Page 3 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
She clutched him nearer. “I fear for you!”
“Get in the carriage,” he whispered, and dropped a kiss to her hair. “I’ll see you all safe to the road south to the Loire.”
Then he faced the salon where her mother and father held each other and wept. “I’ll get your mother,” he said with sorrow.
Vivi swallowed her fears for all of them and followed her sisters to their waiting fiacre. Papa’s majordom had hired a carriage to take them away from the city. Their own traveling coach, sumptuous and marked with the familyécusson, was gone. After King Louis was guillotined in January, Papa had ordered it broken up, the fittings sold to metal workers and the wood burned. He did not want them going about so easily identified.
Charmaine took her time getting inside, hemming and hawing about the narrowness of the cab.
Diane huffed. “Move along, sister.”
Her mother climbed inside.
Vivi paused.
Across the street on the corner stood a public carriage, a fiacre of shabby paint and worn fittings. The nag looked ill and tired. At this hour of the night, it stood alone in the alley, save for their own carriage and two stray cats.
But in the window was the face of a man Vivi had seen before. Yes, she had seen him in theruellewith the maid—and once with Charmaine. When she spied him, he sank backward into the shadows of the cab.
But Vivi had seen enough. Remembered more. He was a very young, handsome fellow with glistening black hair and brighteyes. Blue or hazel, she could not tell. He had facial contours so sharp one would say they were cut by glass. His only warm characteristic was his sun-kissed Provençale complexion. He was the same man she and Tate had seen speaking with the family’s scullery maid. The one they had overheard early this morning at the kitchen door talking to the maid about when they might meet for a rendezvous. Odd, too, it was, because the maid was far from pretty and the fellow was a delicious-looking devil.
Vivi’s little dog, Beau, yipped at the carriage. He always picked up her distress. She ran a hand over his furry little head.
“Come now, Vivi.” Tate came up to her and followed her line of vision. “Is that—?”
“Oui, the one with our maid.”
Tate cursed beneath his breath. A hand to her elbow, he said, “Ignore him. Get in. Now. We must leave.”
With a challenging lift of her chin, she gave their observer one last hard look—and got in.
Tate took a moment to speak to their driver. She heard his deep bass giving instructions to stop at the customsbarrièresouth of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. “I will disembark there. You will drive on through the night to Chartres but only on the back roads, just as you were instructed before.D’accord?”
Vivi heard the driver agree, and in a moment, Tate climbed in and sat down beside her. Across from them, Diane swallowed tears. Vivi’s mother appeared like a statue of marble. Charmaine sat atop her reticule filled with whatever she thought to keep from anyone.
Vivi sniffed. If Charmaine were not her half-sister—and the oldest legitimate one, at that—Vivi would tell her exactly what she thought of her ill-mannered ways. Charmaine was fifteen and should by now know better than to treat all as if she were a princess royal. Their blood might have some Bourbon in it, but it was drops. Charmaine acted as if it flowed pure and blue. Andnone of it, in any quantity, could save them from the wrath of Robespierre and the bloodthirsty heathens in the local Bonnet-Rouge. It was what condemned them.
Their coachman lashed the horses to a trot and headed past the ruined Saint-Germain-des-Prés Abbaye where so many had been brought to trial lately. Even in the country in Neufchateau, many had warned Papa not to come to Paris.They don’t like aristocrats in the city, many of his friends remarked. The guillotine was employed far too often. Men and women were sent to death within minutes of appearing before twelve judges. Gossip said the accused were given little time to defend themselves. But Papa had not listened. He needed to go to Paris, he said, for those things he had hidden there.
Vivi wondered if those items were as valuable as all their lives. But she could not be so bold as to ask, and Papa would not be so willing as to tell her or anyone what those items were.
The coach picked up speed.
All grew quiet inside.
But the driver had challenges. The mobs were out in force tonight. Darkness gave them courage. Becoming ghouls of the night, they were poor folk who ran amok. They yelled about bread and salt, brandishing their fists and their knives. A few even had pistols.
Their coachman shifted down alleys and went on with dizzying speeds. He reined his horses to a stop with speed far too often, then turned away from barricades, roadblocks piled high with old furniture, crates, and barrels.
Their driver had slowed, turning once, then twice down different, narrower roads.
“He goes north again,” Vivi’s mother rasped. “He should not.”
Tate spoke up. “He’s expert,madame.”
“Is anyone able,” asked Charmaine with disgust, “to outrun a mob?”
Tate had opened his mouth to answer when a roar of shouts rose to their ears.
