Chapter 2
Suds: In the suds; in trouble, in a disagreeable situation, or involved in some difficulty.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
Or, more accurately, it was the voice of a missing, and presumed dead, man.
Mariana gave a single, assenting nod.
One arm maintained its restrictive hold across her body, even as his other hand loosened its grip over her mouth. That hand hovered, just a whisper of a touch on her skin, so lightly she could speak if she wanted.
It occurred to her that she and her husband hadn’t touched in ten years, just as another tension coiled in her body. But it was one not born of fear, it was more basic than fear. This was a primordial response, one specific to them. Did he feel it, too?
Once she’d been so sure he did. She’d been too sure. Of course, that was when she’d thought she was worth something to him.
A subtle arch of her back would reveal his desire, or lack thereof, even through several layers of silk skirts . . .
Every muscle in her body aligned in a rigid no. She wouldn’t stoop to that level.
She cleared her throat, the sound a short, muffled scrape against the back of her throat. It achieved its intended effect when his hands fell away as if shocked into a similar realization. He stepped back, and her body swayed, suddenly too free. She heard the key turn in a lantern, and the dark transformed into dim, flickering light. She leaned forward to steady herself against a shelf of what appeared to be rags and various scrubbing implements.
Her blood rioted through her veins on a single emotion: relief. She could come apart with the ferocity of the feeling, but she wouldn’t. At least, she wouldn’t in front of him, not even in the near dark.
Nick was alive.
“I knew you would come looking for me.”
Annoyed by his cheek, she whirled around and assessed the long, shadowy length of him dressed in unrelieved black. “Why are you dressed as a waiter?” she retorted. “And why do you have a beard?” She wouldn’t mention that it was a sin against nature to obscure the strong line of his jaw and the subtle cleft of his chin.
His eyes, the gray of an overcast sea, met hers, and his head canted to the side, an arrogant angle to his right eyebrow. “It’s better that you don’t know.”
Mariana resisted the temptation to reach out and slap that ridiculous beard off his face. Instead, she summoned the righteous indignation that had served her well over years of dealing with this man. “I received a message that you were missing and presumed dead, so I came to Paris to retrieve your dead body. To state the matter plainly, these past two days have been gruesome.”
He leaned an indolent shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms, intending to put her on the defensive.
And, as she continued, it worked. “Have you ever experienced the pleasure of scouring the sick beds of La Salpêtriere for a missing, presumed dead, man?”
A slow, insufferable shake of his head was all the response he gave.
“Well, it’s possible that I’ve conferred with every doctor and nurse in Paris, and every prostitute, too.”
Amusement danced in Nick’s eyes.
“And the stench.” She couldn’t control a shiver of disgust. “Well, we won’t discuss the stench. Except to say, while we’re on the subject of stench”—She couldn’t seem to stem the flow of words, now that she’d gotten started—“have you enjoyed a trip to the morgue along the Quai du Marché-Neuf?”
“That particular pleasure, I have experienced.”
“But not as a dead man, I assured myself earlier today. With bodies laid shoulder to shoulder like sardines in a tin, a more wretched place on earth I can’t imagine.”
“It was an abattoir before it was converted into a morgue,” Nick stated, his tone that of a supercilious popinjay. She’d known this persona well over the last ten years. But it hadn’t always been so . . .
She cleared her throat. “By my estimation, it never ceased being a butcher shop.”
“Are you finished?”
Mariana’s cheeks flamed, hot and mortified, and her mouth snapped shut. She’d been scolding him like a fishwife.
“Now,” he continued, “I’m certain the letter you received was nothing more than a mere prank.”
“A mere prank?” Mariana asked, unable to believe her ears. She swung around. She couldn’t bear to look at him a moment longer. “Foreign Office was scribbled as the return address.”
“Was it signed?”
“No.”
A particular note sounded in his voice, a fine mixture of concern and curiosity she might have missed had she been facing him. Nick tended to overload her senses when she took him in all at once. His subtle, but commanding, physical presence . . . his overwhelming handsomeness . . . his direct gaze that held too many secrets, both his and hers . . . all sparked too much curiosity within her.
He was safer experienced one sense at a time, because only then could she see through the layers of deceit to ferret out the truth. And there was definitely a truth at the heart of his response.
“You must leave Paris,” he stated, low and hard, his voice unaffected and real. Gone was the supercilious popinjay. This was Nick’s true voice speaking.
“I must?” she bristled.
“You’ve accomplished what you set out to do.”
“Which was?”
“To find me. It’s time for you to go.”
She swiveled around to face him. “I may make a holiday of Paris.”
