Page 51

Sinclair located No. 32, the last door at the far end of the Palais, the placard in the curtained window proclaiming it as a seamstress’s establishment. His shoulders took on a disheartened slump as he feared he had but come on a fool’s chase.

Still a light glowed beyond the filmy curtains along with the chatter of voices. Strange that such a shop should still be open this time of night.

When Sinclair knocked at the door, a feminine voice bade him enter.

He stepped cautiously inside. He had not much experience of seamstresses’ shops, but he wagered that most did not look like this.

The sitting room wore an aura of tawdry luxury, all crimson velvet and gilt, the cloying scent of perfume heavy in the air.

Gold curtains framed an arch which led to some other mysterious area beyond.

Draped upon a settee were two ladies of dubious virtue, a redhead and a blonde. If they did possess any talent for sewing, Sinclair doubted they were expending much of it upon their own scanty attire.

An elderly woman bustled forward to greet Sinclair, her rouged cheek puffed out with a smile. “Good evening, m’sieur. How may we serve you?”

Sinclair swept off his hat. “ Bonsoir , madame. I—er- am looking to have some alterations done.”

His words sent the young women upon the settee off into a fit of giggles. One called out, “On your breeches perchance, m’sieur?”

The elderly dame silenced them with a dignified glare.

“M’sieur must understand. We do not serve any gentleman who walks in off the streets. All our callers come here by recommendation.”

Sinclair decided to take a great chance, watching the woman carefully for her reaction. “Lazare sent me.”

Her puzzlement appeared genuine. “Lazare? I have never heard of this Lazare.” She glanced toward the two girls as though soliciting their help.

The blonde one cooed, “I am sure it is all right, madame. I think I have heard Paulette talk of a Lazare.”

“Paulette?” The name sent a jolt through Sinclair.

“ Oui .” The girl nodded to a point behind Sinclair.”There she is. Ask her yourself.”

Sinclair spun about to face the woman who entered the room beneath the velvet-draped arch. Although the saffron gown was not her usual attire, the red ribbon about her neck, the soft brown curls were all too familiar to Sinclair.

“Madame, I need you to—” Paulette Beauvais choked off in midsentence. As her eyes locked with Sinclair’s, the shock of recognition for her appeared as great as his own.

“M-monsieur Carrington.” Her dismay paled into a look of fear. She turned and vanished beneath the arch. Sinclair bolted after her.

“Stop, m’sieur!” the elderly woman cried. “You cannot thus barge in upon us.” She followed after Sinclair, squawking like a frenzied chicken.

Sinclair pursued Paulette down a corridor of doors. She whipped inside the last of these, but not quickly enough to slam the door behind her. Sinclair put his shoulder to the flimsy pine barrier as Paulette struggled to keep him out.

“I will send for the police,” the old woman behind Sinclair was still blustering.

But Paulette seemed to realize the futility of the struggle. As her initial panic subsided, she released the door, allowing Sinclair to enter. “Bien, Margot. Calm yourself,” she said to the old woman. “I do seem to know this gentleman after all.”

Although the madame looked far from satisfied, she was persuaded to retreat. She did so, casting dire warnings at Sinclair to behave himself. “We tolerate no roughness here, m’sieur.”

When she had gone, Sinclair closed the door behind him, facing Paulette across the small bedchamber, the glow of an oil lamp giving the walls a rose-colored cast. The chief feature of the room was its bed, the canopy caught above it giving the impression of some exotic Egyptian tent.

Paulette hovered near it, twisting the fringe.

Obviously nervous, she strove to hide the fact behind a brazen smile.

“So, Monsieur Carrington, have you tired of ma chére Isabelle’s charms? What brings you to a place like this?”

Sinclair folded his arms, leaning up against the door. “I was planning to ask you the same thing.”

“Madame Margot is an old friend of mine. I have known her since the first days of the Revolution. She still allows me to visit her upon occasion, make myself at home.” Recovering some of her bravado, Paulette tipped up her chin.

“And you need not look down your long English nose like that. Madame was good to me after my parents sneezed into the sack.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“After they had been guillotined,” she explained impatiently, then added with a hint of ferocity, “You have no notion what it took for a girl to survive during those dark days.”

“Or in our present time?” Sinclair asked with a cynical cast of one brow. All the while to himself, he thought. Paulette Beauvais. How could he have been so blind? Maybe if he had not been so determined to prove Lazare the spy, he might have seen.

