AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She flushes to the roots of her hair. “TMI, Micki.”
“Besides, if Sam’s holed up somewhere in Chicago, it’s not an immediate threat.”
She continues to glare. I shift uncomfortably. “Look, I’ll tell him when we’re back at the hotel. I’m not planning to keep them secret. We had better things to do. I’ll bet you and Max did too.”
Her flush receding, Cress laughs. “We did. But we also didn’t have any big secrets that needed to be divulged. We’re past all that.”
“Really?”
Cress scrunches her face. “I hope so. Max still has this idea he needs to protect me by keeping me in the dark. Anyway, no secrets at the present time. At least that I know of.”
I snigger as she picks up a miniature eclair and pops it into her mouth. “Too bad they don’t have bigger ones.”
Like a cat toying with a mouse, she swallows the tiny treat. “When are you going to show him the texts?”
I shove a pastry in my mouth, then sip the tea, so I don’t have to answer. The rest of the time, we gush over the sandwiches and the rest of the pastries, as well as the quality of the tea. She’s finally gotten the message I don’t know exactly when I will talk to JL about Sam’s latest transgressions.
Before we leave, Cress buys two Marco Polo tea blends and some Thé de Noël. We walk out, collecting our shadow along the way as we cross the bridge to finish off at Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine. René glances in windows as we walk to watch in case Yavuz follows us.
The Gothic chapel, with its trove of stained-glass, sky-blue ceiling adorned with gold stars, and a huge collection of relics might be the most beautiful church interior I’ve ever seen. No one else is around. Such luxury.
We don’t know where to look first and spend more than an hour in the small space, soaking in the glories that surround us. Heavy footsteps come up the stone steps. René. He suggests we visit the conciergerie, where Marie-Antoinette was a prisoner, then have ice cream from Berthillon on the adjacent Île St. Louis.
Cress rubs her stomach. “I’m pretty full, but I do love the glaces from Berthillon. Maybe I’ll work up an appetite touring the mementoes of the Revolution.” She takes my arm, and we walk to the nearby Conciergerie. The first room is the guard room, a big space, filled with arches and columns, that is used for exhibitions. It’s empty after a big modern art show that closed in January. We check out the artifacts in the museum of the Revolution, which seem to hold more fascination for René than for either of us.
“Madame Taylor, you are a writer of history, non?”
“Historical fiction, yes.”
“Have you told the story of Marie Antoinette?”
“No, I have written enough about queens for a while, and somehow she has never interested me, cake notwithstanding.”
“Dommage. Her story is so poignant, even if you are a revolutionary rather than a monarchist.” He presses a hand to his chest near his heart.
Cress shrugs. “Perhaps in the future something will suggest a story about her court. But I doubt she would be the main character. Perhaps a young revolutionary in love with an aristocrat’s daughter.”
On that note, we troop over to the long line of eager customers waiting to order cups or cones of ice cream. Cress insists on treating us and a certain amount of palaver ensues while she places the order in halting French. Once she hands us our choices, we eat them quickly before they melt, as we meander back to the hotel with no Yavuz in sight.
ChapterTwelve
Paris is a city where even the most outrageous story... is greeted with a verbal shrug: ‘Mais c’est normal!—Edmund White
Micki
Is JL back?I wonder as I push the old-fashioned key into the lock. My heart hiccups when I see him lounging on the chaise, legs hanging over the end, feet flat on the floor.
“Micki? C’est toi?”
I throw my bag onto a small table just as he jumps up, grabs me around the waist, and swings me in a vast arc until we collapse onto the floor, heads spinning, laughing like loons.
When we finally come down from the heights, he says, “I’ve been dying to do that for ages.”
“Glad you had the chance before you expired, Beau.”
He looks intently at my mouth. “You had ice cream, I see.”
“How do you know?”
