A citoyenne in the red bonnet of the Revolution spat across the table, and from somewhere came the sound of smashing glass as a window broke beneath the assault of a cudgel.
A man in the bloodstained apron ofa butcher struggled to lift the edge of the table. Another heaved with him, the veins in his forearms great blue ropes beneath the weather-beaten skin. The table fell onto its side with an almighty crash. The couple behind were now exposed to the mob, their fragile barrier demolished. Hands reached for them, hauled them out, and they were lost in the throng, pushed and jostled to the great double doors of the salon. The sounds of breaking glass continued and the child, lying rigid along the beams of the ceiling, smelled smoke as someone fired the tapestries in the long gallery upstairs and the orgyof destruction reached new levels of enthusiasm…
The narrow cobbled street was thronged, the stench of unwashed humanity heavy in the sultry summer air. The open tumbrils clattered over the cobbles in an endless stream, their passengers standing cheek by jowl, hands bound in front of them, hair scraped back from their faces, white faces staring unseeing into the jeering crowd running beside the carts, pelting them with rock-hard dried mud and rubbish from the kennels.
The child now stood at a gabled window under the eaves of a wine shop. She hugged the shadows as she lo iced out on the scene below. It was the same scene ever from dawn to dusk when Madame Guillotine closedeyes for the night.
The face of a woman among the condemned in the second cart became suddenly sharply defined amid the sea of desperation. The child pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out as she watched the cart pass below the window and out of sight around the comer of the Rue de Seine…
The low, heartbroken sobbing jerked Nathaniel into full awareness before he realized what it was. The bedroom was filled with moonlight, the ruddy glow of the dying embers in the grate a counterpoint to the cold silver clarity of the light.
Gabrielle was sitting up beside him, tears sliding out from her closed lids to track down her cheeks. The sobs were in her throat, and she rocked her body as she hunched pitifully over her drawn-up knees.
"Gabrielle," he whispered, shocked to his core. She made no response, and he touched her bare back. Her skin was slick with sweat and cold as the grave.
"Gabrielle," he said again, louder this time, his warm palm cupping the damp curve of her shoulder. When her eyes remained shut and the sobs continued, he realized she was still asleep. Fast asleep, she sat hunched over her knees, racked with some devastating inner anguish. What nightmare world was she inhabiting?
"Gabrielle! Wake up!" He spoke with a calm authority, swiveling to take her shoulders from the front and shake her awake. "Wake up, you're having a bad dream."
Her eyes opened and the sadness in them struck to his heart. The dark red ringlets clustering around her face clung to her cheeks, damp with tears and sweat, and she stared at him for a minute, unrecognizing. The sobs gathered in her throat, but as he watched in impotent compassion, she swallowed vigorously, wiped the back of her arm over her eyes, and loosened her hair with her fingers, tossing it back over her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice thick with the residue of tears. "Did I wake you?"
"What was it?" he asked gently. "What were you dreaming?"
Her shoulders lifted in an infinitesimal shrug and she shook her head. "Nothing… nothing at all." She lay down again, closing her eyes firmly. "Go back to sleep, Nathaniel. I'm sorry I woke you."
"That won't do," he said sharply, gazing down at her.
"What won't?" She rolled onto her side in the fetal position. "I'm sleepy."
He could feel the jagged edges of her pain as an almost palpable aura around the curled figure, and he knew she was as wide awake as he was.
"It won't do," he repeated, swinging out of bed. "And don't pretend you're sleepy, because Iknow damn well you're as far from sleep as you could possibly be."
He went over to the fireplace and bent to rake through the embers, stirring them into flickering life. He tossed kindling onto the flicker and waited until the dry wood caught. Then he turned back to the bed.
Gabrielle was lying on her back now, her eyes still resolutely closed. Tears stained the translucent pallor of her cheeks, and there was a bead of lip where she'd bitten it.
A few hours earlier he'd fallen into a satiated sleep beside a bold, imperious, exciting woman of inventive and ingenious passion. And he'd woken beside a vulnerable, deeply hurt woman who looked both much younger than her years and yet paradoxically older.
"Gabrielle." He came and sat on the bed beside her, laying a hand on her stomach, feeling the muscles jump in instant reflex against his cool palm. "Iwant to know what you were dreaming."
Her eyes opened and he saw the residue of stark pain in their charcoal depths.
"It was nothing, I told you. Nothing important. I'm sorry I woke you."
"Don't keep saying that." Impatience, never far below the surface, broke through his compassion. "You were dreaming something terrible."
Sighing, Gabrielle sat up. "And what if I was? We're all entitled to our privacy, Nathaniel. You have no rights over my soul."
Nathaniel stood up abruptly. "Now, just listen to me. We make the most wonderful, transcendent love for hours and I fall asleep holding you in my arms, feeling your breathing, smelling your skin and your hair, aware of every millimeter of your skin touching mine. And then I wake in the middle of the night to find you soaked in sweat, sobbing in utter desolation, and you tell me I'm not entitled to know what's the matter. Well, it won't do, Gabrielle. Passion can't exist in a vacuum." He glared at her.
"Biting my head off isn't going to encourage me to bare my soul," she observed. A shiver ran through her as the sweat cooled in the cold night air and goose bumps rose on her skin.
Nathaniel heard the beginning of resignation in her voice. He turned to the armoire and drew out a heavy velvet robe. "Put this on and come to the fire," he said, his voice calm and gentle now. Kindness on the heels of exasperation could be a potent persuader, as any skilled interrogator knew. Throwing another robe around his own shoulders, he went to the door. "I'll bring up some cognac."
"I'd love some warm milk," Gabrielle murmured, huddling into the warm folds of the robe. "If you're going downstairs."
Nathaniel scratched his head. He rarely ventured into the back regions of his house and wasn't at all certain that he'd know how to produce such a commodity.
Gabrielle was smiling at him in perfect comprehension, just a tinge of her customary mockery in her eyes. "I'll come with you," she said. "I'm sure the kitchen fire's well banked for the night. It'll be warmer than here."
"And then I'll hear the story, he asserted.
Gabrielle had shared the nightmare with only two others: Georgie and Guillaume. They were the only people until then with whom she’d shared a bed throughout the long, dark hours of the night when the memories of terror awoke. But to tell Nathaniel was to reveal a weakness-a corner of her soul-to the enemy. Then again, the pragmatic voice of reason said, it would substantiate her hostility to her father's nation.