Chapter 7
Born Under a Threepenny Halfpenny Planet, Never To Be Worth a Groat: Said of any person remarkably unsuccessful in their attempts or profession.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
Mariana alighted from the cramped and noisome hackney, tilted her face up to the open night sky, and basked in the muted brilliance of the moon’s rays. Refreshed, she glanced about the street, her eye drawn to the red lanterns hanging singly above the row of doorstops.
This was a side of the city, an area known as the Left Bank, she hadn’t yet experienced. Every surface from cobblestone street to slate rooftop glistened with midnight light that danced to the competing rhythms of music from opposing open windows, creating a cacophonous symphony of sound not unpleasant to her ears.
And on the street below those windows, where she stood, a pace and demeanor that belonged to the night replaced the hustle and bustle of daytime activity. It was a pace no less hurried, but one that spoke of hidden intentions and secret destinations.
How stark was the contrast between this place and the bright and vivacious environs of the Palais-Royal. Every city had two versions of itself: one version openly displayed with a pride of ownership, and a second version that filled in the shadows, even within a bold and candid city like Paris. All one had to do was take a carriage ride out of one’s comfortable life to see the shadows hiding in plain sight.
This was a Paris that both unnerved and delighted her.
As a girl, she hadn’t been allowed to leave the family’s property unescorted. Any number of cutthroats and thieves surely lay in wait for a little girl like her to happen along. As an adult woman, it embarrassed her to admit that she still adhered to the instructions of her youth when she ventured forth in London.
What had she been missing all these years? This raucous Parisian night didn’t feel unsafe; it felt alive. Paris was adventure.
Her amoral, hedonistic Parisienne returned to her, accompanied by the familiar wash of shame that had plagued her all afternoon and into the night, which wouldn’t do. She must put aside her earlier failure and submit to learning her lessons like a good student, even if they had to come from Nick. Impetuosity and pride had led to her humiliation this afternoon. She wouldn’t let it happen again.
A few doorstops away, she spotted a lantern different from the others. This one shone purple and dim, its light extending no farther than its own doorway. Intuition carried her to its solid, oak door. She gave it a few discreet taps and recalled Nick’s terse response to her request—sent via an unquestioning Hortense—that they meet:
Rue de la Huchette. La Coquine Violet. Midnight sharp. Memorize and burn.
La Coquine Violet. Mariana understood the word violet easily enough, which explained the purple lantern hanging low above her head. But la coquine? Years of French lessons had never taught her that word. Of course, she never had any patience for French, thus her retention of its vocabulary and grammar had been negligible.
Again, she rapped on the door, harder this time. Hand suspended mid-knock, the door swung open, startling her. Before her stood an enormous wall of man of African descent. Silently, his eyes swept up and down her person before he stepped aside and waved her into a dark foyer that offered no view into the room beyond. Only the muffled vibrations of boisterous music and men’s voices, followed by women’s laughter, reached her from the interior. The door clicked shut behind her.
“Your overcoat?” the doorman intoned in an accent that spoke of a complex past.
She nodded and allowed him to remove her coat.
Every fiber in her being tingled in anticipation of what lay beyond the door before her. “This is La Coquine Violet?” she asked, an irritating note of uncertainty lacing her tone.
The doorman brushed aside her nerves simply by smiling and pushing the door open in response. She was across its threshold before anticipation could evolve into panic. Once inside, however, there was no room for ninny-ish considerations like fright or ambivalence.
The blue-tinged room presented every sort of tableau requisite for a gentleman’s entertainment: gaming tables dominating all four corners; whiskey carts scattered throughout; reclining sofas tucked into discreet shadows.
One might think this place a gentlemen’s club, except for two distinguishing features: the jangling piano which produced a convivial style of music conducive to frolic and fun, and the women. They were everywhere the men were. Ever listening. Ever agreeing. Ever nodding. Ever smiling. Ever at the ready, and ever on display.
And, oh, how they displayed themselves. The dark-eyed beauties draped in bold colors, the pale-eyed blondes in pastels, all swathed in diaphanous fabrics that left little to the imagination.
Mariana felt distinctly drab, clad in the serviceable boots and gray dress Hortense had insisted she borrow for the occasion. A servant balancing a tray of champagne and wearing nothing more than a chemise and pantalettes glided swiftly past. Mariana lifted a glass and took a cooling sip.
Her body flush with excitement, she stood enveloped by a Paris unlike any she’d experienced in her usual genteel circles. Not even in London had she ever stepped foot in a room like this. Maybe, especially not in London.
La coquine. There was a reason she’d never been taught this word in classroom French. This place was surely a—
From across the room, a pair of dark, sharp eyes drew her attention. She couldn’t look away from the sturdy woman clad in unrelieved black if she wanted to. Besides Mariana, she was the only woman in the room not smiling up at a man. She must be la Madame.
