The Counterfeit Mistress (8 page)

A white spot caught his eye. A cap. Marielle's woman stood near some shrubbery near the back of the garden, half obscured by the branches of a tree that interfered with his line of sight. He moved to the left and saw Marielle herself. She sat on a bench next to a man who had been upstairs. Some boxwood half hid them, but he saw them speaking intently, heads bent close together and hands moving. They looked like intimate friends discussing a matter of great importance.

Or like lovers having a row.

The man made a gesture of resignation and apology with his hands, holding them open. Then he stood, bowed, and walked toward the terrace. Kendale noted his face as he passed back into the house.

Down in the garden Marielle remained on the bench. She sat there, not moving at all. Her woman stepped over and placed a hand on her shoulder. The touch seemed to call her back from wherever her thoughts had led her. She turned her body toward the older woman and embraced her, burying her face in the woman's dress. She remained thus for a long count before standing, smoothing her skirt, and strolling back with a slow, listless gait.

She noticed him when she was halfway through the garden. That put some iron in her spine and stride in her walk. Head high and eyes alight with mockery, she came up to the terrace.

“Madame Peltier has allowed you to leave her side? I am surprised. She depends on friends like you to make her important with our countrymen.”

“Regrettably, I do not care for small talk in any language and had to take my leave before I went mad.”

“If you are drinking champagne, what do you care how big the talk may be?”

“I do not care for champagne either.”

“Do you prefer beer, ale, gin, and tea, like most of your kind?”

“I like wine too. Just not champagne.”

“Madame Peltier will change your mind about that.”

“I do not think so. Women do not influence me much.”

She wagged her finger at him. “Beware, Lord Kendale. A woman who knows what she is about can influence a man and he does not even realize it.”

Did she warn him about Madame Peltier, or herself? “Who was that man you were sitting with?”

“One of the new arrivals. I came out for some air and he had as well.”

“I was not introduced to him, as I was to the others.”

“Perhaps he left before you were brought around.”

Perhaps. Then again, maybe Marielle now lied. She did that sometimes. “You appeared distressed by whatever he was saying.”

“Were you spying on me? I will not have it.”

“I have been spying on you for over a year. Do not act shocked now, especially after—”
After I have come within a hairsbreadth of possessing you, damn it
. “You went through some effort to meet that man. It was no accident, but a rendezvous. Who is he? What did he say to make you distraught?”

Is he your lover? Your partner in crime?
He wanted to know, badly. Too much. He hated to admit he would prefer the second explanation to the first, even if it confirmed his worst suspicions.

Her expression hardened. “He described the suffering he has known the last few years since his father's property was confiscated. The hunger and the humiliation and fear. Yes, I was distressed, as any person would be to hear such things. Up there they drink champagne to celebrate their deliverance, but they all know the life they once had is gone, perhaps forever, and they are paupers begging at England's door.”

He had not seen sympathy, but real worry, and emotion that required a friend's embrace to contain. He would not argue with her now, however. To do so would make him more of an ass than he had already been. Kissing a woman a few times does not give a man the right to demand explanations, even if he battled a primal anger at seeing that woman in an intimate conversation with another man.

“My coach is here. I will take you back to your house.”

“No, thank you. I am not inclined to be questioned and tested more today, and cannot risk that you will attempt to do so.”

“It is not safe. You must take better care. You take the coach and I will walk.”

“No, milord. Dominique and I will walk and enjoy the fair weather, and then work long into the night to make up for this afternoon's entertainment. Go back to Madame Peltier. She has all the time in the world to waste with men like you.”

M
arielle's mind raced. Dominique walked alongside.

“You might have accepted his offer of his coach, for my sake,” Dominique muttered after half an hour.

“When you want to ride in a coach, we will hire one. We will not accept his gifts of any kind. It will only let him think he can intrude whenever he likes, in whatever he likes, as he did today.” She screwed up her face to imitate Kendale's frown when he spoke on the terrace. “Who is he? What did he say?” She rolled her eyes. “I was right in how I named him the first time. What a stupid man.”

Dominique trudged on, not happy. “He is not one to be put off, that is certain.” She turned her head and looked back. “He has been following us all the while.”

Marielle refused to look. How like Kendale to enforce his will. Her exasperation did not entirely conquer her relief that she would indeed be safe at least today.

“Nor is he so stupid,” Dominique said, pausing by an iron fence to catch her breath. She was neither young nor slender, and she rarely walked this much. Marielle debated whether to hail the coach following them.

Dominique pushed away from the fence and walked on. “He saw well enough what he saw today. You are annoyed he was not stupid enough to believe you asked after a stranger's history and nothing more. He may have misunderstood the reasons, but he saw your sadness and worry.”

Those words did not do justice to her reactions on that bench as Monsieur Marion gave her news of the region around Savenay.

“What am I to do? What? For all I know Lamberte is here in England if he has not been seen in Savenay for two weeks and is known to not be in residence in the château.”

“Monsieur Marion said it is rumored he went to Paris. That he is hoping for a position there, and has gone to make his case.”

Had it come to that? Had Lamberte risen so far and so well that he might find himself in the government's inner circle? She did not think it was so simple. Monsieur Marion had revealed more than that, too.

“The images have affected him, he said. There have been questions. Suspicions.”

“It is what you intended. You should be relieved.”

“If he thinks he can rise further, he will want to make sure such accusations do not continue. He cannot afford for the ministers in Paris to investigate possible financial irregularities. If I were him, I would want to make sure my house were very clean before inviting such attention. I would do what I must to see that only the best parts of my record could be read.”

“He can never be certain of that, after all he has done.”

“He can perhaps if he tears out the bad parts of the record and burns them.”

