Taken by the Rake (The Scarlet Chronicles, #3)

by Shana Galen

  She tripped over a step and would have fallen if Montagne had not caught her arm. “Are you hurt?”

  “What do you care?” she snapped and shook his hand off. She was cold in this underground corridor in October, but his hand still felt warm.

  “Watch your step,” he advised.

  She lifted her skirts higher and kept her other hand on the wall beside the steps. Finally, she reached the last and put her palm on a wooden door before her.

  “Another door,” she said, turning her head so he could hear her whispered words.

  “Do you hear anything on the other side?”

  She stood quietly for a few moments, but she heard nothing. “Silence.”

  “Open it.”

  “You open it.”

  He blew out an impatient puff of air. “Are you always this difficult?”

  “Only when I’ve been abducted.”

  He reached around her, found the latch and tried it. Honoria sighed when it opened. Why couldn’t it be locked? Immediately, the scents of candles and furniture polish wafted over her, and she realized they were in an ante-room in the church. No candles lit the room, but the high windows let in some of the light from outside.

  “Is this Saint Eustache?” Montagne asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been inside.”

  “It must be. Clever of the secret passage to open here. No one attends church anymore,” he said, looking about.

  “Not when belief in anything other than the revolution is suspect. Even the priests are required to preach about the virtues of liberty.”

  He walked about the room, his boots echoing on the bare stone floors. “I am less concerned about the priest’s sermons than I am about what happened to the four hundred million livres of church property the Assembly stole when they dissolved the ecclesiastic orders and transferred the contents of the church coffers to the state.”

  He had a point. The church’s money certainly did not go to buy bread or help the indigent. If it had, perhaps there would have been no need for the revolution to turn so bloody.

  Montagne examined the contents of several cabinets. They were mostly empty of anything of value, probably stripped in the early days of the revolution. There were buckets and a broom. Perhaps cleaning supplies were stored here now. One cabinet was locked, and when Montagne forced the door, it opened to reveal a stack of crucifixes and images of Christ and various saints.

  Honoria frowned. “Why would they put those in a locked cabinet?”

  Montagne withdrew a small figure of one of the saints. Honoria could not have said which one.

  “Because they are forbidden. We are not a Catholic nation any longer. We celebrate dog day, not Christ’s birth on Noël. Only images of the first sansculotte, Citizen Jesus, are allowed to be displayed. This is no longer a church but a Temple of Reason.”

  “It is madness,” she whispered.

  “I agree. And yet you chose to leave the safety of England and reside in the thick of it. Why is that?”

  Honoria pressed her lips together. She owed him no explanation. And a pampered, selfish person like him would never understand what she’d felt when she’d heard Monsieur Palomer’s tale. “What now?” she asked. “You are free. Surely there is no harm in allowing me to return to the safe house.”

  “Unless your friends make an appearance.” He shut the door of the cabinet filled with the outlawed saints. “We’re not safe until we are away from here, and I don’t want to attempt that in the daylight. Ffoulkes was right that if I am recognized on the street, I will not live long.”

  “Then we simply sit here until curfew?”

  He shook his head. Somehow even in the coarse shirt and coat, he managed to look handsome and elegant. His hair was combed and pulled into a short queue that looked almost like a stream of chocolate. “Now we find the crypt.”

  Honoria stumbled back, moving intentionally toward the door they’d just come through. It was concealed behind a wardrobe that might have once stored robes and vestments, but the furnishing had been pulled far enough forward that the door could open and close with ease. “Are you mad? I am not waiting in any crypt, surrounded by skeletons or...or worse!”

  “Why not?” He raised a brow. “Isn’t that why you came to France? To see the revolution up close? To witness the Terror for yourself?”

  “No.” But wasn’t that part of why she’d come? Yes, she’d wanted to be more than a pretty face. She’d wanted to do something worthwhile with her life and to help the innocent people like Monsieur Palomer and the Scarlet Pimpernel. But if she was honest, there was an element of selfishness in her decision to come. She’d wanted adventure and excitement, not the monotony of her days copying documents and examining antiquities in the British Museum. When he’d contacted her, she’d all but begged the Pimpernel to bring her here. She’d argued she wasn’t afraid of anything.

  But that had been a lie. She was very much afraid of death. She couldn’t understand why Montagne seemed to court it.

  “There must be somewhere else we can hide.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t know where that might be. Come on.” He offered her his arm, as though there were just going for a stroll along the Champs Élysées. She shook her head and scooted toward the door again. Now she had one foot behind the wardrobe. Just a few steps and she could be through the door and back into the secret passageway. She did not think he would waste time chasing after her.

  “Honoria,” he began.

  “You may call me Mademoiselle Blake or Citoyenne Deschamps. You do not have leave to call me by my Christian name.”

  “Very well, citoyenne. I do not have time to chase you into the passage. Come with me willingly or I will be forced to take extreme measures.”

  The hard way. Extreme measures. Honoria did not know what he meant, and she did not care. This was her chance.

