Page 2 of Souvenir Heart

She glanced around the room, At the bright yellow walls and matching curtains, the long windows that flooded the space with light; a wave of homesickness sweeping over her as if she’d been gone for years. Gerard had mocked her artistic aspirations. Had balked at allowing her to take lessons, only relenting when he discovered the instructor and the other students were women.

After his death, she’d rolled up the carpets, set up her easels in front of them, spread her paints, charcoals, brushes, palettes and palette knives, jars of turpentine and linseed on the marquetry tables, heedless of the mess. She’d spread bright shawls over the sofa and a few chairs to hide a growing collection of paint smears and coffee stains on the cream-colored silk brocade. Stacked her canvases and portfolios against the walls, along with bolts of fabric that she used to drape behind her models.

Her three prize paintings were arrayed on easels in front of the windows.

Leaving them behind felt impossibly painful. Like cutting off a limb.

And then there were her precious books, stored in a slender vitrine bookcase set against the wall. Behind its glass-paneled doors was an eccentric collection of novels, art books, sketchbooks, and pamphlets. They weren’t all valuable; indeed, a true bibliophile might consider many of them trash. Her favorite was a battered brown tome tucked at the end of the second shelf. It was a treatise on art that she’d kept largely for the lines some scorned lover had scrawled in graphite pencil in the margin:

A woman, like a viper amongst the leaves, can hide her deadly designs behind face paint, powder, and petticoats, but not, I believe, with a brush on canvas. If ever the Devil leads me to love again, I shall demand of my lover, do not tell me of your heart, fair one, but show me your art.

Melodramatic and yet, somehow the words had called to her. What would it be like to be seen for what she created, rather than judged for how she looked, or for the family she’d been born or married into.

She’d been so close to finding out.

“Enough,” she said sharply. Hands on hips, she studied the pile of clothes. Just enough room for her sketchbook if she took out a skirt. But…where was it? She whirled around, scanning the room for the book with the green canvas cover. It should be on the table next to the sofa, but it wasn’t. She peered under the sofa to see if it had fallen on the floor. Crawled over to the table to scan the area around it.

A knock at the front door made her jump, nearly striking her head on the table’s trim. It echoed up the stairs from the entrance hallway.

The knock was followed by a banging, which became a pounding. Loud and insistent.

Or was that her heart?

Two

JUNE 9TH, 1793 (21 PRAIRIAL I) THE ROAD TO ROUEN

France in that unseasonably sweaty summer of 1793 was a dangerous place for a party of Englishmen. Even more so when the party inside the old-fashioned, navy-blue Berlin rumbling down the dusty road to Rouen included four spies for his Majesty George III, an earl’s daughter, and a fugitive aristocrat they had just rescued from the guillotine. The aristocrat, an aging comte who had once served as Louis XVI’s finance minister, and one of the spies were posing as the coach’s groom and driver, respectively. The others sat inside, packed tightly together, dreaming of the coast, the waiting sloop, and the cool sea breezes that lay just hours away.

Marcus Tyndale was idly sketching their rendezvous point from memory; he’d roughed in the rocky path, the waves below, and was just beginning to draw a tiny sloop in the distance—when his sketchbook was snatched from his lap, leaving a slash of graphite across the page.

Tucking his pencil behind his ear, he glared at his seat companion, a young man with dark curls and bright blue eyes.

Scott was using his sketchbook as a fan. Andre. They used only first names when they were on a mission—less chance of slipping up and forgetting whatever false last name they were going by at the moment.

“Use your own books.” Faster than a snake strike, Marcus’s right hand shot out, grabbed Andre’s wrist, pinched and twisted. Catching the falling sketchbook in his left, he cocked his head and said coolly. “You do read, don’t you?”

“I was two years behind you at Eton.”

“Now that you mention it,” Marcus said, reopening his sketchbook, “I do seem to recall the ‘behind’ bit.”

Andre leaned back against the Berlin’s cushions, drew a silver pocket watch from his waistcoat, and flipped open the lid.

Catching sight of the simple engravings on it, Marcus sighed. “When you finish checking the time, would you be so kind as to return my pocket watch?”

“We’ve hours to go,” he said, snapping the lid shut and dropping the watch into Marcus’s coat pocket.

“While I appreciate that you are easily bored, have you considered ways to amuse yourself that don’t involve petty theft? Perhaps you might ask David to build you a toy?” Marcus nodded in the direction of the coach’s box, where David Aylesworth, the team’s master craftsman and brilliant gadget designer, masqueraded as the coach’s driver.

Andre frowned, stroked his chin, paused and said, “No.” Then he returned to what he’d been doing before his attempt at sketch book theft, drumming his restless fingers against the windowsill.

Marcus plucked his pencil from behind his ear, re-opened his sketchbook, considering how he might salvage his drawing and turn the smear into a sloop.

He glanced over at the man and woman seated across from him. He’d been trying not to look at them, to give the pair some modicum of privacy. James Dinsmore had finally realized what the rest of them had known from the start of this rescue mission; resistance to the brash beauty who’d tricked him into letting her join them was futile and he, Dinsmore, was hopelessly in love with Lady Elizabeth Harcrest.

The lady’s eyes were closed, and her head had fallen against Dinsmore’s. His scarred cheek was resting against her mahogany curls, a rare expression of peace replacing his usual mask of bored indifference.

A weight settled on Marcus’s chest, and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe. It wasn’t jealousy; he’d been in love, been to war, and counted himself lucky to have survived both experiences. Returning his attention to his sketch, he set his pencil to the page.