The Forbidden Rose

mob. She shouldered a bag. Handed the other to Jeanne. “Through the kitchen. We’ll go out the back.” There was no time for more. “I’ll take care of the sparrows. You go to Heron. You know where?”

“The mill.” Jeanne patted her skirt. “I’m carrying a knife. They will not take me alive.”

“Don’t be dramatic. If you’re alive, I’ll get you free.”

Outside, a voice yelled for the de Fleurignac bitch. “Bring her here. Bring her to me.” The torches sent shadow and light flickering across the curtains. Smoke rose from the library below.

She pushed sabots onto her feet. A pouch of coins lay in the drawer. She tossed, and Jeanne caught it neatly.

Jeanne yelled, “Marguerite!”

A man burst into the room. Tall. A coarse face. He wore the jacket and striped trousers of a sans-culottes. A Jacobin. He was armed.

Jeanne threw herself on him. Knocked the pistol from his hand.

He caught Jeanne. Pushed her backward, down on the writing table. His hands crushed her throat. In filthy speech from the gutters of Paris he promised death.

Papers and books scattered. The letter opener slithered off the desk, to the floor. The ivory handle glowed against the carpet. She found it, took it in her hand, and slashed him across his face.

The man screamed. Jeanne rolled away, free. The night lamp fell from the desk and smashed. The papers on the floor caught fire.

There was blood everywhere. Jeanne was on her knees, sobbing air in and out. A red mask twisted in the red light of burning. The man reared up and staggered toward her. Grabbed her and caught her. When she fought him off, her hands were red with blood. The curtains went up in flame.

“Wren is in England by now,” Bertille said.

It was bright daylight around her. She was in Bertille’s beautiful garden, not the chateau. She swallowed and put the memory away. “Wren is halfway to London, as you say. And you have escaped. I’ll solve the rest of this.” She touched Bertille’s face. “Go with God. Be in his hand always. I’m glad you are out of this.”

“I am Dove.” Plump, comfortable, indomitable Bertille shook her head. “Remember that. I was the first. Before Jean-Paul and Wren and Crow. Before your secret signals and your safehouses and the dozens of couriers. I was there when it was only the two of us and a compartment under the seat in your coach. I am La Flèche as much as you are.”

“I would rather you were safe.”

“Chut. We do not do this to be safe. When I am settled in the house in Bernay, I will pass the word. If you do not send sparrows my way, I shall go to Paris and remove them myself.”

“Bertille . . .”

“Now we will cry. I must leave before we do that.” Bertille said that even though tears were already on her cheeks. “Take care of your great giant. He is very impressive, that one. And in the name of God, Marguerite, brush your hair. It is a shame upon the honor of French womanhood.”

There was nothing to do then but watch the cart creak slowly out of sight over a hill.

Twelve

“RIGHT, THEN. PRETEND I’M A DESERTER, COME UP from the army in the Vendée.”

“I would rather not.”

“I spotted you.” LeBreton waved in the general direction of west. “Over there. I take off after you. I’m big and I’m angry and I’m dangerous.”

“That does not require great amounts of imagination to picture. Nevertheless—”

“You come panting up the hill, meaning to hide in these bushes around up here. But I catch up to you. And look what’s loose here.” He lifted her braid. Picked it right from her shoulder and closed his hand around it. His knuckles were scraped with dozens of fine, red-brown lines from where he had hit the gardes. “I grab hold of this, which any man would, by the way. You have an irresistible braid. Now what? What do you do?”

Adrian, who was keeping an eye upon the road, snorted.

She said, “I would offer you a bribe.”

“I don’t feel like being bribed.”

“I would employ some clever stratagem. I would fool you into thinking I was the mayor’s wife. I would pretend to wave at him, coming up the hill there. When you turned that way, I would hide.”

“What if I found you?”

“If you are going to write the tale to your own liking, then any sort of disaster might overtake me. What if the sky poured down poison toads? What if I were abducted by Bulgarians?” She did not like to be held against her will, not even so lightly as the hold he kept upon her braid. She sparked inside with a swarm of little angers, like crackles of fire. “Very well. I would hit you.” She looked directly into his eyes. “Hard. Possibly here.” She doubled her hand into a fist and brought it forward slowly, to rest against his chin.

Those damned laughing eyes of his. Seconds passed while they looked at each other. Slow, important seconds. He said, “That’s a butterfly landing on me.”

“I know.” She dropped her hand. “I am a mouse beneath the cart wheel if I meet villains upon the road. This is a sad fact of life.”

They were on the hilltop that overlooked Bertille’s house, in an orchard hidden by long windbreaks of hawthorn and alder. Adrian lay at length upon a horse blanket, propped on his elbows, looking through a break in the low brush with a pair of night glasses, studying to see if anyone would come to Bertille’s cottage. The night glasses folded and unfolded from a metal case that pretended to be the handle of a valise. Such glasses belonged on some naval vessel, watching ships, not in the baggage of an honest seller of books. But then, LeBreton was so obviously not an honest seller of books.

“Stand there and I’ll teach you how to be a mouse with fangs.

“I do not want fangs.” One could not discourage LeBreton. He ignored her attempts.

He smiled, just with the corners of his eyes. The rest of his face was perfectly sober. “You are going to be dangerous. So. Let’s say I’ve just chased you up this hill. We’re pretending you don’t have a cradle handy, which could happen if you were out in the countryside like this. What you do . . . No. Give me that.” He took her fist and unfolded it. “If you have to hit somebody, you put the thumb out of the way so it don’t snap off like a stick of barley sugar. You do like this.”

She looked at what he advised to do with her thumb. “I cannot believe that is right.”

“You are many things, Mistress Maggie, but a pugilist is not one of them. Now listen. You have one chance—if you’re just as lucky as hell—you have one chance to hit this deserter.”

“Or bandit. Let us be fair and say he could be a bandit.”

“Or bandit.”

“Or an officer of the dragoons. Or perhaps a persistent farm laborer. There is always that.”

“So there is. Pay attention. You’re going to fight this man with all the cleverness you got in you. He’s coming along like this.” He raised his arms up, wide. “What do you do? I’m being terrifying.”

“You are ridiculous. You are like a dancing bear rearing up, saying, ‘Hit me.’ ”

“You can’t count on getting attacked by some little fellow. Now, if I’m attacking,” LeBreton took the fist he’d made of her hand and held it pressed against his stomach, “you don’t hit me in the belly, since that’s not going to do you any good.”

“I will not hit you in the belly.” I have tried that. It does not work. “I will not hit you anywhere, Monsieur Dragoon-Brigand-Deserter. I will run.”

“Run like the devil. That’s your first choice. But if you can’t run . . . if you’re cornered . . . You take this.” He opened her fist and curved her fingers together to make a claw. “You come here.” He brought her fingers to his eyes. Set her fingernails to his eyelid. “You dig in. Go for both eyes if you can. He can’t chase you if he can’t