His thick manhood strained against its tight satin sheathing and he moved it in slow and sensuous circles against her pelvis. The rough sapphires on her dress scratched maddeningly through the thin material of his breeches, and he clenched his teeth on a deep, chest-shattering groan.
His strong hands spanned her waist, lifting her until her hips were braced on the rounded front of the bureau. Her knees fell wide apart and he came between them. He bunched up her skirts and underthings around her waist and his hand moved up the long, firm muscles of her thigh. He found the soft nest of hair and he burrowed inside it, sliding his fingers deep into the warm, pulsating core of her. She was wet, quivering, ready for him. Her hands clutched his shoulders, digging in, and she arched her spine and her head fell back, her mouth open.
He pulled his fingers from her to stroke along her slick nether lips, back and forth, faster and faster, while he kneaded the nub of her womanhood with his thumb. With his other hand he fumbled for the opening to his breeches, then at last, at last, he was free. He cradled himself with his hand, and then her hand took the place of his and she guided him into her, wrapping her legs around his hips.
She was so hot, so tight, so incredibly fine. It was as if God had made her just for him. He knew it was irrational, but it seemed that no other woman had ever fit him the way Gabrielle did. It was as if he were the sword and she the sheath, made by a master craftsman, one for the other.
"Gabrielle, Gabrielle, Gabrielle ..."
He crooned her name, over and over, as he plunged into her, again and again, and the bureau knocked against he wall, thudding like a big bass drum, and the candles started to teeter in their sconces. He felt her inner muscles contract around him, and giving one last mighty thrust with his hips, he smothered her scream with his mouth and exploded deep inside her.
He lay hunched over her, his forehead pressed against her breasts. Her lungs pumped hard, and her heart skipped wildly, and her legs were still wrapped around his waist, her skirts bunched up in a crushed wad between them. He would have felt smug at what he had reduced her to, except that he had been left in the same state. This, he thought. As long as we have this together, then I have some hope of keeping her.
Gingerly he pushed himself upright, tucking his shirt back in place and fastening his breeches. He drew her to her feet, helping her straighten her own clothing. The rouge she had put on her cheeks and lips was now smeared across her face; her hair was a mess, half still pinned to her head, the rest cascading in fiery tangles over her shoulders. She tried to pull her bodice, with its built-in corset, up over her breasts, but it had been ripped partway down the middle and she had to hold it together with her fist to keep it up.
Her lower lip fell open and started to tremble, but Max, who had seen her do that before, knew it was from repressed laughter. "Look at me," she said. "I look like . . ." She couldn't finish as amusement overwhelmed her.
His arms went around her and he laced his hands in the small of her back. He dipped his head to rub his tongue along that adorable lower lip. "What you look like, ma mie, is as if you've been well and thoroughly—" He stopped himself, remembering just in time what he had said that had started all this.
She stiffened in his arms, as he knew she would, and he repressed a sigh. She lifted her chin and the candlelight fell full on her face, and he felt a cold dread steal over him for he could read nothing in her face, not even anger.
"That was some lesson you taught me, monsieur. Is that what you did with the marquise de Tesse?"
He opened his mouth to say something cruel and cutting that would pay her back for this time and all the other times. But something—perhaps just plain damned weariness-stopped him, so that what came out of his mouth was, for the first time since she had returned, the uncensored truth.
"No, ma mie. It has never been so wonderful, so passionate, so perfect, with any other woman. Only with you."
She lowered her lashes to obscure her eyes, but he saw her mouth soften into a tiny smile.
Chapter 22
"Where are you going?"
Gabrielle dropped the latch to the front door and whipped around, a guilty flush suffusing her face. Unconsciously she clutched the roll of drawings tighter to her chest. She had deliberately chosen this early hour to slip out of the house so that Max wouldn't question her about where she was headed. She didn't think he would approve of her caricatures lampooning his noble class—especially now that he was the king's astronomer.
Max finished coming down the stairs, pulling on a pair of gloves. He was wearing his tall leather riding boots and English hunting jacket. He raised his brows at her. "You've neglected to answer my question, Gabrielle."
"Out. I'm going out."
A look of supreme impatience crossed his face. "And alone, I see. There are times, ma mie, when I would dearly love to wring your neck. Haven't you heard there was another bread riot in the Place Maubert yesterday morning?"
"I'm not going to the Place Maubert."
He laughed suddenly. "Of course you aren't, my little revolutionary of a wife." He plucked the caricatures from her hands before she could stop him. "You're taking these seditious drawings to your erstwhile Uncle Simon, who will have them printed up in hopes the mob will be incited to further rioting and the monarchy will fall."
She thrust out her chin. "And what is wrong with that? We're working for liberty."
He didn't comment, but flipped through the caricatures, amused cynicism on his face. To her surprise he handed them back to her.
She frowned. "I suppose now you're going to forbid me to go."
"Would it do any good if I did?"
"No."
"Then I won't bother." He tipped his tricorne at her. "Good morning, Madame la Vicomtesse."
He brushed past her and pulled open the door. But he whipped around suddenly and seized her by the waist to plant a swift, crushing kiss on her mouth.
