by Joan Wolf
He said in a hard voice, “My mother didn’t care. She was having an affair with another man the whole time it was happening.”
“Mon Dieu.” she breathed.
He gave a harsh laugh. “Pretty disgusting, isn’t it?”
“That’s awful,” she replied. “Did your father know?”
“No. She was there at his bedside like a good wife. He didn’t know what she was doing when she was gone.”
“But you knew?”
“I caught them,” he said flatly. “He was a neighbor of ours, you see, and I caught them in the fishing house oat by the lake.”
“Oh, Leo,” she said with pity. “How awful for you. How old were you?”
“Sixteen,” he replied.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “That is an ugly thing for you to carry around.”
“I’ve never told anyone about this,” he said. He looked at her and frowned in puzzlement. “Until now.”
“Sometimes it helps to share a burden,” she said. “If it helps you at all, I am glad you told me.”
“I’ve never forgiven her,” he said. “I know you preach forgiveness and charity, Gabrielle, but there are some things that just can’t be forgiven.”
“She did a very bad thing,” Gabrielle said. “Is she sorry for it, do you think?”
“A year after my father was dead, she married the other man. I wouldn’t say that she was sorry in the least,” he said.
“It sounds as if she loved this other man,” Gabrielle said.
“She slept with him, Gabrielle, while my father was dying.” His voice was deeply bitter. “Christ, all they had to do was wait a few months.”
The thunder seemed to have stopped. The only sound in the room now was the rain beating against the window.
Gabrielle rested her head against his arm. “I’m not trying to defend her, Leo. What she did is not defensible.”
He put his arm around her and drew her close. “I was actually glad when she got married. It got her out of the house so I could go home again.”
“No one else knew?”
“I never told anyone.”
“That was good,” Gabrielle said. “So you are still estranged?”
“Yes.”
“Does this make her unhappy?”
She felt him shrug. “Insofar as it reminds her of what she did, I suppose it does. I don’t care.”
Gabrielle thought that he did care. She thought that part of his mission in life was never to let his mother forget what she had done. She thought that it could not be easy to be Leo’s mother. She was not going to say this to Leo, however.
“Did you love your father?” she asked softly.
“My father was a wonderful man. That’s what makes the whole thing so sordid.”
On the mattress, Colette began to close her eyes.
“Look,” Gabrielle said. “Colette is going to sleep.”
“Why don’t we follow her example and do the same?” He stood up and Gabrielle followed him. He bent, picked up the quilt and once more spread it on the bed. Then they each went to their own side of the bed and got in, Gabrielle first taking off her jacket.
“You must be cold,” she said. “You had only your nightshirt on.”
“How about coming over here and warming me up?” he asked.
“I told you about the herbs…”
“I just want to hold you,” he said. “Nothing more.”
“Well, all right.” She moved in his direction and was taken into a warm embrace. “Mmm,” she said, resting her head against his chest. “You don’t feel cold at all. You feel warm.”
“My feet are cold.”
“Well, keep them to yourself,” she warned. “I was suing on mine and they are warm. I want to keep them that way.”
“All right,” he said pitifully. “I’ll just let them freeze away.”
“We could always get Colette to lie on them,” she said. “That would warm them up.”
“No, thank you, sweetheart!” he said forcefully. “I’m sure they’ll warm up on their own.”
She chuckled sleepily. She could hear his heart beating steadily under her cheek and it was oddly soporific.
“Good night, Leo,” she said.
“Good night, Gabrielle.”
In no time at all, she was asleep.
Twenty-Three
Francois Nicholas Mollien, the French minister of the Public Treasury, was sitting at his desk when the war minister came into his office. Mollien looked up from his figures.
“I have had a report from one of the teams that is searching for the Rothschild gold,” the war minister said.
“Oh?” Mollien raised one of his thick black eyebrows.
“The officer I put in charge of organizing the roadblocks had a report from the lieutenant who is stationed outside Rouen. He reports that he stopped and searched a circus.”
“So?” Mollien said. “What is so strange about a circus?”
“This one is traveling toward Spain. And it had an Englishman with it. An Englishman who had just been married to the circus owner. In Brussels.”
“Ah,” Mollien said. “Now, that is interesting. Did the search turn up anything?”
“No. But all those wagons… It would not be difficult to conceal the gold somewhere in those wagons, I think.”
Mollien sat back in his chair. “What are you going to do?”
“I think it would be worthwhile to send a man to accompany this circus. If it is carrying the gold they will have to transfer it into the hands of the English. It will be difficult to do that with a French army officer looking on.”
“Can you spare a man?”
“We’ll pull one of the men off the roadblock and assign him to the circus.”
“Good idea,” Mollien said.
The war minister nodded. “I’ll send the order out right away.”
Twenty-Four
The twelve o’clock show was Leo’s first turn as ringmaster. How did I ever get myself into this? he thought grimly as he dressed in the back of the wagon with Colette looking on. She had given up following Gabrielle around a few minutes earlier and had come back to flop on her sofa.
