Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Shortly after they arrived in Rouen, James told Elizabeth they were going on a picnic. “A picnic?” she said, her voice rising in question. “Have you lost your mind? Haven’t we got work to do? Aren’t we supposed to be paying a call on the merchant Brisant?”
“Briyard. And Marcus is handling the appointment. Don’t forget a good straw hat; the sun is rather fierce today.” He gestured to the pile of hatboxes in the corner of the sunny little room they were sharing. “The one with the flowers and ribbons is quite fetching.”
“You know I would never dream of venturing out without a hat. What is all this about?” Her eyes narrowed. “What are you up to, James Dinsmore?”
“A man tries to take his wife for a luncheon alfresco on a lovely day in a lovely city…” He swept an arm toward the window where, just beyond the pointed rooftops, the river could be seen, flowing blue and serene. “And he is greeted with rank suspicion. I vow, I am wounded.”
“You’re no more wounded than I am your wife. Tell me, James…”
“When we get there. Now be quick about it, before the Brie melts.”
“If you are planning a seduction,” Elizabeth said a short time later, when they’d arranged themselves in a field outside the city, “I should tell you it will come to naught.”
A smile as glancing as the breeze played across his lips and was gone. “Alas, a brief taste of married life, and already she has grown bored with my charms. It is what I have always feared. It is why I have never been married…before this.”
“You have never married, James Dinsmore, because you find it far too amusing to remain a bachelor. Though I doubt even the most amorous lady would have you on this blanket.” Elizabeth wrinkled her nose.
“It reeks of horse sweat and hay. If you haven’t another in the carriage, let us put it away and sit on the grass. ”
“Ah, so you’re not averse to my charms. I am so encouraged I would almost grant your wish and roll up the blanket, but I cannot.”
“Why ever not?”
“It’s the red and white weave,” he said. “Red for the blood of the martyrs, white for the lost Bourbon.”
“It’s a code, a signal?”
He nodded.
“Are we waiting for a signal back, then? From the fugitive?”
“We’re waiting for the fugitive.”
“We just wait? We don’t do anything? It doesn’t seem very dramatic.”
“If our luck holds, it won’t be dramatic.” He poured her a glass of pale golden wine and handed it to her. Then he poured one for himself and lifted his glass. “To a smooth, uneventful, and entirely boring rescue.”
She didn’t raise her glass, only sipped at the wine.
“I would have thought you’d had more than enough excitement this year,” he said, all trace of flirtation gone from his voice.
Color washed her cheeks. “I have had enough…and despite what you and Rafe may think, I have learned from my mistakes. It’s just that…that this…a picnic…seems so…easy.”
“Easy?” He took another sip of wine. “You were hoping for a trial by fire? Something that would burn away your sins?”
She pressed her lips together. “I expect that seems ridiculous.”
He shook his head, sunlight playing across the gold of his hair.
“You are so young, Elizabeth, so unfailingly optimistic. Despite everything, you still seem to think you can just move forward, start fresh.” His fingers played with the stem of his glass.
“You may change where you are, but you can’t change who you are.
The past follows after you like that pile of hatboxes. ”
She didn’t feel like arguing, so instead changed the subject. “If I hadn’t come on this trip, you’d have looked rather foolish on a picnic alone.”
“I’d have brought charcoal, sketched the view.”
“I didn’t know you liked to draw.”
He tore a piece of bread from the loaf that sat between them and handed it to her, with a slice of cheese. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
They ate in silence for several moments.
“For example,” he said, eyes fixed on the horizon as if he were studying it for a composition, “I intended to betray you that night at the ball.”
“You did it for Anne, didn’t you?” she said, her eyes also fixed on the horizon. “She was angry that Rafe didn’t marry her.”
He nodded.
“But you had doubts. That’s why you kept asking if it was really what I wanted.”
“I tried to warn you,” he said, swirling the wine in his glass. “But I didn’t stop you. Nor did I stop myself.”
“Nor did I.” She turned to look at him.
He didn’t meet her gaze. “You were playing that night, looking for excitement. I was not.”
She wanted to ask if that was why his touch felt so serious that night, if that was why things had happened so fast, why he’d come so close to making love to her.
Why, no matter what she said or did, she couldn’t seem to keep her distance from him.
She looked away again, suddenly embarrassed and ashamed.
How could it be that she could think these things, could feel them, and yet could not speak of them? “Is that why you did not come for me?”
“I wanted to.” He fingered his cheek. “Had made up my mind to ask for your hand, bad bargain that I am, but your brother called me out before I could do so. Made it clear he’d never accept me, that I wasn’t good enough for you. And he was right.”
“They told me you refused to apologize. Why wouldn’t you?” she asked, turning her eyes once again to him, to the scar that marred the perfect beauty of his face.
It was only then that he turned to look at her, his eyes hollow and dark. “Your brother wanted me to apologize for touching you.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t. Because I wasn’t.”
It hurt to ask the question, but she did. “You weren’t sorry you ruined me?”
“Oh, no.” His laugh was bitter and broken. “I deeply regret that. But for as long as I live, Elizabeth Harcrest, I’ll never regret touching you.”
Amaury de Joley watched the couple seated on the blanket, trying to decide if these were his rescuers.
The blanket was correct, red and white, but he’d been expecting men, massive, soldierly men, men who looked like Swiss guards or grenadiers.
Not this tall, languid-looking courtier and a pretty woman.
He swept his hand through his hair, painfully conscious of how dirty it was, how dirty he was.
He wanted them to be his rescuers. He wanted them to take him away from his filthy hole in the ground in their well-appointed carriage.
