Chapter 30
Thirty
“Time’s up,” a guard stepping into the center of the courtyard announced. “Gather up your things. Let’s go.”
Marguerite braced herself as she joined the crowd shuffling into a line. It was always difficult to go from the sunny courtyard’s illusion of freedom to their fetid confines. With each step, she felt the gloom saturate her hopes like a dark pool of water, dragging them down.
She lifted her chin. She would not give up.
At least for today, she was among the lucky ones.
Still alive, the warmth of the sun lingering on her skin, her arms filled with clean linen.
She pressed her nose into the damp bundle, inhaling the scents of rosewater and sun-warmed limestone, which almost, but not quite masked the prison’s prevailing odors of sweat, despair, and shit.
Her nose still buried in her laundry, her eyes half closed, she stumbled back up the stairs, through the wickets, and finally, back into the narrow cell with its rows of beds.
Shawls and petticoats were slung between headboards and footboard in an attempt to provide their occupants with a modicum of precious privacy.
Setting her shawl down on the mattress, she unknotted it and began removing the damp washing. She draped a stocking over her headboard, wondering if it would dry or simply molder in the dank cell air.
“Marguerite, only look, I’m having my portrait done!”
She turned to see Marisol, the little blonde hairdresser, perched on the edge of her mattress, back perfectly straight, face turned slightly, hands resting on a mirror on her lap.
She was dressed in a white day dress, a pale blue sash around her tiny waist. A simple fichu was artfully arranged around her neck, concealing the fragile architecture of her shoulders and neck.
Her hair was a masterpiece of curls, plaits, and ribbons.
“You look lovely.” If there were dark circles under her eyes, if her skin was a shade too gray, and her mouth a worried pinch, surely a kind-hearted artist would correct them with his brush.
She looked past Marisol to find the artist. Her mouth dropped open, and her heart stumbled like an awkward child.
Marcus Tisset was sitting on the edge of Marisol’s bed. He was dressed in a navy waistcoat and buff breeches, a sketchbook propped on his well-muscled thighs.
She’d only just decided to send for him; she wasn’t prepared for the full force of him, sitting composed and elegant amongst the chaotic confines of the cell. His powerful, almost arrogant confidence made her want to throw herself into the shelter of his arms—and also to slap him.
As if reading her mind and finding her confusion amusing, Marcus raised an eyebrow, a hint of a smile playing on his severe lips.
Alternatively, he might be smiling at the sight of the single, thigh-high stocking she was holding up with its dainty pattern of embroidered forget-me-nots.
Marguerite flushed, stuffing the intimate item behind her back.
“You are surprised—no shocked and delighted to see him!” Marisol clapped her hands in pleasure. “I had no idea when I received his card and asked him to paint a miniature of me, that you and he are…”
“He and I are…?” Marguerite prompted with rising trepidation.
“Lovers.” Marisol finished, clasping her hands to her chest with a romantic sigh.
“Lovers?” Marguerite rose. “We are not…” But her protest was lost as he dropped his sketchbook, swept her up in his arms and kissed her with a ruthless efficiency that made her head spin and her toes curl.
“Mon coeur,” he said, releasing her lips, but not her body. “You have no idea how I’ve longed to see you.”
“So romantic,” Marisol sighed.
“Decorum,” tsked the maybe-vicomtesse.
“Let ‘em be,” scoffed a woman in an adjacent bed, who was almost certainly a prostitute.
“To speak with you,” he added with a low-voiced urgency.
“Speak?” she repeated, barely able to form the word. She felt breathless, hot, tingling. Furious at the liberties he was taking, but also swept by the desire to feel…more.
She drew back as far as his firm embrace would allow. She was stressed. Tired. It had been too long—no, never—since she’d been held and kissed like that. Her response to this man, this complete stranger, was purely physical. As it was when her foot jerked out when someone struck her knee just so….
“Hear me out,” he murmured against her ear.
She lifted her chin. Which had the unfortunate result of drawing her eyes level with those stern, but sensual, lips.
“You will finish my portrait?” Marisol inquired hesitantly.
Marcus turned to look at Marisol. Speaking with a gentleness she hadn’t heard from him before, he said. “It is nearly complete, Citizeness Auginot. And even if it were not, I should have no trouble remembering your sweet countenance.”
Marisol’s thin hand fluttered at her chest. “You flatter me, citizen.”
“I do not flatter.” He nodded at where his sketchbook lay amidst the straw. “See for yourself.”
Marisol picked it up, her lips forming an ‘O’ of wonder as she examined his portrait of her. “It’s lovely,” she breathed, looking up at him hopefully. “Is it truly me?”
“It is the job of an artist to ‘correct and amend the common Nature, and to represent it as it was first created without fault,’ citizeness.”
Was he quoting De Arte Graphica? The thought was swept away, as a rebellious strand of his hair tickled her cheek; his scent of sunshine and leather filled her nostrils.
Already caught off balance by his unexpected appearance, and even more unexpected kiss, this reminder of freedom and the outside world made her sway.
His arms tightened around her, steadying her, even as his eyes remained fixed on Marisol. “It is but my draftsman’s attempt to capture you. I have none of my lady’s art.”
“You’re an artist, too, Citizeness Rouvroy?” Marisol exclaimed. “I’ve seen you sitting with paper and pencil. But I have never seen you draw…”
Marcus turned to look at Marguerite.
She didn’t know him well enough to read the expression on his face; was it worry or anger? Was this a rescue or a trap?
“Indeed,” he said, “my Marguerite is a rare talent.”
His Marguerite? And what did he know of her art?
