by Mary Nichols
She followed him out to the coach, convinced she would have a corpse on her hands before the day was through and unable to do a thing about it. Pain or no pain, he was still strong enough to clamber in the vehicle and order the driver to go on. There was nothing for it but to climb in beside him and hope that her prayers for him would be answered. She told the driver that monsieur was very ill and ordered him to drive very slowly and carefully.
In spite of that, Adam could not leave the coach when they stopped for a midday meal and a change of horses; he remained ashen-faced, spread out on the seat, too ill to move, almost too ill to argue. Food was brought out to him, but he could not eat and Maryanne knew she would have to defy him and take him to a doctor. When she enquired for one, she was told the nearest and best would be in Paris, and as that was now only a few kilometres further along the road she decided, whatever he said, that they would stop there and find help.
As it happened he did not protest because he was no longer conscious. So much for avoiding the main roads, she thought, as they rumbled up to a rough wooden palisade and through tall gates guarded by indolent soldiers into a city which was a labyrinth of narrow, ill-paved streets and crumbling old houses. Lanterns, strung across the streets, swayed in the wind and cast pools of sickly yellow light in which could be glimpsed throngs of noisy, ill-clad people who made Maryanne shiver with fear. She ordered the coachman to hurry through without stopping and to find a small hotel in a more salubrious area. ‘Clean,’ she said. ‘And respectable, but not luxurious. And not in the fashionable area.’
He grinned and took them to a small lodging house at the lower end of Rue Lepic within sight of the Moulin Rouge. Adam became conscious as the concierge’s husband and the coachman lifted him down and carried him indoors. They took him up to a bedroom, where Maryanne made him comfortable while she waited for the doctor to arrive. Here they were and here they would have to stay until he was completely recovered. Challac and the vineyards would have to wait. And the confrontation she had planned would likewise have to wait. So would proving his innocence - or guilt - and so would a wedding ceremony. She smiled, as she bathed his feverish forehead with cold water; what price her reputation now? Thank the good Lord there was no one who knew them in Paris.
Chapter Nine
It was a month before Adam improved enough to take notice of his surroundings, a month during which Maryanne watched over him and nursed him with devotion and care, but it was also a month in which she found time to search every particle of his meagre belongings looking for the tell-tale documents. But they were not to be found and she reluctantly came to the conclusion that he had disposed of them. It proved one thing above all else, he trusted her no more than she trusted him. How could love, either his or hers, be based on such suspicion? How could they come together with such a chasm between them?
While he lay so ill she did not often move far from their tiny room but it was necessary to shop for good food to help his recovery, for ointments to put on his shoulder, for fuel for a fire and mops and brushes to clean their quarters. At such times the concierge would sit with him and Maryanne would escape from the noisome air of Montmartre for the city, where at least some effort had been made to clean up the evidence of the last days of fighting in which so many young soldiers had died.
At such times, on her way to and from the markets of Les Halles, she would step aside to explore. She found the other face of Paris: the wide tree-lined boulevards, the Palais Royal, the Ile de la Cite, Notre Dame, the restaurants and pavement cafes, the Royal parks with their statuary and fountains, the Louvre crammed with Napoleon’s stolen art treasures, the Arc de Triomphe, begun after Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz but yet to be completed. Here Paris played host to visitors of all nationalities: British, Russian, Prussian; they seemed to have a wild determination to enjoy themselves, to make the most of what the city had to offer, as if it would all blow away, like dandelion seed, at the first puff of wind.
