Royal 02 - Royal Passion (7 page)

"No, you are not."

Mara heard the iron-hard assurance in his voice, and her tension eased. The threat of physical illness receded. She grew aware of the hard strength of the arms that held her, of the ridged muscles in the thigh across which she lay. His eyes, she discovered, were a deep sea-blue, dark with fleeting concern. In confusion, she lowered her lashes, fixing her gaze on a red smear on his white tunic.

"I—I seem to have gotten blood on you. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. You hit the graze on your forehead again. But for my negligence it would not have happened."

A faint smile curved her lips. “That sounds strange coming from you."

"Why? Have I given the impression that I am too proud to acknowledge a fault?"

"No, no. Only that you have none."

His silence was complete, abrupt. For long moments he did not even breathe. She opened her eyes again. In his face as he watched her was such virulent doubt that she put out her hand, struggling to sit up.

His hold tightened. “Trude! Cognac?"

The woman, her face stern, twisted in the saddle and brought out a flat silver flask. She removed the cap and passed it across. Roderic took it and held it to Mara's lips.

She turned her head. “I don't need reviving."

"It will help the pain and other discomforts. Think of it as medicine."

The rim of the container was against her mouth once more. She took a cautious sip, and immediately the prince tipped the bottle so that she was forced to swallow several times. The liquor took her breath with its fire, burning its way into her stomach. When she could speak, she gasped, “You will make me drunk."

"Would that be bad?” he asked softly, and lifted the flask again.

It wasn't. She floated into Paris on cognac fumes made more potent by exhaustion and enforced forgetfulness. She hardly knew when they reached the dwelling place of the prince, when they entered the courtyard entrance, or when she was carried inside. But as the prince placed her on the resilient surface of a bed and began to unlace her arms from around his neck, she surfaced enough to smile sleepily up at him.

"Mine is a bachelor household, but there should be a maid about somewhere. I will send her to you or, failing that, Trude will come."

"You are very kind,” she murmured.

"Take care. Just as you would not credit me with faults, it would be wrong to ascribe to me unwarranted virtues."

"Have you none? Then could I seduce you?"

Laughter leaped brightly into his eyes. “Is it permission you seek or an opinion? If the first, I give it without reservation; if the second, the answer is yes, without doubt."

"You might not like it."

"How should I not?"

His lashes, she discovered, were tipped with gold, a radiant barrier to screen his thoughts. Something she saw behind them, however, carried a warning to her muddled senses, bringing the rush of returning caution. The candid light died out of her face. She released her hold and drew back. “Men, so I've been told, prefer being the hunter."

"As some women enjoy being prey?"

"Not I,” she said quickly.

"Do you expect me to curb my instincts for that reason and sit dulcet and smug, waiting to be enraptured?"

"You couldn't."

"Could I not? It would be a novelty."

It seemed he was issuing a challenge, though with the dullness of her mind caused by the cognac she could not be sure. But if he was, it was not one she felt capable of meeting at that moment. She permitted a yawn to overtake her and smothered it with the back of her hand. “Very well. Tomorrow."

"The sun is rising. This is tomorrow."

"You will have to wait."

He eased her back against the pillow and reached to draw up the linen sheet and coverlet. There was a quiver in his voice that might have been amusement as he answered, “But how shall I bear it?"

The section of Paris where the house owned by the royal family of Ruthenia was located was called La Marais. Once a swamp, the area had been filled in and gradually built up as the city was enlarged. Due to its convenience to the old Louvre Palace and the Tuileries, over the years it had become a most elite and aristocratic district with many fine homes that were themselves like small palaces. Decay had set in when the nobles were required by Louis XIV to move en masse with him to Versailles, and the revolution had hastened the process. With the occupation of the Tuileries by Napoleon as emperor, however, the great houses had been occupied once more and had remained so during the return of the Bourbons and the Orleans to the throne. The section was then a curious mixture of slum dwellings and elite residences where the nobility rubbed shoulders with the descendents of sansculottes, and all were entertained by the activities of the artists and writers who lived in the garrets of the district.

