The Companion - Time For Eternity Part 2

She made for the main gate, through hedges once neatly trimmed in fantastic shapes now going back to nature, shoots and errant leaves obscuring their design. The flower beds were clogged with discarded revolutionary tracts, and here and there some muddied piece of clothing. Public access was hard on the place. There must be no money for upkeep these days, and no desire to keep up the ultimate symbol of aristocracy.

Now for the village. There would be coaches leaving to take the picnickers back to Paris. And she'd be on one of them.

Frankie stumbled from the diligence among a hail of other bodies and took a deep breath. The stench of Paris might be bad, but anything was better than the body odor inside that coach. Would she get used to this again? The coach held eight comfortably, but there had been twelve inside and about twenty clinging outside. Frankie had been crushed between a woman with a crying child and a man with roaming hands. Only when she gripped his wrist hard enough to leave bruises and deposited his hand back into his lap did he cease and desist with a sputtering protest. Respectable young women didn't travel alone. That thought made Frankie smile grimly. If the man only knew how unrespectable she really was, he would probably s.h.i.t a brick.

She looked around the busy yard of the posting inn. Carriages clattered as they wheeled around, jockeying for position, horses snorted and whinnied. The air smelled of soot and night soil. People shouted for coffee and toasted bread. She was close now. If only she knew exactly in what moment in her previous life she'd arrived. If she'd come too late-if even now, across town in the Marais district, he was infecting her then the whole thing had been for naught. If she was early enough, she might even save her employer and friend, Madame LaFleur, from arrest. She'd force the old lady to leave Paris before Robespierre and his b.i.t.c.h- mistress got to her.

Somehow she had to avoid her former self, the one that was living through this whole disorganized, dangerous mess for the first time. Time travel stories always said meeting yourself was a bad thing. If she succeeded in killing Henri, she would probably cease to exist as Frankie, vampire. Maybe she'd just blink out, leaving only the innocent girl she'd once been. She refused to get lost in the conundrums of whether, if her vampire self ceased to exist, she would be there in the twenty-first century to use Donna's time machine and come back to prevent herself from becoming vampire. That was what she hated about time travel stories. You couldn't avoid the inherent circular logic. All that hadn't seemed to bother Donna. Frankie held to that.

Frankie hefted her leather bag, tossed a sou to a vendor in return for a bun filled with unknown meat, and struck out into the sultry night, munching on dinner.

She hurried past cafes where men shouted their political views over the hum of laughing diners, and taverns where others drank their dinner. Paris had never gone to bed early.

As many times as she had imagined killing Henri, the prospect of actually doing it was much different. She set her lips and hurried over the Pont Neuf across the Seine, striding down the Quai de l'Horloge toward the Marais, her heart pounding. Lord knows why Henri still lived in the Marais. In the seventeenth century it had been the height of fashion, but the aristocracy now lived across the Seine in the Faubourg St. Germain. He was just contrary enough to avoid trends. Or maybe, being so old, he held to tradition. For whatever reason, she would find him in the faded grandeur of the Marais, the only place Madame LaFleur could afford.

She smelled the smoke. Her heart skipped. An orange glow over the Place Royale told her that she'd arrived on the exact night she joined the wicked duc's household. Some part of her was relieved. It was perhaps a week before the fatal moment when she had been made vampire. She had time to kill Henri. But was she in time to save Madame LaFleur? She turned into the huge open square. The beautiful facades of the houses across the park were in flames. Or rather one house. She broke into a run, her heavy leather bag banging on her hip. A shouting crowd threw rocks at the blaze not buckets of water.

She staggered to a halt. Madame LaFleur was already being loaded into a black beetlelike carriage, bars at its windows, by gendarmes of the Committee of Public Safety. She was too late! A woman stood on a box under one of the arches of the covered arcade that ran around the ground floor of the entire square, shouting the crowd into a frenzy. Madame Croute. Frankie couldn't hear the words but she knew the sentiment. Aristocrats were an infection. They must be rooted out lest they poison the Revolution.

