Rendezvous (9781301288946)

  The elaborate bed looked empty and uninviting. Over large, it might have been a state bed for a queen, the gauzy white curtains stirring eerily in the draft, a fit place to be laid out to die.

  Belle tried to close her mind against the grim thought. This night would be no better than last. She faced another lonely vigil in hell. She was already so cold.

  The sound of someone stirring in the next room carried to her ears, Sinclair, preparing for bed. She must take care not to disturb him tonight with her pacing. Belle ran her fingers over her chilled flesh. She could not help remembering how warm, how strong Sinclair's arms could be, what fire his kisses had spread through her body.

  Her eyes tracked to the door connecting their chambers, the thought rising unbidden that she need not be alone tonight. Sinclair's voice echoed through her mind, "If anything is troubling you, Angel, feel free . . ."

  Only a few steps, a door separated them. What would Sinclair do if she came to him? She had read enough of want in his eyes. She did not think he would send her away.

  She glided forward like a sleepwalker, only staying herself when her hand encountered the hard reality of the doorknob. No, how could she? She had tried passion a time or two before as an opiate to her pain. It could be as effective as laudanum, but the aftereffects of making love without love were more bitter. And she had nothing but passion to give. Hazarding one's life was one thing, but her heart- she could never do that again.

  But the thought persisted that with Sinclair, this time would be different. There would be no regrets. Yet when she tried to turn the knob, her hand fell away, her courage deserting her.

  But to face the prospect of that lonely bed, the nightmares, was equally impossible. She fetched her shawl instead and swirled it about her shoulders. She knew of a bottle of brandy that had been left below stairs in the kitchen When all else fails, seek out Mama's tried and true remedy for heartache, she told herself bitterly. She would sit by the window and get quietly drunk.

  The clock had just chimed quarter after two when Sinclair thought he heard a noise downstairs. He went to investigate, still clad in his shirtsleeves and breeches. He had been unable to sleep in any case. Attempts to read a book had proved futile. The silence from Belle's room had seemed to roar in his ears.

  How he sensed that she also was not asleep he could not have said. Nor even why he stalked so fearlessly downstairs, not in the least apprehensive of whom the intruder might be. Somehow he already knew.

  The antechamber was dark, but light emanated from the drawing room. Through the half-open door, Sinclair could see a fire crackling upon the hearth, a candle left lit upon the mantel. But when he peered inside the chamber, he discovered Belle ensconced on the side of the room that remained cold and uninviting, where the wind rattled the glass of the tall, latticed windows. She huddled upon a wing-backed chair, an Indian shawl flung over her nightgown as she sat staring past the draperies. Silhouetted by the moonlight, her golden hair appeared spun from its beams, her eyes hollowed by shadows as foreboding as the night itself.

  Although she started at Sinclair's entrance, she did not acknowledge his presence. Her breath stilled as though she waited to see if he would go quietly away and leave her prey to her night terrors, to fight on alone as she must have done so many times.

  "Not this time, Angel," Sinclair murmured to himself. "Curse me, hate me, try to shut me out. But I cannot leave you alone tonight."

  He crossed the room silently. She did not look toward him even when his shadow fell across her.

  When she spoke, her voice was calm. "Good evening, Mr. Carrington."

  "Perhaps you should say good morrow. It must be nearly half past two."

  "Is it?" She leaned closer to the window pane, tipping her head back. "It looks nothing like morning to me. But then, the sky always seems to me much darker over Paris. There have been times I would have sworn dawn would never break here again."

  Sinclair frowned at the sight of a tripod table propped near her elbow, bearing a half-empty glass of golden-colored liquid. He wondered if she was drunk. But as he examined the bottle of brandy, he saw that it had hardly been touched.

  She stretched back in her chair, curling her bare feet beneath her. "I would invite you to join me, Sinclair," she said with a weary smile, "but I fear there is not enough. I intend to make myself quite drunk. I have never tried it before. But isn't that what you gentlemen do to make it through a rough night?"

