Where the Light Falls(38)

Outside, they leaned against the wall of the building, its cold stone façade shielding them a bit from the wind that whipped across the square. Several feet away, by the front entrance, a crowd of sans-culottes had begun to gather. Word had spread throughout the arrondissement that Robespierre and Danton were inside, and the people hoped to catch a glimpse of their idols at the end of the evening. By their secluded side entrance, André and his lovely companion stood removed from the growing crowd, their breaths visible in the chilly air and their faces illuminated by the flickering shadows of the fires the crowd had started.

She had claimed overheating inside, but André suspected that that had been only an excuse to avoid someone, perhaps an overzealous admirer. Based on her shivering, he assumed that she was no longer warm. “Take my coat.”

She did not protest as he draped his frock coat over her bare, narrow shoulders. “Thank you.” She smiled up at him, tucking her hands into the coat pockets.

André looked down at her face, lit up in the hazy glow of the nearby street lanterns. “You know, I haven’t gotten your name.”

“Sophie de Vincennes.”

A noble name. André nodded, studying her delicate features more closely. “I’m not familiar with the name. From where does your family come?”

“Oh, it’s not my family’s name. It’s my husband’s.”

André felt his whole body slump; so she was married.

“Or rather, I should say, my late husband’s.”

“Late husband?” André repeated; she was too young to be a widow. But then again, the Revolution had no doubt made hundreds of young widows with noble surnames.

She nodded. “Monsieur le Comte de Vincennes did not survive to see this glorious Revolution.” She rocked back on her heels as she said it, her tone emotionless.

“I am sorry. It was not my business to pry.”

She continued to look up at him, a quizzical smile brightening her previously cool blue eyes. “Bad men have to die as well as good men, don’t they?”

A curious statement, André thought, but he did not wish to offend her by inquiring further, so he changed the subject. “Do you live in Paris, Comtesse de Vincennes?”

“Please, call me Sophie. Or citizeness, even.” The sarcasm in her voice matched her half smile, and she continued: “The countess was the wife who came before me. She, too, is now expired.”

André nodded, looking over her shoulder at the crowd, still growing in number by the front steps. He blew on his hands, his own body beginning to shiver without his jacket.

“I do live in Paris now,” she said. “My uncle moved me here when Jean-Baptiste, the darling count, died. He said he could better protect me that way.”

André turned back to Sophie. “I have rented lodging in the city as well, just a little to the east, near Saint-Paul.”

“You mean the Pauline Temple of Reason,” Sophie corrected him, another wry smile tugging on her lovely lips. André laughed and then they stood opposite each other in silence for several moments, watching the crowd nearby. One of the men had brought the tricolor flag and hung it outside the entrance. A cluster of several sans-culottes began singing the national anthem, while others cried out insults against Citizen Capet and began dancing in a crudely formed circle.

Sophie broke the silence between them. “It was strange not to have Christmas this year, wasn’t it?”

André nodded, turning back to look into her pale, unblinking eyes.

“I sang carols to myself anyway. I didn’t care, and no one else had to hear them.” She smirked, shrugging her shoulders. Her frame looked so small in his uniform jacket. “Maman used to sing carols to us in the sleigh on the way to Christmas Mass. I especially loved the one about the shepherds who walked through the night to see the little infant.”

André knew the tune of which she spoke, and he began to sing from his own childhood memory: “All through the day, and all through the night.”

She joined him, their voices weaving into one melody: “With nothing to guide them but heaven’s light.”

Looking at each other, they both began to laugh at the same time.

“So you know that one?” Sophie blinked, her head dropping to one side. She looked charming, even in his military jacket.

“Of course I do. Remy used to sing carols until my father would lose his temper and send him out of the room.”

Remy. André felt a tinge of guilt—he should probably go find his brother and ensure that he hadn’t gotten himself into trouble elsewhere in the city. He had known, before they’d arrived this evening, that Remy had been in the mood to fight. But when he looked down at Sophie, her cheeks tinged pink by the frigid night air, her light eyes fixed on his with sudden interest, André found himself not yet ready to leave. Not until she did.