Fairchild's Lady (Culper Ring Series) (10 page)

The air felt charged as they drove into Paris, as if lightning sizzled through it. Julienne looked out the window, upward, but saw not a cloud in the sky. Why then this electricity sparking along her nerves?

Her own anxiety, no doubt. Even the soothing caress of Isaac’s thumb over her knuckles could not erase the gnawing sensation in her stomach. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and wished she weren’t seeing the familiar buildings of Paris, wished they were rather headed for the port from which they would sail. She wanted only to be away.

Mère let out a startled gasp when they turned a corner. “What is going on?”

Isaac’s face had gone grim. Julienne stretched to look ahead of them out the window, her eyes widening when she saw the churning crowd at the end of the street. Their shouts echoed her way, but she couldn’t make out the words. “A mob?”

Isaac muttered something she didn’t catch and leaned out his window when the carriage came to a forced halt. “
Pardonnez-moi
, monsieur,” he said to a man rushing away from the crowd. “We just arrived in the city. Can you tell me what is happening?”

The man paused, but he looked as though he might sprint away at any moment. “The Bastille.” His voice came out in a ragged pant. “They have surrounded the Bastille!”

“What?”

“Why?” Mère leaned forward, face aghast. “To free the prisoners? But there are hardly any kept there anymore…”

The man was shaking his head. “
Non, non
. There are only seven
held within. It was for the arms and ammunition stored there, madame. They have demanded—”

A loud crack filled the air, silencing the man and sending him running in the opposite direction. Even over the tumult of the crowd, Julienne could hear the rattling of metal upon metal, and then another cracking thud.

“The drawbridge!” came shouts from the crowd. “They have cut the chains! Into the courtyard!”

Isaac leaned out the window. “Turn around
now
!”

It seemed Julienne’s stomach twisted into a merciless knot, and all the blood abandoned her head as their driver tried to maneuver the horse and carriage around on the narrow street. She clutched her mother’s outstretched hand and Isaac’s with her other. She shook her head. “Has it really come to this? Rioting in the streets of Paris?”

A muscle in Isaac’s jaw pulsed. “’Twas only a matter of time, my love,” he said in English. “Reports of peasants rioting through the countryside have been filtering in for days, and the soldiers who have been sent to the city will have been seen as a provocation. Then with the king dismissing Necker the other day—”

“What?” She frowned and looked to her mother. “The finance minister?”

Mère’s face was white as a lily. “Père said he was doing nothing to help with the financial problems, that…well, the whole ministry was reconstructed.”

“But Jacques Necker was sympathetic to the Third Estate. They will not have taken well to his ousting.” Isaac’s face hardened still more as the carriage headed down another avenue, equally choked with fist-waving pedestrians.

Julienne watched the transformation of his countenance with an interest she knew was desperate—a clinging to something, anything other than the shouts coming from the streets. Though even apart from that, she would have found it intriguing. The way his eyes went calculating, his features somehow shifted from handsome to fearsome.

This, then, was the brigadier general. A man with lines of responsibility around his mouth and determination turning his eyes to steel. A man whose hand gripped a pistol with all the comfort a courtier’s
would a fork. A man who surveyed the raging masses outside his window as if able to divine exactly what they would do next.

A man she would trust with her life as completely as she trusted Isaac with her heart.

“Are you quite certain you need those items from your house, madame?”

Mère’s lips quavered. “Surely the crowds will be less in that part of town.”

“Assuming we can get to it.” He kept his face turned to his window, his fingers poised on his weapon.

The next half hour seemed an eternity as the driver took them forward and then backtracked, trying to avoid the throngs of angry men in the streets. There must have been thousands—
non
, tens of thousands—in the avenues, their shouts angrier with each passing moment.

Cries for sympathy. Cries for justice. Cries for bread.

Bread?
The knot turned to nausea in Julienne’s stomach. Never in her life had she gone without a meal. How could it be that the people were starving? She’d heard Grandpère say how the nobles had all simply refused to pay higher taxes. How had the burden then fallen onto the poor?

“What have we done?” The question she whispered out was swallowed by the invading shouts from outside.

Mère seemed not to have heard her. But Isaac looked her way and squeezed her hand. “They have seen freedom won by America and have heard tales of equality and democracy. They want that too, but they fail to care that it will coat their hands in blood.”

She shuddered and leaned into his side. “You were there? In America?”

He nodded, gazing out the window again. “War is ugly business, full of betrayal and hatred and the basest of human feelings rising to the fore.”

Her mother lifted her chin. “Why, then, have you made a career of it, General?”

He breathed a laugh sans amusement. “If we left it solely to those who loved it, how much uglier would it then be, madame?” When the carriage halted, he arched a brow. “Are we here?”

“
Oui
.”

“We will all go in. I will leave neither of you alone.” He opened the door himself, jumped down, and then helped her mother out.

Julienne reached for him next. Even now, with fear and nerves foremost, her heart gave a little skitter when his hands closed around her waist so he might lift her down without bothering with the steps. She sent a smile up at him when her feet touched the ground, but he was looking over her shoulder.

And his eyes lit with fearsome determination. “Back in! Up, hurry!”

Too late. The duc’s voice even then pierced the air, calling Julienne’s name like a curse.

T
ime slowed to a chaotic jumble of images and sounds for Julienne. Remi, looking furious and deadly as a pagan god in some classical painting, needing only a cape to billow behind him to finish the picture. Light flashing off the swords and muskets of the four guards. The muted clamor of the mob a few streets over, creating a cacophonic symphony. Mère’s scream, Isaac’s shout, and the deafening roar of her own pulse.

