

She nodded. “And simplicity.”

This, from his Maggie. From the woman who organized hundreds of careful, meticulously planned escapes. “Simplicity’s a fine thing.”

“I am a great admirer of it. For me, there have been only two lovers. To the first I brought disaster. My uncle horsewhipped him nearly to his death. The second brought devastation to me. I am not lucky at this business of taking lovers.”

“Me being the second.”

“Yes. I make mistakes in judgment.” She didn’t turn her head to meet his eyes. “I watched you walk toward me, Guillaume. You knew I would be here. I was no surprise to you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Did you have me followed? You would find that easy to arrange, in your profession.”

She knows.
Sometime in the last day, she’d found out he was a spy. He could read that in the way the air had changed between them. She knew.

“We’ll talk about that in a bit.”

Not here.
He was known here. He ate at Café des Marchands when he was in Paris. Rented a room six blocks north. Bought from the same firewood vendor and water seller. Had his boots cleaned by the same grubby boy every week. Took his newspaper from the same woman at her stand at the end of the street. Folks here knew his face. “Oh. Citoyen LeBreton,” they’d say. “A good patriot. He lives in my Section. He travels, selling books. I know him well.”

“I will be more careful in the future when I take lovers.” Maggie was letting go of him. Putting him in the past. Now he was a lover she used to have.

He picked up her little roll. Offered it to her. She shook her head.

He said, “You don’t take food and not eat it. Not in a place like this. Somebody’s going to wonder why you have money to throw away.” He finished the roll in two bites with the last of his cheese. “Drink some of that coffee, if you can stomach it. We’ll walk off in a little while. You can tell me why you were out all night and I can call you a fool.”

“You are all that is kind.” She picked the blue and white cup off the table. “As always.” She drank. “I am tempted to invent unwisdoms just so you will be pleased. I am very inventive.”

“It has not been night for hours,” she said. “Once there is even a hint of light in the sky, respectable women come out. These are all respectable women here in the café, except the whores, of course, and I am not dressed like a whore. Only, it has become cold. I did not expect it to be cold.”

She huddled into herself. If she was feeling a chill, it wasn’t in the air. The cold was inside her. Time to take her back to her house and let them put her to bed. Not his bed, unfortunately.

“Did you know? They have declared war on the prostitutes of Paris.” She held the cup between her hands and gave it a lot of attention. “They have collected dozens and dozens of them from the streets and filled the prisons even more full. They are not, thank the good God, killing them. They will reform them by making them knit stockings for the army.”

“Don’t we all feel safer on the streets knowing that?” Maggie had paid for her food, but he dropped an extra sou on the table anyway, the way a man did when he was showing off for his particular lady. Taking her arm and giving her help out of the chair didn’t fit this café or the clothes he was wearing, but any man might do that for a woman he was courting.

“It is not universally popular, this harvesting of whores, but naturally no one says this openly for fear of, as they say, sneezing into a basket, which is what one does upon the guillotine. I do not think the reformation of morals will gain much headway. Frenchmen are fond of their whores. You will sympathize.”

If he’d been a lesser man, he would have sighed. “Are we going to talk about this for a while where everyone can hear, or would you like to just jump up and down and denounce the government straight out? Be a pity to get arrested for anything less.”

“I am entirely in agreement. One should only take grave and important risks. In all small matters one must be exquisitely cautious. The gods do not reward frivolity.”

He’d see her right to the door and turn her over to somebody who’d take care of her. Not Victor. Maggie must have somebody in that house she trusted. “Let’s get you home. Maybe they haven’t noticed you’re out drinking coffee with disreputable men at the crack of dawn.”

She walked carefully, as if she felt shaky inside. It was another reason for him to hold her.

He waited till they wouldn’t be overheard. “So. What is it you think you know about me?”

SHE WALKED THROUGH THE EARLIEST OF DAWN, through streets that were asleep under a white sky, side by side with Guillaume.

Papa was afraid of this man. He had cause to be. “Have you come to France to kill my father?” She was weary unto the death of lying to Guillaume LeBreton and receiving his lies in return.

“Why would you think that?”

“My father believes the English have sent men to kill him. I will not ask you to admit that you are an English spy, though I am becoming convinced of it. I will only say that you are not to kill my father. He is a great fool and half mad, but no one is to kill him for that.” As an afterthought she added quickly, “You are not to allow Adrian to kill him either.”

“The boy’s not killing anybody. Neither am I.” He fingered his scar. “If you think I’d make love to a woman and then kill her father, you don’t know much about me.”

“I think you would regret betraying a woman, but you would do it.”

