Chapter 21
Knave in Grain: A knave of the first rate: a phrase borrowed from the dyehouse, where certain colours are said to be in grain, to denote their superiority, as being dyed with cochineal, called grain.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
As the carriage transported her across a grid of indifferent Parisian streets, Mariana sank into brittle leather upholstery and allowed her head to thump back against the unforgiving cushion.
What had she done? Again.
Yet, even as mortification blazed through her—had she really just done that . . . again . . . with Nick in the Jardin du Luxembourg?—regret refused to take hold. She’d wanted Nick. Despite their past. Despite everything.
And she’d had him.
In all honesty, she wanted him again. She craved him the way an opium eater craved the poppy. The more she had, the more she wanted. Her transformation into an amoral, hedonistic Parisienne seemed complete.
Her gaze found the river Seine to her left as the carriage rolled alongside. Tonight, she was to play wife to Nick at the Capet family’s soirée. Hysterical, even unhinged, laughter bubbled up her throat. If the libidinous feeling flowing through her veins was any indicator, it seemed she and Nick excelled at playing husband and wife.
She shouldn’t go. Her dealings with the Comte de Villefranche were done, for better or for worse. And her dealings with Nick?
A flood of nervous energy filled her. She would burst if she remained trapped inside this confining carriage a moment longer. She tapped the roof twice and was through the door before the wheels came to a complete stop.
“Monsieur,” she called up, “I shall meet you on the Rue de Rivoli outside the Louvre Palace one hour hence.”
“Madame,” the outraged driver called down in his thick French accent, “it is not so safe—”
“My safety is my concern,” she snapped. Without another word of protest, the driver set the carriage into motion.
The breeze from the river swirled off the water and gusted over her. As she took in the magnificent view of the Notre Dame, she willed the riot of emotion to release and flutter away. What remained were two prevailing, and conflicting, emotions. One, expected and correct; the other, unexpected and utterly wrong.
Correctly, she was angry at Nick. His mistresses hadn’t been opera singers and dancers all these years. Rather he’d had one formidable mistress: the Foreign Office. The man had blown their marriage to smithereens to play at cloaks and daggers. But . . . He hadn’t betrayed the intimacy between them.
What if it’s a lie? her rational mind nagged. The man told lies for a living.
But it wasn’t. Her irrational heart knew his confession for the truth, a thought not easily dismissed or erased by anger. In fact, this knowledge led her directly into the other unexpected and utterly wrong emotion: hope.
Hope was an emotion she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for a decade. It would have crushed her. But now that Nick had revealed the truth to her, hope expanded within her heart to bursting. It seemed a few days in Paris with Nick were all it took to spark the inconvenient emotion alive.
It only takes two.
Unable to process the enormity of those four simple words and her reaction to them, she’d run. Still, she ran, but she couldn’t outpace them no matter how hard she tried. Within those words lay the dashed dreams of her twenty-year-old heart.
And her thirty-year-old heart? How did she feel about them?
Mariana had had to get away from him as fast as her legs could carry her . . . before he saw the truth in her eyes. It seemed her heart hadn’t aged past twenty. Hope competed with the anger, and the hope might be winning.
An involuntary groan escaped her, and she spun away from the river, as if her mind could match the motion and change her thought pattern as readily as she changed her view. The trick didn’t work. Nothing worked. Truth, and hope, refused to be avoided.
Why had her heart chosen this man all those years ago? And why was she even thinking about hearts after having it ripped from her chest all those years ago?
Weary of standing still and thinking too much, she set her feet into motion and soon found herself rambling through a jumble of narrow lanes. As her heels clicked across medieval cobblestones, her confusion of energy found an outlet in the brisk walk. She’d never walked so much in her entire life as she had in Paris. This trip had revealed to her an unexpected pleasure in the activity. It cleansed. It revivified.
In fact, not only had she never walked so much in her life, she’d never thought so much in her life. She wasn’t a thinker; she was a doer. Yet in Paris she found herself inside her own mind more often than she would like, sorting through thoughts that refused to be sorted.
