The Duke of Olympia Meets His Match (15 page)

One Month Later

6 rue Halévy

Paris, France

A shower of rain had just burst forth from the sky, but Penelope didn't mind. This was April in Paris, and unexpected showers were all part of the atmosphere, making the cobblestones shine and the air sparkle, making the world seem new again. Anyway, they didn't last. By the time she reached the American Express office from the omnibus stop around the corner of rue Halévy, the drops were already scattering and a patch of brilliant blue sky appeared above.

The same color, in fact, as the eyes of a certain English duke, though she didn't allow herself to linger on that thought. Instead she concentrated on the shaking of her umbrella, folding it shut just as she passed through the door and into the spacious office that smelled of damp wood and money. She approached the counter as she did each day, at precisely half past ten o'clock, buoyant and satisfied, having enjoyed a buttered morning brioche with strawberry jam, washed down by a cup of intense black coffee, and improved her French by reading the early edition of
Le Figaro
from beginning to end.

She would not let a thing so ordinary as a color disturb that tranquility.

“Ah! Madame Schuyler,” said the clerk, face brightening. “You have some letters. Also, there is a gentleman who waits for you.”

Penelope's fingers froze in the act of fastening her umbrella. “A gentleman?”

“A very large gentleman.” The clerk leaned forward. “He is leaning against the wall just there, behind you.”

“Is he, now.” She tapped her fingers against the head of the umbrella and felt an electric blue gaze raise the hairs at the back of her neck. The hairs everywhere, in fact, and the blood in her veins, too, while she stood and stood, staring at the bemused clerk.

“Madame? Shall I summon the police?”

She held out her hand. “That won't be necessary. May I have my post, please?”

The clerk looked over her shoulder and then back to her eyes, and an expression of sympathetic understanding crept over his face, as he comprehended the entire history of the affair. He was, after all, a Frenchman.

“Of course, madame,” he said, offering her the letters.

She took her time thumbing through them all—notes from a friend or two, a stately envelope from the lawyer in New York—while the clock ticked heavily on the wall and the clerk stole minute smiles as he bent over the ledger on the counter. To her right, a slender man in a bowler hat was changing a traveler's check. He was, it seemed, from Arizona, and this was his first visit to Paris. “Except the one in Texas, of course,” he told the other clerk, and the clerk smiled politely as though he hadn't heard the joke a hundred times before.

“Madame? Will there be anything else? May I change you some money, perhaps? Arrange for a journey?”

She looked up, as if she'd forgotten where she was. “Oh! No, thank you. I haven't quite decided where to go next.”

“Ah, well. You are in Paris in the springtime, madame. There is no hurry, I think.”

She smiled. “Yes, I believe you're right. No hurry at all.”

She put the letters in her pocketbook and turned at last, in the kind of slow and magnificent rotation she knew the Duke of Olympia would appreciate.

He stood next to one of the enormous windows, dwarfing it. His arms were crossed against his tweed jacket, which was buttoned over a stomach equally as flat and elastic as when she had seen it last. His collar was crisp and white, his hat pulled low over his silver-white hair. He looked well-tailored and quietly expensive and so utterly masculine, she had an instant of jellylike weakness somewhere in the region of her knees. Probably he could crush her. Probably he
would
crush her. A man like the Duke of Olympia did not appreciate having his bold Roman nose tweaked by an upstart American widow.

As she stood there, eyebrows raised in question, he levered himself away from the wall and walked toward her. His feet clacked on the wooden floor, reminding her of the promenade deck on board the
Majestic
. Without warning, the taste of his mouth appeared in her memory. When he was a yard away, he stopped, bowed his head, and offered his arm. His magnificent face was so grave, she nearly buckled.

“A cup of coffee at the Café de la Paix, Mrs. Schuyler?”

“I've already had coffee this morning.”

“Then chocolate, perhaps.”

She took his arm. “Very well. Since you insist.”

He said not a word as he guided her along the sidewalk and across the Place de l'Opéra, holding back the traffic by the force of a single steely glance from under his brow. The maître d' fairly quivered at their approach, and rushed to offer them a table on the sidewalk, which the duke refused in elegant French, preferring the privacy of a table indoors. “If that is acceptable to you, madame,” he said, turning to Penelope.

“Naturally it is acceptable,” she said, in equally elegant French, and the maître d' whisked them inside to a table in the corner. Too late, Penelope wondered if this was wise. Weren't you supposed to stay in plain view? Witnesses and all that? But surely she had nothing to fear from Olympia in the civilized public atmosphere of the Café de la Paix. He would never seek so crude a form of revenge.

“I have changed my mind,” she said, when she was seated. “I believe I will have coffee after all.”

