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Authors: Maggie MacKeever

Tags: #Regency Romance

French Leave (4 page)

BOOK: French Leave
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“You are scowling,
ma petite,”
Maurice chided. A well-fed, balding man of some fifty years, he approached the platform and twitched Mab’s draperies into folds more reminiscent of the antique. “It is inappropriate. Did Venus scowl? Did Aphrodite? Most certainly not!”

Mab was not intimidated by Maurice, who had been a friend of her papa’s. She was grateful to him for the modeling work he put in her way, and consequently kept quiet her opinion that his motive in opening a teaching studio was less to pass on the principles of his art than to train the assistants he required to carry out his own great decorative works.

Mab was not so grateful, now, as to cease to frown, despite his gentle scolding. She hissed, “What’s he doing here?”

Maurice glanced over his shoulder. “Why should the Duc not come to the studio? He has an interest, you understand. An interest in the arts.” He leaned closer. “Edouard would be a generous benefactor. You would no longer need to eke out a slender existence by posing for students in the near nude.” He clapped his hands and raised his voice. “You are indefatigable,
ma petite,
but enough. We must not exhaust you, so you will pose another day.
Allons, hop!

Of course Mab would return another day; she wanted Maurice’s francs. However, there was no arguing with that tone of voice. Quickly, she ducked behind the dressing screen. Mab might pose in the altogether in front of Maurice’s students and not feel a pang of embarrassment; they saw her not as a person but an object to be portrayed. In the presence of the Duc de Gascoigne, however, even in her antique draperies, she felt naked as a babe newborn.

The Duc was not in evidence when Mab emerged from behind the dressing-screen. Maurice, engrossed in passionate conversation with a student, whipped off his glove to correct a drawing with his thumbnail, so emphatically that he cut right through the paper. Mab slipped out of the studio.

Luck was not with Mab that day. The Duc waited outside the door. “Ma’mselle Foliot,” he said with an elegant bow. “I think it is time we talked together, you and I.”

Mab studied the Duc. Slate-gray coat with low-set square tails; yellowish-brown vest of one of the new
matelassé
fabrics; blue-gray breeches, highly polished boots. Very elegant he was, she supposed. Certainly he was handsome, with his aristocratic features, his fair hair, his world-weary gray eyes. Mab had little appreciation for elegancies of appearances, as apparent in her simple, serviceable dark gown, the hair that was drawn back in an untidy coil. “I don’t know what we would have to talk about, m’sieur.”

The Duc raised his brows. “You do not like me much, do you, my little Jacobin? You see in me a throwback to the
ancien noblesse,
and think it a great pity that you cannot see me meet my just end on Madame Guillotine.”

There was more truth in this than Mab cared to admit. “I have to go home now.”

“I shall escort you.” Mab scowled, and the Duc raised his hand. “No, don’t argue! It will do you no good. Maurice has told me where you live. I know you will not wish me to discommode myself—see how well you know me—but I assure you I make no great sacrifice, since I know it is not far.”

Mab refused to be disarmed.

You talk a great deal of nonsense. Come along then, if you must. But we’ll walk if you don’t mind.” She was not such a ninny as to climb into the Duc’s fine carriage. Let his high-and-mightiness make what he would of the dirty streets.

The Duc appeared not the least bit discomposed. He dismissed his coachman and turned back to Mab. “It will be as you wish. I beg you will not continue to scowl at me in that dreadful fashion. Consider Maurice’s students and their dilemma if your face were to freeze.”

Made aware of her horrid grimace, Mab smoothed her brow. “Bah!” she said, lest the Duc erroneously assume she cared a fig what he thought. “Come along then, if you must.” She flung her old India shawl around her shoulders and stepped out into the street.

Maurice’s studio, as well as Mab’s own rooms, were located on the fringes of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the district between the church of Saint Germain—the scene of frightful massacres during the Terror—and the Seine. It was an area much favored by artists, containing as it did both the Ècole des Beaux-Arts and the Institut. The streets were narrow, dark, and dusty; street cleaning was left to the weather, and this hot, dry summer had seen little rain. The streets were also very crowded, with wheelbarrows and carts, vendors of fruit and vegetables, fish and flowers. Water carriers rattled the handles of their buckets. Clothes dealers sought to sell their wares, while glaziers and chimney boys begged to ply their trades. In the distance, a barrel organ played.

