LITMIR.BIZ

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soon as Jacques had arrived in Paris, he’d quickly realised that the wedding dominated everything. The modistes and tailors were working every hour they could to keep up with the demand for finery from the rich. The mayor of Paris had hired all available artisans to work on the completion of the Arc de Triomphe, through which the imperial procession would pass on the great day. The military were constantly on parade, practising their ceremonial marches. Musicians were being sought from all quarters to fill the Champs-Élysées and the Tuileries gardens with melody during the celebrations. As he followed the well-spoken but rather desperate woman who was his guide along the rue de Rivoli towards the Louvre, Jacques noted with wonder that even Paris’s streets were being swept.

      She pulled up before the great public entrance of the Louvre, where crowds of visitors hurried to and fro.

      ‘We’ll have to pay to get in today,’ he warned her. ‘Can’t your business wait till tomorrow, when the place is open to the public for free?’

      She glanced up at him, agitated. ‘We cannot wait. Please, follow me.’ She hurried up to the curator guarding the door, who waved her through with a nod and a smile.

      So she was known here, registered Jacques. Intriguing indeed.

      Chapter Two

      As she led him inside, Sophie’s heart was pounding rather frantically. Not just with the nature of her task—though that was formidable enough—but because she hadn’t imagined, for one minute, that he would be so very—what? So very masculine? Of course you knew he would be a man, you idiot! So very handsome, then. Most irritatingly handsome. And he was laughing at her, which wasn’t surprising in the least. Her heart thumped. He would laugh even more once he knew the tremendous mess she was in.

      The Louvre’s interior was crowded, because a huge new mural of Napoleon’s victory at Marengo had just been put on display. Everywhere in here, there were reminders of Napoleon the conqueror, Napoleon the law-giver, Napoleon the emperor. And soon…Napoleon the bridegroom.

      She paused momentarily at the entrance to the Long Gallery, a vast, vaulted hall which would hold more than a thousand guests for the wedding ceremony. ‘This is the way we must go,’ she told Jacques rather curtly.

      He was still looking around. ‘Isn’t this the route the royal couple will take?’

      She nodded tersely. Please. No more questions, not yet. Then, from amongst the crowds, a grey-haired curator came hurrying up to her. ‘Mam’selle Sophie! You’ll have come, of course, to report on the Marengo painting to your father. How is he?’

      Jacques saw something tighten in her rather lovely face.

      ‘He is improving, Thierry, but—’ she glanced quickly at Jacques ‘—he is fretting about the wedding plans. He will not, unfortunately, be better in time for the ceremony.’ She was aware of Jacques watching her steadily. ‘I see the Marengo picture is a great success!’ she went on brightly. ‘Although really I expected it to be in the Salon Carré, with the other paintings of Napoleon’s victories.’

      ‘So did I, Mam’selle Sophie, but the Salon Carré is locked at present because, of course, it’s being prepared for the wedding ceremony itself.’ He spoke in hushed tones. ‘And the preparations have been thorough. For as you know, if anything were to offend our noble emperor—’ he swallowed nervously ‘—he would express his disapproval rather strongly.’

      Napoleon was famous for his rages. Jacques noticed Mam’selle Sophie turning distinctly pale. But then that bright, forced smile was back on her face. ‘I’m sure, Thierry, I can tell my father that everything is exactly as it should be.’

      ‘You can indeed, Mam’selle Sophie! Pray give him my best wishes!’

      She marched onwards and Jacques followed her, along the great gallery, past the throngs clustered round the new painting. Then the crowds thinned, and they were at the Salon Carré, where only a few candles could be seen burning dimly through the ornate wooden latticework of the great door. She looked at him almost in entreaty, he thought, an entreaty for silence; then she glanced round, reached in her pocket…and unlocked the door.

      How the devil did she have the key? mused Jacques. Certainly she was in no mood for idle chatter. Instead she led him swiftly into this vaulted inner sanctum, where two gilded bronze thrones stood behind a magnificent carved altar.

      All around the room were yet more paintings, of exquisite quality. She beckoned him in further, and hurriedly went to lock the door again.

      ‘You are rather taking my breath away, I must admit,’ he said. ‘Who exactly are you?’

      She pushed back the hood of her cloak. That hideous spinster’s cap fell back also, and he saw that some of her tightly pinned dark hair had come loose and was twining round the slender column of her throat. He could also see that her waist was of hand-span slenderness, and her breasts were heaving rather agitatedly, indeed quite delightfully, beneath her tight, high-necked bodice.

      ‘I will be honest with you, Jacques.’

      ‘You are taking a risk,’ he said, ‘trusting a stranger.’

      Her small chin jutted. ‘If you choose in any way to take advantage of my trust, I will call out, and say that I found you in here, intent on theft. Your punishment would not be light.’

      His eyes glinted. ‘Please continue to trust me, Mam’selle Sophie.’

      She flinched at his use of her name, but went on. ‘Very well. I am a servant—chief seamstress, in fact—at the Tuileries Palace. And my father is a deputy curator here.’ Her musical voice, he noted, was steady, but he could see the anxiety, the fear almost, that shadowed her lovely blue eyes.

      ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And both you and Thierry seem rather afraid of the emperor finding anything in here to provoke him on the day of his wedding. Is there any chance of that, mam’selle?’

      She drew in a deep breath. ‘At this point, Monsieur Jacques, I must take you yet further into my confidence.’

      ‘Let me guess.’ The artist—Jacques—had been looking around calmly at all the treasures in here, but now he turned to her, his dark eyes steady. ‘You’re planning a daredevil robbery, aren’t you?’

      ‘Please do not be ridiculous!’ Sophie clasped her hands together tightly. Ever since she’d set eyes on this man, she’d felt awkward, self-conscious. And it was absurd! She was a twenty-three-year-old woman, and used to dealing with the haughty staff of the Tuileries, sometimes even the emperor himself! ‘There is no question of any wrongdoing whatsoever,’ she went on emphatically. ‘But the problem, such as it is, means that some work has to be done in here in utter secrecy. As I’ve said, if word of this gets out, then I am in trouble. But so are you, and I take it that you are probably in various sorts of trouble and penniless anyway, living as you do!’

      She saw an answering flash of something else in his eyes then. Humour? Was he still finding all this amusing?

      ‘So,’ Sophie went on, fighting down the fresh thudding at her heart, ‘so, I will pay you what I can, which is not much. But my father, as deputy curator, has a certain amount of influence, and he will see, once our transaction is completed, that you get commissions in plenty. Do you agree, before I tell you what I require?’

      His eyes flickered over her, lazily, yet in a way that somehow made her pulse race. What was he doing, looking at her like that? She tried to stubbornly outstare him, yet found herself utterly distracted by his implacably male figure, his hands, his mouth—oh, Lord, that impossibly wicked mouth, that surely was curling even now, in a smile of derision.…

      She fixed her eyes rather desperately on the rakish stripes of his waistcoat. He drawled, ‘Promises are empty things. You said you will pay me what you can. I’d like to know how much.’

      Her voice was a little unsteady now. ‘I cannot afford more than two hundred francs.’

      He folded his arms. ‘That,’

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