Stormfire (84 page)

She looked at him as if she longed for the earth to crack up and swallow her.

Sean noticed his medallion through the
appliquéd
lace at her throat and remembered. Gently he slipped his ring off her finger and put it onto her right hand as her fingers dug into his, her eyes going the color of ink.

The
baronne
noted the slight convulsive movement and her smile became determinedly set. "Archbishop Lepec will be ready by now, I believe. I hear the opening chords."

"Are you ready, Kit?" Sean asked quietly.

"Yes." The reply was little more than a whisper, but her head came up and her hand moved to rest gracefully on his arm. Two bridesmaids settled the cloudlike veil over her face.

The organ was thunderous in the stone cavern of Notre Dame, but the shattering color of the soaring stained-glaSs windows diminished even the music as they arched toward the April sky, the fabulous rose window like an overturned goblet spilling claret light across the tiny humans below. Catherine felt lost, surrounded by implacable, impersonal centuries as she watched her husband-to-be and his honor guard, a vague mass defined only by the scarlet slashes on tKeir uniforms, slowly approach through the gray gloom. On either side of them, the cream of Paris, ostrich plumes waving and jewels gleaming in craning masses of color, lined the strip of scarlet carpet that arrowed to the altar where she waited with Sean. Then Amauri and Fourquet, his best man, in gold-emblazoned blue tunics, came into focus.

As the two officers assumed their plaees, the archbishop, resplendent in white and gold, began to drone the opening passages of an interminable High Mass. Yet too soon,

Catherine felt a rigid tension in Sean's body just before he gave her hand to Amauri; then he was gone. She would have bolted after him like a panicked animal, but the archbishop was clasping her hand into Amauri's. She mumbled the last phrases and Amauri's deeper voice firmly under- toned them. He slipped a heavy diamond onto her finger and lifted her veil. She stared up at him like a vacant doll as his lips brushed hers, then they turned and walked quickly up the long aisle as the dress swords of the honor guard flashed up to form an arch. On the front left row of wedding guests, Napoleon's thin face smiled easily. Suddenly, Catherine-wondered if the cascading lilies on her dress, like the aristocrats a
mong
her bridesmaids, had been Napoleon's idea. Then from somewhere, green eyes tore through the crowd to hers and her own paper Bmile began to crumple.

 
The smile, however, outlasted the wedding reception and the hundreds of guests who dropped crumbs and admired the elaborate wedding gifts as they flowed through the baronne's house. Even Josephine was envious when she saw the fabulous Celtic jewelry the bride had been presented by her brother-in-law. As Josephine ran her finger across a massive gold and ruby brooch,
Fouché
quirked an eyebrow. "Undoubtedly, the fellow has access to the Irish National Treasury."

Napoleon laughed. "To some extent, he's entitled to it." He turned to Murat. "Find Monsieur Culhane, Joachim. It's time I met him."

"Madame." Sean Culhane kissed Josephine's hand, then Caroline Murat's, and his face impassive, nodded slightly to Napoleon and
Fouché.

"We are delighted to welcome you to Paris, Monsieur Culhane," Napoleon said amiably. "I regret recent occurrences in state affairs have prevented me from inviting you to the
Tuileries."
Though his head barely reached Culhane's shoulder, Napoleon showed no sign of feeling overshadowed. Confidently, his eyes seemed to bring all men to his level.

As Napoleon and Culhane exchanged guarded pleasantries, Josephine, having heard the gossip about the Irishman, eyed the newcomer to Paris. His Spanish-style beard and moustache gave him the look of a ruffian, but an elegant ruffian. With a connoisseur's eye, she studied the savagely cut cheekbones and irregular nose. A raw scar was barely visible under the short-cropped, curling black hair at his temple; a second wickedly slashed across his cheekbone and the left corner of his mouth. She found him dangerously attractive, but because of the cool assessment in his eyes, as he had lazily kissed her hand, her long, silent perusal was deliberate and a little cruel. In contrast to Napoleon's energetic movements, the Irishman had an almost languid grace, and she remembered the other stories. Seeing his eyes, she wondered. When talk turned to ballistics, Josephine, as if disenchanted, drifted away with Caroline. "I don't agree with Murat,
Caro.
I think the man may be dangerous."

The sun was setting over the narrow, red-brick houses lining the Place
des Vosges
when two black carriages pulled into its deserted expanse of cobblestones. On the surrounding rooftops, narrow chimney silhouettes sliced the sun and streaked the courtyard below with dimming bars of copper light. Grouchy, accompanying Sean Culhane, stepped from one of the vehicles and waited as three men dismounted from the other: Javet,
Le Clerc,
and Doctor
Emile
Fourquet were still in dress uniform from the Amauri wedding. Grouchy preceded Culhane as the two groups approached one another and halted a few feet apart. "Gentlemen. Captain Javet, do you wish to apologize to Monsieur Culhane?"

