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“Too exciting sometimes,” Belle said, eager to evade any questions about her past.

“Your friend Baptiste in Paris says you are the best royalist agent working in France today. He said that during the Terror, you helped so many aristocrats hide and escape, it is no longer safe for you to enter the city.”

Belle made no comment, but she tensed. She had indeed once come close to losing her life in Paris.

If she closed her eyes, she could easily conjure up chilling images of her confinement in the Conciergerie, the walls of that dread prison enfolding her like a tomb.

But it was not fear of death or of being arrested again that kept her from Paris so much as fear of her own memories, some bittersweet, but most the stuff of nightmares.

The City of Light for her had become a city of darkness.

“Baptiste told me you helped smuggle arms to aid the Catholic uprising in the Vendee,” Phillipe continued. “He said that men call you the Avenging Angel.”

“Baptiste talks too much.” Belle mentally cursed her fellow agent.

How she hated that foolish nickname. She had not gone to work for the royalist cause because she cared a fig whether the deceased king’s fat brother Louis XVIII succeeded in reclaiming his throne or not.

It was because the royalists paid her well and she had despised the violence of the revolutionaries who had overrun France.

She was no one’s avenger and certainly no one’s angel.

Only the insouciant Baptiste, presuming upon old friendship, had ever dared call her that to her face.

“Have you been a royalist agent for a long time?” Phillipe asked.

“Oh, a long, long, long time,” Belle said, hoping to remind him that she was nearly ten years older than he.

Her hint appeared to go wide of its mark, for Phillipe bent forward, his lips parting in a shy smile.

“I am so glad you are crossing the channel with us.” He paused, and then asked in a voice that cracked, “Dare I hope, mademoiselle, that you will come and call upon me and Maman after we are settled in Portsmouth?”

Belle suppressed an urge to tell him she doubted his mother would welcome such a visit. An adventuress in her home was the last thing the respectable woman would want in other circumstances.

“We shall see,” she said. She realized that even this vague promise was a mistake. Phillipe’s face lit up, and she had the impression that if he had dared, he would have reached for her hand to kiss it.

Calf love, Belle thought. She had seen the symptoms of such infatuation far too often not to recognize it, and in males older and wiser than Phillipe. It never failed to astonish her—that she could inspire such devotion so quickly in men. Her gaze turned to her reflection in the carriage window.

Beautiful, she had oft heard herself proclaimed. Was it only she that noticed the hint of hardness that had developed about her mouth, the world-weary expression in her eyes?

Such flaws had obviously escaped Phillipe’s notice, for when Belle turned back to face him, his gaze appeared more openly adoring than before.

This was a complication she did not need.

She liked the boy. To her, young Phillipe represented all that had been best in the old regime of the French aristocracy, the charming manners, the good breeding, the sense of honor.

She had no desire to be the first to break his heart.

“Mademoiselle,” he asked, “have you—have you?—”

“Have I what?” Belle prompted, although she dreaded what might be coming next.

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Oh, aye, many times.” Belle laughed. But the boy looked so wounded, she regretted her flippant reply. She surprised herself by adding softly, “No, in truth, only once and that was enough.”

Phillipe gave her a speaking glance. “Truly,” he said, “once is enough.”

Fearing what he might say or ask next, Belle decided the only way to escape his questions and longing looks was to feign sleep. She forced a yawn. Murmuring her apologies, she nestled her head against the squabs. As she closed her eyes, she heard Phillipe’s deep sigh.

With difficulty, Belle forced herself to relax and pretend to doze. She was far too vigilant to drift off in actuality. In any case, Phillipe’s recent words would not permit her to do so. His innocent question echoed through her head. “Have you ever been in love, mademoiselle?”

Only once.

Her reply carried her back to a time when she had been as young as Phillipe, but far older in experience even then. Yet for one sun-drenched day in spring, she had felt as innocent, as trembling with hope as any maiden.

The path through the village of Merevale had been strewn with May blossoms, crowded with the peasant folk who had come for a glimpse of their young lord’s English bride.

