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Sinclair frowned at the sight of a tripod table propped near her elbow, bearing a half-empty glass of golden-colored liquid. He wondered if she was drunk. But as he examined the bottle of brandy, he saw that it had hardly been touched.

She stretched back in her chair, curling her bare feet beneath her.

“I would invite you to join me, Sinclair,” she said with a weary smile, “but I fear there is not enough. I intend to make myself quite drunk. I have never tried it before. But isn’t that what you gentlemen do to make it through a rough night? ”

“From one who has tried that remedy upon occasion, I would advise against it,” he said. “Far from making the morning come quicker, your head will make you regret that it ever came at all.”

She gave a soft laugh. He had never known that laughter could sound so sad.

She pushed her glass away and turned back to staring out the window.

Although she did not ask him to stay, she did not demand that he leave her, either, Pushing the velvet drapery back farther, Sinclair stood beside her, joining her in her vigil.

The night was dark, the stars like splinters of ice.

In the street below, an occasional carriage clattered by even at this late hour.

Some drunken stragglers slogged past, their voices raised in bawdy song.

Otherwise the Rue St. Honoré remained quiet, the feeble glow from the Argand lanterns not enough to dispel the murky shadows.

To Sinclair, it was nothing but an empty street, yet he would have wagered that was not what Belle saw. He glanced down at her.

Completely still she sat. Beneath the soft sweep of her lashes, he fancied he could glimpse the shadings of her past, all the misery of the world seeming centered in those luminescent blue eyes. But he waited patiently, refraining from questions. If Belle wanted, needed to talk, she would.

Just when he began to think her silence would stretch on until dawn, she stirred, saying, “Monsieur Bonaparte was full of plans tonight for improving Paris. He intends to start with the streets. God knows the Rue St. Honoré could use a little improving, at least some paving. It hasn’t changed all that much since?—”

“Since the Revolution?”

She nodded. “I used to spend a lot of my time then just staring out the window. It was safer, you see, to stay indoors, mind one’s own business.

Jean-Claude and I had an apartment not far from here, just up the street.

I used to be able to watch the tumbrils go by on the way to the guillotine.

” Her voice dropped lower. “Sometimes the carts were crammed full of people, whole families, even the children.”

“It must have been pure hell.”

“No, that was the frightening thing. After a while we all grew accustomed to the horrors and simply went on with our lives.”

Did she truly believe that? Maybe the others did, Sinclair thought, but not you, Angel. The torment of those days was yet reflected on her face. The tumbrils might still have been passing below for all the peace there was to be found in Belle’s eyes.

“So you just went on with your everyday life,” Sinclair said, “smuggling people out of Paris.”

She acknowledged his ironic tone with a wry smile. “Yes, Baptiste and I. We got to be quite good at it, but for every one we helped to escape, there were a hundred more we couldn’t save.”

Sinclair knew he should not ask, but the question exploded from him before he could help himself. “And where the hell was Varens when you were risking your life in such a fashion?”

“He had emigrated. We were divorced by then.”

“I see. He took himself off to England and left you in the middle of a revolution.”

“He didn’t leave me anywhere. I chose to stay. He had given me money, provided for me. It was far more than I deserved, considering what I had done.”

Sinclair clenched his jaw, surprised by the depth of contempt he was learning to feel for the most honorable Comte de Egremont, his anger only strengthened by Belle’s steadfast defense of Varens.

Sinclair knew that no matter what Belle had done, he would have made sure she was safely out of Paris.

Then again, Sinclair was fast realizing, if she had been his wife, he would never have left her in the first place.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “what terrible crime did you commit to precipitate the divorce? Were you unfaithful to him?”

“You should be able to guess. I have already told you that I am the bastard daughter of an actress. I concealed my low birth from Jean-Claude when I married him.”

“And that was his reason for divorcing you! Then he is a bigger fool than I took him for.”

