Victor did not move.
She said, “This is nothing for you to be concerned with.”
“In the absence of your father . . . yes, it is my concern. The explanations will come to me. And it seems I must conduct this business for you.”
A sick weariness overwhelmed her. Guillaume must leave. I must get him out of this house. Away from Victor.
Victor was not only her cousin and the de Fleurignac heir. He was a powerful man in his own right. A radical, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, and a friend of Robespierre himself. He was an idealist. A humorless man, self-serving as a weed, with stern morals and unshakable, very dull convictions. The opposite, in short, of Guillaume LeBreton.
Victor could have Guillaume killed by the lifting of a finger.
She sighed, noisily. “I have been in the dust of the road for four days, Cousin. I am hungry and filthy beyond endurance. You tell me Papa is in some trouble too complex to explain. Citoyen LeBreton can wait.” She barely glanced over her shoulder. “Go now and come back tomorrow. We are busy.”
Briefly, Guillaume looked up, straight at her. His eyes showed not a gleam of what had been between them.
“Who is he?” Victor repeated. “Explain this, Marguerite.”
She threw up her hands. “Very well. Perhaps you are the one to handle this matter, after all. This is Citoyen LeBreton, a peddler of small goods about the villages. When there was disaster in Voisemont—and there has been more than you can possibly guess—he was kind enough to bring me safely through the countryside, all the way to Paris. I promised to reward him. Take money from the strongbox and pay him for me, if you please.”
“A hundred louis d’or.” Guillaume seated himself firmly upon the bench. He folded his arms across his chest and transformed into the Tradesman Citoyen LeBreton, his eyes filled with calculations of money and value, his hands apt to handle the shape and form of merchandise. One could see there would be an occasional short weight among Citoyen LeBreton’s goods. “Gold. Not silver. Not paper.”
“Patriots accept assignats.” Victor was silkily threatening. “Only reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries demand coin. Do you know it is against the law to refuse assignats when they are offered?”
“The bargain was for coin.”
How did Guillaume do it? A twist of his mouth. The scar revealed to the light. A change in his voice. He became a man of the alleys and dirty streets in the crowded faubourgs east and south of Paris. Even his hands, resting on his arms, looked crude and dangerous. The same hands that had been like the hands of a god upon her skin.
Do not challenge Victor. Take assignats and leave.
She did not glance once at Guillaume. She did not trust herself to lie with her face and eyes as well as he did.
“Cousin.” She pushed past him impatiently. “We have troubles more important than dickering with merchants. Send Janvier to pay him and come to the salon. Please.”
Important matters would appeal to Victor. He was a man with a great belief in important affairs, all with him at the center.
He nodded. “You’re right. Go ahead of me.”
She opened the door to the salon. Behind her, Victor spoke softly. But she heard him.
“You should beware, Citoyen LeBreton. Men mount the guillotine every day for less than this single insolence you have shown me. Janvier will bring coin. Do not let me see you again.”
Eighteen
DOYLE WALKED AWAY FROM HÔTEL DE FLEURIGNAC, clicking a pouch of gold pieces.
Hawker didn’t approach till he got the hand signal. Then he caught up. “You just walked off and left her?”
“Right.”
“Was the father there?”
“Not a sign or a whisper. There’s a cousin who’s moved in. An interesting fellow. She doesn’t like him.”
They fell into step, the donkeys forming an auxiliary corps at the rear. The boy didn’t ask for a good long time. Two hundred paces. Then he gave in. “Interesting, how?”
“The number of men he’s killed.” I could drag you halfway across Paris by that curiosity of yours. “Bit of a Utopian philosopher, Victor de Fleurignac, which these days means chopping the head off anybody who disagrees with you. About a dozen so far. He thought about adding me to his bag. He would have, if Maggie hadn’t been standing right there. That is a man darkly and justifiably suspicious of me.”
He took a right into the Rue Riquier, stopped, and did a check of the straps of the panniers on both donkeys. Probably they weren’t being followed. Hard to tell in this part of the city.
Hawker stood alongside, fuming. “You left her with a cousin who kills people.”
“Not just with his own lily-white hands, he don’t. It’s all clean and judicial. Orders of the Committee of Public Safety.”
“You walk off and leave her because you think her father’s going to show up.”
“Or she’ll go find him. One or the other.” He patted the straps and clicked at the donkeys. “She is what we call bait.”
“You do that to her. You take her upstairs with you and then you do that to her.” Stomp. Stomp. Oh, the boy was outraged. “I could smell you two when you came down. Like a couple of alley cats. You grinning and her purring and stretching.”
That had been good, strolling along beside her, knowing she smelled of him. “I’m hoping that cousin of hers don’t have your extensive experience. Which he apparently don’t, or I’d be on my way to the chop right now.”
“Fine. Just fine. What about this pair?” Hawker poked an elbow back toward the donkeys. “We’re through with them, aren’t we? Why don’t we sell them, too? Lots of good, savory meat on those bones. Donkey fricassée.”
“Thought that was what you wanted.”
“You don’t eat your own donkey. And you don’t use your own woman as . . .” Hawker kicked a loose chunk of cobble in the gutter. It rolled end over end and rapped up against a wall. “Bait. That’s one of those delicate distinctions gentlemen make.”
A carriage rolled past. Doyle said, “As far as eating goes, mule is better than donkey. I’ll take you to a café where you can try both. There’s one over on the Left Bank.”
“I’d as soon not, if it’s all the same to you. You could find a way to keep her if you wanted to.”
“I’ve taken a lot of trouble to put her right where she is.”
Hawker showed a line of clenched white teeth. “Piss on that.”
“If she’s in it with her father, planning assassinations of army officers, she deserves what she gets. If she isn’t, she’s still the only line we have that leads to him.” It was full daylight. They’d be awake in the house in the Marais, at headquarters. “De Fleurignac knows who’s marked for death. When I get my hands on him, he’s going to tell me. Now, listen. You know where we are?”
“Notre Dame over there.” Hawker pointed. “Hôtel de Fleurignac that way.” Eyes, sharp as obsidian glass, studied him. “You didn’t like leaving her.”
“I don’t have to like everything I do.”
“When are we going to get her out of there?”
“When it’s time. I’m going to wander off down that street, which happens to be the Rue Cairel. You do a little tracking after me, just for practice.” He talked with his fingers, giving the same order. “If we get separated, find me on the Right Bank, downriver of the big bridge, the Pont Neuf.”
Hawker said, “Yes,” with his hand.
Let’s see if we can lose you, boy. He strolled off, taking the donkeys, not glancing back.
“BURNED! The chateau burned! This is impossible. Impossible.” Her aunt shrieked like a parrot and beat her feet upon the floor. “No! No. No. No. Impossible.”