Rouen. In Rouen, Adam would be the one to play the role of commissioner. His power would be almost absolute. For as long as the fiction that he was Philippe Duhet could be maintained, the escape route for fleeing refugees would remain open. Hundreds of lives, thousands, might be saved. He was doing a very fine thing. "Noble," Millot had called it.
Adam smiled, but there was nothing pleasant in the gesture. To be thought "noble" was-a worthy ambition, he supposed, but it was not his. He was thinking that when the game was over and his half- brother resumed his rightful place, Philippe Duhet was going to find himself in a very awkward position. He, Adam Dillon, would make damn sure of it.
He turned on his side. By degrees, his eyelids became heavy. One thought drifted into another. Juliette Devereux. She was an innocent. She was beautiful. She was spoiled. She was headstrong. Even in sleep, Adam's lip curled. It was John who was the innocent. For Sarah's sake, he devoutly hoped that he would find no trace of Juliette Devereux and her child.
Chapter Two
The girl's name was Claire Devereux. She was the eldest child of the financier Leon Devereux and his wife, Elise. She was twenty years old. She was startlingly beautiful. She was spoiled. She was headstrong. And she was more afraid than she had ever been in her young life.
At any moment, she expected to come face-to-face with Philippe Duhet. The commissioner would step out of his office in his headquarters in Rouen's Hotel Grosne, and his eyes would sweep over the crush of suppliants in the anteroom. Unerringly, his gaze would single her out. It had happened once before, when she had been interrogated about her papers. This time, she was here by choice. Philippe Duhet would know it, and he would gloat.
Involuntarily, Claire huddled a little more deeply into her cloak. There was no fire in the grate in the commissioner's waiting room, but the heat from the crush of bodies took the chill off the air. She pitied those who were pleading with stony-faced officials for information on the fate of friends and family. They lived in desperate times, and the faces of those around her showed it. Everyone spoke in whispers. The smell of fear polluted the air.
It seemed beyond belief that she, Claire Devereux, a girl whose pride was almost legendary in her own circles, should have come to this. She was prepared to barter her pride, her beauty, her body, her favors, for two small pieces of paperthose coveted and almost impossible to obtain passports which promised their fortunate possessors safe-conduct out of France.
Oh God, how her detractorsand there were many of themwould mock her if they could see her now. Proud, some called her. Others were not so kind. Arrogant, they said. Full of her own consequence, said others. A haughty beauty, she had heard herself described on more than one occasion. And the man she had petitioned for an interview had once promised that he would take great delight in humbling that pride beneath his heel.
She was proud, but not in the sense that most people assumed. Her beauty did not hold her in thrall. Perversely, nature's gift had turned into something of a curse. It attracted men like moths to a flame. Her beauty, she knew, seduced their senses. Men wanted to possess her.
Wise to the ways of gentlemen, she held herself aloof. Their flatteries amused her. For all they cared, she might as well have been an empty-headed widgeon. In point of fact, they probably wished that she was a widgeon. When provoked, her tongue was rapier sharp. Her wit was scathing. She had the temper to match her red hair. Some gentlemen had discovered these unpalatable truths to their everlasting mortification.
Her mother had observed her elder daughter's growing cynicism with a troubled eye. She'd tried to remonstrate. It was imperative that Claire accept one of her suitors as soon as possible. Leon Devereux and his vast financial empire had excited the envy of some powerful deputies in the Convention. Anything might happen. A husband with the right connections could shield not only his wife but her family also.
Claire would have none of it. She was too proud to accept a husband on those terms, and too headstrong to heed her mother's advice. Leon Devereux had aided and abetted his beautiful elder daughter. He could not credit that he stood in any real danger. His wife prevailed upon him, however, to set things in motion should the worst come to the worst.
Under assumed names and identities, with forged papers, they were to hide out in Rouen. His daughters were to take up residence in Madame Lambert's School for Girls. Claire, too old to pass herself off as a schoolgirl, was to be a teacher of piano and voice. Leon, named for his father, a youth of fifteen summers, was to be enrolled at a boys' school nearby. The parents would take their chances hiding out above a locksmith's shop. The arrangement was to be temporary. Leon Devereux confidently expected that escape to England or some other friendly country would be easily contrived. He had connections and money. What could go wrong?
Claire stifled a sob. Nothing had gone right! They had been taken completely off guard. In October, suddenly, the queen was tried and executed. Moderates in the Convention were denounced and swiftly followed Marie Antoinette to the guillotine. By the time Leon Devereux decided to put his plan of escape into motion, it was too late.
Deputies from the Commune arrested her parents the very night before they were due to leave for Rouen. Leon Devereux and his wife were an example that Claire would remember to her dying day. Calmly, they embraced their children in turn. Leon Devereux managed a private word with his eldest child before he was led away.
"Everything rests with you now," he said softly. "You are the strong one, Claire. I rely on you to take care of Zoe and Leon." He would have said more, but the deputies came between them.
Claire would never forget the hours that followed. Zoë was subdued. But Leon was in a passion, and all for organizing an escape attempt on the Abbaye where their parents were to be incarcerated. Claire was consumed with remorse.
