Rendezvous (9781301288946) (39 page)

"
Oui
." The girl nodded to a point
behind Sinclair."There she is. Ask her yourself."

Sinclair spun about to face the woman
who entered the room beneath the velvet-draped arch. Although the
saffron gown was not her usual attire, the red ribbon about her
neck, the soft brown curls were all too familiar to
Sinclair.

"Madame, I need you to—" Paulette
Beauvais choked off in midsentence. As her eyes locked with
Sinclair's, the shock of recognition for her appeared as great as
his own.

"M-monsieur Carrington." Her dismay
paled into a look of fear. She turned and vanished beneath the
arch. Sinclair bolted after her.

"Stop, m'sieur!" the elderly woman
cried. "You cannot thus barge in upon us." She followed after
Sinclair, squawking like a frenzied chicken.

Sinclair pursued Paulette down a
corridor of doors. She whipped inside the last of these, but not
quickly enough to slam the door behind her. Sinclair put his
shoulder to the flimsy pine barrier as Paulette struggled to keep
him out.

"I will send for the police," the old
woman behind Sinclair was still blustering.

But Paulette seemed to realize the
futility of the struggle. As her initial panic subsided, she
released the door, allowing Sinclair to enter. "Bien, Margot. Calm
yourself," she said to the old woman. "I do seem to know this
gentleman after all."

Although the madame looked far from
satisfied, she was persuaded to retreat. She did so, casting dire
warnings at Sinclair to behave himself. "We tolerate no roughness
here, m’sieur."

When she had gone, Sinclair closed the
door behind him, facing Paulette across the small bedchamber, the
glow of an oil lamp giving the walls a rose-colored cast. The chief
feature of the room was its bed, the canopy caught above it giving
the impression of some exotic Egyptian tent. Paulette hovered near
it, twisting the fringe. Obviously nervous, she strove to hide the
fact behind a brazen smile.

"So, Monsieur Carrington,
have you tired of
ma chére
Isabelle's charms? What brings you to a place like
this?"

Sinclair folded his arms, leaning up
against the door. "I was planning to ask you the same
thing."

"Madame Margot is an old friend of
mine. I have known her since the first days of the Revolution. She
still allows me to visit her upon occasion, make myself at home."
Recovering some of her bravado, Paulette tipped up her chin. "And
you need not look down your long English nose like that. Madame was
good to me after my parents sneezed into the sack."

"I beg your pardon?"

"After they had been guillotined," she
explained impatiently, then added with a hint of ferocity, "You
have no notion what it took for a girl to survive during those dark
days."

"Or in our present time?" Sinclair
asked with a cynical cast of one brow. All the while to himself, he
thought. Paulette Beauvais. How could he have been so blind? Maybe
if he had not been so determined to prove Lazare the spy, he might
have seen.

"I do sometimes still entertain for
Madame to earn a little more money," Paulette admitted. She
abandoned some of her defensive posture, infusing a hint of appeal
into her tones. "None of this affects the role I play for Isabelle.
Surely there is no need to tell her you found me here? You keep my
secret and I will keep yours."

"Belle would likely be more
understanding about all this than I," Sinclair said, flicking a
contemptuous glance about the chamber's trappings. "But you have
been doing other things she will find less forgivable."

Although Paulette's face was filled
with defiance, Sinclair could sense the beginnings of alarm in her,
an alarm that only deepened when he moved forward and picked up a
black cloak she had left draped over a chair.

"For example, Belle might be more
interested to know why you pay frequent visits to the guardhouse at
the Tuileries."

"I never—" Paulette started to bluster
and then she shrugged. "I have a lover there."

"Indeed? Yes, I have remarked your
penchant for soldiers and sailors. They taught you quite a bit
about the royal dockyards at Portsmouth. Perhaps one of the fools
even helped you make a map of the coastline!'

"I don't know what you are talking—"
But Paulette flinched away from Sinclair's steel-eyed gaze. She
seemed to realize that denial would not serve. She sidled closer to
him, moistening her dry lips.

"Perhaps I have sold a few maps to
Bonaparte. Where is the harm in that?" She tried to angle a
provocative glance up at Sinclair, fingering the brass buttons of
his coat. "England and France are at peace. There is no chance that
any information I provided will be used, but if the first consul is
silly enough to pay, why not?"

Sinclair thrust her hands away. "I
don't know if Isabelle and your other friends in the society will
see your betrayal in the same light,"

Paulette crossed herself.
"Upon the graves of my mother and father," she whined, "I have done
nothing to betray the society. I never gave Bonaparte any names,
never told anything that would hurt
ma
chére
Isabelle."

"Truly? Then you won't mind if I have a
look at this." When Sinclair had moved the cloak, a folded document
had fallen to the floor. He bent to retrieve it, but Paulette dived
for it with a shriek.

"That is nothing to do with you. It is
but a letter from my lover."

Sinclair pried her fingers from the
vellum, nearly tearing the note in the process. He thrust Paulette
ruthlessly away. She sagged back against the bed, watching
helplessly as he perused the document.

Sinclair could see clearly now how
Paulette had adopted the perfect guise to be the counterspy: her
entire pose as a flighty maidservant, a man-hungry female who liked
to flirt with the English sailors, whose marketing left her coming
and going from the house unquestioned. Paulette had never been in
Belle's confidence, but she was in an easy position to overhear
much that would be to Bonaparte's advantage. It also explained why
no information had been laid about the abduction plot sooner. Never
included in their meetings, Paulette had had difficulty in
obtaining accurate knowledge of what was going on. Even in this
report her information was sketchy, alerting Bonaparte only that an
abduction attempt would take place from the theater with none of
the details. But the names were all there, Isabelle's, Baptiste's,
Crecy's, Lazare's, his own.

