Where the Heart Chooses (2 page)

“Very well, Father.”

His smile was a mere stretching of his lips
as he offered me a glass of aged scotch. “Welcome to the family
business, Portia.”

I touched my glass to his and took a
sip.

* * * *

Lady Portia introduced me to the people I
needed to know, keeping up the façade that I was simply in London
to make my belated come-out. I wrote letter after letter to Mother,
describing the whirlwind of gaiety that comprised my days and
nights. I knew she would pass the letters on to Father, who would
pass them on to someone adept enough at cryptography to discover
the hidden meaning of page after page of gushing, girlish
prose.

I became friendly with the men and women who
dwelt in society, as well as those who had, or would one day have,
sensitive positions in the government.

I expected to see these people in the normal
course of my day, and I did. However, there was another newcomer to
the scene, whom I seemed to keep missing.

Folana Fournaise.

Town was abuzz when Sir Joseph Bowne, senior
official of a rather obscure section of the Foreign Office, had
suddenly appeared with the young woman on his arm, introducing her
as his ward. That had raised eyebrows, but no one said anything.
Too many middle-aged men had a tendency to acquire young
wards
.

Oddly enough, each time a photographer tried
to snap their picture, her face always seemed to be obscured.

What was even stranger was the way she
apparently brought every conversation around to me. It became the
most amusing topic of conversation of the Season, although I didn’t
think so.

“Portia, my dear! You just missed Miss
Fournaise! Pity, she seems so interested in meeting you. Always
regrets your absence. We really must arrange something!”

Or I would pick up
The Sun
and read,
“Miss F.F. attended Lady C.’s do with her guardian, Sir J.B.
Everyone was breathless to see the long-anticipated meeting between
her and Miss P. S., but alas, it was not to be.” And I’d realize
she’d put in an appearance after I had left.

It made no sense. The odds that we should
keep missing each other were too great.

In addition to that, I began to feel myself
being watched. While sightseeing, while paying calls, while making
the contacts my father desired. I was too much a daughter of my
family not to be aware of covert surveillance, but I could never
pinpoint the source.

I mentioned this, as well as the elusive
Miss Fournaise, in one of my carefully coded letters home.

Bryan was the one who responded. Anyone
reading it would think it simply dealt with family news: how
serious Anthony seemed to be about the young lady he was seeing,
how Bryan himself was still waiting to meet his “one,” the
charities Mother sponsored, Father’s extended visits to Boston,
Manhattan, San Francisco.

Whoever had opened the letter and read
it—oh, yes, it had been opened, although only someone who knew what
to look for would be able to tell. It had been resealed very
cleverly, but not cleverly enough to fool a Sebring—must have been
bored to tears.

What it actually said was,
We couldn’t
learn much about F.F.’s early years; they seem to be shrouded in
mystery. J’s gone undercover and will look into it more closely.
What we do know is that when she isn’t doing occasional “jobs” for
Sir J., she runs The Complex, an organization that flirts
extensively with the illegal. It might be interesting to find out
why Sir J. is having her pose as his ward. The fact that you
haven’t run into her yet may mean nothing. “The world is a small
place, but London is a very large one.” You always did enjoy
Coleridge’s
Rime
, little sister.

He had paraphrased the line from
Now,
Voyager
, Mother’s favorite movie, which might or might not mean
anything. However…

I read the final line again. Bryan knew that
of all Coleridge’s works, I disliked
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner
the most:

“Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk
in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns
no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close
behind him tread.”

It always gave me the shivers, and I worried
my lip. What was going on that I would need to beware what walked
behind me?

* * * *

The first time I actually saw the leggy
brunette, the group of young people I was with was just leaving the
Victoria and Albert Museum, and she was entering it with her male
companion, a craggy-faced, blue-eyed blond. They made an
interesting contrast. Her blue-black hair was severely restrained
in a French pleat that swung down to the middle of her back, and
her eyes were shielded by the wide-framed sunglasses that were
currently the rage. Her breasts…I flushed. It had been some time
since I’d been distracted by thoughts of sex, and I was surprised
to find myself considering her very female curves. I wanted to test
their weight in my palm, and my panties dampened at the thought of
taking a taut nipple between my lips.

