Love Charade Part 38

"Not an appropriate sobriquet," she informed her husband with a mock curtsy.

"On the contrary," he replied. "There is not a pin to choose between the pair of you." He lifted his son onto his shoulders and Nicky crowed with delight, bouncing up and down, his chubby fingers twisted in his father's hair as they made their way back to the house.

Nicky had learned enough in his twenty-one months not to protest too vociferously as he was returned to the nursery with the promise that Maman and Papa would visit him after his bath. Danielle, on the other hand, showed no such self-discipline when Justin broached the subject of his returning to France.

"We agreed that in future what we do we do together," she insisted. "I also claim St. Estephe for my own. You are quite correct to say that we must make our move first, and he will not be expecting it for the nonce. If, as I suspect, he is playing politics with the tribunal, he will be too occupied preserving his neck to concern himself with us. He has the great gift of patience and will put aside what can wait. He will a.s.sume that I am safe and his spies will by now have told him of your safety. He will be content to watch and wait, a.s.suming that we will use la Manche and the war as our protection. We will strike now while the cobra watches another prey."

"Danny, St. Estephe is mine." Justin's eyes met hers in the dresser mirror as he fastened an emerald pendant around her neck.

"Very well," she agreed. "Yours or mine, depending how the hand is played. But I come with you, it is agreed?"

"And Nicky?"

"You know there is no choice." Her son would be safe, well looked after, with grandparents, cousins, and friends to see him to maturity. She could not allow her husband to go alone into a danger that they both shared.

"It is agreed then." Justin yielded without the fight that would achieve nothing in the long run.

"We must bring Jules and the others with us." Danielle stood up, patting down her skirts with a femininity quite at odds with their discussion. "This is not something the two of us can accomplish alone and we work well together."

"You and they," said Justin. "How will the five of you manage with a sixth?"

"Quite easily," Danielle responded, fastening an emerald bracelet around her wrist. "As long as you follow orders, tu comprends, mon mari?"

Justin caught her by the tiny waist and threw her, skirts, petticoats, emeralds and all, facedown on the bed. Planting a knee firmly in the small of her back, he demanded, "Say that again. I did not quite hear you."

"I do not remember what I said," Danny mumbled into the coverlet. "But it was of no importance."

"You are quite sure?"

"Quite sure."

"It is not, perhaps, something you may remember to say on a future occasion?" His voice was deceptively soft as he slid a hand beneath her petticoats.

"No!" Danny squawked. "It is quite expunged from my memory."

"That is most fortunate." He removed both hand and knee and Danny struggled upright, her face pink with laughing indignation. But she had provoked the attack and was not one to protest the consequences of her actions. They went down to dinner in smiling accord.

Jules and the others, who had eschewed the pleasures of the London Season this winter, preferring the simplicity of Cornwall after their adventures, heard the proposal with a considerable degree of enthusiasm.

"We have been waiting for you to decide when to make the move and so long as you are around, Justin, to keep a rein on Danny, you have my heartfelt support," Jules declared. "I am sure I speak for us all?" He looked inquiringly around the table and, while Danny spluttered indignantly, everyone pledged their support in the matter of St. Estephe.

Four days later, Dream Girl set sail again for the Brittany coast. Danielle, her hair again cropped much to Justin's resigned annoyance, was back in her britches and full of strategies. There was no capacious master cabin on the small yacht and for the three day voyage Justin gained true insight into the close-quarters living of these five. He and his wife became simply partners, exchanging bunks automatically as the rested one went up on deck, taking turns at the wheel, putting to when sails needed reefing or unfurling. No one, least of all Jake; paid any attention to Danny's s.e.x and she asked for no especial consideration.

When they made landfall, she was as wet as the rest, and as heedless of discomfort as they climbed the steep path to the cliff top. In the Legrands' farm house they explained their return, their needs, and heard the story of subsequent events after they had fired Betrand Ville's barn and the comte had returned in a fearsome rage to find his plans in ruins and his victim fled.