  She darted for the door to the passageway, and she would have made it too if she hadn’t snagged her gown on the wardrobe. The furniture had splintered edges and her muslin caught easily on the side.

  She tried to dislodge it, but the material did not rip cleanly and she was momentarily trapped. Finally, the splinter came loose, but by then Montagne had her. He swept her up and into his arms, and when she would have kicked him, he slung her over his shoulder.

  She pounded on his back, not caring who heard. “Let me down.”

  “Keep it up and we’ll have the whole National Guard on our heels. Try explaining why you aren’t wearing the tricolor to those most patriotic of men.”

  She stopped yelling, but she continued to pound on his back. He walked quickly, moving through the church so fast that all she saw was a glimpse of pews and a blur of candlelight flickering on stone. She thought one of the priests might have peeked out from a room on the side of the sanctuary, but if he did, he disappeared just as quickly.

  A moment later, the cool staleness of the grave made her nostrils burn, and Montagne started down a narrow set of steps. “I would be less likely to break both of our necks if you would cease abusing me,” he said, sounding like her pounding was nothing more to him than the nip of a puppy on his ankle. “It might also help if you would stay still.”

  She gasped aloud when the flat of his hand landed on her bottom. “Get your hand off me!”

  “I assure you, mademoiselle, I take no pleasure from this. It is merely to steady you.”

  Oh, but she could hear the amusement in his voice. He was enjoying every second of this.

  “I will stop moving. Take your hand away.”

  “In a moment. I promise you that when I imagined my hands on your derrière, this was not at all what I had in mind.”

  “You are vile and lewd and—”

  “I am happy to report your bottom is just as plump and rounded as I’d envisioned it in my mind.”

  “The guillotine is too good for you. You should be drawn and quartered or boiled in tar or—”

  “Tell that to the Guard when
they catch us. You might suggest they treat me as they did Berthier de Sauvigny, the former Intendant of Paris. You know what the mob did to him, do you not?” He set her down at the base of the steps, and she shivered with cold and the yawning darkness behind her. The only light came from a single oil lamp hanging nearby. Honoria prayed it had enough oil to last until Montagne would let her go.

  Montagne watched her, his green eyes almost catlike in the dim light. “You don’t know the story of Foulon’s son-in-law?”

  Oh, she knew the story of Foulon. He’d been the king’s Minister of Finance. When a rumor spread he had told the starving people of France to eat hay, a mob had gone after him. The elderly man had been hitched to a wagon and forced to pull it to the Hôtel de Ville where the Assembly had met. The crowd had abused him by stuffing hay in his mouth before hanging him from a lamppost and severing his head.

  “I don’t want to know.”

  Montagne smiled grimly. “Then how will you know what horrors to propose for my death? Tell them to treat me as they did Berthier de Sauvigny. Tell them to rip my beating heart of out my chest and present it to the Assembly. Only then will this nation be safe from me. I have no love for the revolution. I am no patriot. For that alone, I should die.”

  He turned and lifted the lamp from its hook, and Honoria put her hand on his arm. “I take it back. I wouldn’t wish a fate like that of the Intendant on anyone.”

  “Then you will help me rescue the royal family? You will help me save Marie-Thérèse?”

  Honoria closed her eyes and shook her head. “Even if I wanted to help, I wouldn’t know how. I am an antiquities expert and a forger. I know nothing about sneaking into prisons or plotting rescues.”

  “Then we make quite the pair,” he said, holding the lantern high and illuminating stone arches under which ornate stone sarcophagi rested. “Because I know nothing of rescuing either, but I’ve given my word, and you will help me.”

  Five

  At his words, her lips thinned and her mouth tightened. Laurent liked it much better soft and full, but what did he expect when he’d all but ordered her to accompany him on an errand that would surely end with their deaths. Still, she had a backbone, and he was pleased to see it. She would need courage and spirit to see her through the rest of this day and into night.

  Of course, he would never make her accompany him to the Temple. He could think of no worse rescue plan than bringing an accomplice who would rather he died than succeed with him. But he would not send her back to the safe house just yet. He needed her to keep the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel at bay, and he needed her special skills.

  And didn’t that sound like utter madness? What French nobleman in his right mind wanted to keep the Scarlet Pimpernel away? The Pimpernel was Laurent’s only chance at survival. He should be begging Ffoulkes to take him to England.

  But Laurent was not leaving without Marie-Thérèse and the dauphin. He would do all he could for the queen and the king’s sister, but it was the princess and her brother he’d promised he would never leave. If only the people of France had known Marie Antoinette as he did. She was not like the libelles and the politicians portrayed her. She was a doting mother and a loyal wife. She could have escaped France half a dozen times, but she stayed because she did not want to leave her husband. She wanted to keep their little family together. Her family was more important to her than anything else. His family had been much the same until Amélie had died.

  But the queen was not so much a fool as the king. When the situation at the Tuileries, the palace in Paris where the royal family had been imprisoned after they had been forced from Versailles, had grown dangerous, she had made Laurent promise to save her children if anything should happen to her. Laurent had promised on the soul of his dead sister Amélie. He had to save the children, and then the patriots could send him to the guillotine or whatever new torture they’d created. He’d go with his conscience clear.

