She sucked in an indignant breath. "I wasn't asking—"
"You were hinting."
"I was not! You were the one who was leering at me with that look you get."
He screwed his face into what he evidently thought was the picture of cherubic innocence. "What look?"
She bit back a giggle. "You know the look I mean."
His features metamorphosed suddenly into those of a lunatic rapist overcome with lust, and he lunged to his feet. Gabrielle shrieked and whirled around, but not fast enough, for he was on her in two strides.
Laughing, he seized her around the waist and lifted her, whirling her around and around until tree and sky and field blended into a stream of color. When he put her down on her feet she had to clutch his arm to keep from falling while the world went on spinning dizzily.
He laced his hands in the small of her back and pressed her tightly against him. "Come sit beside me, my sweet seductress," he whispered, in that silky way of talking that turned her muscles to mush.
"You are the seducer," she protested, knowing he was doing it to her even now.
He brushed his lips lightly over her ear. "Only because I find you so completely irresistible. But I promise to control my lecherous inclinations, if you'll control yours. I would remind you, Gabrielle," he pointed out with affronted indignation, "that there are men working right over there in the fields."
She surrendered, laughing and leaning into him, luxuriating in the feel of his strong arms holding her. It was rather hot and dusty out on the road. She let him lead her beneath the tree and settled beside him within the crook of his arm.
He began to toy with her hair, brushing a curl back and forth across her cheek. It tickled a little, but pleasantly. His chest was warm and solid beneath her back, and she could feel the steady beat of his heart. She stretched her legs out straight in front of her. One of her thighs pressed against his and she felt him tense, his breathing quicken. Secretly she was pleased with this power she had to make him want her.
Smiling happily, she wriggled her toes. Already her feet were bruised and covered with dust. "How far away are we from Paris, do you think?" she asked.
"Four, maybe five hours' ride by coach," he answered. His thumb began to stroke the cord of muscle in her neck. Slowly down to her shoulder, slowly up to her ear. Down, then up, down, up . . .
Gabrielle's stomach muscles started fluttering and her heart beat faster. "Then why ..." She stopped, forgetting what she had been about to say. His arm had shifted. It was draped over the top of her shoulder now, his hand dangling near her breast, though not touching it. She sucked in a deep breath and her breast rose up. Her nipple, visibly hard beneath the material of her bodice, brushed against his curled knuckles.
She took another, deeper breath. And then another. "Why have we stopped so soon?" she asked. She trembled, and her hand, which had been resting in her lap, sort of accidentally drifted onto his thigh. "It'll take us weeks to walk to Paris at this rate."
The muscle of his thigh hardened and she felt his heart do a funny stutter step. "Silly goose," he said, his voice slightly rough. "I've no intention of walking to Paris."
He turned his head and began to plant gentle kisses along the side of her face. His fingers inched beneath her bodice, easily finding the bare flesh of her breast, with no corset or chemise to hinder him.
"But then how . . . Oh, Max, don't ... I can't think when you ..." Gabrielle's senses began to whirl, as if she were again being spun around and around—
A loud bray echoed across the fields and Gabrielle pulled away from Max with a guilty start. The mangy gray donkey with a taste for horticultural products strolled right past them on the road, driven by a youth who grinned and hooted at them, making a suggestive gesture with his fist. The donkey, Gabrielle saw, had a rosebud tucked into his halter, and the drooping petals couldn't have been any pinker than the flush of embarrassment that stained her cheeks.
She felt the rumble of Max's laughter against her back. She turned to face him, shaking a wifely finger under his nose. "Maximilien de Saint-Just, this is all your fault. You promised you would behave yourself."
"I lied."
"You are devious, shameless, truly diabolical—"
"And wicked," he added helpfully.
"Most definitely wicked." She tried to glare at him, but her mouth betrayed her, dancing up into a smile. "But you make love like an angel."
"Angels are celibate creatures, ma mie. "
❧
She leaned over and gave him a sweet, chaste kiss on the lips. "Then perhaps you should pray to them for inspiration—when next you make promises you find difficult to keep."
