Page 71 of The Avenging Angel and the Spy
“Ah, but it is different for you and your Monsieur Carrington. You are still young. And Paris, she was once the best place in the world to be young. She still is. Maybe Monsieur Carrington can teach you how to enjoy yourself for an hour.” The old man fixed her with a shrewd gaze. “He has already brought a sparkle to your eye that I am glad to see.”
Belle could not help but blush under Baptiste’s knowing gaze.
“Now, why do you blush so? Bah, you prim English. It is more than time you took a lover. This Sinclair, he has helped you at last to bury the past,hein?”
“I don’t think anyone could ever do that,” Belle said. A soft smile escaped her. “But, yes, Sinclair does make the past so much easier to bear.”
“Then let him also help you learn to cherish the present. It does have a way of slipping away from one.”
With that the old man deposited a kiss upon her cheek. He sauntered off down the street, leaving Belle to mull over his words.
A few moments later, when Sinclair returned to the table, he discovered Belle lost in thought. He approached her cautiously, as though he half-expected to find her still angry.
“Where is Baptiste?” he asked.
“Gone back to work.”
Sinclair sighed. “And I expect you will say we should do the same. Look, Angel, I don’t want to quarrel with you anymore. I know you have suffered a keen disappointment, how much the money from this mission meant to you, your little rose-covered cottage in Dorsetshire?—”
“Derbyshire,” Belle interrupted with a smile. “Forget about it, Sinclair. It so happens I don’t want to think about the assignment anymore this afternoon, either.”
She rose briskly to her feet, drawing on her gloves. “Let’s play truant. We could go for a stroll down by the river.”
She almost laughed aloud at Sinclair’s look of astonishment. He regarded her as though he could not believe what she was saying. Indeed, she could scarce believe it herself.
“After all,” she said. “We are only young once. And who knows how many such afternoons will be left for us?”
She knew from the glance he cast her that he understood she was talking about more than the unseasonably sunny weather.
“Yes, who knows?” he echoed sadly. He raised her hand to press a kiss against her fingertips before tucking her arm within the crook of his own.
However their mission ended, their time together in Paris was drawing to a close. Belle had never deluded herself that their relationship was a permanent one. They would be bound to go their separate ways. She was surprised to discover how empty that thought made her feel, and she was quick to dismiss it.
Arm in arm, they went walking along the quay by the Seine, the familiar wet-reed smell drifting to Belle’s nostrils. The greenish-brown water had not yet risen to its winter height,leaving some of the quayside exposed. The river lapped gently against the rocks, casting a breeze upon the land, which made Belle glad of her shawl.
She and Sinclair wended their way among thebouquinistes, those booksellers who had ever displayed their wares along the stone embankment, many of the manuscripts quite ancient, threatening to crumple apart at a touch.
Over this section of river the Pont Neuf stretched out its stone arches, the ancient bridge reaching across to the Ile de la Cite, the oldest part of Paris. The bridge was crammed with many others enjoying the day, the hawkers, the artists, the flower girls, the lovers slipping beneath the shoreward arches to steal an intimate moment.
Even as the Seine waters sparkled in the sunlight, so did the city seem to do so today, sparkling with life as much as the man who strode by Belle’s side. Her chief enjoyment came from observing Sinclair, how much he reveled in the bustle and activity about him.
He made her laugh as they wandered through the open air market, teasing her with the prospect that he meant to buy a plump, squawking chicken. He bandied words with theracoleurs, who were ever alert to recruit with a drink any healthy male into joining the army. He applauded a group of street tumblers, tossing them coin, paused to chat with some fishermen angling their lines over the end of the quay, tipped his hat to a saucy group of laundresses in their boats anchored just offshore.
Belle found herself seeing Paris through Sinclair’s eyes as for the first time, experiencing the charm, the zest for life, the gaiety that had ever escaped her before. She began to have some inkling of why Baptiste so loved the place.
Lingering beneath a chestnut tree, its leaves a burst of golden glory, Belle and Sinclair stooped down to feed some bread to a flock of wild ducks gliding on the river.
Belle chuckled to herself. “I can hardly believe I am doing this.”
“What? You mean you never took time before to invite these fine fellows to dine?”
“No. Do you realize that one November during the wheat shortage, I slept overnight on a baker’s doorstep simply to be able to buy a loaf of bread?”
Yet somehow standing here beside Sinclair in the bright sunlight, the grim memory faded to become exactly what it was—a memory and no more than that.
“From some of the things you tell me, Angel,” he said, “you make me glad I could not come to Paris before this.”
As she watched Sinclair squinting past the Pont Neuf to the not far distant shore, she remarked, “Yet it seems so strange to me than an adventurer such as yourself never did so.”