Madame LaFleur was a devout Catholic, in spite of churches and priests being declared illegal. She could never bring herself to enter one of the new Deist churches the government had created. Maybe it was that which brought Madame Croute and her rabble of sans-culottes, the most rabid of the revolutionaries of the third estate who spied for Robespierre and his committee, to Madame LaFleur's house.

Robespierre, first member of the Committee of Public Safety, looked on as the mob pushed over the stone urns on either side of the doorway under the arcade, shouting. A small smile lit his face. Flames flapped from the windows like orange bedsheets snapping in the wind.

As she approached the scene, she slowed. There had been nothing she could do the first time around and there was no way to change things now. Madame LaFleur's life was forfeit at the guillotine. It hit her harder than she would have expected. Somehow she thought that two hundred years of experience with the world's evils would make a single woman's death hurt less.

The gaoler's wagon moved off. That meant that in a moment ...

She turned. Bingo. A carriage with elegant lines and a defiant crest on its doors trotted up the street toward the flames. Four matched black geldings sidled in the harness, made nervous by the smoke. A driver liveried in black and gold stopped the carriage well away from the crowd. A postillion, likewise liveried, jumped down and opened the carriage door.

Henri stepped out. He stood, surveying the chaos through a quizzing gla.s.s, his expression bored and disdainful as always. The roaring mob, the crack of flames, the smoke all receded. Frankie stood, transfixed.

He was even more beautiful than she remembered him. He looked thirty-five or forty though she knew he was centuries older.

His hair was black-he eschewed powder-and brushed back from his face in a long queue. He wore no wig. Who had need of a wig when you had thick, l.u.s.trous hair like that? His eyes were so dark as to almost be black. Their look, as they drifted over the crowd, was as contemptuous as ever. He was tall and powerfully built. He dressed in black, his only nod to the austere fashion of the Revolution. Or maybe he had dressed in black even when the fashion was for wild colors like yellow and magenta. It certainly suited him. His coat fitted his shoulders perfectly. The satin of his breeches hugged his muscled thighs. His cravat and cuffs sported lace though lace was banned. He looked, and was, every inch the aristocrat. How did he manage to flaunt the tyranny of the plebian so openly?

Perhaps by looking as though he didn't care.

She drifted closer to the edge of the crowd, drawn by him. How are you dangerous to me, Henri? Let me count the ways ...

She steeled herself. She must harden her heart to match his. She must commit a sin in the eyes of G.o.d and man. She must do unto him before he could do unto her and deprive him of no more than a few months of living that she might live again.

"What have we here?" he murmured. She heard him clearly with the vampire hearing he had bequeathed her. The curve of his lip was all insouciant condescension. He strolled forward, surveying the crowd of sans-culottes.

"Monsieur, surely you will help us!"

Frankie turned at the sound of her own voice. She gasped. There she stood, the she who had been, Francoise Suchet, not Frankie, her face a mask of innocence in distress, a gendarme holding each elbow. It was the face Frankie still saw in the mirror each day, streaked with soot. Her blond hair glowed copper in the red light of the flames licking out the windows above her.

Frankie knew intellectually she hadn't changed with all the years, but to know this face was not a mirror image but one that lived two hundred years ago shook her sanity.

Francoise stretched her arms as far as she could toward Henri in supplication. Foolish girl. The last thing she needed was Henri Foucault. That way lay vampirism.

Then the young Francoise stilled. Her head turned slowly. Her eyes locked with Frankie's. Frankie saw the eyes that were her eyes, blue and innocent, grow wide.

Frankie couldn't get her breath. Francoise seemed to grow nearer, even as the crowd behind her receded. Frankie dropped her bag, gasping, and bent over, grabbing her belly against the pain there. This was bad. Really bad. She should never have met herself. She felt like she was breaking up. A shriek escaped her. All those time travel books were right, she thought.

