The Misguided Matchmaker (4 page)

He
raised his hand in a brief salute.
“Good luck,
Monsieur le Renard
.
You will need it if you plan to cross
France in the company of the lovely mademoiselle during these troubled times. I
suspect Fouché would enjoy laying hands on the granddaughter of the arch
Royalist, Le Comte de Navareil, almost as much as on the infamous British Fox.”

Père
Bertrand, who headed the clergy of St.
Bartholomew’s, insisted on reading the brief burial service for the count
himself, something for which Madelaine was deeply grateful. If her grandfather
was looking down from heaven, he would be pleased; the two old men had been
like brothers.

Many’s
the time she’d listened to the story of how the good father had hidden her
grandparents from the murderous
sans-culotte
during the Reign of Terror.
More than three thousand Lyonnais were sent to the guillotine during that
bloody year, and the count and countess would surely have been among them had
they not found refuge in the very vault in which they were now both entombed.

“Your
duty to your grandfather is finished, Madelaine, there is no more you can do
for him,” the elderly priest declared as she and the man called Tristan
Thibault helped him up the stone steps that led from the vault to the nave.

“Then
I shall leave to join my father in
Angleterre
as soon as I collect the
few things I need to take with me.” Madelaine promised the portly, white-haired
cleric who had been a second grandfather to her.

But
even as she moved toward the great oak door that led to the courtyard, it was
thrown open by the odd-looking little man who had followed them to the church
half an hour earlier.

“The
home of le Compte de Navareil has been looted and burned and the crowd is
heading this way,” he cried. “You must flee Lyon instantly, milord. Both you
and Mademoiselle Harcourt are in terrible danger.”

Madelaine’s
heart leapt to her throat. It couldn’t be true. Not her home—not everything in
the world she owned. She swallowed her rising panic. Not the miniature of her
grandfather that was all she had left to remember him by. Too late, she
realized she should have listened to Monsieur Thibault when he warned her to
gather her belongings before they left the house.

Hot,
bitter anger penetrated the fog of grief numbing her brain. Many of the men who
had waited outside her grandfather’s gate were longtime neighbors—neighbors who
had hovered like hungry vultures waiting for the hapless prey to die. The same
men who just days before had wished her a cheery good morning had now ransacked
and burned her home in the dark of night—even threatened her very life.

Sick
with pain, she heard Monsieur Thibault question his friend about her mare and
his own horse, which he’d left in her grandfather’s stable. “I saw them being
led away by two rough-looking fellows just before they torched the house,”
Forli stated.

“Well,
that is it, then. If we must travel by foot, we best get started.” Tristan
Thibault grasped Madelaine’s arm in his strong fingers, as if to propel her
toward the door.

Père
Bertrand raised a restraining hand. “Hold, monsieur. You are safe here as long
as you stay inside the church. The mob will not enter the house of God. Not
even in the worst days of the Terror did they go that far.”

Forli
nodded. “The good father is correct. Bonaparte has issued a decree protecting
all clerics from harm at the hands of his followers—an obvious bid for support
of the church in his efforts to regain his throne.

Madelaine
stared at the orange window over the cleric’s head. Even through the stained
glass, she could see the flames leaping from the roof of what had been her home
for so many years. She felt choked with grief and despair. “I will not stay in
Lyon if I must go into hiding to do so,” she said bitterly.

Tristan
Thibault nodded. “I, too, am anxious to leave, and Bonaparte’s decree could be
our ticket to Calais—if you will help us Father.”

Father
Bertrand leaned wearily against one of the marble pillars supporting the vast
nave of the church. “I will do anything in my power to help the
petite fille
of my old friend,” he said gravely. “Still, I cannot like the idea of an
innocent young woman of gentle birth traveling without a chaperone.”

“I
am afraid the times are too desperate to worry about propriety,” Tristan
Thibault declared in a voice sharpened by impatience. “But if it is any comfort
to you, I guarantee I will guard the honor of my employer’s daughter with my
life.”

