Page 70 of The Avenging Angel and the Spy
“I am not worried about Merchant,” she snapped. “But when I am hired to do a job, I finish it.”
“Just as you did in the affair with Coterin?” he reminded her with a skeptical smile.
Belle bristled. “That was different.” In that instance she had chosen to deviate from her task, but she would be damned if she would be forced to give up by simply a lack of daring and resolve.
“You were reluctant from the start,” she accused Sinclair. “If you didn’t wish to take any risks, I don’t know why?—”
“Risk,” Sinclair snorted. “This would be suicide.”
“All I have to say is that if you are going to change your mind, it would be better if you had not accepted in the first place.”
“I beg you,mes enfants, no quarrels,” Baptiste said. “You are throwing those poor gentlemen off their game.”
Belle was startled to realize that she and Sinclair had been raising their voices loudly enough to attract attention.
One of the elderly men at the other end of the garden paused in the act of tossing his ring to frown at her.
Sinclair subsided, but Belle could not let the matter rest. She said in low but forceful tones, “I trust you will remember, Mr. Carrington, I am the one in charge. I will say when the mission is called off.”
“If you can develop a sensible plan, I will follow you anywhere, Angel.” Sinclair drank the rest of his beer, looking so smugly confident that she couldn’t, Belle had a strong desire to break her coffee cup over his head.
As though to prevent further argument, he got up and deliberately strolled across the garden to watch the old men at their game. It did not take long before he was invited to join in, the elderly Parisians showing him how to toss the wooden rings, laughing indulgently at his efforts.
Belle could tell from the flash of Sinclair’s smile that he was not merely staying away from the table to be spiteful, but genuinely enjoying himself with the same gusto with which he smoked those horrid cigars and ate his peppermints.
“He has thejoie de vivre, that one,” Baptiste commented. “He could well have been a Frenchman.”
It was an enormous compliment coming from Baptiste. But Belle recognized that her friend was right. Sinclair did have that vitality, that zest for life she felt lacking in herself. It was one of the things that made him so undeniably attractive.
“He is also a man of good sense,” Baptiste added.
Belle glanced sharply at her old friend. “Does that mean you agree with him that the mission must be abandoned?”
Baptiste frowned into his empty glass. “Oui, at the risk of also angering you, I fear that I must. Monsieur Carrington takes the logical view?—”
“Logic has nothing to do with it,” Belle said scornfully. “I believe Sinclair is merely having one of his misplaced gallant urges, the feeling that he somehow needs to protect me. Well, I have been doing rather nicely without him for a good many years. I think I can decide what chances I should take.”
“Except that you would not be the only one taking the risk.” This gentle reminder and the grave look that accompanied it brought a flush to Belle’s cheeks.
“You are right. Forgive me, Baptiste. I did not think. Indeed, I would not blame you for wanting no more to do with this scheme.”
“It was not myself so much I speak for as the others.” Baptiste shrugged. “What have I left to lose—my life? I have never been much afraid to die as long as I can be laid to rest here in my Paris. I am no longer such a young man.”
He became suddenly pensive. “As the oldest in my family, I always imagined I would be the first to go, my bier borne aloft on the shoulders of my strong brothers with love and all honor. I never thought that I should be the one to survive.”
The light that shone from those ageless brown eyes dimmed as he continued to muse, “Artur, he died by the guillotine for being too free with his opinions, Francois, murdered, his only sin deciding to be a priest instead of a fan maker, Odeon fell before the cannonfire with the army in the Alps, and Gervaise perished of the fever on General Bonaparte’s glorious Egyptian campaign.”
He groped for his handkerchief and dabbed unashamedly at his eyes. “All I want now is peace.”
Belle reached out to cover his hand with her own. “And you shall have it, my friend, perhaps if Sinclair and I did go away now and leave Bonaparte alone. I cannot help but notice some of the sense of order, of well-being the man has brought back to Paris.”
“That he has. The schools and churches are open again. We have a new code of laws. But peace?” Baptiste shook his head. “This Bonaparte, he is to France like the false spring of this day, a warm flooding of light you know cannot last for long. You saw him with his army today. He is not a man to be content with just playing soldier. Napoleon Bonaparte may bring France many gifts, but peace will never be one of them.”
Brushing the last of the moisture from his eyes, Baptiste blew his nose loudly. “Non, I am still with you,mon ange. Perhaps we must surrender our plans for now. But there will come another day.”
Shoving back his chair, he said, “For now, I have been away from my fans for too long.”
Belle tried to protest, “For shame. And to think you were scolding me earlier for wanting to work upon such a fine day.”