And the heat … as though it were yesterday, Belle could feel the sun’s rays beating through the white crepe of her gown, the lace pinniers of her bonnet hanging limp against her neck.

But it had been cool inside the nave of Saint-Saveur. With her eyes tightly closed, Belle could still envision the lofty rib vaulting of the roof above her head, the tall windows of the lantern tower, the stained glass spilling a quiltwork of colored light upon the altar.

There had stood the newly consecrated Pere Jerome, garbed in his vestments, his youthful face aglow with the excitement of performing the marriage sacrament for the first time, his voice quivering as he had put to her the question.

Would she, Isabelle Gordon, pledge to honor, obey, and cherish forever Jean-Claude de Varens?

Belle recalled how she had turned to gaze up into the face of the young man at her side. With painful clarity, she pictured Jean-Claude’s solemn face, the waves of his light brown hair, his mist-gray eyes giving the impression of one always lost in a dream.

She had promised to cherish him forever, and he had echoed her vows, stooping to brush a chaste kiss upon?—

Belle wrenched her eyes open, forcing the image back behind the closed doors of her mind.

There were no forevers to be found in the France of 1789.

The Revolution had destroyed things more sacred than her marriage vows.

St. Saveur was no more. Rechristened the Temple of the Enlightenment, the colored glass had been shattered, the golden candlesticks looted, the stone before the altar stained with Father Jerome’s blood.

And the last time she had seen Jean-Claude- Belle pressed her fingertips against her eyes.

“Mademoiselle?”

She did not at first notice the touch on her wrist, it was so butterfly soft.

“Mademoiselle. I think we are approaching the posting station.” The tug at her arm became more insistent.

“What?” Belle lowered her hand to meet Phillipe’s concerned gaze. “Oh, yes. The posting station.”

When she glanced out the window, she saw that the sun had set, the glass pane curtained with the purple haze of twilight. The occasional flicker of a lantern marked their approach to Lillefleur, a hamlet of thatch-roofed cottages with the spire of a church set in their midst.

“You looked so distressed a moment ago when you first opened your eyes,” Phillipe said. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“No. I never have dreams anymore.”

Belle composed herself. By the time she turned back to face Phillipe, she had shaken off the memory of Jean-Claude. Gripping the back of her seat, she braced against the jolt as the carriage trundled along the rough lane leading through Lillefleur.

Madame Coterin and her daughter were startled awake. Sophie whimpered and Belle could hear the child’s frightened breathing like a small creature cornered in the dark.

“There is nothing to fear,” Belle said. “We are going to stop to change the horses. It will not take long, and then we will be on our way again.”

Sophie ducked her head and burrowed deeper against her mother.

On the outskirts of the village, the carriage halted in the yard before a row of long, low stables.

Belle could hear the postboy scrambling from his perch on the box, the ancient Feydeau alighting at a slower pace.

The coachman’s gruff voice rang out, greeting the station’s ostlers and giving them his commands.

Presently, he stuck his grizzled head inside the coach door. “The change, it take twenty—maybe thirty minutes,” he said.

“So long,” Madame Coterin faltered.

“My fault, it is not.” Feydcau leveled a fierce look at Belle. “What more is to be expected when you do not send the outriders ahead to bespeak the horses.”

The lack of outriders had been a source of contention between Belle and Feydeau at the outset of the journey, Belle insisting that outriders would only serve to call more attention to their carriage.

“Twenty minutes is fast enough,” Belle told the old man. “Though you might see what you can do to hurry them on a bit.”

“Merde!” Feydeau said, but went to do as she suggested.

Belle bit back a smile. Feydeau might be surly and his speech as vulgar as a Petit-Pont tripe vendor, but Belle had worked with the old man enough to know that he could be depended upon, capable of keeping a sharp wit in case of any unforeseen disasters.

Belle did not foresee anything going wrong, not on the fringes of this quiet village. The wait proved not so much nerve-racking as it was tedious. Phillipe fidgeted in his seat, and Sophie tugged at her mother’s sleeve.

“I am so hungry, Maman.”

“Hush, Sophie,” Madame Coterin crooned.