Known simply as Ruthenia House, the residence of the prince was constructed of the same pale gold stone used for so many buildings in the city. That stone had been overlaid with years of drifting soot from chimney pots so that it was now a dull and streaked gray in color, as was the rest of Paris. The massive front gate of wrought iron set with the crest of Ruthenia guarded a cobblestoned entrance court, the largest of four such courtyards that were incorporated in the rectangular building.

The rooms were built one-deep around the four sides of the court areas, which for convenience were named for the cardinal points of the compass, with the larger entrance area being designated the south court. The arrangement allowed for a feeling of openness within the solid façade presented to the outside world, as well as ample light and the free flow of air from tall leaded and stained-glass windows. Though the entrance court was fairly utilitarian, paved with cobblestones and containing only a statue of Diana and bas-reliefs over the entrance doorway representing Grecian women of the four seasons, the other enclosures were planted with clipped evergreen shrubbery set in intricate geometric designs. As one passed from room to room, it was always possible to see greenery and open space. In the summer, blooming plants and herbs would add color, but now in late November there was nothing but dark green shrubs, turned earth, and a few empty urns.

To Mara, the house was a palace, nothing less. There were, she had been reliably told, some seventy rooms under the various angles of its roofline. Above the south court, the entrance court, was the main gallery, a long hall holding the grand staircase that mounted from the entrance and led to the public reception rooms that occupied the wing on the left. To the right were the apartments of the prince, including various antechambers, salons, and other rooms, and beyond them the state apartments for King Rolfe and Queen Angeline, all grouped around the east court. Around the north and west courts were private salons built whimsically in oval and circular shapes, a long gallery sometimes used for exercise and for dancing, plus various other salons, antechambers, bedchambers, and dressing rooms. Near Mara's own suite, which included a salon, bedchamber, and small dressing room, was a back stair that led down to the kitchens on the ground floor. Also on that lower level were the servants’ quarters, the storage rooms, the carriage house, and the stables.

It was without doubt an enormous and splendid residence, and yet the furniture and draperies, the paintings and enamelware, the faience, crystal chandeliers, and chinaware, though once of superb quality, were now of a uniform shabbiness. There had been little effort to update the great, rambling place; though many houses in Paris had installed gas lighting, here there was only accommodation for candlelight. There were treasures hidden in the dark recesses of the various rooms, but also ancient dirt and bits of broken furnishings. The windows needed washing, the floors polishing, the ceilings cleaning of the accumulated soot and grime of decades. Not one of the cavernous chimneys in the place drew as it should, nor was the service from the kitchens efficient enough to assure hot food delivered to any room. There were piles of horse manure in the entrance court and noisome heaps of refuse that would not bear investigating on the street outside the kitchen door. In some wings the stench of chamber pots was pervasive; in others the odor was unidentifiable and indescribable, but just as overpowering.

Mara had been ordered to keep to her bed. She had obeyed from necessity for two days, from choice for another, but on the fourth she had rebelled. The food that had been brought to her was inedible, the girl who brought it a slattern. The sheets on her bed had been musty to begin with and had remained unchanged. There was ancient dust in the folds of the bed curtains and on the speckled, gilt picture frames on the walls, and enough dirt in the rug bedside the bed to sprout seed. Visitors had apparently been forbidden to see her, for she had had none. It was disgust, no less than the boredom and the feeling that valuable time was passing while she did nothing, that had driven her finally from her chamber.

She had not seen Roderic since that first morning. In the back of her mind was a vague memory of a conversation with him on the day they had reached Paris. She was afraid that cognac on a virtually empty stomach, coupled with exhaustion and pain, had made her indiscreet. She could not quite recall what had been said, however, a true loss of memory. She could not think that she had been too confiding or surely she would not still be in the household of the prince. And yet it was possible that something she had said had caused him to isolate her, to suspect her convenient amnesia.