The
priest sighed. “I can ask no more. Take this grandchild of my old friend then,
monsieur. Help her to find a new life in a land where the soil is not saturated
with the blood of Frenchmen killed by Frenchmen. Tell me how I may help you.”

“I
shall need a priest’s cassock—a large one—and a razor, if possible. Mine is in
my saddlebag. Thank God, I kept my papers and money on my person.” Thibault
glanced at Madeleine. “And a shirt and trousers such as a young
paysan
might wear.”

Father
Bertrand’s eyes widened. “You plan to travel as a priest and his acolyte? But
is that not risky? What if you are found out?”

“I
think that is less a risk than the one we would face traveling without a
disguise.” Tristan Thibault ran his fingers through his unruly black hair.
“Thank heavens the priests of your order are not tonsured.”

His
silver eyes swept Madelaine with an assessing look that made her feel as if he
could see into her very soul. “But we shall need a pair of shears nevertheless.
I believe mademoiselle will make a very handsome boy once we bob her hair.”

“Bob
my hair?” Madelaine heard the shock in her own voice. Instinctively, she
reached up to touch her one vanity—the dark brown, waist-length tresses that
were coiled in a neat chignon at her nape. She had lost everything else; now
this insensitive lout, who rejoiced that he need not shave his own head, was
insisting she must chop off her crowning glory.

Tristan
smiled to himself. The lady’s gesture and her look of abject horror when he suggested
cutting her hair were so feminine, so vain, so sweetly vulnerable, that he felt
the first glimmer of hope for success of his thankless mission. He’d almost
begun to think he was transporting a bloody saint back to London to become his
brother’s wife—a fate worse than death for any man, to his way of thinking. But
she was just an ordinary woman after all.

With
Forli’s help, he finally convinced her of the logic of his plan. Then, with
Father Bertrand in the lead, they trooped into the rectory to do the deed. In
tight-lipped resignation, Madelaine seated herself on the stool provided,
removed the kerchief she’d worn on her head when she’d knelt at the chancel
rail and then one by one the pins from hair.

Tristan
felt his breath catch in his throat as the gleaming silken mantle spread down
her back to graze the curve of her slender hips. Suddenly the shears the
priest’s housekeeper had pressed into his hands felt like instruments of
torture. He stared at them, nonplussed, unable to bring himself to use them to
mutilate such beauty.

“I
will cut it if you wish, milord,” Forli said with an eagerness that raised
Tristan’s hackles. “My father is a barber; I know something of the trade.”
Prying the shears from Tristan’s rigid fingers, he proceeded to whack off the
lustrous tresses just below the lady’s ears with a few swift strokes.

Tristan
stared at Madelaine Harcourt’s white face and tightly closed eyes, then at the
mound of dark brown silk curled around the base of the stool and felt a
terrible urge to throttle the little man who was busily snipping away at what
was left of her once glorious head of hair.

“
C’est
fini!
” Forli stepped back to admire his work as Madelaine Harcourt’s eyes
opened and instantly sought Tristan’s, asking his opinion of the results. Coward
that he was, he turned away, loath to face her lest she read the truth—that
with her butchered hair jutting out in every direction, she looked remarkably
like a porcupine about to throw its quills.

“Perfect,”
Forli declared, reaching for the pan of warm water he’d demanded earlier.
Wetting his fingers thoroughly, he ruffled them through the spikey hair, then
toweled it briskly with the square of rough linen provided by the housekeeper.
As if by magic, the ugly spikes softened into a becoming cap of silken curls.

Forli
grinned. “Voilà, milord. Your handsome boy!”

Tristan
felt a smile creep across his face that was echoed by the priest and the
housekeeper, and even Madelaine Harcourt lost a touch of her grimness when
Forli handed her a mirror.