Twice in less than twenty-four hours.
She groaned aloud. It seemed everything she did lately elicited a groan. Oh, that didn’t sound right.
Twice in less than twenty-four hours.
Soon she found herself in the heart of a vaguely familiar neighborhood, and her pace slowed. Perhaps the absinthe café was around here. Or was it the brothel?
The atmosphere had transformed with the daylight: bustling, vibrant—a man’s shoulder clipped her—rude. The distraction of people rushing around her, getting on with their individual days, was a welcome one. These people were doers, not thinkers. When one stripped away the trappings of class and wealth, she saw they were her people.
In the next block, she happened upon a fruit stand offering assorted varieties of juicy fall apples and pears. Of a sudden, she was ravenous.
“Bonjour, Madame”—She wracked her brain for the correct French phrasing—“combien coûte?” She was certain she’d left out a connective word or two, but it would have to do.
The fruit seller—who hadn’t yet acknowledged Mariana as she polished her wares one by one—tilted her head, finally gifting Mariana with her attention. She shifted on her feet beneath the intensity of the woman’s brown-eyed scrutiny.
“Anglaise?” the woman all but spat.
“Oui,” she replied, reconsidering the offerings of this particular fruit seller. This woman might not be her people.
She eyed Mariana up and down for a solid minute before saying, “Un sovereign.”
It was the woman’s use of English that first struck her, but it was the woman’s price that took her completely aback. A sovereign for a piece of fruit worth less than a penny?
She noticed a few sets of curious eyes observing the transaction. Of course. She looked every bit the lady.
Instead of voicing her opposition to this highway robbery, she reached inside her reticule and pulled out a single, gold sovereign. A canny smile stretched the woman’s thin, cracked lips as she reached for the coin. Mariana held onto the sovereign for a beat longer than necessary and watched the woman’s smile slip as they engaged in a subtle tug of war.
“Duex,” Mariana said, holding up two fingers with her free hand.
The fruit seller shrugged an indifferent shoulder, and Mariana released the coin, somewhat mollified. At least, she would have an apple and a pear out of the deal.
As she took her time selecting the biggest, juiciest fruit, and the fruit seller resumed ignoring her, Mariana noticed a motionless male figure on the periphery of her vision. It might have been her imagination, but it seemed the man was intent on . . . her. Her eyes darted right, and he was gone.
The tension bunching her shoulders together released and slid down her back. These spy games were creating menace where there was none. No choice but to act like a reasonable adult woman, she crunched down on the apple and set her feet into motion.
As she wound through the Left Bank, her thoughts settled, and a giddy pleasure fizzed through her. Ladies didn’t eat apples whilst perambulating foreign cities alone. Two, possibly three, rules broken, she was certain. Her etiquette teachers had never explicitly enumerated these rules, but she was certain they didn’t think they needed to.
She took another bite of apple. Scrumptious. This forbidden apple might be the best she’d ever tasted.
When she paused to better peruse the wares of a book shop, her peripheral vision again caught a glimpse of the male figure. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. It was most definitely the same man.
She tossed the half-eaten apple into an alley and searched the lane for a hackney. When none was to be found, she thought to pick up her pace. That would be the height of stupidity. The man would know that she knew she was being followed.
She cut an instinctive left into a dark sliver of an alley and immediately regretted her decision. She would be alone with her stalker. She had only a few seconds before he caught up to her.
She scanned the ground for a weapon before chancing upon a thick plank of wood. Her fingers closed around one end, and a rotten chunk crumbled in her hand. Likely, it wouldn’t inflict enough damage for her to escape. But it was too late to explore other options. It would have to do.
Her back against the damp, stone wall, she went stock still and waited, the flimsy plank raised above her head and at the ready. Just as her arms began to tire, the man slinked around the corner. Without a second thought, she swiped the plank of wood across his head, knocking him off balance. Before her would-be assailant could recover his equilibrium, a surge of adrenaline propelled her down the alleyway, her heart racing faster than her feet.