She blamed herself for bringing them all to this sorry passshe and her overweening pride. If she had only listened to her mother, if she had only accepted the hand of one of those well-connected suitors, it might have been possible to avert the catastrophe which had overtaken them.
When she came to herself, she knew exactly what she must do. "You are the strong one," her father had told her. "I rely on you to take care of Zoë and Leon." She accepted her responsibility for her younger siblings as if it had been a sacred trust.
Over Leon's protests, she insisted that they follow their father's instructions to the letter. They must make for Rouen and take up their lives there. Leon finally gave way when Claire pointed out that, as well as Madame Lambert, there were friends in Rouen waiting to help them. She was far from sure on this point, but she refused to delay. Warrants for their arrest might be sworn out at any moment. It was a common story. Except for young children, whole families were sometimes arrested and sent to the guillotine.
With the exception of Madame Lambert, however, there were no friends waiting to help them in Rouen. As the weeks passed, it became evident to Claire that they must fend for themselves. She had come to accept that they must ride out the storm in France under their assumed identities. Later, when the world returned to sanity, they would take up their lives where they had left off.
It was a vain hope. From the moment Philippe Duhet's eyes had locked on hers, two months before, as he rode into Rouen's market square at the head of his troops, Claire sensed that she would not be left alone to live in peace. That damnable beauty of hers, which she had tried to conceal behind nondescript frocks and plain bonnets, had served her ill, had served them all ill. The last thing they wanted was to come to the notice of the authorities. The last thing she wanted was to come to the notice of a man like Duhet.
His reputation curdled her blood. All Rouen was agog with stories about the new commissioner. It was said that he had murdered all the members of his family one by one. It was known for a fact that he'd had a hand in razing to the ground a convent just outside Paris. Some of the nuns had perished by the guillotine. He was a known debaucher of innocents. Mothers were already warning their young da
ughters to keep out of his sight.
There were some in Rouen, however, who welcomed Philippe Duhet's appointment. The fanatics were jubilant. Duhet would bring the Terror to their province. He must. He was Robespierre's man. And then the North would be rid of all subversive elements and their spawn.
Before a week was out, she was summoned to the commissioner's office and her false papers examined. Commissioner Duhet made no bones about what he was after. He wanted her for his mistress, and told her so straight out. His crudity inflamed her temper. Before she could stop herself, she was spitting her hatred at him. Far from angering him, her proud defiance only enamored him the more. He let her go, but Claire was sure that the reprieve was to be only temporary.
Before Commissioner Duhet could bend her to his will, duty had intervened. For six weeks, she was given a respite. The commissioner and his soldiers were under orders to track down the remnants of the defeated Grand Army of the Vendée. Six weeks of considering the hopelessness of their position had brought Claire to an about-face.
"You are the strong one, Claire," her father had told her. "I rely on you to take care of Zoë and Leon."
Sometimes Claire thought that it was Zoë, for all her gentle manner, who was the strong one in the family. No one would have taken the two girls for sisters. In temperament and in looks, they were complete opposites. Zoë was as dark as Claire was fair. She took after the rest of the Devereux. Claire was reputed to take after her paternal grandmother.
Zoë was younger than Claire by three years. She looked up to her older sister for some reason that Claire could not conceive. Zoë, in her opinion, was by far the finer person.
For the present, Zoë had adopted the role and modes of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. But Claire worried about her sister incessantly. How long, she wondered, before some male predator penetrated the disguise? And if and when that happened, what would become of little Zoë?
It was Leon, however, who gave Claire her worst anxieties, and never more so than in the last few days. In an unguarded moment, she had confided the disquieting news that their parents had been transferred from the Abbaye to the prison at Carmes. It was Madame Lambert, the proprietress of the girls' school where Zoë and Claire resided, who had received the report from friends in Paris.
Leon was beside himself. Carmes was one step closer to the impregnable Conciergerie. And as everyone knew, the Conciergerie was the last stop on the way to the scaffold.
Claire, too, was wracked by fears for the fate of her parents. Leon was not the only one to grasp that something must be done for them soon if they were to cheat the guillotine of two of its victims. But Leon's way was reckless. He was threatening to return to Paris and enlist his friends' aid in an attempt to storm the prison. Such foolhardiness was doomed to failure. Claire had a better way, but one that she dared not confide to Leon.
"I rely on you to take care of Zoë and Leon." She could hear her father's words as if he had just whispered them in her ear.
If it was in her power, she would take care of them all, she resolvedZoë, Leon, as well as her parents. The beauty she had once despised could be turned into a valuable asset. She would barter it, if Philippe Duhet was willing to meet her price.
The door opened and Philippe Duhet strode into the anteroom. There was no denying that he was a handsome creature. Hair as black as sable was tied back in a queue, accenting the patrician features. Claire found that she was holding her breath. His eyes swept over the crush of people. When he saw her, a look of triumph fleetingly flashed in those extraordinary green eyes. Claire felt her skin begin to crawl. The commissioner always had that effect on her.
