Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne

'Because of me?'

'Yes. I have sought you all the way from England. I learned at Plymouth that you had gone to France and so I came.'

'How did you find me? You had me followed, is that it?' She thought suddenly of the black cab.

'By no means. I have some connections – among others at the Ministry of Police. Maillocheau, citizen Fouché's secretary, has some obligation to me. Your description was enough – especially since you arrived in company with so remarkable a man as the renowned Surcouf – and by the by, I'm still not sure how you managed to board the King of the Corsairs. It is not given to everyone to lead the sea tiger on a leash.'

The atmosphere relaxed. Despite herself, Marianne smiled, remembering her friend of a day. She had thought of him more than once and always with a kind of tenderness that belonged to someone she could have loved. But she would not let Beaufort use him to get the better of her and dismissed the Corsair with a wave of her hand.

'So,' she said, 'you sought me, you have found me and you are trying to persuade me to leave this house. May I ask where you would have me go?'

Again there was silence, inhabited by the living presence of the fire. The scent of burning pine logs filled the room with warm, peppery fragrance. In spite of herself, Marianne found her eyes captured and held by the American's blue ones. She stood and faced him, like a sparrow mesmerized by a bird of prey – only the falcon's claws were, all at once, oddly gentle on her shoulders. She made no move to shake them off.

With a movement too quick and light for Marianne to be aware what he was doing, Jason unfastened the satin ribbons holding the black cloak and slipped it off her shoulders. The heavy dark folds sank down to the ground, and the slender green form, released, seemed to shoot up before him like a slim fountain from a black rock. He contemplated her for a moment and Marianne stood, riveted by that sparkling gaze, not daring to move. It seemed to her, though why she should have such a strange idea she could not have said, that if she moved at all or said a word something rare and precious would be broken. In the end, it was he who sighed and spoke first.

'You are too beautiful,' he said sadly. 'It is not right for anyone to be so beautiful. It is perilous – yes, perilous. While you stay here, you will be in danger. You must leave this house, this land – or else, sooner or later, you will suffer for it. Sirens are not made to tread earthly roads. They are daughters of the sea and their happiness can come only from the sea – and I have never met anyone who was so much like a siren as you! Come with me to the sea, Marianne—'

Drawn by the depths of the green eyes looking into his and by the freshness of the lips slightly parted to reveal moist, shining teeth, and mastered perhaps by a passion beyond his control, he made a move to draw her to him. But Marianne recoiled with an instinctive fear from the threatened kiss. The spell was broken. The sparrow shook out its feathers.

'This is the second time,' she said coldly, 'that you have offered to take me away. Why should you imagine I am more likely to agree now than on my wedding night?'

'Because you are alone and friendless, a prey for all dangers and all snares. Do you think you can go on with this fugitive life, hiding under borrowed names, at the mercy of anyone who cares to blackmail or betray you? What I am offering you is a free life in a new land, my own. I do not even ask you to be mine – merely to come with me. I have a ship—'

'I know!' Marianne cried. 'And I know too how you came by it. Do you think I could ever forget that? No, Jason Beaufort, that memory will burn within me as long as I live, as cruel as the hatred—'

'I am not asking you to forget,' Beaufort said impatiently. 'I am asking you to come with me, to let me save you. I swear to you you are in danger here.'

'France and England are at war. The English law will not come for me here.'

'It is not that! You are in danger from something far worse than the English law.'

'What kind of danger?'

'I cannot tell you. But it is serious.'

'If you want me to believe you, you must tell me what it is.'

'I cannot. It is not possible—'

'Then I am not interested. Nor am I interested in your warnings. Besides, supposing I am in danger, why are you so anxious to save me?'

'Perhaps because I have never been able to bear to see a work of art destroyed, and you are the loveliest of all – or, maybe just because I want very much to give you back the equivalent of what I took from you. Come with me, Marianne, I swear – I promise you, by all I hold most sacred, that you will not regret it.'

Abruptly, Marianne turned her back on him. Folding her arms, she began to walk up and down, struggling against the insidious feeling of peace invading her, against a curious longing to listen to this man and believe him, trying to whip up her anger once again.

'It is all too easy, I must say! According to you, it is enough to explain a little and say you're sorry to wipe out everything! Then all you have to do is hold out your hand magnanimously and say: "Come with me, I wish to make amends" and I will be ready to follow you blindly. Yes – I must say, it would be too easy! But you should have thought of all this before you robbed me and degraded me. Now, it is too late, do you hear, too late! I would rather live in wretchedness, like a hunted criminal, I would rather die a thousand deaths than take the least thing from you! Can't you understand that I hate you?'

She spat the last words in his face and had the bitter satisfaction of seeing him whiten. She triumphed in it as though at a victory, vaguely hoping for some sign of weakness which would put him altogether at her mercy and allow her to crush him. But this man of iron did not know how to weaken. He merely shrugged and turned slowly to pick up the big, many-caped black cloak which lay on a chair and throw it over his arm. When he looked at her again, his face was once more expressionless. The warm light had gone out of his eyes.