In the next instant, the Madame sprang into motion, agile and quick in her navigation of the room. The woman was coming for her. Mariana gulped down the remainder of her champagne in an attempt to gird herself. She knew a formidable woman when she saw one.
The Madame stopped in front of her and bluntly eyed her up and down before showering her with a tirade of rapid-fire French that Mariana didn’t bother attempting to translate. The Madame snatched the empty champagne glass out of her hand and pointed toward a nondescript door on the other side of the room. Through a haze of shock, Mariana gathered that the woman was absolutely livid. At her.
When the Madame finally ran out of words, Mariana asked, hushed and polite, “Could you speak more slowly? I am certain we can resolve this matter amicably.”
The Madame’s mouth snapped shut, and her eyes narrowed. “Anglaise?”
It was more statement than question. Mariana answered a simple, “Oui.”
The fire left the woman’s eyes. “Zeese way,” the Madame called over her shoulder, on the move again.
Mariana had no choice but to follow the woman through the room. Every couple she passed exuded their own unique and erotic scent—jasmine coupled with cloves, lavender with sandalwood, rose with almond—underlain by continuous notes of cigar smoke and whiskey, reminding her that despite the flowery wallpapers, quivering cleavages, and ornate furnishings, this was wholly a man’s world.
Behind the Madame, Mariana ascended a dark stairwell, the sounds of revelry growing more distant with each step upward. At the end of a corridor of tightly shut doors, the Madame knocked once and pressed an ear against oak, presumably listening for permission to enter.
“Oui,” the Madame called through the door, reaching for the jangly ring of keys at her waist. She slipped the correct key into the lock and pushed open the door. Mariana stepped through the threshold and stifled a gasp at the sight of an at-ease Nick lounging behind what appeared to be a gaming table.
“You are dressed as yourself tonight,” she said, unable to state anything other than the obvious.
With the fluid grace of a cat, he stood, his fingertips brushing across the felt tabletop. “In this establishment, it is necessary.”
The cold distance infusing his words brought her down to earth. Yes, he was himself tonight. Dressed in crisp whites and blacks, he was a vision of aristocratic English male. Ice wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Before her stood the man she’d assumed him to be until last night. Except he wasn’t that man, and possibly, he never had been.
She watched him approach the Madame and begin conversing with the woman in her native French. She couldn’t help admiring his cool, collected confidence. Nick had ever been so. He knew how to handle a moment capably without trying to prove himself to anyone.
Yet another attractive quality about her husband she’d willed herself to forget. Yet another attractive quality about her husband she again remembered.
Aware that she was staring, Mariana redirected her gaze and took in the room around her. To her right stood the gaming table. Seated in one of its five chairs was a gray-bearded croupier, who sat with his face bent to the task of fuzzing the cards. All beards now suspect, she narrowed her gaze on the man before determining this one was genuine as the man’s hair was the same gray.
Her gaze swung left toward the room’s other dominant feature: the most massive and ornately carved bed she’d ever seen. With its scarlet and velvet coverings, it looked like a caricature of a bed one would find in a bordello.
A hot flush crept up the cleft of her décolletage, and her eyes squeezed shut. A specific memory from last night came to her: her hands braced against the bedpost, Nick’s body positioned behind her, short bursts of his breath on her neck, capable fingers unraveling the flimsy scraps of cloth separating her naked skin from his . . .
The door clicked shut, blessedly drawing her attention away from the bed and a memory that served no good purpose. The Madame was gone.
“Madame Larousse has a place for you,” Nick said, “if your arrangement with me ever sours.”
“She thinks me a strumpet?” Mariana felt not an ounce of surprise or outrage at the Madame’s assumption. In fact, it might even delight her.
“What other kind of woman would you be?” he asked, eyes wide and guileless.
A short laugh escaped her. “Life as your spy is infinitely more interesting than life as your wife.” She wasn’t certain when they’d last engaged in light banter, but it felt new. If she wasn’t careful, it could feel like a beginning. She would be more careful.
“The meaning of la coquine?” she asked in an attempt to right the conversation before it went completely sideways.
“Minx.” He paused before continuing, “Or hussy, depending on your point of view.”
“So this place is what I think it is?”
“Yes.” Nick stepped to a side bar and poured two tumblers of whiskey neat.
“I don’t drink whiskey,” she said, assuming one glass was meant for her.
“Tonight, you might reconsider.”
He offered her a half-full glass, and she took it. “Is there a reason I might need the fortifying effects of whiskey?”
An enigmatic smile curved his lips. “After receiving your request that we meet tonight, I decided this was the perfect place to begin your . . . lessons . . . regarding the fundamentals of espionage.”
