“Ah, yes.” Desedero nodded in understanding. “The dream …”
“Well, I’m only a man of business who doesn’t understand these idealistic vagaries. It appears a duplicate won’t do, so I will have to get the Wind Dancer for him.”
“What will you do?”
“What I should have done in the beginning. Go to Versailles myself and find a way to persuade the queen to sell the Wind Dancer. I didn’t want to leave my father when—” He broke off, his hands again slowly clenching. “I knew he didn’t have much time left.”
“But how can you expect to succeed when she’s clearly so determined to keep it?” Desedero asked gently.
“Information.” Jean Marc’s lips twisted in a cynical smile. “I’ll find out what she most desires and give it to her in exchange for the statue. I’ll take lodgings in an inn near the palace and before two weeks are gone I’ll know more about the court and Her Majesty than King Louis does himself, even if I have to bribe every groom and maid in the palace.”
Desedero gestured to the statue on the pedestal. “And this?”
Jean Marc avoided looking at the Pegasus as he strode to the door. “I never want to see it again. You may sell off the jewels and melt it down.” He jerked open the door. “God knows, I may need the additional gold to tempt Louis into selling the Wind Dancer.”
The door slammed behind him.
TWO
You’re spoiling the lad.” Marguerite’s thin lips pursed as she gazed at Louis Charles’s fair head nestled against Juliette’s breast. “His nurse won’t thank you for this coddling when we get him back to Versailles.”
“He’s been ill.” Juliette’s arms tightened protectively around the baby’s warm, firm body. Not really a baby any longer, she thought wistfully. The queen’s second son was over two, but he still felt endearingly small and silken in her arms. “He deserves a little extra attention. The motion of the coach upsets his stomach.”
“Nonsense. The doctor at Fontainebleau pronounced the prince fit for travel.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s completely well again.” Juliette glared at Marguerite on the seat across from her. “Only two weeks ago he was running a fever high enough for the queen to fear for his life.”
“Measles don’t always kill. You had them twice and survived.”
Louis Charles stirred and murmured something into Juliette’s shoulder.
Juliette looked down, a smile illuminating her face. “Shh, bébé, we’ll soon have you back with your maman. All is well.”
“Yes, now that we’re returning to Versailles,” Marguerite agreed sourly. “So contrary of you to offer to stay with the child at Fontainebleau when the court returned to Versailles. You knew I’d have to stay with you no matter how much your mother needed my services.”
Juliette rocked the little boy back and forth, her fingers tangled in his downy, soft curls. It would do no good to argue with Marguerite, she thought wearily. The woman cared for naught but her mother’s comfort and welfare and was never happy except in her presence. It didn’t matter to her that the queen had been worried to distraction when Louis Charles had fallen ill. Marie Antoinette’s baby daughter, Sophie, had died only four months before and Louis Joseph, dauphin and heir to the throne, whose health had always been fragile, was failing rapidly. When Her Majesty’s ever-robust youngest son had succumbed to the measles, she had been in despair.
“Put him down on the seat,” Marguerite ordered.
Juliette’s lips set stubbornly. “He’s still not well. Her Majesty said I was to use my own judgment as to his care.”
“A flighty chit of fourteen has no business caring for a prince.”
“I’m not putting him down.” Juliette’s lips firmed as she avoided Marguerite’s stare and looked out the window of the carriage. She knew silence would serve her better than quarreling, but meekness was never easy for her. Thank the saints they were close to the town of Versailles now and the palace was just a short distance beyond. She would try to ignore Marguerite and think only of the painting in her trunk on the roof of the carriage. Much of the detail on the trees in the work was still to be finished; she could paint sunlight filtering through the top leaves of the trees revealing the naked skeletal spines. It would be an interesting effect, suggesting the lack of truth in the characters of the figures she had painted lolling below the boughs of the trees.
