Chapter 18
P’s: To mind one’s P’s and Q’s; to be attentive to the main chance.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
Next Day
Mariana picked her lone way across a crushed granite path flanked on each side by towering rows of horse-chestnut trees. The wind breezing through the high canopy, sending fall leaves spiraling in graceful pirouettes to the ground, called to mind a carefree midday stroll down Little Spruisty Folly’s long, undulant drive.
Reality was anything other than carefree. She suppressed the groan that longed to be set free on the breeze. Last night—what had she done?
She took a deep, steadying breath. Focus was required for the matter at hand: her tête-à-tête with the Comte de Villefranche.
But focus was impossible. She’d even arrived at the sprawling Jardin du Luxembourg half an hour early, hoping to clear her mind of the one thought that kept spiraling round and round. What had she done . . . with Nick?
Conflicting feelings of elation, desire, and panic charged through her in a competitive rush, each making a compelling case for primacy.
How the same he was from ten years ago. How different.
His intensity. His engagement. His . . . hardness. A hot flush crept up to the tips of her ears. He’d always been a hard man. But, now, he was . . . harder.
She must be pink all over by now.
She’d opened Pandora’s box. Now all of life’s pleasures were available to her. So, too, were its pains. What had she done? What did she still want to do?
Shameless. Hedonistic. No other words better described it.
Her eyes drifted shut, and a sensory memory pushed forward. His capable fingers clutching her hips . . . the press of his unrelenting body against her forgiving flesh . . . sharp stabs of his breath on her nape . . . Her foot caught an exposed root, and she stumbled, her eyes flying open.
It might be better if she didn’t close her eyes for the time being, possibly ever. If she kept moving, she might be able to outrun her shameless, hedonistic self.
As troubling as her utter capitulation to her desire was, something else disturbed her more. It was the utter confusion of him. One moment they were making love like their lives depended on it, the next, he was telling her that she was ready to seduce Villefranche.
Nick was forever drawing her in and forever pushing her away. She’d convinced herself that all the emotional flotsam from their shipwreck of a marriage had risen to the surface years ago, but apparently not. All it took was five days in Paris to jar more wreckage loose. There seemed to be an endless supply of it.
She gave herself a mental shake. She was decidedly unfocused for a woman presently engaged in a spy mission. Spy mission—whatever that was. Espionage was a terribly ambiguous business.
Just as she emerged from the tree-lined path, a pair of gentlemen caught the edge of her vision. She side-stepped off the path and slipped behind a thick horse-chestnut, her heart beating an unrelenting tattoo. She poked her head around the trunk, committing what felt like her first true act as a spy.
Silhouetted against the backlight of a stone archway stood Villefranche, engaged in conversation with another man. She could act the innocent and “happen upon” the pair, but the close positioning of their bodies implied a discussion private, even covert.
Furthermore, another problem occurred to her: she recognized the other man. Even though his distant profile revealed a clean-shaven jaw, she knew him for the bearded croupier from the poker game. This was the same man whom Nick trusted with his life.
Villefranche glanced from side to side, but not far enough to spot her, and held out a thin, flat packet. The croupier efficiently pocketed it and strode away in the opposite direction, shoulders hunched, head down.
Villefranche pivoted in her direction. Mariana ducked back and tried to think. The crunch of his booted heels grew louder as he fast approached. She had approximately three seconds. Think. She willed herself to do just that, and an idea came to her. It had worked once, why not again?
Braced against the rough tree trunk, she counted one . . . two . . . three . . . before rushing forward and literally happening upon him. As their bodies collided, her reticule skittered across the path. Like the gallant he was, Villefranche sprang into action and retrieved her bag.
“Madame, I believe”—His eyes widened with shock—“Lady Nicholas? Are you injured?”
“Oh, non, Comte,” Mariana replied as she retrieved her bag from his slack hands. “I am quite sound.”
“It was my understanding that we would meet at the Medici Fountain half an hour hence.”