"Max!" she called after him when she had recovered her breath. "Where are you going?"
He was already halfway down the front steps, but he turned to give her a wicked grin. "Out," he said.
Gabrielle stewed about Max's irrational behavior all during the hackney ride to the Palais Royal. It was April now; they had been reunited for over four months, living as husband and wife, sharing the same bed—she smiled to herself—as well as the floor, the sofa, and any other surface that happened to be handy whenever passion struck them. Once they had made love in the carriage on the way home from a day at the Vincennes race track, and another time they had done it in their private box at the opera during the second act of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Although they followed fashion by keeping separate bedrooms, he never slept in his.
She sighed. That part of their life was perfect. It was the only part that was.
For in many ways, they all seemed to lead separate lives. Even Dominique was busy in his own world now. He had a tutor and a riding and a fencing master, and he seemed to think his mother, a mere woman, wasn't capable of discussing even the rudiments of these manly pursuits. As the vicomtesse she had a horde of servants to supervise. In her spare time she was supposed to write letters and do embroidery. Instead she drew biting caricatures of the king and queen and their coterie and helped Simon write tracts calling for a republican form of government. As for Max, he had his new duties at court and his scientific experiments with balloons in his laboratory at the Jardin des Plantes. He never discussed any of it with her. He certainly never told her what he thought of the wave of political unrest that was sweeping the country.
That was the trouble, for they never spoke to each other, at least not about anything serious. They played teasing games of seduction that eventually erupted into draining bouts of passion, but they never sat down and simply talked. Every time one or the other of them would drift to a subject that was the least bit personal it would dredge up all the old feelings of hurt and anger. She had left him, and he had taken another woman while she was gone, if you had loved me, one of them
would begin. If you had loved me, the other would say. And neither of them was willing or able to forget, or to forgive.
But still, still. . . Though he refused to believe it, she had loved him then, and she loved him now. Every day she spent with him she felt her love for him spread and grow deeper, like the roots of a giant oak tree. And as the oak provides shade and holds down the earth, so had Max become essential to her life.
Perhaps, she thought for the hundredth time, I should take the first step. But what that step should be she had no idea, and still, still . . . she was certain that although she loved him, he no longer loved her, perhaps had never loved her, and so she did nothing.
Suddenly Gabrielle became aware that the hackney had stopped moving. She could hear shouts and the pounding of running feet coming from the street, and she raised the window shade and leaned out to see what was happening.
The hackney had come to a standstill in the middle of the Pont Royal. A crowd of angry, shouting people marched toward them down the middle of the bridge, quickly engulfing everything in their path the way the tide swallows shells and rocks lying on the beach. At first she couldn't make out what they were shouting and then she caught a phrase here and there.
"Hang the rich!"
"Death to all grain speculators!"
"Cheap bread! Bread for two sous!"
It wasn't only men in the mob—there were women and children as well. The men were armed with pikes, pitchforks, and iron bars. The women had clubs made from the staves of dismantled fences and had loaded their pockets and aprons with rocks and bits of cobblestone. Two or three of the rioters even brandished muskets which they fired into the air. But although their slogans were full of hate, a holiday atmosphere prevailed. Gabrielle even spotted a vendor pushing wine from a cart and another selling paper twists of chestnuts and strings of tobacco.
The traffic on the bridge had been completely enveloped by the mob. There was a fancy calash—a light, low-wheeled carriage with a folding top—directly ahead of her hackney, and the rioters suddenly swarmed around it. It rocked and swayed precariously for a moment and then tipped over onto its side. Its occupant, a man in a satin suit with curled and powdered hair, was dragged out to be swallowed up by the hostile crowd. And Gabrielle felt the faint stirrings of fear.
The roar of the mob sounded like the rumbling of a giant waterwheel. She heard a horse whinny in terror and her driver shouting to make way. An almost irresistible compulsion to get out of the hackney and try to run for safety overcame her. Isolated in the carriage this way, she felt as conspicuous and vulnerable as a parrot tied to a pole and, indeed, at that moment she heard a thud as something, a stone perhaps, struck the side of the carriage.
Gabrielle pushed open the door.
It was a mistake. Rough hands clutched at her arms, dragging her out. Without the steps being let down, it was a long drop to the ground, and she landed with a jarring fall on her hands and knees. Someone wearing a hard sabot kicked her
in the side, and then the crowd started to move again. She flung up her arm, just managing to curl her fingers around the handle of the carriage door, and tried to pull herself upright before she was trampled beneath hundreds of feet. Faces swirled around her, mouths agape, eyes bulging white with anger and frenzy. She was kicked again, so hard this time that the breath was driven from her lungs and her vision darkened around the edges. Her grip on the door handle started to slip, and then one of the shouting, twisted faces took on a familiar shape.
"Simon!" she screamed.
A strong hand clasped her beneath the armpit and hauled her to her feet. Simon leaned her up against the wheel of the carriage and put his bulk between her and the seething mass of people that eddied around them.
"Gabrielle! What are you doing here?"
"I came ..." She started to shake. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. "Oh, God, Simon . . . what's happening?"
