Vintage Love (70 page)

The two men left soon after. Ramon was still sulking in his bedroom, so Enid went upstairs to hers. She had an odd sensation of approaching danger and put it down to frayed nerves.

Since she had only a limited amount of clothing with her, she wanted to conserve her outfits as much as possible. With a view to this, she removed her blue linen outfit and put on a yellow silk nightdress and a matching dressing gown. She had barely tied the sash around her waist when she heard the door of her chamber creaking open.

She turned in surprise and thought for a moment that the door was opening by itself. Then she saw the smiling little man with his hand on the doorknob.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

He came into the room. “I thought you might be feeling lonely.”

The sight of him in a pair of boy’s short pants with huge white buttons and a round-collared white shirt was amusing, especially when one knew he regarded himself as a Lothario. But she was in no mood to be amused.

“I’m not lonely, but I am annoyed that you have intruded on me like this. I was changing my clothes.”

“I know,” he said, licking his lips. “I watched you through the keyhole.”

“You are a wicked creature!”

“Quite true!” he agreed heartily.

“I shall tell the others about you,” she warned him.

“Why do that?” he asked in a voice meant to enchant her. He became more daring, moved closer to her, and made a grab for the front of her dressing gown.

She backed away from him quickly. “You should be ashamed of yourself! We are comrades, after all!”

“I would prefer to be your lover.” His smile became more cunning.

“You’re mad!” Enid clutched her robe tighter to her. Fear had replaced her former annoyance.

“Not at all. I’m a very good lover and I have delighted many ladies,” he insisted, moving toward her.

She kept backing away from him. “You are contemptible as well as mad! Leave me alone, for God’s sake!”

“You would not sing the same tune if you slipped between the sheets with me,” he argued, undaunted.

“I will tell the others when they return,” she threatened.

“Not if you truly enjoy yourself. It could be our secret. I think you are beautiful—more lovely than most English ladies!”

“I don’t care to hear your opinion of me.”

An ugly look crossed his face. “I can
make
you love me!”

“Don’t be absurd.” She edged over to the window; he was only a few steps away from her. She had nowhere to retreat.

“I have a pistol, dear lady, which I won’t hesitate to use on you if you refuse to let me make love to you.”

“If you kill me, you’ll have some explaining to do,” she pointed out.

“Then why can’t you be generous with me without my risking all that?” he asked plaintively.

“Because I can’t bear the thought of you touching me!” she cried, near hysteria. “You repulse me, and not just because of your size! There is so much inside you that is evil and shameful!”

Ramon seemed taken aback by her scornful tone. “So you hate me?”

“Yes!”

“Women have pleaded for my caresses!” he huffed. “I do not need the love of a sodomist’s rejected slut!” And with these surprising words, delivered viciously, he turned on his heel and strode from the room.

Enid hurried to the door and bolted it, then leaned weakly against the wood frame, feeling sick to her stomach. Her head was throbbing painfully. The little man was more corrupt than she had suspected. She began to realize what a ruthless atmosphere she had been placed in; a world where spies like herself lived in constant danger, not only from the revolutionists but from agents of other countries, as well as from each other.

This last thought was the most shocking of all. She had regarded the underground network as being uniformly loyal. But now she saw that jealousies and deceits were common among those who supposedly had given their complete trust to one another. And there were others, like Kemble, who were not ideally suited to this type of work, and whose impatience and poor judgment could endanger or cause the death of still others. She was in this unhappy predicament tonight because Kemble had needlessly insisted on going out and taking Renaud with him.

She stood at the window watching for them to return. Every fiber in her body was at its peak of nervous tautness. She did not think the midget would harass her again, but she had no way of knowing what his intense sexual drive would make him do. She thought him capable of any wild, insane act.

The candle on her night table had almost burned itself out, but she dared not go downstairs for another until Kemble came back. She watched the flame flicker and grow smaller, and thus she measured the passing minutes. Her imagination was highly active now, and despite her efforts to dispel her sense of impending danger, she could not shake the feeling threatening to choke her.

