Chapter Eleven

 

 

 

“Look at me,” Sylvie said through a smile as she turned and surveyed the bare room where she stood, her hand resting on the damp stone wall as though she might be able to soak up some past memory from it. “Living like a queen at last.”

The irony of the statement wasn’t lost on Tessier. He smiled at the cold humor of it, his eyes never leaving the woman before him, an angel in her white nightgown, a red shawl thrown over her shoulders. He had seen the Widow Capet within these walls a hundred times but she had never transfixed him as this creature did now, never brought such an air of perfect calm to the rooms that had been her cell.

“Where’s the young one?” her voice was soft. “The little king.”

“We are free from the tyranny of kings,” Tessier reminded her. “The child is in his rooms at the Temple.”

“From the Tuileries to the Temple.” Sylvie shook her head with a rueful smile. “And I thought I’d fallen on hard times.”

“I found her here on that final morning.” He gestured at the floor where Madame Capet’s cushion had been. In his mind’s eye, he watched her run the rosaries through her fingers, lips moving in silent invocation. “She would pray for hours at the end, they always do.”

Sylvie nodded once and walked toward him, drawing her shawl around her body before she asked, “Did she kneel to pray?”

“Always.” Tessier nodded, surprised when Sylvie fell to her knees where Marie Antoinette herself had kneeled, her hands clasped before her breast.

“Like this?” Her eyes blinked in the gentle glow of the flame when she turned her head to glance up at him, the tip of her tongue darting out to wet her lips. “Was she very pretty?”

“She was not.”

Sylvie nodded, her green eyes sparkling in the flickering candlelight that danced on the stone walls of the former queen’s final, miserable, deserved lodgings. Even without the clamor of children that filled their rooms at the Temple, this room still rang with that quiet, sing-song voice reading aloud from the damned missal as though her very soul depended on it. Now, though, it was more silent than he had ever known, the only sound his own breathing.

“You thought me very pretty once, Monsieur.” Sylvie smiled in place of prayer. “Do you still?”

“Your son—”

“Granted, I’m not as young as I was, but am I still your pretty girl?” She turned her head again, her clasped hands unmoving. “You’re still my boy, you know.”

“Please, Mademoiselle Dupire…”

Tessier’s words petered out and Sylvie turned on her knees and put her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his thigh. He dimly thought he should push her away, but instead, he linked his hands behind his back at the stark realization that she might see the scars and, somewhere in the distance, his own breath caught.

“My boy,” she murmured. “My good, good boy.”

“Mademoiselle Dupire,” he whispered, hating the way his voice almost shook as her hands brushed back and forth over his buttocks, bringing back too many memories with every caress. “Please don’t.”

“I watched you,” Sylvie said softly, her words almost lost in the darkness. “Just look at you—standing in the Conciergerie with the queen on her knees.”

I wanted you more than you ever knew, he wanted to say, longed to surrender to her as he had on so many evenings in another lifetime. You were always the other side of me.

“Tell me about your son—who did he supply with the tincture of opiate?”

“Have you missed me?” Sylvie’s mouth pressed to his breeches, and a decade or more fell away when he hardened at her touch. “You did, didn’t you?”

“Who did he supply?” Despite himself, he put his palms gently to her cold cheeks, easing her away.

She slid her gaze across to the scars for no more than a moment, then took his right hand and brought it to her lips, kissing the skin where it stretched and glistened. Softly, tenderly, Sylvie slipped his index finger into her mouth and encircled it with her tongue.

His heart pounding, Tessier went to lift her from her knees, but instead she drew him down until he was on the ground beside her, the rough earth floor digging into his flesh. He felt nothing but her mouth over his, lips parting and his body growing warmer despite the cold air.

“I missed my boy, too,” Sylvie cooed into the kiss, her hands moving deftly to his shoulders. “I would hear about what you’d been up to and I was so proud.”

“I looked for you,” he muttered, lowering his head until he could rest it against the swell of her bosom. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“How could I?” Sylvie wrapped one arm around him and pressed him close to her breast, the nipple hardening beneath the thin fabric. Despite the darkness and the linen that separated their bodies he could almost see the milk-white skin, feel the softness of her against him. “A boy has to make his own way in the world, doesn’t he? Look at what you’ve become.”

She reached round to work at the fastening of Tessier’s breeches and she slipped her hand inside to take hold of him, a touch he had never expected to feel again. Her grip tightened until a gasp of pain escaped his gritted teeth. He kissed the nightgown beneath his lips hungrily, pulling her to him. As she murmured and encouraged, Sylvie worked her hand faster and faster, squeezing her fingers until every touch was exquisite agony. At the suggestion of her fingernails, he finally let out a cry and felt the release that he hadn’t experienced in so long. She kept working until there was nothing left within him, that he had given all he could. The world swam before his eyes and a deep sigh escaped his chest. He breathed her in with the next breath, lost in the woman who cradled him.

“You’re a good boy,” she whispered into his hair, drawing her hand out of his breeches. “Am I to follow her to the guillotine now then? Will you put your girl to the razor?”

“If I must,” he muttered, fumbling at the lacing with stiff fingers as he tried to regain some sort of control. Yet the slender arm around his shoulders kept him from lifting his head from her breast, holding him to her. “No exceptions, Sylvie.”

She said nothing but took his hand in her own and placed it on her breast, massaging her body through the linen until her other hand left his shoulder. Then he could move again, bringing his lips to kiss the point in her throat where her pulse beat.

“No exceptions, Vincent,” she told him, a statement more than a question. “But you’ll always remember me here in her cell at the Conciergerie, more a queen than she ever was?”

“You are more than a queen to me,” he replied, tracing the line of her throat with kisses.

The laugh that escaped Sylvie’s lips was low and the disbelief he detected in it sent a pang of sadness through his body. In reply he pulled her closer to him as though that alone might convince her of the sentiment.

“I bow before you now as I always have,” Tessier whispered as she put her hand in his hair and dragged his head roughly upward, until their eyes were level.

“We’ll see, Monsieur Tessier,” she replied, putting her parted lips to his again. “We’ll see.”