“You always think you know best,” Marguerite grumbled. “Ever since you were a child scarcely older than the prince. Do you believe the queen would have trusted you to stay with Louis Charles if the child’s nurse had not come down with the sickness? Her Majesty will find you out someday. You may amuse her right now with your drawings and bold tongue, but she’s easily bored and will—You’re not listening to me.”
Juliette shifted her gaze to the thick green shrubbery bordering the bluff on the far side of the road. “No.” She wished Marguerite would cease her acid discourse and let her enjoy these moments of holding the little boy in her arms. She had never had anyone of her own to care for, and during the past few weeks she had actually felt as if Louis Charles belonged to her. But his time of recuperation was over now, she thought wistfully, and in only a few hours she would have to return Louis Charles to his mother and the attention of the royal court.
Marguerite’s palm cracked against Juliette’s cheek.
Juliette’s head snapped back, her arms involuntarily loosening about the baby.
“You’re not too old to be punished for your insolence.” Marguerite smiled with satisfaction at Juliette’s stunned expression. “Your mother trusts me to know how to school you in spite of the spoiling Her Majesty gives you.”
Juliette’s arms quickly tightened again around Louis Charles. She had not expected the slap. She had clearly misjudged the degree of anger and frustration building in Marguerite since she had been commanded to stay with Juliette at Fontainebleau. “Don’t ever strike me again while I’m holding the boy.” She tried to keep her voice from shaking with anger. “I could have hurt him badly if you’d caused me to drop him.”
“You’re giving me orders?”
“I think the queen would be interested to know the reason if Louis Charles suffered any harm, don’t you?”
Marguerite’s baleful gaze sidled away from Juliette’s stare. “You’ll soon not be able to hide behind the prince. You never would have gotten so out of hand if your mother hadn’t required my services.”
“I’m not hiding from—”
A horse neighed in agony.
The coach lurched and shuddered to a halt, throwing Juliette to her knees on the floor.
Louis Charles awoke and began to whimper. “Jul …”
“What is it?” Marguerite thrust her head out the window of the carriage. “You fool of a coachman, what—”
The blade of a scythe pierced the wood beside her head, burying its curving length through the side of the coach.
Marguerite shrieked and jerked back from the window.
“What’s happening?” Crouched on the floor of the coach still, Juliette gazed at the blade. She could hear shouts, metal clashing against metal, the screams of the horses.
A bullet suddenly splintered the wooden frame of the door.
“Farmers. Peasants. Hundreds of them. They’re attacking the carriage.” Marguerite’s voice rose in terror. “They’re going to kill me, and it’s all your fault. If you hadn’t insisted on staying with that brat, I’d be safe at Versailles with your mother.”
“Hush.” Juliette had to stem the panic rising in her. She had to think. Stories abounded of carriages and châteaus being attacked by the famine-stricken peasants but never a royal carriage accompanied by the Swiss guard. “We’ll be safe. They can’t overcome the soldiers that—”
“You fool. There are hundreds of them.”
Juliette crept closer to the window and looked for herself. Not hundreds but certainly too many to assess at one glance. The scene was total confusion. Coarsely dressed
men and women on foot battled the mounted uniformed Swiss guard with scythes and pitchforks. Men on horseback garbed in mesh armor were plunging through the melee, striking with swords at the peasants on either side of them. Two of the four horses pulling the coach were lying dead and bloody on the ground.
Black Velvet.
Her gaze was caught and held by the only still, inviolate figure in this scene of blood and death. A tall, lean man wearing a sable velvet cape and polished black knee-boots sat on his horse at the edge of the crowd. The man’s dark eyes gazed without expression at the battle.
Another bullet exploded in the wood just above the seat where Juliette had been sitting. She ducked lower, her body covering the sobbing child. If they stayed in the carriage, how long before one of those bullets hit Louis Charles, she wondered desperately. She couldn’t stay and wait for it to happen. She had to do something. All the fighting was taking place to the right of the carriage, so the Swiss guard must have kept the mob from surrounding it. The thicket bordering the bluff …
Juliette crawled toward the door, clutching Louis Charles tightly.