  In the meantime, he would rather not sit and wait for the Pimpernel’s men to stumble across them. He lifted the lamp higher and stared into the long shadows of the crypt. “Follow me,” he instructed the Englishwoman.

  “No. I won’t go any deeper.”

  He frowned at her over his shoulder. “Do you think it full of skeletons and rotting corpses? The dead are in coffins. That’s a good deal better than what you see on the streets of Paris.”

  Her lips trembled, and he knew she’d seen the tumbrels of dead as well. Arms and legs bounced up and down as the carts moved to take the bodies and the severed heads to the Seine to be thrown in to drift toward the ocean.

  “I am staying right here.” She planted her feet as if to demonstrate.

  Good God but he’d thought his fellow Frenchmen stubborn and unyielding. He had no time for this nonsense. Now it was his turn to narrow his eyes. “By all means, if you’d like me to carry you again, stand there and glare at me. I have no objection to the feel of your derrière under my hand.”

  He moved toward her, and she held her hands out. “I will follow you. Odious man!”

  He gestured with the lamp.

  To his surprise, she was actually quiet as they walked. He’d expected her to chatter, to ask where they were going and what his plan might entail, but the only sound was the soft thud of his boots on the damp stone. As they moved deeper into the crypt, the arches looked less ornate and more ancient. He could not read the worn words on the sarcophagi. The darkness around them grew thick and heavy, and he did not think she realized she had grabbed first his elbow and then his hand. Her warm flesh pressed against his as she held his hand a bit more tightly than was comfortable.

  He did not mind. The silence here seemed impenetrable, a reminder that one day—perhaps very soon—he too would be part of that unending silence.

  “Look there,” she whispered, her voice sounding strange in the quiet. She’d spoken in English, probably without realizing it and so he answered her in the same language.

  “A door. What do you wager it is sealed shut?”

  “I don’t gamble,” she said primly.

  Of all the statements she’d made, none had surprised him as much. He’d never met anyone, save the king’s sister, who did not gamble. And even she played cards when the occasion called for it.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t like to lose.”

  “Here.” He pushed the lamp into her hands. He didn’t like to lose either, and he was betting the door would open. Whether it led anywhere he wanted to go was a question for the future. “Higher,” he ordered, approaching the arched wooden door. It had to be several hundred years old, perhaps as old as the church itself. The wood was dark with age. He swiped a cobweb off the round iron door handle, and it squeaked when he lifted it. The metal was rough beneath his fingers.

  He gave the door a hard yank, praying no skeletons would fall out if it opened, but it did not open. It did budge, but the door was thicker and heavier than he’d expected, and he had to bend his knees and pull continuously to budge it.

  Finally, it opened enough for him to peer through, and he took the lamp and held it to the opening he’d made. For a moment, he was not certain what he saw, and then he smiled.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because, chérie, I believe I have just found a way out.” He pulled the door open wider, making room for a body to fit through. Then he took the lamp from her and motioned for her to precede him.

  She shook her head. He should have expected that, considering she was quickly gaining the title Most Stubborn Woman Alive.

  Laurent bit his lip to stop the curses. He took a deep breath. “Mademoiselle, you did not want to enter the crypt. Now I offer you a way out and you argue with that too?”

  “I don’t know what’s up there. I know what is in here.”

  “We shall find out what is up there together. Where is your sense of adventure?”

  At the question she looked away, but to his surprise she looked back at h
im, her mouth firm and her eyes full of determination. She held out her hand. “Give me the lamp.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll light our way.”

  Laurent would have preferred to keep the lamp, but he would hand it over if it meant they could leave this grave. Holding the lamp before her, she squeezed through the heavy door, and he followed on her heels. The weak light illuminated two or three steps on the narrow staircase, and she paused to lift her skirts and peer up. “Where will we exit?” she asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  She gave him a worried look, her brow furrowed and her porcelain skin burnished by the glow of the lamp. “The streets are dangerous. If we are stopped by the National Guard we will be arrested for certain. Even someone looking out his or her window might spot us and send for the soldiers simply because we are not wearing our tricolor cockades.”

  He gave her a level look. “Then we should be careful not to be seen.”

  She blew out a breath and with a resigned shrug, started up the narrow staircase. He was right behind her, so close her thin skirts brushed against his coat. When she reached the top, she paused to catch her breath. “There’s a door here,” she said, her voice a whisper. “If you would hold the lamp, I will try to open it.”

  He took the lamp and held it aloft to give her light, but immediately it was clear she would not be able to move the door. It was either barred from the other side or, like the door below, difficult to move because of years of disuse. “Change places with me,” he ordered.

  She pressed against the wall, and he stepped up. But when she tried to step down, her slipper slid and she inhaled sharply. Laurent caught her arm and yanked her against him. The scent of lavender wafted from her hair, and the warmth of her body branded him through his clothing.