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Seven

T he drums pounded in Belle’s head. Like marionettes, the soldiers’ stiff arms rose and fell, beating out the steady rhythm. They kept step beside the rough wooden tumbril creeping through the streets, bearing the latest cache of victims to the guillotine’s relentless blade.

Tossing on the cot, Belle moaned, trying to pull herself out of the dream. But the webbings of nightmare held her fast, as tight as the cords that seemed to bind her hands.

She was not a spectator. This time it was she who stood braced against the jolts of the cart, her arms bound behind her as she stared out over a sea of jeering faces that had lost all trace of humanity.

Gaping mouths, burning eyes, their features were indistinguishable except for the man who stood a little apart, gentle and solemn, untouched by the hatred of the rabble surrounding him.

“Jean-Claude! Jean-Claude!” Her throat muscles ached with the effort of trying to call to him, but the drums sounded louder, drowning out her cries.

The cart lurched to a stop, and rough hands seized her, dragging her to the ground.

She strained toward her husband, but Jean-Claude had turned, about to vanish into the crowd.

“Jean—”

“Belle!”

This time her cry was cut off not by the drums, but by someone shouting her name.

“Belle! Wake up!” The hands gripping her shoulders gave her a brisk shake.

She felt herself slipping back into the midst of the mob, but the deep male voice, so familiar, so insistent, snapped the tenuous threads of the nightmare.

With a gasp, Belle jerked to a sitting position.

Forcing her eyes open, she struggled to focus on the person perched on the edge of the cot, bending over her.

Glossy black hair tumbled over a furrowed brow, anxiety mirrored in dark-fringed eyes of crystalline green. The mouth that should have been smiling with its customary lazy good humor was not.

“Sinclair?” she said thickly.

“Yes, I am right here, Angel.”

The simple words had a strange effect on her. She flung her arms about his neck, burying her face against him, drawing comfort from the unyielding hardness of his shoulder. He felt so solid, so real after the phantom images of her nightmare.

His arms closed about her, strong and steadying. Tangling his fingers in her hair, he rested his chin against the top of her head, gently rocking her.

“It’s all right, Angel,” he murmured. “You are here, safe with me.”

Belle released her breath in a tremulous sigh.

Yes, but where was here? Her mind yet hazy with sleep, she turned her head enough to study the room through bleary eyes.

She took in the swaying lantern, the trunks propped against the wall, the empty glass tumbled upon the floorboards of the cabin aboard the Good Lady Nell.

Memory flooded back to her, of waiting on the dock, finding the little boy, seeing Jean-Claude, telling Sinclair?—

Sinclair! With a jolt, she realized how she clung to him like a frightened child. She struggled to break free. He attempted to soothe her, but she wrenched out of his arms. Her head swam so dizzyingly she was obliged to sink back flat on the cot.

With a low groan, she covered her face with her hands. It was the cursed laudanum. That was what was causing her to feel so weak and to behave so strangely. She’d be damned if she would ever touch the stuff again. The brief peace it had brought her was not worth the self-loathing she now felt.

She noticed Sinclair’s weight shift from the cot and thought he had left her. But he returned to her side in a minute. Pulling her hands down, he dabbed a cool, damp cloth upon her brow.

“Don’t!” she said, twisting away from him. “I am not ill. I was only having a nightmare.”

“I know,” he said softly. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No!”

She thought her blunt refusal brought a flicker of hurt to his eyes, but in the dim light it was hard to tell. He looked unconcerned enough as he straightened. “Well, perhaps some other time.”

“How long have I been asleep?” she demanded.

“The entire crossing. We are anchored at Le Havre. When you did not come on deck, I grew concerned and came below to check on you.”

And found her raving in her sleep like a madwoman.

With another groan, Belle managed to sit up and roll her legs over the side of the cot.

She made a futile attempt to smooth her hair, imagining how disheveled it must be, what dark hollows she must have beneath her eyes.

She hated Sinclair seeing her this way. All her life she had made it a practice to conceal her hurts, her weaknesses from the scorn of the world.

Yet in the last twenty-four hours, how much of her inner self had she paraded before Sinclair?

She felt stripped naked in front of the man.