  "From one who has tried that remedy upon occasion, I would advise against it,” he said. "Far from making the morning come quicker, your head will make you regret that it ever came at all."

  She gave a soft laugh. He had never known that laughter could sound so sad. She pushed her glass away and turned back to staring out the window. Although she did not ask him to stay, she did not demand that he leave her, either, Pushing the velvet drapery back farther, Sinclair stood beside her, joining her in her vigil.

  The night was dark, the stars like splinters of ice. In the street below, an occasional carriage clattered by even at this late hour. Some drunken stragglers slogged past, their voices raised in bawdy song. Otherwise the Rue St. Honoré remained quiet, the feeble glow from the Argand lanterns not enough to dispel the murky shadows. To Sinclair, it was nothing but an empty street, yet he would have wagered that was not what Belle saw. He glanced down at her.

  Completely still she sat. Beneath the soft sweep of her lashes, he fancied he could glimpse the shadings of her past, all the misery of the world seeming centered in those luminescent blue eyes. But he waited patiently, refraining from questions. If Belle wanted, needed to talk, she would.

  Just when he began to think her silence would stretch on until dawn, she stirred, saying, "Monsieur Bonaparte was full of plans tonight for improving Paris. He intends to start with the streets. God knows the Rue St. Honoré could use a little improving, at least some paving. It hasn't changed all that much since-"

  "Since the Revolution?"

  She nodded. "I used to spend a lot of my time then just staring out the window. It was safer, you see, to stay indoors, mind one's own business. Jean-Claude and I had an apartment not far from here, just up the street. I used to be able to watch the tumbrils go by on the way to the guillotine." Her voice dropped lower. "Sometimes the carts were crammed full of people, whole families, even the children."

  "It must have been pure hell."

  "No, that was the frightening thing. After a while we all grew accustomed to the horrors and simply went on with our lives."

  Did she truly believe that? Maybe the others did, Sinclair thought, but not you, Angel. The torment of those days was yet reflected on her face. The tumbrils might still have been passing below for all the peace there was to be found in Belle’s eyes.

  "So you just went on with your everyday life," Sinclair said, "smuggling people out of Paris."

  She acknowledged his ironic tone with a wry smile. "Yes, Baptiste and I. We got to be quite good at it, but for every one we helped to escape, there were a hundred more we couldn't save."

  Sinclair knew he should not ask, but the question exploded from him before he could help himself. "And where the hell was Varens when you were risking your life in such a fashion?"

  "He had emigrated. We were divorced by then."

  "I see. He took himself off to England and left you in the middle of a revolution."

  "He didn't leave me anywhere. I chose to stay. He had given me money, provided for me. It was far more than I deserved, considering what I had done."

  Sinclair clenched his jaw, surprised by the depth of contempt he was learning to feel for the most honorable Comte de Egremont, his anger only strengthened by Belle's steadfast defense of Varens. Sinclair knew that no matter what Belle had done, he would have made sure she was safely out of Paris. Then again, Sinclair was fast realizing, if she had been his wife, he would never have left her in the first place.

  "If you don't mind my asking," he said, "what terrible crime did you comm
it to precipitate the divorce? Were you unfaithful to him?"

  "You should be able to guess. I have already told you that I am the bastard daughter of an actress. I concealed my low birth from Jean-Claude when I married him."

  "And that was his reason for divorcing you! Then he is a bigger fool than I took him for."

  "It was an excellent reason," Belle said. "Jean-Claude is a gentleman from an ancient and honorable family. Discovering the truth about me was a harsh blow to his pride at a time when he he had already suffered—"

  Sinclair realized some of his skepticism must have showed, for she broke off and cried, "You understand nothing about Jean-Claude. Nothing! So don't dare to stand there condemning him."

  He was making her angry, but at least it brought a flush of color into her cheeks, the spark back into her eyes.

  "I am trying to understand," he said. "If you would care to enlighten me."

