Pale Moon Rider

by Marsha Canham

  If she closed her eyes, Renée could still see her father’s handsome smile, still hear the echo of his laughter and the way it always seemed to fill the rooms of their magnificent chateau outside Paris. She could even remember the scent of his skin, for although it was an outrageous notion that a man should still love his wife to distraction after so many years of marriage, Sebastien d’Anton always had about him a faint hint of her perfume, as if they had bathed together, dressed together, spent the night locked in each other’s arms.

  Renée stared at the blonde, curly hair that fell past her shoulders, remembering how her mother used to come to her room at night, glittering head to toe in silks and jewels. She would take the brush from the maid’s hands and together she and Renée would count the strokes she made through the luxuriously heavy mass while they discussed their hopes and dreams for the future. They had laughed over the dozens of suitors, young and old, who had already expressed an interest in uniting their two powerful families; they had giggled over the anticipated bevy of young heirs who would strut before her like peacocks in all their finery. And because Celia d’Anton had married for love, not money, they also whispered about the one man who would eventually stand apart from all the others, the one who would take her in his arms and dance a single dance with her and sweep her heart away.

  All of those fantasies ended the day the angry citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille. The very next night the maid, who had been a part of the household for almost thirty years, spat in Celia d’Anton’s face and declared herself free of the oppressive tyranny that had kept her a slave to the aristocracy all that time.

  Within a year, Louis XVI had been forced to sign a newly drafted constitution granting every citizen of France liberté, égalité, and fraternité. Within two years all hereditary titles and estates were forfeited to the state, and many members of the aristocracy had begun making arrangements to remove themselves and their wealth to other countries. When the white flag of the Bourbon dynasty was trampled underfoot and replaced with the bloodied tricolor of the people’s militia, the number of these émigrés grew. Four years after the revolutionaries had taken control of the government, when the king and queen were caught at the border trying to escape to Prussia, the trickle of fleeing aristocrats turned into a flood of terrified men and women who were thankful just to escape with their lives.

  As the former Duc d’Orlôns, Renée’s grandfather had been arrested along with his sons and a thousand others suspected of trying to help the king escape. Within a few short months, Louis XVI was found guilty of treason and executed on the guillotine, and the Committee of Public Safety had become the ruling voice of Terror throughout the new republic. The tyrant Maximilien de Robespierre had come into power and under the Jacobin leader’s fanatical zeal, the freed citizens of France were encouraged to identify and condemn all aristocrats and monarchists suspected of plotting against the Republic of Virtue. If a man walked too fast or was seen talking too long with a neighbor, he could be accused of scheming against the glorious revolution. If he wore a hat with a brim that was too round, he was sure to be a monarchist; if he tied his cravat with too many folds, he exemplified the vanity of the privileged class. The wearing of powders or perfumes could be cited as treasonable acts, as could bathing too often or chewing fennel to clean the breath.

  To no one’s surprise, clothing with ruffles, lace, and trim vanished from the streets of Paris, as did wigs and panniers and petticoats of extravagant widths. White became the approved color for women’s dresses while drab black coats and trousers became the standard for men. Hair was braided and confined beneath plain white caps or cropped short so as not to foster the sin of vanity.

  The guillotines began to labor from dawn to dusk in their efforts to purify the new regime.

  One morning Renée and her family awoke to see a pall of thick black smoke hanging over Paris and when Celia d’Anton asked a passer-by what was burning, she was informed with a casual shrug that Citizen Robespierre had declared the prisons were too full. Two thousand aristos had lost their heads during the night and now, because the cemeteries were also too full, the tumbrils were lined up ten and twenty deep, piled high with their headless corpses waiting to be burned in a mass pit.

  In a death-like panic, Celia had ordered Renée and Antoine to remain at home with the doors locked and barred. Finn had gone out earlier to see if he could trade a hoarded jewel for bread and eggs, and when he returned, neither Renée nor her brother would obey his orders to stay behind again. All three ran through the rain-drenched streets to the prison where their father had been taken almost a year before. Celia was at the guardhouse, begging one of the guards for information about her husband. He was the same guard she had bribed in the past so that she might be allowed to carry food and clothes to Sebastien d’Anton, but the gendarme only laughed this time and pointed to the column of ugly black smoke that scrolled over the city, telling her the former duc and his sons were no longer receiving visitors. They had been declared traitors to the republic and executed by order of the Committee.

  Celia had collapsed on the rough cobblestones and Antoine had broken away from Finn to run out and help her. The guard was still laughing, calling to his comrades, nudging the dazed woman with the toe of his boot. The other guards had gathered around, kicking and spitting, taking long pulls out of the bottles of sour wine that gave them so much courage. Antoine had tried to reach his mother, but he was roughly shoved aside. He tried again but one of the men shattered a bottle over his head and when Celia saw him staggering back with blood streaking down his face, she screamed and lunged at the guard, her nails gouging at his eyes and throat.

