Surrender to a Stranger (36 page)

“On the day of their arrival,” Madeleine told her. “Their carriage was stopped by a rough group of men and they were ordered to show their papers. Since both women were émigrés, and obviously wealthy, they were detained for questioning. Lucette grew angry and informed them that her mother-in-law was the daughter of the deceased Marquis des Valentes, that she herself was married to the marquis’s grandson, and that her child was his great-granddaughter, which of course was exactly the wrong thing to tell them. You see, my grandfather had been a staunch royalist in his day, and to admit that they were his émigré relatives was equivalent to admitting they were counterrevolutionaries and enemies of the Republic. They were immediately charged and imprisoned, and with remarkable efficiency they were tried the next day and sent to the guillotine. It was all over before Armand returned home to find that they were gone.”

Jacqueline gripped the arms of her chair with such intensity she felt as though her fingers would break. It was too appalling. The idea that a man could go away for a few days and return to find his family had been executed —the shock and the horror must have been absolutely unbearable.

Her father and brother had been killed, so she understood the agony of losing those you love. But her father had been in prison for months before he was finally brought to trial, and although Jacqueline had not wanted to believe it, she had always known that his execution was a possibility. As for Antoine, she had understood the danger they both faced after her father was executed with complete clarity. That was why she sent Suzanne and Séraphine to England. France had gone mad, and in a world gone mad she and Antoine had no protection except each other. When the guards forced their way into her home to arrest him, she had fought them with every ounce of her strength, knowing Antoine was too ill to withstand being in prison, and that even if he had been able to endure it, they were going to execute him anyway.

But Armand had been away, gambling and drinking and probably savoring the delights of some woman, totally oblivious of the dangers his mother and wife and child were in. And when he returned home, expecting to find his pretty Lucette and his little Angélique waiting for him as usual, he instead learned that they had gone to France with his mother and been guillotined. How did one deal with a tragedy so overwhelmingly brutal and unexpected?

“What did Armand do?” she whispered.

“He went insane with rage,” replied Madeleine. “At first he simply would not believe it. We had received a letter from my mother which she wrote hurriedly before they took her to be executed, explaining what had happened and begging us not to set foot in France until stability had returned. Of course Armand wanted to go to France and find them, thinking there had been a mistake and that they were alive. My husband and I practically had to stand guard at his house to prevent him from leaving, so terrified was I that he would go to France and get himself killed as well.”

Jacqueline could well imagine that Armand would not be one to sit idly by and do nothing. And if he went to France and discovered they were dead, he would not simply turn around and go home. He would want revenge.

“At first he fought with us terribly, so determined was he to rush to France and find them,” continued Madeleine. “And then, when we finally were able to make him see that such an act would merely give the republican government another victim, he withdrew completely. He locked himself up in his study and began to drink himself into a state of complete and utter oblivion. For three weeks he refused to see anyone. I begged him to at least let me in, but the door was only opened for his butler, who brought him trays of food and endless bottles of liquor. I fought terribly with the man over it. I ordered him not to take in any more liquor, but Armand’s servants are unfailingly loyal to him, and the man refused to heed my instructions. I realize now he was probably acting out of compassion. I am sure he thought that Armand was better off in a drunken stupor than sober and facing the reality around him.”

“What made him come out of it?”

Madeleine drew her delicate eyebrows together in a frown. “I don’t know exactly. All I know is one day he appeared at my door, bathed and shaved and utterly sober. He told me that he was all right, and that I was not to worry about him. He was going to visit one of his properties in the north for a few weeks. He was obviously still in great pain, but he seemed calm and rational, and I remember feeling terribly relieved. When he returned from his trip four weeks later he seemed revitalized, as if he had discovered a new purpose. At first I thought perhaps he had met a woman, someone who was helping him to heal. I later discovered that was when he performed his first rescue mission to France.”

