Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  “But will have now.”

  “But will have now,” she agreed, “and always.”

  The word always brought her partway back to her senses. Jean Beaumain. The revolutionary tumult of Paris. An uncertain future.

  Well, now was as good a time as any. “Darling,” she said softly.

  “Hmmm?” His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep.

  “Darling, how did you come to be so much favored by their majesties?”

  His eyes snapped open. He was alert, if not on guard. “What do you mean?”

  “It puzzles me, that’s all. In America, you were at the forefront of those who fought for independence against George III. You and Erasmus Ward—”

  “Yes, and I see that you still wear his cross.”

  “As I will always. But in America, you stood with Ward and Gilbertus Penrod and Washington himself. And now you seem to be in league with the most corrupt elements of the monarchy and the nobility. And it is said”—her tone sharpened—“that you were Marie Antoinette’s lover?”

  “Is that what they say?” he asked, laughing lazily, almost with pleasure at the thought. “My, my.”

  “Royce, this is serious!”

  “My dear, I believe you’re jealous.”

  “Is it true?”

  “A gentleman would never answer that question, whatever the answer.”

  “You’re playing with me. I have to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because”—go ahead, she thought—“because I have to know if you’re still the man I used to know.”

  He looked at her with a playful, half-mocking expression, then got slowly out of bed and strode naked to a huge mirror hung upon the wardrobe door. He examined his reflection carefully for a time, turning this way and that. Then he came back and joined her in bed again.

  “Yes, I believe I’m the same man,” he said. “Perhaps a tad older, but—”

  “That’s not what I mean!”

  “Selena,” he laughed, “what on earth do you mean? Of course I’m the same man.”

  “I don’t think so. No one who would risk his life for one revolution founded upon the human spirit would play turnabout and, in another such revolution, support the causes of repression.”

  “Why not?” asked Royce, still in that easy, teasing way. “In both cases, I saw my opportunities and I took them.”

  “What?” she cried, scarcely able to believe the underlying cynicism that marked his response.

  “So did you,” he added. “How much did you get for that pouch of jewels and sovereigns I left with you in New York?”

  Her stunned look was his answer.

  “I assume you sold or bartered them. No poor girl gets invited to Versailles in the company of the nobility you claim to deplore. Did you buy yourself a position? Or perhaps you still have the pouch?”

  Cleverly, he had turned the issue against her.

  “I became friends with Madame LaRouche in Haiti,” said Selena in her own defense. “The question is, how did you come by those stones? They were obviously taken from rings and brooches—”

  “Is that right?”

  He was patronizing her! “All right,” she told him, anger flashing, “I’ll tell you what happened. I kept the jewels safe all the time. I sewed them into the lining of a coat. Which you, on the way here from Versailles, gave away to a radical named Pierre Sorbante, who was disguised as one of those women demonstrators!”

  He looked at her for a long time, his eyes unreadable. “Well,” he said finally, “easy come, easy go. There’s more where those came from, I guess.”

  “Is that all you have to say!”

  “For the time being, love. Lie down quietly now. I want to have you again.”

  And she did, and he did, and for a while it was wonderful again.

  But their secret garden had a thorn in it.

  Across the river, at the exact moment Royce and Selena brought each other once again to those heights they always scaled so effortlessly, Jean Beaumain, still lugging his wooden box, knocked on the door of the LaRouche mansion. He could see that refurbishment had been going on, but had apparently been broken off, since no workmen were about.

  A young man in faded livery—it was Hugo—answered the door.

  “Madame LaRouche, please?”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Jean Beaumain.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Very well, my man. Just go summon her, please.”

  Hugo complied, and in a minute Martha Marguerite came to the door. “Oh, Jean, Jean.” Their embrace was energetic and heartfelt. “Jean, come in. Things are at a terrible point…”

  “Selena? Is Selena here?”

  Her eyes told him that something was wrong, and he had barely the courage to face whatever it was. Nothing could have happened to his darling! It would be the end of the world if she had died, especially now that he had achieved his dream and evened the score with Chamorro.

  But what Martha had to tell him, about the miscarriage and about Royce Campbell, was almost worse than if she had indeed told him that Selena was dead.

  He listened. He had neither words nor tears. His face grew dark, and a light in his eyes went out forever.

  “Where is she now?” he asked dully. “Where did the rogue take her?”

  Martha did not remember what address Royce had given, only that it had been someplace in Paris. She summoned Hugo and Sebastian.

  “I don’t remember the house number,” Sebastian said. “Somewhere in the Rue St. Denis, as I recall.”

  Hugo nodded in corroboration.

  “I shall rest for the night,” Jean Beaumain decided, “although I do not think that I will be able to sleep.” He sat wearily down upon the wooden box he carried. “In days to come, I shall search the Rue St. Denis from one end to the other, building by building, cellar by cellar, house by house.”

  A new burden of vengeance rested unwanted upon his broad shoulders, a malevolent bird that pecked into his flesh, sought and found the sweet meat of his beating heart.

