Chapter Ten

May 8, 1803

Passy, Paris

T wo mornings later, as Viv sat at her little breakfast table, she received a note from Gaspard with the address of the scullery maid in Passy. It was Sunday, a day for rest, but she could not let that stop her.

She sent her footman immediately to Tate’s house to notify him of her receipt of the address. Please come , she had written. Those two words, she knew, he would take as acceptance of his help and her need for him. So, yes, that much she did want from him. She would wait to declare what else, if anything, she must do to satisfy herself before she gave in to his plea to leave Paris.

Within minutes, via his own footman, Tate responded with a note. I will arrive at nine o’clock at rue du Bac. You will never walk alone anywhere ever again. Loving regards, Tate.

He called for her on time, and they left immediately. “I hired a public cab for us. No need for us to be flamboyantly conspicuous.”

“You’re right,” she said as she took his hand and climbed up into the fiacre. As hired carriages went in Paris, this one was relatively new and clean. But the street was crowded with servants and shop people shouting as they loaded and unloaded lorries. “What is going on here? I’ve never seen Parisians so loud and irritable.”

Tate sat opposite her, his jade eyes so beautiful and consoling. “They are frightened.”

Fear crawled up her spine. “Of what?”

“The end of the peace.”

She took another look at the throngs. “Now? Today?”

“Within days, certainly. The British ambassador plans to leave Paris.”

“And what of your friend, Lord Ashley?”

“He and his wife have departed. Another I cannot find this morning. His majordom has not seen him since yesterday. I worry what has happened to him. So you see, if a favored diplomat can disappear in this city, others can too.”

“You?”

“Why not? I have my passport papers ready, but I am uneasy, as they may be worth less than the paper they are written on.” He stared at her, stiff and forbidding, with more warnings unuttered. “I will not repeat myself and become a nag.”

She was grateful he did not harangue her once more about leaving. He did know when to leave off. She turned her face fully to the window and viewed the results of the animosity between Bonaparte and the English ambassador. Some in the street were cross with their servants. A few yelled in English. Others in French. Women dabbed at tears as their trunks were loaded onto the backs of traveling coaches. Dogs ran amok from house to shop and toward the Seine.

Viv pulled the collar of her pelisse up her throat. She caught the fright of those trying to run for safety. “I am glad we do this today, Tate, and I am thankful you come with me.”

The carriage wound along the Seine and south away from it, into smaller and dirtier alleys. Tate nodded to her as if to imply he understood her concern at the change of circumstances here.

The air grew foul, thick with the odors of wine and decaying vegetables, urine, and the detritus of human life.

Tate frowned. From his waistcoat pocket he dug out a metal object and slid it over his knuckles.

She stared at him in awe.

“This turns the odds in my favor.”

Undoubtedly. One swing of his fist and a jaw could break.

He shifted in his seat then leaned over and patted his boot.

Something else there?

She blew out a breath. A knife, she imagined. “Have you spotted the one who follows me?”

Tate winced. “I have.”

She’d pondered who her shadows might be and what they wanted. “If he is going to steal from me or abduct me, he has had many chances.”

“Clearly—”

“He intends to do neither,” she finished for him.

“ They do not,” he corrected her, and a muscle twitched in his jaw.

“They?”

“They are a team. Perhaps four total. They take shifts. Usually six to eight hours and a new man comes on.”

“You did not tell me.” She was without breath.

“I did not want to worry you more.”

She closed her eyes.

He came to sit beside her and took her in his arms. She went. Oh, she went. Chills made her clamp her teeth shut, and she nestled into his embrace.

“I have two of my men following us this morning,” he said so sweetly into her hair. “We are safe.”

“I wish we could learn who they are and where they come from.”

“Indeed. They are very used to this cat-and-mouse business,” he said. “They know how to dodge and weave. They change clothes, too.”

That did not surprise her. “They’re not poorly dressed, either.”

“They have coin which they use to dart into a crowded café or into a private room. Therefore, they must receive money on which to operate, as well as a decent wage.”

She stared up at him. “So they are not base cutthroats hired off the streets. They’re employed gainfully by someone to do this.”

He arched a brow. “The question is, who is that someone?”