He said something in an undertone to one of his subordinates and Claire was not surprised that it was she who was chosen to enter the commissioner's inner sanctum. When she entered, he was seated at his desk, his long fingers idly drumming a tattoo on the blotter. He seemed preoccupied. Not for one moment was Claire deceived by the pose he had adopted. He was toying with her as a cat toys with a mouse.
"Please be seated," he said, indicating a chair pulled close to his desk.
Claire, thankfully, sank into it. Her knees were buckling under her. Her throat was so dry she could barely swallow. She knew that he was staring at her, but she was afraid to lift her head.
The girl was beautiful, startlingly so. Philippe Duhet allowed his eyes to wander at will over her womanly contours and he was struck anew by the thought that never, in his whole life, had he ever encountered a more perfect or delectable specimen of the fairer sex.
Her skin was translucent, like fine parchment tinted with roses. Her heavily lashed blue eyes were slightly slanted at the corners and gilded by the delicate arch of her brows. And her hair, bathed by the thin wintry sun which streamed through the west windows, seemed to be touched by fire.
He had wanted her since he had first caught sight of her as he had ridden into Rouen. Claire Michelet not her real name, he surmisedwas one of the spectators who, silent and morose, had thronged the market square as his soldiers had set up the guillotine, at his command.
He'd made it his business to find out as much as he could about her. She was one of the schoolmistresses at Madame Lambert's School for Girls. He had not been in Rouen a week, before he had sent his men to fetch her, ostensibly to examine her papers.
He wanted her as he had never before wanted any woman. She was a spitfire. Her defiance stirred him. He would subjugate her just as he had subjugated those rebel peasants of the Grand Army who dared to challenge his authority. The blood lust was still in him. At Angers, they had captured Sillery, one of the rebel leaders. On the morrow, he would ride out and bring the man back in chains. Sillery would be tried and publicly executed. The thought excited his passion for the woman to fever pitch.
He had promised to humble her pride. Claire Michelet would soon learn that he never made idle threats. "How may I serve you, Mademoiselle Michelet?" he murmured, breaking into Claire's train of thought.
She raised her head, and her eloquent blue eyes narrowed unpleasantly. She came directly to the point. "I have two young friends who wish to visit relatives in England. I was hoping, Commissioner Duhet, that you might assist them."
Subduing his annoyance at her barefaced effrontery, he smiled, saying, "What you suggest is treasonable. Our two countries are at war."
Silence.
His smile deepened. He decided that Claire Michelet would be suitably chastened by the time he had finished with her. "Two passports," he drawled. "You sell yourself cheaply."
Color came and went under her skin, but she held his gaze steadily. "Passports won't get my friends to England," she said. "As you say, our two countries are at war. I want some assurance that transportation will be arranged for them."
No fool, the beautiful Claire Michelet. "Consider it done. Is there anything more?"
There was one thing more, but Claire was reluctant to mention it until Zoë and Leon were safely away. The instant she introduced the subject of her parents, the name Devereux must be out in the open. She was deathly afraid that to reveal so much might be tantamount to signing a death warrant for them all. And yet, she must say something.
"Well?" His patience was wearing thin.
She inhaled deeply. "There are two people in Carmes Prison who are very dear to me. I want you to use your influence to have them released."
"Their names?"
She shook her head. "Now is not the time to discuss it. Once my young friends have arrived safely in England, I shall give you their names."
"Suit yourself." It made little difference whether she told him now or later. He had no interest in assisting Claire Michelet or any of her friends. The little he would do, would be for appearances' sake only.
He would sign the passports and provide a carriage. Millot, his clerk, would arrange it. But once the coach left Rouen, Claire Michelet's young friends would get no help from him. Nor would her friends at Carmes.
He leaned forward on the desk, his han
ds clasped loosely in front of him. His charming manner repelled Claire.
"And now, mademoiselle, allow me to tell you exactly what you may expect from the bargain we have struck."
Brutally, graphically, unsparing of her blushes, he described how she would pleasure him when she came to his bed. By the time he had finished, Claire's head was bowed, her cheeks were ashen. Duhet was smiling, well satisfied with the effect he had achieved.
"Tonight," he said. "You will come to me tonight."
At this, her head lifted, but she kept her eyes downcast. Her breath was fluttery; her voice was low. "I shall come to you when my friends have left Rouen and not a moment before."
Without warning, he brought his fist down on the flat of the desk, sending papers and inkwell scattering. Claire's heart leapt to her mouth.
"Millot!" roared Duhet.
The door opened to admit a young man, one of the clerks. "Commissioner?"
Duhet was on his feet, pacing angrily. "Two passports, Millot, for Mademoiselle Michelet. See to it."
Claire forced herself to her feet. "And transportation?" She faltered under the blaze of fury in his eyes. She could hear the rasp of his breath before he brought himself under control.
"Millot, you heard the lady. She desires transportation for two friends."
The clerk waited respectfully. After a moment, he coughed. "What destination, sir?"
Duhet laughed, and the sound of it made Claire flinch. "Tell him, my dear. No need to dissemble. Millot is in my confidence."
She looked at the clerk pleadingly and something in his expression emboldened her to voice the word. "England," she whispered.
A long look passed between the two men. Claire did not notice. Her head was bowed.
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