“Where are you going?” Marguerite asked.
“I’m trying to escape into the woods bordering the bluff.” Juliette ripped off the linen kerchief from her gown and tied it around the boy’s mouth, muffling his wails. “It’s not safe here for Louis Charles.”
“Are you mad?”
Juliette opened the door a crack and peered out cautiously. The shrubbery started only a few feet away, and there seemed to be no one in sight.
“Don’t go.”
“Be silent or come with us. One or the other.” Juliette clasped Louis Charles’s small body tighter and opened the door wider. She drew a deep breath, leapt from the carriage, and darted across the dusty road and into the shrubbery. Branches lashed her face and clawed at her arms as she pushed through the bushes.
“Come back to the carriage at once! You can’t leave me.”
Juliette muttered an oath as she bolted through the shrubbery. Even in the cacophony of shouts and clatter of sabers Marguerite’s shrill voice carried clearly. If Juliette could hear it, she would be foolish to believe none of the attackers would.
Louis Charles whimpered beneath the gag, and she automatically pressed him closer. Poor baby, he didn’t understand any of this madness. Well, she didn’t either, but she wouldn’t let those murderers harm either the child or herself.
“Stop!”
A sudden chill gripped her and she glanced over her shoulder.
Black Velvet.
The man who had sat watching the battle was now crashing through the underbrush behind her, his cloak flying behind him like the wings of a great bird of prey.
Juliette ran faster, trying desperately to outdistance the man in black.
Tears were running down Louis Charles’s cheeks.
She jumped over a hollow log, staggered, and almost fell as she landed in an unseen hollow behind it. She regained her balance and ran on. Pain stitched through her side.
“Merde, stop. I mean you no—” The man broke off, cursing.
A glance over her shoulder revealed he had fallen to his knees in the hollow that had almost been her own undoing.
She felt a surge of primitive satisfaction. She hoped the villain had broken his leg. It would serve him well if—
A bullet whistled by her ear, striking the tree next to her.
“The boy. Give me the boy.”
The guttural voice came not from behind but ahead of her!
A huge, burly man dressed in ragged trousers and a coarse white tunic stood only a yard in front of her, holding a smoking pistol in his hand. He threw the empty pistol aside and drew a dagger from his belt.
Juliette froze, her gaze on the gleaming blade of the knife.
She couldn’t go back toward the man in black. She desperately sought some way to escape.
The branch lying on the path a few feet away!
“Don’t hurt me, Monsieur. See, I’m putting the child down.” She set Louis Charles on the ground at her feet.
The huge man grunted with satisfaction and took a step forward.
Juliette snatched up the branch and brought it up between the man’s legs with all her might.
He screamed, clutching his groin and dropping the knife.
Juliette picked up Louis Charles again and darted past her victim.
Only seconds later she heard the man cursing as he pounded after her. How had the lout recovered so quickly? She knew how disabling a blow to that part of a man’s anatomy could be. Only a few months earlier the Duc de Gramont … A stream to jump. Her skirts trailed behind her in the water.
Within seconds she heard the splashing of heavy boots in the water.
He was closer!
A meaty hand grasped her shoulder, jerking her to a halt.
“Bitch! Whore!”
She caught the gleam of metal from the corner of her eye as he raised his dagger to plunge it into her back.
Sweet Mary, she was going to die!
The dagger never fell.
She was jerked and whirled away from the peasant’s blade with such force she fell to her knees on the ground.
Black Velvet.
She gazed in stunned amazement at the bloody stain spreading on the shoulder of the black velvet cloak worn by the man who had thrust her aside to take the peasant’s blade himself.
Pain wrenched the tall, lean man’s features into a grimace even as his own dagger plunged into the other man’s broad chest.
The burly peasant groaned, then slumped to the ground.