She’d already fled a good ten yards when she heard, “Christ almighty!”
She stopped dead in her tracks. That voice was most definitely not that of a Parisian cutpurse. In fact, it was unmistakably English.
Slowly, she turned to face the man, who was now hunched against the patch of wall she’d just vacated and rubbing the back of his head. She recognized him as the croupier, or whoever he was today. But that wasn’t what arrested her attention: she knew that voice. His was a voice from her past. But where from her past?
Against her better judgment, she began moving toward him, picking her way across murky puddles of filth she hadn’t noticed a few seconds ago. The alley had gone eerily silent. Her hand tightened its grip on her wood plank, which she hadn’t realized she still held until now. He began to come into focus.
He was a tall man. Rangy . . . Wolfish. His head was topped by a flat cap with dark curls peeking out from beneath. The gray light of the alley and the brim of his cap conspired to obscure the details of his face.
“Are you injured?” she called out from a cautious distance.
A dry laugh escaped the man as he cut her a sidelong glance and removed a blood-smudged hand from the back of his head. Still, he didn’t utter a word. And she needed him to speak. She needed confirmation of what her ears had told her.
Her feet inched closer, as if she approached a wild and unpredictable animal, and she began to discern a familiarity in his profile, not only in his voice. Even though this was the same man she’d seen with both Nick and Villefranche, this feeling of familiarity ran deeper: she knew this man. But from where? Context continued to elude her.
“I should have known better,” the man’s deep voice sliced through the silence, “than to underestimate Lady Mariana Montfort Asquith.”
He turned his head and faced her square.
The rotten plank fell from her suddenly slack hand as context hit her with the intensity of a gale force wind coming off the North Sea. Her brain refused to accept what her eyes and ears were telling her. It couldn’t be. That voice and that face, although both much altered, were long dead.
“Percy?” She had difficulty comprehending the name even as it passed her lips.
Percy was her sister’s long-deceased husband. Percy was an impetuous young man who had sped off to war and his death at the first opportunity. Percy was buried in a field in Spain. Percy was dead.
“Percy?” She repeated herself like a simpleton when the proof stood clear before her eyes: Percy was alive.
He straightened and pushed off the wall, and she stepped backward. “Captain Lord Percival Bretagne”—He performed a bow worthy of a ballroom—“at your service.”
Was that irony she detected in his tone and in his manner? When had Percy developed irony? “You are not Percy,” she whispered.
He was Percy . . . But he wasn’t.
His eyes went hard and unreadable. It struck her that she didn’t know a thing about this man standing before her in a dark alleyway. She longed for her rotten plank of wood. She might need it.
“Follow me,” he said and added over his shoulder, “or don’t.” In a few long strides, he ducked around the corner and out of sight.
Drat. Before she could consider the foolishness of her actions, she scrambled to follow him. It was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to squander. Her gaze swept the crowded street and finally located his swift-moving back half a block ahead. He was zigzagging through the streets at such a fast clip that she had to trot to keep pace.
After several blocks and street crossings, he hooked a sharp right into a dingy and disreputable building. By the time Mariana reached the entrance, she was out of breath, and Percy was already at the top of a decrepit staircase that didn’t look fit to hold the weight of a child, much less that of a full-grown man. She glanced about the wretched pile and placed a tentative foot on the bottom step. When she looked up for confirmation from Percy, he was already gone.
It was her choice.
Well, she hadn’t much of a choice. She must follow. Her skirts hitched up to her calves, she allowed her breath to catch up with her and began her ascent, fleet feet springing up the steps in his wake. He wouldn’t get away so easily.
At last, she arrived at the very top landing and stood before a cracked door. Once she entered this room, nothing would be the same. Uncertain footsteps stuttered forward as she reached out and pushed wide the door. Three steps later, she found herself at the center of a dim, attic room the size of a garden shed.
The door clicked shut behind her, and she swiveled around to find Percy watching her, his stony expression inscrutable. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch him, to confirm the reality of his corporeal form. Instead, she clenched her hands into fists and kept them at her side.
