The Forbidden Rose (37 page)

There was slack in the ropes. The chair wasn’t solid as rock. Give him half an hour to himself and he’d get loose. Unfortunately, Victor had plans for his next half hour.

“It is done.” A bushy mustache walked into his line of sight, hauling a grizzled guard along with it.

“Leave him with me,” Victor said.

“We have no orders to give a prisoner into your charge.” That one was a soldier. A veteran of the colonial wars, he’d guess. Wasted on prison duty.

“I said go.”

“It is a bad precedent. Without orders—”

“I am from the Committee of Public Safety, a friend of Robespierre. That is the only order you need.”

It got quiet. One man whispered to the next. Laid a warning hand on the sleeve. The senior guard hesitated, then nodded, and the men jostled out, silent. The door didn’t click behind the last man.

They’d left the door open a crack. Done that on purpose. There’d be a man left picking his teeth in the hall, innocent-like, keeping an ear on events. They all reported to somebody. The Secret Police. The royalists. The military. There were no secrets in Paris.

Victor strolled over to appreciate the selection of clubs and bludgeons laid out on the table. He picked out a sturdy length of wood that had started life as a table leg.

This is where I get hurt.
It said everything he needed to know about Victor that the man only came close when he had a weapon in his hands and his opponent was tied up.

The club swooped back and forth. Victor faced him. “My cousin has not left Paris. You are going to tell me exactly where she is.”

“Citoyenne de Fleurignac? I left her at your house. That’s the last I—”

Victor swung the club.

Pain. God, the pain.
Couldn’t get his breath. It took three tries before he could talk. “Listen, you cod-sucking pig, I don’t know where she is. It’s not my fault you can’t keep hold of—”

That got him a fist across his face. “Where is my cousin?”

He spat out a mouthful of blood, getting some on Victor’s fine white shirt. “Your cousin is nothing to me. Never touched her. Never wanted to. Don’t know where she is now.”

He saw the club coming, twisted, and took the hit on the flesh of his arm. He yelled so they’d hear it on the street.

“If you do not tell me where she is, you will die. Before you die, I will break every bone in your body.”

“I don’t know where she is.” He slumped, groaning. Being stoic just encouraged folks to beat the hell out of you. “I don’t know . . . where . . . she is.”
The minute I lift my head he’s going to hit me again.
“Damnation, man. How many times do I got to say it? I don’t know where she’s run off to.”

Victor drew back and swung in a wide arc.

“I don’t know—” Pain tore the words apart. The idiot was going to kill him by accident. “Hell in a bucket.”

He coughed. Agony shot into his side. Pain like white ice. “Wait. Just a minute. Wait.”
Say something he wants to hear. While he’s listening, he’s not hitting.
“Listen. I brought her home at dawn, but it’s not what you think. I found her in the Tuileries, out where she shouldn’t be. I took her home. That’s all. I left her on your doorstep. I never touched her. That’s twice I’ve collected yer wandering girl for you. You should be thanking me for—”

He caught this one on his arm. He yelled, making it loud. “When she left the prison, where did she go? Where did Marguerite go?”

Give it a count of three. One. Two. Three. Look up.
He put the right amount of startled on his face. “The prison? Your cousin? She weren’t here. That was my Odette.” He let bloody saliva dribble out of his mouth.

Victor’s pale green eyes flicked over him, flicked away fastidiously. “What do you mean?”

His half brothers used to hurt him this bad every time they came home from Eton. They’d race in, howling, and pull out the cricket bats, and track him down. Teach the bog-trotter not to be uppity. They didn’t mind admiring their handiwork.

“It was . . .” He let his voice drop weakly. Panted. “Was Odette Corrigou. My woman. Works for a seamstress on Rue de Roule. Nothing to do with you.” He bit his lip to coax some more blood out. Nothing like leaking blood to make a man look sincere. He kept his breath shallow, skimming under the pain. “She’s a good woman, my Odette. Good Bretonne woman. Comes from—”

“Lies.”

Pain. White hot. Blood red. “My cousin visited you here. She told you where she’s hiding. Where her father’s hiding. Tell me.”

“It was my woman.” That was truth. His woman. His Maggie. Always and for all time, his. “Just my woman.”

Hawker would be delivering those dragons’ teeth across Paris. Twenty powerful men had just got themselves terrified. They’d bring down the whole bloody French government.
Including you, Cousin Victor. Including you.

And Maggie would be safe.

His breath cut like a knife going in and coming out, bright and sharp. He let his head loll back, mumbling as if he were losing consciousness.

Victor lowered the club. His eyes slunk away.

Victor crossed to the plank table and dropped the club clattering among the wine bottles. “You’re really quite good. I could almost believe you.”

Victor had taken his gloves off for the dirty work of beating a prisoner. He picked them up from the table and shook them out. “I discovered Marguerite’s involvement with La Flèche some weeks ago. Émigrés in London talk of nothing but their escape from France. I recognized Marguerite’s rabble of lowborn friends in the reports of our spies. She is fortunate no one realizes what she has done. You are one of her flock of traitors, I think. Heron, perhaps. I could never decide who Heron was.”

