Like the dining room’s combination of clamorous argument echoing against the silence from absent servants, its light was now a shifting mix of shadows and fiery streaks of crimson. The family had lingered in the dining room so long the candles weren’t even lit.
“Raoul is the best of men, and you loved him before the Revolution. You read how bravely he fought at Valmy and all you hate is his politics.” Celeste threw her napkin onto the table, tears standing in her eyes. “Please let me marry him. If you do, I will leave this house, and you will never hear from me again.”
Maman’s breath hissed in, and her eyes met Hélène’s across the table. Hélène suspected hers were as wide and appalled as her mother’s were. But could Papa truly keep clever, stubborn Celeste here if she didn’t wish to stay?
In these terrifying times, nobody traveled anywhere unless forced by necessity. Hélène had moved back to Sainte-Pazanne under the pretext of caring for her mother, after her nephew by marriage had tried to rob her of her widow’s portion at gunpoint. She’d talked her way past him, but she’d practiced ever since then with guns and black powder.
“No.” Papa’s voice was completely cold, that of a patriarch whose family had dictated the law for more than six centuries. “You are my youngest daughter, and I will not abdicate my responsibilities toward you. When de Beynac comes to his senses and agrees to serve the King, I will gladly give you to him. Until then, I will protect you as best as I know how.”
“But…”
A single eyebrow lifted, quelling even Celeste. She inclined her head after a long moment, tears running down her cheeks. Sobs shook her chest, another and another, ripping into her throat, until finally she hid her face in her napkin.
“Petite,” coaxed Maman, putting her hand over her youngest daughter’s.
The weak winter sunlight was fading faster and faster now, disappearing from the room’s windows. A great candelabrum stood ready on the table to light their repast, its candles high above their heads to avoid dazzling their eyes, as did several of its smaller mates on the side tables.
Celeste shoved everything away, including her mother’s touch and her plate. She buried her face in her arms and wailed.
Maman shot a glance at her husband, clearly torn between her duty to support his definition of honor and her need to comfort her daughter.
Papa harrumphed, but his fork hung in midair, lacking the single-minded force he’d displayed earlier. He nodded to his wife, and they silently left the room, their usual practice for dealing with Celeste’s hysterics over things which would not be changed.
Hélène hurried around the table to her sister, wishing yet again the four of them were united as a whole as they’d been for so long. The three women singing in harmony, while Papa played his violin. Or cheering on Papa’s latest racehorse. Or fussing over Celeste’s newest dress…
“Celeste,” she cooed and rubbed her sister’s shoulder.
La petite continued sobbing, but at least she didn’t shrug away from the contact.
“All will be well, sweetheart. They have your best interests at heart,” Hélène tried to reassure her. Logic had never worked well with her sister, but it always was worth a try.
“Nobody has ever loved anyone the way Raoul and I love each other.” Celeste’s voice was so choked with tears as to be almost indistinguishable. “I don’t know why he begrudges me such a love.”
“Perhaps he believes you already have the love.” Hélène leapt on the opportunity to divert her sister. “But marriage is a different matter. He is generous enough not to have forced you to break the betrothal with de Beynac, after all.”
“But how can I wait, knowing he could be killed any day?” Her voice broke.
“There are other men…”
“Haven’t you ever known one man is special?” Her tear-filled eyes met Hélène’s. “So unique that everyone else is completely invisible next to him? So perfect that only he, and he alone, will do for you?”
Hélène hesitated, thinking of Jean-Marie St. Just. Remembering the months of laughter and dancing. The chess games, the conversations about politics, the jokes about trivialities. And, God help her, the candlelight gleaming on his naked body…
“You do know what I mean! You have met such an individual.” Celeste grabbed Hélène’s hands. “Do you deny it?”
“Mon Dieu, I wish I could,” Hélène sighed, as much to herself as to Celeste. “But I’ll never have him. I don’t even know where he is.”