Jacqueline silently absorbed this information. So that was it. Armand was not some opportunistic merchant, risking his life to save endangered French aristocrats in exchange for an enormous fee. Nor was he a bored, eccentric adventurer, traveling to France for sport, abducting the condemned for the sheer thrill of it. He was a man in agony, a man tormented by the terrible black guilt of his past, who was waging his own personal war on the country that brutally murdered his family. And because of that pain, and that hatred, and the need to inflict revenge, he had started saving people who were beyond the hope that anyone or anything could possibly save them. People like his wife, mother, and daughter, who had undoubtedly been terrified as they awaited their fate, and would have done almost anything to survive. And people like Jacqueline, who were so bitter and angry with the world they were past caring whether they lived or not.

“I sent him there,” she breathed, more horrified than ever by her actions. He had not wanted to go. Perhaps he had been tired, and wanted a rest, a break from the danger. Perhaps he had sensed there was something amiss, had known somehow that the mission would not be successful. But she had forced the issue by agreeing to terms she now realized he never expected her to accept. He had gone because she met his challenge. She had given herself to him for one night. And in return he went to France to save a man who had not lifted a finger to help Jacqueline when she had been in prison, had not even come to visit her out of fear that his name might be tainted by his association with her. And in trying to free this man, Armand had been caught.

“Why in God’s name did I ask him to go back?” she cried, hating herself at that moment more than she knew possible.

“You must not blame yourself, Jacqueline,” soothed Madeleine gently. “No one could ever make Armand do anything he did not want to do. If he has been caught and is still alive, his men will come up with some way to help him. At least now we know what his objective was. Surely that will help us in securing more information. If we only knew where he is being held, we could arrange to get him out.”

Jacqueline rose from her chair and went to the window, suddenly restless with the need to move, to think, to do something. Armand had once told her that if he did not return, it was because he was dead. Jacqueline could not accept that possibility. Armand was too clever, to adept at thinking quickly, at changing his character, his accent, and his story. No, he could not be dead. Trapped, perhaps, maybe even arrested and imprisoned, but not dead. It was not possible. “There are over fifty prisons in Paris alone,” she said vacantly as she watched the snow beginning to fall again. “Armand has never found it difficult getting into them. The question is, which one do we want to get into?”

Madeleine rose from her chair. “I shall suggest to Mr. Langdon that he and his men begin by investigating the Luxembourg,” she declared. “Even if he is not being held there, if he was caught while rescuing your betrothed, someone at the prison will know about it.”

Jacqueline nodded. “The prisoners at the Luxembourg are not held in solitary,” she recalled, thinking back to when her father was incarcerated there. “There is a lively gossip mill, and an escape attempt would provide entertaining conversation for weeks afterward. If one of his men could get in there and talk to either a prisoner or a guard, he is certain to learn something of Armand’s arrest.”

After another sleepless night Jacqueline rose and listlessly went through the motions of daily life in the Harrington household. She took breakfast at eight, met with her tutor for English lessons at nine, had lunch at one, and then went to the music room with Suzanne and Séraphine in the afternoon to listen to Suzanne try her hand at the pianoforte. She and Madeleine had agreed not to inform Sir Edward or Lady Harrington of Armand’s disappearance, since there was nothing either of them could do to help anyway, and when Armand returned he would doubtless expect that his exploits to France had remained confidential. It was also possible that whoever was detaining him in France had absolutely no idea of whom they had captured, since Armand had probably been in disguise at the time, and therefore it was more essential than ever to keep his identity a secret. Madeleine would instruct Sidney to investigate the Luxembourg, and Jacqueline would be informed the minute they had any new information. Beyond that, there was nothing she could do except wait, and pretend that everything was fine.

It was almost impossible.

