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“Kiss the aristo!” a woman cried.
“Yes, kiss the aristo!” others echoed.
Laurent felt Honoria’s fingers dig into his arm, but he resisted the urge to turn and embrace her. Instead, he stepped away from her and made a huge show of puckering his lips.
This had the effect he’d hoped. The mob laughed and offered him the head. This might have been him. It might still be him, and he silently asked the man for forgiveness. He smacked the corpse’s cheek loudly with his lips and then cried for the other cheek and did the same. The stench of death clung to the man’s sunken cheeks, but Laurent had smelled worse.
The mob cheered him, but the woman with the blood on her cheek still frowned. “Let the citoyenne kiss our friend,” she cried. “She looks as though she feels sorry for the aristo.”
Laurent turned to Honoria. Her face was pale, her hands visibly shaking, where they clawed against the wall at her back. He moved to go to her, but someone in the crowd held him back. Bile rose in his throat as her eyes met his. She wouldn’t be able to do it. He wouldn’t be able to save her this time.
And then suddenly, she shoved away from the wall, raised her head, and stared the mob’s leader in the eye. “I will kiss your aristo,” she said. He could hear her voice shaking, but he didn’t think those who didn’t know her would notice. “I will kiss him, and send him straight to hell.”
The mob did not cheer, as Laurent had hoped they would. Instead, they were eerily silent when the leader lowered the head on the pike. Honoria moved to kiss the man’s cheek as Laurent had done, but the woman with the bloody cheek hissed, “On the lips!”
Honoria seemed to sway, and Laurent clenched his fists. There was nothing he could do. Any action he took to aid her would be seen as counterrevolutionary. In the mob’s eyes, she was either a revolutionary or a royalist. If she could not kiss the head, she was doomed and he with her.
Honoria’s gaze swept the mob until she stared directly at the woman with the blood-smeared cheek. There was a tense silence as the two women confronted one another, and then Honoria took a dainty step forward, stood on tiptoe, and kissed the head’s lips.
It was not a quick, perfunctory kiss. It was the kiss of a lover, saying goodbye. It was the kiss of a mother for a sleeping child. It was a mark of respect.
She stepped back, and no one in the mob moved. Laurent steeled himself for the onslaught. But the hands gripping him slowly released him, and as he stood still, the mob moved around him. They started again for the Temple, still holding the pike with their grisly trophy, but not nearly so proudly now. They wound around Honoria and he watched them go. Only the woman with the blood marring her cheek paused. She met Honoria face-to-face, then reached out and snatched the cockade from her dress.
“If you’re a revolutionary, I’ll eat this.”
Honoria said nothing, watching as the woman pinned the cockade to her own breast.
“Watch out, citoyenne,” she warned. “Next time we meet, you may not be so fortunate.” And she hurried after her friends.
When the mob had passed, Laurent reached for her. She stepped back. “I must go to the market.” With shaking hands, she smoothed her skirts. And then she walked away from him. He stood, rooted in place, for almost a full minute before going after her.
“Honoria!” He trotted until he was beside her. “Are you quite alright?”
She glanced at him quickly, her eyes full of fire—not fear, thank God. Anger. “No, I am not. I just kissed a dead man.”
He handed her his handkerchief, and she scrubbed her lips and thrust it back at him.
“I’m sorry.” He had to walk quickly to keep up with her punishing pace.
“Why? You didn’t kill him. I only hope their bloodlust has cooled enough that they leave the residents of the Tower in peace.”
“As do I. You should not go to the market alone. Come back with me and lie down.”
“I don’t need to lie down. I need todosomething, but since I cannot flay all of those savages alive, I will go buy bread and wine.”
He almost smiled. She was stronger than he’d thought.
“I’ll accompany you. We can buy twice as much wine if I’m there to carry it.”
“You have put yourself and us in enough danger today. I will be back as soon as I can.”
He removed his cockade and handed it to her. She pinned it on, then he watched her go. Before she turned a corner, she looked back at him. “Thank you, sir. I did not say that, did I? I don’t know if I could have”—she made a gesture, a flutter of her fingers—“if you had not given me strength and courage.”
And then she was gone, and Laurent stood quite still, incapable of moving because in all of his life he had never, ever given anyone courage or strength.