Now that Nick was safe and sound—well, safe might be a stretch—she could resume her long-established habit of opposing him when given half a chance. It was the only delight she’d derived from him in the last ten years, albeit a mean one.
“Everyone goes on at length about the shopping to be found in Paris these days.”
“You find no pleasure in shopping, Mariana.”
The assuredness of his words stopped her cold as a hot fury flared within her. “And what do you know about what does and doesn’t give me pleasure? It has been over ten years since we . . .” She stopped herself mid-sentence. No good could come of speaking aloud what they hadn’t done in ten years. “Parted ways.”
Although separated by a distance of no more than five feet, a chasm the breadth and depth of the Atlantic Ocean expanded between them. It was a distance impossible to bridge, especially after his affair.
She cleared her throat—tight with emotion. “What have you been doing on the Continent all these years? Somehow I don’t think it’s ceremonial consular duties.”
“Have you really not puzzled it out?” He raised his brows, speculation in his eyes. “I collect information for the Foreign Office.”
“Collect information?” Mariana repeated. “That’s almost as vague as ceremonial consular duties.”
A charged silence stretched between them before Nick broke it. “If I tell you, will you promise to leave Paris immediately?”
“Why would I promise you anything?”
“Mariana.”
“I promise to consider leaving.”
A frustrated, sibilant breath sounded through his teeth. “Put bluntly, I’m a spy.”
A short burst of baffled confusion transformed into rattled shock. “A spy?” she asked in a low hush. She’d been a willful fool all these years. She’d seen what she wanted to see in the man who had broken her heart: a frivolous dilettante.
But the Nick standing before her—whoever he was—was the real Nick. He was a collector of information for the Foreign Office. Nick was a spy. Obfuscatory beard and unfashionably shorn hair were all part of a role he played.
“Mariana, you’ve no idea what you’re dabbling in.”
“You still think of me as that eighteen-year-old girl, don’t you?” she asked, bitterness twisting every word. She hated her inability to hide it from him. “The one so amenable to your wishes and requests?”
A wry smile curved his beautifully formed lips. These were the same firm, full lips that had ravished every inch of her during their short-lived union. He pushed off the wall and strode to the door. “I wouldn’t dream of characterizing you as amenable.”
She resisted the impulse toward distraction. Their past had no place in the present. “Why did I receive the note?” she pressed.
He paused and slid his gaze toward her. Her breath arrested in her lungs. He still possessed the power to stun and captivate her with a single glance.
“I shall fix this,” he said as familiar, distancing reserve returned to his demeanor. “There is no reason to involve you.”
With those parting words, he was out of the door. And out of her life for all she knew.
She slumped against a wall of shelving. She’d forgotten how devastating he could be, and how he could slice her open with a few words.
There is no reason to involve you.
No seven words better encapsulated the story of their marriage.
Rather than allow herself to become bogged down in emotion best left to the past, she stiffened her spine and focused on the present. She had experience in moving beyond a devastating moment: place one foot in front of the other and aim for a destination. In this case, Helene’s box would do. Yet, as her feet carried her forward, a pair of refrains circled her brain like a whirlwind:
Nick is alive. Nick is a spy.
A statement of relief and truth: Nick is alive. A statement of bewilderment and intrigue: Nick is a spy. The clues had been before her the entire time she’d known him. Of course, Nick was a spy.
Within a matter of minutes—minutes which bore no resemblance to the steady tick-tock of time, given the torrent of conflicting thoughts and emotions that continued to swirl about her brain—she resumed her seat beside Helene.
“Did the air refresh you?” Helene whispered.
A quick, affirmative nod was Mariana’s response. Her unseeing eyes were fixed on the drama playing out on the stage, even as she attempted to comprehend the drama just behind her.
Nick was alive, at least, as of five minutes ago, and she was free to pick up her life where she’d left it. London was little more than a boat ride away.
A subtle nudge of Helene’s shoulder drew Mariana’s attention. “Ma chérie,” came Helene’s delighted whisper, “you have an admirer.”
As she brought Helene’s proffered glass to her face and followed the direction of Helene’s twinkling gaze, her heart banged out a hard thump in her chest. Was it possible that it could be . . .
Disappointment shot through her.
The wrong man returned her gaze. He inclined his head in a shallow nod, and his eyes shifted away.
“He may not be perfect,” Helene murmured sotto voce, “but a flirtation with a most eligible younger man is refreshment for the soul, non?”
Mariana released a sigh and allowed the glass to fall to her lap.
