40. Ambush
Putting their heads together over dessert, the co-conspirators worked out a plan that called for Sébastien to 'tear himself away' early, citing as his excuse the need to respond to emails and texts that had accumulated over the course of the day. Bonnie was to take her own leave only after an interval long enough to avoid any suggestion of their departures being connected. While she remained behind, inconspicuously topping off her meal with a café noir, he would be using the time to transfer the Lavallières' photos to the flat-screen so they would be ready for inspection immediately upon her arrival.
When Sébastien finally pushed away from the table, a general murmur of protest arose at his breaking up so convivial a party before time, and he was enjoined to stay for coffee, but he maintained he had already neglected the demands of his business too long, and could not procrastinate further, much to his regret.
"We won't keep you, then," Madame Vincent said. "But, later, if your work allows, feel free to come by my suite for a night cap. Henri is stopping by, and Isabelle, too, I believe."
Sébastien nodded acquiescence. "I make no promises, though. I anticipate being occupied the rest of the evening." The words, though ostensibly addressed to his hostess, were accompanied by a provocative look at Isabelle, who returned an infinitesimal lift of her chin. He saluted the company then with a last smile and parting wave, and was gone.
Bonnie nursed her coffee, biding her time as, some quickly, some slowly, her dinner companions finished their after-dinner drinks and made their goodbyes. When some twenty minutes had passed, and their number had been reduced by four, she decided her moment had come. Slipping into the seat just vacated by the French Cultural Attaché, she smiled gratefully at Madame Vincent. "I'm afraid I must be off, too. It's been such a lovely evening. Thank you so much for inviting me."
"Not at all, my dear. I am so very happy you came. I know it is something of an inconvenience for you, staying in town so late."
"Do you not live in the city, then?" came Isabelle's voice from over her shoulder. "Forgive the intrusion," she went on, as Bonnie turned to her. "I couldn't help but hear, and curiosity did the rest."
"I live outside the District, in Virginia."
"You have a long commute ahead of you?"
"Usually, but I'm not going home tonight." As Isabelle's brows climbed her forehead, Bonnie hastened to explain, "I've arranged to stay overnight with some cousins."
"Ah! How fortunate for you, to have so accommodating a family."
"Yes, I am very lucky. And speaking of family…" Bonnie turned back to her hostess. "I won't say 'good-bye,' Madame, but only 'au revoir,' as I hope to see you again at the gallery. I plan to have a second look over the weekend and I'm sure, once my grandfather Booth hears about your portrait of Angela, he is going to want to come with me. They are very dear friends, those two."
Madame Vincent's face blossomed into a warm smile. "But, we must leave nothing to chance! If you only knew how I have longed to meet the celebrated Agent Booth! Such stories Angela tells about him! And, I confess, I have read the novel based on his and your grandmother Brennan's great romance, and, yes, seen the movie, too. I would not miss meeting him for the world!"
Bonnie, having promised to phone to arrange all the details, gathered her evening wrap and clutch, and was already congratulating herself on a neat getaway, when Bear unaccountably pushed to his feet. "I'll just walk you out and see you into a cab."
"What? No!" She heard the dismay in her voice, and tried her best to play it down. "I mean, there's no need for you to trouble yourself, really! You… ah… haven't finished your coffee, and besides, I'm not leaving right away. I… um… have to make a brief stop at… you know…" She let the sentence dangle lamely as she swiftly rounded Isabelle's chair, passed behind a still-standing Bear, and scurried to the door and safety. When she ventured one last look and 'goodbye' over her shoulder, it was to see several faces staring after her in mild perplexity and concern.
It was just as well she did visit the ladies' before heading upstairs as Isabelle swung through the door as she was washing her hands. "All right, then?" the older woman asked solicitously. "You rushed from the room so quickly, we feared you must have come over ill."
Bonnie forced a cheery smile. "Right as rain, as you see. Thank you for checking, but now, if you'll excuse me, I really must run."
"Of course, my dear. You won't want to keep your cousins waiting."
As she stood fidgeting before the bank of elevators, Bonnie tried to convince herself she'd imagined the mocking inflection Isabelle had given the word "cousins," just as she was imagining the feel of eyes trained upon her back. She sighed with relief when her elevator arrived at last, only to castigate herself a moment later for having chosen the express car to the upper floors. She ought to have taken the stairs to the first floor, and hopped an elevator from there. As a covert operative, she was a disaster. How Eddie would tsk-tsk, if he knew!
Room 2704 proved to be easy to find, only a few feet from the elevator along a thickly-carpeted, somber-hued corridor. Bonnie rapped sharply on the door a few times, and Sébastien appear in short order, a look of unmistakable delight on his face. He had dispensed with his jacket and tie, and even his shoes, she noticed, as he ushered her in on stockinged feet. The room beyond the short entryway was immense and luxuriously appointed, with a king-size bed dominating one end, a sitting area taking up the other, and a fully-equipped desk in between along the exterior wall. "This is very nice! You must be very comfortable here."
