Rendezvous (9781301288946) (29 page)

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 commit 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 Sinclair'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."