And then she was hurtling toward Francoise. She felt herself disintegrating into a mist.

Then nothing.

Three.

Francoise shook her head to clear it. She had seen a woman at the edge of the crowd. The woman had looked like her, though dressed a little strangely.

But there was no one there now. Francoise felt ... full. Her head felt tight and her chest almost burst with ... with something. She looked around, dazed. There had been a woman ... hadn't there? She couldn't quite remember. She must be mad to be daydreaming at a time like this. Everything she owned was in that burning house. The mob seemed bent on tearing down what was left brick by brick. Robespierre had ordered Madame LaFleur arrested and Francoise was about to follow her. That meant prison and the guillotine.

She glanced to the edge of the crowd. She had seen something there, hadn't she? Something that made her uneasy. But she didn't quite know what. She felt as though all her senses were dulled, somehow. She couldn't quite see as far as she expected, hear as much as she ought. Something inside her was vaguely ... disappointed.

Enough. She turned to the Duc d'Avignon, crossing from his carriage, quizzing gla.s.s raised to survey the crowd and the burning house that shared a wall with his own, much larger dwelling. She must be mad to think of asking him for help. The wicked duc would do nothing for her. But no one could help her once she'd been arrested, so he was her only hope.

"Please help me, Monsieur." She hated that her voice was small and pleading.

His quizzing gla.s.s turned toward her and her two burly guards, magnifying his eye until he looked like a monster. This was the first time he had even noticed her in all the months he'd lived next door. She blushed, acutely aware that her skirts were torn and covered with soot. "You mean to call him 'Citizen,' do you not?" Madame Croute asked through gritted teeth. "We have no forms of respectful address for the n.o.bility. France belongs to the people."

The quizzing gla.s.s was turned on Madame Croute. The duc frowned then surveyed the burning building. "Really, this crosses the line." His voice was quiet, yet somehow the crowd around her subsided. Only the roar of the flames filled the night air. They must be reacting to that electric energy he always seemed to give off. She had watched him secretly as he went out every evening for months now. One could not help but be riveted by him. He was a handsome devil who seemed much more alive than everyone else. He flaunted his wealth and taste in the teeth of the revolutionary zealots as though he were fearless.

He cast his gaze over the crowd. "You'll burn down the Marais, and, more importantly, my house, with your nonsense." His dark eyes seemed to glow red in the light from the flames. "Put it out." His voice almost echoed in the night.

To her shock, the four men nearest him began exhorting the crowd to put the fire out. The crowd milled uncertainly, then gained purpose.

"To the mews! The stables'll have buckets."

"Take 'em to the fountain."

The crowd split into purposeful streams. This enraged Madame Croute. "Citizens!" she screamed. "This refuge of antirevolutionary sentiment must come down!" But the crowd wasn't paying attention to her anymore. She turned on Robespierre.

She was a handsome woman with a fine figure, albeit with a rather long face and slightly protuberant pale blue eyes. She was dressed in the style of a poor woman, with ap.r.o.n and cap, but the fabrics were rich and very clean, unlike those of her followers.

"Citizen," she accosted Robespierre, "Do something."

The duc looked over her shoulder. "Ahhhh, dear Robespierre, what brings you to this sordid scene?" He glanced to Madame Croute. "And your minion as well."

Madame Croute glared at him.

"Rooting out a traitor," the little man said primly. He was dressed with the greatest propriety in sober black, plain wool, his hair concealed by a modest wig with only two rolls over each ear. He wore a ribbon on his lapel with the revolutionary colors.

"I wonder"-the duc sighed-"that the Committee of Public Safety should be involved in starting fires. It seems such a contradiction."

The little man drew himself up, frowning. "You make light of our sacred charge, Citizen Foucault, but the cause of freedom must be protected at all costs."

