“So I’ve been thinking,” he said as we came to the door in the wall. “If you’re not busy Saturday, I thought you’d like to come with me and Noah when we go to his piano lesson. It’s not very far, just up the road a bit in Carrières-sur-Seine. His teacher isn’t fond of parents sitting in, she says we’re too big a distraction, so while Noah takes his lesson we could have a walk around. There are some good places to walk there.”
“I’d like that.”
He opened the door for me, swinging it inward and into the garden. “Good night, Sara.”
He started the bise this time, but when his mouth brushed my cheek for the second time it hovered there for a moment, and paused, and then slowly slid sideways to cover my own. I was already turning to meet it, to welcome it, loving the rush of sensation I got from that one gentle touch. Then it ceased being gentle, and I loved that, too. I was dimly aware of Luc pulling the door shut again, closing both of us back in the silence and peace of the lane, leaving both of his hands free to hold me.
Somewhere, in the middle of that still and perfect moment, wrapped in warmth, I thought: I will remember this.
I knew it to be true: I would remember this when other, more important things had faded from my memory. I’d remember how the evening air had breathed its cold against my cheek, and how a car had revved its engine in the unseen street behind me, and how Luc Sabran had tangled one hand in the hair behind my ear to hold my head supported while he kissed me.
I’d remember, too, the way he’d moved that same hand when the kiss had ended, combing back the curling hair along my temple with his fingers.
“Till tomorrow,” was his promise, as he reached again to turn the handle of the green door in the wall, and this time when he swung it open for me I passed through and somehow crossed the lawn with less than steady steps and made it to the back door of the kitchen without once looking behind me, for I knew that if I’d stopped at all it might have been a long, long time before I’d left that lane.
Chapter 23
Ye sons of the chace, stand far distant…
—Macpherson, “The War of Inis-Thona”
Chalon-sur-Saône
February 18, 1732
“I must confess I know not what to do with him,” said Thomson.
He was speaking to the Scotsman, who was walking at his side in front of Mary and Madame Roy as they climbed the sloping road towards the citadel. Their travel in the diligence had been disrupted on the day before by one horse falling lame and forcing them to slow their pace, so when they had been meant to dine at Beaune they had not reached that place till after nightfall, and instead of reaching Chalon on the river Saône last night, they had arrived here late this morning and were now faced with the prospect of a full day’s wait before they would be able to change over to the river barge—the diligence d’eau—that would convey them the remaining way to Lyon.
Mr. Stevens had seemed little inconvenienced by the change of plan. When he had joined them at Auxerre he clearly had not known that he was traveling alongside the same man he had been following, for otherwise he would have been a fool to speak so freely of his plans to them, but Mary felt quite certain that before that day was done he’d grown suspicious, and the comment he had made to her about the wolves at Saulieu had been proof. He’d dogged their steps all yesterday and kept close by all evening, watching them with an increasing interest Mary did not like. Which was the reason she was outdoors in the open air now, climbing to the citadel, instead of sitting with the mother and her daughters in the comfort of the new inn’s parlor, by a pleasant warming fire—because both Mr. Stevens and the merchant were within the parlor also, talking politics as usual. And hunting.
Madame Roy, even fatigued from travel and the days of sickness and poor eating, climbed more strongly than did Mary and was not the least bit winded, as though she’d been bred to steep terrain. The four of them were now above the main part of the houses of the lower town, and being where they were no longer likely to be overheard so long as they spoke low, they were now briefly able to converse in English.
Thomson said, “If, as you say, he knows—”
“He knows.”
“—then he does not yet feel so certain of that knowledge in his mind to rouse himself to action, else he would by now have taken me.”
MacPherson merely cast a sideways look at him as though he felt it hardly needed saying that there was another reason why the Englishman had not yet tried to lay a hand on Thomson. A tall, ill-tempered, very Scottish reason.
Thomson said, “I know how you would wish to deal with him, but surely there are other ways. You cannot simply kill the man.”
He fell to silence, thinking.
Madame Roy glanced sideways at the little dog in Mary’s arms and smiled and said in French, “You’ve spoiled that beast. God gave him four legs and he never gets to use them.”
Mary answered her in French as well, explaining, “Frisque was spoiled before he came to me. I’m sure it is too late for him to be reformed.” She snuggled him against her and the little spaniel licked her chin and nestled in the warm folds of her cloak.
At least the dog, she told herself, was yet a true companion and not likely to deceive or disappoint her as the others had.
She’d found it very hard today to keep up the appearance of normality. She’d kept on seeing Nicolas’s eyes as they had looked on their last parting at Sir Redmond’s—how he’d sworn he’d never put her in harm’s way, when he’d have surely known he’d just consigned her to the keeping of a murderer, a thief, and…well, whatever Madame Roy was. Mary truly did not wish to know. The less she knew, the simpler it would be for her to keep her conscience stainless and not share their guilt.