Their footsteps sounded rushed on the foyer floor and it was then Gabrielle realized she should have planned this better. It had been over an entire day since she’d snuck out of Theodore’s townhouse and spent the night in the park awaiting Eric. Of course Theodore had confronted Annette and Margaux as to her whereabouts.
“What’s happened, Gabrielle?” Margaux asked, breath short as she raced into the parlor.
Annette, right beside her sister, looked as worried as the elder Fortier woman. “We’ve been mad with concern. Where had you disappeared to?”
She’d prepared for those questions, but that didn’t stop the guilt Gabrielle felt. “I see Theodore has already been here to alarm you.”
“He’s beside himself with worry!” Margaux insisted.
Gabrielle didn’t doubt that one bit, but knew Theodore’s worry over her had less to do with her whereabouts than who she may have been with. Had, indeed, been with.
“I couldn’t stay with Theodore a moment longer,” Gabrielle said quietly, so no servant overheard her. However, both women listened intently. “But I had to see the pair of you. My visit must be brief,” she said and wondered if Theodore had any of the Fortier servants on his payroll.
“But you must know how much I care for the both of you.” Gabrielle crossed the few feet between them and took their hands, squeezing tightly in true affection. “And how much I have long appreciated your kindness and welcome.”
“You’re our family now, Gabrielle,” Margaux insisted. “What’s this about?”
“Have you quarreled with Theodore?” Annette demanded, but didn’t release her hand as if she feared doing so would see Gabrielle lost. “If you have, if you feel you can’t stay with him a moment longer, you are always welcomed here.”
“Yes.” Margaux nodded. “We don’t want you wandering the streets.”
“Theodore has lied to me.” Gabrielle’s words were flat and harsh in the bright fall sunlight. “Someone I had long believed dead was not.”
No surprise shone on either sister’s’ face. However, neither looked happy with her revelation, either.
“Is it that merchant we met on the street?” Margaux demanded. “He isn’t good enough for you, Gabrielle. He can’t take care of you as Father will,” she leaned closer, intent on making Gabrielle see reason. “As we will. Theodore must have had his reasons for his lie.”
Annette was nodding in agreement. “You’re safe with us,” she insisted. “Isn’t that worth more than a poor man’s handsome face?”
“Father,” Margaux said in a whisper, looking at Annette who nodded. “Father won’t care if you’re ruined. He wants only you; as do we as part of our family.”
“A single tryst won’t spoil what we have,” Annette agreed as if they’d practiced this conversation.
As much as that thought amused Gabrielle, she shook her head. She couldn’t have this, them believing an afternoon’s delight would ease everything.
“I’ll have the servants make up your room,” Annette added, releasing her hand and stepping back to do just that as if the matter had been settled.
“No,” Gabrielle said quickly. “No, please don’t. I won’t stay. It’s true, I love Eric. And I plan to return to him.”
She embraced Margaux and turned to Annette who hadn’t moved another step though she clearly looked as if she wanted to. Emotion choked her, and she smiled at them, warm and loving.
“But I wanted to say goodbye and tell you that you needn’t feel you have to be alone or lonely.” Gabrielle took both their hands again and made sure she held their attention. “Margaux, your father’s aide, Philippe, watches you with such affection. If you’d merely return his gaze, he’d be yours forever.”
She kissed Annette’s cheek. Behind her Gabrielle could just see out the windows but Eric had hidden himself well and she couldn’t see him.
“Annette, Monsieur de Claude makes it a point to watch you whenever you leave the house.” Gabrielle nodded at the look of utter shock in Annette’s eyes and insisted, “Greet him and let yourself be loved.”
She took a step back, releasing their hands even as they protested her plan. They didn’t, she noticed, protest her observations about the men Gabrielle knew to be clearly smitten with them. Major Phillipe Lemieux had long wanted Margaux so far as Gabrielle could tell and she knew the look of a man in love. And the Fortier’s’ neighbor de Claude did, indeed, gaze at Annette with such longing Gabrielle wondered the air between them didn’t burn with his wanting.