“Two coffees and a basket of bread, if you will,” said Olympia, and he settled back in his chair and patted his waistcoat pocket, as if hunting for something to smoke.

“When did you realize the truth?” she asked, in English.

“About an hour out of London, I'm ashamed to say. You see, I was in something of a daze, which has not happened to me in many years.” He hesitated. “I might almost say, since I was a young man.”

She shrugged. “It passed quickly enough.”

He didn't answer until the coffee and pastries had arrived and were laid out ceremoniously before them, cramming the little table as if Penelope and Olympia were sitting down to a feast. His eyes, however, didn't leave her face. She refused to return his gaze. She had been warned about basilisks in her youth.

“So. Do you have questions for me?” she said at last.

“No, I have not. An exchange of cables with our friend Madame de Sauveterre illuminated the major points of the ruse. How she had become alarmed at Dingleby's fanaticism and yet powerless to stop her without the assistance of the authorities, whom she knew would treat her revelations with suspicion. How she cleverly managed to bring all of us on board the ship, counting on the close quarters and our own ingenuity to bring about the desired result, which would not only disable Dingleby's plot but provide a convenient feint for you to smuggle the papers free unscathed.” He picked up his spoon and dropped a single heap of sugar into his coffee, which, like hers, was as thick and black as oil. “Have I missed anything important?”

“Don't you want to know what the papers contained?”

“Can you tell me that?”

“No.”

“Ah, well. I suppose it's just some nonsense, after all. These secret papers usually are. So much effort and sometimes blood, and it's all for nonsense.” He tasted the coffee thoughtfully. “There is one thing I should like to ask you. From a sense of professional curiosity, nothing more.”

“Of course.” The coffee burned her tongue, but she hardly noticed.

“Did de Sauveterre tell you everything from the beginning, or did she leave you to manage the business on your own?”

“The second. I didn't realize she had some great plan in the works until I retrieved the portfolio from the safe, two days before our arrival in Liverpool. I thought perhaps I should know a little more about what I was risking my neck for, and so I looked inside. In addition to the papers in question, there was a note from Margot. She'd been counting on my curiosity, you see.”

“And what did the note say?”

“Simply that if her friend the Duke of Olympia was such a numbskull as not to have recognized Miss Crawley's true identity by the last night of the voyage, I would find the relevant information hidden under the seat of her chair. She trusted I would know what to do with it.”

“Hmm. A numbskull, was it?”

“I believe that was the term she employed.”

He selected a pastry from the basket and frowned at it, so sternly that Penelope was afraid it might wither away into his hand. “She took a great risk. What if I'd been able to lift the papers from you?”

“Well, as to that, I think she may have been—what's the phrase—testing me out?” She arranged her fingers around the rim of the coffee cup. “You're right, the information in those papers wasn't the kind of thing to save lives or topple empires. The recipient was—
is
—in the hotel business. He was very grateful, however.”

“
How
grateful?” growled Olympia.

“Enough to allow me to stay in his hotel for as long as I liked, free of charge. Meals included, which is very nice. The chef is superb, absolutely superb. But the point is, I passed the test.”

“Yes, you did. I won't deny it. You led the way in this little affair, whilst I failed you at nearly every step.”

“That's not true. You showed me—if it weren't for you, I—” The words died in her throat. How could she describe what he had meant to her? The strength she had taken from him, from his belief in her.

“I suppose Madame de Sauveterre wishes you to undertake further such missions?”

Penelope shrugged. “It's possible.”

“Will you accept?”

“I haven't decided. It's so much to take on. On the other hand . . .”

“Yes?”

“I haven't had so much fun since I was a girl.”

The duke set down his pastry and steepled his fingers to consider her with the full weight of his concentration. “Yes. There is that. So much potential wasted. You should decide soon. The clock ticks, as they say.”

“Yes. I will. I can't stay at the Continental forever, and I haven't much money.”

The duke said nothing. He was looking at her hands now, grim-faced. She moved them from the rim of her cup and lifted the coffee to her lips, in order to fill this appalling silence with movement at least. What was he thinking? What was he plotting? Surely he wasn't just going to let her get away with this. She had played fair; she'd let him know where to find her. Now it was his turn. Friend or foe? Concession or revenge?

“There is, of course, an alternative,” he said.

“Is there?”

He lifted his gaze to her face. “You can marry me.”

The words hit her in the chest. She wasn't quite sure she'd heard them properly. “
Marry
you?” she repeated, as she might say
Soak you in buttermilk?

“Yes. I have, for some time, contemplated a change in life. A shedding of my former ways, to be replaced by a—a—” The grand old Duke of Olympia could not quite find the words to express himself.

