Sweet Piracy (22 page)

“He is not old,” Caroline said, laughing at her drollery. “I doubt he is more than a year or two more ancient than that matrimonial prize, the Marquis de Rochefort.”

Estelle gave an airy wave of her hand. “That one you can have also. Me, I prefer younger men.”

“Like Hippolyte Gravier?”

“At least he doesn’t frighten me to death! M’sieur le Marquis has too great and uncertain a temper for my taste.”

“You may be right,” Caroline said. “At least it is good you know your own mind.”

“Indeed, yes,” Estelle said complacently and waltzed back out onto the gallery to rejoin her court.

8

CAROLINE SAT STARING at the blank paper in front of her, a frown of concentration between her brows. The result of her earlier efforts lay scattered over the top of the
secrétaire
in wadded balls. She had improved the point of her quill with a penknife, trimmed the candlewick for a better light, diluted the ink in the inkstand, and adjusted her chair, paper, and blotting sand, all to no avail.

How did one address a man who saw fit to use a title to which he had no claim? How did one request a meeting with such a man without sounding either coy or melodramatic? She could decide neither case. Nothing she wrote seemed quite appropriate. Yet write she must. Already he had let more than a week slide past since her decision to confront Rochefort.

A rustle of silk drew her attention to the door. There would be only one person who still preferred the stiffness of petticoats to the softness of muslin. Tante Zizi.

The old lady stood just within the sitting room door, both hands resting on a gold-handled cane. “May I enter, Mam’zelle?”

Caroline at once got to her feet and went forward. “Naturally, you may enter. I would be glad of the company.”

“You have delightful manners, my child,” Tante Zizi said. “I am sure you wish me at the devil, but you are too polite to say so.”

Bringing a small footstool covered in petit point for the elderly woman’s use, Caroline laughed. “And much too polite to agree with you, even if it were so, which it is not.”

Tante Zizi smiled. “Old ladies don’t sleep well, you know,
ma chére
. On my midnight ramblings I saw your light. What is a young woman like you doing putting pen to paper when you should be abed? Writing
billets-doux
, I make no doubt.”

Succumbing to the teasing tone in Tante Zizi’s voice, Caroline replied, “Not precisely, though you could say that I am trying to arrange an assignation.”

“Impudent baggage,” the old lady said without heat. “I understand you whistled one perfectly good suitor down the wind.”

“Perfectly good?” Caroline mused, returning to her chair at the
secrétaire
. “Well, yes, at least I’m sure he thought so.”

“Hah! I collect then that you want a man whose virtues are not quite so obvious?”

“I did not say so.”

“I noticed. Some things pass without saying. Tell me whom you are planning to meet.”

“Now, why should I do that?”

“Because I am a nosy old lady who likes to know what is going on around her. You may as well tell me, I will find out anyway.”

“What would you say if I told you I was writing to our noble neighbor?”

“Rochefort? I’d say you had more wits under your hair than I gave you credit for.”

Caroline looked away in distress. The joke had suddenly gone sour.

“Something is troubling you,
ma petite?
Have I been tactless? I am so seldom in company. Sometimes I don’t think how people will take what I say.”

“No, no. It isn’t that.” She managed a smile.

“Then you are surprised that I would approve a union between you and the Marquis? But why not,
chére
? You forget, I know your lineage. The position you now hold may be humble, but your birth is not. Think you I would prefer to see the title fall to my own nieces? Ah, no. Estelle is too young for Rochefort, and Amélie too tender. They would not do at all, despite all their mother’s machinations.”

Caroline could not bring herself to disillusion the old lady. This example of the effects of Rochefort’s deception strengthened her resolve to put an end to it, however. With a commendable try at lightness, she said, “Are you saying I am old and tough, Madame?”

“No, indeed,” Tante Zizi snapped. “I am saying you are a sensible and sensitive girl who deserves better than she has at present. And if there is aught I can do to see you comfortably established, it shall be done.”

“You are very kind,” Caroline said slowly, “and I did not mean willfully to mislead you. I must tell you there is nothing of — of a romantic nature between Rochefort and myself.”

“Figs!” Tante Zizi said. “It’s plain as a pikestaff you are in love with him. Haven’t I seen the two of you with your heads together, dancing, laughing, talking? If he isn’t as taken with you as you are with him, I will own myself an addlepated old fool!”

“Nevertheless—”

“Pride, is it? Pride is a cold bedfellow, my girl, let me assure you. Shall I tell you something I have not spoken of for more than fifty years? I was never the mistress of the King of France. Never, despite what everyone believes. And I shall regret it until my dying day. Like a foolish virgin, I caviled at accepting the little he had to offer. I loved him, but I told myself I did not want to be another woman in a long line of women, that he would love me better and longer if he did not possess me. I begged him to send me away. At last he agreed. And then what? People believed the worst anyway. Pride robbed me of the position filled by Madame Du Barry. Pride filched away the ten years of happiness I might have enjoyed before his death, ten years.”

“Are you implying, Tante Zizi, that I should become the mistress of the Marquis?”

The old lady grew stern. “Do not pretend to misunderstand me, my girl. I expect better of you than that. I am saying that you must allow yourself to be ruled not by your head, but by your heart.”

Caroline met her wise old eyes without flinching. “It is good advice, I’m sure, but easier to give than to follow.”