  20

  Night and Day

  Never before had Selena lost herself so utterly in the tumult of passion. All that afternoon and into amber-tinted twilight she held Royce to herself, within herself, drifting from pleasure to pleasure, until their flesh could no longer rise to satisfy the appetite for pleasure. Yet when he finally withdrew from her, she cried out with regret at the sudden emptiness.

  He got out of bed and began to dress.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where are we going. Come along. To eat, to drink. I have no servants here. It has been a bit…dangerous for me. There are those who know the King made me vicomte, and those with titles are rather persona non grata in most parts of the city.”

  She looked alarmed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Just dress. I will find a place that is safe.”

  They left his residence. First, he took the stallion to a stable and gave a handful of coins to the proprietor, a choleric, one-eyed humpback who ogled Selena shamelessly.

  “Feed and water the animal,” Royce ordered. “Give him a rubdown. Perhaps I’ll return tomorrow. Perhaps not. You can handle it?”

  “Hay I have,” muttered the troglodyte insolently, running the coins through his dirty, stubby fingers, “but money none.”

  Royce reached into his pocket and added a franc note to the coins. “Now you do,” he said. “Mind, see carefully to the beast.”

  Then he and Selena set out down the street in gathering darkness. Walking with her arm in his, Selena could not help but remember that, on just such a night as this, they had been parted in New York. That would not happen tonight. She also realized how hungry she was.

  “I have heard there is no food in Paris,” she worried.

  “There is, though. One must know where to find it, and have the money to buy it.”

  “And you do not care that others are starving?”

  He
was silent for a long time. She could not see his expression. When he spoke, his voice was as nonchalant as it had been earlier, when he’d learned that he’d given away his jewels to a rebel. “Life is unfair, and I guess I can’t do much about it.”

  You could, she thought, with an ache in her heart. But she was with him, and for the time being she permitted her love to override the nature of the differences between them.

  They must have walked for at least a mile, avoiding groups of ragged citizens that moved through the city in surly directionlessness, shouting threats and slogans and oaths.

  “They haven’t gotten the bread they were led to believe was forthcoming,” said Royce. “And I doubt that they will. All France is at a standstill. Commerce and industry lie dormant. No one knows what will happen. Farmers are not selling their grain today, because the price might go up tomorrow. The King can do nothing, and meanwhile people here in the city grow more desperate.”

  “What will happen? Something must.”

  “I think the revolution here in the city will grow ever more feverish. We should attempt to leave at first opportunity.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “Scotland, of course,” he said.

  Selena felt sad. “Yes, of course. But sooner or later, we’d be found out. I have no home to go to. Coldstream is in the hands of the King.”

  “Oh, I should think a cave in the Highlands would do us just as well…”

  Suddenly, he grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her into and along a dim passageway, through an opening in a wall, and down a long flight of stone stairs. For a moment, Selena thought they were descending into the sewers, but then she heard the muted sound of voices somewhere ahead, saw a tiny light flickering behind drawn curtains.

  “We are going to the Tavern Richelieu,” Royce told her. “All manner of people come here. Talk flows like wine. Perhaps we may learn the exact nature of the present situation. I should not like to try and flee Paris if the roads are blocked. We’d be taken as Royalist fugitives and imprisoned, or worse.”

  “I’ve had enough of prisons for the rest of my life,” said Selena.

  The Tavern Richelieu surprised her. Royce had been correct. There were still places in Paris where one could eat and eat well, if one had the money.

  Royce had eschewed his splendid uniform and wore a common pair of breeches and an old shirt. Selena still wore the nondescript dress she’d chosen at Versailles that morning. They might have been notable in physical appearance, the svelte, blond beauty and her tall, saturnine escort, but they were inconspicuous as to attire When they entered the tavern and found seats at a table toward the back. It was dark there, and Royce did not light the candle on the table. All around them, people were eating and drinking and talking. So much talk, and argument, and debate.

  “Language is the fuel of revolution,” Royce said, ordering a pot of rabbit stew, potato biscuits, and a bottle of red wine.

  Selena looked at him, seated there with her at the little table, thinking of all that had happened to them in life thus far, and wondering what would yet befall. How darkly, how gloriously intertwined were their lives, but what was the resolution to which they sped? What was the meaning? Her love was so great that she trembled as she lifted the glass of wine to her lips. Yet in spite of such joy, she was troubled by the insouciance with which he assumed and discarded ideas and beliefs as if they were suits of clothing, or horses, or…women?

  I’ll tell him about Jean now, she thought, when the rabbit stew had arrived and they’d begun to eat. I have to do it anyway, and after all, he was pretty damn casual about his association with Marie Antoinette!

  “Darling,” she said, her spoon midway between bowl and mouth, “there’s something—”

  “Just a second,” he replied, lifting his hand. “I want to hear this.”

  Two men at an adjacent table, who had been speaking quietly with their heads together, now raised their voices in disagreement.

  “The King must be executed forthwith as an enemy of the people,” said one. “We know he is planning to bring foreign troops into the country in order to end the revolution. We know he has a treasure chest with which he has been attempting to bribe the members of the National Assembly. We know he is only pretending to support the reforms that have been wrought. I tell you, he must die!”