She had wondered more than once if the prince had not deliberately made her intoxicated. Such a tactic, she thought, would not be beyond him. Oh, she absolved him of using any such means to force himself upon a woman—a man with his appearance and title would have little need of it. Regardless, there was a ruthlessness about him that suggested that he would not be too scrupulous about his methods of gaining information if he thought the situation called for it. The idea gave her a feeling of unpleasant vulnerability.

Roderic also, Mara suspected, used more conventional methods of gathering information. In the few short hours she had been up and about, there had been a steady stream of visitors to see the prince. To this the official embassy of Ruthenia had come men with the stern and pompous look of statesmen and financiers and ladies wrapped in furs who trailed silk skirts and clouds of expensive perfume. These were to be expected, and were received in the public salon that overlooked the main entrance court. But what of the authors with ink-stained fingers, artists with flowing ties in the romantic style, street cleaners, fish vendors, drivers of cabriolets, black-coated waiters, and little seamstresses in their cheap gray dresses that had given them the name of
grisettes
? What purpose could such people serve except for what they might be able to tell Roderic? What reason could he have for gathering such knowledge except to find answers to the riddle she represented?

Perhaps she was giving herself too much importance. It seemed doubtful that a man such as the prince would go to so much trouble to discover the identity of a woman. She could not flatter herself that he was that taken with her charms. Certainly she had seen little sign of anything more than curiosity. There might have been a moment of brief attraction, but it had been quickly submerged by irritation and annoyance. She could not feel that an undying passion for her had been kindled out of such minor reactions.

She was no longer certain, of course, that such passion was to be desired. Her instructions had been to persuade Roderic to bring her with him on his return to Paris, to install herself in his home. It had been expected that she would be forced to share his bed in order to accomplish that object. She had not. It had not been explained to her what the purpose of her presence was, except that she would be instrumental in involving the prince in some scheme de Landes had in mind. She might well be able to do what was necessary without going so far as actual intimacy with the prince.

But did it matter? Mara, for all the indulgence of her upbringing, was a realist. She was not foolish enough to think that she could emerge unscathed from this escapade. It was true that she was not well known in Paris; still, there were people whom she had met, people who would recognize her. Sooner or later, if she stayed long enough with Roderic, there would be someone who would see her and draw the inescapable conclusion.

It was possible it would not happen until she had done what she must—she prayed that it would not for the sake of her grandmother. But if it did, if it was discovered that she was in Paris rather than in the country with her grandmother, as her cousin believed, the scandal would be great. Paris, for all its cosmopolitan outlook, was provincial about some things. The appearance of virtue must be maintained. Some railed against such a bourgeois attitude, one that had emerged with the advance of the middle class after the revolution and steadily increased in strictness with every year since. But it did no good. A woman who cared for her good name did not live under the same roof with a man, especially one such as the prince.

Once the tale was out, it would reach New Orleans without delay. What her father would say and do, Mara did not like to think. What she herself would do afterward, how and where she would live when her task was complete, she preferred not to consider. Her grandmother would be safe, and that was all that mattered.

Mara was traversing the main gallery above the south entrance court after inspecting the public rooms when she heard the faint sound of barking. It was Demon, she was sure, though the sound seemed to be coming from some distance away. The acoustics in the house, as in all houses of any size, were peculiar. A person could yell herself hoarse in one spot and not be heard beyond the next room, while a whisper in another place would reverberate through the entire upper floor.

She thought at first that the dog might be in Roderic's apartments. She had not penetrated into that section of the building, but knew that the rooms occupied by the cadre were located in the same wing, along one side of the east court, with the exception of Trude's, which was near to her own. The dog was surely with his master, Estes, since he was seldom far from the count's side. Estes would, in all likelihood, be with the other men of the cadre.