Soon she found herself in the heart of a vaguely familiar neighborhood, and her pace slowed. Perhaps the absinthe café was around here. Or was it the brothel?
The atmosphere had transformed with the daylight: bustling, vibrant—a man’s shoulder clipped her—rude. The distraction of people rushing around her, getting on with their individual days, was a welcome one. These people were doers, not thinkers. When one stripped away the trappings of class and wealth, she saw they were her people.
In the next block, she happened upon a fruit stand offering assorted varieties of juicy fall apples and pears. Of a sudden, she was ravenous.
“Bonjour,Madame”—She wracked her brain for the correct French phrasing—“combien coûte?” She was certain she’d left out a connective word or two, but it would have to do.
The fruit seller—who hadn’t yet acknowledged Mariana as she polished her wares one by one—tilted her head, finally gifting Mariana with her attention. She shifted on her feet beneath the intensity of the woman’s brown-eyed scrutiny.
“Anglaise?” the woman all but spat.
“Oui,” she replied, reconsidering the offerings of this particular fruit seller. This woman might not be her people.
She eyed Mariana up and down for a solid minute before saying, “Unsovereign.”
It was the woman’s use of English that first struck her, but it was the woman’s price that took her completely aback. Asovereignfor a piece of fruit worth less than a penny?
She noticed a few sets of curious eyes observing the transaction. Of course. She looked every bit the lady.
Instead of voicing her opposition to this highway robbery, she reached inside her reticule and pulled out a single, gold sovereign. A canny smile stretched the woman’s thin, cracked lips as she reached for the coin. Mariana held onto the sovereign for a beat longer than necessary and watched the woman’s smile slip as they engaged in a subtle tug of war.
“Duex,” Mariana said, holding up two fingers with her free hand.
The fruit seller shrugged an indifferent shoulder, and Mariana released the coin, somewhat mollified. At least, she would have an appleanda pear out of the deal.
As she took her time selecting the biggest, juiciest fruit, and the fruit seller resumed ignoring her, Mariana noticed a motionless male figure on the periphery of her vision. It might have been her imagination, but it seemed the man was intent on . . . her. Her eyes darted right, and he was gone.
The tension bunching her shoulders together released and slid down her back. These spy games were creating menace where there was none. No choice but to act like a reasonable adult woman, she crunched down on the apple and set her feet into motion.
As she wound through the Left Bank, her thoughts settled, and agiddypleasure fizzed through her. Ladies didn’t eat apples whilst perambulating foreign cities alone. Two, possibly three, rules broken, she was certain. Her etiquette teachers had never explicitly enumerated these rules, but she was certain they didn’t think they needed to.
She took another bite of apple.Scrumptious. This forbidden apple might be the best she’d ever tasted.
When she paused to better peruse the wares of a book shop, her peripheral vision again caught a glimpse of the male figure. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. It was most definitely the same man.
She tossed the half-eaten apple into an alley and searched the lane for a hackney. When none was to be found, she thought to pick up her pace. That would be the height of stupidity. The man would know that she knew she was being followed.
She cut an instinctive left into a dark sliver of an alley and immediately regretted her decision. She would be alone with her stalker. She had only a few seconds before he caught up to her.
She scanned the ground for a weapon before chancing upon a thick plank of wood. Her fingers closed around one end, and a rotten chunk crumbled in her hand. Likely, it wouldn’t inflict enough damage for her to escape. But it was too late to explore other options. It would have to do.
Her back against the damp, stone wall, she went stock still and waited, the flimsy plank raised above her head and at the ready. Just as her arms began to tire, the man slinked around the corner. Without a second thought, she swiped the plank of wood across his head, knocking him off balance. Before her would-be assailant could recover his equilibrium, a surge of adrenaline propelled her down the alleyway, her heart racing faster than her feet.
She’d already fled a good ten yards when she heard, “Christ almighty!”
She stopped dead in her tracks. That voice was most definitely not that of a Parisian cutpurse. In fact, it was unmistakably English.
Slowly, she turned to face the man, who was now hunched against the patch of wall she’d just vacated and rubbing the back of his head. She recognized him as the croupier, or whoever he was today. But that wasn’t what arrested her attention: she knew that voice. His was a voice from her past. But where from her past?
Against her better judgment, she began moving toward him, picking her way across murky puddles of filth she hadn’t noticed a few seconds ago. The alley had gone eerily silent. Her hand tightened its grip on her wood plank, which she hadn’t realized she still held until now. He began to come into focus.
He was a tall man. Rangy . . . Wolfish. His head was topped by a flat cap with dark curls peeking out from beneath. The gray light of the alley and the brim of his cap conspired to obscure the details of his face.
“Are you injured?” she called out from a cautious distance.
A dry laugh escaped the man as he cut her a sidelong glance and removed a blood-smudged hand from the back of his head. Still, he didn’t utter a word. And she needed him to speak. She needed confirmation of what her ears had told her.
Her feet inched closer, as if she approached a wild and unpredictable animal, and she began to discern a familiarity in his profile, not only in his voice. Even though this was the same man she’d seen with both Nick and Villefranche, this feeling of familiarity ran deeper: she knew this man. But from where? Context continued to elude her.
