Authors: Diane Whiteside
“I’m as likely to become your
vampiro
as your
concubino compañero
,” Jean-Marie sniffed.
Rodrigo laughed outright at that, having vowed never to become any
vampiro
’s
creador
. They hugged, the tension broken.
“Do you wish more blood before you go upstairs? The servants should have water heated for your bath by now.”
“No.” Jean-Marie stretched, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m strong enough to sleep now and go to Sara in the morning, when she’ll be more generous.”
“
Bien.
We’ll leave Paris for London tomorrow afternoon, if you’re ready.” Rodrigo’s eyes searched his for a reaction.
And abandon hope of seeing Hélène d’Agelet again, at least anytime soon. But—how much hope had he really had?
“I’ll be ready.”
CHÂTEAU DE SAINTE-PAZANNE, THE VENDÉE, FEBRUARY 1793
“Raoul de Beynac is a soldier fighting France’s enemies!” Celeste slapped the table, making her wine dance in its glass. She was very good at that, gained by arguing with her father for so many years.
“He is a traitor to his king and a regicide!” roared their father, the
comte
de Sainte-Pazanne, the setting sun pouring crimson over his hair through the windows. “If he truly honored his oath, he’d have resigned when those foul beasts in Paris executed the King last month.”
“How could he when there are Austrian and Prussian armies on our frontiers? When he has already fought—and won!—one victory against them?”
“France has a new king, Louis XVII, the young boy who needs every brave man’s help to escape his stinking prison and bring peace.”
Their voices set the crystals rattling below the sconces, and Hélène winced reflexively. If only the footmen were still standing watch, Papa and Celeste’s argument might not have gotten out of hand.
The servants still served the Sainte-Pazannes out of love, unlike many other aristocratic households after feudal rights had collapsed. But
Maman
had excused them as soon as Papa had mentioned politics, of course, knowing the conversation would quickly become heated.
Like the dining room’s combination of clamorous argument echoing against the silence from absent servants, its light was now a shifting mix of shadows and fiery streaks of crimson. The family had lingered in the dining room so long the candles weren’t even lit.
“Raoul is the best of men, and you loved him before the Revolution. You read how bravely he fought at Valmy and all you hate is his politics.” Celeste threw her napkin onto the table, tears standing in her eyes. “Please let me marry him. If you do, I will leave this house, and you will never hear from me again.”
Maman
’s breath hissed in, and her eyes met Hélène’s across the table. Hélène suspected hers were as wide and appalled as her mother’s were. But could Papa truly keep clever, stubborn Celeste here if she didn’t wish to stay?
In these terrifying times, nobody traveled anywhere unless forced by necessity. Hélène had moved back to Sainte-Pazanne under the pretext of caring for her mother, after her nephew by marriage had tried to rob her of her widow’s portion at gunpoint. She’d talked her way past him, but she’d practiced ever since then with guns and black powder.
“No.” Papa’s voice was completely cold, that of a patriarch whose family had dictated the law for more than six centuries. “You are my youngest daughter, and I will not abdicate my responsibilities toward you. When de Beynac comes to his senses and agrees to serve the King, I will gladly give you to him. Until then, I will protect you as best as I know how.”
“But…”
A single eyebrow lifted, quelling even Celeste. She inclined her head after a long moment, tears running down her cheeks. Sobs shook her chest, another and another, ripping into her throat, until finally she hid her face in her napkin.
“Petite,”
coaxed
Maman
, putting her hand over her youngest daughter’s.
The weak winter sunlight was fading faster and faster now, disappearing from the room’s windows. A great candelabrum stood ready on the table to light their repast, its candles high above their heads to avoid dazzling their eyes, as did several of its smaller mates on the side tables.
Celeste shoved everything away, including her mother’s touch and her plate. She buried her face in her arms and wailed.
Maman
shot a glance at her husband, clearly torn between her duty to support his definition of honor and her need to comfort her daughter.