"As we expected, then," Danielle said thoughtfully. "The comte returned almost immediately to Paris and no one has disturbed our friends since. They know little of what is happening in the country but will lend us horses again, and anything else we may need. The carts are still here, but I think we need only take one."

"How do we enter Paris this time?" Philip asked. "It will not be as easy."

"Comme d'habitude-in the usual way." Danielle shrugged. "It is how we leave that will present difficulties."

They made the journey to Paris exactly as they had done in the past. The countryside was alive with rumor now but no one questioned the pa.s.sage of five ragged sans-culottes and a scrubby lad whose command of the insults left them torn between laughter and annoyance. The boy's companions appeared to do what they could to control his excesses and those who had seen the urchin were not those who saw the coquettish peasant girl in a grubby blouse and torn skirt who made flirtatious play with the guards at the various posts now sprung up along the road to Paris.

The five men kept their hands on their pistols at each barriere but never had reason to use them as Danielle danced them through and Justin decided, like Jules, that she had missed her vocation. On stage, she would have been superb. They were through St. Antoine on the evening of the third day and, to their horror, found themselves caught up in a grim procession as the last tumbrils of the day moved through the crowds to Place de la Revolution. It was impossible, in the wildly yelling throng, to turn the cart in another direction, just as it was impossible for them to allow their revulsion to show. Danny hissed suddenly to Justin, "I will meet you in Les Halles." Before he could react, she had leaped from the cart and vanished as if she had never been.

"No," Jules whispered, seeing his cousin prepared to go after her. "You'll never find her; she's as slippery as an eel and knows all the back streets, besides you will draw attention to us all."

Justin swore viciously, but there was nothing he could do but wait in a spiral of anxiety until the day's grisly business had ended and the last head rolled into the blood-soaked basket. The crowds thinned gradually as the spectators, exhausted by their day of shouting, jeering, and applauding, made their way back to the shops and hovels in the poverty-stricken faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marcel from where they would crawl out again on jhe morrow, thirsty for more blood.

It was still an hour after the spectacle had ceased, however, before the cart with its five sans-culottes managed to reach Les Halles where the presence of one more cart would pa.s.s unremarked. Many of the peasantry from the surrounding countryside poured into Paris these days to witness the executions, sleeping in the streets or, if they were lucky enough to possess one, in carts loaded with straw as Danielle and the others planned to do themselves.

Danny's flight had been inspired first and foremost by the knowledge that she could not stand to see again the sights in Place de la Revolution that still haunted her dreams. Her jump from the cart had been purely instinctive but once lost in the crowds she decided to put her freedom to good use. St. Estephe's previous lodging had been in a tall narrow house near the magnificent medieval edifice of Notre Dame. It would be as well to discover if he was still to be found there. With a stroke of luck, Danny found the concierge sitting in the courtyard with a flask of wine, taking the mild evening air. She was a slovenly, sour-faced woman who appeared to take her duties lightly, but she did not refuse the dirty urchin a gla.s.s of water, particularly in exchange for a lively description of the day's executions-a description Danny drew from memory and embellished lavishly. She encouraged the woman in her grumbles about her tenants-coming and going at all hours, quite prepared to wake her up if the gates were locked; as if she hadn't got enough to do keeping the stairs clean with the pains in her joints!

Danielle examined the swollen knees and ankles with much sympathy and mentioned some remedy that her grandmother had used. The concierge tutted and began a long description of everything she had tried and was kind enough to remark how unusual it was these days to find young people, particularly lads, prepared to listen to an old woman. Encouraged, Danielle broached the subject of the tenants again. It produced another diatribe but the names came out and Citoyen St. Estephe's was one of them. The woman coughed and spat and imparted the information that that citoyen had some strange habits-the noises she heard sometimes coming from his apartment directly above her own . . . Then she recollected herself hastily. The citoyen, of course, was an excellent man, a member of the tribunal and a good friend of the Citoyen Robespierre. He worked tirelessly for the republic, ridding the land of the aristos, and Citoyenne Gerard meant no criticism.