She shivered. Whoever masterminded this was crafty and had a goal beyond hers and Tate’s comprehension.

Their fiacre idled to a stop.

She clutched Tate’s cravat. “Post a man to the front door. Can you signal one to do that? And…and another at the corner across the street.”

He cupped her cheek. “My darling, my men are very good at this. They are everywhere.”

“But you cannot be certain.”

“I can.”

“How?”

He brushed tendrils of her hair from the arch of her cheek. “Did you see them when you went to the Place des Vosges?”

She gasped. “You had me followed then?”

“Or when you decided to dress as a pauper and seek out an apothecary in the Marais?”

Her mouth dropped open. Her shadow—correction, shadows—had followed her for weeks now. They did not follow every day. Or rather, because they were a team, she did not spy them every day. Nor could she detect them at night.

She sat back in the squabs and collected her thoughts. The interview ahead with the maid required her wits. She would not be afraid of the shadows, but stand in the light of her own desires. She’d talk with the scullery mind and be done with this. She was not gaining ground elsewhere—meanwhile, the world had caught on fire and headed toward war. In her reticule, she had her smelling salts in her little étui . Another vial, too, was filled with Charmaine’s usual dose of laudanum. Viv was prepared as much as she could be without a dose of arsenic.

The coachman opened the door and Tate got out.

She looked outside at the crumbling old building before them.

By the time she stepped to the cobbles, she’d found her strength. Old hatreds did not die. They simply festered in one’s heart.

“Darling,” Tate murmured to her as he took her hand and they gazed up at the half-timbered shack before them. “If this is not to your liking, we can leave.”

“No. I am here.” She patted the collar of her pelisse to her throat. “Knock and ask if Jocelyn Gatel lives here.”

He rapped on the door. Minutes stretched. No one came. He knocked again. Another minute passed before, inside, someone dragged a foot across ancient, creaking floorboards.

The rough-hewn wooden door inched open. A shriveled gremlin squinted up at Tate. Curiosity had the little person examining him head to toe.

“ Bonjour , madame—are you Jocelyn Gatel?”

“Who wants to know?” The little owl of a lady spotted Viv, and shock had her drawing back.

He stated, “Mademoiselle Charmaine de Massé.”

Those watery eyes grew big with shock. But with the bat of a lash, she sent Viv a shrewd, sharp look of greed. “Come to see me after all these years? So noble of you. So kind.” Her words implied nothing of the sort. She leaned on the handle of the door and swept a hand toward the inside.

A waft of putrid air hit Viv like a hot river. But she planted her feet more securely. She’d come this far.

The ugly little creature punched her black cane into the floor and craned her neck at Viv. “Why’ve you come?”

“I have come to visit you, madame, and see to your health.” And not.

Confusion lined the ugly spotted bird’s already wrinkled brow. “ Oui? You?” Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “You come to help me ?” She slapped a hand on her knee and cackled.

“Why not?” I can. I will. If you help me.

“Come, girl!” The woman spread her white lips to show small black teeth. Viv felt the scourge of her rotten breath upon her face. “Come inside, then, if can hold your stomach.”

Viv stepped across the threshold, Tate beside her—and the stench brought up her gorge.

“You can smell my mother there.”

Indeed. The woman sat like a corpse in a ragged upholstered chair that Viv would say had belonged once to the house in rue du Four. Her spidery hands to the armrests, the old lady had the complexion of the dead, a few wisps of white hair sprouting from her bald head, and a gown that clung to her emaciated form like a wet rag.

“She never rises from the chair. So that’s why you smell her. Does all her living there, if that’s what you can call it.”

Viv held on to her sanity by a thin thread. “Sad,” she offered.

“Stupid. She should die but lives to drive me insane. What do you want, mademoiselle? To give me money? I’ll take it. How much?”

“I did come to help you if I could.”

The little owl licked her thin lips. “What do you want for the gift of a coin, eh?”

So a transaction was expected. Greed was good. “I thought you might tell me about what happened to the other servants in our house.” That was a lie. But Viv had to improvise. The woman was no simple-minded hag, but one who was still canny, despite the squalor in which she lived.