"So I've been told." The dark eyes flicked back to Francoise and away. "And an old woman is certainly a worthy target of your wrath. I positively quake to think that I lived next door to such a dangerous character."

Was it her situation that caused Francoise's wobbly knees? Or was it whatever had disconcerted her at the edge of the crowd?

She shook her head again. She couldn't remember what she had seen. But she had a feeling she had done all this before, in a dream perhaps.

"But what has my ward to do with all of this?" the duc drawled.

Had her attention wandered? What ward? The duc lived alone in the house next door, if one could call living with at least a score of servants living alone. She glanced around.

Robespierre frowned. "Who might you mean, Citizen?"

The duc gestured idly to Francoise. "This chit. Belongs to me. You'd hardly credit it, what with her appearance."

Francoise felt her mouth drop open. Only surprise kept her from protesting.

"She was found in the house with the old woman." Robespierre frowned.

"The citizens report she lives there," Madame Croute added, as though delivering a coup de grace.

The duc raised one arched brow. "How strange that I should find the need to explain myself to you." He sighed in resignation.

"She plays piquet with the old woman from time to time out of the goodness of her heart. I tried to warn her where it would lead, this having a heart. Personally, I gave it up long ago."

Robespierre would never believe she was the ward of the wicked duc. He couldn't be more than fifteen or twenty years older than she was. And what young man would adopt a girl child? Lying to the leader of the Committee of Public Safety would only land him in a tumbrel on the way to the guillotine right behind her. Robespierre and his committee had the power of life and death. They could condemn a person without trial, without witnesses, without evidence. And they did. Thousands had gone to the guillotine in the last months merely on suspicion of being antirevolutionary. Madame Croute was perhaps even more dangerous. Though she could have no political power because she was a woman, she ruled the mob and they dispensed the committee's will. Not even the committee controlled them entirely. Robespierre and Madame Croute would never allow themselves to be intimidated by an aristocrat who had no power at all.

And yet, before her eyes, the little man swallowed. Twice.

"Very well, Citizen Foucault." His smile was so bland as to be frightening. "I would not dream of threatening your ... property."

He nodded to the gendarmes. They released Francoise.

"What are you doing?" Madame Croute hissed.

Robespierre did not answer her question. "Quiet, woman!" "Might you feel the need to apologize?" The duc murmured his question.

Robespierre looked as though he would choke. He took a breath. "I apologize, Citizen."

The duc shook his head, smiling. "No, no, my good man. Not to me. To the lady."

Francoise felt a blush rising. Audacious!

Robespierre nodded curtly to her. "I apologize, mademoiselle."

"You allow this ... this aristo to thwart the will of the people?" Madame Croute accused.

Robespierre did not answer, but turned on his heel and made his way through the line of people pa.s.sing buckets of water from the fountain through the arcade to the open door of the house and got into a waiting carriage, Madame Croute haranguing him all the way.

Francoise looked around, feeling not herself at all. What a surprising outcome. Why had Robespierre backed down? And yet it wasn't surprising at all. If she thought about it, she knew some part of her expected exactly what had happened. Blinking, she turned to the duc. Why had he saved her? There was something she should do, something tickling at her mind. She should be afraid of him. Of that she was certain.

The duc ignored her. He ordered his servants to help douse the flames. People poked their heads out of other houses along the elegant facade, offering buckets and help. The disordered mob turned into a rather efficient machine moving water from the fountain into the house.

The duc held a delicate handkerchief, embroidered and edged with lace, to his nose against the smoke. He seemed to have forgotten all about Francoise. The flames cast his face into satanic relief. Even with the excitement of a fire and the prospect of a mob lately engaged in tearing down the house next to his own, he looked bored, his eyes heavy -lidded, his full mouth curved in what was very nearly a sneer.

After some time, a dapper older man appeared out of the duc's house and presented a silver salver on which sat a crystal decanter filled with amber liquid and a gla.s.s. He bowed crisply at his master's side, but said nothing, just waited.