And it seemed there might be some justification for that belief because, beneath the outward enthusiasm, beneath the cries of ‘Vive le Roi!’ whenever Louis passed in a well-sprung carriage there were others of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’
The Duke of Wellington arrived at the end of August to take up his appointment as British Ambassador, and moved into the beautiful mansion in the Rue du Faubourg St Honore, which he had bought from Napoleon’s sister. Gone was the popular acclaim of the early heady days of peace, gone were the cries of ‘Liberateur!’; he was looked upon as the conqueror of a nation too proud to own defeat. Maryanne, moving unnoticed through the crowds and with her French improving daily, was aware of the undercurrents and felt a certain apprehension. Could the Emperor, confined to his tiny kingdom of Elba, really return? In the autumn of 1814 it seemed impossible and yet she could not help recalling Adam’s words about generalship. Surely Napoleon was watched, surely the national leaders, soon to convene in Vienna, would succeed in making a lasting peace?
But in truth she was more concerned with caring for Adam, now slowly recovering, than with state boundaries, more worried about how to eke out Adam’s dwindling store of money than with whether the Louvre should keep its treasures. She knew Adam would soon be well enough to take control of his own life and, with it, hers. What, she asked herself again and again, did she intend to do when he was fully recovered and no longer needed her? Would she, could she, leave him? Was she his prisoner? But how could a strong, healthy woman be the prisoner of a helpless man too ill to fend for himself? If she really wanted to, she could throw herself on the mercy of the new Ambassador, who would surely arrange for her safe return to England.
But she could not leave. Well or ill made no difference; the thought of spending the rest of her life still in doubt about his guilt or innocence was intolerable. She found herself going over and over in her mind the events which had brought her to this seething city; it was as if it had been written in the stars, immutable from the day she had been born. That being so, what was the use of questioning it?
When the leaves on the trees along the grand Boulevards began to turn to yellow and russet and drift to the ground beneath her feet as she walked, Adam began to move about, restlessly pacing the room, cursing his weakness and the time they had wasted, and at such times she was glad to escape and leave him to his grumpiness.
It was a grumpiness caused by frustration. Did she not realise how difficult it was for him to hold back from her, to refrain from taking her in his arms and kissing her until she understood his need? His coolness towards her was an act he found more and more difficult to sustain, but until she softened towards him, until she confessed she had searched his belongings and truthfully told him why, until all suspicion had melted away, he could not make love to her, he could not even re-affirm the love he had so rashly declared in the coach. He did not want to persuade her with words or passion, he wanted her to realise, in her heart, in the depths of her soul, in whatever intuitive place women knew these things, that he was not only innocent, but wronged.
He had hoped they could put the past behind them, to forget why they left England and make a new life together, united in trust and love, but now he realised that had been a fool’s paradise. Until he cleared his name there would always be this chasm between them. It was time to rouse himself.
She came back one day to find him dressed and shaved and sitting at the table writing a letter.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked pleasantly, taking off her cloak and hanging it behind the door. It was the one Jeannie had given her, very grubby and much darned. He didn’t recognise the dress she wore under it, but it was of some cheap woollen material with no pretension to style. She had probably bought it in the market for a few sous. How she had managed these last few weeks was nothing short of miraculous and he marvelled and, at the same time, was angry with himself for failing to provide for her. She removed her bonnet and shook her head so that her hair swirled about her shoulders, and turned to smile at him; it was enough to
make an angel weep, and he was no angel.
‘Writing to Robert. He has no idea where we are and he might have news for us. Besides, I need funds. It is time Sir Peter and Lady Adams re-emerged.’
‘Why?’
‘You have nursed me unstintingly and it is time we moved from here to more comfortable quarters,’ he said. ‘You need a maid and a wardrobe and I want to show you the best of Paris before we go to Challac.’
‘You still mean to go, then?’ she asked.
‘Of course, nothing has changed.’
No, she thought, nothing has changed. Although, on the surface, he spoke affectionately to her, there was a part of him he held back. She could not imagine him repeating the words of love he had uttered in the coach when they were travelling. It was almost as if she had dreamed them. Perhaps she had, perhaps the whole thing was a dream... Or a nightmare.