“A wife?” she ventured.

“Yes. To put the matter succinctly. You see, until now, whenever I contemplated this change, I couldn't quite conceive what I might do to replace this business, which has occupied the heart of my life since I was a young man. I no longer relished these escapades as I once did, but what else was there to relish? What else might fill its absence?”

The blood pounded in her cheeks. “Are you saying you wish to marry me because you
relish
me?”

He sighed and gazed at the ceiling. “You want more flowery words, I suppose. Women always do. It is not enough that a man feels as he does, with all the strength of his heart; he must then declare it in the most honey-soaked language, flowing on and on, rotting his very teeth as it wanders through his mouth—”

“No.” She scraped back her chair and flung herself into his arms. “
Relish
will do very well.”

Paris.
The Duke of Olympia announces his marriage to Mrs. Penelope Schuyler, formerly of New York City, yesterday morning in the chapel of the Palais Royale after a short engagement. The bride was attended by the Countess de Sauveterre and Mrs. Robert Langley, both ladies also of New York City, while the groom was attended by his two grandsons, the Duke of Wallingford and Lord Roland Penhallow. A wedding breakfast was held at the Hôtel Continental. The Duke and Duchess of Olympia departed that same evening on His Grace's private steam-yacht for an extended honeymoon, the destination and duration of which the duke declined to reveal.

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A MOST EXTRAORDINARY PURSUIT

Coming Soon from Berkley

The main saloon of the
Isolde
took up the entire width of the ship along a fifty-foot section of her main and upper decks, topped by a brilliant stained glass dome that was presently crackling with rain, though not loudly enough to drown out the voice of Caruso from the gramophone inhabiting a substantial cabinet on the port side.

“What the devil's that?” said Lord Silverton, pausing in the doorway.

“It is Donizetti.”

“Damned mournful bloke. Haven't we got anything a bit more cheerful?
Pirates of Penzance
, now that's a jolly farce. Or else—whatsit—that charming little jig a year or two back—
Merrie England.
Marvelous stuff.”

I rose to a sitting position. “No.”

Silverton strolled to the gramophone and propped his long body against the cabinet. “Still a bit green about the gills, are we?”

“Touch that needle at your peril, sir.”

He held up his hands and waited politely for the end of the aria, at which point he raised the arm of the gramophone with a single finger and set it aside, in the same manner he might dispose of a soiled napkin. “Just how the devil do you know what he's caterwauling about? Or does it matter?”

“Of course it matters. Nemorino has joined the army, and he's just seen a tear roll down the cheek of the girl he has always hopelessly loved, so perhaps she cares for him, too, except now it's too late—”

“Oh, I see. The same sentimental rubbish as you get in the music hall, except it's all right because it's sung in Italian.”

I folded my arms. “Have you come for any particular purpose, or only to malign a form of art of which you are entirely ignorant?”

“Actually, I thought we might have a little chat about old Max.”

“The newly appointed Duke, do you mean?”

“Do you know, I can't quite bring myself to call him that. The last time I saw Max, he was neck-deep in some damned filthy hole in the ground in Mesopotamia, swearing in five different languages.”

I shrugged. “I've never met him at all.”

“Never? How extraordinary. And now here you are, steaming across the Med to his rescue, in his own private yacht, eating his porridge and listening to his phonograph recordings, except he doesn't know he owns any of it yet.” Silverton levered himself away from the cabinet and collapsed crosswise into an armchair, allowing himself a splendid vantage of the rain-dashed dome. “The captain informs me we'll hurtle into the Aegean around daybreak, so it's now or never, so to speak.”

“What's now or never?”

“Why, sorting out how we go about this business of tracking down the needle that is Max inside the haystack that is the bloody Mediterranean Sea.”

“I thought he was in Crete.”

“Ha! You don't know Max.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small white ball, which he flung into the air and caught with the other hand, before flinging it up again to be caught in the first hand. “If he hears some rumor about a butterfly's wings touching a Rosetta stone in Alexandria, he's off on the next tide, like the cat who . . . who . . .” The ball paused in his hand.

“Ate the canary?”

“No, no.”

“Walked by himself?”

“No, dash it. Something to do with yarn.” He shook his head and sent the ball back into the air. “Well, it's gone now. But you know what I mean.”

“I don't believe I do. In any case, the Rosetta stone is now safe inside the sturdy walls of the British Museum, thank goodness, and—what
is
that?”

“This?” He held up the ball. “It's a cricket ball, of course.”

“But why on earth are you flinging it about like that?”