“You’re giving me spy lessons”—He winced at her phrasing—“in a brothel?” She thought he would teach her a few tricks of the trade tonight and send her on her way.
“We have three nights until your next tête-à-tête with Villefranche.” He set his whiskey on the nearest table and slipped his right hand into the interior pocket of his evening jacket, pulling from its depths a long and slender object.
It was a cigar.
The sudden blaze of mortification fired through Mariana as Nick snipped off the end before striking a match and puffing the cigar alight. A thin and winding column of smoke wafted toward her, its acrid scent of earth and decay filling the room. Cigar secured between thumb and forefinger, he asked, “Would you care for a puff? It is my understanding that life thus far has denied you the pleasure of appreciating a man’s cigar. Although, if memory serves—”
“You were there today.” Her heart threatened to thunder out of her chest.
The cherry end of his cigar began to gray with ash. “I have—”
“People,” she finished for him.
He tapped the ash into a crystal dish. “You will never be alone or unsafe, Mariana. Never.”
His words elicited a powerful charge of emotion within her, and she glanced away, lest he see it within her eyes. The moment elongated as neither of them spoke. Nick did enjoy prolonging a moment. In fact, she remembered just the sort of moment he most enjoyed prolonging . . .
Years. It had been years since she’d indulged such thoughts about him. She wasn’t one for dwelling on past failures, but with one touch of his body last night, those years threatened to fade into irrelevance.
Nick cleared his throat, breaking through her unhelpful reverie, before stubbing out his cigar in the dish. His point made, he held up the glass in a toasting gesture and tossed back the entire contents of his glass. She took a compliant sip and couldn’t help a grimace.
“It’s bourbon whiskey from the Americas,” he explained as he began walking toward her. She instinctively braced herself. “Tonight, we will play poker.”
“Poker? It sounds menacing.”
“It’s a card game played on Mississippi riverboats,” he explained in the patient tone one would use with a toddler. “One must employ duplicity and guile to win at it. You mustn’t give yourself away.”
“That’s tonight’s lesson? Duplicity and guile? And where did you pick up bourbon”—She held up her glass—“and Mississippi riverboat games?”
“On a Mississippi riverboat.”
“Nick”—And she’d thought he could never shock her again—“when were you on the Mississippi River?”
It occurred to her that she must forget everything she thought she knew about this man and start from scratch. Before her stood a spy who made secret ocean voyages, drank exotic whiskeys, and played cards on Mississippi riverboats.
Oh, and he happened to be her husband.
Three taps sounded on the door.
“I shall save that story for another time,” he called over his shoulder.
A shrill, excited squeal from downstairs burst into the room alongside two saucy young strumpets who sauntered in with arms linked, each gripping an open bottle of champagne. Their dark flashing eyes flitted between Mariana and Nick before one whispered into the other’s ear, and they giggled in unison. Mariana’s hand felt for the chair beside her, and she searched Nick’s face for a clue about tonight’s proceedings. But he betrayed not a single thought.
The subject of the strumpets’ matching smirks and giggles became immediately apparent to Mariana. They were speculating about her and Nick, and what such a couple would require of them. In their place, she would wonder the same. Actually, now that she thought about it, she did wonder the same. What would be required of these two strumpets tonight?
One fact was obvious: they weren’t innocent virgins, and this situation was neither new nor shocking to them. In fact, she was likely the only person in this room to whom this particular circumstance would be . . . fresh. Every muscle in her body tensed at the perverse notion. She readied herself for the night with half the contents of her glass.
“Yvette and Lisette will be playing with us,” came Nick’s low voice, closer to her ear than she expected.
Playing with us? Mariana turned to find him at her elbow. “Are you on a first name basis with every strumpet in Paris?”
A quicksilver grin crossed his lips as he pulled out the chair beside her. “Shall we?”
She bit back a responding smile. She liked the way that particular smile transformed his serious and intense visage into that of a carefree boy. She’d made herself forget all about that smile, and now she remembered it. She was remembering too much.
If she knew what was good for her, she would hasten to Calais and board the next ship bound for England. But she didn’t know what was good for her, because she lowered herself onto the proffered seat and arranged her skirts as if settling in for a long evening. Nick sat to her left, Yvette and Lisette to her right, and the croupier across.
One could almost forget the croupier, so quiet and understated he was, eyes cast down, face obscured by the beard so characteristic of a certain class of Parisian. Yet a familiarity hung about the man that she couldn’t lay a finger on.
The thought was replaced by matters more urgent when Nick nodded, and the croupier began dealing several sets of five cards arranged in various combinations.
Nick made no move to pick up the cards. “Poker is a vying game, similar to Brag.”
“Brag uses three cards,” Mariana pointed out.
“Similar. Not the same.”