Papa harrumphed, but his fork hung in midair, lacking the single-minded force he’d displayed earlier. He nodded to his wife, and they silently left the room, their usual practice for dealing with Celeste’s hysterics over things which would not be changed.
Hélène hurried around the table to her sister, wishing yet again the four of them were united as a whole as they’d been for so long. The three women singing in harmony, while Papa played his violin. Or cheering on Papa’s latest racehorse. Or fussing over Celeste’s newest dress…
“Celeste,” she cooed and rubbed her sister’s shoulder.
La petite
continued sobbing, but at least she didn’t shrug away from the contact.
“All will be well, sweetheart. They have your best interests at heart,” Hélène tried to reassure her. Logic had never worked well with her sister, but it always was worth a try.
“Nobody has ever loved anyone the way Raoul and I love each other.” Celeste’s voice was so choked with tears as to be almost indistinguishable. “I don’t know why he begrudges me such a love.”
“Perhaps he believes you already have the love.” Hélène leapt on the opportunity to divert her sister. “But marriage is a different matter. He is generous enough not to have forced you to break the betrothal with de Beynac, after all.”
“But how can I wait, knowing he could be killed any day?” Her voice broke.
“There are other men…”
“Haven’t you ever known one man is special?” Her tear-filled eyes met Hélène’s. “So unique that everyone else is completely invisible next to him? So perfect that only he, and he alone, will do for you?”
Hélène hesitated, thinking of Jean-Marie St. Just. Remembering the months of laughter and dancing. The chess games, the conversations about politics, the jokes about trivialities. And, God help her, the candlelight gleaming on his naked body…
“You do know what I mean! You
have
met such an individual.” Celeste grabbed Hélène’s hands. “Do you deny it?”
“
Mon Dieu
, I wish I could,” Hélène sighed, as much to herself as to Celeste. “But I’ll never have him. I don’t even know where he is.”
“That is why I, too, will not settle for second best. Why having my love, I must also have marriage with him or go to my grave unwed.” She pulled the thin gold chain out from around her neck with Raoul’s grandmother’s ring and held it out. “Ah, Hélène, it is Raoul de Beynac for me and no one else in this world.”
It had been more than five years since she had seen Jean-Marie, yet no other man had so much as made her pulse twitch. Still, Celeste could have her Raoul if she but waited.
Hélène steeled herself for a storm of disappointment. “You must be patient,
petite
.”
Sheer disbelief stormed through Celeste’s dark eyes and she clutched Raoul’s small gold ring like a talisman. “Don’t
you
understand? He is a soldier, and he could be killed any day. I want to have him
now
!”
Tears welled up and over, spilling down Celeste’s cheeks. She pointed a finger at her sister. “Go away and promise me I won’t see you again until tomorrow.” She squeezed her eyes shut, sobbing, twisting, and tugging on the thin gold chain, as if she was holding her lover’s hand.
“I promise,” Hélène agreed, recognizing their old promise. She backed out of the room, hoping this bout of hysterics would end quickly. There’d be no approaching
la petite
until it did.
A sharp POP! sounded just after she’d passed the doors.
“No!” screamed Celeste.
Hélène whirled and peeked into the dining room, wondering what else could have gone wrong.
The thin gold chain was slipping from Celeste’s neck in a single long thread. A bell-like tone announced the ring’s leap onto the wooden floor. It rolled, flashed once in the sun’s dying light, and disappeared under the sideboard.
“No!” screeched Celeste, diving to find it. She pulled up short, baffled by the darkness under the massive piece of furniture. Finally she began to crawl along the floor, methodically shoving her hand into every opening under the sideboard and cursing.
Hélène took a step into the room and stopped. She couldn’t see where the ring was, given the darkness, although it should be easy to find—if there was light in the dining room. On the other hand, she’d given her word to
la petite
they wouldn’t meet again until morning.
If only one of the candelabrum on the side table was lit, it would be enough to help her.
Could she do so from the door?
She’d always been mesmerized by fires, from harvest bonfires’ great leaping flames to a single candle’s delicate flicker—and terrified by her own fascination. But still, she couldn’t stop herself from staring into their blazing hearts and wishing she could shape the power there.
