Then he stopped, confronting her. "Are you hungry, Fleur Bosanquet?"
"Yes," she admitted softly, realising, yes, she was. Tantalising aromas of coffee and port rose around her where before she had only scented danger. The restaurants and halls glowed like brilliant embers. And de Villaret at his most charming was lethal.
"What is your desire then?" The words were a caress and she felt deliciously tempted.
"I do not know the Palais Royal, citizen. I came here once with Thom—"
"Not know it?" He laughed. "How can you live in Paris and claim such ignorance? Shall it be Italian glaces—though I warn you they are better value and more genuine in the Rue des Italiennes."
"Oh, here will do," Fleur answered. "But not ices."
"Hmm." He scanned the arcades on either side. "Then not the Grotte Flamande—it's mostly billiards and the entertainment's not fare for women—nor La Barrière, the new chef's untried, though they say he makes pate fou. If you are swooning with hunger, they do a decent supper at Café Liberté," he jabbed his cane towards the lights at the end of the gallery, "or pasta in the Rue de Beaujolais, but as it's after nine, it may be a crush with the apres theatre crowd, though you might see the former Duc d'Orléans there. Citizen Egalite himself—"
"No, there, please," Fleur cut in swiftly, nodding towards the Liberté.
"Citizeness, it shall be my pleasure."
It was not quite what she expected. The powdered maitre of the Liberté, wearing his obligatory tricolore, fulsomely welcomed de Villaret by name. Having passed the lady's shawl and the customer's hat and cane to an underling, he requested an entwined couple in one of the more private stalls to disconnect and resume their tangling elsewhere, then he fussily mouchoired the cushioned, crescent-shaped bench before he permitted the new arrivals to be seated. Fleur was caught between dismay at the enforced intimacy and the urge to laugh.
"Perhaps I should tell my waiters to dust the benches," she giggled, and sobered as de Villaret slid in after her. With a painted screen beside her, she was snared in a luxuriant velvet cul-de-sac. Around them, the warm shadows, concealing other clients, whispered of confidences. It was definitely a rendezvous.
"Hmm," she commented, trailing a silken cushion with the back of her hand. "I thought there was a shortage."
"Feeling safer?" He eased the loose satin bolster behind his back with the nonchalance of a pasha settling on a divan with his latest concubine. Safer! Sitting thigh by thigh with a Jacobin, and no oxen or gall-tongued sans-culotte to chaperone them! "Wine or champagne mousseux? We missed out last week." We?
"Oh, wine," Fleur declared. "Did you not know there is a war?"
"You are feeling better. How about vin de l'Hermitage then?" His nod instantly summoned the hovering waiter.
"The staff know you," she observed, but she was looking around at the other customers—what she could glimpse of them. Most of them were in an embrace.
"The Liberté caters for rakes and roués," de Villaret countered witheringly as though he could read her thoughts. "You pay extra for the degree of shadow. I bring all my mistresses and even the women I find wandering in the Palais Royal here. That's better. Now take the poker from your spine, citizeness! A lot of restaurants are lit as dimly as this, but the food is excellent and I did offer you a choice. Here's the wine. This will put heart into you."
Well, her knuckles had been well and truly rapped.
"The Chinese have a saying," he told her, touching his glass to hers. "May you live in interesting times."
"It sounds like a curse. Especially now." She glanced round at the brass-ringed crimson curtains, knowing who lurked beyond the windowpanes. Would her pursuer stay in wait?
"Be at ease. He cannot harm you." At ease? When the concern in de Villaret's eyes was exploding the fortifications she had been building all last week?
"It's becoming too frequent," she said softly.
"Attempts on your life?" His expression hardened. "Or that you perpetually need rescuing. Am I missing something?"
"Oh, I do it deliberately to earn your attention, I promise you. Maybe I should start extricating aristocrats from La Force."
His fingers tightened around the stem of his glass, then he raised it and drank, watching her. "It would certainly bring me running, but I don't find that remark particularly amusing."
"I'm sorry." She gazed down at her napkin.
He changed the subject. "Was the de Gouges woman worth listening to?"
