Love Match (7 page)

“You are being deliberately provoking. Which shouldn’t surprise me. I’ll make you a bargain. I’ll go into the Baths when you do.”

Magda had no intention of going into the Baths with Augusta. Or anywhere else, actually, which went to show how easily one’s intentions could be overset. “The scandal of nude bathing has been removed, and along with it my interest. Do not stand there gaping! Come along,
ma chère.”

Madame de Chavannes threaded her way through the crowd, glancing with keen interest at the various faces around them. None were worthy of her attention. She cast a quick eye over the book designated for the registration of the city’s more worthy guests.

Magda did not add her own name to those pages. She turned to Lady Augusta, who trailed in her wake. Augusta was almost winsome in her short robe of white muslin, trimmed round the neck with lace, worn over a striped muslin petticoat; her Dunstable hat trimmed round with a narrow blue ribbon, across its crown a wreath of artificial flowers. Or she
might
have been almost winsome if not for her expression, which was fierce enough to frighten off anyone. “It is your own fault if you are unhappy. You insisted on coming with me,

Gus.”

Augusta’s elegant nose twitched in irritation. “Don’t call me that!”

Magda returned her attention to her surroundings. “Better Gus than some of the other things Nigel has called you. I especially recall the episode of the hornet’s nest. Poor boy, he was badly bitten. Unfair of him to blame you when we were all equally at fault.
Eh bien!
Those were better days.”

Augusta emptied her glass and set it down with a thump. “For you, perhaps. I do not remember them so fondly. Nor do I think Nigel wax nostalgic about being hornet bit. May we please speak of something else?”

Magda emptied her own glass. Her companion was as touchy as a bear with a sore paw. Not that it was difficult to understand why. “Try and not be so dour,
chérie.
The day is young, and we are in Bath, which I might point out was
also
your idea. And if the place does not delight you, it is a joy to me after France! Taxes upon tobacco, road travel, legal documents, windows, and doors. Domiciliary police visits and rigorous examination of travelers. Paris is a maelstrom of intrigue.”

Augusta eyed her companion. “And in the midst was meddling Magda. You shan’t convince me you didn’t enjoy yourself.”

Magda gazed into the distance. “After the fall of Robespierre, Paris followed the countryside in an intensifying reaction against the Revolution. In the springtime returning émigrés with a renewed hope of royalty congregated in
le petit Corblez
to hear the monarchial philosophies being preached abroad by Bonared, and joined the countless counterrevolutionary groups, such as the Societe de Egaux, and found themselves being given two weeks to leave the country or become intimate with Madame Guillotine.
Mais oui
, ‘twas vastly entertaining to see poor Jules’s head atop a pike.”

Augusta could have bitten off her bitter tongue. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Magda shrugged. “How could you? It is not an uncommon thing. There were
bals de guillotine,
where ladies who lost loved ones to the blade wore red ribbons round their neck. But I have escaped all that. Now I am determined to be gay.”

Madame de Chavannes certainly looked gay in her long tunic of light muslin pulled in under the breast and trimmed with a Grecian design, bracelets around her ankles, rings on her toes, and Greek style sandals on her feet. At least she wore a shawl around her shoulders. And not, for which Gus was grateful, a red ribbon round her neck.

The crowd pressed close around them. Lady Augusta wrinkled her nose at the stink of strong perfume and unwashed flesh. It was said of Bath that in this city everyone met everyone else each day, and mixed with perfect equality. French Revolution or not, Gus was no great believer in
egalité.
“Might we,” she said faintly, “go outside?”

Magda noted Augusta’s nauseous expression; glanced at the fine Tompion clock that marked the passage of the hours; led the way past the statue of Beau Nash in the eastern alcove, through the elegant colonnade of the entrance, and paused beneath the Greek inscription which translated ‘Water! Of elements the best.’ “There! Are you feeling better now?”

Gus drew in a deep breath, which was perhaps unwise; Bath, in its basin of hills, tended to retain bad smells. She exhaled and made an acid comment on a passing lady’s gown.

“
Ah.
You
are
feeling better.” Magda drew her arm through Lady Augusta’s, and guided her past the sedan chairmen waiting in the courtyard. Along the busy street strolled more people with whom Gus had no desire to rub shoulders, cardsharpers and soldiers of fortune, ladies of the town and widows in search of husbands, the sick and not so ill. A stage doctor on an elevated platform covered by a ragged blanket extolled the virtues of a nostrum designed to cure all imaginable disorders, and some that were not. Street sellers hawked cigars and walking sticks, spectacles and dolls, ballad sheets and shirt buttons, rat poison and whips.

