The Price of Glory (22 page)

“No. He is in England at present.”

The courtiers had drawn back a little, perhaps sensing something more than idle chatter, all bar Rose and the young man, who was looking upon him more shrewdly than Nathan might have expected, though now he shot a glance at Thérésa who mouthed the one word, “Imlay.”

“But he has been to America very recently,” continued Nathan, “and has news of your mutual interests.”

Had he said too much, he wondered, for the eyes clouded slightly and it was the man who answered for her.

“Well, we will be pleased to hear it, will we not, my dear?” With a brilliant smile but without taking his eyes off Nathan's for an instant—and there was something in them, for all their liquid charm, that made Nathan think of Robespierre. “Perhaps we will have an opportunity later, Captain, when you have had a chance to enjoy yourself a little.”

Was this a putdown? It could very easily have been, but there was a swift glance to Rose that seemed to contain some unspoken instruction for Nathan felt her hand upon his arm once more and she led him off towards the tables for she felt sure he needed feeding, she lisped.

Indeed he did, and had no objection to being fed by such a one, for there was a supple voluptuousness about her, an overt sensuality that made her even more alluring to his eyes than the other nymphs, with the exception of Thérésa herself. Every movement she made threatened his precarious composure, just as it threatened to dislodge the precarious muslin from her breasts.

“My goodness!” He saw that she was gazing in something like awe at the amount he had heaped upon his plate and he frowned in mortification for he had not really been thinking about it. “You must not eat quite so much,” she abjured him, “or you will not be able to move. And you cannot be permitted to leave without dancing at least one polka with me.”

A polka? In that dress? It was unimaginable. But perhaps not. All things considered, it was best not to let his mind dwell upon such delightful possibilities, for if it carried to his loins he was lost. She led him to one of the small tables set out under a little grove of trees, hung with lanterns. The natural light had leeched from the sky, transforming it from a part-wiped palette of creams and blues and pinks to a soft, seductive violet not unlike that of the carriage he had seen in the Rue Saint-Honoré. Despite his unease, Nathan felt strangely elated. True, there was the permanent ache, deep in his heart, for Sara—and it would always be there, especially in Paris—but sometimes it felt less intense than at others and this was such a time. It had nothing to do with his charming companion, he told himself, but more with the sheer exhilaration of playing a part, of being behind enemy lines—and finding them occupied by beautiful women with next to nothing on.

But he did not fool himself that he was among friends. Nor that they would smilingly direct him homeward if they saw through his pretence. He was walking upon a tightrope without a safety net, knowing that if he made one false move he would surely die. And he loved it. Well, perhaps love was too strong a word but he was, in his own way, content. Why ? Why so much more than being the captain of a ship at sea? Was it the absence of responsibility, the relief of being freed from the burden of command? Or the intoxicating sense of recklessness, while some small but vital part of his brain focused solely and soberly upon the next careful step.

But there were other duties than the burden of command. He was here to gather information. And there was something to be learned right now.

“The gentleman we just met …” he began.

“Monsieur Ouvrard. I am sorry, I should have introduced you.”

“Not at all. But he seems …”

“Confident?”

“Well …”

“Arrogant?”

He laughed. “A little of both.” Though the word he had avoided saying was “proprietorial.” “He has an enviable air of composure, certainly, for someone so young.”

“That is possibly because he is one of the richest men in France.”

He stared at her curiously, half-smiling. “He cannot be much more than twenty-five or twenty-six,” he said.

“He is twenty-three.”

“So. He inherited a sugar island?”

Rose shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Much good it would do him if he did, with the blockade. My family own a part of one and I am as poor as a church mouse.” She noted his expression. “It is true. Thanks to the British Navy. My fortune is what you see before you.”

He said what was expected of him but for once her mind was on other things. She was watching Ouvrard thoughtfully as he bent his head close to Thérésa's. “As a matter of fact, he was an accountant when the Revolution began, working for a grocery shop in Nantes. And Thérésa, as you might know, is the daughter of a banker and a noble. Now look at them.”