  A crowd had begun to gather, and now that they had an audience to impress, the guards took turns kicking her and beating her and inviting the onlookers to vent their anger on the filthy aristo. The cheering citizens picked up stones and threw them. Some carried pikes and clubs, and they joined the guards in beating the crumpled, bloodied form until it lay still and lifeless at their feet.

  When there was no more sport to be had beating a dead woman, they remembered Antoine, but where they had left him there was only a guardsman writhing on the stones, his hands clutched around a knife protruding from his belly. Someone reported seeing a tall, skinny old man half dragging the boy down the street … and the chase was on.

  The three could not return to their house on Rue Dupont and they dared not appeal for help from anyone who might be greedy to collect the reward that would soon be on their heads. Being English had kept Celia and her children safe up to then, but with her husband branded a traitor and a guard dead by Finn’s hand, they would be taken directly to the guillotine if they were caught. Hoarding his own grief for a later time, the resourceful Finn stole a gun and some ragged clothing into which they could change, and, convincing a dung collector he was an expert shot, forced the terrified peasant to carry them out of the city in his stinking cart.

  Much of what followed ran together in a blur of freezing nights and days when they were too exhausted and too hungry to do more than huddle together under a pile of hay, numbed by a sense of loss so deep and chilling Renée feared she would never know the pleasure of feeling warm again. When they reached the coast, it had been no simple matter to find someone willing to ferry them across the Channel or, once they were in London, to present Renée and Antoine—half-starved and lice-infested— to Charles Holstead, Lord Paxton, as the children of his estranged sister.

  They had not expected him to welcome them with open arms and an open heart. It had been thirty years since he had seen his sister, and no less than thirty days since he had received a letter from the French government informing him the entire family of the ci-devant Duc d’Orlôns had perished. At first Renée had thought her uncle was just shocked to see them alive, but she soon came to understand that it was the shock of having to assume the burden of their welfare that had sent him staggering back, his hand clutched over his heart. With almost indecent haste he had proposed her m
arriage to Edgar Vincent, showing a callous indifference to the fact that she was still in mourning for her parents.

  She had refused, initially, to even consider the marriage. For the first four and a half months they had lived in London, nothing, not the hostile isolation she endured in her uncle’s town house, not the accusations of ingratitude, nor the endless lectures on obligation could have made her agree to marry Edgar Vincent of her own free will. This coming January she would be twenty-one and of legal age to make her own choice in the matter of marriage, but four weeks ago in London someone had shot her uncle. Antoine had been accused of the crime, and Renée had found herself with no choice but to agree to the marriage, agree to help Roth, agree to do anything necessary to prevent her brother from being arrested for attempted murder.

  Renée opened her eyes. Her gaze fell unerringly to the small sandlewood box that contained the tiny vial of rose-scented oil she rationed out a drop at a time for her bathwater, the larger bottle of bluish laudanum she took to ease her monthly cramps, and the folded paper packets of powdered opiate that were sometimes required to ease the blinding pain of a migraine headache. The latter two, she had been warned by the physician in London, could be lethal if taken together in large doses. More than once she had been tempted to do just that, and if not for Antoine and Finn, she might well have succumbed to the idyll of a deep, dreamless sleep.

  She stared into the mirror again. Her tears had left two shiny streaks on her cheeks, and she wet the small square of flannel that was folded over the rim of the washbowl, scrubbing her face until it glowed a resentful pink. She started to bathe the bruise marks on her throat when her gaze stalled again. There were more marks lower down where Roth’s fingers had dug beneath the edge of her bodice, and, disgusted at the thought that there might still be some of his sweat or spittle on her flesh, she unfastened the wide ribbon beneath her breasts and shrugged the gown to the floor, chasing the slippery sheath of her silk petticoat after it.

  Dressed only in her chemise, she soaped and scoured her flesh, untying the row of tiny bows in front so that she could wash her breasts and remove the lingering taint of his hands and mouth. There was one mark that would never come off, no matter how hard she rubbed, and in the end she cursed it for what it was: a harlot’s brand. A wine-colored mole, perfectly heart shaped, it was seated above her left breast, high enough to be visible over the edge of all but the most modest of necklines. More than one pair of lecherous eyes had settled on it, bright and hard, assuming it was a cosmetic patch, glued there to invite attention.

  She threw the cloth aside and reached for her dressing gown but it was not on the shelf beside her. With a sigh, she recalled seeing it draped neatly across the foot of the bed and guessed that Jenny had laid it out earlier.

  The bedroom was dark and she paused a moment at the dressing room door, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. The kindling she had set alight earlier had smoldered down to a listless pile of ash. The candle on the nightstand had succumbed to a draft and was sending a thin finger of smoke trailing through the stream of blue-white moonlight that poured through the window. One of the panes had swung open, and she cursed the lack of a sturdy latch that could keep the windows closed against more than a half-hearted breeze.