She gave Guillaume time to answer. The streets turned corners and shut the noise of the city away. At this hour, at every house they passed, lanterns were being taken in. It was the work of the first servants awake to blow out the small candles that had been left to burn in the night and save the stubs to use again. Everyone was thrifty now.

It was very quiet. Her footsteps and Guillaume’s made a single cadence, like a single animal walking.

After some uncounted number of steps, Guillaume said, “I don’t mean any harm to your father. Can you send a message to him?”

“No.” That would be to admit she knew where he was.

“You went to talk to him. That’s why you were out all night. He’s still in Paris.”

“Will you tell me why you are looking for him?”

“Ah. Now that I can’t do.”

Exchanging words with Guillaume LeBreton was like pouring water into a cup with a hole in it.

“If you will not admit to being a spy for the English and you will not tell me why you want my father, the meat of this conversation has been plucked out and we do not need to have it. I will discover the truth, eventually. I will not like you at all when I know the truth about you.”

They did not return to her house directly. Guillaume chose a path of smaller streets. It might have been that he did not want to meet heavy carts and noisy carriages and these alleyways were less traveled. Now she saw this as sly and careful. He was not seen. She was not seen.

Guillaume took a hundred such precautions, because he was a spy. She had not wanted to think of this before.

He was large and comfortable to walk beside. He had decided his role of the moment permitted him to be attentive and take her arm to help her avoid the gutters in the middle of the alley. He was portraying several of the most popular masculine virtues. Two middle-aged women of great respectability nodded at him as they passed. A cat sat on a windowsill, washing. A laundry woman carried flat, white sheets, folded, in her basket. Guillaume kept his arm tightly around her, which she permitted by not thinking too deeply about the significance of it.

Somehow, at last, she was home.

Guillaume frowned down at her. Behind him the sky was the color of thin paper that has been laid on the fire, when the light glows behind it, just before it catches flame. It would be another hot day. “I don’t like to leave you alone here. Come with me. I’ll find somewhere to take you. We can—”

She shook her head. He knew the thousand reasons this was impossible.

“You’re not well.”

“Agnès will put me to bed and bring me warm bricks wrapped in cloth to hug to my stomach and I will not feel so sick. I will drink tisanes and lemonade and be better tomorrow.”

“Go inside, then. God, your eyes are staring out of your face. Go to bed. Let them take care of you.”

As he had upon another occasion, he reached past her and knocked on the door. The difference was, this time he kept his hand on her arm, holding on. “I’ll come back tonight, around at the kitchen. Tell them to let me in when I come.”

“No.” The sun was everywhere, getting brighter. She didn’t feel the warmth. She felt empty and ill and cold, and she was saying good-bye to Guillaume. Again. “You must not come here. Ever.”
I will not let you find Papa. And I will not let Victor find you.
“My cousin,” she swallowed and her mouth tasted vile, “is malicious. Whatever you are, he is dangerous to you. You must keep away from me. I will come to the café again, in a week or a month. Or someday. I will come and wait for you again. I can promise that much.”

She heard the lock of the door, turning.

Guillaume’s hand still rested on her arm. “It’s not over between us. Think about me. I need that much.”

“I have a hundred terrible things to think about. You are ninety-nine of them.”

“Maggie. No. Look this way again. Look at me.” He took her chin in his hand and edged her face into the sun, into a stinging assault of light. “Open your eyes. Are you using some kind of drops? Belladonna?”

The door opened behind her. “Do not be ridiculous. And let me go. I cannot stay.”

“Maggie. Stay a minute. There’s something wrong here.”

She slipped from his hold and through the door before Janvier had it fully open, leaving behind whatever words Guillaume said to keep her there.

The halls were empty of servants. She stumbled upstairs and around, through the length of the house, to the front windows of the parlor. She threw the curtains back. She would have one last glimpse of Guillaume as he walked away.

He was a spy. He did not give one small damn about her, really. He was using her to find her father. She knew this. She knew this completely. There was no connection between them that did not involve dishonor and lies and stupidities beyond counting.

He stayed at the door for a long minute. She was in time to see him go.

Below, on a street the color of rocks, Guillaume LeBreton walked away from her. Not in a hurry, not slowly. It was as if he had twenty tasks to do this morning and he had finished three and now proceeded on to the next, at which he would also be successful. He said all that with just his steps upon the street. No one created an intelligent and eloquent walk as he did.

She held aside the red brocade curtains of the salon and pressed her face to the glass so she would see him for the longest possible moment.

I am no heartsick girl to weep at the window for what I cannot have.
She cried only because she was so tired.

Because she was being foolish about Guillaume, she saw him arrested.