"Tolerably." He gestured her toward the sofa and chairs arranged opposite a wall-mounted flat-screen currently displaying a vividly-colored bucolic scene. "You were so long in coming, I thought you must have changed your mind."
She felt his hands at her shoulders, ready to ease off her wrap, and after a brief hesitation, surrendered it to him, along with her bag. "I had a little trouble getting away, and I may as well confess, I could have handled it better. I think Isabelle suspects the truth."
He nodded, unperturbed. "She's sharp, that one. Not much gets by her, but don't worry. She rarely acts on her suspicions."
Bonnie was walking away before he'd finished speaking, irresistibly drawn to the image on the screen. A blushing shepherdess and her swain were lovingly entangled beneath the sheltering boughs of a venerable oak, their disordered clothes brilliant splashes of blue, pink and yellow against the forest green background. "This is by Blanchard?" she said, turning to Sébastien, only to find him leaning over the low-slung table behind her, pouring a golden-brown liquid into snifter glasses.
"Hmm? No, sorry! When I gave up hope of you, I decided to examine again the Boucher paintings I plan to bid on Saturday." He extended one of the drinks for her to take, and when she would have declined, wheedled, "Surely you won't be so unkind as to make me drink alone!" He set the liquid in his own glass swirling, and, raising the snifter to his nose, inhaled deeply. "Vintage Armagnac, smooth and fragrant. You must try at least a sip!"
She was minded to stand her ground, even to remarking that he had already imbibed enough over dinner, but she could not bring herself to be rude when he had gone out of his way for her. She accepted the drink and tipped just a bit of the brandy into her mouth. "Mmm," she said, mostly to please him. "Very nice. So, Sébastien… the Blanchard paintings?"
"Yes, yes, of course," he said, easily, "but what is the hurry, after all?" He stepped around the table, and sinking onto the sofa, patted the cushion beside him. "Come, have a seat. Let us savor our wine, and spend a little last while together. Unless…" he went on, as she shifted irresolutely from foot to foot, "you have merely been pretending to enjoy my company these last three days, secretly wishing me to perdition the whole time?"
"Of course not," she protested, half truthfully and half out of politeness. There was no help for it, then: she rounded the other side of the table, and perched on the edge of the couch, the snifter cradled in her hands.
"How very prim and proper you are," Sébastien laughed. "The very picture of maidenly virtue! Come now, you can unbend with me! Put you feet up! That is as pretty a pair of shoes as I have yet to see, but I'll wager they pinch unmercifully."
Bonnie obliged so far as to settle deeper into the sofa, her lower back against the cushions. Sébastien toasted this concession, and, raising the glass to his lips, watched her over the rim. "Do you know," he said, lightly, "I think, despite your brave words earlier, you're not at your ease being here alone with me. Tucked up there in your corner, you look very like a little mouse expecting the big, bad cat to pounce at any minute."
"Well, then, looks are deceiving," she said, a bit stiffly. "I don't feel any anxiety whatever where you're concerned. You're not the predator you're made out to be."
"You're so sure of that, are you? It's true I'm not a monster…" He reached out a hand, and ran the back of his fingers from her bare shoulder to her elbow. "… but I am a man, my dear, with a man's natural desires."
His expression was so over-the-top suggestive as to be practically comical. "If you're offering to show me your 'etchings,' I'm going to have to pass. That's not what I came here to see, as you well know."
"And see the Blanchard paintings you will, all in good time. For the moment, here we are, two healthy, compatible, consenting adults, neither of us attached. At least…" He cast a pointed look at her left hand. "No wedding band."
Bonnie glanced down at the offending finger which might even now have been sporting Trev's ring. "I'm… ah… engaged. Not officially yet, but soon."
Sébastien's smiled widened. "You really cannot lie at all convincingly. Stay, stay," he said, catching her gently by the arm when she made to rise. "If you cannot like the idea, you have only to say so. But, why not give it a chance? Relax. Let go…" He leaned in toward her, his eyes on her mouth, the smell of liquor on his breath. "Just a kiss to start with…"
She shrank away, and angling to one side, managed to scramble up and past him, the brandy sloshing with the sudden movement and nearly spilling on her dress. She set the snifter back on the table, and backed away. "No, Sébastien! No! I'm sorry if I somehow gave you the impression that I'd be open to… to that sort of overture, but…" She shook her head firmly. "You can either show me the paintings, or I'm leaving. Now."