  Belle compressed her lips, retreating deeper beneath her shawl. She had been so glad of Sinclair's presence when he had first entered the drawing room. It had been such relief to talk to someone at last about her nightmarish memories of the Revolution. Why did he have to speak of Jean-Claude? Sinclair was not even her lover. There was no reason in the world she had to account for her past to him. None.

  She glared up to where he stood, poised by the window curtain, his dark hair and compelling eyes making him seem at one with the night, but night as she had never known it, a warm, protective mantle, a night in which one could whisper all one's sins and heartbreak and never fear to see one's weakness exposed in the garish light of day.

  She did not know what impelled her to do so, perhaps it was that empathetic link she had ever felt with Sinclair. Belle only knew that once she had started to speak, she couldn't seem to stop.

  "I was sixteen that summer I met Jean-Claude," she said, leaning wearily back in her chair. The candle upon the mantel flickered and went out. In the wisp of smoke the years seemed to disappear.

  Sixteen and traveling abroad for the first time. Belle could still remember her excitement. It had been one of those rare times of good fortune in that mad up-again, down-again life she had known as the daughter of Jolie Gordon.

  That summer Jolie had been lucky enough to take as a lover the foolish but amiable Count Firenza, a wealthy Italian nobleman. No more being sent by Mama to fend off the bailiffs while Mama hid in the wardrobe, no more being abandoned with disgruntled relatives while Mama disappeared for weeks on end

  The count's generosity had extended to including Isabelle in his entourage, the kindly man taking a bluff paternal interest in her. He had swept both Jolie and Belle off to the south of France. They had done Marseilles in grand style, Mama feigning to be a countess, Belle, the nobleman's pampered step-daughter. Firenza had looked on with indulgence, seeing it all as the most marvelous jest ever played upon the snobbish French aristocrats. Certainly, Belle had never intended to take in Jean-Claude with her masquerade. She had never intended anything by him at all. He was handsome enough, but too solemn, too serious. She had far more witty admirers than the gray-eyed young man who propped up the wall at soirees, following her every movement with his wistful gaze.

  The intentions had come afterward. With her usual flightiness, Jolie had run off with a Prussian officer. But the good-natured count had not held Belle to blame for her mother's defection. He had permitted her to keep the frocks, the jewels, even giving her a small sum to see her back to England before setting sail himself for Italy.

  Only Belle had gone nowhere. Sick to death of her uncertain life, she had finally perceived a way out in the admiration of the young Comte de Egremont. It had been so easy to convince the guileless Jean-Claude she had been left in the care of a governess for the sake of her health. Easier still to appear frail and helpless, entrapping the adoring man into marriage.

  Here Belle paused in her recital, wrenched back to the present, wondering what Sinclair thought of her scheming.

  She risked a glance at him. He leaned against the window, his arms folded, but his still features passed no judgment as he merely waited for her to go on with the tale.

  Sighing, she continued, "I never counted on the fact that I would fall in love with him. As I grew to know him better, he seemed so different from any man I had ever met, so gentle. But more than anything else, he had dreams." A wistful note infused itself into Belle's voice. "Not dreams like my selfish ones for a place in society, material possessions, but such visions for a better world."

  Her eyes misted as she recalled those long-ago evenings by the fireside, the glow on Jean-Claude's face as he talked of the brotherhood of mankind, a world where inequalities would be destroyed, injustice forever banished, a society where one's birth would not be so important as the value of a man's soul.

  From such talk Belle had been encouraged to hope Jean-Claude would not mind so much when she told him the truth. But she could never work up the courage, always terrified of losing his love.

  "He thought me perfect," she said. "It was very hard to live up to his image of me. I feared what he would think if he knew how I had lied. Tomorrow, I always assured myself, tomorrow would be a better day. I would tell him then."

  But her secret had paled before the greater events sweeping through the country. The Bastille had fallen the day after their wedding, the repercussions of that event slowly spreading throughout France.