“That is why I, too, will not settle for second best. Why having my love, I must also have marriage with him or go to my grave unwed.” She pulled the thin gold chain out from around her neck with Raoul’s grandmother’s ring and held it out. “Ah, Hélène, it is Raoul de Beynac for me and no one else in this world.”
It had been more than five years since she had seen Jean-Marie, yet no other man had so much as made her pulse twitch. Still, Celeste could have her Raoul if she but waited.
Hélène steeled herself for a storm of disappointment. “You must be patient, petite.”
Sheer disbelief stormed through Celeste’s dark eyes and she clutched Raoul’s small gold ring like a talisman. “Don’t you understand? He is a soldier, and he could be killed any day. I want to have him now!”
Tears welled up and over, spilling down Celeste’s cheeks. She pointed a finger at her sister. “Go away and promise me I won’t see you again until tomorrow.” She squeezed her eyes shut, sobbing, twisting, and tugging on the thin gold chain, as if she was holding her lover’s hand.
“I promise,” Hélène agreed, recognizing their old promise. She backed out of the room, hoping this bout of hysterics would end quickly. There’d be no approaching la petite until it did.
A sharp POP! sounded just after she’d passed the doors.
“No!” screamed Celeste.
Hélène whirled and peeked into the dining room, wondering what else could have gone wrong.
The thin gold chain was slipping from Celeste’s neck in a single long thread. A bell-like tone announced the ring’s leap onto the wooden floor. It rolled, flashed once in the sun’s dying light, and disappeared under the sideboard.
“No!” screeched Celeste, diving to find it. She pulled up short, baffled by the darkness under the massive piece of furniture. Finally she began to crawl along the floor, methodically shoving her hand into every opening under the sideboard and cursing.
Hélène took a step into the room and stopped. She couldn’t see where the ring was, given the darkness, although it should be easy to find—if there was light in the dining room. On the other hand, she’d given her word to la petite they wouldn’t meet again until morning.
If only one of the candelabrum on the side table was lit, it would be enough to help her.
Could she do so from the door?
She’d always been mesmerized by fires, from harvest bonfires’ great leaping flames to a single candle’s delicate flicker—and terrified by her own fascination. But still, she couldn’t stop herself from staring into their blazing hearts and wishing she could shape the power there.
True, she’d heard family legends of Maman’s Breton ancestors, women who’d been able to accomplish intriguing feats with their mastery of ordinary objects. But those tales had always seemed more fantasy than reality, stories from a time before Christianity, here on France’s western coast where great carved stones hinted at powers beyond mortal understanding. Even Maman’s account of how her great-great-great-grandmother had lit a lantern to warn her husband of an ambush, even though she was bound and gagged—had seemed a story more mythical than real.
Cher Bernard, on the other hand, treated fire with extreme caution and studied it the way warriors eyed their greatest enemy. He fought to eliminate it and its dangers from men’s lives with his electrical igniter, all the while knowing that one false move in his laboratory would let fire claim his life in a single massive explosion. As it had in the end.
Never openly admitting
his fear, he’d taught her all he knew of fire’s science until much of her unreasoning terror was gone. She was still very, very wary of it but seemed to have reached an accommodation with the power residing inside the flames, if one could call it that. Welcoming her greater comfort with “old-fashioned methods,” as cher Bernard called matches and fuses, her husband had encouraged her to take full responsibility for that aspect of his experiments.
She’d once set fire to slow matches, those lengths of slow-burning fuse used to light gunpowder, without using a candle or another lighted length of slow match. She’d been alone in Bernard’s laboratories, and confident she fully understood slow matches and gunpowder. She simply hadn’t known she didn’t need to physically touch them and had lit it from less than a foot away, while wishing it would light quickly so she could check on Bernard’s unaccustomed silence behind the screen.
Nobody could have been more surprised than she was when the slow match started smoldering. It had been all she could do not to drop her fuse and run shrieking from the room. Instead, she’d decorously snuffed her fuse while her heart slammed rapidly around her ribcage, announced the countdown for the slow match—and never told anyone else what had happened.