Again, that patient note sounded in his voice. It found its way beneath her skin and nestled there.
As Nick proceeded to explain the rules of the game and its winning combinations, Mariana only caught every other word. Yvette and Lisette, with their ceaseless whispering and giggling, provided constant distraction. They, too, had found their way beneath her skin.
Uninterested in the words coming out of Nick’s mouth, they displayed a most definite interest in him as a man. One strumpet leaned forward in feigned curiosity, when really she was offering him a view of her décolletage, while the other strumpet skated her tongue across her bottom lip in a brazen attempt to draw his eye to the nature of its potential charms. Mariana had seen it dozens of times. Women simply couldn’t help themselves around Nick.
“Shall we?” he asked once he concluded his tutorial. He distributed three bags of small coins around the table before the croupier performed a quick shuffle and dealt. The game was on.
Mariana picked up her cards and hid an unruly smile. A straight flush. Even though the cards were low, it was one of the best combinations in the game.
She added a few coins to the pot and glanced around, trying—and likely failing—to mask her elation. Nick’s face, on the other hand, gave nothing away as he changed two cards. Meanwhile, Yvette and Lisette drank champagne straight from the bottle and giggled, not bothering to hide their cards from each other.
When the time came to reveal her cards, Mariana’s heart raced at the prospect of a win. Yvette and Lisette showed one pair each before Nick laid out a full house. Relief stole through Mariana. If anyone could have bested her straight flush, it would have been Nick.
“Well done.”
“Beginner’s luck, to be sure,” she allowed as she reached for her winnings. All she wanted to do was crow in triumph.
It felt good to best Nick. Always. Obviously, there was nothing to this game.
The croupier dealt the next hand. This time she was but one card away from a straight. How lucky.
She slid her nine of hearts facedown toward the croupier, who changed it for a different card. All she needed was a Jack of any suit to complete her straight. With bated breath, she lifted the new card. Nine of diamonds. The Curse of Scotland—Grose’s appellation for this particular card—wasn’t at all what she needed. Now what?
Unwilling to admit uncertainty, therefore weakness, she pushed more money into the pot.
“You’re raising?” Nick asked as he tossed enough coins into the pot to check her bet.
“Of course,” she replied, hoping her voice didn’t ring as hollow as it felt.
In the end, it was Yvette—or was it Lisette? Oh, who cared—who won the round. Of course, their response was to giggle and whisper and giggle some more. What a pair of bubble-brains. Mariana wouldn’t have minded taking the pair of strumpets by the shoulders and shaking some sense into them.
Instead, she turned in her chair and trained her gaze on Nick. “This ridiculous game is supposed to provide an instructive”—Her voice lowered to a murmur—“lesson?”
Eyes fastened onto his cards, Nick’s reply was a curt nod.
On the next hand, she went for the straight. Again. And she lost. Again.
Nick won. Yvette won. Lisette won. Mariana lost. She lost every hand, except for that first one, which was beginning to feel like a lifetime ago.
She glanced down at the freshly dealt cards now resting in her hands, and her heart accelerated. She held a flush, yet . . . she was so close to a royal flush. How every instinct called out to her to throw caution to the wind and trade the nine of spades for a chance at the ten. She resisted the call and stayed, all but assured of a victory if she sat tight. Her fingers constricted around her tumbler of whiskey. With each sip, it went down ever more smoothly.
Nick raised the stakes by tossing in a handful of coins, and the strumpets matched him. That pile of coins was exactly what Mariana needed to reestablish herself in the game, and this was just the hand that would take her there. She reached down to check their bets and found nothing but green felt, sleek and empty. She was penniless.
The room went airless, and her cheeks warmed. This was it. She was so close, and yet she was done. Her eyes refused to meet Nick’s. Would she fail at everything today?
To her right, Yvette and Lisette whispered into each other’s ears. The exchange was noteworthy because this time they didn’t giggle. Instead, matching impish grins lit up their faces as they spoke a few words to Nick in rapid French. His lips an unyielding line, he shook his head. Yvette and Lisette giggled and again pressed their point. Again, Nick shook his head, this time punctuating the gesture with a firm, “Non.”
“Nick?” Mariana asked, unable to keep her curiosity at bay a moment longer. “What are they saying?”
He swiveled in his chair and leveled his serious gaze upon her. “If you wish to stay in the game, Yvette and Lisette have a proposal.”
“Yes?” Mariana prompted. What could a pair of silly strumpets with air for brains have to propose to her?
“Since you have run out of funds, they suggest we wager articles of our clothing.”
“Our clothing?” Mariana asked in a stunned whisper. Her gaze shifted right and found the strumpets warily observing her, awaiting her reaction. They wondered if she had the nerve.
Well, they didn’t know her at all.