The cold, metallic October sky doused the room with its morning light. Marguerite lay in her husband's embrace, staring at the thinly veiled windows until a purple shadow danced before her eyes. She lay on his side of the bed with her head resting just beneath his chin, and his arm slung loosely over the small of her back. She dared not raise her head in case she disturbed him, but she could hear his even breathing, and feel the gentle rise and fall of his chest beneath her.
She had given herself, once more, to him. Marguerite had not led a sheltered life in Paris – she had listened to mistresses, some of them famous, back stage at the Theatre, and joined in the gossip that usually took over at the end of her salons. She knew how marriage was regarded merely as a contract, made for money or connections, not love; how the word 'obligation' was heard more than 'passion' when husbands spoke of their wives. Yet Marguerite felt in her heart that she could never fall into that trap: she saw herself as choosing to share her life and her body with Percy, her husband, rather than signing herself over as so much property. The comments made about his wealth, his title, and even his nationality - "Well, they do say the grass is greener in England" – did not make her doubt her choice. She knew why she had married him, even if others could only find ulterior motives.
Onlysomething was obscuring Marguerite's happiness; a secret was looming overhead like a thundercloud, threatening to release the truth in a deluge that she couldn't hope to stop. How could she tell Percy? To the ears of her 'friends', those members of her salon who had been instrumental in the whole affair, it all sounded perfectly acceptable, and they had exonerated her from any blame: "The Marquis deserved it, Margot," they had scoffed; "he brought it on himself, and would have been brought to justice eventually."
Yet she couldn't forgive herself, or make herself believe that she had merely been a tool in somebody else's machinations. How could she seek the understanding of a man who had been her husband for just under a day, when she could barely comprehend in her own tortured mind all that had happened?
There would soon be blood on her hands, she knew, and she had to tell Percy before somebody else did. Earlier, when he had talked of being swept up in the spirit of the revolution, she had been afraid that he had already heard, but then he had pacified her instead of confronting her, and so Marguerite had let the moment pass.
"Percy?" She whispered, finally raising her head. His eyes were closed, but she could tell from the barely perceptible flickering of those heavy eyelids that he was awake, or at least only napping. "Can I talk to you? C'est important."
She expected some light-hearted quip, a schoolboy innuendo about what could be important, but he said nothing. Slowly those blue eyes of his, which she had learned could betray his every innermost feeling unless he masked them somehow, opened to look into hers, and the expression that slipped over his features chilled her perhaps more than if he had pushed her away: his eyes had fallen into that lazy, distant gaze, and his mouth was held in a lightly mocking smirk. She had seen him study others from behind that mask – her zealous male acquaintances at her salon, for instance – but she had never before been on the receiving end of his aloof regard, and it scared her.
"Percy?"
"La! m'dear," he sighed; "it's far too early for serious discussion. I always feel that a similar rule should apply to debates and arguments as regulates the consumption of alcohol: never before ten."
"I don't wish to argue, Sir Percy," she began, slowly, "only to share –"
He stopped her measured words with a finger held lightly against her lips. "We haven't even reached a whole day of matrimony yet, Margot; words should be still be unnecessary."
Marguerite let out a quick sigh of frustration and anxiety. How she wished she could keep delaying the inevitable. Perhaps if they were to leave Paris this very morning, nobody would be able to interfere! That flicker of hope was instantly quenched, however, as the voices that troubled her were not those of interfering gossips, but of her heart. She studied those features before her, still so lovingly familiar beneath that sudden condescending expression, and wondered if he would accept what she told him. He had said that he had no right to talk of the revolution to a daughter of France, but did he really grasp the full truth in his words?
Marguerite tried to mentally piece together exactly how it had all come about: had she spoken out first, or had the denunciation been suggested to her? Either way, her actions hadn't been intentionally malicious: she had wanted humiliation, not death, for the Marquis, and she had never imagined that his family would be implicated also. And surely, surely there was some truth in what her friends had told her – more people than she had known of the Marquis' letters to Austria. St Cyr had taken a risk at a dangerous time, the eventual outcome almost guaranteed. But whether she told herself that her part in the denunciation had been only one link in a long chain, or that her love for her brother and her wish to avenge his humiliation had been twisted by a third party, Marguerite couldn't escape that heavy burden of responsibility.
"When will it be time for words?" She asked, laying her head back against the rumpled linen of her husband's shirt, surrendering for the moment to her fear.
Percy drew his arms tightly around her shoulders, kissing her hair and then tucking the crown of her head beneath his chin, in a strangely protective gesture. "Pas encore," he murmured.