Danny made the appropriate responses, praising the work of the tribunal and d.a.m.ning the aristos in rich language that drew an appreciative chuckle from her companion. The sun was very low in the sky now and Danny became fully conscious for the first time of the dangerous position she was in-sitting in the lion's den! Her disguise would not fool St. Estephe for one minute, he was far too accustomed to it. With a hasty excuse, she darted from the courtyard just as St. Estephe rounded the corner of the street, deep in conversation with another man. Danny darted into a doorway, her heart pounding, the sweat of fear misting her brow. Had he seen her? She would know soon enough-there was nowhere to run to. The door at her back was closed and she cowered in the narrow s.p.a.ce as the loathsome sound of that remembered voice came closer and her skin felt as if an army of slugs undulated beneath her clothes, leaving a sticky trail in their wake.

But the voice faded. She kept to her hiding place for another petrifying five minutes before peeping around. There was no sign of St. Estephe or of his companion so presumably they had gone into the courtyard. She slipped from her hiding place and walked down the alley, hands in her pockets, whistling the "Qa Ira" as she kicked negligently at stones and garbage littering the street. If she ran, she would draw instant notice, but as it was, she was just another Parisian street urchin with an empty belly and pockets to let.

Danielle, at this point, was blissfully unaware that she stood in more danger from her husband than from St. Estephe. Justin was frantic and nothing his companions could say did anything to alleviate his fear or his fury. In fact, the more often they told him that they had grown accustomed to his wife's sudden disappearances, the more livid he became. The sights, sounds, and smells of this city disgusted him more than anything he had previously experienced and it was only now, he realized dimly, that he was experiencing the full emotional impact of the horrific risks Danielle had taken in those months of his sojourn in Russia.

Westmore spotted herfirst, wriggling like an eel through the crowd toward them. As usual, she was chattering nonstop, tossing off the light badinage that was perhaps the most effective part of her disguise. He nudged Jules and the four of them melted discreetly into the throng. Whatever was about to happen between husband and wife needed no witnesses.

"Where are the others?" Danielle appeared breathlessly at the cart. "I have made some most interesting discov-" She gulped at the sight of Linton's face and her heart plummeted to a resting place somewhere in the region of her toes. "Wh . . . what is the matter?"

For answer, he seized her upper arms, slamming her backward against the cart where he held her, imprisoned by his body. "You dare to ask what is the matter?"

Danielle stared into those eyes, burning like red hot pokers, and as she struggled for words her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.

"If you ever ever run off like that again, Danielle, you had better not come back, because, so help me, I will ensure that you regret the day that you were born!" His fingers squeezed her arms as the words came with slow fierce emphasis. "Do you understand me?"

"I am sorry, I didn't realize you would be so frightened." Danielle, knowing her husband as she did, had no difficulty understanding the reason for this blind rage any more than she doubted he would make good his promise.

"How could you not have realized?" he rasped, for the moment unappeased by the apology. "You disappear without a word in the middle of this h.e.l.l on earth! It matters not that you are at home in this city, more so than the rest of us, you may not take unilateral action. Is that clear?"

"Yes . . .yes, please. It is quite clear," she stuttered. "I am sorry, I will not do such a thing again."

Justin drew a deep breath as the anger flowed from him and relief at having her safe again took its place. "You had better not," he said quietly. For some extraordinary reason he had a great desire to kiss her, and the thought of the absurd image of a scruffy sans-culottes kissing a disreputable urchin in the middle of a crowded marketplace in this revolution-torn city of terror brought a shout of laughter to his lips.

"Now what is amusing?" Danielle demanded, relief that the storm had pa.s.sed mingling with annoyance at this bewildering volte-face that merely added to her disadvantage.

"I am not going to tell you," Justin declared. "And you may count yourself fortunate that you have escaped further reprisals."

