AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She knew it did. She knew she had trapped him as securely as if he was a wolf whose leg had been caught in a snare. “It depends on the details of the task,” he said. He was a man of principles, and he would do nothing that would betray his country or harm his countrymen.
“Of course,” she said as though she expected this response. And then when the waiter appeared with the coffee, she took it and thanked him. “Shall we finish our coffee and discuss the details outside? Where we can speak privately?” She raised a brow, and against his will, his heart thudded in his chest.
He cursed himself inwardly. Why did his body assume that privacy with this woman meant intimacy? It did not. They would speak of aiding a criminal of the republic to freedom, nothing more.
Unless he made it more.
She sipped her coffee, eyeing him over the rim of the cup. “Do you know that for the rest of my life, whenever I look at coffee, I believe I will think of you.”
It was not at all what he expected her to say, though she must say something lest they sit the next quarter hour in silence, but he had thought she would remark on the weather or the price of bread.
For a moment, he did not know what to say. He looked at his cup and then at her. “Surely you have drunk coffee with other men.”
“Yes, but none whose eyes were so perfectly the color of café au lait. If only your eyes were a bit warmer, I might wish to sit and stare into them all evening.”
Tristan felt heat rise to his cheeks. Women did not usually flatter him so, especially not since he’d acquired the scar on his jaw and began working with Robespierre. He’d almost forgotten that at one time young ladies had giggled behind fans when he passed and fluttered lashes at him. Those days seemed so long ago now.
“I see I’ve embarrassed you,” she said, sipping her coffee again. “That was not my intent.”
“I doubt that,” he said. “I doubt very much you do anything without calculation.” He hadn’t intended to say as much, but he had been thrown off balance first with the blackmail and now with her flattery. He found himself annoyed and impatient to be rid of her and the way she flustered him.
“Do you?” she said and sipped her coffee. It was an unsatisfactory answer and he said so.
“And so you expect me to reveal all to you when you have revealed nothing to me?” she asked.
He swallowed the last of his coffee, but it tasted bitter on his tongue. “You act as though it is I who have the advantage. You know far more about me than I wish anyone to know.”
“Oh yes.” She swept a hand out, the folds of her cloak fluttering. “I know where you live, who you dined with last week, the last woman you slept with—”
He nearly choked. “I beg your pardon!”
“You needn’t be embarrassed. Claudine du Champ is quite lovely, but you did not stay the night with her. Why is that?”
He glared at her. He should have expected this. He had surmised the Pimpernel and his League had been watching him, but he hadn’t considered how closely they’d observed him. To think one of the Pimpernel’s compatriots—perhaps Alexandra Martin herself—had stood and watched Claudine’s apartment to see when he would emerge from her bed felt like the worst invasion of privacy, worse even than having tricked him into giving them the evidence against Robespierre.
“Did she not please you?” the woman asked as though the conversation were not entirely improper, “or is it simply that your feelings were not strong enough that you wanted to sleep in her bed and wake beside her?”
“Have you finished your coffee, mademoiselle?” he said coldly.
She raised a brow, and he realized she’d flustered him to the extent that he’d forgotten to call her citoyenne.
“I have. Would you escort me to my carriage?” She smiled up at him with far more innocence than she possessed.
He rose and offered his arm. To any who watched it would appear as though the couple had shared drink and conversation and were now departing in order to be home before the curfew. In truth, he felt as though a noose hung about his neck, and every moment he spent with her tightened it further and further.
Once outside, Tristan was grateful for the bracing air. He drew in several breaths and then looked where she pointed. A carriage had just turned the corner and now the coachman, his hat low and his coat collar high, reined in the horses. Another man, his head ducked, jumped down and opened the door of the carriage. Tristan knew immediately these men were from the Pimpernel’s League, and they must have been walking the horses around the café while he and Citoyenne Martin sipped coffee.
The man playing the footman handed the woman up, and she turned and looked back at Tristan. “Join me for a moment, won’t you?”
He supposed he had no choice. They would now have the privacy she had spoken of before. Waving away aid from the false footman, Tristan leaped easily into the carriage and took the seat across from her. No sooner had he done so than the door closed and the carriage began to move again, taking him he knew not where.
Citoyenne Martin’s voice pierced the darkness. “Now, Citoyen Chevalier, if you wish to go home to your bed tonight, you will do exactly as I instruct you.”