And the litany of denial that stampeded through her mind.
Non, non, non
. He was not here, could not be here. He was supposed to be at his country estate, not his home in Paris so near Grandpère’s. He could not stop them now, must not stop them now.
Non, non, non
.

Gunshots were heard in the distance. Was it her imagination, or did that horrific sound make the duc’s eyes light with even more evil glee?

“Climb up!” Isaac’s command penetrated her fog. He had grabbed for her mother and pushed her toward the carriage again too. Julienne turned, shaking. She wished she knew the words to curse her skirts from letting her get up quickly in the vehicle without the steps.

Remi’s voice overlapped with Isaac’s. “Shoot them! Kill them if you must, but
stop them
!”

Seconds later the wood of the carriage splintered just beside Julienne’s head, shots ringing out and sending her reeling away. Mère screamed again.

Julienne grasped her mother’s shoulders, looking frantically for the wound. “Are you hit? Hurt?”

She managed only a shake of her head through her tears.

Isaac pushed them behind him, raising an arm. Another crack, and this time one of the duc’s guards fell. To Julienne’s lips sprang a prayer, memorized long ago but never before so desperately needed. “
Defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.” Protect us in the battle, be our safeguard and protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil
.

Remi shouted something more, but she could not hear what. One of his men had reached them, and Isaac sprang forward. A jab, a strike, and the man’s weapon clattered to the ground. A knee, a punch, and the guard soon joined it.

“The house!” Mère shouted into Julienne’s ear. “Go to the house.”

And leave him?
Non
. She could not. Her feet would not move. Not until her mother pushed and shoved at her so that she stumbled forward. Then she saw that a servant had opened the door for them and was waving them forward.

She made it only a step before a familiar hand seized her arm, biting into the bruises it had put there a week ago. But her cry was more anger than pain, and she swung around to hit him with her other arm with all the force she could muster.

It won her only a curse and a backhanded slap across the mouth.

The metallic tang of blood touched her tongue. The bolstering wind of defiance lifted her chin.

“Idiot woman.” He tried to pull her away from freedom—the house, the carriage, Isaac, Mère, who found a stick and raised it above her head—but Julienne dug in her heels. Then she thought better of it and kicked him in the shin instead. He grunted and raised his hand once more.

Then he froze when a gun pressed against his temple. “Strike her again and I will kill you. Let her go. Now.”

Even had she not already been in love with him, Julienne would have sworn lifelong loyalty to Isaac in that moment. She glanced over
her shoulder to see that he had laid the third guard flat upon his back, leaving only one more coming up behind the duc, who would surely not act with a pistol to his master’s head. Her mother let her arms fall to her side but kept the fallen branch in hand.

Remi’s Adam’s apple bobbed, though he relaxed his grip on her arm only a few degrees. “I am surprised at you, d’Ushant. Since when does one woman evoke such a reaction from you when there are plenty more out there who are not so much trouble? Leave this one alone. She is mine.”

Julienne pulled on her arm. “I am
not
. I have never been, and I will never be!”

“You
are
.” His fingers dug in anew, and he wrenched her arm until she gasped.

Thwak
. With lightning speed Isaac wielded the pistol as a club, drawing a line of spurting red onto Remi’s temple. The duc released Julienne and staggered back, shouting, “Henri!”

The fourth guard folded his arms across his chest. “
Oui
, monsieur?”

The glaze over Remi’s eyes looked to be half incredulity, half pain. He lifted a shaking hand to his head. “Do something. Kill him. Grab her.”

Not a muscle twitched but for one in the man’s face. “I think not, monsieur.”

Remi’s countenance contorted, though the rage looked futile in light of the trail of blood weeping down his cheek. “You
think
…
not
?”

Henri’s face went even more blank. “My family are all on your lands.
Villeins
, servants. They are starving.
Starving
, monsieur. And you do nothing. You cannot be bothered. You are too busy poisoning your wife so you might force this poor girl to wed you.”

The stick clattered to the ground as Mère covered her mouth with both hands. “Poison?”

Fury mottled Remi’s face and sent the blood dripping faster. He spewed curses at Henri that blistered Julienne’s ears, and then he moved into threats as to what would become of the man’s family now.

Isaac sighed, switched his pistol to his left hand, and shoved a fist into the duc’s face with enough force to render him immediately unconscious.

Henri moved to stand over him, staring down with stony face. “Go, monsieur. Take the ladies away. I will see to the duc.”

But Isaac lifted a brow. “What exactly do you mean by that,
mon ami
? You will hand him over to the authorities for the crimes of which you seem to have knowledge?”

The muscle pulsed again in Henri’s jaw. “If there is authority to be found in these times. Or perhaps I will take him to the Hôtel de Ville and let the people confront him along with the mayor. Or better still, let him answer to his
own
people, in Remi.”

Isaac lowered his pistol but shook his head. “Deal mercifully with him.”

“Mercifully?” For the first time, emotion surged into the guard’s eyes. Bitterness and hurt. “He has never dealt mercifully with anyone.”

Isaac met it with calm regard. “True, but he is not ultimately the Master to whom you must answer.”

Julienne splayed a hand over her heart. The Lord had been smiling on her when he led this man to her side at the masquerade. For surely there was none better in all the world.

For a long moment Henri made no move. Then his face softened, and he leaned down to haul up Remi. “May you stay as safe as you are wise, monsieur. Now go, quickly, before my fellows awake.”

Mère turned quickly toward the house, from which the housekeeper even then rushed, a satchel in hand. “I received your missive, madame,” the woman declared, out of breath. “I had it all ready. Quickly.”