The man in black velvet stood there, swaying, before staggering to lean against a pine tree a few feet away. One hand clutched at his left shoulder from which the dagger still protruded. His olive skin had faded to a sickeningly sallow shade, his lips drawn thin. “My dear Mademoiselle de Clement. May … I say.” His voice faded. “That … you … make it damnably hard for a man to … rescue you?”
Her eyes widened. “Rescue?”
“I brought reinforcements to help the guard when I learned of the plan to attack the carriage. If you’d stayed in the coach—” His palm clutched blindly at the bark of the tree as his face convulsed with pain. “The battle should be … over by now.”
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Juliette whispered. “Whom to trust. Who are you? Where did you come from?”
“Jean Marc … Andreas. An inn nearby … Inn of the Blind Owl …” His gaze shifted to the peasant lying on the ground a few feet away. “Not clever. Boots …”
His eyes closed and he slid slowly down the tree trunk in a dead faint.
“Don’t argue with me. You must send for the physician in the village and I’ll need hot water and clean linen.”
Jean Marc opened his eyes to see Juliette de Clement belligerently confronting a large, stout man. Jean Marc dimly recognized him as Monsieur Guilleme, the proprietor of the inn where he had been residing for the last few weeks.
The innkeeper shook his head. “I’ve no wish to offend His Majesty by sending for the physician in the village if Monsieur Andreas truly saved the life of the prince. We must wait for the court physician to arrive.”
“The palace is too far. Do you wish to be responsible if he dies?”
Why, she was scarcely more than a child, Jean Marc realized hazily. When he had first caught sight of the girl running through the forest his only impression had been of a thin, graceful form, a storm of shining dark brown curls and wide, frightened eyes. Now, although she stood with spine straight, shoulders squared as if to compensate for the fact that the top of her head barely came to the third button on the innkeeper’s shirt, it was clear her slim body bespoke only the faintest hint of the maturity to come.
“Can’t you see the man’s lifeblood is pouring onto your floor?”
Jean Marc shifted and became aware he was being held upright by two soldiers dressed in the uniform of the Swiss guard, both of whom were grinning as they watc
hed the confrontation. “What a truly depressing … picture,” he whispered. “I devoutly hope … you’re not referring to myself, Mademoiselle.”
Juliette whirled to face Jean Marc, and an expression of profound relief lightened the tension in her face. “You’re awake. I was afraid …” She turned back to Monsieur Guilleme. “Why do you just stand there? He must have the dagger removed from his shoulder immediately.”
Monsieur Guilleme spoke soothingly. “Believe me, sending for the court physician is best. You’re too young to realize—”
“I’m not too young to realize you’re more afraid for your own skin than for his,” Juliette interrupted fiercely. “And I’ll not have him bleeding to death while you stand there dithering.”
Jean Marc grimaced. “I do wish you’d stop talking about my pending demise. It’s not … at all comforting.”
“Be silent.” Juliette glanced back at him, her brown eyes blazing. “I’m sure speaking is not good for you. You’re behaving as foolishly as this innkeeper.”
Jean Marc’s eyes widened in surprise.
“That’s better.” She nodded to the two soldiers supporting Jean Marc. “Take him to his chamber. I’ll follow as soon as I deal with the innkeeper. And be gentle with him or, by the saints, you’ll answer to me.”
The soldiers’ grins faded and they began to bristle with annoyance as the girl’s fierceness turned on them. Christ, in another minute the chit would have the men dropping him in a heap on the floor. He flinched at the thought and asked hastily, “The prince?”
“I told you not to—” She met Jean Marc’s gaze and nodded curtly. “He’s safe. I sent him on to the palace with my nurse and the captain of the guard. I thought it safer for him.”
“Good.” Jean Marc’s knees sagged and his eyes closed wearily. He let the soldiers bear the brunt of his weight as they half dragged, half carried him toward the stairs.
The next ten minutes proved to be an agony unsurpassed in Jean Marc’s experience, and when he was finally lying naked beneath the covers on the wide bed in his chamber he was barely on the edge of awareness.