"Do you think that's true?" she asked Max, wondering if, as the son of the comte de Saint-Just, he had ever attended court and met the queen. But as she turned to ask the question, her breast pressed intimately into his shoulder, and for a fraction of a second they both went perfectly stilL
Max let out a strangled oath and set her bodily away from him. "I doubt it's true," he said in a voice that shook, brushing the sweat from his face with the ruffles on his cuff: "Marie Antoinette might be shallow and frivolous, and probably very lonely, but I don't think she's perverted."
Agnes was practically squirming with curiosity. "Is what true? Jesu, what does it say? What wicked thing has she done now?"
"I'll tell you later," Simon said, glancing significantly at Dominique. For although the boy seemed engrossed in playing with his wax statues, they all knew from experience he was aware of everything that was said or done around him.
Gabrielle had gone suddenly silent. Her breast felt on fire where it had touched Max's shoulder. She didn't need to look down to know her nipples stood out like round, smooth stones beneath the thin calico of her bodice. She raised her eyes to Max's face, and the quicksilver gleam of his eyes flared back-at her. Then against her will her gaze was pulled downward, over the broad planes of his chest that quivered now with his ragged breathing, to the tense muscles of his flat stomach, to the bulging manhood in his tight breeches that swelled even more beneath her eyes-She tore her gaze away from him, feeling a shocking moistness between her own legs.
❧
Agnes, her skirts kilted high above her ankles, walked with Dominique down to the riverbank, where a place had been fenced in for bathing. Simon had left soon after eating, saying he had a chess match set up at his favorite cafe.
And so Gabrielle and Max were at last left together.
They had taken care not to touch again, even accidentally, but always throughout the long afternoon, she had been aware of him so that by now her nerves were stretched taut as the skin of a kettiedrum.
She sat, her back pressed against the tree, her knees drawn up under her chin, looking across the field to the riverbank. Max was lying on the ground, braced on one forearm. There was a quality about the silence between them, an intimacy that became so tangible Gabrielle felt compelled to break it.
"Where did you learn to pick a pocket so skillfully?"
He sat up, bringing himself closer to her. She wondered if it was deliberate, if he was going to try to kiss her, if she would let him this time.
"The same place Agnes did," he said. "In the streets. The streets of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to be exact," he added, naming a hard working-class district of crowded tenements and smoke-belching foundries.
Gabrielle thought of a period in her life when she would have, if she'd had the skill, picked pockets in order to survive. But there had been other times in her life not so desperate, times that weren't in a way much different than the life of any other daughter or son of a noble family. And in such a life one did not acquire the talents of a pickpocket.
"You've had a strange upbringing for the son of a comte, a famous marichal of France," she probed.
"And what of your upbringing, Gabrielle?" He slipped his curled finger under her chin, turning her head so that she was forced to look at him. "I think you're not the common shopgirl you pretend to be. I think there must have once been a time when you wore silk and jewels and danced the minuet beneath gilded chandeliers. Who are you, Gabrielle?"
She would have been honest with him then if she'd been able to speak. But her eyes, lingering on his lips, saw them part slightly as he sucked in a sudden, sharp breath. Reaching up, she traced the length of them with the tips of her fingers.
Whatever she had been about to say was forgotten.
He pulled her against him and his mouth covered hers, fierce and gentle, urgent and lingering. He branded her with those lips, marking her as his possession. And the burning fire spread throughout all of her, consuming her, so that she melted into him. Her arms wrapped around him, one hand massaging the bunched muscles in his back while the other stroked his neck beneath his hair. She rubbed her breasts against his chest, feeling her nipples harden instantly. She forgot to breathe so that the world spun dizzily and she clung to him even tighter-He dug his fingers into her shoulders and pried her away from him. "Christ. . ."he exhaled on a ragged gasp.
And then he was up and striding away from her, toward Agnes and the boy wading along the river's edge.
❧
Thunderclouds formed in the west, and it began to grow dark early.
