Page 60 of The Avenging Angel and the Spy
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 mantelflickered 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 theguileless 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.
“He thought me perfect,” she said. “It was very hard to live up to his image of me. I feared what he would think if he knew how I had lied. Tomorrow, I always assured myself, tomorrow would be a better day. I would tell him then.”
But her secret had paled before the greater events sweeping through the country. The Bastille had fallen the day after their wedding, the repercussions of that event slowly spreading throughout France.
Yet for a long time the village of Merevale had remained untouched. The people on the Egremont estate were devoted to Jean-Claude, suspicious of any wild idea coming from such a ‘foreign’ place as Paris. It had been Jean-Claude himself who had let the Revolution within the chateau walls. Enthusiastically embracing its principles of equality and freedom, he had voluntarily resigned his title and talked joyously of a liberated France governed by a constitutional monarchy. His happiness had known no bounds when he had been elected to the second national assembly.
“And so we came to Paris,” Belle said. “I had just passed my eighteenth birthday, but I already had seen far more of the ugly face of men than Jean-Claude. From the first day we rode through the streets, I sensed something seriously amiss. Most of the noble speeches only served to disguise the ambition of hard and ruthless men.”
But for Jean-Claude’s sake she tried to quell her doubts and uneasiness, a task that became harder and harder as the weeks sped by and the violence of the Revolution grew. Frenetic mobs invaded prisons massacring priests and aristocrats. The Tuileries was attacked, the king and queen arrested. More and more the moderate voices in the assembly such as Jean-Claude’s were being drowned out by the roars of the fanatics.
“Each day,” Belle said, “I looked into Jean-Claude’s eyes and saw his belief in the goodness of men, dying a little more. And there was no way for me to recapture those dreams for him, hold them fast, although I would have given my life to have done so.”
You did, Angel, far too much of it, Sinclair longed to assure her, but he knew she would not want to hear that.
Overcome by her recollections, she doubled her hand into a fist, pressing it against her eyes. With her words, she had painted a picture for Sinclair, but not the one she wanted him tosee. Her tale roused not a particle of sympathy in him for Jean-Claude.
Someone should have smacked his noble lordship awake, Sinclair thought savagely. He doubted that Jean-Claude could have suffered overmuch, passing through the Revolution in a rose-tinted dream. But Belle, ever the realist, facing all the horrors with her eyes wide open—how many scars she yet carried, how many pain-filled memories were seared into her soul.
Hunkering down, Sinclair closed his hand over hers. Her skin felt so cold. He tried to chafe some warmth back into her.
After a moment she lowered her fist from her eyes. Once more in control, she resumed her story. “Jean-Claude managed to continue his work in the assembly until the trial and condemnation of the king. Even to the very last, Jean-Claude did not believe the people of Paris would let the execution happen.”
Using Sinclair’s hand for support, Belle levered herself to her feet. Sweeping the curtain aside, she beckoned him to join her at the window, pointing toward the distant street corner. “Down there on the morning the sentence was to be carried out, Jean-Claude mounted one final plea to the crowds to attempt a last-minute rescue as the coach went by.
“I was terrified that the mob would turn on him, and I tried to make him stop. It scarce mattered. The cheers, the drums beating were so loud when the king’s carriage passed that no one even heard what Jean-Claude was saying.
“The rest of that day I held him as he wept in my arms. It was shortly after that Jean-Claude discovered the truth about me. I suppose it was bound to happen one day. An Englishman traveling in Paris had once visited Mama backstage at the theater and he remembered seeing me. When he told Jean-Claude the truth, it nearly killed him.”
Her voice faded to silence. For a long time Sinclair said nothing, but she was aware of how close he stood to her, drawing comfort from his nearness.
“How long did you stay in Paris after Jean-Claude had gone?” he asked.
“Until the summer of ninety-eight. The Terror was at its worst then, so many innocent people proscribed. Baptiste and I got a little reckless trying to help and were caught. I was imprisoned in the Conciergerie, an experience I never care to repeat. That I would be found guilty was a foregone conclusion.