His arms went around her, gathering her to him, and he buried his face in the curve of her neck. "I really did think I could just sit here and hold you, Gabrielle." He laughed softly. "Especially after making love with you all last night and most of the morning. But it seems that no sooner am I done having you than I want you again."
Of course she understood, for it was the same with her. "But will you want me as much a year from now?" she asked, only able to do so because his face was still buried in her neck.
He nuzzled her with his chin. "I'll want you fifty years from now."
"Hunh. I'll be an old crone then. All wrinkled and toothless."
She felt him smile. "Good. Then no other man will fancy you and I won't have to worry about keeping you all to myself."
They held each other in silence, then he grasped her shoulders and set her away from him. "Gabrielle, there are things we must discuss."
A cramp twisted her stomach. "What . . . what things?"
He gave her a hard, searching look, and she stopped breathing. Then his eyes focused on something behind her and a strange emotion crossed his face. She thought it almost might have been relief.
"Here's our transportation back to Paris," he said.
Gabrielle turned. Coming up the road from the direction of the village was a gypsy caravan, its colorful wagons corded tightly one behind the other like a beaded necklace. Max stood up and waved his arm, and a horse and rider broke away, cantering toward them.
The horse, a magnificent roan stallion, danced to a stop in front of them, rearing up on his hind legs. The rider looked down at Gabrielle, and his face registered surprise, then his attention turned to Max. His teeth flashed white in his dark face. "You didn't get far," he said. "I've been looking for you ever since Provins."
It was the man Gabrielle had last seen beside a wagon loaded with contraband salt. The man who thought she had seen too much.
"The envelope developed a leak," Max said. "We came down sooner than I'd planned. It's in a field not far from here. I'd like to salvage what's left of it if I can."
"But of course." The gypsy nodded at Gabrielle with his chin. "What's she doing here?"
"She's my wife," Max said, an edge to his voice.
The gypsy's eyes widened slightly, then a mask descended over his features. "You have my felicitations, mon frere. "
He turned his horse around and trotted back toward the caravan. Max started to follow, but Gabrielle grabbed his arm.
"What are they doing here—those gypsies?"
"I told you. They're our transportation back to Paris. I arranged it."
Impatient, he started to walk away again, but she held him back. "How? How could you have known we would be here?"
"I didn't know we would wind up here precisely. I knew generally in which direction the aerostat would sail because of the prevailing wind currents, and I asked Prado to start looking for us northwest of Provins."
As she watched him walk down the road toward the caravan, she felt anger and confusion and an odd sense of betrayal. Why hadn't he told her about the gypsies before this? He was too good at arranging things. And if she still had secrets from him, who was to say he'd kept no secrets from her? She called him husband, but what did she know of Maximilien de Saint-Just? Only every inch of his body and what he had chosen to tell
her about himself, which amounted to very little indeed.
About as much, her conscience nagged, as he knows about you.
Gabrielle stood where she was and watched the gypsy wagons come to her. Several men went with Max down the hill and through the pines to retrieve the collapsed envelope. They took a team and a tumbrel with them, for the huge gummed-silk envelope was heavy. The women, who were left behind in the wagons, stared at Gabrielle while pretending to ignore her. After a while Gabrielle went to sit by herself beneath the oak tree, where at least it was cool.
A small head peeked out at her from a window cut into the wooden side of one of the wagons. Gabrielle smiled and waved, for it was the girl Lia, Dominique's friend. Seconds later, the wagon's door banged open and the girl emerged.
She came slowly, shuffling her bare feet in the dirt. She stopped several feet away and glanced up at Gabrielle from beneath shyly lowered lashes that were as long and sweeping as a feather duster. "Madame, where is Dominique? Have you brought him with you?"
Gabrielle smiled, shaking her head. "He's in Paris with his . . . uncle."
Lia's face fell. "Oh. I still have the statue he gave me. I keep it in my treasure box."
"He keeps your bracelet beneath his pillow," Gabrielle said, and it was true. Along with his rock collection, and his puppet, and his top. Gabrielle had often wondered how her child was able to sleep at night with such a lumpy resting place for his head.