“It was an excellent reason,” Belle said. “Jean-Claude is a gentleman from an ancient and honorable family. Discovering the truth about me was a harsh blow to his pride at a time when he he had already suffered?—”

Sinclair realized some of his skepticism must have showed, for she broke off and cried, “You understand nothing about Jean-Claude. Nothing! So don’t dare to stand there condemning him.”

He was making her angry, but at least it brought a flush of color into her cheeks, the spark back into her eyes.

“I am trying to understand,” he said. “If you would care to enlighten me.”

Belle compressed her lips, retreating deeper beneath her shawl.

She had been so glad of Sinclair’s presence when he had first entered the drawing room.

It had been such relief to talk to someone at last about her nightmarish memories of the Revolution.

Why did he have to speak of Jean-Claude?

Sinclair was not even her lover. There was no reason in the world she had to account for her past to him. None.

She glared up to where he stood, poised by the window curtain, his dark hair and compelling eyes making him seem at one with the night, but night as she had never known it, a warm, protective mantle, a night in which one could whisper all one’s sins and heartbreak and never fear to see one’s weakness exposed in the garish light of day.

She did not know what impelled her to do so, perhaps it was that empathetic link she had ever felt with Sinclair. Belle only knew that once she had started to speak, she couldn’t seem to stop.

“I was sixteen that summer I met Jean-Claude,” she said, leaning wearily back in her chair. The candle upon the mantel flickered and went out. In the wisp of smoke the years seemed to disappear.

Sixteen and traveling abroad for the first time. Belle could still remember her excitement. It had been one of those rare times of good fortune in that mad up-again, down-again life she had known as the daughter of Jolie Gordon.

That summer Jolie had been lucky enough to take as a lover the foolish but amiable Count Firenza, a wealthy Italian nobleman.

No more being sent by Mama to fend off the bailiffs while Mama hid in the wardrobe, no more being abandoned with disgruntled relatives while Mama disappeared for weeks on end

The count’s generosity had extended to including Isabelle in his entourage, the kindly man taking a bluff paternal interest in her.

He had swept both Jolie and Belle off to the south of France.

They had done Marseilles in grand style, Mama feigning to be a countess, Belle, the nobleman’s pampered step-daughter.

Firenza had looked on with indulgence, seeing it all as the most marvelous jest ever played upon the snobbish French aristocrats.

Certainly, Belle had never intended to take in Jean-Claude with her masquerade.

She had never intended anything by him at all.

He was handsome enough, but too solemn, too serious.

She had far more witty admirers than the gray-eyed young man who propped up the wall at soirees, following her every movement with his wistful gaze.

The intentions had come afterward. With her usual flightiness, Jolie had run off with a Prussian officer.

But the good-natured count had not held Belle to blame for her mother’s defection.

He had permitted her to keep the frocks, the jewels, even giving her a small sum to see her back to England before setting sail himself for Italy.

Only Belle had gone nowhere. Sick to death of her uncertain life, she had finally perceived a way out in the admiration of the young Comte de Egremont.

It had been so easy to convince the guileless Jean-Claude she had been left in the care of a governess for the sake of her health.

Easier still to appear frail and helpless, entrapping the adoring man into marriage.

Here Belle paused in her recital, wrenched back to the present, wondering what Sinclair thought of her scheming.

She risked a glance at him. He leaned against the window, his arms folded, but his still features passed no judgment as he merely waited for her to go on with the tale.

Sighing, she continued, “I never counted on the fact that I would fall in love with him. As I grew to know him better, he seemed so different from any man I had ever met, so gentle. But more than anything else, he had dreams.” A wistful note infused itself into Belle’s voice.

“Not dreams like my selfish ones for a place in society, material possessions, but such visions for a better world.”

Her eyes misted as she recalled those long-ago evenings by the fireside, the glow on Jean-Claude’s face as he talked of the brotherhood of mankind, a world where inequalities would be destroyed, injustice forever banished, a society where one’s birth would not be so important as the value of a man’s soul.

From such talk Belle had been encouraged to hope Jean-Claude would not mind so much when she told him the truth. But she could never work up the courage, always terrified of losing his love.