'You have understood nothing, and learned nothing, even now, have you?' he said grimly. 'You still think of yourself as the queen of a besieged empire. You think that things and men should bow to your wishes and merely thank you politely when you kick them like a naughty child. I fear you may soon find yourself cruelly disappointed – more cruelly even than in the past. But you are your own mistress. Farewell, then, Marianne Mallerousse, do as you like. But should you—'

'I shall not!' Marianne broke in, stiff with pride and anger. But he seemed not to hear and went on calmly:

'But should you change your mind – or wish to know the land I'm offering you for your home, a land of sunshine where the cotton grows and the Negroes sing, where you can hold up your head as a free woman, remember I remain in Paris for some little time yet, at the Hôtel de l'Empire in the rue Cerutti. I shall be waiting—'

'I shall not come!'

'You may – think about it, Marianne. Anger is a bad counsellor and you are in real danger. I desire only your peace and happiness, do not forget that.'

The black cloak swirled as he flung it round his shoulders. He went swiftly to the door. Marianne did not move. She remained quite still by the fire but just as, with one last look, he was about to leave her, she stopped him.

'One thing more! Was – was Selton completely destroyed?'

Now it was Jason Beaufort's turn to be cruel, to feel the need to give back hurt for hurt to her who stood like a rigid, diaphanous statue in her shimmering draperies, and see those stony green eyes falter, however little.

'No,' he said harshly. 'There was quite enough left for me to get a good price for it. And to enable me to get a good, fast vessel.'

Suffering in her turn, Marianne closed her eyes so that he should not see her tears. She wished that not one stone of the house that she had loved had been left standing.

'Go – go quickly.'

She did not see the move he made towards her, or his look of angry pain, nor did she hear him sigh. She only heard him say:

'Have the courage to look things in the face – and do not stupidly refuse what is your due.'

She did not open her eyes until a blast of freezing cold air made her shiver. The french door was swinging gently open to the empty night. A gust of wind swirled into the summer-house, raising the ashes in the hearth. Marianne bent slowly to pick up her cloak and wrapped it round her shoulders, huddling into its comforting warmth as though for refuge. Outside, Jason Beaufort was striding swiftly towards the lighted house, his great black cloak flying in the wind like the sails of the Flying Dutchman.

Marianne felt suddenly icy cold. She wished he had not gone, that he was still there to talk to her about that unknown country, full of sunshine and plaintive singing, a land where she could be a different person without ceasing to be herself. She ran to the door and opened her mouth to call him back – but no, she could not do it. She could not go with a man who had bought her for a night like some creature of the streets, a man who had coldly robbed her to repair his own fortunes. She could not go aboard the ship Selton had paid for. For a moment, she had been tempted but it was over. She would go on the way she had chosen and if it proved stony, so much the worse.

Yet, one thought still nagged at her mind. Why had he said she was in danger? Why had he urged her to flee? To that, there was no answer but as she too made her way back to the house, her memory kept repeating like a refrain: 'Hôtel de l'Empire, rue Cerutti – Hôtel de l'Empire, rue Cerutti—' A funny thing, memory.

The town berlin belonging to the Prince of Benevento sped as swiftly as the rough-shod greys could draw it along the promenade de Longchamp, deserted at this late hour. It was eight o'clock in the evening. In summer, the promenade would have been crowded with horses and carriages for some hours yet but the dark, the cold and the snow had long since driven Parisians indoors, the bourgeois to their supper and cards, the fashionable world to the large parties which took place almost every night at this time of the year. Yesterday, it had been the Prince de Cambacéré's, tonight, it was the duc de Cadore, who had replaced Talleyrand as Foreign Minister. This, thought Marianne, was no doubt the reason why Talleyrand was sitting beside her in the berlin rather than dressing for the duke's ball.

Ensconced in the mulberry coloured cushions which matched the paintwork on the great wheels of the carriage, she stared out indifferently at the snow-covered landscape. Longchamp was quite familiar to her now from many drives with the princess and little Charlotte and she did not greatly care to know where she was being taken. Talleyrand had told her that morning:

'Tonight, I mean to take you to the house of a very good friend of mine, and a great lover of music. I want you to be beautiful. Not that that will be difficult but I should like to see you in pink.'

It was the first time the prince had expressed any preference with regard to her clothes and Marianne was surprised, especially since, until that moment, she had believed his taste to incline rather towards cold colours, like blue and green, and she had no pink dress.

'You shall have one tonight,' the prince assured her and sure enough, later in the day a gown had arrived from Leroy which, though extremely simple, Marianne thought perfect. The dress was made of very pale pink satin, frosted with silver but with no other decoration. With it went a great hooded cloak of the same stuff, quilted and bordered with ermine, and a matching muff. The effect, on her, was stupendous, as was proved to her by the smile of satisfaction bestowed on her by the prince as she came down to meet him.

'I believe,' he told her, 'that tonight will be another triumph for you – perhaps your greatest triumph of all—'

Marianne's voice had certainly earned her a very flattering degree of success at private parties but it was a success which bore no relation with what she hoped to meet with in the theatre. She had the good sense to realize that what she had achieved so far was simply a fashionable success, and by its very nature fleeting. For some time, too, she had been feeling less confident of herself, and had worked with less enthusiasm at her singing. In addition, there was the persistent black cab always on her heels wherever she went. It was beginning to haunt her, like some inescapable presage of disaster. She had thought once or twice of going out on foot to see if anyone approached her but she had not dared, held back by a fear which she could not have explained. What was more serious was that, although she had mentioned it in her report, Fouché had made no comment and now Marianne did not know what to think. The prince had not mentioned it, either. It was all very bewildering. It was in her mind to go and see Fouché in the morning.