Page 72 of The Count’s Charade

He shook his head. “No, ma chère, for you judge with the heart. It is for Sir James to look with the mind that has not a — how do you say? — prejudice.”

“Yes, but it don’t hurt to put the case for the defence,” said Sir James trenchantly. “Have you nothing to say for yourself, Rousselle?”

Henri sighed, releasing Grace’s hand. “I say nothing, Sir James, for that whatever word I say, you must ask of my compatriot Jean-Marc if he will say the same. He will tell you that which he believes will make you release me to him. It is again my word to his, voilà tout.”

To his puzzlement, a somewhat grim smile settled upon the magistrate’s face. “Not very trusting, are you? I dare say you have reason.” He turned his gaze upon the excise officer standing patiently to one side of the desk. “We’ll get no more out of him, I believe. Let’s have it then, Wooferton.”

Henri saw Grace glance at the man with as much perplexity as he did himself.

“From what I managed to make out, sir, the fellow Loriot were asking of M’sieur Rousselle here to make the switch from being a royalist to joining the revolution in earnest. Seems as M’sieur Rousselle believed as it was a trick, for to get him away from here so’s them Frenchies might kill him. He began a-chiding of the fellow Loriot, saying how they’d been friends from boys, and how all four of ’em — them other two included — set out to join them republicans so’s to work from inside. The fellow Loriot said as how he didn’t remember nothing about that. And then —”

“Diable!” Henri broke in, rising. “You have heard all from outside the door!”

In growing realisation, he had been listening to a report of the very conversation he’d had last night with Jean-Marc. Which explained just why Sir James had failed to be surprised at Grace’s revelation: he had already known it.

A spark of anger lit in Henri’s chest. He turned on Sir James. “If you have known this, why have you sought to make me speak of it?”

“Yes, I should like to know that,” came from Grace on a vibrant note.

Sir James rapped the table with his knuckles. “That’ll do. I can’t be expected to base a decision on an overheard conversation. But we’ll hear Wooferton out, nonetheless.”

Seething, Henri fell silent, watching the excise officer, who coughed and resumed his tale.

“There ain’t much more, Sir James. ’Cepting as I were able to gather that it were the man Loriot, with foiling plans an’ all, as done for the royalist cause.”

“Ah yes, how has he!” burst from Henri. “How many have been lost who were faithful? How many message has he stopped to reach those we seek to save? How many times we send the soldiers to make an arrest, with the thought that these victims are warned and fled, only to see them come to trial? And all the time Jean-Marc is behind this! Yet I am to believe he seeks to save me from certain death? Faugh!”

He swung away from them, fetching up at a window, from where he contemplated the spacious grounds without seeing them, his heart filled with the rabid frustration that had attacked him these many months as he sought for the traitor, who was much nearer home than he could ever have dreamed.

Grace watched his rigid back with pain at her heart. How long had he carried the hurt of his friend’s defection? No wonder he had spoken so blithely of an acceptance of death. Here was bitterness indeed.

Behind her, Sir James was shuffling papers. There was gruffness in his tone. “It would appear, Rousselle, that these papers of yours bear out what was said last night.”

Henri turned, the green eyes fierce. “This means, enfin? You believe, or you do not believe?”

“I said it bears out. It don’t prove you either way, but it might, if you’d oblige me with where you came by that note from Robespierre.”

Henri let out a crack of laughter. “I have stolen it! You think Jean-Marc has given it to me?” Turning, he shifted a pace towards the magistrate’s desk. “No, m’sieur. I have searched his apartment when he is at the Tribunal.”

He met blandness in Sir James’s expression. “Why should you have done that?”

Why indeed? “I have done it when it becomes clear to me who is the traitor.”

“How did it become clear to you?”

Henri felt his jaw tightening. He had held the truth close to his chest for more weeks than he cared to count. Of what use now to withhold it? At the least, Sir James was aware of his royalist sympathies. He could not suppose last night’s conversation had been planned. Himself a lawyer, Henri knew the magistrate could not take hearsay as evidence. He felt the man to have shifted in his favour. Yet it was with reluctance that he came away from the window.

“For some time it has been my suspicion that one — Etienne or Augustin as I have thought — makes a betrayal of what we do. We fail, and we fail again. There were many like de la Cour there, who ask for help. Too many.”

Watching, Grace saw bitterness curl his lip, and heard the irony in his tone.

“I have discussed this with Jean-Marc at that time, thinking I may trust only he. It amuses one, no?” As his mind ran back to those dark days when, time after time, the secret plots had gone awry — to secure this one’s release, to warn that one of imminent arrest — he began to pace. “Jean-Marc sees that my eyes turn not to him. What does he do? I have shown I suspect, en effet. If not Augustin or Etienne, then who?”

Grace held her breath against the echo in her breast of the agony caused by his friend, far beyond the physical wound inflicted by Jean-Marc’s bullet.

“One who has betrayed his friend must fear his friend,” Henri went on. “Jean-Marc conceives I must find him out. Thus it needs that his friend will be eliminated. Jean-Marc tells to Robespierre that he believes the aide Rousselle is sympathetic to the cause royalist. Robespierre — what would you? — gives to Jean-Marc the order to investigate the aide Rousselle.”

“Scoundrel!”