Doyle kept his head down, concentrating on being stupid. Staying alive.

“You and the others who betray France will be swept away like the garbage you are. But I will keep my cousin’s name out of this. You make a mistake when you keep her from me. I am the only chance Marguerite has.”

A chance to get killed.
But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything.

“I have men searching for her. I’ve discovered Marguerite’s secrets before. I will do so again. Someone saw her leave this place. Someone knows where she went.” The gloves were kid leather, bone white. Pristine. Victor tapped his fingers in. First one hand, then the other. “It cannot be too difficult to find one woman.”

You have not one crumb off the loaf of an idea of what she is, do you?
He lifted his head. “Nothing to do with me. Told you that.”

“I’m not an idiot, Citoyen LeBreton.” A thin smile appeared. “Did you think I wouldn’t know my cousin had been with a man? You should not have touched a de Fleurignac. It was the worst mistake you ever made.”

Victor finished with his gloves. “I will return in a day or two to tell you I have found her.” He paused and pretended to reconsider. “But no. Of course not. There will be no reason to return. You will be dead.”

“AND THEN?” MADAME STOOD ON THE STAIRS above her. She was dressed severely in black. Her hair was caught up with silver butterflies, on pins. She wore silver rings upon her hands.

Justine made her report concisely, as she had been taught. “He delivered the last of the papers to Tallien and to Vadier.”

“Who are great enemies of Robespierre.”

“
C’est sûr
.” Madame would find this amusing. “The so-clever Adrian took me with him for the last deliveries. He said if he did not, I would only follow him, and this would save us both a great deal of trouble.”

Madame smiled at her. “And did you discover what is in these papers?”

“Alas, no.” Really, these English were not trivial opponents. “I did not see them. I wheedled and cajoled and the boy was not moved in the least. I think these are matters of great gravity.”

Madame waited, her hand on the railing.

“The Gardener has told me to stay inside for the next days. I am on no account to go about in the city alone. He is afraid there will be riots.”

“Because of these letters. Someone is meddling with grave business indeed. The Gardener is not precisely a fool, so I shall second his orders. Be prudent, Justine. If you hear disorder, take care to be elsewhere.”

It is good to have someone to tell me to be careful.
“The boy was hurt, delivering these letters. Attacked by someone. He was not candid about that, either.” She said the last part very quickly. “I have put him into my room for tonight. I hope you do not mind.”

Madame studied the rings upon her hand. They were heavy bands, intricately worked. “I have learned more about this Adrian since we last spoke. He is Hawker the Hand of London, a dangerous playmate for you. He has killed more men than you have hair ribbons.”

She had suspected something of the sort. There was that in his eyes sometimes that spoke of such things. “I do not underestimate him. I am not . . . I do not interest myself in him except for the de Fleurignac matter, you understand. I made a pallet for him upon the floor beside me in case he should develop a fever and need to be watched. Events will be complicated enough without that boy becoming ill.”

Madame coughed delicately. “They have a plan to rescue William Doyle from prison, then?”

“They do not speak of it to me. I will go tomorrow and insert myself into their affairs and tell you what is afoot. It will be interesting to see Marguerite de Fleurignac concocting one of her plans. I have admired them for years and will now see one from beginning to end. It is strange to assist in freeing an English spy from prison. Yet, next week you may send me to see him arrested again.”

“It is amusing beyond measure,” Madame said. “Life is an ever-laden table of delights, is it not?”

“Most certainly.”

Madame walked downward, past her, on the stairs. When they were level, she stopped. The silver butterflies she wore in her hair were on small springs. With every movement they vibrated, as if they were alive. “I do not forget how dangerous this is for you. Do not think for a moment that I do this lightly.”

“I do not mind danger.”

One brush of fingers on her cheek.
She is careful never to touch because of what has been done to me.
“Are you quite sure I cannot send you and your sister to safety? There is a school in Dresden run by good friends of mine. They have a house on the river . . . No? I am not entirely happy to send a young girl to do this work.”

But Madame’s own daughter was part of their work. Not a small player of the Game, either. Everyone knew she had been ordered to safety abroad and had refused to go. She was given dangerous assignments, even upon the battlefield.
And she is younger than me.
“I want to be here. To do this. I feel alive when I do this.”

One of the girls of the house had taken up a song. That was Péronette, who had a most lovely voice. Madame looked toward the sound and then back to Justine. “We are much alike, you and I.” She made a shooing motion. “Go tend your young spy. I will tell Babette to look at his wound. Yes, I know you are capable of caring for any injury short of a beheading, but we will indulge Babette by letting her cluck over your handsome boy.”

What was there to say? That lethal, sly boy was not hers, of course, but denial is always unconvincing. So she shook her head and tripped upstairs to see what searches he performed among her belongings.

“Justine.”

She turned back.

“The British Service brought him to Paris, but Adrian Hawkins is not theirs. He has no reason to be loyal to them and some small cause to hate them. Recruit him for France, if you can. He would be most useful to us.”

That would be interesting.
“I shall attempt it.”