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“Only if you ask very, very sweetly.”
She laughed and stepped into his arms. He slid his hands under her cape and felt her body trembling from the cold. They stood for a long moment, and then she motioned to the floor and they sat, bodies pressed close.
After a long silence, she looked at him. “I really do not want to like you.”
“You won’t, after we return to Paris.” He felt her body stiffen.
“You will inform Robespierre of the plan to rescue the dauphin—the king—from the Temple?”
“And if I do?”
She sighed. “Then I suppose the league will reveal your betrayal of the republic.”
“Then I go to the guillotine and Citoyen Capet’s guard is doubled. At least my sacrifice saves the republic.”
“Perhaps we might consider a compromise whereby everyone keeps his or her head.”
He should have known she would suggest a compromise. “Which is?”
“Give me time. I haven’t thought of one yet.”
When she’d finally ceased shivering, her breathing became regular and her body relaxed. She’d slept as little as he the night before, so it was no wonder she’d given in to exhaustion. He tried to close his eyes and fall asleep as well, but he could not quiet his thoughts. Alexandra Martin seemed to think he was allowing his personal pain to cloud his judgment about Louis Charles. But any good patriot knew that allowing the king, even if he was a boy, to leave the country or go free would only result in the royalists rising up and using the child as a standard to fight behind.
The boy could not go free.
On the other hand, he was just a boy, and it was not his fault he had been born the son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. Tristan had given little or no thought to the boy’s life in the Temple Prison. Was it as bad as Alexandra Martin claimed? And how would she know? No one save the boy’s jailors and Robespierre was allowed into the Temple.
Was that to protect the child or to hide the abuses the boy suffered?
Tristan lowered Alexandra Martin so her head might rest on his shoulder as she slept. He could turn his face, just slightly, and see her lovely face, even lovelier now in slumber. Asleep, her mouth was soft and full, not tense and pinched. Her lashes, somewhat darker than her pale blond hair, swept over her cheek, now pink with color as she grew warmer. Her cropped hair fell in a sweep over her forehead. When he brushed it back, her small shell-shaped ears were revealed.
He liked holding her like this. It had been a long time since he had felt at peace. Since that night when the Duc du Mérignac had forced his way into his house, Tristan had known no serenity. He had thought of little except how to smash the lives of the nobility, the way they had smashed his. His single-minded devotion to the task had led him to serve under Robespierre, but Robespierre’s merciless form of justice had not brought Tristan peace. He wouldn’t be here now if he had not sought to stop Robespierre.
Perhaps this League of the Scarlet Pimpernel was not so far from the mark. Not that he could ever join them, no matter how much he enjoyed holding Alexandra Martin. He’d never met another woman like her. She was intelligent, witty, brave, and a traitor. Leave it to fickle fate to make the one woman who had actually interested him for more than a few hours his enemy.
At some point, he too must have fallen asleep. Her soft breathing and the scent of flowers lulled him into drowsing. He must have heard the storm pass, heard the plink of rain on the roof cease, but he could not drag himself from the warmth to rouse her and go back into the cold and wet.
But he heard the scrape and the sound of muffled voices, and when the woman in his arms stiffened, he also came awake.
“Don’t make a sound,” she whispered in his ear. He felt her hand move and then the outline of her dagger was clear in the gray early morning light.
“Is that dagger for me or our friends outside?” he whispered back.
“Keep talking, and you will feel the point first.” She rose and stalked toward the stable’s door, moving as silently as a shadow. The wood had rotted and shrunk and there were gaps he could see through. She peered through one now, then swore and dashed back to him.
He was already on his feet.
“It’s the men from yesterday—”
“The same men? I thought we lost them.”
“We found them again. They are knocking on doors and in a moment the owner of the stable will open his door and point here. We have to go. Now.”
He picked up the handle of what had once been a shovel and headed for the door.
“Not that way!” she hissed. “They’ll see you. Back way.”
He turned around and squinted, but she walked straight to a narrow, barred door on the other side of the stable. It creaked when she tried to lift the bar, as though the metal had not been moved in many years, but with his help they pried it up. She grasped the latch.