The Duc made no demur. Could he be familiar with such plebeian scenes? No, he would be accustomed to military reviews in the park, to promenading in the Luxembourg Gardens in moonlight, or attending religious plays given in the catacombs beneath the city. Mab would wager he’d made few forays into such teeming, vulgar streets as these. A little merry-faced cocotte passed by them, then turned with a twirl of ruffles and a display of neat ankles to smile at the Duc. He returned her smile and then leapt back to dodge a passing cart. His ankle turned beneath him, and he almost fell. Mab bent to retrieve his hat, which had fallen in the street. She blew away the dust before restoring it to him.

“Thank you, ma’mselle.” He caught her hand and drew it through his arm. “But still you frown. How may I amuse you? I find in myself a large desire to see you smile instead of scowl.”

Mab sought to remove her hand, but he held it fast. Best, she decided, to ignore him. “I never smile.”

“Ah,” murmured the Duc. “A smile bestowed too quickly no longer becomes a gift to the beholder, eh?”

Smiles? Gifts? “You talk a great deal of nonsense, M’sieur le Duc.”


Pardon.

The Duc looked apologetic. “It is in my nature to try to amuse.”

Mab found nothing in this attitude to admire. “I am seldom amused,” she said. “I think life is serious indeed. While you seem to take nothing seriously at all. I don’t know why you should wish to talk to me, m’sieur, when it is obvious that we have nothing to talk about.”

The Duc greeted this rebuff with a small smile. “
Au contraire.
We have a great deal to talk about, I think.”

“Then we shall have to do so at some other time.” Mab stopped in front of a tall building. “This is where I live.”

The Duc looked up at the six-story building. Mab imagined it through his eyes. Constructed of stone, its lower windows barricaded with iron bars, the house resembled more a prison than a private dwelling divided into apartments of varying degrees of squalor and grandeur.

Not that Mab cared what the Duc might think. She tolerated him only because to offend the Duc was to offend Maurice. “Thank you for seeing me home.” Again she tried to remove her hand from his grasp. “Without your protection, who knows what harm I might have come to in the streets. But now I am home, and I am perfectly safe, as you can see, and so I will bid you
adieu.”

“Not yet. Rank has its responsibilities, little Jacobin.” The Duc’s expression was unreadable. “It is my responsibility to see you safely to your door.”

Further nonsense! Mab wasted no time in argument. In silence she led the Duc past the massive gate into a courtyard, where a fat gray tabby cat inspected the rubbish left there that morning by the various tenants.

“Bonjour,
Fifi!” Mab bent to stroke the cat. Tail twitching, the cat tolerated her caress. The concierge neglected to come see who trespassed in her courtyard, as Mab had half hoped she might.

A sad day, when Madame Gabbot was the lesser of two evils. Mab led the Duc to the entrance, up the staircase that was shared by all the tenants, farther and farther up until they arrived at the top floor. She unlocked the door and pushed it open. “I do not mean to impose,” said the Duc. “But I fear I twisted my ankle when I fell. And then those infernal stairs—I beg that you will allow me to rest a moment before I continue on my way.”

Much as she might wish to, Mab could hardly bid the Duc go and be damned. In truth, the man did look pale. The Duc construed her shrug as acquiescence and followed her into a great drafty barn of a room lit by two enormous windows, one facing north onto the courtyard, the other sloping in the roof. Scattered around the chamber were a few pieces of battered furniture and various accoutrements of the artist’s trade. A stove with a great thick pipe bent at right angles to the wall stood in one corner of the room. “This was my father’s studio,” Mab said brusquely. “Since you’re here, would you like some tea?”

“I knew of your father.” The Duc moved also toward the stove. “He was a history painter in the grand style that takes its subjects from mythology as well as history, preferring gods and heroes as protagonists in preference to kings. Did you also pose for your father, Ma’mselle Foliot?”

Mab was embarrassed to speak with this unwelcome visitor about so personal a subject. Whether or not the Duc wanted tea, she did herself. Silently, she placed a pot of water on the stove.

“You do not trust me,” observed the Duc. “I do not blame you for it; there is no reason why you should. And perhaps every reason why you should not. I am behaving very badly, I know it.” He smiled. “And I fear I am about to behave much worse.”