Strings of paper lanterns hanging from poles circled and looped, like a necklace of diamonds, around the fairgrounds. As the twilight deepened, the lanterns grew brighter, and the sound of laughter and music carried further on the air.
They left the Champ de Mars, walking east along the river. Max strode ahead with Dominique balanced on his shoulders, and Gabrielle heard her son's piping voice firing an endless stream of questions which Max, with unfailing patience, tried to answer. Lightning flashed, but weakly, and there was a long pause before thunder rumbled in the distance. The storm was still far away.
Agnes slipped an arm through hers. "If you leave us, Gabrielle, don't go too far. Simon and I, we need you."
It was a strange thing to say. An unlucky thing, for Gabrielle was happy in the pawnshop in the Palais Royal, and life had taught her that happiness was ephemeral. But then so, please God, was sorrow.
"Why, wherever would I go?" she answered, trying with a carefree lilt in her voice to banish these morbid thoughts.
Agnes looked at Max, who walked ahead of them, a shadowy figure now for it was rapidly growing dark. The boy on his shoulders made him appear monstrously tall and misshapen. "To him," she said.
Gabrielle said nothing. I will go to him, she thought, when he asks. And it seemed then that she had suddenly stumbled across a clue to a long, involved riddle. Now that she had it, the answer appeared so obvious, so perfect, she wondered why she had not thought of it before. How simple, she thought. How very, very simple. I love him and so, when he asks, I will go to him. And I will stay.
A camp fire flickered brightly from a nearby gypsies' camp. A soft breeze, a precursor of the coming storm, blew off the river, bringing with it the garlicky smell of sausages roasting over the flames and the mournful wail of a violin.
A pair of gypsies danced around the fire. Agnes and Gabrielle paused to watch.
The woman had long dark hair that fell in thick ropes almost to her ankles. She arched her back, curling her arms in the air and stamping her feet in time with the throbbing, sensuous beat of the music. There was an expression of pain on her face, almost of agony, a look of lost love and broken hearts. A young man danced with her, winding his slender, sinewy body around hers. The look on his face was one of hunger and desire. The heartbreaker.
A demijohn of wine passed from hand to hand. Someone threw a piece of wood on the fire and the flames flared up, casting light in a wider circle around the camp. Gabrielle saw Max on the other side of the dancing figures, speaking with one of the gypsies, their leader obviously from the richness of his clothes—a man with a flashing smile and a gold hoop dangling from one ear. She didn't see Dominique.
She pushed her way through the circle of people, not quite running, only a little afraid. Max would not lose her son.
When she arrived at the spot where she had seen him, Max was gone.
She whirled, searching through the faces around the fire, faces with dark hair and skin. The tempo of the music picked up; the dancers moved faster. The woman threw back her head and began to sing. There was loneliness in the song. A sudden crack of thunder ripped across the black sky.
Gabrielle left the fire, searching through the gypsy caravan. Stuck through brackets fastened to the corners of the wagons, torches flickered, casting strange shadows that seemed to perform a dance of their own. Here, the laughter and music were muted. The breeze died suddenly, leaving the air hot a
nd still, and the sound of her own ragged breathing filled Gabrielle's ears.
Lightning flashed, illuminating for an instant the entire caravan. There was no one about; they were all around the fire, watching the dancers.
"Dominique!" she called.
"Maman?"
For a moment she couldn't tell where the voice came from. Then the wind kicked up again and one of the torches flared, picking out a flash of gold beneath one of the wagons. Dominique's hair.
She bent over and hauled him out by the scruff of his neck. Her fear had been such that the relief she felt in finding him was immediately replaced by anger.
She gave him a rough shake. "How dare you sneak off like that!"
"I didn't—"
"Where's Monsieur Max?"
Dominique wriggled free. "Don't know," he said sulkily, kicking at the dusty ground with his foot.
A little girl crawled out from beneath the wagon. She looked solemnly up at Gabrielle, her topaz eyes huge in her beautiful, dark-skinned face. She was dressed in clothes made of expensive satin, embroidered with bright gold thread. She had four heavy gold bangles shoved halfway up her thin brown arm and the wax statue of Marie Antoinette clutched tightly in her hand.
