The animals disappeared beneath the load. He’d smeared dirt on their necks and legs. They were the meanest of village donkeys now, muddy, unkempt beasts kept by the lowest farm tenants. Adrian had become slovenly as well. The cheeky defiance was gone from him. Slumped, dull, placid, moving at a snail’s pace, he strolled through their sight.
LeBreton set his hand on her bare shoulder, a tight, warning touch. He must have known what was coming next.
“You! You there. Halt.” The harsh Parisian accent came at a distance. Hooves speeded up. “Come here.”
Adrian had dallied in the courtyard in a lackadaisical way. The riders had seen him and the donkeys. He was caught.
“Who are you, boy?”
I know that voice. Edged like a razor, carrying with it the slums of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the east of Paris. This was the man who’d broken into her room the night the chateau burned. The man she’d fought. The one who’d come to kill her.
“You have no business here. What are you doing?” The clop of hooves. She could see nothing, but she could hear the breath of the horses. “Explain yourself.”
LeBreton’s muscles registered no surprise. He’d sent the servant boy to play out this scene in the courtyard. Exactly this.
“Looting is forbidden.”
The Jacobin had screamed when she slashed his face. He’d shrieked loudly enough to be heard by the mob on the lawn. His blood spilled over her hands. Covered the letter opener she held like a knife. When she fought to get away the night candle fell from the desk. Her papers caught fire. The curtains went up in flames.
He’d survived. Hidden in the dark, in the damp niche under the bridge, shaking and sticky with blood, she’d heard him howl her name.
“We will not tolerate a plague of scavengers, stealing from the people.”
Crouched like an animal in her hiding place, she’d watched that man stalk through the mad carouse of the burning. She’d seen him, his head dressed in a rough bandage, going through the crowd, grabbing women to search their faces, rolling drunken couples on their backs to get a good look, yelling, “Where’s the de Fleurignac bitch? She has to be here somewhere. Find her.”
The servant boy whined. He had done nothing. Nothing. The people could have the greens. He didn’t want them. Here. Take them. His grand-mère would find other herbs for her stew. Nobody told him he couldn’t—
The outraged squawk said Adrian had been booted to the ground. The men snickered. That was the sport they brought out of Paris these days, bullying a farm boy.
LeBreton closed his hand on her. Quiet. Quiet.
Adrian had a widowed mother. His grand-mère was aged. She had no teeth.
“God rot your grandmother.”
The boy hurriedly mentioned more destitute relatives.
The Jacobin said, “They are a plague upon us. If we tolerate vermin like this, they will strip France bare.”
Adrian would give everything back. All of it. They were only herbs from the garden. He was not a plague. Please.
“Better to hang a dozen now as an example.”
“He’s a boy.” That was the other voice. Slower, deeper, better-natured. She had seen this man as well, that night, wandering his way through the rioting, wine bottle in hand, annoying the young women. A long pole of a man with the loose jowls of a hunting dog.
“Boys his age are fighting for France. No, I don’t want a load of damn weeds. What do I—” The squeal of a horse. “Fils de salope. It bit me!”
One of the donkeys had helped itself to a chunk of Jacobin.
A barked obscenity. Horses stamped. Gravel scattered. Adrian let loose a dozen panicked apologies, fitting them between snarls and gutter oaths from the men.
I wish I could see.
From the sound of it, the Jacobins had their hands full, keeping their horses under control. They were city men. Not used to riding.
“Get those stinking asses out of here. Out! Get out. Allez!”
Reins jangled. Hooves scraped iron on stone. A donkey brayed. Paris accents cursed the horses. Adrian hurried past the grilled gate, limping and bent over, being a hapless country lad. Lying with every inch of his body. The donkeys were in on it, too. They nosed along after him, heads hanging, mistreated and down-trodden. It was not altogether her imagination that they looked pleased with themselves.
Quiet. LeBreton said it through his hands, pressing the message into her skin.
The Jacobins trotted by. One man, then the other, then a horse on a lead, loaded high with bags and bundles of loot from the chateau.
They’d confiscated themselves better horseflesh than they could manage. The man in front, heavily bandaged, jerked the reins, making no impression on the mare. The other Jacobin, pale-skinned and pockmarked, followed, clinging to the mane of his horse, riding like a sack of potatoes.
They did not glance into the goldfish garden. They jogged through her sight and away.
She had learned stillness at Versailles, in the hardest school on earth. One does not fidget in the presence of a king. Hungry, thirsty, exhausted, with pins sticking into one’s bodice, with feet that ached, hour after hour, one does not wriggle. Those first weeks at Versailles, Uncle Arnault stood behind her and pinched her every time she blinked.
The thud of hooves turned dull on the grass beyond the terrace. The path in the front took up the noise. Long minutes later, three horses, not matching steps, took the road that led toward Paris. A busy, rustling wind blew by and scattered the sound of the last hoofbeats.
Time lengthened. She closed her eyes and released the breath she was somehow holding and let herself relax against Guillaume LeBreton. Her cheek comprehended the folds of his shirt. A noisy little piece of her mind insisted on figuring out each line, each seam, but she ignored it. She let herself stop thinking.
Her lips were open and rested upon him. His waistcoat had a dark, pungent taste, like rye bread. In the space between them, she breathed back her own warm breath mixed with his. He was leather, and wood smoke, and a smell like morning, green and alive.
Complicated textures of his clothing pressed against her everywhere. Compelling. Overwhelming. She felt each distinct, hard button he wore and the smooth fabric of his trousers. She was naked, so she felt this with great exactness.
He was hugely erect. The hardness grew and stirred against her.
He desires me.
The moment fell between them like a ripe fruit. She felt a shock in him that mirrored the shock inside of her. He had not planned this. She had not imagined this.
She was naked, after all. She was plastered against him. It was not amazing that a man should notice.
He was not the first man to push her against a wall and shove his interest in her direction. Versailles had been a viper pit. Men with power believed they could take anything they wanted. Many of them had wanted a fifteen-year-old girl. She had avoided dark corridors.
If she pushed him away, he would let go. His hands were ready to open and set her free. Whatever else she believed, she knew this. He wanted her very much and he would let her go.
The hard, hot, animal insistence against her belly filled the center of her mind. A curious silence took possession of her. The busy niggling of thought faded away. There was only feeling. What had been fear transformed to an explicit, earthy wanting. She tightened and throbbed. A heady sweetness invaded.