"She did not turn up."
That made him smile. "All promises and no delivery—just like Manon Roland." He let that settle and, to tease conversation out of her, added, "Don't you think one of the reasons the Revolution happened was because our culture was becoming effeminate?"
"Oh, that is nonsense." Fleur forgot about the man lurking outside and contemplated the pleasure of aiming a damp sole at her rescuer's ankle.
"Is it nonsense, citizeness? Old France was like that crone Madame du Barry, powdered and puffed up with other people's hair, hair that poor women had to sell to feed their wretched children. Where was France's manhood? Wafting around Versailles with painted faces, beauty spots, wigs and lace. Pah, every inch of life was beribboned, full of whirls and flourishes." Goodness, thought Fleur, had meeting M. Beugneux inspired this lecture? "Look, I believe Rousseau was right," continued her companion."We're missing virtue. There's an honesty we have to get back to. I'm sorry." He broke off, and met the devilry in Fleur's face.
"Women staying at home with their sewing instead of attending meetings, you mean?"
"Well..." Fortunately for him, the waiter arrived.
"If I were La Coquette," Fleur informed him after she had ordered, "you would be trying to seduce me and I would be accusing you of hypocrisy."
For an instant de Villaret looked affronted and then he launched a counter-offensive. "And what am I doing now? Charity work for widows?" He leaned forward, watching her.
"But you are La Coquette, aren't you? Fleur... La Coquette... Which of you is real?"
"La Coquette doesn't exist," said Fleur quietly. "Please don't imagine she could. I only did it to bring the customers in." She watched him lean back like a lawyer who had extracted an admission. "There, you have your confession at last, but it took you a while, citizen. Maybe you should take all suspects out to dine. Interrogation au coq... or truffe," she added lamely, her cheeks growing warm. Au coq! Mon Dieu, sometimes she didn't behave as though she was nineteen but nine. "I-I didn't mean that."
"I know, but I like it when you make mistakes." He leaned an elbow on the tablecloth, his chin cupped in his hand. "Let me confess too. My name is Raoul, Fleur Bosanquet, and I don't think you murdered anyone."
"You don't?" She felt like an insect being slowly bound with silken threads. "Raoul?"
"Raoul." The name growled provocatively. The Jacobin was going to kiss her and she was going to let him.
The waiter coughed.
"Not in cold blood at any rate," added de Villaret, forced to shift back as a dessert descended between them, its rosy sides wobbling.
Fleur drew a deep breath and somehow found her spoon. "I should tell Thomas to try something like this." She licked the fluffy mixture of cream and rosewater from her lips."Maybe with chocolate. We do not have enough chocolate on our menu." De Villaret made no comment, seeming content to savour her enjoyment. "Your charity to widows," she added huskily, refusing more wine, "does it come at a price?"
A slow roguish smile curled about his mouth. "You mercenary baggage!" he murmured, permitting the waiter to refill his glass. "Of course it does, especially after midnight."
Would he cage her here till midnight? She finished her dessert in silence, her thoughts as confused as a ransacked house. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"What, like Newton brained by an apple?"
"Something like that."
"Well," he sighed, "I am wondering if we can begin again, Fleur-de-Lis. Whether we can try and imagine there is only now.
"
"Now?"
"Definitely now." He was dangerously close. She longed to feel his fingers steal beneath her curls; she wanted him to draw her face to his. "No future, no past, just now."
The deputy was wearing the grin of a general who knows the second campaign has been a success. But there was something else as he lifted his glass towards her: not just a speculative desire that made something deep inside her ripple with longing but a tenderness in his smile that made her feel treasured.
"Oh," she whispered. "Now is all we can wish for."With her senses seduced, Fleur wanted to hold this moment between her palms as though it were a fragile dove that might take flight at any moment and leave her lonely and lost. But this wasn't real. Tomorrow he would return to his investigations and she would be forever watching the street corners, waiting for the knock on the door and the national guard with warrants.
Glass met glass. Fleur took a sip and grimaced. The wine tasted sour after the sweetness.