“Why not?” Helene pressed, misinterpreting the cause of Mariana’s pique. “The state of your marriage is no secret on either side of the Channel, ma chérie.”
Vexed, Mariana averted her gaze toward the stage and focused on an unremarkable point in the middle distance. It was true: the state of her and Nick’s marriage had become open for public speculation when his affair with an opera singer was splashed across every gossip rag in London ten years ago. With little recourse available to her—Parliament wasn’t likely to allow her to divorce a husband who had only behaved like every other Society husband—she’d accepted that she would have the sort of marriage she’d vowed never to have: loveless and detached.
She’d anticipated a different sort of marriage with Nick, one rooted in love. But, in the end, that feeling had been hers alone.
A crowd of unfamiliar faces formed a continuous blur before and below her. By sheer accident, she caught the eyes of her young admirer. Something about him struck a flat note. His countenance held no hint of the playful or sensual. There was no promise of future delights should she choose him. A word came to her: solemn. Who ever heard of a solemn admirer?
Upon further reflection, solemn wasn’t quite on the mark. His regard registered as deeper, more soulful, like a Parisian Lord Byron. In fact, this man’s entire being spoke of the Romantic ideal: luminous brown eyes; dark curly locks; a general brooding air that belonged to a set of Mariana’s peers for whom she never had an ounce of patience.
Still, he was handsome. And he was young.
Too handsome and too young.
What a night this was turning out to be.
She swung her attention back toward the stage and forced herself to concentrate for the rest of the performance. Part of the ballet’s allure, aside from its breathless beauty, was its order and synchronicity. If everyone hit their marks, it flowed with a precision missing from life outside these walls. For the duration of the performance, she was allowed the fantasy that an ordered life was possible.
All too soon, the ballet ended, and reality—and disorder—was allowed to prevail once again.
Nick is alive. Nick is a spy.
Possessed of the proportions of a sturdy, little bullfinch, Helene took Mariana’s hand and pulled her up. Times like these reminded Mariana how very much taller she was than other women. Not that she’d ever minded. She rather liked that she could see across a crowd on her flat feet.
Helene began guiding her through various groupings of Society acquaintances. Numb to it all, Mariana stepped through the motions of introductions and small chit-chat. She wouldn’t remember a single person from this night.
Courtesies observed, Helene led Mariana down a dark and crowded corridor that spilled into a high-ceilinged room stripped of all decoration. It appeared to be a rehearsal studio with mirrors lining two adjacent walls and ballet barres bisecting all four walls.
“What is this place?” Mariana asked. She couldn’t help feeling displaced, yet invigorated by an effervescence infusing the room’s atmosphere.
“This is the Foyer de la Danse,” Helene replied. “A select number of patrons have the opportunity to associate with the dancers after the performance.”
Mariana observed the dynamics of the room. In England, dancers were regarded as little better than common prostitutes, and they were treated as such. Aristocratic Londoners kept every part of their lives distinct: their virtues located in Mayfair and Belgravia; their vices in Southwark and Whitechapel. The English didn’t mix virtue and vice in the same neighborhood, much less in the same room.
Here, some patrons patiently watched the ballet dancers mingle with the crowd, while others seized the opportunity to engage the dancers and try their luck. In all, it was high and low, heavenly and sordid, an odd and conflicting atmosphere, and so very Parisian.
“I believe,” Mariana observed, “you and I are the only two females not wearing tights and tulle.”
A pleased giggle escaped Helene. “Ma chérie, I would never see my husband, the Marquis, if I didn’t step inside this room from time to time.”
Mariana couldn’t summon a carefree rejoinder. She hadn’t been so sanguine when it had come to her own husband’s abandonment.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed a figure clad in evening black approaching. It was her admirer. Better to have this introduction over and done. Solemnly—again that word—the man bowed before her and Helene.
“Isn’t this perfect,” Helene stated rather than asked as she held out her hand to be kissed. “Lady Nicholas Asquith, may I introduce Lucien Capet, the Comte de Villefranche and heir to the Marquis de Touraine, to you?”
Mariana acquiesced to the request with a nod of her head and allowed the young Comte to take her hand. As his lips brushed the back of her gloved fingers, she braced herself for the suggestive eye contact that would inevitably follow when he straightened.
The inevitable didn’t come to pass. In fact, his dark eyes barely glanced her way, hardly knowing where to rest as they darted from her to Helene, to coffered ceilings, back to her and Helene, and finally to his feet. Mariana was dizzy watching him.
This young man didn’t seem to have the slightest understanding of the role he was attempting to play. This was no worldly French suitor with a trail of conquests in his wake. He was the very opposite.