“I do sometimes still entertain for Madame to earn a little more money,” Paulette admitted.

She abandoned some of her defensive posture, infusing a hint of appeal into her tones.

“None of this affects the role I play for Isabelle. Surely there is no need to tell her you found me here? You keep my secret and I will keep yours.”

“Belle would likely be more understanding about all this than I,” Sinclair said, flicking a contemptuous glance about the chamber’s trappings. “But you have been doing other things she will find less forgivable.”

Although Paulette’s face was filled with defiance, Sinclair could sense the beginnings of alarm in her, an alarm that only deepened when he moved forward and picked up a black cloak she had left draped over a chair.

“For example, Belle might be more interested to know why you pay frequent visits to the guardhouse at the Tuileries.”

“I never—” Paulette started to bluster and then she shrugged. “I have a lover there.”

“Indeed? Yes, I have remarked your penchant for soldiers and sailors. They taught you quite a bit about the royal dockyards at Portsmouth. Perhaps one of the fools even helped you make a map of the coastline!’

“I don’t know what you are talking—” But Paulette flinched away from Sinclair’s steel-eyed gaze. She seemed to realize that denial would not serve. She sidled closer to him, moistening her dry lips.

“Perhaps I have sold a few maps to Bonaparte. Where is the harm in that?” She tried to angle a provocative glance up at Sinclair, fingering the brass buttons of his coat.

“England and France are at peace. There is no chance that any information I provided will be used, but if the first consul is silly enough to pay, why not?”

Sinclair thrust her hands away. “I don’t know if Isabelle and your other friends in the society will see your betrayal in the same light,”

Paulette crossed herself. “Upon the graves of my mother and father,” she whined, “I have done nothing to betray the society. I never gave Bonaparte any names, never told anything that would hurt ma chére Isabelle.”

“Truly? Then you won’t mind if I have a look at this.” When Sinclair had moved the cloak, a folded document had fallen to the floor. He bent to retrieve it, but Paulette dived for it with a shriek.

“That is nothing to do with you. It is but a letter from my lover.”

Sinclair pried her fingers from the vellum, nearly tearing the note in the process. He thrust Paulette ruthlessly away. She sagged back against the bed, watching helplessly as he perused the document.

Sinclair could see clearly now how Paulette had adopted the perfect guise to be the counterspy: her entire pose as a flighty maidservant, a man-hungry female who liked to flirt with the English sailors, whose marketing left her coming and going from the house unquestioned.

Paulette had never been in Belle’s confidence, but she was in an easy position to overhear much that would be to Bonaparte’s advantage.

It also explained why no information had been laid about the abduction plot sooner.

Never included in their meetings, Paulette had had difficulty in obtaining accurate knowledge of what was going on.

Even in this report her information was sketchy, alerting Bonaparte only that an abduction attempt would take place from the theater with none of the details.

But the names were all there, Isabelle’s, Baptiste’s, Crecy’s, Lazare’s, his own.

“You would never hurt your chére Isabelle, eh?” Sinclair said, casting a fulminating glance at Paulette. “You bitch!” He savagely rented the paper and tossed in into the fire.

Paulette shrank back from his anger. “Ah, please, monsieur. You will not hurt me. I have not told anything yet. I was even changing my mind about that note.”

Beneath Sinclair’s stony stare, she wrung her hands and wailed. “It was just the temptation. You cannot imagine how much they would have paid me for information like that. I?—”

The rest of her plea was lost as the door to the chamber crashed open. Sinclair started and Paulette shrieked in fright, cowering back against the bed.

Framed in the opening were two burly soldiers. One squinted at Sinclair through narrowed eyes like a ferret seeking its prey. The other sneered beneath his mustache. From the reek of gin they were obviously drunk.

“Wrong room, gentlemen,” he said. He tried to close the door, but the mustached one blocked it.

“I don’t think so, do you, Giles?” The younger soldier grinned at his companion.

“ Non , Auguste, it looks like the right place to me.” The ferret-faced one pushed his way forward into the room.

The two men were not as drunk as Sinclair had supposed. A sense of real danger coursed through him as his gaze flicked from one crude face to the other, the dawning of suspicion.

“Have I not met you somewhere before?” he asked.