When at last he deigned to notice the servant, the duc seemed mildly surprised. "Gaston, you antic.i.p.ate my need. But let us repair to the library. I do not care to imbibe on the street."

Gaston bowed again and the duc strolled down the arcade to his own door, Gaston in his wake. Francoise watched him go with dismay. She turned to look at the remains of the house she had lived in with Madame LaFleur for the last year. The facade was still intact, but most was a smoking, wet ruin. The door out to the arcade hung at a crazy angle, and people were tramping about inside, dousing the remaining flames. The windows held only broken shards of glazing, the brick above them stained with blackened tongues of soot. The roof had fallen in places.

Where was she to stay?

A liveried footman opened the door for the duc. Light spilled into the street. Before the duc could pa.s.s inside he paused and looked back. He had obviously forgotten her. But he covered well. "Are you not coming in, my dear?"

Francoise froze. She was not the duc's ward. No man with the reputation of being the devil himself would ever have a ward.

Entering that portal would put her entirely in his power. All her upbringing told her that her very soul was in danger if she set foot inside that house. And yet part of her felt that there was something she must do, and that doing it required that she be near the duc.

What was the matter with her tonight?

None of her scruples mattered. She had no choice. The old lady's rheumatism had made getting her out of the flaming house slow work. There had been no time to grab any belongings. Francoise had no money, no friends to take her in tonight. No respectable inn would take her without money and looking like she did.

The duc waited, amus.e.m.e.nt lurking in his eyes. When he saw that she had fully comprehended her dilemma, he raised one brow.

Francoise bit her lip. Something inside her whispered that she must go with him.

The duc did not wait longer but turned into the house, knowing she would follow.

She trailed after him, under the impa.s.sive gaze of the footman.

She might be confused, but she did not doubt that entering this house was dangerous.

Francoise pa.s.sed into an elegant foyer. The duc's house was impeccable on the inside. The central houses on the grand facade of the Place Royale were much larger than Madame LaFleur's, which was the first in the line of smaller residences beside them.

The Hotel d'Avignon was almost a palace. Black and white tiles stretched away on the floor of the foyer and twin staircases joined halfway up to the first story, where she knew for a fact there was a huge ballroom. She had seen the duc's decadent revelries from the street on many a night as she came home late from the market. Several delicately carved chairs and tiny tables were set about the foyer for the convenience of visitors seeking admittance. The chandelier that hung from the high ceiling held fifty candles at the least and dripped sparkling crystals. Francoise had never felt so out of place, with her cheap, dowdy clothes, soiled with soot, the hem of her dress muddied with runoff from the burning house. Most absurdly, she wished she had used some of her small salary from Madame LaFleur to buy one modish dress.

Her host seemed to have forgotten her again. He was strolling through the hall under the stairs, Gaston in his wake. Very well. She might have to stay here tonight, but tomorrow she would seek out another position. And she 'd tell Monsieur le Duc just that. She set off across the foyer, shoes clicking on the marble tile, and pushed her way in behind Gaston before the door could close. This room was much cozier than she imagined. It was lined, floor to ceiling on two sides, with bookcases. Two comfortable-looking wing chairs sat facing a grate with a small table between them. A low fire burned and, even though it was summer, the crackle was not unwelcome. These old houses were always a little damp in the evening. At one end was a large desk, inexplicably covered with papers. She couldn't imagine the duc doing anything that required a desk. Surely his minions paid his tailor's bills and household accounts.

The duc collapsed into a wing chair, one slippered foot negligently out in front of him. Gaston set down the brandy, murmuring, "Dinner at the usual time, your grace?" The duc could afford brandy, even taxed as it was these days. No one drank brandy anymore.

"But of course. And see that another place is set."

Well, at least he remembered her existence, not that she could touch a bite of food while in the devil 's lair. As Gaston left, said devil peered around the wing of his chair. "Well, are you going to sit down or stand there like a pillar of salt?"