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Thirteen

B elle walked alongside Jean-Claude, her silence as rigid as his, two stiff figures jostled by the gay crowd that flocked over the bridge.

Hawkers displayed their wares to pretty ladies shaded beneath parasols.

Artists dabbled with oils upon their canvases.

Street singers warbled their tunes, offering for sale the new sheet music.

It was strange, Belle thought. Only a moment ago with Sinclair, she had felt so much a part of all this color, this gaiety. Now once more she had the sensation of being removed, as though in the carnival of faces pressing past her, life itself were passing her by.

She glanced at Jean-Claude, wondering if he could feel that, too, but the stony set of his profile told her nothing, only the deep-set misery of his eyes.

Why? She wanted to shout at him. He had made it clear at the reception he could never forgive her, that he could scarce bear the sight of her.

Then why did he choose to seek her out again, subject them both to an interview that would only cause them fresh pain?

They had not even passed by the second arch of the bridge when she halted. “I think we have come far enough, Jean-Claude,” she said. “What did you wish?—”

“No, not here. Please, Isabelle. The noise.” He nodded upward toward La Samarataine, the huge hydraulic pump rising three stories above the bridge, its facade adorned with gilded figures of Christ receiving water from the Good Samaritan.

The pump shuddered with activity as it sped a water supply to the Louvre and the Tuileries.

“Let us go just a little farther,” he pleaded.

Belle found the clatter of the pump somehow more bearable as a backdrop than the happy chatter and laughter of the Pont Neuf’s other occupants, but she fell into step beside Jean-Claude once more.

They continued on until they reached the next half moon embrasure, one of the bridge’s many stone bays which jutted out over the Seine.

The semicircular seat was unoccupied. Belle settled herself upon it, and Jean-Claude sank down beside her, taking great care to keep a decorous distance between them.

Still, he seemed unable to break the silence, his gloved hands fidgeting nervously with the silver-tipped handle of his walking cane.

Once even for all his coldness, his rigid anger, Belle would have given much to have him seated thus by her side.

Now she was surprised to discover she felt nothing but impatience.

Certainly she had no desire to make this any easier for him, or to offer him any encouragement.

She stared out across the sluggish waters of the Seine watching the ferry boats and the flat-bottomed barges laden with their cargoes.

Jean-Claude cleared his throat. “There seems to be more river traffic than I recall.”

“Is that why you have been following me all this time?” Belle asked. “To discuss the number of barges on the Seine?”

“ Non. ” She heard him draw in a tremulous breath. After a long moment of hesitation, his hand reached out and tentatively covered hers where it rested upon the balustrade of the bay.

Startled by the gesture, her gaze flew up to meet his. He said, “I sought you out to tell you that I am sorry for my behavior at the reception the other night.”

Belle blinked, almost unable to assimilate the meaning of his words. Apologizing? He was actually apologizing to her for his hurtful remarks, for attempting to ignore her.

“My manners were atrocious, my words certainly not those of a gentleman.”

“Not at all, sir.” Belle slid her hand from beneath his. “You were ever the gentleman.” Even when Jean-Claude had been demanding the divorce, he had been so unbearably civil, so damnably polite.

“Truly, Isabelle,” he continued, sounding more earnest. “I am sorry. I didn’t want to offend you or wound you. It is just that it was so hard for me seeing you again.”

“It was not precisely easy for me, either.”

But he stared at her with that wistful look in his eyes. She had never been proof against it.

“Let us simply forget the quarrel,” she said with a weary sigh. “I am not so easily wounded these days. I survived the incident.” She reflected that this was true. In these last few days she had given little thought to the ugly scene with Jean-Claude. Sinclair had had a great deal to do with that.

“I am glad,” Jean-Claude said. “It is a great relief to know you are not angry with me.”

“And you?” she asked. “Does this mean you have forgiven me at last?”

“I am trying very hard. I wish more than anything that we could both simply forget the past.”

“Forget the past? Do you truly believe that’s possible?”

“Perhaps not. But maybe we could learn to recall only the good. There were some good times, were there not, Isabelle?”

She had always thought so, but she had believed his own memory of them erased the day he had learned the secret of her birth.