"You would never hurt
your
chére
Isabelle, eh?" Sinclair said, casting a fulminating glance at
Paulette. "You bitch!" He savagely rented the paper and tossed in
into the fire.

Paulette shrank back from his anger.
"Ah, please, monsieur. You will not hurt me. I have not told
anything yet. I was even changing my mind about that
note."

Beneath Sinclair's stony stare, she
wrung her hands and wailed. "It was just the temptation. You cannot
imagine how much they would have paid me for information like that.
I—"

The rest of her plea was lost as the
door to the chamber crashed open. Sinclair started and Paulette
shrieked in fright, cowering back against the bed.

Framed in the opening were two burly
soldiers. One squinted at Sinclair through narrowed eyes like a
ferret seeking its prey. The other sneered beneath his mustache.
From the reek of gin they were obviously drunk.

"Wrong room, gentlemen," he said. He
tried to close the door, but the mustached one blocked
it.

"I don't think so, do you, Giles?" The
younger soldier grinned at his companion.

"
Non
, Auguste, it looks like the right
place to me." The ferret-faced one pushed his way forward into the
room.

The two men were not as drunk as
Sinclair had supposed. A sense of real danger coursed through him
as his gaze flicked from one crude face to the other, the dawning
of suspicion.

"Have I not met you somewhere before?"
he asked.

He never received an answer, for at
that moment Paulette saw her chance to flee. Grabbing up her cloak,
she made a dash for the door. Neither of the soldiers tried to stop
her, but Sinclair lunged to do so, catching hold of her
sleeve.

The movement threw him off guard, left
him unprepared for the sudden savage blow the man named Giles dealt
his stomach. As pain spiked through him, Sinclair doubled over.
Paulette wrenched herself free, making good her escape.

Panting and forcing himself upright,
Sinclair's one thought was to go after her, but the other man,
Auguste, was attempting to circle around behind.

Narrowly avoiding the stranglehold of
his arms, Sinclair cracked his fist against Auguste's jaw. But he
was not quick enough to deflect another blow from Giles. This one
sent Sinclair crashing across the bed. Before he could regain his
footing, Giles hefted him up, preparing to pummel him again.
Somehow Sinclair's hand closed round the shaft of his umbrella, and
he cracked it across the bridge of the man's nose. Giles staggered
back with a howl as the blood flowed, giving Sinclair time to
maneuver.

He had no idea who had set these two
against him, but he had no time to find out. He had to go after
Paulette. Quickly Sinclair jammed his hand into his cloak pocket
and pulled the pistol free.

Before he could fire, Auguste jumped
him. The weapon discharged into the air, sending the plaster of the
ceiling showering down upon them.

Sinclair was dimly aware of the shrieks
in the hallway outside. Madame would be sending for the authorities
soon, only adding to the desperation of his situation. He glanced
toward the door, but that way out was blocked by his assailants. It
was impossible that he could fight his way out of here in
time.

He fended off Auguste with another hard
blow to the man's ribs, but Giles was struggling to pull out his
sword. Backed near to the wall Sinclair sought another avenue of
escape.

The window! But he needed to buy
himself a few seconds of precious time. Seizing up the oil lamp,
Sinclair dashed it down in front of the advancing Giles, who leaped
back roaring as the carpet caught fire.

Sinclair yanked at the casement, but it
was jammed. He grimaced, recognizing the inevitable. Smoke from the
flames was already beginning to sting his eyes. With no more time
to think Sinclair snatched up his umbrella, smashing the
glass.

The sudden rush of cool air made the
flames lick higher, forcing the two soldiers back to the door.
Shielding his head as best he could from the remaining shards,
Sinclair dived out the window amidst another hail of shattering
glass.

Lazare lingered in the parlor of No.
32, his presence unremarked amidst the hysteria of the brothel's
workers and patrons. From sounds emanating from the back of the
house, for once it appeared as if the Marboeuf brothers were
earning their hire. Perhaps he should go to make sure, but he had
done enough by titling Sinclair to this place. When seeking
Carrington, he had overheard enough of the conversation in the
bedchamber for Lazare to know he had a far greater problem-
Paulette Beauvais.

Lazare glimpsed her at last, pulling on
her cloak, slipping out the brothel's front door. Following
quickly, he intercepted her before she had taken five steps. When
his hand closed over her shoulder, she fairly collapsed from
fright.

"Good evening, Paulette."

She spun about, taking a step sideways
as though tempted to dart upon her way, pretending that she did not
know him. But then she drew up short, shifting back her hood enough
to reveal a nervous smile.

"Why, Lazare. How fortunate that I have
run into you. I have quite lost my way and I was trying to find
Monsieur Crecy's establishment—"

"I don't think so,
chérie
," Lazare said
silkily. "I don't think you are in the least interested in going
there." He indicated the door to No. 32 from which she had just
emerged. "But perhaps that place over there holds more fascination
for you."

"I don't know what you mean," Paulette
said, backing away. Lazare could see she was on the verge of panic,
and if he wished this handled subtly, he must proceed in careful
fashion.

He leaned forward, whispering, "Do not
be alarmed. I have but come to help you. Carrington is a British
spy. He would see you arrested."

"I—I know. He was—" Paulette broke off,
turning deathly pale as she realized how she had just betrayed
herself. She stared at Lazare with a mixture of suspicion and
terror.

"But, how did you know?" She bit down
upon her knuckle. "Dear God. What am I going to do? I must get
away."

Lazare slipped his arm about her waist,
preventing her retreat. "Be calm, chérie. I understand everything.
I would never see one of my own countrywomen handed over to the
damned English.

"Come with me now. I have a place to
hide you." Lazare's teeth flashed in a feral smile. "A place where
you will be quite safe."