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“Yes, citizen. On the Rue Montmarte. If you hurry, you might catch them.”
The guardsman didn’t scamper off, as Laurent had hoped. Instead, he looked at the Englishwoman and then Laurent again, his eyes narrowed. Perhaps he wasn’t as simple as Laurent had assumed.
This was the end then. He’d been a fool to believe he could save the princess. He could not even make it halfway across the city. And now he’d doomed not only himself—no great loss as he’d already been doomed—but the Englishwoman as well.
He gave her an apologetic look, but she wasn’t looking at him. She’d raised her face and now stared straight at the revolutionaries. Laurent followed her gaze, noting some of the men were ogling her with mouths hanging open. Laurent had done much the same when he’d first seen her, and he was a man accustomed to female beauty.
“Please,” the woman said in flawless French. “Save us from those monsters. I will personally write to Robespierre of your heroism and sacrifice for the revolution.”
As ifRobespierrewas a magic word, the men seemed to spring into action. The leader hefted his musket and looked to his men. “Which way did they run? We will catch these cowards, these enemies of liberty.”
“That way!” Laurent pointed to the east as he needed to travel west. “Hurry! They may accost other good citizens and patriots!”
The men started away, and the people in the street behind them hurried to make way. Laurent pushed the Englishwoman ahead, moving as quickly as he dared without causing undue attention. They were out of sight before they reached the Boulevard du Temple, with its tree-lined streets and wide, busy walks. It was far less crowded now as so many of the actors had fled the country and the theaters were severely regulated as to the plays and operas they might perform. Everything had to be approved by the National Convention.
Laurent hurried past the Salon de Cire, where Monsieur Curtius displayed wax figures of men like Marat, Danton, and Lafayette. Or perhaps Lafayette was no longer in favor with the revolutionaries. In which case, some other general would have replaced him. The Salon de Cire was shuttered, either closed for the day or several days while Curtius’s niece, Madame Grosholtz, created another tableau. Laurent had met her briefly at Versailles when she served as tutor to Madame Élisabeth, sister of the late king. But he passed the salon and the laboratory of the Charles brothers beside it. No one could be trusted—not even former tutors to the royal family.
Finally, he reached the front gate to his apartments, but instead of entering that way, he pulled the Englishwoman down a narrow alley and to the dark back entrance used by the few servants he’d employed. The solid wall that comprised the gate was locked with a thick padlock, and Laurent had lost the key months ago. As the wall was too high to climb, he had no choice but to break the lock. “Stand back,” he ordered the Englishwoman. Laurent had taken but one step back when the woman held up a hand.
“Do youwantto call attention to us? You think no one will notice a broken lock or hear the noise you make in the effort of breaking it?”
Laurent gave her a long look. “You have another solution?”
He’d expected her to look sheepish and close her mouth. Instead, she reached into her hair and withdrew a hairpin.
“This should work,” she said, bending to observe the lock more closely. “As long as French locks are not so different from those we have in England.”
Laurent stared in stunned silence as she inserted the pin in the padlock and began to wiggle it.
The woman was picking the lock. First, she’d saved them from the guard with the mention of Robespierre, a name that had been nothing sort of magic. Now she was picking the lock to his rooms.
He heard the mechanism inside the lock click even before the padlock fell open. The Englishwoman caught it with one hand. “There.”
“Is there anything you cannot do?” Laurent asked with true appreciation.
“Yes. I cannot stay with you.” And she swung the heavy padlock at his head.
