Page 74 of Souvenir Heart

“She’d have told you she was planning to denounce you?”

“No, no, but perhaps I’d have known her well enough to…”

“Understand she’s the kind of person who thinks people whose beliefs and ideas differ from hers should be arrested? That a drawing mocking a power-mad politician deserves a death sentence? Seems to me the time spent getting to know such a person— no,” he amended, “the time wasted on getting to know such a person, is far more exhausting.”

“I’m guessing you are unmarried?”

“No lovers. No wife. No family,” he said, in a tone that was clearly intended to shut down that particular line of conversation.

This man’s scars went deeper than his skin; she wanted to wrap him in her arms. “But you must have had family once?”

Silence.

“You don’t strike me as the product of immaculate conception.”

This elicited a twitch of his severe lips. “Far from it.” He dumped the water from the basin into a water can, wrapped her hair in a towel and began wringing segments of it out. “I did have a family, once. They’re gone.”

“Is that why you do this…rescuing…or whatever?”

“Whatever?” He set the wrapped coil of her hair down and looked at her.

“The fake names. Is Marcus Tyndale really your name, or just your name for now? The disguises. The I-can’t-tell-you-just-wait-for-my-instructions secrecy.”

“Ah,” he said in a tone of exaggerated understanding “You mean the whatever that saved your life?”

“For which I’m grateful. Very grateful. Though we’re not in England yet,” she couldn’t resist adding. “I heard you speaking English in the carriage. You’re English. You’re all English, are you not?”

He pressed his lips together.

“Ah,” she said waving a finger at the severe line of his mouth. “There it is. The I’ll-only-tell-you-what-I-decide-you-need-to-know whatever that enables you to neatly avoid entanglements.”

“Neatly avoid?” he repeated, his tone incredulous. “Is that why you think I rode hell for leather for three days to reach Paris, broke into your apartments, spent days finding a way in and out of the Conciergerie, stealing a uniform, smuggling it into the prison, fabricating a key…”

“Which didn’t work.” She knew she was goading him, but his anger felt better than his studied indifference, like an electric shock revitalizing them both.

“You probably turned it wrong,” he muttered. “Not to mention producing all those portraits.”

“Ah yes, the portraits. That reminds me, in the pocket of the breeches you carried away you’ll find a purse.”

“I have it. I’m not a thief.” He drew the embroidered purse from his pocket and dropped it on the table. “As well as the sketch paper you didn’t use.”

“You may keep it.”

“How gracious. Seeing as how it was mine to begin with...”

“Not the paper,” Marguerite said, surprised at the fury he infused into the words ‘sketch paper.’ “The purse.”

“The purse?” Marcus repeated, clearly confused.

“It’s your payment.” She cocked her chin at the little embroidered bag. Looking at it felt like a punch to the stomach and she quickly turned away. “From Marisol Auginot,” she said, her voice hardening. Anger felt so much safer than grief. “The woman in the bed across from mine. She wanted to make certain that she paid all her debts before she went to the guillotine. Or, was she someone you decided wasn’t worth getting to know…better forgotten?”

“I…”

“Do this for the money,” She waved a hand, completing the sentence for him. She began twisting her towel-wrapped hair.

He’d been standing behind her, next to the basin on the table, and he came around to face her. Setting his hands on the arms of her chair, he knelt in front of her so that their eyes were level and said firmly, “Stop.”

“Stop what?” She didn’t know what inflamed her more, his proximity or his words. “Stop speaking? Or stop telling the truth? You don’t like it?”