He appeared to take her rejection in good part. "Very well," he said, with a shrug and a dry smile. "You can't blame a man for trying." He picked up his vid-screen from its charging stand and began swiping across its surface with rapid strokes. On the flat-screen, photos of paintings, some showing their totality, others, their details, followed swiftly one after another, the stream too quick for more than a general sense of shapes and colors. A few dizzying moments later, an image zipped onto the screen and was allowed to remain. Sébastien stood, and leaving the table between them, held the vid-screen out to her. "This is the first of six. When you're ready, swipe left for the next one."
Bonnie took the device, happy to discover it was the same make and model as her own. She waited, somewhat warily, for Sébastien to come round to her side, but he seemed content to address himself to his brandy. "I won't be long," she promised.
He waved this away. "Take your time."
She turned back to the photo, and with that, the room, and everyone in it, faded away. The first painting was disappointing both in its subject, a group of sumptuously-dressed revelers in an idealized country setting, and its execution, which showed neither flair nor creativity. The second, also a landscape, was more promising because more personally-observed. It depicted the droll scene of a countrywoman holding a boy by the seat of his pants in an attempt to keep him from diving into a shallow pond while, on one marshy bank, their dog snuffled in the undergrowth and up in the field above the pond, a lone figure worked the soil. The third, a barnyard scene, and the fourth, a portrait of an elderly man, held no interest for her, but the fifth made her catch her breath.
Against a nursery setting, a beautiful young woman bent over her sleeping infant's cradle, her classic features illuminated from without by a shaft of sunlight and from within by joy and adoration. Though sentimental, the painting captured the powerful love of a new mother for her child, and had obviously been executed with feeling, but what excited Bonnie most was that the blond, rosy-cheeked woman had been pictured in profile. She was about to zoom in on that detail, when she felt hot hands settle on her shoulders and begin to knead her neck. She jerked, nearly dropping the vid-screen in the process, and tried to shake herself free. "Sébastien, stop that at once! What do you think you're doing?"
"Helping you loosen up a little," he said, persisting in his massage. "Go on with what you were doing. Don't mind me."
"I said, stop!" She twisted out of his grasp, and once several feet away, rounded on him angrily. "I've already made myself crystal clear. I'm not interested!"
He stalked toward her, his steps measured. "An excellent show of reluctance! I can almost believe you mean it. But we both know it is all part of the game. You pretend to resist to add spice to the chase."
"No, Sébastien!" Bonne matched her retreat to his advance as best she could, but she was hampered by having to negotiate, backwards, an unfamiliar space and kept losing ground to him. "That is not what is going on here! Listen to me: I do not want you. I am not being coy. I am not playing hard to get. Not, not, not! Get it?"
She had backed her way out of the sitting area and into the middle of the room. The short passage to the exit gaped invitingly close, and she realized with a sinking heart that the better part of valor demanded she leave as quickly as possible. Casting a swift glance around, she spotted her wrap and clutch on the credenza along the interior wall, and, abandoning the vid-screen there, was about to snatch them up when Sébastien caught her by the upper arm, and swung her back round to him.
"Cruel Bonnie," he said, trapping her against his chest. "After all I have done for you, you would try to skip out without so much as a kiss? This is what I deserve from you?"
"Let me go!" Bonnie struggled and squirmed to get her arms up and under his so she could attempt to break his hold, but without success. "I mean it! Let go, now!"
He ignored her, nuzzling his face into her neck, nibbling his way up her jaw and over to her ear, murmuring drunkenly the while how good he would make it for her, how she would have no regrets. When he moved to cover her mouth with his, she reared back as far as she could, and turned her face into her shoulder. "For the last time, Sébastien, stop it! Don't make me have to hurt you. I don't want to, but I will."
His only answer was to weave the fingers of one hand into her hair, and try to guide her head back round for his embrace. She knew then he was well beyond the appeal of reason, and she had no option but to act. She made herself relax, and feigning a weakening resistance, lifted her right leg along the outside of his left. Then, just as he swooped in triumphantly to claim her mouth, she stomped down on his instep with all of her might.
He released her with a bellow, hopping back on his one good foot, while his hands reached down to cradle the injured one. Bonnie did not let herself think of the kind, agreeable Sébastien she had known over the past few days; she had been trained for this moment, and she knew she could not afford second guesses. She grasped his ears, and pulling his head down forcefully, smashed her knee into his face. He crumpled to the carpet, and lay there groaning, his fingers splayed over his nose, the back of his hands quickly streaked red with blood.
She could hear her trainer's voice in her head, shouting, "Disable and go!" but even with her wrap and bag in her arms, and her instincts urging flight, she couldn't reconcile herself to leaving him writhing in pain on the floor. She hovered irresolutely, her heart hammering more loudly in her ears than it had ever done before. It was only when she heard "Beaumont, open up," that she realized the pounding was coming from the hall. She flew to the door, and throwing it wide, saw Bear, one fist raised as if to knock again. "Oh, thank God," she said, grasping him by the arm and towing him over the threshold. "I swear I didn't want to, Bear, but, oh! I think I may have broken his nose!"