Three
Gregory had expected guilt. Shock that he’d found her out. Horror that he’d actually confronted her over it.
He had not expected the damned woman to laugh at him, long and loud, before saying, “Who on earth is Mona Servet?”
“Monique Ser— Damn it, you know whom I mean. You. You’re Monique Servais.”
Eyes twinkling, she cocked her head at him. “Oh? Tell me more. Why do you think I am not myself and instead am . . . am . . .” She waved her hand airily. “Some Frenchwoman.”
“What makes you think she’s French?” he countered.
That made her falter, but so briefly he could almost think he’d imagined it. Except that he hadn’t.
“Servais is a French name,” she said stoutly.
“Actually, there are Servaises in Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Canada, as well as Dieppe, France.”
She didn’t even blink at the mention of Dieppe. “Are there? I had no idea. Nor do I care. This Monique Servais is nothing to me.” She arched an eyebrow. “And you still have not told me why you think I am she.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, annoyed. This wasn’t going as expected. “So you intend to brazen it out, do you?”
“Brazen what out? That I am some other woman pretending to be Princess Aurore? The idea is absurd.”
“I agree. But true, nonetheless.”
She shook her head. “You, monsieur, are quite mad.”
When she turned on her heel as if to head back inside, he caught her by the arm. “No more mad than you and the count if you think you can perpetrate a deception of such proportions without consequence.”
A cool smile crossed her lips as she faced him once more. Oh so delicately, she removed his hand from her arm. “Why would my country attempt such a thing at this critical moment in the negotiations? You must realize that such a tactic would be ludicrous.”
“It would be, indeed. Which is why I must know the reason for it.”
“You tell me. I have no idea.” As if to erase the feel of him, she rubbed her arm where he’d been gripping it. “But you must have some theory.”
Sadly, he didn’t. He could think of no reason for the subterfuge. Yet.
“Well?” she prodded, obviously sensing the weak point in his argument.
He threw out the first thing that came to him. “Perhaps the princess is dead. And Chanay doesn’t want to lose its chance at having Belgium in its pocket.”
“The princess isn’t dead.” Just as he was about to pounce on that slip, she added, “She’s standing right before you.” Then she fluttered her fan again in what he’d come to realize was a telltale indication of her nervousness. “And if she were dead, then how could anyone reasonably expect her to be made queen of Belgium? Unless you believe that the Rocheforts mean to put an impostor on the throne. Not only would they be risking the royal line, but such a conspiracy would require my subjects—excuse me, the princess’s subjects, according to you—to accept another woman in her place.”
Another woman. Gregory kept waiting for her to forget herself and say, “an actress,” which he had deliberately not mentioned as the impostor’s profession, but so far Mademoiselle Servais had been better at maintaining her role than he would have expected.
So Gregory fell back on his usual tactics—fix her with a stare, keep his silence, and wait for her to crumble. Unfortunately, she seemed to be familiar with the strategy, because she did the same thing to him. And as the silence between them lengthened, it gave him time to look her over, to remind himself of her sensuous curves, to be drawn in by her beauty.
Damn her.
Meanwhile, she’d shown no sign of being the least affected by him in that way. Though she was an actress, which meant that showing no sign of her true feelings was her forte.
Apparently growing emboldened by his silence, she snapped, “Have you no answer to that?”
It was his move now. He’d best make it a good one. “For all I know, the Rocheforts do intend to put an impostor on the throne—someone they can manipulate, someone they can control. The real princess is not such a person. And there is a resemblance between the two of you, after all, which might even be good enough to fool the citizens of Chanay.”
As he’d hoped, that seemed to startle her. The only reason this subterfuge was working was that no one outside Chanay had ever met the real princess. Including him. But Mademoiselle Servais needn’t know that.
“Are you saying that you and I have met before?” Her voice was strained. “Because I do not remember that. And I think I would remember a man of your sort visiting Chanay.”
He gritted his teeth to hear her persist in the deception still. “Of course we’ve met before, as you well know. Not in Chanay but in Dieppe, where you lived as Mademoiselle Servais.”
That didn’t seem to faze her. “So you have not met me, then. And all your talk about the ‘real’ princess not being able to be manipulated is just . . . what? Speculation? Because you have some notion that I am this woman in Dieppe?”
“It’s not a notion, damn it!”
He caught himself. The chit was annoyingly adept at making him lose control of his temper. And if he’d learned anything from his youth with Father, it was that controlling one’s emotions was essential. Not only in his position, but in every aspect of life.
Forcing a measure of calm into his voice, he asked, “Why would I invent such a thing?”
“Because you once encountered a woman who looks like me, and have mixed us up.” A brittle smile crossed her lips. “You saw that poor likeness of me in the Lady’s Monthly Museum and think that I look different. But men do not realize how easy it is for a woman to change her appearance merely with a touch of rouge to brighten the cheeks, a bit of kohl to darken the eyebrows. We can make them doubt their very eyes just with our crème pots. And we often do.”
True. Most men were unaware of such female secrets. But he was not just any man. Secrets were his game.
“How interesting that you should mention cosmetics,” he said, “when I would imagine a princess of your standing is forbidden to wear them. But Mademoiselle Servais wore them all the time. She was an opera singer.”
Would she correct him? He watched her expression, but she gave nothing away.
Instead, she broke into a smile. “An opera singer? How droll! Comic or dramatic opera?”