“For sport, Truelove.” He tapped his wide golden forehead with the ball. “I find it greases the old gears when the mechanism's got stuck. Perhaps you ought to try it. You look as if you could use a bit of mental focus, at the moment. All pink about the cheeks and green about the gills. Rather ghastly, in a charming sort of way.
Think
, now. Why might upstanding Max leave his Cretan post in the middle of winter, without leaving word to his nearest and dearest?”

“Has he
really
left it? We only know for certain that he's not replied to anyone's messages. Perhaps he's been busy. It's not impossible that he hasn't even received these messages to begin with.”

“There is the matter of the Greek official, to whom he's delinquent in sending his regular reports.”

“He may have his own reasons for that.”

Smack
went the cricket ball into Silverton's left palm. “By George, if you're not swimming in optimism this afternoon. Determined not to fear the worst, are you?”

“I see no reason to borrow trouble. There's usually a simple explanation for these conundrums.”

“Conundrum.”
Smack.
“Now there's a splendid word. I do like a splendid word now and again. Makes one feel as if words actually matter. So I suppose the first person we should interview is this Greek chap who's got his fustanella up around his ears about those missing reports. He'll be as crooked as a mountain path, of course—your petty Mediterranean officials always are—and probably expect a handsome gratuity in exchange for any useful information, unless we can contrive, between the two of us, to make him drunk enough to empty his brain for free.”

“Certainly not,” I said indignantly.

He tilted his head in my direction and applied his gaze first to my face, and then my bosom. The ball rolled nimbly around his right palm. “There are other ways, of course. But I daresay you'd object to those, too.”

I swung my feet to the floor and rose from the sofa. “If you're trying to discompose me, it won't work.”

“Perish the thought.”

He watched me as I walked across the length of Persian rug to the gramophone cabinet. Lord Silverton had the kind of gaze you could feel between the blades of your shoulders, and down your spine to the back of your legs: not keen or piercing or tingling, but simply heavy. Heavy and quite, quite blue. I turned the crank briskly and lifted the needle.

“If you're right about the corruption, there is always the possibility that these reports from Mr. Haywood—the
former
Mr. Haywood—were not reports at all, but simply payments,” I said. “I imagine his explorations in Crete require a certain amount of goodwill from the Greek authorities.”

Smack.
“The thought had crossed my mind, I will admit.”

“Naturally the official would be upset if the payments ceased.”

“Incensed, one imagines. Though not so much that he's willing to risk his own comfort to gambol off in search of the missing Max himself.”

The needle scratched, the music began. I turned to face Lord Silverton, leaning my body protectively against the cabinet, hands braced against the edge. He was now twirling the cricket ball at the end of one finger. His head tilted to one side, catching an unnecessary radiance from the electric lamp nearby, and I realized that the unsteadiness in my stomach had quite disappeared.

“Nor would he send any men from his own department to investigate,” I said, “for fear of arousing suspicion, and perhaps jealousy for his additional income.”

A slow smile began at one corner of Lord Silverton's mouth and spread to the other end. He enclosed the cricket ball in the middle of his hand and extended his index finger,
waggle waggle
. “Why, Truelove. What a deliciously devious mind you're hiding, behind that mask of oppressive piety.”

“I am only doing my job, Lord Silverton.”

“A job for which you're singularly suited, I think.”

Caruso sang:
O dolci baci, o languide carezze.

“Now, there he goes again,” said Silverton. “What's the poor fellow lamenting this time?”

“You would neither understand nor appreciate his dilemma.”

“Try me. I once wept at the Willow Song, though—to be fair—I
had
just lost a faithful old hound at the Boxing Day meet at Beaulieu the day before. Awfully broken up.”

I pushed myself away from the cabinet and wandered to a painting on the opposite wall, depicting the cutting out of the
Hermione
. On the one side, the Porto Cavallo guns made furious orange-pink clouds against the harbor walls; on the other, the silver moon rode at peace in the night sky, casting a path along the agitated sea. In the middle, the frigate herself, young and triumphant.

Sobbed Caruso:
E muoio disperato . . . e muoio disperato . . .

“He is to die by firing squad at dawn,” I said, “and he is remembering how marvelous it is to be alive.”

No answer came from the armchair in the center of the saloon. The drum of rain intensified briefly, and then abated. Beneath my feet, the deck was steady and level but nonetheless alive with the grind of the engine, the surge of motion through the water. As if the soles of my shoes were vibrating.

“Well, you're wrong there, Truelove,” said Silverton. “I understand the poor fellow's dilemma very well.”

I turned in astonishment, but his lordship was already striding toward the door, moving his long legs with remarkable efficiency, having left behind the white cricket ball in the center of the paisley cushion.