Could she do as well with a candle from a few feet away?
Hélène turned quietly until she could see the side candelabrum in the knife’s polished silver.
Three candles, all beeswax, all with linen candlewicks, all well made. Everything could burst into flame quickly and brilliantly when excited, as cher Bernard, the master chemist, had taught her. Deep down inside, they were like a bow spinning into dry wood: Turn it very quickly until a spark came, and fan that spark.
She closed her eyes and focused on making the candles’ linen candlewicks revolve more and more rapidly where nobody except a chemist could see. Faster and faster, spinning more and more…
A flame snapped into being on the center candle, rather as if it had always been there. An instant later, the second candle and the third also burned brightly.
Hélène gulped and closed her mouth before anyone could comment on one particularly well-lit corner. God help her, but she’d actually lit a candle. Three of them, in fact.
She also seemed to have ignited a brutal headache behind her eyes, and the question was who she really was. That hadn’t mattered in the friendly confines of cher Bernard’s laboratory where anything and everything could be explored if it might help France. But here?
She wouldn’t try such an experiment again.
Celeste smacked her hand down on the ring and began to back away from the sideboard, chortling over her success.
Her older sister smiled privately. She’d have to light a candle to the Virgin tomorrow—undoubtedly with a match—to say thank you.
VIENNA, MAY 1793
“The Vendée has risen en masse against Paris.” Rodrigo dropped the stack of newspapers onto the table. Knowing the latest tidings from everywhere in Europe was a necessity for the proprietors of the Austrian capital’s most fashionable—and exclusive—gambling den. It wasn’t a profession Jean-Marie had ever expected to find the proud Spaniard engaged in, but its profits were a definite benefit.
Jean-Marie immediately set aside his coffee and began sorting through the sheets with almost indecent haste. He’d been glad to leave London almost two years ago, with its citizens’ stubborn insistence on treating Americans as recalcitrant toddlers who’d run back to their king after another, better “spanking.” Coming to Europe’s center was almost a relief, especially since he could aid its continual opposition to the French revolutionaries. After all, their princess was the French queen who’d just been butchered.
But none of that, or his avoidance of Sara as much as possible, had kept his mind away from Hélène d’Agelet. It was purest folly, to be obsessed with a woman, whom he’d only known for five months and left five years ago. Yet his hands were shaking as he hunted for mentions of her, her family, or their lands.
“London papers,” Rodrigo commented, settling into his chair and throwing back his head, scents from the finest English tea teasing their nostrils.
“Ah!” Jean-Marie yanked the slim page to the top and began reading the few, cryptic words. Sara was sleeping off a night’s debauchery, so he could say what he pleased afterward.
“If Brittany and Normandy also rise up…” He fixed his stare on Rodrigo, who’d once sat on a crown prince’s war council.
“Hmm,” was the noncommittal answer.
“Why not?” he demanded. “Paris is loathed in the provinces, and the Vendeans are excellent soldiers.”
“Paris is terrified and has an army.” Rodrigo’s face shifted, his eyes turning abstract. “I am not sure the Vendeans will believe how much evil their enemies are capable of.”
“Evil?” Jean-Marie stiffened, watching his friend with growing alarm. “What vision are you seeing, Rodrigo?”
Rodrigo’s visions came rarely but were always accurate. They were usually of great events, such as an immense storm, and occasionally of a happening in a friend’s life.
“Blood.” The dark chocolate eyes turned inward at images not granted to others. “Streams of blood, filling the streets and the rivers. Killing everyone—from the oldest to the youngest, even the beasts in the field. Fire rising to the sky from every corner of the farms, towns, and the woods…All by the order of their distant masters.”
He shook his head, black hair flying forward to cover his appalling scar.
“I must go to her.” Jean-Marie sprang to his feet.