“You got coin for them too?” She crossed her bony arms. “Lucky you. What do you do for that money? Did your papa give it to you? Did he even live? Ha!” She looked Viv over like a man buying a woman for the night. “Pretty, still. Good breasts. Clothes, too. Earn them on your back?”

Tate cleared his throat.

The owl sneered at Viv. “What do you want, Charmaine?”

The woman did not read newspapers or gossip sheets. She had no money for such frivolous things. Therefore, she had no idea who or what Charmaine de Massé had become. And of course, she was rude to address her by her given name.

Viv did not care what Jocelyn thought of her. “Tell me, Madame Gatel, do you know where our other servants are now?”

“Most are dead. The majordom. The chef and the chatelaine. Your mother’s maid lives north somewhere… Why? Want to give them money, too?”

“I am grateful for their service to us, and I wanted to give all of you a token of my appreciation.”

The owl blinked at Viv, greed giving way to gratitude. “ Merci beaucoup , mademoiselle. Not many care for those who washed and fed them.”

Now there was a spark of melting regard of which Viv might take advantage.

“Did you not have a beau?” Viv said with concern. “Someone you favored?”

“I did. Smart pig, he was. Is still.”

“Did you not plan to marry?”

“Marry?” Jocelyn scoffed. “The likes of him marrying a maid?”

“It happens. Especially after the revolution. All classes marry now whomever they—”

“Not him. Too high and mighty, he was.”

“Really? Who was he?”

“Then he was police. Still is, but grander, you know?”

So not a sans-culotte for the commune or the Bonnet-Rouge Section . “In the local police?”

“ Oui. Handsome devil.”

Viv’s heartbeat picked up. “And now? He still lives?”

“Ah, oui , he does. Quel enculé! ” Jocelyn muttered.

Viv knew the obscene insult and put a sneer into her next words. “Was he really?”

“An asshole who rose up fast after I”—Jocelyn jabbed herself in the chest—“I helped him!”

I always suspected you were doing more than kissing him. “He was not appreciative of your help.” Viv shook her head as if to commiserate.

“They do not prize a woman,” Jocelyn said with a sour glance at Tate. “Like this one, do you?” she prodded him.

He only stared back at her.

The woman sniffed back her irritation that he did not respond. “Men take women. Then throw them away.”

“What happened to your man?”

“Him? Oh, crafty, he was. He had a friend who was the concierge of Carmes.”

“Carmes?” Tate murmured, as if reflecting on some fact he’d heard.

“ Oui , one of the gaols,” Jocelyn said. “My man and this warden ran the prison like a bardello . Bribed women, raped them. Two devils.”

The name of the prison struck a bell in Viv. Charmaine had once talked of the Paris prison near rue du Four where she thought Diane might have been sent. Why Charmaine would know about such a place had always perplexed her. “Carmes is a prison?”

“Worst kind. Even Madame Bonaparte spread her legs in there to survive.”

Viv wanted to be sick once more. She had to know the name of this man! “And he used that to become a rich man, did he?”

“Used it to become Fouché’s man.”

Fouché. “The Minister of Police? He works for that man?”

“His deputy.”

“Vaillancourt.” Viv recalled his name, his tall and elegant good looks, black hair, and cut-glass-perfect cheekbones. She had met him once at Cyprien Montagne’s. Vaillancourt had acted honored to meet her, a sophisticated gentleman out on the town who fawned over her success as an actress and spoke of some vague remembrance of her father.

“But you knew him.”

Viv’s head spun.

The maid frowned, perplexed. “You wanted me to tell him you would have him.”

Viv could not move. She licked her lips—and she panicked. Where was her acting skill now? What should she say? “I cannot recall.”

The woman looked at her as if she were the dumbest person to have ever lived. “It’s what you paid me for. To get him for you.”

“Get him? Oh, oh, I…” Viv shook her head, frightened she had destroyed her act as Charmaine. “I really do not remember.”

“You paid me to keep him happy.” Jocelyn hitched her arms on her hips.

Viv could barely breathe. “I did?”

“ Oui! Do you play innocent with me? Ba! You liked his looks.” The old woman preened. “You told me to tell him about your sister, the one who was always running up the street to watch those animals in the Bonnet-Rouge.”