  Yet for a long time the village of Merevale had remained untouched. The people on the Egremont estate were devoted to Jean-Claude, suspicious of any wild idea coming from such a ‘foreign’ place as Paris. It had been Jean-Claude himself who had let the Revolution within the chateau walls. Enthusiastically embracing its principles of equality and freedom, he had voluntarily resigned his title and talked joyously of a liberated France governed by a constitutional monarchy. His happiness had known no bounds when he had been elected to the second national assembly.

  "And so we came to Paris," Belle said. "I had just passed my eighteenth birthday, but I already had seen far more of the ugly face of men than Jean-Claude. From the first day we rode through the streets, I sensed something seriously amiss. Most of the noble speeches only served to disguise the ambition of hard and ruthless men."

  But for Jean-Claude's sake she tried to quell her doubts and uneasiness, a task that became harder and harder as the weeks sped by and the violence of the Revolution grew. Frenetic mobs invaded prisons massacring priests and aristocrats. The Tuileries was attacked, the king and queen arrested. More and more the moderate voices in the assembly such as Jean-Claude's were being drowned out by the roars of the fanatics.

  "Each day," Belle said, "I looked into Jean-Claude's eyes and saw his belief in the goodness of men, dying a little more. And there was no way for me to recapture those dreams for him, hold them fast, although I would have given my life to have done so."

  You did, Angel, far too much of it, Sinclair longed to assure her, but he knew she would not want to hear that.

  Overcome by her recollections, she doubled her hand into a fist, pressing it against her eyes. With her words, she had painted a picture for Sinclair, but not the one she wanted him to see. Her tale roused not a particle of sympathy in him for Jean-Claude.

  Someone should have smacked his noble lordship awake, Sinclair thought savagely. He doubted that Jean-Claude could have suffered overmuch, passing through the Revolution in a rose-tinted dream. But Belle, ever the realist, facing all the horrors with her eyes wide open—how many scars she yet carried, how many pain-filled memories were seared into her soul.

  Hunkering down, Sinclair closed his hand over hers. Her skin felt so cold. He tried to chafe some warmth back into her.

  After a moment she lowered her fist from her eyes. Once more in control, she resumed her story. "Jean-Claude managed to continue his work in the assembly until the trial and condemnation of the king. Even to the very last, Jean-Claude did not believe the people of Paris would let the execution happen."

  Using Sinclai
r's hand for support, Belle levered herself to her feet. Sweeping the curtain aside, she beckoned him to join her at the window, pointing toward the distant street corner. "Down there on the morning the sentence was to be carried out, Jean-Claude mounted one final plea to the crowds to attempt a last-minute rescue as the coach went by.

  "I was terrified that the mob would turn on him, and I tried to make him stop. It scarce mattered. The cheers, the drums beating were so loud when the king's carriage passed that no one even heard what Jean-Claude was saying.

  "The rest of that day I held him as he wept in my arms. It was shortly after that Jean-Claude discovered the truth about me. I suppose it was bound to happen one day. An Englishman traveling in Paris had once visited Mama backstage at the theater and he remembered seeing me. When he told Jean-Claude the truth, it nearly killed him."

  Her voice faded to silence. For a long time Sinclair said nothing, but she was aware of how close he stood to her, drawing comfort from his nearness.

  "How long did you stay in Paris after Jean-Claude had gone?" he asked.

  "Until the summer of ninety-eight. The Terror was at its worst then, so many innocent people proscribed. Baptiste and I got a little reckless trying to help and were caught. I was imprisoned in the Conciergerie, an experience I never care to repeat. That I would be found guilty was a foregone conclusion.

  "I would have taken that long ride down the Rue St. Honoré myself except that Robespierre was so obliging as to make himself unpopular. Shortly after he was executed, those he had had arrested were set free. I didn't wait for anyone to change their minds. I left Paris the same day and have never been back until now."

  She rested her head against the cool pane of the glass. "I returned to England and lived the best I could until I met up with Merchant. I decided it was better to become a royalist spy than turn whore. So there you have it, the whole dismal story of my life. Not very impressive, is it? I sometimes feel as if it would have made no difference to anyone if I had not been born at all."