The Forbidden Rose

They’d tied his wrists behind him when they hauled him out of the cells. That was one more disadvantage to walking around, the size he was—all this mistrust on the part of the authorities. The guards cleared off the biggest chair and manhandled him down. They left his hands trussed up at his back, coiled rope around his chest, and pulled it tight, being rough but impersonal. They didn’t waste malice on somebody who’d be dead in a handful of days.

There was slack in the ropes. The chair wasn’t solid as rock. Give him half an hour to himself and he’d get loose. Unfortunately, Victor had plans for his next half hour.

“It is done.” A bushy mustache walked into his line of sight, hauling a grizzled guard along with it.

“Leave him with me,” Victor said.

“We have no orders to give a prisoner into your charge.” That one was a soldier. A veteran of the colonial wars, he’d guess. Wasted on prison duty.

“I said go.”

“It is a bad precedent. Without orders—”

“I am from the Committee of Public Safety, a friend of Robespierre. That is the only order you need.”

It got quiet. One man whispered to the next. Laid a warning hand on the sleeve. The senior guard hesitated, then nodded, and the men jostled out, silent. The door didn’t click behind the last man.

They’d left the door open a crack. Done that on purpose. There’d be a man left picking his teeth in the hall, innocent-like, keeping an ear on events. They all reported to somebody. The Secret Police. The royalists. The military. There were no secrets in Paris.

Victor strolled over to appreciate the selection of clubs and bludgeons laid out on the table. He picked out a sturdy length of wood that had started life as a table leg.

This is where I get hurt. It said everything he needed to know about Victor that the man only came close when he had a weapon in his hands and his opponent was tied up.

The club swooped back and forth. Victor faced him. “My cousin has not left Paris. You are going to tell me exactly where she is.”

“Citoyenne de Fleurignac? I left her at your house. That’s the last I—”

Victor swung the club.

Pain. God, the pain. Couldn’t get his breath. It took three tries before he could talk. “Listen, you cod-sucking pig, I don’t know where she is. It’s not my fault you can’t keep hold of—”

That got him a fist across his face. “Where is my cousin?”

Ask question. Get no answer. Apply beating. Ask the question again.

He spat out a mouthful of blood, getting some on Victor’s fine white shirt. “Your cousin is nothing to me. Never touched her. Never wanted to. Don’t know where she is now.”

He saw the club coming, twisted, and took the hit on the flesh of his arm. He yelled so they’d hear it on the street.

“If you do not tell me where she is, you will die. Before you die, I will break every bone in your body.”

“I don’t know where she is.” He slumped, groaning. Being stoic just encouraged folks to beat the hell out of you. “I don’t know . . . where . . . she is.” The minute I lift my head he’s going to hit me again. “Damnation, man. How many times do I got to say it? I don’t know where she’s run off to.”

Victor drew back and swung in a wide arc.

“I don’t know—” Pain tore the words apart. The idiot was going to kill him by accident. “Hell in a bucket.”

He’s going to break my damned ribs. Send bones into my lungs. I’ll drown in my own blood and he’ll be surprised.

God, I hate amateurs.

He coughed. Agony shot into his side. Pain like white ice. “Wait. Just a minute. Wait.” Say something he wants to hear. While he’s listening, he’s not hitting. “Listen. I brought her home at dawn, but it’s not what you think. I found her in the Tuileries, out where she shouldn’t be. I took her home. That’s all. I left her on your doorstep. I never touched her. That’s twice I’ve collected yer wandering girl for you. You should be thanking me for—”

He caught this one on his arm. He yelled, making it loud. “When she left the prison, where did she go? Where did Marguerite go?”

Give it a count of three. One. Two. Three. Look up. He put the right amount of startled on his face. “The prison? Your cousin? She weren’t here. That was my Odette.” He let bloody saliva dribble out of his mouth.

Victor’s pale green eyes flicked over him, flicked away fastidiously. “What do you mean?”

You don’t like looking at that, do you? You got a weak stomach for torture.

His half brothers used to hurt him this bad every time they came home from Eton. They’d race in, howling, and pull out the cricket bats, and track him down. Teach the bog-trotter not to be uppity. They didn’t mind admiring their handiwork.

“It was . . .” He let his voice drop weakly. Panted. “Was Odette Corrigou. My woman. Works for a seamstress on Rue de Roule. Nothing to do with you.” He bit his lip to coax some more blood out. Nothing like leaking blood to make a man look sincere. He kept his breath shallow, skimming under the pain. “She’s a good woman, my Odette. Good Bretonne woman. Comes from—”

“Lies.”

Pain. White hot. Blood red. “My cousin visited you here. She told you where she’s hiding. Where her father’s hiding. Tell me.”

“It was my woman.” That was truth. His woman. His Maggie. Always and for all time, his. “Just my woman.”

You’ll never touch Maggie. You’ll never get close to her.

Hawker would be delivering those dragons’ teeth across Paris. Twenty powerful men had just got themselves terrified. They’d bring down the whole bloody French government. Including you, Cousin Victor. Including you.

And Maggie would be safe.

His breath cut like a knife going in and coming out, bright and sharp. He let his head loll back, mumbling as if he were losing consciousness.

Victor lowered the club. His eyes slunk away.

Look at me. Damn you for a bloody incompetent coward. Look at the man you’re torturing. You think the answers are written on that wall? If you were paying attention to the man you’re beating up, you’d know I’m not broken. God save us from idiots.

Victor crossed to the plank table and dropped the club clattering among the wine bottles. “You’re really quite good. I could almost believe you.”

Victor had taken his gloves off for the dirty work of beating a prisoner. He picked them up from the table and shook them out. “I discovered Marguerite’s involvement with La Flèche some weeks ago. Émigrés in London talk of nothing but their escape from France. I recognized Marguerite’s rabble of lowborn friends in the reports of our spies. She is fortunate no one realizes what she has done. You are one of her flock of traitors, I think. Heron, perhaps. I could never decide who Heron was.”

Doyle kept his head down, concentrating on being stupid. Staying alive.

“You and the others who betray France will be swept away like the garbage you are. But I will keep my cousin’s name out of this. You make a mistake when you keep her from me. I am the only chance Marguerite has.”

A chance to get killed. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything.

“I have men searching for her. I’ve discovered Marguerite’s secrets before. I will do so again. Someone saw her leave this place. Someone knows where she went.” The gloves were kid leather, bone white. Pristine. Victor tapped his fingers in. First one hand, then the other. “It cannot be too difficult to find one woman.”

You have not one crumb off the loaf of an idea of what she is, do you? He lifted his head. “Nothing to do with me. Told you that.”

“I’m not an idiot, Citoyen LeBreton.” A thin smile appeared. “Did you think I wouldn’t know my cousin had