Turning for the door, she didn’t realize Margaux’s and Annette’s protests had abruptly died. Theodore stood in the doorway, looking far more fearsome than she could ever remember him looking.
“I’d like a moment with my sister.” Theodore’s voice cut through the parlor.
“Listen to him,” Margaux whispered as she pulled Annette along. They both looked at her worriedly, but left nonetheless. “Listen to his reason.”
The parlor doors shut behind them though didn’t latch if Gabrielle heard correctly over the roaring in her ears. Her heart raced with a thread of fear but she raised her chin in defiance. She’d see no help from either the sisters or the staff, and didn’t know if Eric could see into the front parlor.
A thousand thoughts raced through her mind: Perhaps for once her brother would listen to reason; perhaps Margaux and Annette would have a change of heart and return; or perhaps Eric could truly see inside the Fortier’s front parlor and wouldn’t allow Theodore to take her back to his townhouse.
However, Gabrielle knew none of those thoughts could be true. She was well and truly trapped.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded in a hard voice. His arms folded over his chest, but he hadn’t moved from the doors. No doubt so she wouldn’t try to escape. “Did you find your way back to the damn Club?”
“They’re alive,” she shot at him. “They’re both alive, you lying bastard!”
Gabrielle wanted to attack him, wanted to hit him, throw things at him, but didn’t want to be within arm’s reach. Well known for his mercurial temper, Gabrielle didn’t want to take the chance he’d physically assault her.
He stalked her, long steps eating the distance between them. His eyes, so like the blue of hers, darkened with mad fury.
“I don’t care,” he snarled. “You’re not to be with them! You’re not to be their whore!” His voice rose unsteadily, hands curling into fists. “I’ll find them and kill them myself if you don’t do as I instruct.”
He lashed out and grabbed her arm, grip bruising as he yanked her against him.
“Your threats are hollow, Theodore,” Gabrielle spat at him. Her arm ached but she barely felt it over her own anger. “You’ll never be able to reach us again. I had a note sent to warn you and that is all I owe you!”
He didn’t reply, Gabrielle wondered if he could speak over the wrath consuming him. Theodore wrenched her to the doors and opened them. Margaux and Annette stood in the foyer, looking worried but didn’t try to stop them.
Gabrielle couldn’t feel betrayed by them; they didn’t know the true Theodore, and she didn’t want to involve them in her familial dispute for fear her brother would turn on them. The look of fear in their eyes caught her even as Theodore hauled out the front door.
His carriage awaited them on the street and her heart sank. Gabrielle frantically looked around, but knew none would come to her aid. Across the street, several citizens gathered in a rush of curiosity and concern. One called for the police.
For a wild moment, Gabrielle thought that someone would see her, but it didn’t matter. As her brother, Theodore had every right to treat her as he wished. She looked from the driver to the footman, but neither man so much as twitched in her direction.
“You think I didn’t see that bastard you whore yourself to?” Theodore spat as he opened the carriage door.
Panic froze her, when Theodore tried to shove her into the carriage, but Gabrielle fought him. Eric!
“What
did you do?” she screamed at him.
Whirling on him, Gabrielle fought with renewed fury. Clawing, kicking, snarling at him, she attacked. Theodore tried to stop her, to contain her fight, but she refused. He’d done something to Eric, harmed him enough to be confident he wouldn’t interfere.
And with André making their final arrangements at the Club…
Gabrielle stumbled forward. Margaux and Annette grabbed hold of her and for one startled moment she thought the sisters had pulled her from Theodore’s grip. Breathing hard, she focused on her brother, not at all confident that the Fortiers’ presence would stop him from taking her again.
André and Eric flanked Theodore. Both looked furious, but Eric had blood matting his hair and staining his white cravat.
Relief raced through her, but Gabrielle knew the look in her brother’s eyes. She didn’t know where it came from, or how he reached it so quickly, but suddenly Theodore held a pistol and aimed it directly at Eric.