“Sometimes I enjoy a contemplative stroll in a garden.” It was Nick who had told her that for a lie to be believable, it must be threaded with truth.
“You are unaccompanied by your lady’s maid?” Villefranche asked, prim shock made evident by his raised eyebrows.
“She succumbed to a sudden fever this morning and was unable to escort me,” she replied. Hortense was, in fact, in perfect health and had protested most vociferously against Mariana venturing to the garden without her. “I am so looking forward to my first view of the Medici Fountain. I’ve heard it’s glorious. Do you know the way?”
“Of course, it will be my pleasure to show you.”
She rested her hand on his forearm, and it struck her that she was touching the wrong man. What a silly and unwelcome thought.
She should distract herself by flirting with Villefranche, but she couldn’t muster the will. And since he lacked the capacity for light conversation, they perambulated through the famed Jardin du Luxembourg as if they were on a grim death march instead of a pleasure stroll. It then occurred to her exactly what she needed to say.
“Lucien . . . may I call you Lucien?” At his hesitant nod, she continued, “I must apologize for my curiosity regarding cigars.”
His only response was the betraying splotch of red that crept up his neck.
“After you bid me that hasty adieu, I realized how the topic may have been misconstrued to mean, well, I’m not certain how to finish that sentence.”
They were the words of a flustered ingénue. She risked a shy glance up at him, and her eyelashes might have fluttered. This was the moment that would make or break her mission.
“Think nothing of it, Lady Nicholas. Misunderstandings can occur.”
The words were stiff. His tone was stiff. But the Comte de Villefranche was nothing if not stiff. In other words, she might have mollified him, but it was too early to tell.
“You are the very soul of graciousness,” she said obsequiously. She squeezed his forearm for good measure. “Do you often venture to the garden for rendezvous?”
“Rendezvous?” he all but exclaimed. He must be wondering if she’d seen him with the other man.
She pasted a bright, flirtatious smile onto her lips and returned, “Well, what would you call what we’re doing?” The rigid muscles beneath her hand released the slightest increment. She tried again. “Do you know the history of this garden?”
A history lesson would have to do. Clearly, neither of them was in the mood for a flirt.
“Marie de’ Medici,” he began, “created the garden two hundred years ago in the Italian style to remind her of her childhood home, the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Two thousand elm trees were planted at her behest.”
As his lecture—Villefranche didn’t know how to speak in any other fashion—began to take shape, Mariana’s mercurial focus blurred around the edges, softening its borders, allowing other thoughts entry. On a usual day, she would soak in every word, delighting in newfound knowledge that might never be useful, but wasn’t useless either. This informal acquisition of knowledge was how she’d educated herself over the past decade.
But this was no usual day. This was the day after she’d fucked—oh, that wicked word—Nick.
But it had been more than simple physical pleasure. She’d experienced an emotional pleasure last night, too, that could be summed up in two words: Woolly Mammoth. It was an example of the tender, thoughtful man she’d married, a side he’d only ever revealed to her; she was sure of it. It was a gift in itself.
This last decade, she’d never allowed herself to remember that side of Nick. She would have missed him too much. And now she remembered.
Villefranche waved an instructive finger in front of her face, effectively cutting into her reverie. “Marie de’ Medici referred to the palace”—His finger remained pointing toward the building to their left— “as Palais Médicis.”
“Her own Italian paradise,” Mariana replied, the statement bland and indifferent.
“Perhaps,” Villefranche allowed. Mariana sensed a storm cloud about to break over her head. “But this is Paris, and she was the Queen of France. She built her Italian paradise, as you call it, with French money and on the backs of French laborers without a care for any but her own desires. Do you know she was the grandmother of King Louis the Fourteenth?”
“I’ve never given it a thought.”
“Le Roi Soleil. That was the name he gave himself. The Sun King.”
“I might have read something—”
“And the palace at Versailles? An utter waste of the French collective wealth,” he spat.