“My apologies for taking such liberties,” he whispered in her ear, “but this is the only way we can speak privately. And we must speak, Madame. Time is running out.
As if she didn’t know.
One arm still firmly wrapped around her waist; he reached with the other for his sketchbook. “Citizeness Auginot, I promise I shall finish your portrait this evening and return with your miniature tomorrow.” With a meaningful glance at Marguerite, he added. “And I always keep my word.”
“M’sieur miniaturist, you will return tomorrow and paint me as well,” the maybe-vicomtesse commanded, craning her regal head from around her headboard.
“But of course,” he dipped his head, “It would be my pleasure to return.”
Marguerite eyed him warily.
Nodding in the direction of the beds draped with shawls and blankets, he murmured. “Do you have something like that? Something that will give us some privacy?”
Reminding herself that she’d made up her mind to speak with him even before his outrageous appearance, she eyed the arm around her waist and said, “If you will release me?”
He dropped his arm.
Marguerite turned to her bed, adding the balled-up stocking in her hand to the pile of laundry she’d spread on the mattress and sweeping the lot under the straw-filled sack that passed as a pillow.
She picked up her shawl, shook it out, and began tying one corner to the outer post of her headboard.
As she drew the other end across the bed, he came to stand beside her
“How are you here?” she hissed.
“Consolation portraits.” He lifted his sketchbook. “They’re, sadly, in great demand.”
She looped the other end of her shawl over the outer post of the footboard, then hesitated before tying it in a knot, her gaze moving from his broad shoulders, down the length of his right arm, to his hand.
At the base of his artistic fingers, she recognized the calluses of an experienced swordsman.
Who was this man?
Ducking beneath the curtain of her shawl, she seated herself on the bed, then plucked his sketchbook from his hand.
“You might have asked,” he said, ducking under the shawl to join her. Concealed by the makeshift privacy wall, he made no effort to touch her, though he sat closely enough to whisper without being overheard and one arm was stretched behind her back, as if anticipating she might need support.
She felt drawn by invisible strings towards him; it took an effort of will not to lean against him.
“Are we observing the niceties, now?” She examined his portrait of Marisol.
It was a decent enough likeness, his lines precise and intentional.
Although, he hadn’t recorded the toll the prison’s hardships had taken on the woman, the worried creases around her eyes and mouth, the bruised shadows beneath her eyes.
He’d drawn Marisol as she must have looked before her arrest—vibrant and young; it was a sharp contrast with his sketch of the fugitive Comte Verignac. “You are an artist, then?”
There was an odd twitch of his lips as he took his sketchbook from her. “As you can doubtless see, I’m more of a draftsman. Certainly not in a class with you.”
“You’ve seen my work? How is that possible? I’ve never shown it publicly.” She’d never seen him in any of the Paris salons, and certainly never invited him to her apartments.
“With one notable exception,” he agreed.
Her face, already flushed from his proximity, grew even warmer: that damned fish.
“When I first got to Paris, I went to your apartments,” he went on, as if he hadn’t noticed her discomfort. “I’d planned to find you there, convince you to leave with us, and take you back to England.”
England? The heat in her face was replaced by a sickening chill. He said the word so casually. As if England and France were not at war. She lowered her voice so that it was nearly inaudible, “Emigration there is a crime punishable by death, Citizen.”
He leaned closer, his whisper equally soft.
“So is drawing France’s leading politician with fins and a tail.
” He continued, “There was no one home. So, I let myself in. I saw the mess. And your paintings.” He shook his head.
“Quite remarkable. If I hadn’t already promised your father that I’d bring you back to him, your self-portrait alone would have moved me to do so.
And your Diana,” he whistled admiringly.
“No.”
“No?” He inhaled the last note of his whistle. “You would prefer to remain here? You do understand that however much Andre might stall your sentencing, he cannot stop it.”
“I do.” But she also knew that her father, or whomever he forced her to marry next, would put an end to her dreams of becoming a professional artist. And life without art…
after she’d been so close to a public exhibition.
Years of work, of trial and error, back bent over an easel, fingers cramped around a brush...
Silence stretched between them.
“If I twist the curl up, and pin it like so,” Marisol’s voice filtered through the shawl, “it gives you height, makes your features so much more dramatic.”
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…” the elderly vicomtesse intoned.
“They may be comforting you, but they’re annoying the hell out of me,” said the prostitute in the bed next to the vicomtesse.
“Will you at least allow me to get you out of here?” Marcus’s voice, when he finally spoke, was low and urgent.
“Why?”
“Why?” He raked a hand through his hair, and again she caught the scents of sunshine and leather. “Not…can I do this? Not how?”
“Yes. Why. Why are you doing this? How can I be sure you’re not trying to lure me into some kind of trap?”
“Trap?” He gestured at the stone wall behind them with its coating of mold, at the headboard carved with initials and dates, and the sagging shawl. “Could you be more trapped than this? What do you imagine that I…that we could possibly want from you?”
“I’m supposed to simply trust you, a complete stranger, when you tell me you’ve rescued my father and now have come to rescue me. Why? Just because you’ve got the face and body of a Greek god and a charming manner?”
“Greek God? Charming?”
“Because you order me to? Again, why? Because you’re acting out of the goodness of your noble heart?”
There was a flash of frustration in his cognac-colored eyes; then he closed them and inhaled deeply.
Here it comes, she thought, the noble speech. She wondered which well-worn theme he’d choose to try and convince her to trust him: duty, honor, personal responsibility?
Marcus opened his eyes. His face was cast in shadow, but Marguerite caught a hint of mockery in his voice as he said, “You want to know why I’ve come to save you, Mme de Rouvroy? For the money, of course.”