The Forbidden Rose

Thirty

MARGUERITE THOUGHT OF GOING BACK TO THE Hôtel de Fleurignac. But Victor was there, and his mother, and a houseful of servants who would look in her face and see something was wrong. They would bring her delicacies to eat and brew her tisanes. And hover.

She could not. She could not. She crossed her arms around her waist and began walking.

Papa had done something dreadful. Or, not so much done this himself as stood back and allowed his work to be used for horrible purposes. It had not been chance that brought Guillaume to the chateau at Voisemont. He’d come looking for Papa. How disappointed he must have been to find only her.

Now she must mend this.

Somewhere in her city she would find a little breeze. In some park. In some street that led down to the Seine. She would stand and let it blow into her face and watch the sun come up. Maybe that would make her feel better.

A violin played in one of the twisting streets to the left, perhaps in a café. It was beautiful and faint, like a bird singing when the woods are utterly still. She walked for a while toward it.

If she had known where Guillaume was, if she had the least smell of a notion where he might be, she would have walked in his direction. It wouldn’t have been a choice. Her feet would have started moving on their own and kept at it till they bumped into his boots.

I am a great fool. She stubbed her toes on the uneven cobbles. In the narrow and ancient streets of this quartier, stone barriers jutted into the streets so carts would not scrape the walls. That was another hazard to avoid. She seemed to be full of pain in every region inside her skin. Her stomach cramped.

He is English. Why did I not see that? He was not a smuggler, or a bookseller, or a petty criminal, or even a member of the Secret Police. He was a spy of England. He was sent to find her father and take revenge upon him.

She must have walked a long way. In some alley off the Rue d’Anduza, she leaned over and was sick, retching most miserably. But after that, she felt better. The early dawn turned chilly though, and she walked along, shivering. In the Rue Montmartre she passed cafés with every table full. Men in fine clothes idled away the end of the night, drinking cognac, talking loudly, holding the newspapers that were already circulating on the streets. Around them, at other tables, men just awakened and surly were getting ready to do the work of the world. It was as if, in these streets, humanity divided itself into Men of the Day and Men of the Night.

Guillaume was both. Day and Night. He could sit with one sort of men or the other, and they would both welcome him.

She noticed, then, where her feet had brought her. The Café des Marchands, where she had eaten with Guillaume. Where he had told her she could leave a message for him. Where she had told him she did not need him.

I do not need you, Guillaume LeBreton. I do not want you. I do not even know your name.

She sat at one of the tables outside the café, since it was as easy to be discouraged and forlorn sitting down as wandering the streets like a ghost. When the woman paused impatiently beside her, she ordered coffee and a roll.

The coffee was laid on the table softly, so it would not spill. The roll set beside it.

“Are you well, citoyenne?” the woman asked.

She shook her head, but said nothing. The woman went away.

She did not want to eat. She wanted to be at home, in the chateau at Voisemont, at her desk, writing tales of beauty and high adventure. She did not want to live in an adventure. They hurt.

When she wiped her face with her hands, she discovered that she no longer smelled of being loved by Guillaume. She smelled like monkey.

FROM the end of the street Doyle saw Maggie, sitting at a table outside. Her head was bowed, so he couldn’t see her face. She was dressed to match the café in plain, durable clothing. That could have been deliberate on her part, but it was probably wasn’t.

He’d said she could find him here. He hadn’t thought she would.

She’d taken the table farthest from the door, where she wouldn’t be bothered by men going in and out. A cup of coffee, untouched, sat before her and a little round of bread, unbroken.

“Hello, Maggie.”

Her head came up, smooth as flowing water. Strands of hair slipped and fell across one another and slid down around her face. The clear, brown eyes lifted and met his.

“I’ll join you,” he said.

I am drowning in this woman and I don’t want to swim free. This is the one. This is the one I’ll give up the Service for. Yesterday or the day before, or maybe the first time he’d seen her, he’d made the decision. While he wasn’t noticing, his mind thought it out and argued it through and settled it. His Maggie. It already sounded natural.

He scraped the rush-bottomed chair back so it was up against the wall of the café and he could keep an eye on the street. He sat next to her, almost touching. She looked tired and worn out and sad. “You’re up early.”

“Not early. I was awake all night.”

She’d walked half the city, Talbot said. Talbot had followed her, at a careful distance, all night. She’d passed a dozen cafés, talked to an organ grinder in the park, played with his monkey, scratched a cat’s ears in an alley, spent time looking out at the river. If somebody was supposed to meet her, he didn’t show up.

Talbot said she was sick. She’d cast up her accounts in an alley.

I want to take her home. I want to have a home to take her to. I want to put her in my bed and just hold on to her while she sleeps. I want to reach out my hand at any hour, all night long, and find her there.

He couldn’t. He’d have to take her back to Hôtel de Fleurignac and leave her there. Damn, but it felt wrong. “Probably not a good idea to go walking around Paris alone at night. You meet dangerous people.”

“Like you. But I met you first in broad daylight, so there are no guarantees. At Voisemont, I go walking at night.” Maggie picked up the coffee and barely tasted it. “I used to go walking.”

The widow who owned the Café des Marchands came out from behind the counter and brought him cut bread, a slab of hard cheese, and a cup of wine, without him having to ask. The widow liked his looks and, being in the market for another man, let him know it. She gave a shrewd glance from him to Maggie and shrugged and left.