The crowd that had once gathered around the opposite street now did so about them. Murmurs of excitement crisscrossed them, but they didn’t move to intervene. Beside her, Annette and Margaux held her tightly, whether to keep her from Theodore, hide her from the ever-expanding crowd, or take her back inside Gabrielle didn’t know.
“You should have been put to the guillotine long ago,” Theodore snarled. “But I won’t let either of you escape it now.”
He stepped forward, pistol steady, but from his left, Gabrielle could see his gaze swing from André to Eric and back again. Theodore was an excellent marksman; when they’d been young and closer, before the Terror, before the guillotine, before her introduction to the Hellfire Club, he’d often practiced on their estate while Gabrielle enjoyed a picnic lunch and watched.
He wouldn’t miss.
“No one would blame me,” he added, clearly playing to the crowd.
Gabrielle struggled against the sisters’ grip, desperate to stop what was about to happen.
The shot rang out. Startled, Gabrielle tried to scream but no sound emerged. The crowd, so intent on watching this private spectacle unfold dropped into dead silence. Eyes frantic on her lovers, she looked from Eric to André and back again.
Both looked unharmed. Theodore had crumpled to the sidewalk.
On her right, Margaux calmly released the iron grip she’d had on her arm, and stepped away. Gabrielle looked in stunned amazement to her friend; Margaux nodded as if she shot people every day, but didn’t meet Gabrielle’s gaze.
Instead she scanned the crowed before calling out to someone she clearly recognized. “The man was unstable and paranoid,” she told her acquaintance, loudly enough for the entire block to hear her. “I feared he’d harm someone.”
Mutterings from the crowd seemed to agree with Margaux, spreading faster than word of the disturbance between her and Theodore. A man in the middle of the crowd shouted his agreement, addressing Margaux formally. Of course they knew who Margaux was; of course they knew General Fortier’s daughters and would believe whatever they said.
Annette pulled her back, away from Eric, André, her dead brother, and Margaux who continued to speak to the crowd as if addressing a gathering of friends.
“Go off to your life, Gabrielle,” Annette whispered. The other woman embraced her tightly, kissed her cheek. When she looked back at Gabrielle, there were tears in her eyes. “We’ll take care of this.”
Gabrielle nodded, stunned. Everything happened so quickly, she couldn’t do more than that. She wanted to promise to write, to visit them again, but knew both to be impossible. She couldn’t tell either sister her plans to leave France, make a new life for herself and her lovers in London.
Instead, she squeezed Annette’s hands and, her own voice choked with emotion, whispered, “Thank you.”
Epilogue
Gabrielle felt as beaten and worn as she no doubt looked. The journey across France had not been easy, but they’d mercifully not run into any Revolutionaries. Or for that matter, she thought as the carriage rocked along the streets, the motion lulling her into a light doze, Royalists.
She rested her head on André’s shoulder, felt his arm come round him and finally relaxed.
It wasn’t until now, finally in London and on their way to the townhouse André and Eric had purchased, that she felt safe. The Channel crossing hadn’t been difficult, though Gabrielle had discovered a sincere aversion to sea travel. London Hellfire representatives met them at the port in Dover and they’d crossed England in a blur of motion.
Now, with safety and freedom all but theirs, Gabrielle found she could barely stay awake to enjoy it.
“We’re here,” André whispered, gently urging her to sit up.
Gabrielle nodded and opened her eyes. Exiting the carriage into the darkened, and nameless, London street, she wondered where their new home was located. Anywhere not Paris, indeed France, suited her perfectly well. Still, with fatigue tugging at her, she found herself very curious as to her new home. Eric let the door knocker fall against the heavy oak, and they waited several moments for the butler to open it.
“Yes?” the man snapped, looking down his formidable nose at them.
“Reynolds,” Eric snapped back in English, “let us in.”
