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“You speak English?”
“Of course I speak English,” Madame Langlois snapped. “Any educated person speaks at least two languages. Whatever gave you the impression that I didn’t?”
“Marc.” Claire hadn’t missed the snub, but she dismissed it in favor of more important things.
“Ah, Marc.” The old woman nodded. “That explains a great many things. Nicole, my precious, run out to the kitchen and ask Genevieve to make us some strong coffee. And stay there awhile, would you, my dear? Your stepfather’s friend and I have a great deal to talk about.”
Claire flinched. “Stepfather? Marc isn’t Nicole’s real father?”
Harriette smiled, a sour, satisfied pursing of wrinkled lips as she led Claire to the sofa. “Marc lied about that, too? Surely you had enough sense to ask Nicole herself about these things? You can’t be that much of an idiot!”
Claire stifled the flash of anger that swept through her, simply because she knew that she had, indeed, been that much of an idiot. “There was no reason to doubt Marc,” she said slowly. “Besides, when I referred to Marc as her father, Nicole never corrected me.”
“You must have done so in English. Nicole is an intelligent child, but her grasp of that language is understandably limited. Sit, sit!” she ordered. “We have a great deal to talk about. But fir
st you will tell me why you are here.”
“And then?” She sank down onto a silk striped chair, gripping the arms of it with cold, sweating fingers.
“And then, my dear Mademoiselle MacIntyre, I will do my best to save your life.”
CHAPTER 10
When Claire left Harriette Langlois’s apartment it was raining, cold fat drops that splatted down on her head, ran down her collar, and soaked her skin. She usually kept her head down when she walked through the Paris streets, scurrying along determined to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes and thereby precipitating a conversation.
But this time she looked up for a moment, around her, at the Parisians huddled against the cold and rain, rushing to their destinations, a gray, desolate lot, each in his own solitary world. They looked as cold and miserable as Claire felt. Somehow she didn’t find the thought comforting.
She wrapped her arms around her waist, hugging herself for warmth and comfort as she hurried through the streets. It had been so long since anyone hugged her, anyone offered her comfort, that her heart cried out for it. Right then she would have given anything for a sheltering pair of arms and a place to weep for her own foolishness.
There was such a place. If she had any sense at all it was the last place she should go to. But the last six months, no, the last two and half years had been singularly lacking in sense on her part. Why mar a perfect record? she thought bitterly. And with no hesitation she turned and headed toward Thomas Parkhurst’s neighborhood.
It wasn’t that she believed Harriette. Nor, for that matter, did she disbelieve her. The woman was bitter, full of anger and hatred, and she directed all that negative energy toward Marc. Whether or not Marc really deserved it was another matter.
Freed from the mesmerizing effect of his presence, Claire could contemplate it calmly. Was the man she’d been living with, the man she’d considered marrying, capable of murdering his wife?
He’d lied to her. The more Claire thought about it the longer the list of lies grew. He’d lied about Harriette’s speaking French, he’d lied about Nicole being his own daughter rather than his stepdaughter, he’d lied about the apartment and its expensive furnishings. God, even his precious Limoges had belonged to Nicole’s mother; it hadn’t been in Marc’s family for generations. He’d grown on his aunt and uncle’s run-down farm outside of Rouen, dirt poor and distinctly working class.
It should have made Claire’s heart ache for the poor, orphaned little boy. He would have been a very handsome child, and doubtless he’d honed his winning ways early. If she had any charity, any understanding at all, she would understand why he had taken Isabelle’s ancestry, her apartment, even her daughter for his own identity.
But for some reason her charity and understanding couldn’t reach out and enfold him as they had Nicole. No, she didn’t believe he was capable of murdering his wealthy wife. But there was an essential coldness, a talent for manipulation that she could see quite clearly, now that the sexual blinders were off. And she wanted nothing more than to get away, as fast and as far as she could.
Through the gray, soaking downpour she began to recognize the neighborhood. Tom had told her where he lived, but she hadn’t been paying attention. She’d thought it too dangerous, too tempting. Now she could have kicked herself for not listening.
Did he live to the right or to the left of the café? Was he five or six flights up? That didn’t matter—he was definitely on the top floor. It was late enough—a little after eleven. At least she wouldn’t be waking a stranger if she made the wrong decision.
She should turn around and go home, back to that apartment where she couldn’t escape the sense of being watched. She needed to clean up the broken tea cup she’d left in the sink, she needed to make plans. What she didn’t need was another man when her taste had been so execrable in the past.
But needing and wanting were two different things. And without hesitation she entered the building to the left of the café and began to climb the stairs.
Gilles Sahut looked out into the pouring rain as it puddled in the streets, making little pools of filth and garbage along the walkway. Slowly, with deliberate care, he untied his bloody apron and set it on the knife-scarred counter.
“You take over,” he said to his assistant, a sturdy young boy from the streets. “Close the shop at six and don’t touch a penny or I’ll cut your throat myself.”
The boy nodded, unperturbed, and Gilles allowed himself a brief moment to watch the play of muscles in Edgar’s naked arms. It had been a long time since he’d had a boy. Maybe tonight, after he finished, he’d pay a visit to that small, dank room Edgar rented in a filthy alley in the midst of Belleville. With luck the boy would put up more of a fight than the whores Gilles paid so well.
Gilles pulled on his jacket, not bothering to wash the blood, the smell of death, from his hands. The rain looked as if it would continue all day and well into the night. With a smile that sat oddly on his harsh, beefy features, he headed out the door in search of a grandmother.
By the fifth flight of stairs Claire wished she was dead. Her breath was rasping, burning in her chest, her legs trembling, her heart threatening to burst from her chest. If Tom Parkhurst weren’t at the end of this torture then her decision would be made. There was no way she was capable of trying the other building and climbing another five or six flights of stairs.