He knew the answer to that question, all right. He had bribed Gabrielle into giving him a kiss by promising to fill in as ringmaster.
And thanks to that kiss, it looked as if he was going to get a lot more.
It was worth it, he told himself as he slid his arms into the red hunting jacket, which was too small across his shoulders. The thought of the coming night filled his mind and he felt his manhood stir.
Better control my thoughts, he told himself. I don’t want to make more of a spectacle of myself than I already am.
Colette let out a long sigh, and as he turned to look at her, the events of last night came back to his mind.
Whatever possessed me to tell all of that to Gabrielle? I haven’t had such a loose tongue since… since it happened.
Yet he wasn’t sorry he had told her about his mother. For some reason, that heavy secret seemed lighter this morning. Perhaps it was true what Gabrielle had said, perhaps it helped to share a burden. And Gabrielle certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone. She didn’t know any of the people involved, and would never know them, so his secret was safe with her. Besides, she wasn’t the type of person to betray a confidence. He thought he knew her well enough to know that.
He wondered why she had changed her mind and agreed to sleep with him. Did it have something to do with the way I helped her out with Franz? Is this her way of showing gratitude?
If it was, a gentleman wouldn’t take advantage of it, he thought. But he had every intention of taking advantage of whatever impulse it might have been that had caused Gabrielle to acquiesce to him. He had never met a woman who appealed to him the way she did. Her unique mixture of strength and vulnerability; her loyalty to her young brothers; her magic touch with animals; her gallantry in taking on the burden of the circus after her father had died—all of th
ese things drew him to her as he had never been drawn to anyone before. And she was so beautiful. It stirred him just to look at her.
He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.
And tonight she would be his.
His eyes fell on Colette. “What are we going to do with you?” he asked.
Tie her, he thought.
I have to remember to bring some rope back to the hotel tonight. Gabrielle can’t object to tying her up for an hour. She can stay perfectly comfortably on her mattress while we…do what we want to do.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to go and look for a piece of rope while he was thinking of it. He didn’t want to get back to the hotel room tonight and find that he had forgotten this most important piece of equipment.
I’ll get some baling twine from the hay wagon, he thought, then finished buttoning up his coat and jumped out of the wagon to do his errand.
When Leo stepped into the ring and the audience applauded, he had to restrain himself from turning and walking out.
God, if any of my fellow officers could see me now! he thought as he waited for the applause to die down. He couldn’t believe that he was about to make a fool of himself in front of a bunch of farmers and shopkeepers.
“Good afternoon, mesdames et messieurs,” he said in the voice that could carry across a battlefield. “The Cirque Equestre welcomes you to our show. We will start off today with Mademoiselle Gabrielle Robichon and her Liberty Horses.”
He made a motion toward the performer’s door and Fantan trotted in, followed by Kania, Shaitan, Sheiky and Dubai. The horses began to circle the ring and Gabrielle took the center. Leo ducked out the door.
Mathieu and Albert were standing outside.
“You were good, Leo,” Albert said. “Nice and loud. Gerard isn’t loud enough sometimes.”
“Thank you,” Leo said woodenly.
He grew marginally more comfortable as the circus progressed. The worst part was when he had to chase Sully away from the tightrope and out of the ring. He thought that had to stand as the single most humiliating moment of his life.
The circus members were full of compliments when the show was over and Leo tried to be gracious with his thanks. After all, they couldn’t know how degraded he felt out there in front of the kind of people who would come to the back door of Branford Abbey.
The second show started promptly at four and trouble arose right away. Two young men, obviously drunk, sorted calling out to Gabrielle as she worked the Liberty Horses. Leo heard them and, angered at the insult to Gabrielle, strode up the aisle to where the men were sitting and told them in a low voice that if they didn’t quiet down. he would throw them out.
The next few acts went by without interruption, but - hen Gabrielle entered on Noble, the two young men began to call out again.
“Come out with us after the show, Gabrielle, and we’ll show you a good time.”
“Come and meet some real men, not these circus mountebanks.”
That’s it, Leo thought grimly, and he came back into the ring. When he reached the benches, he turned to Gabrielle and held up a hand. “Start over when I have removed these miserable nuisances,” he told her. Then, to the rest of the audience, “Sorry for the interruption.”
“We’re not leaving,” one of the men said. “We paid for our tickets just like everyone else.”
“I’ll refund your money, but you are going. Now,” Leo said.
One of the young men crossed his arms. “No, we’re not.”
“Excuse me,” Leo said pleasantly to the family on the end of the bench where the troublemakers were sitting. They got up and let him through. He moved in to tower over the two young men.
“You can leave on your own feet, or I can knock you out and carry you,” he said. “The choice is yours.” His voice was still pleasant, but the undernote in it was dangerous. He was furious that Gabrielle had to be subjected to these drunks.
One of the young men stood up. There was a flash of something, and a knife appeared in his hand.
The audience audibly caught its breath.
