French Leave (10 page)

She touched her fingers to her forehead. As result of the past half hour, Mab also had a headache. The art of prevarication was extremely complicated. One had to think not only forward but backward, and keep in memory the lies one had already told.

Tibble came forward at last with a cup of chocolate. Mab leaned over the Duc. His eyes remained closed. She touched his cheek, which felt neither too warm nor too cool. “Asleep,” she whispered, and moved carefully away from the divan. Again the packet prodded her, reminding her of its presence.

Like a great many of the citizens of Paris, Mab was not exempt from the speculation on the stability of the restored Bourbon regime. Now she had in her possession something that might affect the outcome. “I’m going out,” she said abruptly. Mab was about to become a Jacobin in truth.

Chapter Eleven

Conor paced through the rooms of his hôtel suite, a handsome apartment on the second floor of a mansion that had been built in the previous century. The suite consisted of drawing room, bedroom, kitchen, and two anterooms, one of which could be used as a dining room; two additional small rooms on the floor above, which were used by Conor’s valet and the cook; and the “amenities,” which were accessed from the kitchen via a staircase steep as an Alpine trail. Currently, Conor was in the drawing room, a chamber of pleasant proportions with neo-Greek cornices around the ceiling, and a marble fireplace, furnished elegantly and with a multiplicity of mirrors. His surroundings gave him little pleasure. He dropped into a chair and had application to the decanter at his elbow.

Paris had grown flat. Conor had grown weary of the amusements of
le beau monde;
weary, in point of fact, of almost everything. He contemplated his snifter. Brandy was no solution, he decided, and flung the glass into the fireplace.

The sound of breakage brought no anxious servant to the door. Desirous of solitude, Conor had given his servants the afternoon off. Sensing his mood, they had been eager to depart. Conor had the devil’s own temper, and he knew it, and to his credit tried to keep his worst moods to himself. Encountering his wife’s cousin so unexpectedly had sorely tried his self-restraint. “Damn and blast!” muttered Conor, when he heard a summons at the door.

He almost didn’t answer, but then rose from the chair. His own thoughts were not such good company that he wished to keep them inviolate. Almost any distraction was preferable to recollections of his wife.

Conor, however, did not anticipate the distraction that he found waiting for him. His wife’s cousin stood at his front door, clutching a brown-paper-wrapped parcel.

“I’m sorry to disturb you!” she gasped. “I had just gone out for some sausage and cheese. When I came out of the shop, I realized someone was following me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t wish to lead him home. And then I thought of you.”

She had thought of him. No stranger to feminine wiles, Conor supposed he should be flattered she had brought the parcel to add credence to her tale. Then he felt ashamed by the realization of how jaded he had grown. Perhaps what she said was true.

He stepped away from the door. “What does this man look like? Shall I go and speak to him?”

“Oh, no!” Barbary could hardly explain that it was a policeman who followed her, on the erroneous assumption that she was Mab. Or so she thought must be the case. “There is no need for you to involve yourself. If I may just rest here a few moments, he will surely go away.”

He had not misjudged her. Conor was aware of a curious disappointment. “Come,” he said, as he led her into the drawing room and settled her in a chair. “This will calm you.” He poured brandy from the decanter into a glass.

Barbary was glad of the refreshment. She had walked some distance through the crowded streets before becoming certain that the policeman was following her. Each time she paused he had seemed absorbed in his surroundings, first in the contents of a shop window, then in a pretty little fountain built in a recess between the doorways of two adjoining houses. She drank the brandy, too quickly, and coughed. “I am glad to have found you home.”

“I am glad to be home.” Conor studied her. “I did not think we would meet again so soon as this.”

“Nor did I.” Barbary set down the glass, which Conor obligingly refilled. “Nor would we have except for that man.”

Perhaps she
had
told him the truth. She did look flushed and breathless, as if she had been hurrying, and her hair was coming unpinned. Conor found himself feeling very charitable toward his wife’s cousin, perhaps because Barbary would never have let herself get into such an untidy state. He smiled.

He was amused by her. Barbary could not bear it. “You must think me foolish,” she said with immense dignity. “You do not know, m’sieur, what it is like to be a woman alone.”