Viv’s stomach turned. Charmaine had ordered this woman to watch Diane as she went on her expeditions to watch the tribunals.

Tate was beside Viv at once, a hand to her arm.

Jocelyn wiped the back of her hand over her nose. “ Oui , he had his friends watch the house, too. Just for you. But then you look a pretty piece to offer a man. Paid him well in chat , did you?”

Tate growled at the woman.

Viv could only stare into the past. Wouldn’t Vaillancourt want to arrest her father? What good was Diane to him?

But…but then…

Would this woman lie? Why? For fun? To see me—or rather Charmaine—squirm? But what good would it do to make this up now? Charmaine wouldn’t pay the woman more for lies she made up here years later.

She had to speak. Sound logical. Sound like Charmaine.

“I…I do remember him now. Handsome man.”

“ Oui. A real chevalier .” Jocelyn cursed. “René Vaillancourt. Bastard.”

*

Tate had Viv’s arm curled in his as they bade adieu to Jocelyn Gatel. Viv held her head high as he and she turned for the door.

With a few words to the coachman, Tate climbed inside the carriage, sat beside Viv, and pulled her frozen body into his arms. He removed her little bonnet and opened the frog at the collar of her pelisse. Then, one hand to her cheek, the other arm around her stiff shoulders, he tucked her into the crook of his neck.

They rode in silence. She needed time to absorb the hellish revelations of the maid. His own conclusions he would hold inside until he had helped Viv put the news of Charmaine’s betrayal and Vaillancourt’s involvement into perspective.

When the coach stopped, he alighted first and, without a word, extended his hand to her. She came. On her face, a look of surprise soon melted to approval at the scene before her. His house, yes, it was. The servants’ entrance. Those men who followed them—Tate’s and the others—knew where they were. But few others would know. Protecting her reputation was the least he could do for her this morning.

She did not comment. She did not argue. She merely nodded at him and allowed him to lead her inside. Up the creaking stairs, they went round and round to the second floor.

He took her to his rooms. Privacy, even from his own servants, was most important to him today.

Inside his sitting room, he helped her with her pelisse and put to one side her little reticule. He heard the jingle of the metal and glass inside. Charmaine had taught Viv well how to imitate her, even carrying an étui filled with whatever Viv could buy in Paris chemists. With nary a word, he went to his dry board and poured them both generous draughts of good cognac. He gave her hers and caught her gaze.

“I don’t know where to begin,” she said, looking into the depths of her glass and setting it aside. “What she said was so…preposterous.” When he had no response, she tipped her head in question. “You believe her.”

He sat down beside her, but put his glass to the nearby table. “I do. She had no reason to lie to you today.”

“Exactly. I took her by surprise. She had no time to dissemble.” Her features grew pinched with disbelief. “The man she seduced was René Vaillancourt,” she murmured, her dulcet voice a wreck. She stared at Tate. “I’ve met him.”

“As have I.” He is the law, and here, above it. “A dangerous man.”

Her fingers curled over his cravat in a desperate clinch. “I am undone that Charmaine paid that woman to seduce him. How does one do that? And to trap one’s own sister? I knew…I knew Charmaine could be… But not this. Not this.”

Tate had always thought little of Charmaine. He should have sensed the enormity of her cruelty. “She knows no bounds.”

“That is not…not who she is today!” Viv stared at him. “Or so I thought.”

He threaded his fingers through her soft hair and stroked the fullness of her lower lip with his thumb. To respond with his disbelief that people never changed would not be helpful to Viv.

Terror stood in her sapphire eyes. “Vaillancourt took Diane to a prison.”

“Carmes.” Ramsey had told him a few details about those who had been incarcerated there. A living hell from which few emerged.

Viv opened her mouth, a memory flitting over her lovely face. “It is not far from rue du Four.”

“If Vaillancourt was attached as a gendarme to the local police in the Croix-Rouge crossroads, he would have ordered her taken there.”

Viv shuddered. “Why would he want her? Diane was young, fifteen, no threat to anyone.”

“A question only he can answer. But I’d say he wanted to use her as a trade for your father.”

“To offer up to Robespierre?”

“Exactly.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “And what good has it done anyone?”

Tate curled her against him. He would not recount those lost to the horror of that evening.

