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Honoria couldn’t say why the words stung so much, but she actually shrank back. “Everyone says von Fersen and she are lovers,” she added.
“And how do these writers know this information when they know neither the queen nor the comte nor have they ever spent a moment in either’s presence?”
“Then they are not lovers?”
He looked away, staring into the fire as though remembering a long ago past. “Only the queen and von Fersen can answer that. I spent many, many hours with Her Majesty, and I never witnessed anything inappropriate between the two. And before you accuse me of bedding her, I never so much as touched her hand. I have done many reprehensible deeds in my life, but I would not think of cuckolding the King of France.”
As he spoke, his face softened, his eyelids lowering.
“But you loved her,” Honoria said quietly.
He gave her a sharp look. “What makes you say that?”
“Your face. When you speak of her it looks softer, kinder.”
“That is because I am a great fool.” He rose and paced across the room, coming to stand before the fire. He leaned one arm on the mantel and stared down into the flames. “I did not love her, not in the way you mean. But I did love her charm, her joie de vivre, her impeccable taste. I loved that she was a good mother to her children. I saw in her—” He broke off, and she wondered what he had meant to say. Shaking his head, he continued, “No, I was never in love with the queen.”
Honoria knew she should not press him. His voice had grown strained, his mouth tight. But she could not seem to stop herself. If he were to go to such great lengths to ensure he had her skills to forge these documents, she wanted to know why he was so determined. “Then how are you a fool?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Because I cannot let theancien régime—as the revolutionaries call it—go. Because I want that way of life back. Because like the king, I steadfastly ignored every warning sign and stayed until it was too late to leave. Charles Phillipe left in 1789. I went with him, him and the hundred other nobles and friends who fled the country. But I did not stay away.”
“You can still go. The Pimpernel—”
“Not without the children.” He rounded on her, his face hard and determined. “You asked if I loved the queen, but you did not ask about the children. Marie-Thérèse and Louis Charles are the ones I love.”
“They are your cousins?”
“Distant cousins, but so are a thousand other nobles spread over the Continent. Those two are more like brother and sister to me. The first time I saw Madame Royale she was barely a month old and squalling like her limbs were being torn from her body. Charles Phillipe and I were both suffering the effects of overindulgence in drink the night before, and we simply wanted the noise to end. The princess’s nannies were trying everything they could to quiet the baby, but finally I stepped up and demanded they hand her over.” A smile played on his lips. “As soon as she was in my arms, she quieted. She looked up at me with those large blue eyes and that’s when I fell in love. I have been devoted to her and the dauphin ever since.”
“But I have always heard the princess was haughty and spoiled.”
At that his smile widened. “She can be. But that does not mean she deserves the fate to which she’s been consigned. I don’t have the luxury of time to list all of her merits or tell you stories about the princess. The queen is on trial and will go to her death soon. I must rescue the children before they follow their mother. I cannot allow them to die.”
“There is nothing you can do,” she whispered.
“No!” He sliced his hand through the air between them. “I refuse to believe that. I have been helpless before. I amnothelpless now. I will not let them die, not like Amélie.” He sucked in a breath, and she knew he had said more than he’d intended.
“Who is Amélie?” Honoria asked.
Montagne looked at the floor for a long moment, so long she did not think he would answer her. Finally, he raised his gaze to hers, and his eyes were full of pain. “She was a child who died. I loved her, and I could not save her. I would rather die trying to save the royal children than endure the pain of watching them die and knowing I did nothing to stop it.”
Honoria’s eyes stung. Had Amélie been his child? A daughter? How had she died? She had so many questions, but she couldn’t bear to cause him more pain by asking them. Before he’d spoken of her, the princess had been little more than a title on a piece of paper, but now she saw the girl through the marquis’s eyes. She was a child who had suffered loss and terror and who was imprisoned because of the accident of her birth. Honoria could not go home to her cozy bed in England and her safe position at the British Museum and leave an innocent child behind to suffer. Saving these children was why she had come. She might not have known as much, not when Monsieur Palomer had come to her, but she knew it now.
She rose. “I will help you.”
He’d turned back to the fire, but now he faced her again. “You will make the papers?”
How could she trust this man? How could she put her life in his hands? She swallowed the fear—nay, the terror—rising in her throat. “I will do more than that. I will help you rescue them.”
He stared at her, his green eyes as cunning as a cat’s. “You realize it is suicide?”
Oh, she realized that. She could easily imagine her neck under the blade of the guillotine. Alex had told her of a woman, a member of the Pimpernel’s League, who had escaped the blade after being betrayed by her lover. She’d cautioned Honoria that if she ever found herself in that position, she would not be so fortunate. The sewers they had used to escape were now guarded or closed off.
Honoria drew in a breath. “Some causes are worth dying for. If the life of an innocent child is not a worthy cause, then what is?” Her voice shook. “I will help you.”
He reached out and closed his warm hand over hers, an action that settled her more than she had supposed it would. “I have not said this enough in my life—thank you.”
***