“If you will allow me,” he began, a callow crack in his voice, “I would be your escort for the evening. The Foyer can be a scandalous place for unescorted mesdames.”
“Scandal?” Mariana asked, both bemused and irritated. “How very”—Oh, what was the perfect word?—“stimulating.”
“Too much stimulation is not good for the delicate constitutions of . . .”
“Mesdames?” Mariana finished for him, warming to the subject. “My dear Comte, I understand that you are young and do not yet possess a working understanding of mesdames, but I can assure you that we—”
“We would be delighted to accept your company, Villefranche,” Helene interrupted, smoothly shushing Mariana in the process.
Mariana bit back the rest of her sentence and acceded. Three abreast, with Mariana in the middle, they began their turn about the room.
They had taken no more than two steps when a dancer approached and stopped before them, a playful light in her eyes. With careful precision, she positioned her arms and feet before performing a series of flawless pirouettes. She was the picture of grace and beauty. A delighted Helene clapped her hands.
After the dancer flounced away to perform for another group of patrons, Mariana turned toward the young Comte at her side. It would be rude to stay silent. “Do you frequent the Foyer?”
“Non,” Villefranche replied, “it is not to my taste.”
Her head canted to the side. “Yet you are here.”
“There are times when a man must act outside his true inclinations,” he replied, one word following the next in a passionate staccato.
Taken aback by his fervor, she asked, “And why would the son of a marquis ever have to act outside his true inclinations?”
Twin patches of scarlet brightened the young Comte’s cheeks, and he glanced away. If she’d known him better, she might hazard a guess that he was flustered.
Unaware of the curious exchange, Helene continued greeting passersby as they progressed through the room.
Villefranche asked, “Have you yet shopped in the Palais-Royal?”
Mariana suppressed a surprised laugh at this conversational turn. This night grew stranger by the moment. “Non,” she replied, disinterest rounding out the single syllable. Nick had been correct about one thing: she derived no pleasure from shopping.
“I shall escort you on the morrow if you like,” Villefranche replied . . . solemnly.
Before Mariana could form a polite refusal, Helene nudged her. “Oh, ma chérie, you must experience the Palais-Royal before you leave Paris.”
No other option available, Mariana replied, “I shall think on it.”
She wouldn’t, of course. She only entered shops out of necessity and with a clear objective. She couldn’t think of a bigger waste of time than an aimless perusal of random wares for sale.
Villefranche leaned forward and caught Helene’s eye. “You could join us for propriety’s sake?”
Helene’s eyebrows lifted. “I am fairly certain I have a previous engagement.”
Mariana suppressed a smile. Helene would take great offense at the very suggestion that she was old enough to play chaperone to a woman of thirty years.
“In that case,” Villefranche continued, “Lady Nicholas, I shall send a messenger for your definite reply on the morrow.”
Without further preamble, the young Comte dipped in a shallow bow before pivoting on one foot and hastening through the arched doorway.
A short, astonished silence followed. “A shame his beauty is wasted on such a dull humor,” Helene said on a wistful note. “I can’t say I envy you your shopping excursion.”
Mariana nodded in polite agreement and looked out across the room. Her eyes snagged upon a fleeting, and eerily familiar, figure. It wasn’t Nick, but if she didn’t know better, she would have thought she’d caught a glimpse of . . . Percy. He’d carried himself with a distinctive angularity.
She blinked, and the phantom was gone. Ridiculous. Percy had been dead these last eleven years. Two witnesses had testified to seeing him cut down at the Battle of Maya and buried in an unmarked grave. Just because Mariana’s own husband had risen from the grave tonight didn’t mean Olivia’s had, too. Plenty of men were angular.
She must leave Paris. But not for Nick. She must leave Paris for herself. Any oblique dangers he might have referenced tonight were insignificant compared to the very real danger she presented herself.
Her marriage to Nick only operated smoothly if neither of them actively engaged with the other, maintaining parallel existences that intersected at appointed times. Yet her actions of the past few days had strayed off course and into Nick’s territory.
While it had been necessary to find him and confirm he remained amongst the living, the matter was now resolved. Yet a pair of questions would quietly persist: When had he become a spy? And why was he missing and presumed dead to the Foreign Office?
She exhaled a forceful breath, attempting to release the questions from her mind. One thing was certain: this wasn’t her mystery to solve, no matter how her curiosity would protest the opposite. She would leave Paris and her unanswered questions behind at dawn.
Nick’s business was no business of hers. This was a refrain she would do well to repeat until she’d put a large body of water between herself and this new Nick who intrigued her all too much.