Carruthers laid out a couple of silences, each with a different meaning. “The Café des Marchands. Make your excuses to him.”
He knew some small number of deadly women. This one, though, froze his bones. She had the same eyes Doyle did, the same weighing look that saw everything.
Right now, she was full of contempt. “The world will be a cleaner place when somebody snaps your neck.”
He wanted to shrivel up and slink out and never come back. So he grinned. “If I am a rat, madame, I’m the most dangerous rat you will encounter outside your nightmares. A good night to you.” He turned his back on her and walked out the way he’d come in. He’d wipe his arse with Robespierre’s papers before he gave them to that old hag.
The hell with her. The hell with the lot of them.
Thirty
MARGUERITE THOUGHT OF GOING BACK TO THE Hôtel de Fleurignac. But Victor was there, and his mother, and a houseful of servants who would look in her face and see something was wrong. They would bring her delicacies to eat and brew her tisanes. And hover.
She could not. She could not. She crossed her arms around her waist and began walking.
Papa had done something dreadful. Or, not so much done this himself as stood back and allowed his work to be used for horrible purposes. It had not been chance that brought Guillaume to the chateau at Voisemont. He’d come looking for Papa. How disappointed he must have been to find only her.
Now she must mend this.
Somewhere in her city she would find a little breeze. In some park. In some street that led down to the Seine. She would stand and let it blow into her face and watch the sun come up. Maybe that would make her feel better.
A violin played in one of the twisting streets to the left, perhaps in a café. It was beautiful and faint, like a bird singing when the woods are utterly still. She walked for a while toward it.
If she had known where Guillaume was, if she had the least smell of a notion where he might be, she would have walked in his direction. It wouldn’t have been a choice. Her feet would have started moving on their own and kept at it till they bumped into his boots.
I am a great fool. She stubbed her toes on the uneven cobbles. In the narrow and ancient streets of this quartier, stone barriers jutted into the streets so carts would not scrape the walls. That was another hazard to avoid. She seemed to be full of pain in every region inside her skin. Her stomach cramped.
He is English. Why did I not see that? He was not a smuggler, or a bookseller, or a petty criminal, or even a member of the Secret Police. He was a spy of England. He was sent to find her father and take revenge upon him.
She must have walked a long way. In some alley off the Rue d’Anduza, she leaned over and was sick, retching most miserably. But after that, she felt better. The early dawn turned chilly though, and she walked along, shivering. In the Rue Montmartre she passed cafés with every table full. Men in fine clothes idled away the end of the night, drinking cognac, talking loudly, holding the newspapers that were already circulating on the streets. Around them, at other tables, men just awakened and surly were getting ready to do the work of the world. It was as if, in these streets, humanity divided itself into Men of the Day and Men of the Night.
Guillaume was both. Day and Night. He could sit with one sort of men or the other, and they would both welcome him.
She noticed, then, where her feet had brought her. The Café des Marchands, where she had eaten with Guillaume. Where he had told her she could leave a message for him. Where she had told him she did not need him.
I do not need you, Guillaume LeBreton. I do not want you. I do not even know your name.
She sat at one of the tables outside the café, since it was as easy to be discouraged and forlorn sitting down as wandering the streets like a ghost. When the woman paused impatiently beside her, she ordered coffee and a roll.
The coffee was laid on the table softly, so it would not spill. The roll set beside it.
“Are you well, citoyenne?” the woman asked.
She shook her head, but said nothing. The woman went away.
She did not want to eat. She wanted to be at home, in the chateau at Voisemont, at her desk, writing tales of beauty and high adventure. She did not want to live in an adventure. They hurt.
When she wiped her face with her hands, she discovered that she no longer smelled of being loved by Guillaume. She smelled like monkey.
FROM the end of the street Doyle saw Maggie, sitting at a table outside. Her head was bowed, so he couldn’t see her face. She was dressed to match the café in plain, durable clothing. That could have been deliberate on her part, but it was probably wasn’t.
He’d said she could find him here. He hadn’t thought she would.
She’d taken the table farthest from the door, where she wouldn’t be bothered by men going in and out. A cup of coffee, untouched, sat before her and a little round of bread, unbroken.
“Hello, Maggie.”
Her head came up, smooth as flowing water. Strands of hair slipped and fell across one another and slid down around her face. The clear, brown eyes lifted and met his.
“I’ll join you,” he said.
I am drowning in this woman and I don’t want to swim free. This is the one. This is the one I’ll give up the Service for. Yesterday or the day before, or maybe the first time he’d seen her, he’d made the decision. While he wasn’t noticing, his mind thought it out and argued it through and settled it. His Maggie. It already sounded natural.
He scraped the rush-bottomed chair back so it was up against the wall of the café and he could keep an eye on the street. He sat next to her, almost touching. She looked tired and worn out and sad. “You’re up early.”
“Not early. I was awake all night.”
She’d walked half the city, Talbot said. Talbot had followed her, at a careful distance, all night. She’d passed a dozen cafés, talked to an organ grinder in the park, played with his monkey, scratched a cat’s ears in an alley, spent time looking out at the river. If somebody was supposed to meet her, he didn’t show up.
Talbot said she was sick. She’d cast up her accounts in an alley.
I want to take her home. I want to have a home to take her to. I want to put her in my bed and just hold on to her while she sleeps. I want to reach out my hand at any hour, all night long, and find her there.
He couldn’t. He’d have to take her back to Hôtel de Fleurignac and leave her there. Damn, but it felt wrong. “Probably not a good idea to go walking around Paris alone at night. You meet dangerous people.”
“Like you. But I met you first in broad daylight, so there are no guarantees. At Voisemont, I go walking at night.” Maggie picked up the coffee and barely tasted it. “I used to go walking.”
The widow who owned the Café des Marchands came out from behind the counter and brought him cut bread, a slab of hard cheese, and a cup of wine, without him having to ask. The widow liked his looks and, being in the market for another man, let him know it. She gave a shrewd glance from him to Maggie and shrugged and left.
He said, “Did you come here looking for me?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure why I’m here.” She sat staring into the cup. “It just happened somehow. Perhaps I was looking for you with some part of my soul that is very stupid and does not know it is no longer allowed to be with you. It is like a dog that cannot be told that its human is dead. It goes out on the street, taking its accustomed walk, looking everywhere for him. Does that not sound both sad and self-pitying?”