To sit there calmly, and say yes, I will have tea, and no, I do not wish to go shopping, and that is very good Suzanne, when inside she was screaming
Where are you? What have they done to you?
and
Please, please forgive me for putting you in this awful situation,
was almost more than she could bear. By midafternoon her head was throbbing with an excruciatingly painful headache, so she sent the girls off to their governess and retired upstairs to her chamber, unable to carry on the charade any longer. She drew the curtains and the room was plunged into a heavy, gray darkness, which served to accentuate her desolation. When she lay back on the bed she noticed a tiny shaft of light piercing through a crack in the drapes with fierce determination, illuminating the slowly spinning dust motes and reminding her that there was a world outside, despite her effort to block it out temporarily. As she watched the dust float and twirl lazily in the warm ray, she recalled another moment, weeks ago, in a bare, cold little room in a cheap Paris inn, where she had awakened to see shafts of sunlight streaming through the cracks of the shutters. For a brief instant she had felt safe, and peaceful, and then she had realized that she was alone, and that Armand, or Citizen Julien as she had known him then, had deserted her. And she had been filled with panic, had been convinced that he had betrayed her. But he had returned, dark, scowling, enormous, filling the room with his presence, and demanded,
Did you think I would leave you, Mademoiselle?
as if the very idea was insulting, ludicrous, unfathomable. And when he saw that she truly had believed he had abandoned her, he made a solemn promise.
I will always come back for you, Mademoiselle.
So simple, those words. So reassuring. And so easy to say. He had saved her from being raped in her cell. He had stolen her from her executioners. He had pulled her from the clutches of a bloodthirsty mob and smuggled her through the gates of Paris. He had gone after her when she tried to escape him and torn her away from the country she loved. He had nursed her when she had been so ill with seasickness she wanted to die, and not left her side once during the night. He had kept his word. He had stayed with her until she was safely delivered. But he had not done it for money, as she had believed. He had done it because he wanted her to live, because by living she was a slash across the face of the republican government, and because her life was a spark of light against the darkness that enveloped him every day of his life.

She never should have asked him to go back. But she had thought she was hiring him, a simple business transaction, nothing more. She should have known better. What kind of businessman would ask a woman to sleep with him in exchange for risking his life? And when she thought back to how it had been between them that night, all apricot light and liquid fire and achingly sweet tenderness, how he had held her against the sleek, hard warmth of his body, filling her with his strength, his life, his need, and his pain, her eyes began to fill with unshed tears, and in that moment she knew that he had changed her, had reached out and touched her soul and made her feel things she had never thought to feel, had not wanted to feel, not now, not ever. “Damn you,” she whispered into the darkness as the tears began to spill from her eyes and slowly trickle down the sides of her cheeks and into her hair. “Damn you.”

She awoke to the sound of knocking at her door. “Jacklyn,” cried an excited voice, “are you awake?”

Slowly she opened her eyes. The room was completely black, so she knew it was night, but she had no idea how many hours she had slept. Her eyelids felt sore and puffy, and her head still ached, the dull, muffled ache that follows a restless, tormented sleep. She sat up and saw that she was still in her clothes, lying atop the counterpane. Stiffly she pushed herself up until she was sitting.

The door swung open, letting in a bright shaft of light and the shadowy figure of Laura, dressed in an enormous lemon-yellow gown, her dark hair a mass of buoyant curls decorated with matching yellow ribbons. She held a three-tiered candelabra, which cast a yellow glow on her.

“Oh Jacklyn, you will never guess,” she squeaked with excitement, “he is back, safe and sound, and he is here, right now, downstairs in the library with my father.”

“He is—here?” Jacqueline repeated vacantly, unable to believe that Laura could be telling her the truth.

“Yes!” shrieked Laura, almost beside herself with enthusiasm.

Jacqueline blinked and took a deep breath, trying to absorb what Laura was telling her. Armand was here? Now? It was incredible. It was wonderful. “But, how—”

“Come downstairs and he can tell you all about it himself,” interrupted Laura, her curls bouncing as she shook her head impatiently. Her expression grew dreamy. “He has been through the most terrible ordeal, and then made a wonderfully daring escape, and he said that all through it, only the thought of you kept him going. Isn’t that positively romantic?”