Mariana’s gaze locked onto him. “You certainly have strong opinions about . . . everything.”
Sheepish misgiving stole across his features. “My apologies, Lady Nicholas. I tend to let my principles carry me away.”
Mariana held her tongue. In the implacable determination in his eyes, in the tone of his voice, in the set of his jaw, she recognized herself in Villefranche. She’d allowed her principles to carry her away more than a few times. Her work at The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds was the fruit of one such principle. It was a quality she respected in others. She respected this man for it.
He was the sort of man who formed the backbone for revolutions. He had the intellect. He had the connections. He had the resources. And, most important of all, he had the will.
His words, and his fervor in their delivery, confirmed another impression of him, too. This was a man ensnared in a role for which he was supremely unsuited. He wasn’t a revolutionary; he was a pawn to be used and discarded at the whim of more powerful players.
There was no doubt in Mariana’s mind that Villefranche was careening straight toward Nick, who understood the game and its larger implications better. Nothing in Nick’s covert world was black or white, right or wrong.
This was going to be a problem for the idealistic young man at her side. Villefranche only saw the world in black and white. While she sympathized with that view, her adult life had taught her that world existed only in fairy tales and dreams.
Neither man was wrong. Yet neither seemed to have the right of it. The time was long past for them to come to terms. She didn’t know what the conversation between Villefranche and the croupier entailed, but there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that the stakes were raised when those two men exchanged that package.
Nick needed to know. But, then, he had people. Likely, he already knew.
She put the thought behind her and walked on in silence with Villefranche until the sky opened above them and the trees fell behind. As if provided an instructive metaphor, her mind, too, opened, and a possible solution to the problem of Villefranche and Nick began to coalesce.
She shook her head. The idea was too bold. And there was the strong possibility that it just might be a terrible idea, maybe even disastrous, like so many of her ideas since she’d arrived in Paris. She should do the job given her and leave the bold ideas to the seasoned professionals.
The vista before her widened, and she allowed herself to be distracted by the view. Before her stood a massive grotto both high and wide, composed of a brown stone that gave the impression that it had sprung directly from nature. This must be the Medici Fountain.
Her eye followed the line of the four impressive columns all the way up, up, up to find the requisite—this was an Italianate fountain, after all—classical imagery of lounging gods overseeing all from on high. And even though the fountain itself was an unimpressive stream of water that flowed into a small pool at the grotto’s base, when taken as a whole, the Medici Fountain possessed a majesty that spoke volumes about the colossal power of the woman who had commissioned its construction.
Mariana’s gaze wandered back to earth, and her eye happened upon a shadowy form some thirty yards in the distance. Her breathing went from relaxed to shallow in the space of a second, her heart an unrelenting hammer in her chest, frozen blood sloshing through her veins.
Instinctively, her gaze darted away and settled on an arrogant Greek god. When she detected no movement at the periphery of her vision, she stole a glance, and the figure was gone. Her stomach lurched in relief, and her eyes fixed on the pool at her feet, so as not to reveal the receding burst of anxiety and paranoia.
Villefranche’s voice came into tune once again. “It was Napoleon who rehabilitated the Medici Fountain after it had fallen out of fashion and into disrepair. No one had a use for a picturesque, Italian fountain in the last century.”
“I suppose it wasn’t gilded enough,” she replied, a caustic, distancing edge relieving a measure of her interior tumult.
“Exactement,” Villefranche exclaimed. “Tastes, as we know, are fickle. We are currently enjoying a recent return to the sublime.”
“Lord Byron couldn’t have said it better.”
“Ah, but it was Byron who said it first.”
Mariana regretted conjuring the late poet, already a hero to idealistic young men everywhere. That word, idealistic again stole into her thoughts, conjuring ideas of black and white, right and wrong.
The solution to the problem of the Comte de Villefranche returned to her, and she couldn’t remember why it would be best if she left it to the professionals to solve. Wasn’t she a professional . . . of sorts?