I dreamed of her that night, and I awoke
with my own nipples tight with need, an ache between my thighs, and
the sheets sweaty and tangled around my legs.

The second time, a couple of days later,
they were leaving Madame Tussaud’s while we were about to climb the
stairs.

The third time, early the following week,
she was strolling through Hyde Park while I trotted past her,
accompanied by Jack, my godmother’s son. He was just leaning toward
me to say something, when I was distracted by the sight of her. She
met my raised eyebrow with a raised eyebrow of her own, and then
lowered her sunglasses, gazed at me over the rims, and smiled. My
breath stopped in my throat.

The big blond touched her arm, and they
vanished into the crowd.

Our paths continued to cross, my dreams
became increasingly more erotic, and I wondered if I should
engineer a way to meet her.

And then I received a wide, thin envelope
from Jefferson. Within was a black and white photograph, taken with
a telephoto lens. The subject was gazing pensively into the
distance, unaware, but even the grainy quality of the picture
couldn’t diminish the beauty in her face. On the back, my middle
brother had written,
From what I could learn, they see you as a
new player, and they want to determine if you’ll prove to be a
threat. Keep them guessing, little sister!

Jefferson never did give me credit for being
able to take care of myself, but he was my brother, and I loved him
for his concern.

The woman in the photo was the raven-haired
beauty who had been turning up at the oddest times. Folana
Fournaise.

* * * *

The ball Lady Portia sponsored for me was to
be preceded by a dinner party. I was pursuing my acquaintance with
Ludovic Rivenhall, a pretty young man who was being groomed for a
position in his government.

“Oh, I-I s-s-say!” he stuttered. “If it
isn’t Miss Fournaise! Isn’t she a smasher? N-not to say that you
aren’t a-attractive also, Miss Sebring.”

The general consensus was that I was
“attractive.” I had the fair looks of my father’s side of the
family, and the cool temperament of my mother’s. More than once I’d
overheard myself being referred to as an ice princess.

I smiled at him absently—odd how his stutter
came and went, but of course I was too polite to mention anything
about that—and turned to examine the woman who had just entered the
room.

Folana Fournaise wore a gown whose elegant
lines proclaimed it to be a Dior. It was a deep blue velvet that
matched her eyes. Her long hair was in a chignon. In spite of what
I had learned about her, I was drawn to her.

For once, she was not accompanied by her
blond escort.

“That’s Sir Joseph Bowne with her. One would
think he could find a woman closer to his own age. The bloody
blighter! Oh! I b-beg your pardon, Miss Sebring!”

I murmured something noncommittal.

I studied the gentleman who was beside her,
and I wondered if anyone else noticed the small distance she kept
from him.

He inclined his head toward her and
whispered a few words, and she inclined her head in turn.

From across the room, Folana Fournaise’s
eyes skimmed my figure, and my nipples tightened. She didn’t smile,
but I sensed her interest, and I thought she would join us.

Just then, however, dinner was
announced.

* * * *

I slipped out onto the balcony for a
cigarette. Everyone smoked, they all knew I preferred Pall Malls,
and that I frequently received shipments of them from home. No one
knew that occasionally, tucked in the red cartons, were encoded
messages.

It was damp and chill on the balcony, but
I’d needed to escape a baronet who felt that because I was
American, I should be overwhelmed by his attentions. I’d met more
than my share of men like that, and my brothers had taught me how
to deal with them. I had even broken the nose of one when he’d
gotten overly fresh.

I thought about the young woman who had sat
at the other end of the table from me. The distance between us had
made conversation impossible, but each time I looked in her
direction I’d find her gazing at me. Each time she looked in mine,
I’d be watching her. Then we would take a sip of our wine and turn
back to our dinner companions.

The French door opened.

“Miss Sebring?” As if she had been summoned
by my thoughts. “I’m Folana Fournaise.”