Javet bit his lip. He looked pale, as if still under effects from the party the previous night. He knew he was in the wrong, and sensed the others knew it, too. He could only brazen out his rash insult. "I do not apologize, sir."

"Monsieur Culhane, do you withdraw your challenge?"

"I do not."

"Very well, gentlemen, choose your weapons."

The combatants discarded their cloaks, headgear, and jackets.
Le Clerc
presented a long black bundle, and from it unfurled a pair of sabers. The two men selected their weapons. Culhane slashed his saber in an experimental
enveloppement,
then waited, one hand on his outthrust hip, the saber point resting on the toe of his boot while Javet tested his own weapon.

"Gentlemen, are you ready?"

"Ready." Javet took his position. Sean nodded and the opponents crossed sabers. For a few moments, nothing
seemed
to happen, only a tentative brushing of saber tips. Then, at the same instant, Culhane and Javet slid backwards and the sabers flashed dimly in the gathering gloom. As
Le Clerc
was to relate later, the duel was not a fight, but an execution. In less than a minute, Javet lay sprawled on his back on the cobbles, his jugular pulsing away his last moments of life from an angled slash to the left side of his neck and shoulder. His shirtfront rapidly turned black in the dusk until the whites
oí
his eyes gleamed like gray pearls.

That night on the
île de la Fraternité,
the door of Number 15 opened and
Mei
Lih stepped back into the shadows, the white silk of her dress forming
a.
nimbus behind the candle she held. Sean took the candle and placed it in a wall sconce. Silently, he reached for her, pulling her to him even as he kicked the door closed, crushing his mouth down on her and tangling his hands in the silk of her hair until her heart battered against his chest.

He carried her quickly to the sofa in Madeleine's drawing room and tore the thin shift from her slender body. Half closing his eyes, he buried his face against her breasts then entered her swiftly, urgently until he did not even hear himself harshly gasping Catherine's name as he drove deeper into oblivion.

"The house looks remarkably as it did before the Revolution,
Raoul;
even
Grandmère
would have been amazed at what your workmen have accomplished, and so quickly, too."

Raoul
d'Amauri laughed as he showed his bride the last of the ground-floor rooms of the old
Comtesse de
Vigny's handsome seventeenth-century mansion on the former
Rue Royale.
"I'm glad you didn't see it before. The last occupant was a former stableboy, now a treasury official. The furniture sprouted antimacassars like mushrooms."

Catherine had to smile. Raoul's irrepressible good temper and effort to ease the strain of the long day had earned her gratitude, but images of Sean, hoarded in brief, miserly glimpses at the reception, still haunted her. Where was he now, the one who should have taken holy vows by her side and claimed her tonight forever? She tucked an arm about her husband's. "It's difficult to thank you properly,
Raoul.
You've done so much."

He smiled confidently and brushed a tendril loose from her chignon. "Oh, I'll think of many ways to make you appreciate me, but you must thank Napoleon for the house."

She stiffened. "Napoleon?"

"It was his wedding gift." He paused. "He has also arranged for the
Vigny
holdings to be returned to you. You've a stack of papers to sign, even before beginning to answer all the social invitations piled up with the wedding gift replies." He tapped her nose. "Being the wife of an ascending general is going to keep you busy."

"You're to be a general?" she said incredulously. "And Napoleon is giving my property back? I don't understand. I thought he'd be furious. . . ."

"The First Consul is a generous and gracious man,"
Raoul
said impressively, his faint note of pedantry at odds with his usual lightheartedness. "Undoubtedly, his chagrin has been outweighed by his desire for doniestic alliances. What more delightful way than a fairy-tale wedding?" He looked teasingly crestfallen. "Aren't you even going to congratulate me? After all, I'm the most fortunate fellow in the world today."

"Of course, I'm . . . very happy for you,
Raoul.
I'm sure you've more than earned your promotion."

Amauri chose to ignore the uneasy note in her voice. "Come, let's celebrate," he said coaxingly, and drew her into the dining room. The long table was set for two. On the table and sideboard gleamed some of the baronne's massive silver pieces, loaned until the wedding silver and porcelain could be transferred. Perhaps, she reflected as
Raoul
seated her, the place would seem less sterile after her own things arrived. Then silently, she sighed. Her own things, for all their lavishness, included nothing she had chosen herself, not even the furniture: all
Directoire.
How much more appealing had been her grandmother's pieces, which had ranged back to Frances I. Grandmother's bed had belonged to Diane
âe
Poitiers, mistress of Henry II; it had been a tiny bed, perfect for the petite
Comtesse.