She was still staring at the waning candle when she heard a strange sound, like a clump. After a short pause it came again, then a pause, then the same sort of bumping noise, a little nearer now. She turned to look at the bolted door, and once again she heard that eerie thump followed by silence.

She could not bear it. She had to see what it was. She advanced cautiously to the door and unbolted it without making a sound. Then she opened it just a crack and peered out into the hallway. What greeted her gaze was something so horrible and terrifying that for a moment she was paralyzed with fright.

The midget was crawling up the stairs, slowly and desperately trying to reach the landing. Each time he moved an inch forward, the action was accompanied by the clumping sound. His face was battered and bloody, and a river of blood streamed out from a wound in his chest. He raised his head as he reached the landing, tried to say something, coughed, and fell silent.

Enid ran forward involuntarily to see if she could help him, thinking that he must have really gone mad and inflicted this damage on himself, possibly to take revenge on her. She knelt by his ravaged little body and realized almost at once that he was dead.

“Good evening, Lady Blair!” The words came from the foot of the stairs.

Enid raised her eyes to see Louis Esmond, in a black cape and three-cornered hat, standing there with a twisted smile on his face.

“You!” she gasped.

“Unfortunately,” Esmond jeered, his good eye fixed on her with derision. “One hates to use violence, but he was very stubborn!”

“You brute—scoundrel!”

He limped up a few steps, drew a pistol from beneath his cloak, and pointed it at her. “We are not in England now, Lady Blair, and you are not on the stage of Drury Lane, though I vow your disguise is most excellent. Personally, I preferred you as a blonde.”

“Finish me as you did that poor creature!” she cried.

“That is not my plan for you, madam,” he said politely. “You will come slowly down the stairs toward me. The little one is dead, so waste no pity on him.”

She made no reply but did as he had bade her, shuddering as she passed Ramon’s sprawled, blood-spattered body. Then she came abreast of the infamous man with the black eye patch. He seized her by the arm with his free hand and shoved her none too gently down the remaining stairs.

A hulking figure in a shabby uniform approached Esmond. “The house is empty of anyone else, Citizen,” he reported. A musket dangled loosely in his hands.

Esmond nodded. “Then let us be on our way. The lady goes with us.”

“The carriage is waiting outside, Citizen,” the soldier said.

Esmond led her out into the cool darkness and saw her into the coach. He took his place beside her, still holding the pistol, and the carriage started off.

He gave her a mocking glance. “You did not presume to visit Paris without my making you welcome, did you? What an oversight on your part!”

“Why have you taken me prisoner?” she asked.

“Call it a whim,” he replied. “I could easily have eliminated you as I did the midget.”

“You can’t eliminate all your enemies,” she countered.

“They multiply like rodents,” he agreed. “But as long as I keep them under control, I am satisfied.”

“Do you really think the revolution will last long enough for you to become a party leader?”

“The revolution cannot fail,” he told her. “And my power is growing daily.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to taunt him about using the poor Dauphin as a power ploy, but she restrained herself. She did not want to let him know how much information she and the others possessed. It was best to say nothing, she decided.

The carriage rolled on through the night and then crossed the river to the opposite bank. After rumbling along a broad thoroughfare for several minutes, it halted at an entrance with iron gates. Two guards came forward to inspect the vehicle; on seeing Esmond, they hastily opened the gates. The carriage turned into a half-moon driveway and stopped in front of an enormous stone mansion. Its windows were shuttered, and Enid understood now why Father Braun had called it a fortress and had been reluctant to launch an assault on it. This was where she was to be a prisoner.

Esmond stepped out of the carriage and marched her to the ornate oak door, which opened at their approach. A gaunt-faced servant bowed to Esmond and moved aside as the master spy and Enid entered.

“Up the stairway,” Esmond ordered.

Enid slowly ascended the curving marble stairs, Esmond right behind her. At the landing he took her by the arm and led her into a room with book-lined shelves and a wide desk cluttered with papers. Then he closed the door and locked it. The smile he offered her was not pleasant.