A dapper fellow in a lemon yellow jacket tipped his hat and smiled, revealing a fine set of Egyptian pebble teeth. “A fine day, ladies. How d’ye do?”

Gus was having none of this classes-come-into-contact-with-perfect-equality-nonsense. She took a firmer grip on Madame’s arm. “We don’t! Be on your way. I told you we should have brought a footman with us, Magda. And you still haven’t told me how you escaped from France.”

There were any number of things Magda hadn’t told her companion, nor would she, because Gus had never been a marvel of discretion, and Magda couldn’t afford to have the cat escape the bag. Therefore, she repeated the tale she had told St. Clair of her journey via Rouen to Le Havre, and her departure by way of a friendly fishing boat. In reality, the fishing boat had taken her only as far as a Royal Navy frigate, which had fetched her home along with Sir Sidney Smith. Magda had received no hero’s welcome, unlike Sir Sidney, who was now embarked on frog-hunting in the eastern Mediterranean. She had entered the country without a passport, and would leave it the same way. Among Magda’s acquaintances she numbered William Wickham, head of a clandestine organization that had made espionage the most flourishing industry of Europe, due to the influx of British gold; Richard Ford, the chief magistrate of Bow Street; the Abbé Ratel, go-between for the British and the Bourbon Princes’ court; and a certain Louis Bayard, also known as
Crepin,
Louis Vincent, Franc, and a number of other aliases to the grand total of thirty-one, several more than Magda’s own. All of which had led her to the conclusion that Royalists were as fragmented in London as in France, where each agent had a different Paris master, and everyone watched every other like hungry hawks.

Even now Magda couldn’t be certain she wasn’t being watched, due to her known connection with the Comité Français, which was effectively a royalist government in exile. “I am hungry,” she announced, as she towed Augusta down the street toward a coffee house. “Come along,
ma chère.
We shall refresh ourselves, and inspect the shops, and discover if we may meet any of our acquaintances promenading among the fashionable crescents and squares.”

For her part, Augusta hoped she might not meet any of her acquaintances while in company with Madame de Chavannes. Not for Madame the traditional trappings of mourning. Rings on her toes, for heaven’s sake.

Magda was up to something. Gus wanted to know what. She also wanted to delay as long as possible a further confrontation with her cousin, whom she must placate somehow. She followed Magda into the coffeehouse.

It was a coffeehouse reserved for ladies. Young girls were not admitted, because the conversation dwelt on politics, scandals, philosophy, and other subjects not fit for their tender ears. The room was of a goodly size, the front window filled with coffee cups and pots and strainers of a dozen different designs, pint coffeepots waiting ready by the well-filled antique grate, clean, polished floors.

A babble of voices filled the air, as the patrons perused the latest newspapers, all of which had columns devoted to foreign news, and voiced their opinions of what they had read, which resulted in a great deal of good-natured joking, as well as rumor and gossip and much talk of politics. Magda dropped coins into a brass box, inspected the noisy room, and chose a small round table placed near the back wall. A waiter brought two cups of hot steaming coffee in shallow delftware bowls. Magda requested a piece of almond cake. The walls were plastered with advertisements: Dr. Belloste’s pills for rheumatism, Parke’s pill for the stone, Daffy’s elixir, Godfrey’s cordial, Velno’s vegetable syrup for the alleviation of venereal disease.

The waiter placed a plate on the table. Augusta sniffed. “Cake so early in the day? Magda, you are decadent.”

Madame plunged her fork into the pastry. “I was always decadent. But I didn’t realize it until I lived in France. You have no idea how horrid it is to be an émigré. Living abroad in humiliating circumstances, properties confiscated, income stopped. You must not begrudge me my cake.”

In truth, Augusta begrudged Magda nothing, unless it was that shocking dress. She knew what it was like to be penniless. Or if not precisely penniless, dependent upon someone else’s good will. She stripped off a glove and applied one fingertip to a cake crumb that had fallen on the table. “Justin will tolerate no scandal,” she remarked.