I turned casually, raising the cigarette to
my lips. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I was beginning to think
that would never come about.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We always seemed to be missing each other.
You’ve been asking about me.”

Her smile was politely inquiring, and I knew
she wasn’t going to answer me. “Your aunt sent me to find you.”

I saw no need to tell her that Lady Portia
was actually my godmother. “It is bad of me to be hiding out here.”
I looked down at the stiletto-heeled shoes I wore. “If one
more…gentleman…steps on my toes, I shall do him a violence.”

That made her chuckle. “Perhaps you’ll show
me the conservatory instead? I understand Lady Portia actually has
a maze.” She noticed I winced as I took a step toward her. “If
we’re alone, you can even remove your heels. I won’t tell.”

“That sounds like an excellent plan.” I
stubbed out the cigarette in the standing ashtray that was to the
side of the railing, and we reentered the ballroom. A wall of music
engulfed us.

She gazed around. “Is there a secret passage
leading from the ballroom to the conservatory?”

I smiled at her. The four-inch heels on my
shoes put us almost at eye-level. “No.” Of course there was, but I
was not about to tell that to a relative stranger.

“That’s rather unusual, don’t you think?”
She followed me around the edge of the dance floor, around the
enthusiastically fox-trotting couples and out into the relative
quiet of the central hallway. “I’m sure I heard all these old
townhouses had at least one secret passage, if only from one
bedroom to another.”

“I really couldn’t say. I’ve only been here
a short time.”

We strolled down the stairs and through the
long vestibule on the ground floor to the rear of the house.

“How much longer will you be in London, Miss
Sebring?”

“Call me Portia, please.” I ran a hand over
the French twist in which I had chosen to wear my hair, making sure
there were no loose strands. “Oh, as long as Lady Portia permits.
I’m so enjoying my stay in England, you know.”

“And the young men of England appear to be
enjoying your presence here. Do you plan on marrying one of
them?”

“Perhaps. If I’m asked. There is the scent
of orange blossoms in the air, you know—my older brother will be
getting engaged…” Not quite a lie, as anyone who chose to look into
it would learn that Tony was indeed seeing a young woman whose
family was quite prominent in the Washington social scene. “…and
I’ll have to return home for the formal announcement.”

“Pity. I had been looking forward to getting
to know you.”

“Oh, you’ll still have the opportunity to
get to know me!” I cried gaily, doing my best impression of a
flibbertigibbet. “It won’t be for some time. My mother will insist
on it being done to the nines. Anthony is the firstborn son, after
all. There will be at least a dozen bridesmaids and groomsmen,
although quite possibly more, since the ceremony will be at the St.
Matthew’s Cathedral. I hope Anthony and his fiancée choose a
wedding day in December. Red velvet gowns would be so appropriate.
And of course, I’ll need to return home for the fittings.”

For a second, Folana’s eyes looked glazed.
“And you’ll enjoy that?”

“Of course!” Poor little girl. She might be
very capable running a dangerous organization like the Complex, but
she’d never manage in Mother’s world.

“You’re quite the social butterfly, aren’t
you?”

I swallowed a laugh. “I beg your
pardon?”

“I’ve been following your activities in the
columns.”

“I would almost say you’ve actually been
following me.”

And then a smile curved her lips. “Will you
forgive me if I admit I have?”

“That would depend on why.” Would she tell
me the truth? I opened the door, and we entered the hothouse
atmosphere of the conservatory. The scents of roses, jasmine, and
violets blended together rather than clashing, and I inhaled the
lovely fragrance.

“I find you very attractive,” she said in a
soft undertone. It was obvious, to me at any rate, that she was
bewildered by that statement.

“
I
?” I smiled. I’d known a young
woman during my junior year at Wellesley who was attracted to me,
and who was puzzled by it. I hadn’t pursued it then, and I wouldn’t
pursue it now. “The maze is this way.” I led her to the far end of
the room, taking a few steps into the twisting passageways that
wound in upon themselves. It wasn’t a large maze, but I’d gotten
lost in it the first time I had tried to find the pretty fish pond
that was at its center.