AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Seventeen
Tristan pulled Alexinto his arms again, his hold so tight, the little remaining air she had was squeezed out of her lungs.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said into her hair.
She could barely see him. She’d brought only a weak candle with her to the passage. They’d lit torches in the adjacent chamber, not wanting to risk any light seeping under the stone entrance in case a soldier was patrolling the cemetery.
“I’m far too clever for Robespierre,” she said. His tone possessed more emotion than she could allow herself to feel at the moment. She feared she would break into tears of fatigue and fear. She’d been afraid she might never see him again, and waiting for him to come to the cemetery, knowing he might not come at all, had been exhausting. But he was here now. They had this night, and she would not think about the future or the danger they faced in the days to come.
“Of course, you are.” He kissed her neck, causing warmth to flow through her. “But that was too close.”
She took his hand. “Let me take you in to the others.” She started toward the antechamber, but he resisted. “What is it?” she asked.
“Are there...Is that where the dead are laid?”
“It would be, but there aren’t any dead there now. We moved them months ago in case we had need of shelter.”
“How macabre.”
“Exactly.”
She knocked on the second stone slab, and it slid open, revealing a small huddle of people bathed in torchlight. Tristan surveyed the faces, accounting for everyone.
“How did you manage to escape?”
Ffoulkes shrugged. “Robespierre’s men barged in. Alex pulled the cord to ring the bell in the attic, then took the hidden staircase up herself. We were all gone before the soldiers had finished searching the ground floor.”
“What I want to know is how Robespierre knew where to find us,” Dewhurst said. He crouched in a corner, his expression dark. “If we have a traitor among us, I say we kill him now.” He gave Tristan a menacing look.
“I think I’m to blame,” Alexandra said. “Ffoulkes must be right. When Chevalier and I were at the Tuileries, the guards who spotted me climbing out a window recognized me.”
“They did not see Chevalier. One ran to fetch the others and Chevalier hit the other from behind. But he saw me. He must have known who I was.”
Dewhurst grunted, looking annoyed that he didn’t have a reason to strangle Tristan.
Because of her career on the stage, she was not as anonymous as she might have hoped. She’d hoped the dark that night coupled with costumes, stage makeup, and wigs would have made her impossible to identify. But she’d been wrong and should have realized she could be identified and the house, even though in Hastings’s name, invaded.