“Even she,” Viv said with a desperate groan, “Jocelyn Gatel, has not profited. After more than a decade, she is in poor health. Living in a filthy hell. Destitute. The ten francs I gave her before we left will do little for her for the rest of her life.”

His heart melted. “You pity her. After all she revealed today. Amazing that you can do that, my darling. I must say you are a remarkably forgiving soul.”

She took a quick gulp of her cognac, let it slide down her throat, then shook her head. “Forgiving? Not me.”

He curled her against him and lifted her face. “You forgave me my failure to rescue Diane.”

“Oh, Tate! Your intention was honorable. The odds were against you. We all wish we’d had greater success at some endeavors. Me too. Mama, who cried her heart out that she could not save Diane. Oh, to fail is…”

She shot from the settee and snatched up her reticule and pelisse.

He was behind her, his arms to her shoulders. “Where are you going?”

“A walk. A ride. A swim in the Seine!” She laughed wildly, then hung her head.

“I’ll go with you.”

She spun and stared up at him. “No! You have done enough. I must save myself.”

“You do, my darling. You have saved not only yourself but everyone else in your family.”

“Not Charmaine.”

“Even her. You were thirteen when we left here. But in your soul, you were wiser than your years. You accepted that you were in another country without home or money.”

“You gave us both.”

“A pittance.” He brushed tears from her cheeks. “You bought chicks and ducklings from George Drummond’s mother. You planted herbs and vegetables.”

“You tilled that field for me.” Her tears stopped.

“A small service.” He traced the arch of one elegant cheek. “You saw that another tenant was going to shoot a stubborn donkey, and you bargained with him and gave him five hens to save Fred. That wise creature has loved you ever since.” As I do. “Through it all, you nursed your mother, who was gone to her own imaginings. And Charmaine? Well, even to her, you were her inspiration to take up acting. Meanwhile, you taught the tenants’ children English history.”

“Which they questioned because of my heritage.”

He smiled and hugged her close. “Facts they spout to each other…”

“Yes, while fighting the Battle of Bosworth on the village common.”

“With sticks and stones. Yelling at each other like ghouls.” He grinned.

She curled her lips in a brief smile, but grief made her tremble and she pulled away. She ran down the way he’d brought her into the house to the servants’ stairs and down through the servants’ hall and the kitchen.

At the door, he caught her by her wrist. But she shook her head at him and pushed open the door to the alley.

His hired coach was still there. He’d paid the man to remain, planning to take her home himself. Congratulating himself on his foresight did not fill the ache in his heart that he could not comfort her in this sad hour.

Tate was faster than the driver to offer her a hand up into the coach. He lifted her chin. “Return to me. I will honor and comfort you in all good times and bad. I love you, Vivienne de Massé.”

*

She scrambled up into the coach, his words fire to her soul. The driver lashed the reins, and off they went into the sunny afternoon filled with the chaotic chorus of the city. Fleeing terror and war, death and despair, those in the streets looked like rabid animals. Viv remembered the emotion.

But today, she felt not their anguish.

She sat like a statue.

Tate loved her, and she was too obsessed with the machinations of Charmaine to respond. Tate loved her, and she had left him. Tate loved her, and she had not told him of her own desire.

She let her tears dribble down her cheeks. He had always been her friend. For years, he had been in her life for all the little things that had created her respect for him. He had laughed and dined with them in Neufchateau, teaching her a smattering of German and how to shoot a pistol. He had ridden with the family to Paris and helped them pack to flee Robespierre. He had escorted them to his estate in Norfolk. Given them one of his cottages. Some money. Hope.

He had been her ally, her comfort in good times and bad. Sending a physician to look at his mother. Plowing that field to grow the garden vegetables she so desperately needed to supplement their diet. Ordering another cottage cleared as the schoolroom. Building chairs and desks. Chuckling at the children who attended her village classes. Even taking part like a wild man in their reenactments of Bosworth.

She burst into a teary laugh at the memory of his wielding a sword of wood, pretending to be King Richard, dying to keep his throne. He was more her hero, her King Arthur, saving her family from ruin.

She pounded on the roof of the cab. She winced and did it again.

“Return!” she yelled to the man. “Return!”