Quicker than the eye could see, Leo’s own hand shot out and knocked the knife out of the other man’s grasp. It clattered to the floor and Leo grabbed it.
“Correction,” he said. The edge in his voice was sharp as the knife he held in his hand. “I will not give you your money back. Now, move.”
Sullenly, the two men began to edge their way out of the seats as Leo followed. When he got to the aisle, he spoke to the audience.
“Mesdames et messieurs, I apologize for this interruption. If you will return your attention to the ring, Mademoiselle Gabrielle Robichon will now ride Conversano Nobilia in an exhibition of the highest level of equitation.”
That said, he escorted the two drunken men out of the tent. They swung around to stare sullenly at him once they were outside. Both men had the sturdy build of peasants.
“How did you get here?” Leo asked.
One of them kicked the brown grass and the other said after a moment, “We walked.”
“Well, you can start walking again,” Leo told them. “I want you off these grounds, and if you try to come back I’ll shoot you for trespassing.”
Both men looked at each other. “We didn’t mean any harm,” one of them mumbled.
“You pulled a knife on me in front of hundreds of people,” Leo said. “If I have to shoot you, there will be plenty of witnesses to say that I had cause.”
At this point, Gerard came around the curve of the tent and walked up to Leo. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes. These men are leaving. I want you to stand right Gerard, and watch them leave. If they show any signs of lingering, come and get me.”
Gerard nodded. “All right, Leo.”
Leo looked at the young men, who had visibly sobered up during the last few minutes. “Do you understand what I have just said to you?”
They nodded.
“Good. Then go.”
With droopy shoulders and hanging heads, the two young men walked off.
Leo said to Gerard, “If they show any sign at all of rearming, come and get me immediately.”
“All right, Leo,” Gerard repeated.
Leo went back into the tent in time to watch the end of Gabrielle’s act with Noble.
The rest of the show went smoothly, and Leo was less focused on the humiliation of his role than he had been earlier. Instead his mind was on the two drunks and the insult to Gabrielle.
“Does something like this happen often?” he asked Sully as they stood talking next to Gabrielle’s wagon after the show.
“Not often, but it does happen. Some of the time we just try to ignore the disturbance and continue on, but you did a great job of getting rid of the problem today, Leo.”
“I am not putting up with any lack of respect for Gabrielle,” Leo said grimly.
Sully patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good husband, Leo. Gabrielle is lucky to have you.”
Leo didn’t know what to say. He watched as a bird landed on the top of the wagon and finally replied, “Thank you. I’m lucky to have her, too.”
“You are,” Sully replied. “I’ve known Gabrielle since she was a little girl and there has always been something special about her. She has great compassion, Gabrielle. It is not a trait that is in abundant supply in today’s world.”
“True,” Leo said. “She has compassion for you, Sully, which is why you should not disappoint her and give in to your own demons.”
Sully sighed and rubbed his high forehead. “I know. But it is hard, Leo.”
“When you feel like drinking, come to me and I will stay with you. A man in a situation like yours needs a friend, Sully.”
“Paul is a friend, but he feels sorry for me and lets me drink.”
Leo shook his head decisively. “That’s not the kind of friend you need. You need someone who will be understanding but tough. Come to me, Sully, and I’ll try to help.”
“Gabrielle said the same thing to me, but I can’t burden her with my problems.”
“My shoulders are much broader than Gabrielle’s.”
Sully gave him a faint smile. “You are very good, Leo. I’ll try.”
Leo didn’t get a chance to talk privately to Gabrielle until they were together on the front seat of her wagon, driving back to town.
She turned to him with a smile. “You certainly got your baptism by fire today! Only your second show and you had to throw people out.”
“I hope that sort of thing doesn’t happen often,” he said.
“ Not often, but when it does it’s extremely disagreeable. It spoils things for the audience as well as the performers.”
He frowned. “I didn’t like it that they picked on you.”
She sighed. “I hate it, too. Thank you for defending re.” She gave a little laugh. “Sometimes the audience even throws the hecklers out. That has happened more than once.”
His frown deepened. “What would you have done if Gerard had been your ringmaster and I hadn’t been here?”
She wrinkled her nose. “We probably would have tried to ignore them and gone on with the show. Papa was more like you—he would evict anyone who got too rambunctious. But Gerard is not up to such things.”
He said soberly, “You need someone younger to be your ringmaster.”
“I know. I was hoping that we could make do with Gerard until Mathieu gets old enough to take over the job, but perhaps I should start to look around for someone to fill in in the meantime.”
He said carefully, “Does Mathieu want to become the ringmaster?”
“Let me have the whip for a moment,” she said. He gave it to her and she flicked a fly off Jacques’s back. She gave him back the whip and turned her attention to his question.
“Papa always said that Mathieu would be the next ringmaster after him. Of course, he didn’t expect to die so soon. Mathieu needs a few more years before he can take over that kind of a job.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” he said. “Your father may have wanted Mathieu to be ringmaster, but what about Mathieu?”