Hearts Beguiled by Penelope Williamson Read Free Book Online Page A

large," with a boat-shaped basket swinging by ropes underneath. She added oars and a fanciful sail. Then, with her tongue tucked into her cheek, she drew a man hanging upside down by one foot from the rim of the basket. She exaggerated his aristocratic nose and sharp cheekbones. She laughed softly to herself as she made his eyes wide and filled with comical terror, his mouth open in a huge scream—
    A shadow fell across the paper. Gabrielle's head jerked up. She looked into a pair of sardonic gray eyes and felt the flush of hot color surge slowly up her neck to flood her face.
    Surreptitiously she tried to cover the paper with her hand, but he slipped it out from under her fingers and turned slightly, holding it up to the sunlight streaming from the open door and window.
    A smile flitted across his arrogant mouth. "Not a very good likeness, ma mie. You've made the nose a trifle long, and the chin is much too weak."
    Gabrielle bit her lip to hide a smile. She assumed her haughty look. "An art critic as well as a scientist—there seems to be no end to your accomplishments, Monsieur de Saint-Just—"
    "Max. Please call me Max, ma mie. "
    "Monsieur de Saint-Just. And I am not your lady-love." Although I want to be, God help me.
    "I insist you call me Max." He gave her that maddeningly mocking smile. "After all, we faced death together . . . Gabrielle."
    His silky voice made her name sound like the notes of a song. No one had ever said her name like that before. It gave her a warm feeling.
    Blushing again, she lowered her eyes. She saw that her fingers were wrapped tightly around the charcoal stick. She let it go and lifted her head. "How do you know my name? How did you even find out where I—" She cut off the words, furious with herself. What had made her automatically assume he was here because of her?
    "I found you by searching for a mysterious Monsieur Prion," he said, drawling the words in the fashion of the king's courtiers at Versailles. "A mysterious Monsieur Prion who turned out, to my considerable disappointment, to be nothing more exotic than a pawnshop owner."
    He walked around, gazing idly at the racks and display cases. He was dressed formally today, in a suit of black velvet with silver lacing. His shirt spilled out in heavy frills at his wrists and throat, enhancing his dark coloring. Oddly, the "dainty elegance of these clothes seemed to emphasize his raw masculinity that had so intrigued her the first time she had seen him.
    "I discovered your name by having a bit of a gossip with the baker's wife," he was saying in his teasing drawl. "Veritable founts of information are bakers' wives. She told me, for instance, that you are widowed with one child, a boy of four. That you are Monsieur Prion's niece by marriage and a blessing to him. And that he needs all the blessings he can get since he seems to have afflicted himself with the care of a foulmouthed urchin by the name of Agnes. Who, if the baker's wife ever has her wish, will be put in the stocks for her impertinence."
    Gabrielle was laughing. She suddenly felt very happy. He had wanted to see her again, wanted to see her badly enough to go to the trouble of finding out her name and where she lived.
    He smiled back at her, with genuine feeling this time, not cruel and not mocking. It eased the harsh lines around his mouth and dimmed for a moment the cynical gleam in his eyes.
    He picked up an ivory fan and unfurled it with long brown fingers, and she noticed that, contrary to fashion, he wore no jewelry, nor adornment of any kind except for the plain silver buckles on his shoes. If it weren't for the patrician bones in his face, he might have been a peasant dressed up in his lord's clothes. Everything about him was a strange mixture of elegance and roughness. She could just as easily picture him brawling with his fists as fighting with a sword.
    The painting on the fan was a pastoral scene, a shepherdess with her cavorting flock. He made a face at it and