A soft light came into his gray eyes. “We often used to stroll upon this bridge together that first summer in Paris. Do you recall?”

“I remember,” she said. A reluctant smite escaped her. “Mostly you walked along daydreaming with me attempting to steer you through the crowds and see that you didn’t fall off the bridge.”

“I don’t do much of that anymore—daydreaming.” An expression of melancholy washed over him. The brief spark that had appeared in his eyes vanished, and he fell into a brooding silence.

Belle’s urge to comfort him was strong, but instead she studied the man whom for so many years she had regarded as the entire possessor of her heart.

His face was pale, but then it always had been.

The strands of silver were new, but not unbecoming to his gaunt face.

His countenance had never been an animated one, not like Sinclair’s— She broke off the thought, refusing to compare the two men. Impossible. They were so unalike.

Jean-Claude’s attractiveness had come from the dreamy, other-worldly expression in his eyes. Without that he was an empty shell of a man, broken and defeated. Looking upon him like this was enough to break her heart, wrenching feelings deep inside of her, but was that feeling love?

It shocked and frightened her that she should question something that she had believed in for so long. Unable to bear to examine her own emotions too closely at this moment, she sought to draw him out of his unhappy reflections.

“So what are you doing here in Paris?” she asked. “Have any of your old friends returned as well?”

“I don’t know. I have not troubled myself to find out. I have little use for the company of philosophes these days. I prefer men of action.”

“Such as Napoleon Bonaparte?” Even at the risk of offending him, she was burning to know what Jean-Claude had been doing attending the reception at the Tuileries.

The vehemence of his answer startled her. “ Non , not Bonaparte! I despise him. It sickens my soul to breathe the same air as he.”

Belle regarded him with astonishment, not a little discomfited. She had never seen such a fierce light in Jean-Claude’s eyes, never heard him express such hatred of any living being.

She laid her hand soothingly on Jean-Claude’s arm. “I understand what you must feel, being deprived of your estates, your home, but?—”

“That has nothing to do with it.” Jean-Claude glared down at her. “It is Bonaparte, himself. What he is. Do you not see it? He is the dark side of the Revolution.”

When she looked at him with incomprehension, Jean-Claude flung his hands wide in an impassioned gesture. “He is the embodiment of all the violence, all the greed, the power hunger that destroyed the fine ideals, the noble purpose and the quest for freedom that the Revolution should have been.”

“I will grant you that General Bonaparte is something of a freebooter, an opportunist, perhaps, who took advantage of the circumstances?—”

“He is evil incarnate.”

Belle tried to reason with him, but saw it was of no avail.

Jean-Claude, who had ever thrived on debate, attempting to see all viewpoints, was totally beyond reason.

It was as though he had taken all the anger and the bitterness of the Revolution he had never been adequately able to express and had found an outlet for it by settling his hatred on the person of one man. Foreboding coursed through her.

“If you hate the man so,” she asked, “why were you at his reception?”

“Because at last I have learned the advantage of playing my enemy’s games, disguising my feelings, watching, waiting—” The glazed look in Jean-Claude’s eyes made her acutely uneasy. “There is the future of France to consider and my son.”

“Yes, Jean-Jacques.” Belle seized eagerly upon the boy’s name, hoping to snap Jean-Claude out of this strange mood. “Jean-Jacques is the most charming child. Do you intend to bring him over to France to live with you?”

“Not until things are different.”

“How different?” Belle asked sharply, now thoroughly alarmed.

She knew that the members of her group were not the only plotters to be found in Paris.

There had always been other wild dreamers, some of them even highly placed in the French army, hoping to generate another coup, sweep Napoleon from power.

A ridiculous fantasy, considering Bonaparte’s military skill and his popularity with the people.

Surely Jean-Claude could not have fallen prey to any of those fanatics.

“Jean-Claude,” ‘she demanded. “Exactly what have you gotten yourself involved in?”

“Nothing.” He forced a smile. “Nothing that I would wish you to be concerned about. All I can tell you now is that these past few months I have been like a man slowly coming awake from a dream, beginning to know myself for the first time. I am a fool.”

“No, Jean-Claude. You?—”