“Well, no.” Conor looked apologetic. “I do not. But I assure you this is the most welcome of diversions. I had grown heartily bored with my own company.”

Bored, was he? So much for his opera dancer, Barbary thought spitefully. She glanced around the room and noticed the broken glass in the fireplace. So Conor had been in a temper? Uncharitable as it was in Barbary, she could not help but be glad that he did not have everything his way.

The silence grew uncomfortable. Perhaps Conor wanted her to leave. Perhaps he was expecting his opera dancer to return at any moment. Or the arrival of some other lady friend. Barbary stood up. “I have intruded. I’m sorry. I will go.”

“No.” Conor caught her arm. “Stay. I’m damned poor company, and I apologize to you for it. I can’t get over the resemblance. You look so much like your cousin.”

Perhaps Barbary hadn’t grown so haggard as she had thought. Conor’s hand burned her through the fabric of Mab’s gown. “But older,” Barbary said in an effort to remind herself of whom she had claimed to be.

“I had thought so.” Conor frowned. “But perhaps not. There is a difference, at any rate.” He touched a strand of hair that had escaped its coil to curl upon her cheek; then abruptly released her and moved away.

Barbary felt very foolish, standing alone in the center of the room. “I should go,” she repeated.

“Please don’t.” Conor turned back to her. “Allow me to explain. Your cousin, when I met her, was fresh out of the schoolroom. She set her cap at me. I was amused. And flattered also, I suppose.” Barbary hadn’t been the first woman who set out to snare Conor, or the last; but she had certainly been the most determined, once even taking a lesson from Caro Lamb’s pursuit of Lord Byron and dressing as a page to steal into his rooms.

Conor did not think Barbary’s cousin would enjoy hearing such tales. “She affected me,” he said simply, “in a way no other woman has. Nor any woman is likely to again, thank God! Your cousin was an education, Ma’mselle Foliot. I can only be grateful that particular madness has passed. When I came upon you—well, I was determined never to see Barbary again.”

Barbary listened to this little speech with conflicting emotions. At its inception she had been very tempted to confess her identity. Now, at its close, she strove hard to restrain her inclination to box Conor’s ears. “I make no excuses for my cousin. How could I? But it has seemed to me that these misunderstandings are seldom one person’s fault.”

“It was no misunderstanding.” Conor fetched another glass. He refilled Barbary’s glass also, as an afterthought. “Your cousin was a tremendous flirt who always had admirers in tow. The most hardened flirt in all London, it was said. My error was in thinking marriage with me would be sufficient to occupy her attention. I was mistaken. She is hopelessly addicted to the game of hearts.”

Addicted, was she? Barbary’s fingers clenched around the glass. “I do not think you should be telling me such things.”

“I wished you to understand.” Conor sat down beside her on the couch. “I had put Barbary out of my mind. Now here is the cousin who looks so much like her and acts so differently. I can’t help but be intrigued.”

Intrigued, was he? Once Conor had told Barbary that she was made for love. Now he called her a flirt and made sheep’s eyes at Mab. Someone should teach the knave a lesson.

So someone should. Who better than herself? Barbary looked demurely into her brandy glass. “I regret that I should awaken unpleasant memories.”

Lightly, Conor touched her hand. “It is easily enough remedied. We have merely to make pleasant memories of our own.”

Barbary looked at his fingers. Had he not touched her then, she might still have changed her mind. But Barbary remembered that touch very well, and she was very much disgusted with Conor for trying to play off his wiles on an innocent like Mab. Mab would fall in love with him—how could she not?—and then Conor would tire of the business and find some reason to cast Mab aside also. Barbary foresaw the entire unhappy chain of events.

This time it would not happen. Barbary would teach Conor a sorely needed lesson, would allow him think her his victim, and would make him hers.

“I have offended you,” said Conor, when she remained silent. He took his hand away.

“No, you have not offended me,” Barbary said quietly, and with considerable untruth. “It is just—you move more quickly than I am accustomed to, m’sieur.”