“Well, I suppose that is what a Revolution is about,” Nathan responded lamely, for he detected a note of bitterness in her remark.

“Oh, really,” she murmured, “is that why so many died? I am sure if they had known, they would have skipped happily to the guillotine.”

“I meant Equality. Or at least, the possibility of advancement in life, even for an accountant in a grocery store.”

“And was that what your American Revolution was about? Advancement in life? Getting rich?”

“Partly,” he agreed. “Though for appearance sake, we called it the pursuit of happiness.”

“Well, I do not know about happy, but certainly it has made a lot of people wealthy, though most of them appear to be bankers.”

Nathan looked toward Ouvrard. “So he is a banker now?”

“Did you not know? Yes, he is a banker and a man of business. And, of course, a lover.”

“A lover? Is there money in that?”

“Oh a great deal, if you love the right people.” She cocked her head in that way she had—contrived, of course, but no less attractive for that. “I wonder why I am talking to you like this? I am usually more circumspect. Is that the word? Perhaps it is because you are an American.”

Nathan recalled what Bicknell Coney or Lord Spencer had said about her lack of discretion, but this was too good an opportunity to miss—and had perhaps been presented for that purpose.

“You have known many Americans—besides Imlay ?”

“Ah, Imlay. I think there are not many like Imlay. You have met him recently, you say ?”

“I met him only last week, in London.” She glanced swiftly about her to see that they were not overheard and it reminded him of the time of the Terror, so perhaps things had not changed so much after all: perhaps the artifice was not confined to La Chaumière. “As Americans, of course, we have the privilege of visiting in England and France,” he added innocently, “though passing between the two is uncommonly difficult at present.”

“And he was in good health, Imlay ?”

“Excellent health—and high spirits.”

So high, indeed, that Nathan had been inclined to regret his decision to fire wide that morning in Lincoln's Inn Fields for as he was led away by the Watch he had glanced back to see Imlay beaming broadly and speeding him on his way with an amused salute.

“You have known him long?”

“Long enough. We met in New York some years ago.”

“New York?” She raised a delicate brow. “Then you are not a frontiersman, Captain?” she teased him.

“No. More a seafaring man.”

“So you have not visited the western territories?”

He decided not, for his knowledge of the region was confined to what he knew from Bicknell Coney and the maps he had pored over in London, and they were not very good maps at that. But it would help to have had some experience of the frontier.

“My own explorations have been further south. In the bayous and swamps about New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta.”

She shuddered theatrically. “I have always had an aversion for snakes,” she said, “and other swamp creatures.” He wondered how she could tolerate Imlay. “So you have not been tempted to put your own money in Imlay's ventures?”

“My own money is tied up in shipping,” he assured her, which was true in its way. “But I wish I had a thousand or so to spare, for there is a great deal to be made from Imlay's ventures, I think. Especially if there is to be peace between France and Spain.”

“Really ? Well, you must talk to Monsieur Ouvrard about that,” she said, “for I know nothing of investments—or of politics.”

Too far, too fast: he felt her draw back while he swayed upon his tightrope, one foot in the air. But then she began to prattle away about La Chaumière and how Thérésa seemed to have started a fashion for the pastoral—as if there was anything remotely pastoral about it; he felt like reminding her that Marie Antoinette had nourished similar conceits and look where it had got her.

She was a puzzle to him, this Rose: a curious mixture of the coquette and the sophisticate. Sometimes her conversation was that of a knowledgeable courtier with her head screwed on; at other times she was exceedingly silly. He wondered what was real and what pretence. Or perhaps she was all pretence, like La Chaumière. A waxpaper toadstool. But he recalled his conversation with Lord Spencer at the Admiralty when Coney had left them.