She
ran her fingers through the soft curls framing her face. “My head feels so
light,” she said wonderingly. Her gaze lingered for one brief moment on the
tresses at her feet; then she squared her shoulders and raised her chin in the
same haughty gesture that had intimidated her Bonapartist neighbors. “It looks
much better than I had anticipated. Perhaps playing the part of a boy will not
be so unpleasant after all.
Je vous remercie
, Monsieur Forli.”

Forli’s
gargoyle grin widened until it spread from ear to ear. “You are welcome,
mademoiselle. But I feel I must warn you that if you wish to successfully
impersonate a
paysan
, you will have to relinquish the more formal speech
of the aristocracy in favor of the simple
merci
of the lower classes.”

“A
point well taken, monsieur,” Madelaine said gravely and with a dignity Tristan
could not help but admire, she gathered up the homespun shirt and sturdy pants
and jacket the housekeeper had found for her and retired to the adjoining room.
A few minutes later she emerged, the picture of a handsome young
paysan
.

Tristan
donned the cassock provided him, and slipped the accompanying chain and cross
over his head and his pistol into his pocket. He looked up to find Forli
watching him, a thoughtful frown puckering his brow. “What is wrong?” he asked,
raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“Nothing
is wrong…exactly. But I must admit to having second thoughts about this
disguise of yours. You might fool some men, but I doubt any woman who views you
will be taken in. Yours are not the eyes of a priest, milord.”

“And
yours is not the mouth of a prudent man,” Tristan said, dryly, leveling a look
on the diminutive Italian that had been known to reduce men twice his size to
quivering blobs of blancmange.

Forli
merely shrugged it off. “Ah well, the church has survived the Spanish
Inquisition and the excesses of a Borgia pope; it will undoubtedly survive a
priest with the eyes of Lucifer.”

Tristan
gritted his teeth. The little Italian’s raillery over his “devil’s eyes” was no
worse than what he’d encountered time and again in the years since he’d been
old enough to be noticed by the opposite sex. He’d grown accustomed to the
stares and the giggles and the lewd comments his odd-colored eyes evoked. He’d
even managed to live up to the reputation they’d earned him in both Paris and
Vienna.

But
Forli’s timing was unfortunate if Madelaine Harcourt had taken note of it.
Spending days—and nights—alone with his brother’s bride-to-be would be awkward
enough; it could become a nightmare if the lady got it in her head he was a
threat to her virtue. He dared a single glance in her direction and, to his
relief, found her at the far end of the room, busy packing a knapsack with
bread and cheese.

He
turned back to Forli. “The success or failure of my disguise remains to be
seen. At the moment, my first concern is a means of transportation.”

Forli
nodded. “I hid my cabriolet and horse in a grove of trees beyond La Croix
Rousse where the Saône and Rhône rivers converge. They are yours to use, but
the streets between here and there teem with Bonapartists.”

“It
is too bad you are strangers to Lyon and do not know the
traboules,
”
Père
Bertrand lamented. “They are little used at night, and since one of them
connects with the church, you could reach La Croix Rousse without setting foot
on the streets.”

Tristan
scowled. “The
traboules
? What are they?”

“The
network of covered alleyways, built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
which honeycomb Lyons. They are the quickest and safest way to cross the city
in troubled times, as many Royalist discovered during the Terror. But they can
be very confusing. Even knowledgeable Lyonnais have been known to become
hopelessly lost in them on occasion.”

Madelaine
Harcourt looked up from her task. “Have you forgotten that I, too, am involved
in this journey?” She bestowed a look on the assembled men that proclaimed, “If
you are not equal to the task, leave it to me.”

Tristan
groaned. If he’d ever had any doubts she was Caleb Harcourt’s daughter, that
look dispelled them.

“I
am well acquainted with the
traboules,
” she said with quiet authority.
“My grandfather taught me how to find my way through them in case the need ever
arose. We visited La Croix Rousse many times to buy silk fabric directly from
the weavers. I am certain I can find it again.”