"Is it safe to come back?" Philip's voice, deliberately plaintive, sounded at Justin's back.

"For the moment," Justin said, releasing his wife. "Until the next time my brat decides to do something outrageous."

"You do not quite understand, I think, milord." Danielle spoke with an a.s.sumption of dignity. "I could not bear to face the spectacle in La Place again. I ran without thought at first, and then decided that I should do something useful. I have some information about Citoyen St. Estephe."

"I understand your explanation," Justin told her, "and while I respect it, it changes nothing of what I have said." He pinched her cheek, looking steadily into the brown eyes until satisfied that his point had been well taken. "Now, I think we should go in search of our supper. It will be less than adequate, I daresay, since we can hardly appear to have more than a few sous to spend."

"If you will follow me," Danny offered, "I will show you where we may eat quite well for a few sous. Unless, of course, you would prefer, milord, that we follow you?" Her eyebrows lifted fractionally. Jules turned away, hiding his snort of laughter under a spasm of coughing. Had she no sense of self-preservation? The thinner the ice, it seemed, the faster she skated.

Justin wished as he had so often done that he were alone with her, but since he was not he chose to ignore the challenge. "Let us go then."

Danny was as good as her word. In a small dark room full of bibulous customers they ate a rich vegetable soup, sausage, ripe cheese, and crusty bread, washed down with a rough wine that convinced Justin, at least, that his liver would never be the same again.

"No one seems at all interested in what I have discovered," Danny stated, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand-a gesture that caused Justin to wince reminiscently, even as he recognized its authenticity in the part she was playing. "I have also a plan-a good one, I think. It is perhaps not foolproof, but then what plan is?"

"We cannot talk here," Tony remonstrated.

"There is nowhere better," she said with a tranquil smile. "No one is interested in listening to our conversation." She gestured around the noisy room. "Why would they be? We are quite unremarkable."

"I think, as far as you are concerned, infant, that that is probably the wrong adjective," Justin murmured. "But enlighten us, pray."

She shot him a look so out of keeping with her disguise, a look radiating sensual promise, that his body rose, stirred in inconvenient response. "Depeche-toi!" he insisted.

"Very well." She told them in a few words what she had discovered, prudently leaving out her near miss with St. Estephe. "I think it will be possible to conceal ourselves in his apartment. Citoyenne Gerard took a kindness to me, and I think I may be able to draw her away from her post tomorrow. There will be an interesting spectacle in the streets nearby . . . a lynching or some such." She shrugged carelessly. "So long as it is sufficiently violent it matters not what we invent. I will offer to take her place while she goes to view the excitement. She is lazy and bored and will accept such an opportunity with enthusiasm. St.

Estephe's apartment is directly above hers- that is how she hears so clearly the strange noises ..." A look of pain scudded across her face. It was not hard to imagine those sounds as St. Estephe played with whatever little putain had been unlucky enough to take his fancy. "Anyway," she went on, "it will not be difficult to identify the apartment. We overpower whatever servants he may have and await his return."

"And how do we gain entrance to the apartment in order to overpower the servants?" Jules inquired, taking another swig of wine with a grimace.

"Oh, but I thought I would leave some part of the planning to you." Danny smiled sweetly as she nibbled a crust of bread. '"It should be simple enough. There are few people around in the daytime and we watch until St. Estephe departs for the Parliament House. There are four other tenants and it would be best to wait for them to go about their daily business, also. A servant or two should not present too many problems." She licked a finger and absently picked up the crumbs littering the stained planking of the narrow table. Just in time, Linton smacked her hand in the process of carrying the crumb-laden finger to her mouth.

"You do not know what has been on this table," he snapped. "It is not necessary to carry your part to quite such extremes."

"Oh, pah! You do not know what has been on the platters or in the tankards before they came to the table. It has not stopped you eating and drinking," she retorted.