Tante Zizi let out a sigh. “Well I know it. I must be in my dotage to think you could learn from my mistakes. Forgive an old woman for burdening you with the story. Give me your arm and I will remove myself and let you get on with whatever it is you have to do.”

When Caroline had seen the elderly woman to her corner bedchamber, she returned to the sitting room. She seated herself at the
secrétaire
and picked up the plume. After a moment, she began to write.

The sealed note was sent off by Jim the groom directly after breakfast. It still lacked an hour of noon when Colossus sought her out on the back gallery where she was showing Mathilde her numbers.

“Mam’zelle,” he intoned with a stiff inclination of his upper body. “There is a gentleman to see you. He waits in the salon.”

Caroline set the girl from her lap and got to her feet. “Run back to your nurse, Mathilde, there’s a good girl. We shall learn more this afternoon.”

“Yes, Mam’zelle,” the little girl replied and, giving Caroline a swift hug, ran to do as she was bidden.

Smoothing the creases from her rose cambric gown with fingers suddenly nerveless, Caroline turned into the house.

Rochefort stood with his back to the room, staring out the window. At her entrance, he swung around but made no move to come toward her.

Caroline stood as if rooted to the spot just inside the door. There was a grimness about him she had not expected. His lips were set in a tight line and his brows drawn together above the bridge of his nose.

“Well, Mademoiselle Pembroke?” he rasped when she remained silent. “I had your summons. What do you want of me?”

She swallowed, dismayed by his antagonism so near to the outset. “Won’t you sit down?” she managed finally.

“Thank you, no. I prefer to stand.”

They had parted with cordiality when last they met, on the day of the trip to the sandbar. She could think of nothing that had happened in the meantime to set him so at odds with her. Not that his attitude mattered. Her task would have been much harder if he had been all smiling friendliness.

“Very well,” she said, lifting her chin. “I asked you to come this morning because I have something I feel I must say to you. To put it plainly, I know who and what you are.”

He took the few steps that brought him to the settee and, placing both hands along the back, leaned toward her. “You don’t intend to stop there, I imagine.”

“I can go on, if necessary,” she said, her gray eyes level. “Last winter I had occasion to travel from the continent in a British merchantman. The ship was seized on the high seas and boarded by the privateer known as the Black Eagle. It has taken me some little time to place the resemblance, but I have done so at last. You, sir, are that privateer.”

“You seem very certain, Mademoiselle. How does that come about?”

“The incident is extremely vivid in my mind. It is not every day that I am forced to entertain in my stateroom a man little better than a pirate.”

He pushed away from the settee and moved around the end of it. “Forced his way into your stateroom, did he?” he queried, a dangerous edge to the softness of his voice.

“Yes, the stateroom I was sharing with Amélie, as you well know.”

“You must have been quite close to him, then?”

She watched his slow advance with misgivings, remembering suddenly the forfeit taken by the privateer, something she had tried hard to forget. “Yes,” she answered.

“As close as this?” he asked from no more than arm’s length away.

“Y-yes,” she managed, nerves tightening the muscles of her throat as the restraint she held upon herself snapped and she swung away from him.

A hand on her forearm stopped her. “In such confined quarters, there must have been a great temptation to take liberties,” he said, a husky sound edging his voice. “Did he, perhaps, do this?”

His arms enclosed her. His kiss was demanding, thorough, and yet there was an underlying gentleness that was oddly at variance with the iron grip which held her immobile.

Caroline was conscious of a hollow ache in her chest and the heat of a suffocating blush as he released her and stepped back. Fighting for composure, she clasped her trembling hands together before her waist. If she had ever doubted that Rochefort and the Black Eagle were one and the same man, she could no longer do so.

His next words confirmed her thought. “Yes,” he said with hateful self-control, “there was a certain familiarity to that. It seems I must be the man of whom you speak.”

“You are,” she said tightly.

“We are agreed then. And now, having satisfactorily established my identity, what will you do?”

“Do?”

“Surely you had some reason for confronting me with my evil past?”

There was a trace of mockery in his voice that Caroline could not understand. Surely he should be more disturbed that she had recognized him? “You are an imposter,” she said unsteadily. “I could not simply ignore that fact.”

“And of course the neighborhood must be rid of such a pariah.”

“No, I — I didn’t think of it like that, but — but suppose you were to wed? The marriage would be illegal!”

“How so?” he asked, his eyes unreadable behind the screen of his lashes.

“Why — because you have assumed the name and title of another man, at least — you must have, or you would not have been able to satisfy Tante Zizi.”

“I see. You fear I will cheat the woman I marry. There is a way you can prevent that and, at the same time, allow me to continue my masquerade.”

“I don’t understand you,” Caroline said.

“You can marry me yourself, and as we stand before the priest I will undertake to whisper my real name into the Holy Father’s ear.”

Stunned, Caroline could only stare at him. And then the cleverness of his ploy began to unfold in her mind. Her gray eyes grew dark with contempt. “Yes, that would silence me nicely, wouldn’t it?”

“Come now, don’t be hasty. Have you forgotten? Imposter that I am, I am still a rich man. We could be most comfortable together.”

“I will not be bribed with your ill-gotten gain!” she told him, her voice shaking with fury.