When money arrived from Robert, Adam lavished it on her, taking her to all the beautiful shops and buying her clothes and jewellery as if his purse were bottomless. He rented a house in the Faubourg St Germain, which belonged to a returning émigré who had no money to bring it back to its former splendour. It had a faded gentility and, above all, it was quiet. Adam hired servants and a carriage and horses and generally set out to impress. She had no idea whether he could really afford it all, but her greatest concern was their unmarried state. He had not mentioned marriage again since she had so adamantly turned him down, and now she did not think he ever would. He had, on his own admission, brought her with him because she knew too much; it was his reason for wanting to marry her, and hers for refusing. But, married or unmarried, she could never give evidence against him; surely he should have realised that by now? And what did she know? Nothing.
When she could put that from her mind, she enjoyed herself, and sometimes, for an hour or two, she could forget she was anything else but Lady Adams, could put from her mind the fact that she was the hostage of an unkind fate, that her future happiness was in the hands of a man wanted for murder. They sauntered along the boulevards and sat at the pavement cafes; they went to the packed theatres and dined at famous restaurants like Quadron Blue, Jardin Turque and Frascati’s. They wandered along the Seine, visited the Louvre and Notre Dame and admired the public buildings, which surpassed anything that could be seen in London.
‘I’ve heard it said,’ Adam remarked, ‘that if Napoleon had reigned another ten years there would not have been a city to match its splendour.’
‘But do you think that making a city beautiful justified all those deaths, all that devastation, all the plunder?’
‘No. I was merely making an observation,’ he told her.
‘I sometimes forget you are a Frenchman,’ she said. ‘It is bound to give you a different view.’
He did not answer and she fell to wondering once again what would happen to them if conflict broke out again between their two countries. ‘Do you think that the war will start up again?’
‘I pray to God it does not,’ he said grimly.
‘If it does, will you serve again?’
‘I may have to.’ He smiled. ‘But we should not be thinking such sombre thoughts. Nothing will happen. The French are just as tired of war as the rest of Europe. What would you like to do for your birthday?’
‘Birthday?’
‘Surely you had not forgotten that tomorrow you will be twenty-one?’
‘No, but I thought you had.’
‘I could not forget the day you throw off your shackles and become an independent woman.’
‘Except for my dependence on you.’ She laughed, making a joke of it. ‘You know I will never be able to claim my inheritance? It was conditional on my guardian approving my marriage.’
He smiled. ‘What a good thing I am a wealthy man. What about the opera? Shall we dress up and show ourselves to the world?’
On the evening of her birthday Maryanne dressed in a gown of Brussels lace over silk, with burgundy satin ribbons slotted round the high waist and hem and along the length of the long sleeves; it set off her figure, now regaining its former curves, and made her look almost ethereal. Around her throat she wore the ruby pendant he had bought her as a birthday present. Seeing her coming down the stairs towards him, Adam found himself with a lump in his throat. ‘You look like an angel,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘But you and I know I am no angel, don’t we? The wicked Lady Adams is pretending to be what she is not.’
‘If anyone but you said that, I would run them through.’ He took her arm. ‘Come, let us go; I want to show my lady off. I shall be the envy of Paris.’
‘You look very handsome yourself,’ she said. He had eschewed the cossack trousers which were the latest fad for black pantaloons which were moulded to his long thighs and shapely calves. His well-tailored evening coat was undone to reveal a fine embroidered waistcoat and a lavishly tied cravat. ‘Quite the dandy.’
After the performance, which was all she had hoped it would be, he took her to Tortoni’s for supper. She was in a happy and relaxed mood as she allowed the waiter to push in her chair for her, knowing they made as handsome a couple as any who were there. While Adam ordered their meal, her attention was drawn to a noisy party of English people on the other side of the room.
‘You should have seen him!’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Taking off old Boney to perfection. The old fellow couldn’t be sure if it was his Emperor or not and he didn’t know whether to fall to his knees, kiss him or arrest him. I don’t know how I kept a straight face.’