Rodrigo’s fingers locked on his wrist. “You cannot help her.”
“I do not believe you.”
“You do more good here, helping me run an outpost of the British Secret Service.”
“You’re joking.” Jean-Marie stared at him.
“Would I on that subject? Would you have helped me if I’d asked your permission?”
Recent events combined with old experiences to form a pattern.
“All the unusual visitors, the gamblers with their truly unusual bets—they were passing messages!”
Rodrigo bowed.
But spying meant little, next to her.
“Even so, Hélène needs me. I must go to her.”
“You know as well as I that you will die before you reach her,” Rodrigo snapped. “Besides, you have greatly shortened your life by your foolish insistence on not tasting Sara’s carnal juices. I will not allow you to commit suicide.”
Jean-Marie threw a salt cellar at him, which Rodrigo caught and set down without losing his soldier’s wariness.
“Someday a woman will shatter your inviolable calm, Rodrigo, and you too will beg for her survival,” Jean-Marie growled.
A muscle ticked in his friend’s jaw. “The only lady with that power sings in an angels’ choir, mi hermano.”
Jean-Marie threw up his hands and turned away. He took out his rage on an inanimate object, pounding his fists against the wall.
“How long?” he asked, without looking at his brother of the heart.
“I don’t know. This vision only lets me see blood and fire, not even the time of year.” Rodrigo shuddered.
THE VENDÉE, THE MONTH NIV ÔSE OF THE YEAR II,
JANUARY 1794
Raoul de Beynac considered his orders again, the plan of total destruction as the Committee of Public Safety called it. They’d defeated the rebel army a few weeks ago at Savenay, and now it was time to stamp out the fire of rebellion with a bonfire of their own.
All of it necessary to frighten rebels elsewhere in France away from the foreign jackals—to keep the northwest from the Austrians and English, the northeast from the Prussians, the southwest from the Spanish. France had not faced so many foreign armies in centuries, and she needed to be united, or they would all die. A harsh lesson, but sometimes fools needed that.
As for himself, he was fighting for Celeste and their future together. That she and their children would know peace and never see anything like the
mobs he’d watched destroy Paris. He needed to know she could walk down the streets safely, holding their sons and daughters by the hand, could laugh over a new dress because no bandits would rob her house. If he had to kill, and kill again, to provide that for her—then he would do so gladly and without a second thought.
Any penalty he might pay, even the ultimate, meant less than nothing to him, if it brought her another second of happiness. After all, there would be no Heaven for him without his angel Celeste.
He could do a great deal in the coming campaign, thankfully. Thanks to his efforts at Savenay, he’d been given his choice of routes for his “infernal column” to follow on its mission of total destruction.
If his sister had been able to stay in touch with dearest, dearest Celeste, he’d find her within the next few weeks, no matter how well that rebel leader of a father had hidden her.
He dipped his pen into the ink and began to write,
“Ma chère Louise…”
SOMEWHERE IN THE VENDÉE, FEBRUARY 1794
“We can rest here in the woods,” Papa said. “Nobody can see us amidst the trees.”
Celeste shouldered off her pack and sank to the ground gratefully, while Hélène helped Maman do the same.
Papa stayed alert, listening for any followers. He was one of the very, very few Royalist leaders who’d escaped Savenay. The Blues, the Republican army, wanted to catch him more than they wanted to fight the English.
She understood their feelings perfectly: He was an unfeeling tyrant, who understood nothing of reason and honor. Especially honor as it pertained to a seven-year-old betrothal. At twenty-six years of age, she had not yet married the man whose only fault was his differing views on France’s future. Even her father admitted Raoul de Beynac was a patriot.
But what could she hope for now, after the rebellion? Like many other women, they’d followed Papa and the army. Parbleu, how she’d hated it, although she’d probably have enjoyed it in Raoul’s company. Her family had fled after the crushing defeat at Savenay, but they’d never been caught by any of the Blues.
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