“You must be careful of Rose. She is not at all what she seems. She has suffered a great deal in her life and is nobody's fool. Her husband accused her of being unfaithful—apparently at the instigation of his mistress—and sent her to a nunnery. She was barely pregnant with his child at the time. Or someone else's
.
”

“She became a nun?”

“I do not believe that was in prospect. She merely lodged there with many others considered to be fallen women, from whom she learned a great deal of her tricks.”

“So she is tricky.”

“Exceedingly so, according to Imlay. Far trickier than her friend Thérésa who is pure innocence by comparison. But her prime concern, I have been assured, is money. And she is greedy. There lies your advantage.”

Well, the information came from Imlay so it had to be taken with a pinch of salt, but one thing Nathan was sure of: Marie-Josèphe de Beauharnais was a survivor. She had survived an idiot husband who was as cruel as he was stupid, and she had survived the prisons of the Revolution, and she was still here and appeared to be enjoying every minute of it.

She was now pointing out people in the crowd.

“The woman over there with the face of a bulldog and the body of a Venus; that is Madame Hamelin. You must not go near her—there are no limits to her indiscretions. She once walked naked down the Champs Elysées for a bet. The woman in the shawl looking as if she is at her First Communion; that is Madame Récamier. Do not be misled. She has had more lovers than Messalina. Her husband is a banker: another who has done well from the Revolution. Oh, and see who has joined her—La Raucourt. You have not heard of her? But of course you are from America. She is an actress, but she would scratch my eyes out if she heard me call her that for she thinks of herself as a great tragedienne; she would make a stoat weep. But do not stare at her so or she will come over and clout you with her stick. You will not have failed to notice the stick.”

Nathan had not. She leaned upon it like a country gentleman. Nor had he failed to notice that she was dressed like one. He asked if this was from inclination or amusement.

“Oh inclination, of course. She always dresses like that—except when she is upon the stage and obliged to play the part of a woman. She is entirely impervious to convention and lives with one of our late Queen's ladies-in-waiting. I mean Marie Antoinette,” she added, as he was an American.

“Ah,
that
queen,” he murmured dryly. “And who is the military gentleman who looks as if he has been fired out of a cannon?”

“Where?” She gazed about the company with interest.

“On the terrace. He has been glaring at us for some minutes.”

She found him and looked quickly away. “Oh my God, I cannot believe you said that.” She had gone quite red.

“I am sorry,” he said, “I did not mean to give offence. Is he a friend of yours?”

“Oh no. Good heavens. But you have got him absolutely. He is even called Captain Cannon—in some circles.”

“He is an entertainer?”

“Oh heavens, no! Oh dear.” Her delight appeared genuine. “No, it is what Barras calls him. He is a real soldier, if you will believe it. He commanded the artillery when Barras took Toulon and now he is a general. Well, a chief of brigade, which I am told is the lowest form of general, and he is the poorest soldier in the French army.”

This was probably an exaggeration but he certainly looked poor, unless he dressed for effect. The shabbiness of his uniform was set off by a large bicorn hat which he wore athwart, as opposed to fore and aft, and his lank hair hung straight down on either side like the ears of a spaniel. But there was nothing of the spaniel in his eyes, at least at the moment, for he wore a scowl as ferocious as any villain in a comic opera.

“Please do not stare at him,” Rose begged, “or he will take it amiss. He is an Italian and very passionate. He thinks himself in love with me.”

“I am sure that is true of most of the men here,” Nathan assured her gallantly.

“No. Really in love,” she insisted seriously. “He says he wants to marry me, though he asked Thérésa first, the toad. She thought it very amusing, but I believe she is quite fond of him. He has become quite the little pet but it would not do for you to cross him. Perhaps we had better mingle.”

She gazed about her vacantly but they were distracted by a commotion upon the terrace. People were applauding and drawing back to permit the passage of a tall, burly individual in a splendid uniform with epaulettes like wings, a wide blue sash about his chest and black ostrich feathers in his hat. The music stopped and then struck up again with the “Marseillaise” and Rose leapt to her feet with her hand to her mouth.