It took the poor man, Reynolds, several seconds of scrutiny to recognize Eric but, when he did, the butler bowed deeply and gestured them all inside. Gabrielle couldn’t blame the butler. Grime covered every inch of the three of them, their clothes were torn, travel worn, and just plain used. If she never saw this gown again, Gabrielle would be all too happy.
She didn’t know what the townhouse looked like, and while she knew Eric and André had already spread word about Eric’s marriage to her, at this precise moment she couldn’t remember any of it.
“The servants are well paid,” Eric was saying as they led her up the stairs. “None will utter a word as to our…peculiar living arrangements.”
“Though I do object,” André said with a hint of his usual wicked wit, “to being the cousin, forced upon my dear relatives.” He leaned closer and whispered into her ear, sending a shiver or arousal sparking through her. “However it does give me the utmost pleasure to be the wicked tongue at balls. After all, is that not the intruding cousin’s requisite occupation?”
“No.” Gabrielle peered up at André and gave him a wicked grin of her own. “His requisite occupation is to please his cousin’s wife in every way he can possibly think of.”
“I do believe,” Eric said as he pushed open the door to their bedchamber. “He is up to that particular task.”
“And will be for the rest of our lives.” André smiled, pulled Gabrielle into his arms and kissed her tenderly.
Gabrielle felt the love in his kiss as it warmed her, felt the need and the loss as well. They were safe now and that was all that mattered to her. She hadn’t lost the two souls that breathed life into her heart and she never would again.
She brought her hand to André’s face as they pulled apart, stared into his eyes for a long moment. Still held securely in his arms, she turned and responded to Eric’s kiss, the love and need in him.
No, she’d never be parted from either of them again.
About Kristabel Reed
Kristabel Reed lives on the East Coast and loves to explore the steamier side of historical romance. “There are so many sexy situations that didn’t just pop up in the 21st century and my goal is to burst the myth of the prim and proper debutante.”
She loves romances but historical ménages particularly which add an element of danger and discovery not seen in contemporaries. Historically speaking, unusual romantic connections put lives on the line—people were ostracized and some even put to the death.
In the coming year, Kristabel is going to try her hand at mainstream historicals with an added element of eroticism, which she hopes won’t be too overt.
She loves reading, watching old movies, and anything Cary Grant. And is always interested in talking about eroti
c romance, so drop her a line: [email protected]; or Tweet her @kristabelreed; find her blog: kristabelreed.blogspot.com
Also by Kristabel Reed
A Hellfire Club Erotique
Masque: A Hellfire Club Erotique by Kristabel Reed
“The gorgeous storyline of The Masque combined incredibly erotic encounters between the three with an ongoing element of danger that had me on the edge of my seat.”
~Five star review, Just Erotic Romance Reviews
Olivia Reynard must leave Paris tonight. It’s the height of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror and as a nobleman’s daughter, she knows it’s a matter of time before she’s sent to the guillotine. Fleeing to the notorious Hellfire Club, she soon finds a world of sexual pleasure she’s never imagined.
Comte Sebastian de Courville has promised to help Olivia get out of Paris, but he didn’t expect such instant attraction to the beautiful maiden. He wants to show her every pleasure known, but time is short and their lives are in ever increasing danger. And then there’s his lover…
Julien Laruent has survived the treacherous streets of a Paris in turmoil. Now permanently ensconced in the Hellfire Club, he hasn’t looked back on that time. A dangerous man to have in one’s bed, he took one look at Olivia and vowed to keep her safe.
But when old enemies exact vengeance and Madame Guillotine an ever present threat, will the three of them survive long enough to find love?
Find it at major ebook retailers!
A Regency Ménage Tale series
Risqué: A Regency Ménage Tale by Kristabel Reed
“Holy smokes, Risqué: A Regency Ménage Tale is an incredible book! Not usually one for historical romance novels, I was immediately transfixed by the characters…Beyond the fact that every one of the sex scenes were incredible, the story line was both unique and sensual, too. Ms. Reed has a real talent for seduction of the senses.”
The Escape Page 6