A huge smile had broken across the little girl's face. "Will you tell him something for me, madame? When you see him again? Tell him I had to wash my cheek, the one he kissed, though I promised I wouldn't. But Maman made me."
Gabrielle's mouth fell open. She quickly shut it, biting her lip to keep from smiling. Her Dominique—who squirmed and made faces whenever she tried to hug and cuddle him—had willingly bestowed one of his own precious kisses on this girl child. The male species, she decided, was completely unfathomable at any age.
"Lia!"
The little girl whirled around and ran back to the caravan. The gypsy leader Prado trotted up on his roan stallion. Max rode double in back of him.
"What was Lia saying to you?" the gypsy leader demanded as Max slid off the horse's back and started toward her.
Gabrielle glared up at the man in defiance. He was handsome, but in a flashy way, like his bright clothes and golden earring. Oddly, his eyes, although they regarded her warily, weren't cruel.
"Nothing," Gabrielle said. "She was only being friendly. Don't punish her for it."
The man looked shocked. "I wouldn't!"
"Gabrielle." Max took her arm. There was gentleness in his touch, though none on his face. "We'll be riding in the tumbrel with the aerostat. Do you mind?"
He didn't wait for her answer but led her further up the rise to where the tumbrel waited for them with its gaudily striped load. The driver, an old man in a coat of purple velvet and a flowered waistcoat, had two gold hoops in his ear, one looped inside the other. He gave her a gap-toothed smile and tipped his tricorne.
Gabrielle eyed the conveyance suspiciously. "I suppose there's salt hidden under here somewhere."
Prado, who had been walking beside them on his roan, shot a sharp look at Max. "You must come to an understanding with your woman, mon frere, else her wagging tongue could get us all branched," he said, referring to the custom army's method of dispatching smugglers by hanging them from the nearest tree branch.
"She'll take care. I don't think Gabrielle has any desire for a confrontation with the law. Do you, ma mie?"
Suspicion was plain in the mocking gray eyes that regarded her. Tears stung her eyes, and a burning pain seized her chest. She could only shake her head in denial.
"Don't worry. Gabrielle and I will be going on alone through the barriere and on foot, and long before you," Max said cryptically.
Prado reflected a moment, then nodded. He pulled his horse's head sharply around and cantered off, back to the rest of the caravan.
Gabrielle stared after him. "I don't like that man."
"He doesn't much like you, either," Max said, hoisting her into the tumbrel with a hand beneath her bottom. "He's convinced I married you to ensure your silence, and he wonders why I didn't kill you instead. He also loves his own wife and daughter very much and would cut off his arm before hurting them."
The tumbrel jerked into motion. Gabrielle held out her hand and Max grabbed it. With a running step, he climbed in beside her.
"Did you?" Gabrielle said.
"Did I what?"
"Marry me to ensure my silence?"
"Yes." Max lay down within the silken cocoon of the envelope, lacing his hands behind his head. "And now will you kindly provide me with a little of it, wife?" He shut his eyes. Within seconds he was asleep.
Gabrielle leaned over, bracing herself on one hand, and enjoyed the luxury of studying the face of her husband when he couldn't look back at her.
In sleep, the harsh lines around his mouth softened. His closed lids, with their incredibly long lashes, hid the mockery in his eyes. He looked gentle, trusting, innocent. In sleep, her mischievous rascal of a son looked the same—angelic.
Agnes never had that look of sweet vulnerability while she slept; neither, Gabrielle remembered, had her maman. It must be a talent, she decided, that belonged strictly to the male of the species.
Smiling, she touched his cheek, and his eyes flew open, instantly alert.
"Look," she said and, straightening, pointed ahead of them to a horizon cluttered with buildings and blanketed by a cloud of dung-colored smoke. A noisome smell wafted toward them on the hot breeze. "Paris."
He sat up and, putting his arm around her, drew her to him. The smile he gave her, though not the least bit angelic, was warm and loving. "Home," he said.
The gypsy caravan made camp outside the city wall. Max and Gabrielle walked through the barriere on foot and caught a hackney to take them to the Palais Royal.