Her eyes locked fast onto his, she spoke first. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
An unreadable emotion flickered across his face, but he remained silent. It was too big a question. This conversation couldn’t be swallowed whole. It must be taken in small bites.
“What happened to your hair?” she asked, beginning anew. “It was gray when I saw you in the brothel. I truly didn’t recognize you.” It seemed a simple enough opening.
“I’m not recognizable when it suits me.” He crossed the room and poured them each a measure of amber liquid.
This man didn’t move like Percy. The Percy she remembered moved with an upright bearing, like the horses he’d so loved displaying on Rotten Row. This Percy slipped and slid like a shadow, never taking the straightforward path.
He set one glass on the tiny table below the room’s lone window and silently toasted her with the other. She reached for her glass and followed his lead, downing the whiskey in one fiery gulp. A gusty, “Oof,” escaped her.
He indicated with a flick of his wrist that she sit. She moved to the proffered chair, but stood behind it. She wasn’t ready to make herself comfortable for a civilized discussion of, And how have you been faring? It’s been a dreadfully long time since we last spoke. My, oh my, how time does fly!
That wouldn’t do.
“What happened to you?”
“Is that a general or specific inquiry?” he asked before settling back into a creaky chair.
“Either.” She glanced at the thin, silvery scar running the length of his right cheekbone. “Both.”
“The Battle of Maya.”
A seed of frustration cracked open within her. “The Battle of Maya ended eleven years ago.”
“For some.” He lazily traced a finger around the rim of his empty glass.
This was blatant evasion. Her frustration sprouted roots. “You owe me more than that. It isn’t only the scar, Percy. You are altered.”
An unhurried hand reached for the whiskey, and he poured them each another few drams. She watched him take a sip and left her own untouched.
How was this Lord Percival Bretagne? Sitting opposite her was a rangy wolf of a man. The sort of man one instinctively crossed the street to avoid. This was Percy?
The Percy she remembered was a high-spirited youth who was the life of every party. She would have even gone so far as to describe him as frivolous. Honestly, she’d never understood what, beyond his dashing good looks, Olivia saw in him. Mariana had always thought him shallow as a puddle of water. And when he’d run off and gotten himself blown to bits on the Continent, she hadn’t been at all surprised.
The man before her was no brash, shallow youth. His face had shed any trace of boyishness. It was still a handsome face, but one long accustomed to deprivation. The word wolfish returned to her. One’s eyes wouldn’t linger long enough on this man’s face to take note of its rugged handsomeness. This man possessed depths that ran as deep and dark as those of a Scottish loch.
“Shall we start at the beginning?” she asked, grasping for some sort of opening.
“And where is the beginning?” he asked, the question a laconic drawl.
“Why did you lead me here only to be deliberately obtuse?” She couldn’t keep a frustrated rush from jumbling her words. “How is it you’re alive? That would be a beginning.”
He picked up his glass of whiskey and downed its contents in a swift swallow. Here was something else she was learning about this Percy: he was difficult. The Percy she remembered had been eager to please. Not this one.
“My death, it turned out, wasn’t long-lived. Eventually, I was found somewhat alive, if a bit worse for wear.” A dark laugh escaped him, and a chill raced up her spine. “Turns out I’m far more useful dead than I ever was alive.”
“Why would you say such a thing?”
“So many indelicate questions for a lady. But, then, you never were one for mincing words.” He absently tapped the side of his empty glass. “If you must know, a government has many uses for a dead man.”
A sick feeling of dread crept into her stomach. His eyes slid away from hers, and she knew. His government . . . Whitehall . . . the Foreign Office . . . Nick.
Nick knew. Of course, he did.
She’d seen them together twice. She’d even spent an evening in the same room with this man. A dark thought came to her. She wasn’t certain if it was born of fear or . . . hope. “I’ve seen you with Nick and the Comte de Villefranche. Perhaps you are playing both sides. Perhaps you sent those men to attack Nick.”