"Some rich aristocrat has been caught hoarding grain," he proclaimed, with all the passion of the righteous in his voice. "We're going to force open his warehouse and distribute it to the people."
Holding her arm, he began to drag her forward, back into the flow of people moving across the bridge. Gabrielle had no choice but to follow.
❧
Earlier that morning, Abel Hachette had stood at his library window, feeling the satisfaction of a man who believes all is right with his world.
Someone had planted red flowers in the windowboxes across the way, which gave the neighborhood a nice touch of spring. In front of the house next door a carriage was being loaded with bandboxes and trunks for Monsieur Costaine's annual trek to take the waters at Vichy. Monsieur Costaine was a silk merchant with an income of five hundred thousand livres a year, and dropsy.
Hachette heard the tinkle of a cowbell and looked up the street. There, as he did every morning, came a drover poking along with a stick his tiny herd of six mangy cows. Hachette wondered, as he did every morning, why the drover found it necessary to drive his animals down this particular street. Where did the man come from, and where was he going with his pathetic herd of—
Just then Hachette spotted a familiar figure dodging in and out among the usual crush of carriages and carts. He actually had to blink several times—the first to be sure he wasn't seeing things', the second time because he didn't want to believe what he saw. Unconsciously his hand drifted to his throat; suddenly his cravat felt tight and he had difficulty swallowing.
During the past year and a half, Hachette had spent many a sleepless night worrying over what would happen if his Black Angel ever discovered that he, Abel Hachette, had tried to betray that damnable nuisance of a woman to her enemies. It didn't matter that the fool Louvois had somehow bungled it, or that the woman and the boy had somehow escaped on their own. What mattered was intent. And if his Black Angel ever discovered what his intent had been that hot August day, then Hachette was doomed. For Maximilien de Saint-Just was a man who never forgot, and never forgave.
The final irony was that, in spite of the fact that the girl had mysteriously disappeared from Max's life, Max had refused to come back to the cabal. Hachette had put one of the other angels to spying on Max, and the angel had reported Max to be interested in nothing but drinking and gambling and occasionally, when he sobered up enough, those foolish experiments with inflammable air-filled balloons. Then four months ago, the girl had just as mysteriously reappeared. No more drinking or gambling, the reports had said lately. But still Max would not return.
Until today.
Why? Hachette wondered. Pulling out his perfume-scented handkerchief, he patted his sweating brow and walked stiff-legged to the fortress that was his rosewood desk. He had just managed to get himself safely barricaded behind it when the lackey swung open the double doors and the Vicomte Maximilien de Saint-Just strolled through.
Hachettc quickly scanned the young man's face. He saw the drooping lids, the lazy, mocking smile. They did nothing to reassure him.
"Good morning, Max."
The smile deepened. "You've always been a master of understatement, Abel. We haven't spoken to each other in nineteen months, yet you act as if it were only yesterday."
Hachette shrugged, pretending indifference. "You said you no longer wished to work for us. I've respected your decision."
"Bloody hell you have. You've been spying on me. Not that I've minded. It's been rather flattering."
Hachette didn't need to glance at his reflection in the mirrored panels to know that disgusting color had flooded his cheeks. He started to reach for his quizzing glass, noticed his hand shaking, and pressed it flat on the desk instead. "Is that—" he began, then stopped to clear his throat. "Is that why you're here?"
Max came forward and leaned over the desk, bracing his fists on the polished surface. Hachette stopped himself from shrinking down into his chair.
"I've come for the key to your grain warehouse," Max said.
Hachette's mouth fell open. "You what?"
Max's
voice was slow and silky and it brought the hairs up on the back of Hachette's neck. "The people are starving, Abel. They're paying ten sous a loaf for bread made from rotten grain that makes them sick, and you sit here with a full warehouse waiting for prices to rise even higher."
Hachette smiled thinly and shook his head. "You know profit isn't the real reason why I haven't released that grain, Max. We want liberty, and the only way we're going to get it is through revolution. There can be no revolution if the bellies of the people are full. It may not be an easy thing to accept, but for a just cause some sacrifices must be—"
"No!" Max slammed his fist down on the desk and Hachette jumped. "You don't want liberty. It's power you're after. You want to take the power from those who have it and keep it for yourselves—you and that damned cabal. You're only using the word 'liberty' as a cloak for your own brand of tyranny. And like a naive fool I believed in you once, Or maybe I was simply lying to myself. No, not maybe. I was lying to myself. I liked the excitement of the games you played, and I liked the money you paid me. But no more. I'm going to make amends, Abel, and you're going to help me do it."
He stepped around the barrier of the rosewood desk and hauled Hachette to his feet. His voice went low and soft. "Give me the key."
"I can give it to you," Hachette squeaked, "but it won't do you any good. The overman won't open the doors unless I'm there in person. Those were my instructions."
Max smiled. "Then get your hat, Abel, because you're coming with me."
❧
The crowd began to run and Gabrielle was carried with them, the way a twig is carried downstream by rushing rapids. Once, she tripped over a bundle of fagots set out at the curb for sale. She went sprawling down on her hands and knees and would have been trampled underfoot if Simon hadn't again hauled her to her feet.
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