Maryanne froze in her seat, because the voice was unmistakably Caroline’s. She tugged at Adam’s coat skirts. ‘Adam, Caroline is over there.’ She jerked her head backwards.
He smiled. ‘So she is, but we will not let that spoil our meal.’
‘Adam, please, let’s go. For all you know, Mark is with her.’
He craned his neck to see over her head. ‘I do believe he is. And Caroline’s friends, the Halesworth girls, and Lord Brandon. I heard he had been appointed to the embassy staff.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘We are going to have our meal, Maryanne. Mark does not frighten me and, in any case, there is nothing he can do to us here.’
‘It will always be the same, won’t it?’ she said, as the waiters came and set pate and fish and English beef on the table, together with a bottle of champagne. ‘We will never be able to stop running.’
‘You could stop now,’ he said. ‘Go back to him, if that is what you want.’
‘You know it is not. I was referring to the fact that we have to skulk in corners for fear of being seen. What I want more than anything is to be able to look the world in the eye.’
‘Do you feel guilty?’
‘No, why should I? She looked up at him, trying to guess what was going on behind that scarred brow. ‘Do you?’
‘No.’ The word was said quietly but he was angry. What right had he to be angry with her? She was innocent of any crime, except doubt, but was that a crime?
‘I could almost believe you wanted him to see you,’ she said angrily. ‘What will you do if he does?’
‘What will you do? Will you rush into his arms and beg forgiveness? Do you think he will take you back?’
‘I know he will not.’ At any other time she would have enjoyed the luxury of the fruit-flavoured ices which the waiter set before them, but now she pushed hers away.
‘Not even for your fortune?’ He smiled, but it was a twisted smile which lifted the scar above his eye and made him look sinister. ‘Do you regret forgoing that? Would you like to turn the clock back?’
‘It is not in our power to do that. If it were, you would, perhaps, have done it yourself.’
‘You are right,’ he said, thinking of what he had brought her to - a life which obviously made her miserable. ‘We must make the best of what is here and now. You and I, my dear Maryanne, are indivisible. Are you ready to leave?’
She nodded and he beckoned the waiter to f
etch her cloak. It seemed to take an age to help her into it and then for her to cross the room, with Adam’s hand under her elbow.
‘Evening, Saint-Pierre, I see you are enjoying the delights of Paris.’ Mark’s words sounded more like a threat than a pleasant enquiry and Maryanne turned towards Adam, hardly daring to breathe. His face was white, the scar over his eye stood out and a muscle in his throat twitched. He remained frozen like that for several seconds while Mark’s smile died on his face and was replaced by a look of animal fear.
Caroline seized his coat tail and made him sit again. ‘Leave it, Mark, please.’
‘You are right,’ he said with a twisted smile, directed at Adam. ‘He is not worth the effort and neither is she. My lawyers have found a way to release the inheritance back to the family. As a criminal, she has forfeited it.’ His laugh was an ugly sound and made diners from other tables turn to look at them. ‘He is welcome to the whore for I no longer need her.’
‘I say, Mark, that’s a bit strong,’ Lord Brandon said. ‘He could call you out for it.’
‘No,’ Mark said. ‘He dare not fight me.’ He turned to Adam, his confidence returned. ‘You won’t, will you, no matter what I say?’
Maryanne tugged at Adam’s sleeve. ‘Please, Adam, let us go. He is only trying to goad you into something foolish. Please, please, let’s go.’
He shrugged her off, still looking at Mark. ‘May I suggest you go armed in future?’ he said evenly. ‘Paris is a dangerous place for Englishmen at present. But then I have no doubt you have brought your bodyguards.’ He affected to look round the room. ‘Where are they, by the way? I hope their aim has improved; when we last met they could not hit a barn door at twenty paces.’ With that he took Maryanne’s arm and walked out to their waiting carriage, with Mark’s harsh laugh echoing behind them. He bundled her inside and got in beside her.