Beside her she felt him tense, heard his exhale. “So—you are accustomed, Ma’mselle?”

She turned to look steadily at him.
“I am not fresh from the schoolroom, m’sieur.”

“No.” He touched her hair again, bolder now, more sure of himself. “No, you are not.”

Conor’s comeuppance would be made all the easier by Barbary’s knowledge of him. It made her melancholy to think that their past intimacy would now lead to his future downfall. She was made even more melancholy to think of all that she had lost because of the man. Barbary looked straight into his eyes and smiled.

She was a paradox, thought Conor, an artist’s model, yet of good education and birth. She was totally devoid of social graces, of artifice, a free spirit unfettered by the ordinary constraints of society. And she had that damnable resemblance to his wife. Of course he wanted her; how could he not? He touched his fingers to the smooth contours of her face.

She closed her eyes, catlike, beneath his caress. In that respect she was like Barbary. Conor had known few women as sensual as his wife. He was very curious as to what other similarities, or differences, the cousins possessed. His fingers moved to her throat, the neckline of her modest gown.

She looked at him then, a languorous expression in her sapphire eyes. “We are alone?”

“Quite alone.” Conor was grateful now for the ill temper that had prompted him to dismiss his servants. “We will not be disturbed.”

Revenge, Barbary reminded herself. She wanted revenge on this man, not just for herself, but for her cousin and every female who had ever been misused, and not just by Conor, though she’d no doubt he’d left strewn behind him in his pathway an inordinate number of broken hearts. As her own heart had been broken. Precisely who had broken her heart Barbary could not have said at that moment, but there was no doubt that she was ruined for further romance. Which was a great pity, because Barbary had enjoyed romance very well. She lifted her hands and unpinned her hair.

Conor buried his hands, then his face, in that golden cloud. “You smell like sunlight,” he whispered, and then moved his hands behind her head and drew her face up to his.

It was a gentle kiss, sweet and seductive. If anything, if possible, Conor had gained in expertise. Upon how many women had he practiced since he last kissed Barbary like this?

He said he had no more feeling for his wife. Barbary thought she might prove him wrong. She lifted his hand and placed it upon her racing heart, where it felt very much like it belonged.

Conor had the same sensation, though to him it was very queer. No matter how strong the resemblance, it did not seem right to him that making love to this strange woman should seem so much like making love to his wife. But then, there was the resemblance. And he had not made love to his wife for a very long time.

She had shocked him, Barbary thought. Not by what she had done, but that she had done it. Barbary had been too much the elusive coquette to ever perform so aggressive an act. Now she regretted the omission. She lifted her hand and traced the outline of his mouth.

Like Barbary, and not like Barbary at all. Perhaps Conor’s memory was playing him tricks. No matter. She was warm and pliant and willing, and he wanted her badly. He stood up. She looked up at him. He held out his hand.

Chapter Twelve

Afternoon’s shadows were lengthening. The lawns and gardens of Philippe-Égalité’s old garden were beginning to take on their true character. Sellers of garters and thread and lavender water, toothbrushes and sealing wax and balls of thread, were giving way to young women, and others not so young, clad in diaphanous gowns cut low in the bodice and high in the hem, whose seductive glances hinted at less tangible, but no less purchasable, delights.

The
traiteurs
also were open. Parisian hotels by custom didn’t supply guests with meals, and it was the French habit to dine early at one of the city’s many
traiteurs
before going on to the evening’s entertainment. About one thing, at least, Mab had not fibbed to the Duc. There was indeed a certain cafè in the Palais Royale. In point of fact, there were dozens: one could chose among one hundred and fifty dishes in the restaurants of the Palais Royale alone. She entered a small cafè, which advertised that two people could have an excellent dinner of three or four courses for the equivalent of three and sixpence.

The cafè was not doing a thriving business, although this may have been due less to the austerity of the decor than to the quality of the food. Mab looked around for someone she knew. A group of students were seated at one of the small tables. She walked across the room. “I must speak with Gabriel,” said Mab. “Where is he?”

One of the students jerked his head. “In the back room. You must not go there, ma’mselle. He does not wish to be disturbed.”