“Now we will come to terms. Sit down, Lady Blair,” Louis Esmond ordered, slipping off his cloak.

She stood defiantly. “May I ask again why you have brought me here?”

“If you will be seated, I will talk with you. Otherwise I shall have you shut up in one of my guest rooms. I promise you they are rather dark and cold, with no windows at all. Merely a grating high in the wall for a little air to get through.”

She decided she would have to humor him, and moved to a high-backed chair.

Esmond remained smiling down at her, a bizarre-looking figure with his bald head and eye patch. “Is not this room in exquisite taste?” he inquired politely.

Enid glanced at the shelves bursting with leather-bound volumes; at the mahogany sideboards whose large candelabras lighted the room softly; at the desk, also mahogany and with another show of candles; at the rich maroon carpeting and the finely upholstered furniture.

“It is surely a credit to the man you stole it from!” she remarked. “Where is he now? A victim of the executioner’s block?”

“Not at all,” Esmond laughed. “I’m more generous than that. He is still here in his own house. However, for almost two years he has occupied a dungeon in the cellar.”

“That sounds like your type of generosity!”

He laughed again and limped to the sideboard nearest him. “Will you join me in a cognac?” he asked.

“I do not drink with your sort!” she flared, her chin held high.

His one eye regarded her with interest. “You talk like an aristocrat. But then, that is only fitting, since you
are
an aristocrat. Your name was Lady Enid Henson before you married the pervert.”

“You have researched me well.”

He poured himself a cognac and then moved toward the desk, resting against one edge of it as he sipped his drink. “The Duke of Aranjais has an excellent wine cellar, but I prefer his cognac. I have developed quite a taste for it.”

“I suppose you share it with him,” she derided.

“I offered to,” Esmond replied evenly. “I went down to him a year ago, on the anniversary of Bastille Day, and I offered to drink with him to the success of the revolution. The fool wasted his drink—threw it in my face! So he has not tasted my generosity since.”

“At least his honor remains intact.”

Esmond smiled nastily. “That is difficult to know, for since then his mind has snapped. The man who once possessed one of the great judicial minds of the realm is now reduced to gibbering idiocy.”

“Is destroying people your favorite sport?”

He nodded. “Since you mention it, I believe it is.”

“And you plan to destroy me, I suppose,” she said bitterly. “I assure you I’m so unimportant that I’m not worth your efforts.”

“I think differently,” he demurred in his suave manner. “I’m not the ideal ladies’ man. You can see that for yourself. But I do admire a certain style of feminine charm—such as yours. And how interesting that you should be in dishabille!”

Enid listened grimly, striving to hide her fear under a facade of arrogance. She knew he would want her to confess what she had learned, as well as to betray the others in the network. She was determined not to talk even under torture. And she thought it ironic that changing into her dressing gown had left her weaponless. The small pistol she always carried was in a concealed pocket in her dress. Useless to her now, since her dress hung in the closet of her room. But she did have one weapon of last resort. The poison that Sir Harry had given her was hidden in the locket she wore about her neck.

“I am a British subject, visiting France on an errand of mercy. You have no right to hold me.”

“Right?” he repeated. “Who cares about rights? We make our own rights in France today.”

“A great nation has become a prison ruled by the mob,” she said scornfully.

He put aside his empty cognac glass and studied her with amusement. “I’m charging you with being a spy. Because of that, your British citizenship offers you no immunity.”

“Am I to be given a hearing on those charges?” she demanded.

“I shall pick a judge and jury for you. You will receive a perfectly legal trial. And your execution will also be legal, and swiftly carried out. I will then send a message to Sir Harry with a lock of your hair and my regrets.”

“How well you have it planned!”

“Experience, my dear lady. I have looked after such matters many times before. It was reckless enough of you to throw your lot in with the aristocrat Beaufaire and help murder several of my valuable allies in London, but now you have the insolence to appear on my own French soil in order to work for Sir Harry’s spy ring.”