She sat close beside Max on the cracked leather seat as the carriage lurched fitfully through the crowded streets. Her hands were clutched together in her lap, and Max, reaching over, picked one up and brought it to his lips. She thought he probably wanted to reassure her, but she felt no fear, only joy. She was coming home, married to a man she loved with all her heart, body, mind, and soul. And she regretted none of it.
The hackney let them out at the garden gates just as the sun dipped below the ducal palace walls. They walked slowly along the arched galleries, past the shops and cafes, nodding to the courtesans, the booksellers, the mountebanks—their neighbors in the Palais Royal. Though they must have been a strange sight, barefoot and travel-stained, no one stared or looked at them amiss. Stranger sights were seen every day. in this bawdy, raucous district.
The three golden balls of the pawnbroker winked at them through the trees. Gabrielle began to walk faster. She saw her son; he was squatting on the stoop in front of the pawnshop, intently studying a black, box-shaped thing between his wide-spread knees. "Dominique!" she called out, and pulling her arm from Max's, she began to run.
Her son looked up at her and smiled. "Oh, hello, Ma-man," he said, pleased but not overwhelmed with excitement at seeing her. She might as well have been gone for two minutes as two days.
She bent down to see what he was playing with. It appeared to be a small wicker cage with a black cloth draped over it.
"This is my new friend, Maman. I caught him with a piece of cheese."
Smiling, Gabrielle lifted the cage, pulling aside the cloth. "And what is your new— Jesu and all his saints!" she shrieked, flinging the cage from her in horror. It split open when it hit the ground, and a huge rat the size of a puppy, with a wiry black tail and long twitching whiskers, scurried for the safety of the littered gutter.
"Maman!" Dominique wailed. "Look what you've done! You've let him escape!"
A strong hand took Gabrielle's arm, steadying her. "Dominique, you can't keep a rat for a pet," Max said. She knew he was trying to sound stern,
but she could hear the repressed laughter in his voice.
"Why not?" Dominique demanded.
"Because you maman doesn't like them."
"Why not?"
"Well, because . . ."
Gabrielle shuddered. "Horrible, filthy, disgusting creatures."
"Because they're horrible, filthy, disgusting creatures," Max said. He was definitely laughing now.
Gabrielle glared at the pair of them; they had both quickly assumed the same round-eyed innocent look, but she wasn't fooled. "If you two think you can—"
The door was flung open and Agnes stood on the threshold, arms akimbo and a gloating smile on her face. "Well, what have we here?" she cooed. "May a thousand and one devils pickle me in oil. And where have you two been this last day and night, eh?"
Gabrielle looked at Agnes, unable to say a word.
"We got married," Max said.
Laughing and rolling her eyes, Agnes turned around to Simon, who was hurrying forward from the back of the shop. "Did you hear that, Monsieur Simon? They got—" She whipped back around again, her mouth a perfect O of astonishment. "Married? By the ever-Virgin Mary Mother of God ..."
Gabrielle broke out of the mysterious paralysis that had suddenly seized her limbs and throat. "Agnes, don't curse," she said automatically. She took a jerky step forward, toward Simon, and her eyes went instantly to his face. "Simon, Max and I ... we were wed yesterday. The balloon hit a church steeple. It was all Max's fault. We came down in a field and we decided to get married. There was a village nearby. Chenaie-sur-Seine? The priest's name was Father Benoit and he was nice in a funny way, although he shouted and sneezed a lot. We ..." She stopped, bereft again of words. She felt, indeed, like a daughter who anxiously awaited her father's approval.
It came, for Simon's round face broke into a delighted smile. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight. Breaking away, he turned to Max. "So you married her then?" he said, his voice gruff with emotion.
Max stared steadily back at him. "Yes."
"And you'll take care of her? You'll keep her safe?"
"Yes."
Simon nodded sharply. As he grasped Max's hand, pumping it hard, light from the candelabra glinted off the wetness in his eyes. "Come, come." He waved his arm, ushering them all toward the kitchen. "We must have wine to celebrate."
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