Before she could again reverse on herself, she opened her mouth and said, “There is something you must know.” She waited for Villefranche’s full attention. “You are terrible at this. We are both terrible at this.”
His brows knitted together in confusion before releasing. “We are? Lady Nicholas, to understand the mind of a poet is perhaps too rigorous an undertaking for the delicate constitution of a mere—”
She held up a silencing hand. “At spying. You. Me. We are terrible spies.”
His poetic eyes grew bright and serious.
“We are being used in a game neither of us fully understands.”
“You have me confused with another.” He disengaged his arm from hers and inclined his head. “I bid you good day.”
He began to turn away. She had to think fast, or she would lose him. She glanced about to insure no attentive ears were near before calling out, “The king is dying, non?”
Villefranche swiveled around, bewilderment clouding his handsome face. Buoyed by his dismay, she continued, “It is no secret that the Bourbons and your Orléans relations have little use for one another. Perhaps you hope for a fresh start.”
“Nothing will be gained from Louis’s death,” Villefranche stated flatly.
“That isn’t completely true. You will gain a new king in the Duc d’Artois,” she said, her words a testing inch forward.
“As I said, nothing will be gained,” he repeated with the emotional complexity of a block of wood. His eyes narrowed. “You show a keen interest in France’s politics.”
It was time for her to be bolder yet. She felt like a conductor, influencing the rises and falls of a symphony. “There will be war if the Duc d’Artois is assassinated, making it most difficult for your family to claim the throne.”
“Is it your implication that my family would stoop to assassinating a future king for personal gain?”
“Some might believe it,” she said. “But not I. I believe the Duc’s assassination would be for nationalist purposes, not materialist.”
Villefranche blanched as the implication of her words sank in.
“But at what cost?” she pressed.
“Is there a cost too high for liberté?”
“Hasn’t enough young blood been shed on France’s fields?”
“There will be no war,” he stated with finality.
Mariana couldn’t contain a cynical laugh at his certainty and his naiveté. “With power, money, and control hanging in the balance? There will be war.” She cut the distance between them in half. From afar one might think them engaged in a lovers’ quarrel instead of a struggle for life and death. “Like me, you’re a pawn in their game.”
“And who are they?” He scoffed dismissively. “You are deranged.”
“They will use you,” she said, her words an insistent whisper, “and they will discard you. It is what they do. Do you want England involved in your country’s politics? Once you let Whitehall in, good luck getting them out. Would your countrymen welcome such a radical step?”
“Lady Nicholas, you know nothing—”
“What was in the packet you handed that man?”
A sheen of perspiration glistened against his pale skin. “You saw?”
“I told you that neither of us is any good at this.”
Again, the analogy of the conductor came to her. There was a time for bombast and drama, but also a time for subtlety and sensitivity.
Her voice emerged on a low and steady note, the sort sounded through a woodwind instrument. “Is it too late?”
His eyes went wide, calling to mind a spooked horse. She knew enough about spooked horses to tread with light feet.
“You will lose everything,” she continued. “Your family will lose everything. France will lose everything. And for what reason? For the actions of a naïve and spoiled boy?”
She took a step back to allow him a measure of space for reflection. A heady feeling grew and expanded within her. She saw how one could become addicted to it, this influencing the fate of nations.
Her gaze returned to Villefranche, expecting to find him reflective and possibly penitent. Instead, she found a man intently and singularly focused on a point above her shoulder.
A sensation stole over her as if the very air she breathed had changed its molecular composition. This must be how wild animals felt the moment they realized they were being stalked. She glanced over her shoulder and followed Villefranche’s gaze across the pool and down the opposite path.
She blinked. Then she blinked once again for confirmation that her mind wasn’t conjuring visions. If Villefranche was seeing him, too, it must not be fiction.
It must be true that approaching them was none other than Nick, returning their twin dumbfounded stares with a polished aplomb uniquely his own.