Page 11 of Souvenir Heart

“Rather shy on details, don’t you think?” James glanced over his shoulder at the comte, then lowered his voice. “And what will you do if the lady’s been arrested?”

“I’ve factored that in.” Marcus ticked the days off on his fingers. “Three days hard ride to Paris, three days back to the coast, with plenty of time in between to find her and to get her out of whatever trouble she may have gotten into.”

“Trouble?” James shook his head with disbelief. “Is that what you call a French prison? Have you any idea how many prisons there are in Paris?”

“Fifty,” Marcus shot back, recalling the precise number from an intelligence report he’d delivered to Lord Grenville six months earlier. “But they’re not all used for political prisoners, so I should be able to narrow it down fairly quickly.”

“And then what? You’re going to just walk in and…what? Ask for the keys? For her release?”

“Doubtful,” Andre interjected, stepping closer to join the conversation. “The scribbler hasn’t exactly got a way with words, or charm, or tact,” he added, ignoring Marcus’s scowl.

“He’s probably imagining he can fight his way in. Man’s a brute. Which is why he’ll need me. I can get the keys.”

“Needs us,” David amended, looming over the three men. “You’ll need equipment, tools, logistical planning. Without me, you’ll be filching the keys, while forgetting the horses you’ll need to complete your escape.”

Andre shoved an errant curl off his forehead and scowled up at the big man. “Are you suggesting I’m disorganized?”

“Is ‘scattered’ considered an organizational style?”

“Enough,” Marcus interrupted them. “I’ll figure out details when I’ve gotten there and surveyed the situation...”

David gripped his arm, each finger like an iron vise, “when we get there. We.”

“Damn it all to hell, have you forgotten who is in charge, here?” Dinsmore demanded. “I will decide who stays and who goes. After we’ve gotten the comte to safety.”

Seven

There was a mark on the door? What kind of mark? And who had put it there? Some part of Marguerite’s brain knew there were more important things she should be thinking of or doing as the sound of voices and pounding feet grew ever closer, but she found herself unable to move as her sitting room filled with men in red caps and sashes, waving clubs, sabers, and pistols. Trying to stop them would have been like trying to dam a flood with a feather.

“See!” one of them shouted triumphantly and pointed at her. “There she is. Citizeness Rouvroy. The enemy of the State!”

The open mouths, the gesturing hands, the odors of their bodies, their breath; it was almost more than her senses could absorb.

“Search the place!”

Instinctively she moved to clap her hands over her ears. The movement seemed to shatter the fugue that had been settling around her. Grabbing her right wrist with her left hand, she brought both down. Then she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and faced the men. Were there four? Five? They spread out to search her rooms.

“Enemy of the state?” she raised her voice loud enough to be heard over the scrape of drawers being opened, the bang of cabinets thrown wide, and the clatter and thud of her belongings being hurled to the floor. “On what grounds are you bringing such a charge?”

A man with gray stubble on his cheeks and a red sash across his broad chest stepped forward. “Are you Citizeness Rouvroy?”

“I am.”

“Formerly known as Mme de Joley de la Rouvroy, wife of the Chevalier de la Rouvroy?”

“My husband and I gave up our titles in June 1789—at the time of the tennis court oath. If you know anything about my late husband, or of me, then you know we have been supporters of the Republic since the beginning.”

“Your late husband was a Girondist, was he not?”

As focused as she was on her art, she wasn’t so cut off from the world that she didn’t know about the orders that had gone out to arrest the Girondins. But what did that have to do with her? “Gerard died seven months ago.” Well before the Girondins had voted to appeal to the people on the subject of whether to execute the King, laying themselves open to charges of being monarchists and counterrevolutionaries. And well before they’d tried to rally provincial support to break Paris’s domination of the National Convention.

The fools, underestimating the power of Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. “What possible transgression could my husband have committed that would bring you here now?”

“Ah,” the man smiled, gray stubble glittering in the sunlight. “Who says it is your husband’s crimes that have brought us here?”

Despite the prickling heat of the June sun spilling through her windows, the man’s emphasis on the words ‘your husband’ and ‘crimes’ chilled Marguerite as thoroughly as if her skin had been painted with ice.

Was this somehow tied to her father? She’d had no contact with him since last October. After the September massacres, she’d wondered if she’d been wrong to reject his offer to leave, but then Gerard had gotten sick. And after her husband’s death? She’d known all too well that her father would never allow her to paint professionally.