He said, “Did you come here looking for me?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure why I’m here.” She sat staring into the cup. “It just happened somehow. Perhaps I was looking for you with some part of my soul that is very stupid and does not know it is no longer allowed to be with you. It is like a dog that cannot be told that its human is dead. It goes out on the street, taking its accustomed walk, looking everywhere for him. Does that not sound both sad and self-pitying?”

“It sounds like someone who writes down old tales. That’d make a good fable.”

“Perhaps. But I came here because I do not want to go home. I could not sleep. This café was the last thing you said to me and I have not yet banished it from my mind. So my feet came in this direction without consulting me.” She drank a mouthful and swallowed. “You must be careful what you say to me.”

Every damn motion was beautiful. Probably she wasn’t actually the loveliest creature on earth. He’d lost his objectivity.

She set the cup down. “It takes a while for me to sweep your words from the doorstep of my mind. I am led to unconsidered acts. You would not wish me to undertake such things.”

“I wouldn’t want that.”

“I am foolish. I come to your accustomed place and still I am surprised to see you here. Every time we are together I think it will be for the last time. It utterly confounds me when I see you again.”

“It’s never been the last time. This isn’t the last time, either.”

“I think it may be. I wish I liked this coffee better.” She rolled the cup between her hands. “But at least it is warm to hold. I have old friends—women I know—who have taken many lovers. They enjoy the drama of it. The flirtatious approach, the hurried, passionate meetings, the mad planning, the jealousy, the accusations . . . the inevitable betrayal. It would make me exhausted, so much emotion. I become weary just listening to them.”

“I’m all for the quiet life.”

She nodded. “And simplicity.”

This, from his Maggie. From the woman who organized hundreds of careful, meticulously planned escapes. “Simplicity’s a fine thing.”

“I am a great admirer of it. For me, there have been only two lovers. To the first I brought disaster. My uncle horsewhipped him nearly to his death. The second brought devastation to me. I am not lucky at this business of taking lovers.”

“Me being the second.”

“Yes. I make mistakes in judgment.” She didn’t turn her head to meet his eyes. “I watched you walk toward me, Guillaume. You knew I would be here. I was no surprise to you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Did you have me followed? You would find that easy to arrange, in your profession.”

She knows. Sometime in the last day, she’d found out he was a spy. He could read that in the way the air had changed between them. She knew.

“We’ll talk about that in a bit.”

Not here. He was known here. He ate at Café des Marchands when he was in Paris. Rented a room six blocks north. Bought from the same firewood vendor and water seller. Had his boots cleaned by the same grubby boy every week. Took his newspaper from the same woman at her stand at the end of the street. Folks here knew his face. “Oh. Citoyen LeBreton,” they’d say. “A good patriot. He lives in my Section. He travels, selling books. I know him well.”

“I will be more careful in the future when I take lovers.” Maggie was letting go of him. Putting him in the past. Now he was a lover she used to have.

It’s too damned late for that, Maggie. You’re stuck with me.

He picked up her little roll. Offered it to her. She shook her head.

He said, “You don’t take food and not eat it. Not in a place like this. Somebody’s going to wonder why you have money to throw away.” He finished the roll in two bites with the last of his cheese. “Drink some of that coffee, if you can stomach it. We’ll walk off in a little while. You can tell me why you were out all night and I can call you a fool.”

“You are all that is kind.” She picked the blue and white cup off the table. “As always.” She drank. “I am tempted to invent unwisdoms just so you will be pleased. I am very inventive.”

Can you possibly know how much I want you? Are there any words on earth I could say that would do it justice?

“It has not been night for hours,” she said. “Once there is even a hint of light in the sky, respectable women come out. These are all respectable women here in the café, except the whores, of course, and I am not dressed like a whore. Only, it has become cold. I did not expect it to be cold.”

She huddled into herself. If she was feeling a chill, it wasn’t in the air. The cold was inside her. Time to take her back to her house and let them put her to bed. Not his bed, unfortunately.

“Did you know? They have declared war on the prostitutes of Paris.” She held the cup between her hands and gave it a lot of attention. “They have collected dozens and dozens of them from the streets and filled the prisons even more full. They are not, thank the good God, killing them. They will reform them by making them knit stockings for the army.”

“Don’t we all feel safer on the streets knowing that?” Maggie had paid for her food, but he dropped an extra sou on the table anyway, the way a man did when he was showing off for his particular lady. Taking her arm and giving her help out of the chair didn’t fit this café or the clothes he was wearing, but any man might do that for a woman he was courting.

“It is not universally popular, this harvesting of whores, but naturally no one says this openly for fear of, as they say, sneezing into a basket, which is what one does upon the guillotine. I do not think the reformation of morals will gain much headway. Frenchmen are fond of their whores. You will sympathize.”

If he’d been a lesser man, he would have sighed. “Are we going to talk about this for a while where everyone can hear, or would you like to just jump up and down and denounce the government straight out? Be a pity to get arrested for anything less.”

“I am entirely in agreement. One should only take grave and important risks. In all small matters one must be exquisitely cautious. The gods do not reward frivolity.”

He’d see her right to the door and turn her over to somebody who’d take care of her. Not Victor. Maggie must have somebody in that house she trusted. “Let’s get you home. Maybe they haven’t noticed you’re out drinking coffee with disreputable men at the crack of dawn.”

She walked carefully, as if she felt shaky inside. It was another reason for him to hold her.

He waited till they wouldn’t be overheard. “So. What is it you think you know about me?”