  A shiver sent her in that direction first. Barefoot, her hair flowing over her shoulders, and her chemise gaping open halfway to her waist, she went to the window and closed the pane. She stood there a moment, her hand still pressed to the glass as she gazed out over the brightly moonlit landscape. A new and unbidden image filled her mind—that of a black-clad highwayman racing across the open fields, free to come and go where he pleased. The image swept her away and she closed her eyes, envisioning herself riding into the wind with him, her arms tight around his chest, her face pressed against his back, her hair fanning out like silvered waves of silk behind them.

  She had ridden out on that dark stretch of road tonight not knowing what to expect. A thief was a thief; they had sly, shifting eyes and half-rotted teeth. They were brutish and coarse; they smelled of ale and sweat and debauchery, with the grime embedded so deeply into their flesh, it corrupted their souls. They were cowards and murderers who deserved to be put behind bars, and she had been able to ease her conscience somewhat by convincing herself this highwayman was no different. He was a thief and a criminal, and, as Roth had so brusquely pointed out, whether she helped capture him or not, his life was fated to end on a noose, hanging from Tyburn Tree.

  Yet she had been startled almost beyond breath when she had seen the tall, mist clad highwayman emerge from the shadows behind the coach. Sly he may have been, and certainly cunning enough to have eluded his hunters for six years, but his demeanor was not that of a common drayman. His laugh had been deep and rich, and when he had extended his hand to seal their pact, his grip had been firm and strong, the gesture almost courtly in manner.

  Renée tipped her head up and stared at the luminous circle of the moon.

  She had thought—seriously thought—of attempting to steal the jewels herself, but Edgar Vincent was not the kind of man who let anyone who picked his pockets get away unscathed. He had given her the rubies in London when their engagement had been announced, and for the following fortnight had allowed her to wear them in his presence. But he always reclaimed them the instant they boarded the coach for home and whisked them away somewhere safe until the next occasion arose when he wanted to display his vulgar extravagance. When Roth had come to her with his proposition—to elicit her help in setting a trap for the elusive Captain Starlight—she had thought it pure fantasy to use the jewels as bait. Madness, even. But now she wondered.

  Could a man who had outfoxed and outmaneuvered the king’s men for all these years manage to slip through the teeth of a trap one more time? She was certain Roth would plan for every possible contingency, but …

  What if the legendary Captain Starlight could actually steal the gems? The suite was worth over fifty thousand pounds, and with that much money she and Finn could take Antoine far away from Roth and his false warrants.

  They could go to America. To New Orleans. Her father had been there just after the American revolution and …

  Her breath fogged the glass pane and she placed her fingertips over the dampness. She was not staring at the moon anymore. Her gaze had been drawn to the reflected glare of candlelight that originated inside the dressing room. She had deliberately left the door ajar to let some of the light spill into the darkened bedroom, but over the course of the past few moments, the gap had grown narrower and narrower, the movement gradual enough for her to have credited it to an errant draft pushing the door slowly closed. Now, however, with only inches of light to go, she knew the door was being pushed by something far more ominous than a ghostly current of air. Something … someone was standing beside the door deliberately cutting off the light and plunging the room into darkness again.

  The skin across her breasts tightened and a fine spray of gooseflesh rippled up her arms. She turned and searched the shadows, but they were too dark and her eyes too disbelieving to discern more than a vague shape against the wall.

  It was not possible. She had imagined him only a moment ago galloping free across the open fields, yet there was no mistaking the configuration of the tricorn and the multi-collared greatcoat. And no mistaking the silver scrollwork on the brace of snaphaunce pistols that were leveled at her chest.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You!” she gasped.

  “Don’t be frightened, mam’selle. I am not here to harm you.”

  It was hardly a reassuring statement with the two pistols glinting in the moonlight. She needed a moment to catch hold of her wits. “Then … may I ask why you are here?”

  “I wanted to know a little more about you. It isn’t every night I am stopped on the road and hired to commit a robbery.”

  “But … h—how did you find me? And”—she glanced at the window and could not remember any vines or latticework attached to the outside
walls—“and how did you get in here?”

  “I followed the coach,” he said simply. “And there is a rather convenient drainpipe running down the wall beside your window. As to how I knew which room was yours, well … that was sheer guesswork on my part, but the sudden appearance of candlelight made for a good start.”

  Renée felt a strange sensation flowing down her body, as if there were rivulets of water sliding over her skin, and she glanced down, startled into realizing the skimpy state of her dress. She had not retied the bows on her chemise and where it gaped open in front, the valley between her breasts was visible, laid bare almost to the waist. Where the linen had been splashed with water, it clung to her skin, clearly revealing the shape of everything not already glowing white in the moonlight. The lower edge of the hem barely reached the tops of her thighs to safeguard her modesty, and below that, her legs gleamed pale and translucent against the shadows. As casually as she could, she pulled the halves of her chemise together.

  “I was not expecting guests. May I at least put on my robe?”

  “I was actually enjoying the view. But if it would make you feel more comfortable, by all means do so.”

  She had to pass through the shaft of moonlight to retrieve the garment, with every step under the vigilant eye of the highwayman, and to her credit, she was able to accomplish it without tripping over her feet. Roth had certainly not planned for this contingency. Who, indeed, would have expected such audacity?