"This is my new friend, Maman," Dominique said. "Her name is Lia. I gave her a present, and she gave me this." He held up his arm, from which dangled a thick gold bracelet.
Gabrielle looked at it in consternation. The bracelet was worth far more than the little wax statue, but the girl was still too young to have any conception of the monetary value of things. Nevertheless, Gabrielle could hardly allow Dominique to accept the gift. She had heard that a gypsy girl's dowry was her jewelry, and though this girl looked hardly older than five or six, it wouldn't be too many years before she would be of marriageable age, for gypsy children wedded young.
Gabrielle knelt beside Dominique and turned him to face her. "Dominique, mon petit, it was very nice of your new friend to give you a present, but—"
"I'm not giving it back," Dominique stated, holding the arm with the bracelet tightly to his chest. "Lia wouldn't want me to."
Sighing, Gabrielle pulled her son into her arms. She put her palm against the back of his hair and felt, instead of the silky strands she was used to, a sticky grittiness. She rubbed her fingers briskly across his scalp. "Heavens, child, what have you been into?"
She sniffed her fingers, then licked them, tasting . . . salt.
She stood up to look more closely at the wagon. Though it was very dark now, with the stormclouds obscuring the moon, there was still a small pool of light cast by the torch. She could make out a thin dusting of something white on the darker earth beneath the vehicle's deep bed.
"Is this your wagon?" she asked the little girl. "Is this where you live?"
"No, madame," Lia answered solemnly. "The pigs live in that wagon." The wagon did, indeed, smell like a barnyard.
It was made entirely of wood, like a small cottage on wheels. There was a door in back, secured by a latch. Gabrielle started to reach for it, then turned to the girl.
"May I see the pigs, Lia?"
The girl's face brightened. "But yes, madame! It is a mother pig and three babies. We used to have another, but we ate him.'' Eager to be helpful, she opened the wagon door for Gabrielle.
The sow lay on her side in the straw, the piglets suckling at her tits. Although the wagon was quite large, except for the pigs it was empty. A thick layer of straw covered the bed, which appeared from the inside to be much too shallow for the wagon's size.
Gabrielle pushed aside a handful of the straw. More of the gritty white powder dusted the warped, wooden floorboards.
Salt smugglers.
The gypsies were salt smugglers.
Each family in France was required to purchase a certain amount of salt a year at state-controlled prices. It was known as the gabelle—the salt tax—and was the most hated tax in the land. To use smuggled salt and cheat the king of the gabelle had become a matter of pride to all Parisians, and so salt smuggling had become a profitable and noble profession. An army of customs men and police had been called up to try to suppress the salt smugglers, and instant hanging was the punishment if you were caught at the crime.
Was Max, Gabrielle wondered, a member of this salt smuggling gang? His image came to her as she had last seen him, deep in conversation with the gypsy leader. Games, she thought, dangerous and nefarious games—
"Have you seen enough, Gabrielle?"
She turned slowly. Max appeared within the circle of torchlight, the gypsy with the gold earring a step behind him. Max stopped when he was two yards away from her; he stood with his feet slightly apart, his fingers curled around the pockets in his breeches. The gypsy cradled a musket in his arms.
"Papa!" the little girl sang out happily, and started toward the gypsy, but when she noticed the angry look on his face she stopped, sticking a finger in her mouth.
Dominique's eyes went from his mother to the tall man with the hard face and the soft voice, and for once he was silent.
"I asked you, Gabrielle," Max said, his voice silky, dangerous, "if you have seen enough."
Gabrielle flung up her head and stared defiantly back at him.
The gypsy took a step toward her. "She's seen too much."
Max put out a hand, stopping him. "It's all right, mon frere. I can ensure her silence." There was a movement in the shadows behind him, and Agnes appeared at his side. "Take Dominique down to the river and wait there," he said to the girl.