  Selena made the mistake of turning toward the speaker, even as Royce touched her arm to discourage her from so doing. She turned quickly back to her own table, but not before she had seen—and been seen by—a fiery-eyed, foppishly dressed, yet oddly pedantic-looking young man. He looked out of place in silk stockings and powdered hair, particularly in this tavern, but his words left no doubt of his extreme revolutionary intensity.

  His interlocutor, who sat with his back to Selena, responded with equal heat, although his words seemed more reasonable.

  “Don’t you understand?” he asked. “Don’t you understand that if Louis XVI is executed, the British will invade, the Dutch will invade, the Germans will invade? By killing the King, you will be accomplishing exactly what you most fear. Besides, the National Assembly has been successful on all fronts. Serfdom has been abolished. Tithes and all sorts of ecclesiastical privileges have been renounced. Offices must no longer be sold. Land in the provinces has been given to peasants. And His Majesty has agreed to all these things!”

  “Yes, but he cannot be trusted. When the foreigners come and destroy you and me and our compatriots, how long do you think Louis will keep his word? Hah! How long? And as for the peasants, land given is land easily taken back by the nobles.”

  “You’re wrong, my friend.”

  There was a crash and clatter as the firebrand stood up, knocking over his chair.

  “You are not my friend, sir!” he declared, and stormed out of the tavern, but not before giving Royce and Selena a penetrating look of hatred.

  “What was that all about?” Selena asked cautiously, when things had quieted down a bit.

  “That is the fate toward which the revolution is tending,” answered Royce, refilling their glasses with wine. “Things, unchecked, will proceed from the inevitable, such as the King’s departure from Versailles, to the pragmatic, such as the recent decrees of the National Assembly, to the self-destructive. That young man was Maximilien Robespierre. Mirabeau and Sorbante are reactionaries compared to him. He will not be satisfied until the King is dead, and thousands of others, I’m afraid.”

  “Darling,” she said, a bit worried, “he saw us. I think…I may have been mistaken, but it seemed as if he knew you.”

  “Unfortunately, he does. I think it would be best if we left now.”

  Selena, who had not even begun to sate her hunger, looked up in alarm. Royce was cool and self-controlled. Only the haste with which he drained his wineglass betrayed tension.

  “I wanted to find out what was going on,” he told her, smiling slightly. “Things have been changing too fast. Even a week ago, men like Robespierre would not have spoken so freely, even here.”

  “Exactly who is this Robespierre?” Selena asked, as they climbed back up toward the street.

  “The worst sort of man for politics,” Royce answered, halting at the corner of the building and peering up and down the street. “He is an idealist and a dreamer. Such men misjudge human nature. First, they feel that people are more noble than is really the case. Then, when they become disillusioned, they turn against the very humanity in which they originally placed such great hopes.”

  It was now quite late and the streets, while not deserted, seemed less threatening than they had earlier. Royce and Selena, hand in hand, began their walk back to his home. The thought of being alone with him again re-ignited physical need, and she forgot the other, lesser hunger of her stomach. But they had not gone more than halfway to his apartments when he squeezed her hand and whispered, “Don’t turn around, but I think we’re being followed.”

  “By whom?”

  “Robespierre. You were righ
t. He did recognize me. I cannot let him find out where I am staying. It would be the end of us both.”

  “What will we do?”

  “Do you think you can find the way back by yourself?”

  “Oh, darling, no. We can’t become separated again—”

  “It’s the only way. I’ll lead him on a chase and lose him.”

  “What if you don’t?”

  “I shall.”

  “I’m not sure I can find the way back.”

  They continued to walk for a short while more.

  “Selena, we have to do something,” he said. “We’ll leave Paris as soon as possible, but we have to keep Robespierre from learning where we’re staying. Trust me when I say that. It’s very important.”

  “All right. What do you want me to do?”

  “We are coming to a hotel that I know,” he said. “We’ll both go inside. You go straight through and exit in the back. Wait in the alley there. I’ll have a glass of wine at the bar. If he comes in, he may assume we’re staying there, and that you’re in our room. I don’t know if he’ll wait or be content to have found our lodgings and leave until another time. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  She agreed, with some trepidation, to this plan.

  They turned off the street and entered the dingy, lamplit lobby of a down-at-the-heels establishment. A small taproom was at one side of the lobby, where a handful of men and several apparent prostitutes were drinking. An old concierge dozed behind a desk near the door, her thinning hair wrapped in a bandana to which the cockade had been attached. She reminded Selena of Senora Celeste.

  “Yes? Yes?” she asked, peering at them as if trying to establish the precise degree of their carnal intent. “You want a room for the night?”

  “No, just wine,” said Royce. He led Selena toward the taproom, then released her hand and said, “Go!”

  She obeyed, noting that the concierge was nodding back into sleep, walked hurriedly through the lobby, down a greasy, closet-lined hallway, and out the back door. It was dark in the alley, and cold. She smelled garbage. Above her, in the narrow space between two buildings, she could see the stars.