He wanted it so much he could almost taste the food laid out in colorful abandon on the blanket.
The pale-yellow cheese, the crisp brown bread, the rosy grapes, the golden wine. Amaury licked his chapped lips.
He couldn’t let desperation overcome his caution.
If he approached and was mistaken about who they were, they would report him.
They might not think he was a fugitive, but considering how he must look, they’d almost certainly believe he was a criminal or a deranged lunatic.
To have successfully hidden from the authorities all these weeks and lose his chance at escape because he hadn’t been cautious enough?
If they were his rescuers, he knew they would come again.
It was painful to wait. But he would.
“Gourneau.” The captain of the Rouen National Guard in charge of overseeing the security of the area rapped his knuckles on his lieutenant’s desk. “Are you eating your lunch here?” He gave the pile of eggshells a disgusted flick of his fingers.
“No, sir.” Lieutenant Gorneau, who’d been signing papers, put down his quill and straightened in his chair. “Those shells are not from my lunch, sir. They are evidence.”
“Evidence of what? A chicken?” The captain’s voice sounded dubious.
Gourneau shook his head. “They’re from an old woman on the outskirts of town. It’s the second time she’s been here. Claims someone has been stealing eggs from her. Wants us to do something about it.”
“I hope you told her we’ve more important things to do here than chase local sneak thieves.”
“I did, sir.” The lieutenant batted the shells with his quill.
“But she’s insistent it isn’t anyone local. Says she saw the culprit and didn’t recognize him. Says he was wearing a coat stolen from a neighbor.”
The captain, a burly bald man who’d been a miller before the Revolution, scratched his nose. “Anything else suspicious reported in the area? Any fugitive aristocrats thought to be hiding there?”
“No, sir. The family that lived there was rounded up and sent to Paris weeks ago.”
“So, what did you tell the good citizeness with the shells?”
“I thanked her for her dedication. Told her we were spread a bit thin here, and that the Republic was dependent on the sharp eyes of her citizens. Told her if she saw anything peculiar, besides egg thefts, such as strangers hanging about, she should file another report with us.”
The captain eyed the tower of papers on the corner of the lieutenant’s desk. It looked as if another sheet would send it toppling to the floor. He nodded approvingly. “Vive la révolution.”
For as long as I live, Elizabeth Harcrest, I’ll never regret touching you.
The words hung heavy. The weight of them seemed to press the air out of Elizabeth’s lungs and flatten her heart.
So, you love me? she wanted to ask, but that wasn’t what he’d said.
So, you want me? He’d wanted many women over the years.
He’d had most of them. Am I different? She wanted to know. And if he said she wasn’t?
“Thank you for telling me.” Even as she said it, it sounded absurdly polite.
“You’re welcome,” he responded in kind.
She looked at him, at this beautiful, scarred man sitting so close she could wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him without having to do more than lean.
The Elizabeth who walked into the library with him those many months ago would have reached for him.
The old Elizabeth, she thought. She’d learned.
The new Elizabeth was more cautious—at least with her heart.
You could have me, she wanted to say, so easily.
But you have to reach out to me. Tell my brother to go to hell, James.
You were worthy of me then. You’re more than worthy of me now. Especially now.
She thought of the words she’d overheard James say to her brother in his study: “Redemption? For a man such as I? I merely seek…” “Why have you come to France? Gotten involved with this rescue? Are you in search of a trial by fire?”
He shook his head, sunlight turning strands of his hair to gold. “I think we both know I’ve been tried and found sorely wanting. But a man who hits bottom ought to find something to do with his time, don’t you think? And a spy is as good—or as bad—as anything else I might have chosen...”
“You are down, to be sure, but you’re a man. You’re not so disgraced as I, and certainly not so permanently. How can you be so…so…”
“Cynical?” he offered.
“Complacent. Accepting.” Her pain burned down, igniting a white flare of anger.
“What else can I be, Elizabeth? What can I change? Can I bring my mother back from the dead? Can I bring my father back to his sanity? I could marry some upstart merchant’s daughter, bring my family back to fortune.
Sell my name and, of course”—he gestured to his lap—“my noble seed. Now that would be the honorable thing to do, wouldn’t it?
” His tone was still polite, but the eyes he turned on her were fierce.
“It’s what other men in the ton have done,” she began.
He cut her off. “Do you want to hear something peculiar, Elizabeth? I know all about what your brother did to replenish the fortune your father and brother squandered. I know how he ‘soiled’ his hands with trade. And I respect him for it. Hell, I envy him. He’s earned enough to live as he pleases.
Marry as he pleases. Perhaps I should have done the same. But it would have killed Anne.”
James raked a hand through his hair. “Isn’t it ironic?
Anne never would have wanted to marry your brother if she’d known where he’d gotten his money.
She wouldn’t have given a second thought to revenge.
And none of this would have happened. Complacent?
Accepting?” He repeated her words, spitting them out as if they left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“Rather say I am a realist. I’ve learned not to reach for the things I know I cannot have. ”
“And how do you know you cannot have those things unless you reach for them?” she persisted.
He fingered his damaged cheek. “People have a way of letting you know.”
“Isn’t there anything you’d fight for?”
The finger that had been tracing the curve of his scar slid to his mouth. He tapped his lips like a child confessing a secret. “I did.”
He said the words so softly, Elizabeth wasn’t certain she heard them.
But the weight on her heart and lungs seemed to lift. She exhaled, for what seemed like the first time in a very long time. Her body seemed to follow the course of her breath, flowing toward James.
He closed the distance.