"Monsieur Max, you won't—"
Max said something to her, too low for Gabrielle to hear, but whatever it was it satisfied Agnes, for she gathered Dominique in her arms. "You come, too," she said, holding her hand out to Lia.
"We'll finish our business later, Prado," Max told the gypsy, and the dark-faced man flashed Gabrielle a final, baleful glare before he, too, disappeared into the night.
Gabrielle wondered why she didn't do something. Why she just stood there waiting for Max to come to her, waited with her feet fastened to the ground as if they had grown roots. She thought of the stiletto in his boot; she remembered the strength in his hands. How was he going to guarantee her silence? Would he slit her throat or strangle her?
He took a step toward her—
Gabrielle took a step backward. "Why should it matter if I know about the smuggling?" she said, her voice breaking shamefully. "Do you think I care if you've found a way to cheat the gabelle? It was only curiosity—"
"You have a lot of curiosity, don't you, Gabrielle?"
He reached her in two strides, but she was too quick for him. She whirled, dashing around the wagon and running for the Champ de Mars, back toward lights and people and safety.
She tripped over a tree root in the dark and went sprawling. Gasping for breath, she pushed herself to her feet. But Max was on her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and swung her around, pushing her up against the tree trunk. His hands went around her throat . . .
❧
Max had never intended to hurt her; he only wanted some answers. He hadn't expected her to run from him, and when she did, it set off his hot temper like a match to gunpowder. He was tired of her teasing games. She would tell him who she was and why she was spying on him or, by God, he would—
She fell and he hauled her to her feet, furious enough now to shake the truth out of her if necessary. But the moon picked that moment to burst free of the clouds that covered it, and there before him was the haunting white beauty of her face, the depthless purple pools of her eyes, and her lips, those lips, whose softness was a memory and a promise . . .
Suddenly it seemed he wanted only one thing from those lips, and it had nothing to do with truth. He lowered his head and wrapped his hands around her neck to bring her mouth within reach of his.
She punched him in the face with her balled-up fist, striking his cheekbone and sending a shock of pain from the top of his head. She hit him again, the blow landing on his throat this time, a
nd he choked. She seemed to have as many arms as a giant squid; no sooner would he capture one than the other would land a blow somewhere. She could hit damned hard for a girl.
"Dammit, Gabrielle, I'm not going to—Jesus!" he swore as she kicked him.
He managed at last to get both arms pinned between her back and the tree. He held her slender wrists easily in one hand and pressed his pelvis and thighs against her body so she couldn't do any more damage with her feet.
"Why did you run? I wasn't going to hurt you."
"Liar!" she spat at him.
Her fichu had pulled loose, and the short sleeves of her dress had slipped off her shoulders. She was panting heavily and the soft swell of her breasts rose and fell, rose and fell, straining against the thin calico of her bodice.
There was an achingly hard bulge in his breeches. She had to feel it, to feel him, and she did, for he saw the answering passion flare within her as her eyes darkened. She opened her mouth . . . and he covered it with his own.
He let go of her wrists to grip the sides of her head. Her hair was a golden-red halo set ablaze by the pale moonlight, a waterfall of liquid fire. He tangled his hands in it, bending her head back so he could probe her mouth with his tongue, and she sucked on his lips, tasting him, drinking him.
Desire was in the tight, exquisite feeling in his chest; the hard, urgent need in his loins. Passion was in the trembling of her woman's body in his arms, the low moans in her throat, her roaming hands that were touching him, burning him, claiming him . . .
His lips left her mouth to kiss her neck. He found a spot she particularly liked, on the side, below the gentle curve of her jaw, and he lingered there, feeling the swift pulse of the blood beneath her skin, feeling her hot, harsh breathing against his ear. There was a tangy scent to her—of salt and apples—and underlying it the faint and evocative scent of sexual arousal.
He pulled the sleeves of her dress further down her arms, yanking at the tight bodice a bit too roughly so that it tore, freeing her breasts. They were small but firm and round, just filling his hands, and he teased the hardened nipples with the backs of his fingers, then lowered his head to take one in his mouth. He heard her sigh his name as she shuddered in his arms.
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