"I think it is time we sought our beds, such as they are," Philip said diplomatically. The tension was affecting them all and Danny's continual provocation of her husband, while clearly simply reaction to strain, was not helping.

They all rose with relief. Justin surrept.i.tiously took a firm hold of Danielle's belt as they strolled back to Les Halles and the cart of straw that would be their resting place for the night.

But when they rolled in their cloaks beneath the straw, she crept against him as if they were in their own bed in the privacy of home and whispered her apology with a soft kiss against his ear. He held her tightly as she fell, with all the ease of a cat, into a dreamless sleep where she hovered just below the level of. unconsciousness but ready to wake, instantly alert, at the slightest hint of danger.

By seven o'clock the next morning the streets were again alive and the April sun, though still low in the sky, promised a good day. They breakfasted on warm bread and the bitter coffee of the working people and Danny maintained a steadfast cross silence. Justin had taken a not so playful revenge earlier, when she had made an inappropriately sharp remark, and held her head under the cold water of the pump in the center of the market square with the comment that it was the only appropriate treatment for hot-headed hoydens who were ill-tempered in the morning. Now she nursed her wounded dignity while the five of them, apparently sublimely indifferent to her fit of the sullens, made their plans.

Her naturally sunny temper could not be held down for long, however, any more than could her bursting need to partic.i.p.ate in the discussion. "We cannot be too rigid," she broke in. "If strategies are not flexible, then they stand in danger of fragmenting at the point of impact."

"How true, mon general." Justin gave her a teasing conciliatory smile. "Where do you see the danger of rigidity?"

"I think it best to plan one stage at a time and adapt according to circ.u.mstance. We will remove Citoyenne Gerard without doubt, and we will gain entrance to the vermin's apartments, without doubt.

What we then decide will depend upon what we find."

Justin regarded her thoughtfully. He knew that secretive, excited gleam in those brown eyes. Danielle had her own plans. "What is it that you have in mind?"

Danny pulled a wry face. "It is disconcerting that you can read my mind, Justin."

"Not your mind," he stated. "But I can read your eyes."

"Very well. I wish to confront St. Estephe alone . . . No, pray listen," she said urgently, seeing denial on every face. 'Only initially and only if it is possible. If, perhaps, there are two rooms then you may conceal yourselves in one. I will have my pistol and the advantage of surprise. I have to see him just ance more alone, when I am without fear," she explained simply. "Afterward, you may do as you wish."

"If it is possible," said Justin, "then we will act in that manner. If it is not, then you must also be flexible."

"D'accord." Danny shrugged easily. "Shall we then begin, mes amis?"

No one remarked on the six sans-culottes mingling with the pedestrians in the street outside St. Estephe's lodgings. They were quite undistinguishable from the rest except for the sword sticks concealed beneath their jackets, the pistols hidden beneath their s.h.i.+rts. They behaved in no unusual fas.h.i.+on as they hung around the cafes, and no one was aware that six pairs of eyes watched the comings and goings in the narrow house on the banks of the Seine, overlooking the crenellated cathedral of Notre Dame.

St. Estephe came out at nine, unaccompanied, and walked briskly in the direction of the Right Bank and the Parliament House. Within the next hour, four others left the building, wearing the red, white, and blue c.o.c.kade standing in proud declamation against their tricorn hats, its brilliance seeming ouriously. at odds with the somber jackets and britches of respectable citizens.

Tony wiped the sweat from his brow in a flamboyant gesture, the bright checkered neckcloth flinging its message to Westmore across the street. Westmore did the same and the message pa.s.sed to Jules who waited on the corner.

Danny, engaged in idle conversation with a group of youths, heard the sharp report from the street corner. "Tiens, done! Qu'est-ce qui se pa.s.se?" She was suddenly alone as her companions hared in the direction of Julian's firecrackers now creating a rat-a-tat of noise and smoke. A great shout of excitement went up from the excitable crowd. Danny ran into the courtyard of St. Estephe's lodgings and hammered on the door of the concierge's apartment. Citoyenne Gerard appeared instantly.