It only made matters worse when Sinclair noticed the empty glass on the floor. He picked it up, sniffed it and tasted some of the dregs with one finger to his lips. Although he frowned, he said nothing.

Belle felt as though she could not face his contempt or his pity, but she had never learned to spare herself. Slowly she got to her feet and looked him full in the eyes, but found only understanding, an understanding that seemed to delve into the depths of her soul.

It alarmed her even more than the physical attraction she felt for Sinclair. She had spent too long building the wall about herself to have it so easily breached. Quickly she averted her gaze.

“Where is Paulette? I would have thought she would be the one to come down and wake me.”

“She was ogling the sailors as they launched the longboat.” Sinclair hesitated and then added, “All of the other passengers have already been set ashore.”

Belle supposed that was Sinclair’s kind way of telling her that Jean-Claude was already gone.

Belle felt the familiar tug of loss, but suppressed it.

What difference did it make? It was not as though she and Jean-Claude had anything more to say to each other, at least nothing that he would care to hear.

She drew herself up, groping for her dignity, that mantle of pride which had stood her in such good stead all these years.

“It is time we were going ourselves. Get Lazare down here to help with the trunks. As soon as we are ashore, we will want to see about hiring a carriage,”

“Belle.” Sinclair stopped her as she moved toward the door, his hands resting on her shoulders. He turned her to face him.

“There is no need for such haste. We could linger a day or two at Le Havre, give you- give both of us some time to recover and lay our plans.”

She refused to look up at him, but she saw his hand move and knew that he meant to caress her cheek. She felt so empty and aching inside. God, how she wanted Sinclair’s touch—no, needed it.

For that very reason she shied away, refusing to let him come any closer. “No,” she said. “Two days from now I intend to be in Paris.”

Belle backed out of the cabin, slamming the door closed between them.

Paris- that city of broken dreams and shattering nightmares.

How many years ago had it been that Belle had crept through its gates, her meager possessions bundled in a shawl, her heart thudding when she thought of how narrowly she had escaped from the dank confines of the Conciergerie, that last stop on the journey to the guillotine.

She had paused but once outside the walls surrounding Paris, vowing never to return and so risk her life again.

Yet here she was. Belle’s lips curved into a self-mocking smile as she braced herself against the sway of the coach.

Whoever said that wisdom was supposed to come with age?

Well, she had survived seeing Jean-Claude again.

She would survive the return to Paris as well.

She had never yet heard tell of anyone being slain by a memory.

Paris seemed to press in about her, the eternal din of the city assaulting her ears, vendors crying their wares, newspaper hawkers bellowing out the headlines, workmen’s hammers clanging, donkeys braying.

She stared out the window, every rut, every crack of the Rue St. Honoré as familiar to her as if she had ridden down it just yesterday.

The street threaded through a narrow canyon of tall buildings, the smoke from the chimneys hanging in the air like a blue mist, the houses the same mad jumble of architecture, turrets, gables and neoclassic all crammed side by side.

Little had changed except that she noted that No.

17 appeared unoccupied. The five-story dwelling had housed the flat she had shared with Jean-Claude those few happy days they had known together, before the Revolution had turned into a reign of terror, before he had discovered her secret.

But the timber frame structure now wore an air of dilapidation, the windows broken or boarded over. It was somehow appropriate. In that house all her dreams had died. Gazing upon it was like viewing an open grave, and she was quick to avert her eyes.

“Have we nearly arrived at this Baptiste’s?

” Sinclair’s voice startled her. She had thought him asleep.

Weary from the journey, he had hardly roused himself even when they had passed through the barrière in the thick wall that surrounded Paris.

She turned from the window to find him sitting up on the seat opposite, wincing and rubbing his leg, cramped by the narrow confines of the coach.

“It is not much farther,” she assured him.

“Good. I may never be able to straighten again.” Flexing his arm muscles, he bestirred himself, leaning forward to peer out the same window as she did.

In doing so, his shoulder brushed up against hers.

She was quick to draw back. When she had slammed the cabin door between them, she had attempted to erect an invisible barrier as well, keeping Sinclair Carrington at arm’s length, suppressing all response to his penetrating eyes and that seductively soothing voice.