Viv turned her eyes away from that part of her past. Her mother had loved the man. Why, only Mama knew best. But that she had done so with her whole heart still had not absolved the hurt that Vivienne—who exactly resembled his oldest daughter—was the one who had no legal right to stand in his light. Instead, Viv had the heritage of Pierre, his younger brother, the man who had died eleven months before she was born and who was her father in name only.
Viv halted her mount. The sight before her brought tears to her eyes. Cringing, she caught her breath at the sight of the huge, vacant plot where, according to witnesses, her father had been marched up a platform, hauled toMademoiselle Machine Horrible, and murdered in the middle of the square.
“Come away, my dear.”
She sniffed back her tears, caught and yet not surprised by the sound of the bass voice in her earshot. Tate Cantrell again. Was he her personal Paris plague? She chanced sight of him. So broad-shouldered, muscular, and bold, he presented that vibrant mix of flashing blue-green eyes and sugared cinnamon hair that made her mouth water. As if she weren’t in his thrall already, he added to the drama of his presence in a magnificent mahogany-brown riding habit. “I should expect you everywhere I go now, is that right?”
His eyes danced.But of course, said his look. “I know you well.”
Indeed.“Too well. You cannot annoy me into conducting a conversation with you.”
He gave a laugh. “Then I shall annoy you enough to protect you.”
Once she would have kissed his cheek for that. Now, congenial as his promise was, that irritated her. She ground her teeth and urged her horse back toward Pont Neuf. “I have enough protection.”
He rode beside her, easy as if he’d been invited. “He does look the part. I hope you pay him well.”
“Ba! Look at him, monsieur.”
She nodded toward her groom. Older, gruff with a day’s growth of beard and a bulbous nose long disfigured by too many brawls, Fortin flashed his black eyes at Tate. Then, with suave menace and a hand to the butt of his pistol at his side, he said, “Monsieur, if you please.”
“I assure you, sir,” Tate cooed in the sweetest French as he raised both gloved hands, “I am a friend and I mean no harm.”
She sniffed the air.
Her guard grimaced. “The lady does not want you, monsieur.”
Tate checked her eyes. “I believe she does. In fact, she always has.”
Viv opened her mouth to object.
“No, monsieur,” Fortin cut in, angry now.
Tate shook his head and reassured him with the most benevolent of smiles. “I have only a few sentiments to convey, monsieur.”
Fortin cast her a glance and tipped his head at their intruder. “What say you, mademoiselle?”
“Speak your piece, Cantrell.” She would not honor him with fine addresses. He tempted her. She could not let him see it. “Be brief and be gone.”
“Of course.” He kept to English now, making her grumpy French groom snarl. “Obviously, you are here pretending. But I cannot fathom why.”
That Tate would not say—even in English—that she was impersonating Charmaine was prudent, even kind of him. But she could not tolerate his revealing anything more. He had to go. “Stay away, Tate.”
“I have thought on this all night. I know what you used to want,” he said, cool as a charming friend in some coy conversation of no import.
A dream. Never possible.
“When you were thirteen, my dear, you prayed for a return to Neufchateau. Especially because you never thought you’d have safe means to do it.”
“When we are children,” she said, staring straight ahead, “we all want things we can never have.”
“But now,” he argued, “with a peace treaty and émigrés welcomed back to France, all of a sudden you have a passion for being someone you never wished to be? Someone you even disliked?”
Indeed. Charmaine’s character was never one I applauded. But opportunity comes rarely.“People change, Tate.”
“Not you. Not like this,ma cherie,” he ventured, his voice full of longing, and her heart pounded at his endearment. “I don’t know how you have accomplished this—shall we call it transformation? Or why. But I will.”
“Do not meddle, sir, in my business. This is my quest.”
