Page 24 of Souvenir Heart

Marcus exhaled. He didn’t know who the urchin had been sent to warn, but he knew he’d have to work quickly. Pulling out his pocket watch, he marked the time—he’d give himself twenty minutes—and surveyed the room. Gilt framed mirrors were set over each of the tables to expand the space and reflect light from the chandelier hanging over the starburst-patterned parquet floor. A pattern sparkling with powdery shards of porcelain.

He frowned at them. If the lady or one of her servants had dropped a piece of china, surely it would have been swept up by now?

But there was no sign of either.

He ran up the stairs.

“Merde,” was his first thought when he reached the top. He’d been on enough raids to recognize the aftermath of one. Papers were scattered across the paint-smeared parquet floor, an upended desk drawer atop them. Splayed books were heaped beside an empty bookcase, its glass panels swung wide. Canvases and portfolios leaned haphazardly against the wall behind a crooked row of easels.

Marcus inhaled sharply. He registered the familiar aromas of linseed oil and turpentine, but not, thankfully, of gunpowder. Or blood.

Had she been arrested? Or had she fled?

He conducted a quick inspection of the rest of the rooms, finding more drawers emptied and overturned. As he searched under beds, behind curtains, and inside the larger armoires and trunks, he called softly, “Mme de Rouvroy? Citizeness Rouvroy?” He thought of the dark-eyed sprite in the miniature. “Marguerite?”

Marcus checked his watch—ten minutes had passed.

Returning to the sitting room, which he suspected had been the epicenter of whatever had happened, he began examining the scene more carefully, starting with the papers on the floor. He found household accounts and correspondence with artists, studios, and salons, including the Louvre’s. His gaze shifted to the paintings on the three easels. Getting to his feet, he stepped around the discarded books, an empty leather artist’s tube, and inspected them more closely.

Based on the correspondence he’d skimmed, he guessed they were her proposed Louvre submissions. The painting on the left was an allegorical work, Diana the Huntress Testing Her Bow. In the center stood a portrait of a young woman with a sketch pad on her lap, the tools of an artist’s trade around her, an open window behind her. And on the right loomed a portrait of an austere-looking older man in black, with a white neckcloth and a tricolor rosette on his lapel.

All three were signed M. Rouvroy in the lower right-hand corner. He let out a low whistle. He’d seen works by women artists like Vigée le Brun, Labille-Guiard and Carriera, so he knew that there were women who could paint as well as men. But still, they were rare. Madame de Rouvroy’s work was vibrant, confident…and audacious.

He knew he should check the time, finish his search, but his gaze was inexorably drawn to the portrait of the young woman. Marcus didn’t need to consult the miniature in his pocket to know that he was looking at Marguerite de Rouvroy.

Her hair was tied in a loose bun, a few renegade strands framing her oval face. She had delicately winged eyebrows, impossibly large eyes, a nose that turned up slightly at the end, and a generous mouth. In one hand she held a piece of charcoal; it hovered over the sketchpad in her lap, as she gazed out of the canvas, an expression of critical amusement in her eyes.

As if she were trying to decide whether he was worthy of her attention.

He tore his gaze free. It was just a painting. The restless buzzing of his nerves? Exquisite art was always exciting. And he’d been riding for three days. On an unplanned mission to rescue a woman who was clearly missing.

Marcus glanced at his pocket watch. Fifteen minutes gone.

He turned his attention to the portfolios propped against the wall. If she’d managed to flee, it would help to get a better sense of the woman he was trying to find. Who was Marguerite de Rouvroy?

He flipped quickly through them. One contained sketches of mythological scenes—all women, another of portraits—a mixture of women and self-satisfied looking men, a third of anatomical studies of hands, feet, and eyes. Yet another held pastel drawings of a dark-haired man, his long hair unbound, his face vague, but the lines of his naked body sketched and smudged in sensuous, lingering detail. The drawings were shocking. Improper. And yet…what did it feel like to be the object of a woman’s openly admiring, sexual gaze?

Who was this faceless man?

Her husband? A lover?

Marcus slammed the portfolio shut. The lady’s erotic drawings were not his business. His business was to find her and bring her back to her father.

He turned to look at the books spread about the floor. He’d always thought perusing a person’s library was a bit like reading a diary. He scanned the titles: sketchbooks, novels, poetry, art criticism. A tattered brown volume was splayed against a table leg. Du Fresnoy’s De Arte Graphica.

He started, as if seeing an old friend with whom he’d had an unpleasant falling out. He’d had a copy once, but he’d sold it to a Palais Royale bookseller. He could recall the text, the exact page and placement of the author’s description of the artist’s power to “correct and amend the common Nature, and to represent it as it was first created without fault.”

Those lines still made him want to find the author, grab him by the collar and shake him. Nothing created by nature was without fault. To cover up those flaws, to pretend otherwise, was a lie.

Lies led to betrayal.

He remembered the clumsy verse he’d scrawled in response, half drunk, half mad with pain. On impulse, he opened the book. And there it was, in the margin, in his own handwriting, a nausea-inducing reminder of his youthful romantic stupidities.

There was a pounding at the front door. For a split second, trapped in the amber of the past, he took it for his heart. Snapping the book shut, he shot a look at the portrait of Marguerite, then at the leather artist’s tube he’d seen on the floor.

The pounding on the door grew louder. It was accompanied by a male voice impatiently demanding to know if “anyone was in there.”

Marcus stood very still, not frozen, but recalling the placement of the doors and windows, reviewing the details of the exterior of the house, the arrangement of drainpipes, ledges, and rooftops. Then he drew out the knife in his sleeve and listened, a plan taking shape in his head.