He mulled her words before answering, “And if I did?”
It was tempting to give in to the possibility of his confession. After all, if Percy was a double agent, the situation would be black and white, and easily concluded. As quickly as the thought came, it was replaced by another consideration, one grounded in reality. Nick trusted this man, Percy, with his life. Nick trusted no one.
Percy wasn’t behind the attack. Furthermore, it was clear that he was providing cover for Nick. The black and white swirled into gray again.
“Your loyalty to Nick runs so deep that you would allow me to think the worst of you so I don’t think it of him?”
Percy’s gaze glimmered with an intense light. “Nick is finished.”
A surge of protectiveness swelled within Mariana. “Nick knows his business very well. When he sets his mind to something, he is the—”
“Best?” Percy finished for her. “He was the best before”—She braced herself. She knew how this sentence would end—“you arrived. Now, he is finished. He simply hasn’t realized it yet.” He shifted forward. “Do you know why he is finished? Can you admit why even to yourself? Allow him to come home, Mariana.”
“You have the temerity to speak those words to me?” She threw back at him. “What of your home, Percy? What of Olivia? What of your daughter whom you’ve never met? Or do you even know of Lucy?”
He flinched. She’d hit her mark. “I know of her.”
“Have you considered how Olivia suffered?”
“Not as much as she would had I returned.”
“Help me understand. Why do you and Nick choose this?” She spread her arms wide to indicate the ramshackle room surrounding them. “You’re the son of a duke.”
“I am a son of England. My surroundings”—He mirrored her gesture, arms splayed wide—“are of no consequence. But the work I do is.” He cocked his head, and a shrewd light sparked within his eyes. “It’s the same work you’re doing. This work seduces you in. It invigorates and makes you feel alive. You feel it, non?”
Her mouth snapped shut as she remembered the heady sense of power she’d experienced conducting Villefranche.
“Not everyone in this world can make the easy choice or take the straightforward path. Your tidy Mayfair world depends on it. Society’s ease comes with a price for those who will pay it. And make no mistake, Mariana, someone must pay the price. Have you ever taken a good look around you in London? Have you ever noticed the hordes of maimed men littering the sidewalks? Those men paid the price and are still paying it.”
“But, Percy”—This conversation had taken a sharp turn, and she was determined to right it—“you owe . . .” His eyes snapped fire, and the remainder of her words died in her mouth.
“You know nothing of my debts,” he said. “I owe you nothing.”
“But Olivia—”
“My wife, yes.”
“Your wife?” The question startled out of her. “Percy, you were declared dead. Olivia is a widow. You don’t get to call her your wife.”
A stab of concern for her sister cut through her. After years of widowhood, Olivia had settled into a measured life of peace and routine. It wasn’t the sort of life Mariana could tolerate for more than five minutes, but Olivia had chosen it. That was enough for Mariana. And, now, here was Percy, alive to muck up the past. And the present.
His chair a sharp, strident scrape across the floor, he stood. “Allow me to escort you to the door.”
“You never answered my question,” she protested. “Why did you choose this life over your family?”
His head canted to the side, his eyes an onyx glint in half-shadowed light. “You think this life a choice? You’re not asking the right question.”
“Tell me what question to ask.” A strange idea occurred to her. “Are you here against your will?”
Although he hadn’t been moving, somehow his body went yet more still. It was as if she was a gorgon who had turned him to stone with her question. “Someday you and I might debate Aristotle’s meditations on free will and fate, but not today. It’s time for you to leave.”
He placed a guiding hand on the small of her back and all but pushed her along. Nearly through the door, she planted her feet into rotting floorboards. She must say something more to this man, and he would hear it. She swiveled around to face him. “Whatever comes of this, leave Olivia be.”
A strange mixture of curiosity and vulnerability shone in his eyes, but he kept silent.
“Stay dead, Percy.”
He flinched. Good. She pivoted on her heel and strode down the corridor, her footsteps a decisive echo behind her. The old Percy was in there, but buried deep—too deep for her to fathom.