"I lied just then," she recanted. "I want to know about your past."
There was a long pause. His gaze moved pensively and slowly, very slowly, up her black brocade buttons as though he was slowly undoing each. "What do you need to know?"
Need? Her whole body was burning. Fanning herself, she tried to keep her voice steady. "W-what was your profession before you became caught up in the Revolution?"
"I was trained as an artist." He seemed glad to be distracted by the cheese platter that was being placed between them. His knife sliced into the ripe softness.
Fleur drew a breath and checked herself. No, she could never tell him that she had sat for the great David as a child.
A silence settled between them before he added, "I painted portraits. I should like to paint you." And not just your face, his gaze told her.
"Do you—" She swallowed; words were hard to disentangle in her growing confusion. "Do you always tell the truth as an artist?"
"The truth."The word sounded like a sigh. One of his dark eyebrows lifted fractionally—she did like his eyebrows-in the cynical way that was becoming familiar. "No, people do not want the truth. Some would say portrait painters are as much the sediment of society as prostitutes. We take money to massage another's vanity. Have you seen any of David's work? Some say he is the lackey of the Revolution. What do you think?" Fleur was not sure whether his clever mind was still setting traps for her.
"Well, I suppose if he is painting history being made, it makes him a sort of visual chronicler. Just that alone should make him valuable to posterity, shouldn't it?" But she could imagine King Louis's brothers burning David's Tennis Court Oath in the palace yard at Versailles if ever things returned to normal."I do not know what you think of David's techniques, citizen, but as an ignorant observer I think them excellent except..."
"Except?"
"Except the women in his early paintings are so useless. The Oath of the Horatii, for instance. It is all military glory, men together, and the women are just a wailing heap in the background with nothing to say for themselves at all." Oh dear! That was a mistake. Where was the provincial nobody from Calvados supposed to have seen such a masterpiece? "But you have distracted me, citizen," she chided. "You do not need my opinion. We were talking about you. How did your family feel about you taking up a paintbrush?"
"Instead of a musket or a lawyer's quill?" His eyes lost their soft gleam as though she had stumbled on a hidden lode of pain. "Diable, it would be an understatement to say my father was displeased. In his opinion, soldiering was the only worthwhile career. We parted on bitter terms. I left home without his blessing."
"It bothered you?"Too light a word. Too late, she saw the sharp lines slashed from flare of nostril to a mouth curled down in strong displeasure.
"Not at the time," he answered with a dismissive shrug. So he was wary she might dig deeper.
Trying to be more subtle, she asked: "I've often wondered, as an artist, do you... you must look at the world with a different eye? Are we not blocks and triangles of light to you?"
"The beautiful Fleur Bosanquet reduced to geometry!" De Villaret tilted his head and smiled his slow, lazy smile as if she had given him given carte blanche to stare his fill. "That is a fascinating suggestion. Has some other artist told you that is how he thinks of you?" His hand rose in worship to the column of her throat.
Fired by his touch, Fleur needed to restore the conversation to a more prosaic level before she melted to a cinder.
"Oh, a boy who had aspirations as a painter once told me I looked like a toad with indigestion. Oh, Ciel! You've spilt your wine. Hold still." She uploaded the salt cellar generously over his shirt cuff.
De Villaret, recovering from almost choking, exclaimed hoarsely, "Then the young clod was either blind or stupid."
Frowning sweetly, Fleur even gave the matter some thought. "Stupid, I'm afraid, and rather a braggart. What's the matter?"
He dragged his other hand across his forehead. "I'm sorry," he exclaimed, clearly making a courteous effort to continue the conversation. "How old were you then?"
I must be boring him, decided Fleur. He probably expected us to be intertwined by now. Even the couple who had just come into the restaurant were already embracing. And she must look so dowdy, buttoned to the chin in this tedious black when all the other women here were wearing evening necklines. But he repeated his question.
"Oh." She stared at the cloth. "About nine. I was rather dumpy as a child but he had no right to be so rude."
That was a mistake. The Jacobin was frowning as if he feared she might suddenly balloon out of shape that very instant, but he did not tease her. Instead he refilled their glasses with painstaking care. "Did you retaliate?" he asked.