“That is hardly relevant.”
She made a face. “No, I suppose not. But it is no wonder you are confused. An opera singer wears wigs and face paint and patches. How could you even tell what she looked like?”
He tried another untruth. “I saw her without all of that.”
Only the sudden sharpening of her smile betrayed her reaction. “Did you?”
“Yes. Though even if I hadn’t, I never forget a face, cosmetic changes or no. And I noticed Mademoiselle Servais’s prominent chin in particular. The real princess has a very small chin, nothing like the opera singer’s.”
She laughed. “That is the source of your evidence? My chin? You do realize, sir, that no woman wishes to have, as you call it, ‘a prominent chin.’ So of course I asked the artist to reshape my chin for the painting. Even a princess wants to appear beautiful in her portraits.”
“You know damned well that you’re beautiful, prominent chin and all,” he snapped. “You’re certainly more beautiful than Princess Aurore.”
“I’m not sure how that’s possible, given that I am the princess.” Her eyes shone merrily in the lamps of the garden. “But I shall take the compliment regardless.”
God, she was as sly as a courtesan, and twice as tempting. “If you didn’t, I’d be shocked, since you didn’t seem to mind such compliments when I paid them before.” He tried to provoke her with another lie, crowding her in and lowering his voice to a murmur. “You didn’t mind anything we did before.”
She blinked. That had shaken her. “Oh? Are you saying that this Mademoiselle Servais was your . . . paramour?”
“Can you claim otherwise?”
As if she knew what he was about, she met his gaze coolly. “Of course not. I am not she. What do I care if you have ten paramours?”
He considered his choices. He could give up the fight for now, and see what he could find out. Which might be difficult, given that even the very respectable Beaumonde was obviously part of the plot.
Or he could act to throw her off her game entirely. Because if he kissed her, the actress wouldn’t dare call out for help from the guests—she wouldn’t risk his voicing his suspicions before an audience. But she might lose her temper and give him what for. She hadn’t liked him, after all.
Of course, if she were the princess, kissing her could ruin him. But she wasn’t—he’d never been so sure of anything in his life. And not exposing her subterfuge could ruin him, too, if it came out later. He’d look the fool for not seeing through her disguise. His enemies would make mincemeat of his political aspirations.
He glanced around. The garden was empty, everyone having drifted inside. And nothing else had provoked her into making a mistake. Unfortunately, until he could get her to admit her masquerade, he couldn’t get her to tell him why there’d been a need for it.
“Now, sir,” she began, “if you are quite done, I should like to return to—”
“Not yet,” he said firmly. Once she rejoined her companions, he wouldn’t have another chance at unraveling this deception. At least not tonight.
He snagged her about the waist, taking her by surprise, and pulled her into a nearby gazebo obviously kept dark for a reason. Then he murmured, “We should take up where we left off in Dieppe.”
“I told you, I’m not from—”
He kissed her, covering her mouth with his in a most insolent manner and praying she was not the princess. Though even if she was, she would probably try to extricate herself from the situation diplomatically, without insulting the man who could make her a queen.
She froze, then jerked back to glare at him. “What are you about, sir?”
He stared her down. “You know what I’m about. Reminding you of what we once meant to each other.”
Her eyes glittered at him, and he held his breath, sure that she was about to call him a liar and tell him that Monique Servais would never have let him touch one hair on her head.
Instead, she smoothed her features into coyness. “We can hardly have meant anything to each other since we haven’t met until tonight.” She lifted a hand to cup his jaw, the impudent caress shocking him into rigidity—in more places than one. “Though I don’t see why we can’t mean something to each other now. I’m happy to pretend to be this Mademoiselle Servais for you in private . . . if you will champion me as queen of Belgium in the end.”
“Are you actually attempting to seduce me, Monique?” he said, unable to mask his incredulity.
“Why not, if you pine for Monique so much that you would look for her in every stranger’s face?”
“I don’t pine for her, damn it!” He gritted his teeth. She was making him lose control. Forcing some calm into his voice, he added, “And if you think seducing me will buy my silence—”
“On what subject?” she asked in the silky tones he remembered only too well, the ones that had thrummed through his senses that night even when she’d been provoking him. Especially when she’d been provoking him.
She trailed a finger down his jaw in a sensuous stroke that stirred danger in his blood. God help him. He should have known she would be an expert at temptation.
“I don’t need your silence,” she murmured. “I am the Princess Aurore, after all.”
“The Princess Aurore would not be touching me like this,” he choked out.
“Clearly, you know nothing about me. But since you persist in this nonsense, I might as well receive a reward from it, non?” She wrapped her hand about his cravat and fixed her gaze on his mouth. “Seduction would be going too far, I think, but perhaps a little . . . mutual enjoyment would not be amiss.”
Then she pulled his head down to her for another kiss. Bold. Hot. Yet somehow innocent. The way the real princess’s might be.
That’s when he realized his error. He’d assumed that he could remain unaffected through this little dance, that he would be immune to an actress’s tricks. But the very smell of her—lilies and apples—seeped beneath his defenses. Her mouth was as delicious as he’d imagined, and her waist as tiny as he’d remembered it looking backstage.
If he had wanted her three years ago, despite her caked-on cosmetics and her outrageous gown and wig, he wanted her even more now that she was free of such things.
So this time when he kissed her, it was not on behalf of his country or his career. This time it was for him and him alone.