Mab could not like the sound of this. She backed toward the stove. “Very badly,” said the Duc. “Ma’mselle, am I correct in assuming that you haven’t the least notion of what I’m talking about?”

Mab would confess to no such ignorance. “You presume, m’sieur. I see that you can walk without limping. Since your ankle is much better. It is time for you to leave.”

The Duc was not so obliging. He grasped Mab’s shoulders instead.
“Tu m’enivres,”
he murmured huskily.

She intoxicated him? Mab stood accused of intoxicating a duc? But she had not so much as fed him tea, the water for which should even now be bubbling in its pot. Perhaps she had mistook his meaning. She frowned.

He touched his fingers to her forehead. “But no. You must not scowl now. Not when I am about to teach you to smile.” He moved his hand to her untidy coil of hair and pulled out the pins. It tumbled down around her shoulders. He lifted a strand to his lips. “Beautiful,” he said.

The Duc had seen her hair loose before, in the studio, many times. Mab would not pose privately, or perhaps Maurice had not told him that? “M’sieur—”

He did not allow her to continue, but plunged both hands into her hair and drew her close to him and pressed his lips against hers. It was an excellent kiss, not that Mab was qualified to judge it, having never in all her five-and-twenty years been kissed before, save once, almost ten years past, that she had almost forgot.

Mab put her hands against the Duc’s chest and shoved. “You are indeed intoxicated! And demented beside, if you think that you may practice
droit de seigneur
upon me.”

The Duc looked bemused. “Do not be angry with me,
ma chère.
I mean you no dishonor when I ask you—”

“To be your
petite amie,
I suppose?” spat Mab. “I would rather embrace Madame Guillotine!”

“Ah, so?” The Duc looked amused and reached for her again.

M’sieur le Duc apparently failed to understand that Mab regarded kissing and romance with the same abhorrence that she accorded elegant and idle aristocrats. Murmuring endearments, he rained warm kisses against her cheek, her throat. Mab grasped the pot from the stove behind her and applied it with all the force she could muster to the man’s thick skull.

 

Chapter Five

 

Mab stared at the Duc’s body, sprawled in a puddle of bloody water upon the floor. Had she killed him? At least she had not scalded him as well, having forgotten to light the fire beneath the pot.

Gingerly, she knelt beside him. There seemed to be a great deal of blood, its source a nasty gash on the back of the Duc’s head. Mab had not meant to hit him so hard as this. She grabbed a paint-daubed rag and pressed it to the wound. The Duc looked considerably less elegant and aristocratic now. Mab bent and placed her head against his chest but could hear only the pounding of her own pulse.

At this most inopportune of moments there came a knocking at the door. Mab jumped. Had the police come to arrest her so soon? Absurd! How could they know? Perhaps the meddlesome concierge had seen her enter with the Duc after all. Mab was not on the best of terms with Madame Gabbot.

Again came the knocking. Mab could not afford to arouse suspicion, especially not now, with a possibly dead man lying on her floor. She grabbed a rug and threw it over him, then hurried toward the door.

Prepared to face the very worst, Mab was stunned to see not Madame Gabbot, with her evil-tempered cat, but golden hair, sapphire eyes— Mab’s own mirror-image stared back at her. Not a precise image; Mab was not wearing a traveling costume
à
la militaire,
or a foolish little hat. She was certainly not supporting a manservant and waving a vinaigrette beneath his nose. Mab wondered if perhaps the shock of killing a man had caused her to hallucinate.

The mirror-image scowled nearly as dreadfully as Mab herself. “Well?” she demanded. “Aren’t you going to let us in?”

Mab’s feelings defied description. She stared at her cousin, whom she had not seen for some years, since her father, an
émigré,
had deemed it safe to return to Paris. “Barbary! What are you doing here?”

Barbary had recourse to the vinaigrette herself. “I am like to take a lesson from Tibble here and swoon on your doorstep if you do not let us in!”

Reluctantly, Mab stepped aside. Her visitors entered the studio. Tibble set down the luggage and tottered to the nearest chair.

“Tibble does not care for travel,” Barbary explained. “Nor does he like Paris overmuch. He does not consider it a place for respectable people.” She looked curiously around the studio. “Mercy! What a bizarre room. I thought your papa had returned to Paris a successful artist, Mab.”

BOOK: French Leave
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