Encouraged, Fleur nodded impishly. "I brib—no matter." She bit her lip. Oh, she had nearly tripped then.
"Oh no, don't hold back now, Fleur." Imperious fingers tilted her chin up. "I want to know exactly what you did."
"I-I hid a toad in his satchel," she lied, editing out the bribe she had given the footman to do the task. "T-tell me, did you make a decent living from your art?"
"A toad?" The edge of his thumb skimmed her lower lip. Hmm, she wanted to open her lips and taste...
"A-a very little toad. At least so I..." Oh God, the intense gleam in those beautiful eyes. If only he weren't her enemy.
"A toad with indigestion," he repeated. "Nom d'un chien!" Released, Fleur regarded him with huffy confusion as the man's long fingers rose to hide his laughter and his shoulders visibly shook. "Oh, Fleur, Fleur."
She glared at him. Not that he noticed. If she could ever, ever say that de Villaret had come close to hysteria, no, not hysteria, losing control might be more apt, this moment was it.
"Yes, well, need we dwell on that?" she retorted tersely.
He swallowed, trying to rearrange his features into at least a semblance of sobriety, and offered her the cheese platter. As if Roquefort or Chester would placate her! Unappeased, Fleur served herself. "I asked if you'd made a decent living from your art," she growled. "Commissions and things like that." She pushed the plate back and he served himself the new Norman cheese that was à la mode, taking care not to look at her.
"I... yes..." The damn man was sucking in his cheeks as though he was close to bursting into laughter again. "Yes, I had plenty of commissions before the Bastille fell but suddenly life pointed me in a different direction." He dabbed his lips with his napkin before he gazed back at her. "Somehow I ended up a deputy." There was a different warmth in his expression now. Something had changed, softened further, but the desire was still there crackling invisibly in the air between them.
"That cannot have been as easy as it sounds," she said softly.
"I had help," he answered, letting his eyes wander lazily over her with an artist's freedom. "My mentor was ambitious. He climbed high, changing his coat to suit the fashion. I suppose I seized hold of his coat-tails and held on."
"No." She leaned back, shaking her head. "You bel
ieved."
His expression grew distant. "Yes, and I still believe. I know what it is like to be at someone's beck and call. I believe in equality and freedom of opportunity."
But not for women. Aloud, Fleur said, "So do I. But there are always ruthless men who use the dreams of others to make money, aren't there? Wherever there is a niche, they exploit it. The Revolution took place, don't you think, because people were hungry and desperate, and yet nothing has changed. I sometimes wonder whether the Revolution occurred because a lot of people were bored. They sneered at the King and Queen so much that even the ordinary people started to sneer as well. I suppose you think that a foolish observation."
"No, a most acute one, and you are right about greed too. That is why Robespierre and Marat have earned the people's love. They don't exploit anyone to line their pockets."
"Do you?"
"No! Hey, a few morsels of Norman cheese and you are as fierce as a tricoteuse."
"An honest question, Raoul."
"I draw a salary, no sinecure—I work for it—and I derive some income from my grandfather on my mother's side. Now let us talk about you, citizeness." Somehow his hand had moved across to take hers. "Apart from being a duplicitous, argumentative minx, no doubt engendered by being overweight as a child..." He paused, the golden gaze reflecting the lamps and mirroring her face. "You were thin with hunger back in Caen. Why? Bosanquet would not have let his future wife starve. What really happened?"
Duplicitous, sadly, yes! The teasing bruised her. Her soul yearned for no lies between them, but she must play this game forever. Should she offer an explanation of the catapult? Perhaps a bone of truth was necessary for him to chew on.
"It is quite simple. I was starving and Monsieur Bosanquet was dying. He offered me marriage to keep his possessions out of his nephew's hands. I was hungry, so tired of being hungry, so I agreed." She looked up and hoped she saw understanding in his eyes. His mouth was tight with satisfaction. Another admission for his dossier. "I am not a Medusa, if that is what you suspect."
Fleur-de-Lis Page 27