By the time she reached the outside of the building, her feet beat a harder, more decisive tattoo, her thoughts racing toward the source of her burgeoning wrath: Nick. She’d been a fool for the man . . . again.
A storm of anger swept through her, body and mind, before settling into a cold fury. Her furies usually ran fierce and hot, obscuring the world around her for the length of time it took to drink a pot of tea, but this one was unlike any she’d ever experienced. Through this cold fury the events of the past week showed crisp and clear.
She could have forgiven Nick the opera singer ruse. In fact, she saw now that it had been an inevitability. Perhaps she’d been on her way to reconciling with him. Perhaps that had been an inevitability, too.
Now she knew the truth about Percy, a truth Nick had kept secret, not only from her, but from Olivia. Forgiveness and reconciliation with Nick were impossible.
Bitterness frayed the edges of her crisp and clear fury. She should have known better than to be seduced by that most insidious of emotions: hope.
Hope had no place in the lexicon of her relationship with Nick.
No longer was this a game they were playing. Real life had been happening all this time, directly beneath her nose. She’d been playing fast and loose with a ruthless man, one who would watch others grieve when he knew a truth that would save so many from heartache. The good of the many outweighed the good of the few. That was Nick’s belief. What were a few lives worth when so many more were at stake?
But what about those few? What about those individuals who sacrificed so much without any knowledge of their act? What about Olivia?
To harm Olivia was to harm Mariana. It had ever been so. And ever would be. The man who had inflicted that harm had once held her heart, a heart he may once again hold . . .
She swept aside the remainder of that unruly thought and returned to her cold fury, a fury that included herself. She’d gone into her dealings with Nick with the full knowledge that she played with fire. Yet she’d played on, foolishly thinking she could separate the emotional from the physical. She’d thought she wouldn’t get burned. That she’d learned her lesson the first time around. Well, she was scorched.
And she had no one to blame except herself, not even Nick. Past behavior was the best predictor of future behavior, after all. Absurdly, she’d fallen into the trap of believing it could be otherwise and that a new pattern could develop.
Ha.
Nick would always be Nick. And she would always be Mariana, the girl who fell hopelessly in love with him any time he glanced her way. How easily she’d allowed herself to forget.
But now she remembered. And now, once again, she must find a way to forget and carry on with the rest of her life. Dark possibility snaked in alongside the thought, and a way of forgetting came to her. Even as her stomach dropped to her toes, cold intellect pressed forward. It might be the only way.
To forget one man, one could seduce another. Nick himself had given her a few lessons toward that end.
Like a domino tipping over, the perfect candidate for her seduction fell into place: Captain Nylander.
What was Helene’s description of him? A tall drink of Viking water.
Her own? The path not pursued.
Well, it was her prerogative to pursue that path now.
Captain Nylander was gorgeous and discreet, and he’d given her his address in Calais. She could be there within the day.
But she knew the answer must be no. The man clearly had a code of honor regarding women, and she wouldn’t take advantage of it.
She needed someone else, someone who couldn’t threaten her emotionally and vice versa. She needed . . . the Comte de Villefranche.
She couldn’t stand the man, which made him perfect. And she’d already put in the effort with him. Furthermore, he wasn’t exactly repulsive.
With Villefranche, the sexual act would be a cold and sterile affair. She would walk away from him completely unscathed. That was the most important consideration.
Villefranche would do.
Tonight’s soirée would provide the opportunity she needed. Never mind that Nick would certainly find out. That wasn’t her motivation. Of course, it wasn’t. Through the haze of her cold fury, she saw that she would be doing this for herself. She needed this to forget Nick, to break her bond with him.
She should have taken a lover years ago. Never mind that Nick had never taken one. He should have. They each should have. It was the only way to protect their hearts from each other.
The past was done. A new future opened itself to her. It was a future she would embark upon tonight. She should feel optimistic.
And if she didn’t? If the future stretching before her felt as bleak as the tundra of her cold fury?
Well, there would be more lovers.