Lyon. Elizabeth Amber
and turned to look up at her window.
Swiveling on the ball of one foot, she fell back against the wall and put a hand over her thumping heart. How long would he remain out there?
It didn’t matter, she told herself. She rarely left the house and Monsieur Valmont’s watchdogs were fierce. That stranger could watch this window for the next year for all she cared.
Ridiculous. As if he would. He’d affected her far more than she’d likely affected him. She was glad he’d gone, she decided.
Sliding down the wall, she crouched on her heels hugging her drawn-up knees. The drops were already beginning to warm her, dulling the sharp corners of reality. As usual, they had another effect—making her long for what she would not seek. A man’s touch.
Remembered sensation still hummed deep inside her most private feminine crevice. The wanting was worst than usual.
Because of him.
What had happened out there? How had it come to pass that she—the only female in the house who’d never had a man between her legs—had been violated by one tonight?
A horrible thought struck her.
Oh, God! Had he taken her first blood?! She hadn’t even considered that possibility. Stupid. Stupid!
Her knees hit the floor. She hunched her back as one hand dove under her skirts. Gingerly, she slipped a finger high between her legs, searching. The private folds gating her channel were slick. Juices, sticky and heady, coated her inner thighs.
He’d done this to her, made her body sob for him. Her forefinger dipped inside, a little deeper. Oh, please, please, where was it? Then her fingertip gently butted against what she sought. The delicate membrane. Her hymen. It still held.
She slumped in relief, more confused than ever. Withdrawing her hand, she wiped it on the linen that hung from her washstand. Had his shaft—or something of him—truly come inside her or not?
Pushing from the floor, she stood to peek out of the window again. The man was nowhere to be seen. She pressed her forehead to the cool windowpane, searching the quai more thoroughly. He was gone.
If only it had been possible to find out what he knew without a face-to-face conversation with him. But such a meeting would be impossible to arrange, even if he returned again.
She could just imagine asking Valmont’s servants to question him: Pardonnez-moi, monsieur, but could you tell me the identity of the woman you lay with tonight under the bridge? And also if you would be so kind, can you tell me if you are able to supply orgasms to women without touching them? Mademoiselle Juliette wishes to know.
Absurd!
Looking east, her eyes located a familiar building—the Hospice des Enfants Trouvés—The Hospital of Found Children. Its spires pricked heavenward like great thorns, prodding her with painful memories. She let the thin curtain fall closed to obscure them and stood very still, almost afraid to breathe.
“Je ne suis pas folle,” she whispered unsteadily. “I am not insane. I am not.”
It had been three years since most of the magic had left her.
Three years since she’d last transformed in the way her body had attempted to just moments ago.
Three years since she’d been accused of murder and lost the person most dear to her in this world.
Her gaze went to the second floorboard from the wall beside her bed. On legs that were still unsure, she went to kneel there. Darting a look at the door, she reassured herself it was shut. There was no privacy lock, so she turned her back toward it and listened for footsteps.
Pushing on one end of the wooden slat raised its other end revealing a leather pouch secreted below. She pulled it out, opened it, and lifted a strand of olive-shaped beads from among the coins within.
Raising one bent knee, she draped the necklace over it so its ends dangled on either side, then ran her fingers over each bone bead. There were precisely seventeen of them, strung on a long silken cord, which had looped her neck until she was sixteen years of age. When Valmont had bade her to put aside such things.
Her fingers found the thick pewter and iron medal tied at one end of the cord. A picture of Saint Vincent de Paul was engraved on one side and the flip side bore identifying information in the form of two numbers: 1804 and 8900.
In the year 1804, she’d been the 8,900th child abandoned at the Hospice des Enfants Trouvés. Though it was less than an hour’s walking distance from here, she’d visited only once, during the first week she’d returned to Paris a year ago. It had been more painful than expected and she’d avoided it since. But every day it haunted her from where it stood in the distant shadow of the Cathédral Notre Dame.
That she was illegitimate was a virtual certainty. That her mother had never planned to come back to the hospital for her was as well. She’d left no notes or identifying tokens as had been tucked in the blankets of some of the other abandoned children. She had no way of knowing if her mother had done the deed alone, but she’d always assumed her father had not accompanied her, since that was the usual story with orphans.
Upon her arrival at the foundling hospital, the only known facts of her origins had been faithfully entered into the large recording book, the Registre d’Admission. Sex: female. Age: one day. Name: Juliette. There were also notations that included a brief description of her clothing and blanket. And she’d learned the actual day of her birth, something she hadn’t known. She would be nineteen next month.
It seemed that sometime in the wee hours of December 20, 1804, she’d been birthed, bathed, and wrapped in blankets of fine wool before being deposited upon the hospital’s infamous “tour.” This stone wheel lay flat on its side, serving as a rotating turntable set in an aperture in the building’s exterior wall. A wooden box, which acted as a makeshift cradle, rested upon the half of the wheel that was exposed outside the wall. It would have been a simple matter for her mother to stealthily and anonymously place her there, inside the box.
Had her mother wept as she turned the wheel? Had she watched until the cradle—and her baby within it—had been entirely re-situated on the inside of the hospital? Before leaving, she would have rung a bell alerting the Sisters of Charity that yet another deposit of an unwanted, pink-faced infant had been made.
Juliette gathered the beads in her fist and held them tight. Her heart cried out for the loss of the page that had been stolen from her today. Not wanting anyone to question her about it, she had only quickly scanned it. Then she’d tucked it in her basket, planning to later scrutinize it at leisure, here in her private room.
It had been a silly, costly whim to have it stolen in the first place. But from the moment she’d learned of the book’s existence, she’d longed to know whatever details of her beginnings it contained. Another orphan might’ve been allowed to view his or her personal information, but she dared not reveal her identity at the hospital and risk being turned over to authorities.
She had not expected to be surprised by anything she read on that page, but she had been.
For directly below her name, there had been another, familiar one.
Elise.
A sharp rapping came at her door, causing her to jump.
“Mademoiselle?”
“Un moment!” Juliette hastily replaced the necklace in its box and then the box in its hiding place. Her domestique had arrived to fuss over her. In less than one hour, she was expected downstairs. And then tonight’s performance would begin.
“Sweet victory,” Monsieur Valmont murmured from beside Juliette.
Her breath caught as she peered at the new arrival through the decorative punched-metal screen. It was he. The man from the bridge. The one who’d given her her first orgasm.
Wasn’t it? She leaned closer to the grillwork trying to get a better look through the perforations.