True, she’d heard family legends of
Maman
’s Breton ancestors, women who’d been able to accomplish intriguing feats with their mastery of ordinary objects. But those tales had always seemed more fantasy than reality, stories from a time before Christianity, here on France’s western coast where great carved stones hinted at powers beyond mortal understanding. Even
Maman
’s account of how her great-great-great-grandmother had lit a lantern to warn her husband of an ambush, even though she was bound and gagged—had seemed a story more mythical than real.
Cher
Bernard, on the other hand, treated fire with extreme caution and studied it the way warriors eyed their greatest enemy. He fought to eliminate it and its dangers from men’s lives with his electrical igniter, all the while knowing that one false move in his laboratory would let fire claim his life in a single massive explosion. As it had in the end.
Never openly admitting his fear, he’d taught her all he knew of fire’s science until much of her unreasoning terror was gone. She was still very, very wary of it but seemed to have reached an accommodation with the power residing inside the flames, if one could call it that. Welcoming her greater comfort with “old-fashioned methods,” as
cher
Bernard called matches and fuses, her husband had encouraged her to take full responsibility for that aspect of his experiments.
She’d once set fire to slow matches, those lengths of slow-burning fuse used to light gunpowder, without using a candle or another lighted length of slow match. She’d been alone in Bernard’s laboratories, and confident she fully understood slow matches and gunpowder. She simply hadn’t known she didn’t need to physically touch them and had lit it from less than a foot away, while wishing it would light quickly so she could check on Bernard’s unaccustomed silence behind the screen.
Nobody could have been more surprised than she was when the slow match started smoldering. It had been all she could do not to drop her fuse and run shrieking from the room. Instead, she’d decorously snuffed her fuse while her heart slammed rapidly around her ribcage, announced the countdown for the slow match—and never told anyone else what had happened.
Could she do as well with a candle from a few feet away?
Hélène turned quietly until she could see the side candelabrum in the knife’s polished silver.
Three candles, all beeswax, all with linen candlewicks, all well made. Everything could burst into flame quickly and brilliantly when excited, as
cher
Bernard, the master chemist, had taught her. Deep down inside, they were like a bow spinning into dry wood: Turn it very quickly until a spark came, and fan that spark.
She closed her eyes and focused on making the candles’ linen candlewicks revolve more and more rapidly where nobody except a chemist could see. Faster and faster, spinning more and more…
A flame snapped into being on the center candle, rather as if it had always been there. An instant later, the second candle and the third also burned brightly.
Hélène gulped and closed her mouth before anyone could comment on one particularly well-lit corner. God help her, but she’d actually lit a candle. Three of them, in fact.
She also seemed to have ignited a brutal headache behind her eyes, and the question was who she really was. That hadn’t mattered in the friendly confines of
cher
Bernard’s laboratory where anything and everything could be explored if it might help France. But here?
She wouldn’t try such an experiment again.
Celeste smacked her hand down on the ring and began to back away from the sideboard, chortling over her success.
Her older sister smiled privately. She’d have to light a candle to the Virgin tomorrow—undoubtedly with a match—to say thank you.
VIENNA, MAY 1793
“The Vendée has risen en masse against Paris.” Rodrigo dropped the stack of newspapers onto the table. Knowing the latest tidings from everywhere in Europe was a necessity for the proprietors of the Austrian capital’s most fashionable—and exclusive—gambling den. It wasn’t a profession Jean-Marie had ever expected to find the proud Spaniard engaged in, but its profits were a definite benefit.
Jean-Marie immediately set aside his coffee and began sorting through the sheets with almost indecent haste. He’d been glad to leave London almost two years ago, with its citizens’ stubborn insistence on treating Americans as recalcitrant toddlers who’d run back to their king after another, better “spanking.” Coming to Europe’s center was almost a relief, especially since he could aid its continual opposition to the French revolutionaries. After all, their princess was the French queen who’d just been butchered.