“Pfft!” Magda waved an airy hand. “You refer to our divorce. Unlikely that anyone will recall that ancient business. And if someone does, I am a friend of the family, am I not?
The worst that may be said is that we are monstrous civilized.”

In this setting, Lady Augusta felt monstrous civilized herself. Certainly she was a great deal more civilized than the people seated at the nearby tables. She twitched her skirts closer to her chair. “I don’t understand why Justin married Elizabeth. She is a very ordinary sort of girl.”

Magda pushed the cake plate toward her. “You are mystified? Allow me to explain. Saint’s bride is all that’s proper. It is a marriage à la mode.”

Augusta smiled. “She is your opposite, you mean.  Justin may have gotten more than he bargained for. His proper little bride has already bloodied his nose.”

If Augusta knew how attractive she was when she wasn’t scowling, she would probably never smile again. Magda ticked cake frosting off her lips. “You were always jealous, Gus.”

Augusta didn’t dignify this accusation with a response. Not that it lacked truth. In light of her advanced age and reduced circumstances, she was unlikely now to make a match. Magda, on the other hand, had been married four times at last count, or maybe five, including the unfortunate Jules, for whom she wore no black. Better to have loved and lost? Gus wondered if Magda would agree.

She picked up another larger cake crumb, and popped it in her mouth. “Elizabeth has no friends in Bath. My cousin will soon be off doing whatever it is that gentlemen do. She will be bored, poor child. We cannot in good conscience abandon Justin’s bride.”

Magda sipped her coffee. “In other words, you cannot abandon the gaming tables. Do you hope that here your luck will change? Saint will not like it if you expose his bride to such things, I think.”

“He will not like it if you expose her to worse.” Gus abandoned her good manners altogether and finished off the cake.

Magda eyed the empty plate. “As if I would do such a thing. You misjudge me, Gus.”

“I know you, Magda. You always have an eye to the main chance. I am curious to see how you will manage to feather your nest in Bath.” Augusta picked up her coffee cup. “Maybe Justin had to have a fortune. Elizabeth was well-dowered, from all accounts.”

Magda chuckled. “You are of so many minds that you’ll never be mad,
ma chère.
A pity that you are Saint’s first cousin and could not marry him yourself.”

Augusta choked on a mouthful of coffee. “Marry Justin? It’s you who must be mad. Ah, but you
did
marry him, didn’t you? A pity it didn’t work out.”

Magda’s smile faded. “I have thought so sometimes. Had things been otherwise— 
Tout même,
that is water under the bridge.”

Had things been otherwise how? Augusta was curious. Magda had changed since her girlhood. For that matter, so had Gus.

Magda fell into conversation with the occupants of a nearby table. Augusta picked up a copy of
The Lady’s Magazine,
its frontispiece an elegant engraving showing Lord Nelson engaging two Spanish ships of superior force off Cape Saint Vincent, faced by a sketch of the national hero’s life. She flipped the pages until she came to a fulsome ode to the late glorious hero. Mentioned were Neptune’s heroes, Gallia’s tarnished laurels, death-dealing thunder shaking oozy caves where hoary bellows crimsoned beneath a purple sky.

What nonsense. Gus was weary of politics. Naval mutinies, invasion scares— On display in Fleet Street were a series of startling engravings showing the type of machine Englishmen might expect to see bearing down upon their shores from France, a giant raft with four windmills and a battlemented wooden fortress, batteries of forty-eight-pounders at each corner. She studied her companion, who was engaged in an energetic conversation about the alarming aspect of affairs in Ireland. Could Magda be a revolutionary herself, with a taste for republican sentiments and severed heads?

Magda finished her conversation, and her coffee. Augusta set down her own cup. “Justin will want to make known his presence in Bath. We shall give a small entertainment. Soup
à
la Reine.
A fillet of pheasant and truffles. Larded partridges. Woodcocks. Dantizic Jelly. Lemon-Water Ice. Followed by a musical interlude.”

“And then some cards?” Magda placed her elbows on the table, and folded her hands beneath her chin. “I do not mean to blast your schemes, truly I do not, but I must point out that Saint’s bride is now the lady of the house.”

So she was. Augusta didn’t begrudge her cousin his happiness—if happiness he would find—but his marriage left her without a place again. She could hardly reside indefinitely with Justin and his wife. Unless she made herself indispensable. “Elizabeth is not foolish. She will allow herself to be guided by older, wiser heads.”