"Citoyenne," Danny gasped. "There is much excitement. I think they have captured the aristo who escaped the guards this morning. It will be a great spectacle. Venez vite!"

"Mais, la maison," the concierge said, even as her bloodshot eyes l.u.s.ted for the sight so close to the door.

"I will watch for you," Danny said. "I have seen s.uch sights many times and can go again to the executions this afternoon. Depechez-vous, chere citoyenne."

"Ah, but you're a good lad." Citoyenne Gerard made haste to don her bonnet rouge and scurried off in search of food for her hungry soul.

Danny shot across the courtyard and through the main door, waiting at the foot of the stairs, whose littered condition bore ample witness to the concierge's housekeeping. The others joined her in minutes with Jules only a little later.

"It is amazing," he said. "There is nothing to see, but they are determined to find something. They are off on a wild rampage."

"It takes little to stir a mob," Justin said. "Particularly one with an insatiable appet.i.te. Let us find what St. Estephe's apartment holds."

The five men shrank against the wall on either side of the door as Danielle pounded with her fists. "Citoyen, j'ai un message d'urgence de Citoyen St. Estephe."

The door flew open and a burly manservant in a leather ap.r.o.n appeared. "Qu'est-ce que c'est, gargon?" She ducked beneath his arm and was into the room before he realized it, the . excited words babbling from her lips. In the instant of his bewilderment, turning toward this bouncing urchin and away from the door, the hapless manservant found himself overpowered from behind. As he opened his mouth to shout, a clenched fist made contact beneath his chin and the star-shot blackness hurtled to meet him.

"That was well done indeed," Danny said admiringly to Tony. "Your left is quite as punis.h.i.+ng as Justin's. I had not realized."

"Cease your comparisons, brat," her husband instructed. "Find something to bind the man. He will not be out for long and I think it unlikely that our quarry will return before the evening."

"Well, we must not make him too uncomfortable," Danielle demurred, rifling St. Estephe's wardrobes and drawers. "We do not know what kind of man he is, and maybe he is not of the vermin's ilk."

"Unlikely," Justin muttered, catching the hank of rope she threw him. "But far be it from me to destroy your faith in human nature."

Danielle gurgled with laughter at the ironic tone and found one of St. Estephe's cravats. "This will do for a gag, I think."

The manservant was bound, gagged, and rolled into a capacious wardrobe. The apartment yielded bedroom, parlor, a cabinet de toilette, and a slip of a room for the servant. Danny's plan was clearly feasible and her companions, despite their reluctance, agreed to hide in the bedroom while she waited for St. Estephe, pistol in hand, in the parlor.

It was a long tedious wait. Citoyenne Gerard reappeared eventually, hot and flushed. The mob, set off by Julian's firecrackers, had careened through the streets and found a wine barrel toppled from a delivery cart. The blood red liquid jozed from the cracked cask and was seized with yells of excitement by a crowd deprived of their expected diversion and uixious, therefore, for another. Shoes, hats, and hands were pressed into service in the absence of more utilitarian vessels o scoop the wine into eagerly open mouths. Those lucky enough to live in the area of this unexpected bounty filled pots ind tankards as the cask split apart and the wine, in a crimson or rent, ran across the cobbles and into the kennels. Citoyenne Gerard was unable to do more than curse the absent urchin who had not fulfilled his promise to remain in her place, before ailing onto her cot and subsiding into a stertorous sleep.

St. Estephe left the Parliament House at six on that evening of Sat.u.r.day, April 13. It had been a momentous day. The Jacobin, Marat, had been impeached by the Girondist majority in the a.s.sembly and St. Estephe's head now clung to his neck by a frail thread. At last forced to swing down from the fence, he had picked the Jacobins, the party of Marat and Robespierre. The Girondists for the moment held the majority in the power house, but St. Estephe had felt the strength of Robespierre, the quiet fanaticism that tugged an empathetic cord.