They walked in silence then. Marielle guessed that Dominique's thoughts went to the same place as hers. Lamberte had sent men to track the engravings back to their source and remove that problem. She could only hope that he had not realized that Marielle Lyon was the source of that dangerous nuisance.

“He said there has been no word of your father.” Dominique reached over and squeezed Marielle's hand.

“It has become harder to execute without good cause. Harder to be a power that answers to no one, as he was during the chaos six years ago. To do that now might bring the wrong kind of attention to him.” She hoped so. She prayed so.

“And, he knows I could be alive. He may have surmised that only his hold on Papa keeps me from denouncing him outright, and with more than satirical images.” Her mind took her back to that alley, and to how close she had come to having long plans come to naught. It would be sadly ironic if Lamberte killed her without even knowing who it was that he killed. “Perhaps that is what I should do now.”

“Do you think to go back?” Dominique shook her head. “No, no, no. Whom would you trust? To whom would you present your evidence? The government is busy fighting wars. No one will care about a crime from long ago. No one will listen and if they do, they will not believe you.”

Marielle knew that. She had never alluded to the worst crimes in her engravings. With so many deaths, a few more became meaningless.

Instead the prints showed Lamberte stealing from the government. They would care about that, perhaps, if enough of those prints made their way to Paris.

Twilight had fallen by the time they turned onto their street. Footsore and tired, they both hobbled up the steps.

Before Marielle could open the door it flung open. Nicole the cook faced them, her eyes wide with fear and relief. She began crying.

“What is it?” Dominique demanded. When Nicole did not answer she gave the woman a shake.

“Thieves!” Nicole exclaimed when she caught a breath. “We have had thieves intrude while you were gone. I thank God I was below and heard nothing. Had I come up, I might have been killed.”

“If you heard nothing, how do you know someone intruded?” Marielle asked.

“You will see, mam'selle. Such desecration—I may never sleep well again.” She stood aside so Dominique and Marielle could enter.

Sounds from the street pulled at Marielle's attention. Those of horse hooves clipping slowly on stones and of wheels crying as they stopped turning. She glanced back and saw Kendale's coach in the street. He sat near the window and looked out at her.

She turned away quickly.
Go away, go away
,
you stubborn, intruding man
, her mind urged. Her heart swelled with relief, however, when she heard the carriage door open.

“W
hat has happened?” Kendale asked as he mounted the step to the blue door.

“The cook says we had housebreakers. Thieves.” Marielle did not bar his entry, so he followed her over the threshold.

Evidence of the intrusion spread across the studio. Papers had been tossed haphazardly on the tables and floor. Marielle flushed and covered her eyes with her hand, then began gathering the prints into a stack. “We will have to go over each one most carefully, to see if there is damage.”

“And if there is?”

“I must pay for them, of course.” Her slender finger plucked more off the floor.

He bent and helped, trying to avoid being more harm than help. It took half an hour to pick them all up.

“Why were no women here working?” he asked.

“I chose to go to that party. Madame LaTour can be my eyes here when I am gone, but she too attended. So we all took a little holiday.” She smiled sourly at the workroom. “Such a cost for so little gain.”

“Marielle,” the old woman said from the doorway. She gestured for Marielle to follow her. Kendale tagged along.

A small chamber at the back of the house overlooked the garden. He peered out. There was not much property, and what they had was planted. Not flowers. No tulips here. The ground had been worked in rows. He guessed it would fill with greenery and vegetables in a few months.

The old woman pulled back a drapery to reveal a broken shutter and sash. A small pane of glass had been smashed too. Kendale pulled the window open. It was large enough for a man to enter.

“What did they take?” he asked.

“If you will wait here, we will go and see if anything of value is gone,” Marielle said. Huddled close and whispering, they left him.

He sat on one of the chairs and took stock of this house. Although modest, it was larger than many. Marielle's print coloring business probably paid the rents. Her industry provided a modicum of comfort at least, but he supposed it was a precarious existence. One unexpected problem, such as having to pay an engraver for prints one could never sell, might tip the balance.

He caught his own thoughts up short. How easily he was willing to worry for her, and forget that she probably had other income besides that from those prints. She may not have even signed the lease to this house, if it had been provided to her so that she had a home while she collected information. He would have to check to see whose name was on the paper.

Marielle returned alone and sank into another chair. “They were above. Our chambers are overturned. Mattresses, clothing, all over. However, we can find nothing gone.”

“They were looking for something, from what you describe. Why else overturn a mattress?”

“To see if coin is hidden beneath it, of course.”

“Do people really do that? Hide money beneath their mattresses, tied to the ropes?”

“Some do, although if I were a thief, I would look there first, so better places should be found.”

“Where do you hide yours?”

She patted her hip. “Here. It is a benefit of being unfashionable. One can sew a pocket into these skirts.” Her hand slipped between two folds and the fabric swallowed her arm almost to the elbow.

He wondered if that were the real reason she wore such styles now. Like the long shawls, those pockets allowed all kinds of things to be carried invisibly. “First men try to kill you. Now this. I do not think it is a coincidence.”

“They are not related, except to show London has many thieves in it.”

She smiled at him, putting on a brave face. He saw how concerned she was, however. That had never happened before with a woman. Females remained ciphers to him for which he possessed no solution. They all wore masks of one kind or another, playing this role or that on life's stage. They confounded him when he noticed them at all.

This one, however—for good or bad he had come to know her. Right now, he knew she was afraid.

“If you tell me what this is all about, perhaps I could help you.”

He braced himself for mocking Marielle or self-possessed Marielle, and maybe he even hoped for seductress Marielle. Instead she looked at him so directly that he thought he could see right into her mind.