The Seducer

by Madeline Hunter

  “She has her father’s eyes. Do you think that I could pursue her, always seeing that?” It was what he had told himself several times during that long carriage ride. Except sometimes she looked at him in that steady, unflinching way and he forgot to see the resemblance for a very long while.

  Like just now, upstairs in the Chinese chamber.

  “That hardly reassures me,” Jeanette said. “But if you plan what I think, you need her innocent. That will check you, should you ever be tempted.”

  “Now you truly wound me. I do not corrupt young women.”

  “There are some things even you cannot plan, Daniel. Things that even you cannot control.”

  “Perhaps, but my appetites are not among them. I am not a total devil.” He rose to leave, annoyed with her insinuations. That he had, in fact, been recently moved by something difficult to control did not help his mood.

  She laughed. The mirrors showed them facing each other, her shaking her head in amusement and him looking down, a tall dark tower bespoiling this little, glittering, pastel world.

  “Ah, Daniel,” she said with a sigh. “I am not implying that you are a devil. I am suggesting that you are a normal man. But perhaps that is a bigger insult.”

  chapter 4

  Gustave Dupré plucked two tomes from their shelves and carefully placed them on his desk, angling and opening them to create a haphazard arrangement that spoke of scholarly disarray. It was important for a certain type of visitor to understand that this was the study of a busy man whose advanced intellect did not like distractions of a mundane nature.

  He awaited such a visitor now.

  He fondly surveyed the many leather bindings on their mahogany shelves while he chose the next book. It was an unsurpassed scientific library, the envy of everyone who knew him. Hadn’t Fourier himself come to borrow from it? He had enjoyed making him wait just a bit before receiving him, especially since it had been Fourier who all those years ago had found the flaw in the mathematical proof that Gustave had expected to secure his fame.

  Yes, he had enjoyed humbling Fourier. Only a little, of course. They were brothers in science now, equal in status and repute. Another proof had secured that for Gustave, one which even the great Fourier could not pierce.

  Adrian, his new secretary, entered the library. “His carriage is here.”

  Gustave settled himself in the chair behind the desk. “Bring him here when he comes in.”

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  Gustave bristled at the impertinence. Did Adrian dare to suggest that he, Gustave Dupré, could use the counsel of a young pup barely out of university?

  If so many of France’s own sons had not been killed in the war, he would not have been forced to resort to this English upstart. The young man had been so bold last week as to correct the Latin that Gustave had used in a treatise. Ever since, Gustave had detected a lack of deference. Presumptuous that, since Adrian was of suspect blood and a mongrel in appearance. The boy was fortunate to have any position at all, let alone that of a secretary to one of the greatest scientists on the Continent.

  On the other hand, this visitor had made reference to foreign texts. No doubt such a person considered Latin foreign.

  “You may stay. You might learn something.” His own writing of Latin might make some slips, but his reading of it was unsurpassed. Perhaps he would have a chance to put this secretary in his place.

  Adrian left and returned shortly, carrying three bound books. A tall man, about thirty years old, followed him in.

  Daniel St. John accepted Gustave’s welcome and took the chair beside the desk. Adrian deposited his burden and moved away to the wall.

  Gustave examined his visitor. For a man who had made his wealth in trade, St. John was well turned out and carried himself with an arrogant dignity. Well, money could do that, up to a point, just as learning could. He had heard of St. John, but they had never met.

  “It was generous of you to see me,” St. John said.

  “Your letter describing some rare books intrigued me. I doubt anything will come of it, but I decided that they are worth a look. Tell me where you found them.”

  “One of my ships was in the eastern Mediterranean. The captain, as a favor to the Turkish sultan, agreed to provide passage to Egypt for a member of the royal court. Unfortunately, the minister died while on board. These were found among his belongings.”

  And Daniel St. John had not sought to return them to either his passenger’s family or the sultan. No wonder the books were being offered privately and quietly.

  “I have heard of your library,” St. John continued. “And although I cannot begin to make any sense of it, the top book appears to deal with something scientific.” He flipped open the cover of the thin volume. “See here. There are drawings and numbers, and not just words.”

  “This is not a printed book. It is a manuscript.”

  “Yes. Didn’t I mention that?”

  He had not. What a fool.

  Gustave pulled the volume closer. The writing was not Latin, but Arabic. Hell, he didn’t know any Arabic.

  He studied the mathematical formulas and the pictures. He paged forward.

  A tiny image near a corner caught his eye. It showed rows of cylinders, connected by lines. Now, that appeared familiar. His blood began pulsing for reasons he could not name. It reminded him of how he had felt when he neared completion of that ill-fated proof.

  He forced a bland expression. It would never do to reveal his interest. St. John would probably charge a fortune for anything someone really wanted.

  His presumptuous secretary craned his neck to get a glimpse. Feeling a spurt of the teacher’s largesse, Gustave called him over.

  “Arabic,” Adrian said with astonishment.

  “Brilliant observation.”

  “I have taught myself some.” Adrian’s finger went to a line of jottings. “I can translate part of this for you.”

  Gustave snapped the cover closed, almost crushing the intrusive finger. “M’sieur St. John, would you excuse us for a short while?”

  St. John graciously retreated. When the door closed behind him, Gustave turned on his employee. “Do not ever presume to instruct me, especially in front of others. I took you on despite your ambiguous history and your lack of fortune, but there are others waiting for your place.”

  “My apologies. It is just that I thought it might help if you knew what the manuscript was about.”

  Gustave opened the pages to where he had been. Those cylinders . . . Why did that look so familiar?

  Well, what was the good in having a secretary if you didn’t get your money’s use out of him. “Fine,” he said to Adrian. “Tell me what you make of it.”

  The young man frowned over the dots and dashes. “I do not think it is only scientific, but also mechanical. It appears to have something to do with iron.”

  Gustave’s heart took a huge leap. Rushing blood prickled his scalp and extremities. He stared at the pages, flipping them again and again.

  Suddenly he understood why that drawing had appeared familiar. He possessed another manuscript that contained a similar, less developed image, and that also spoke of iron. He could picture it on the top shelf behind him, thin and worn, untouched for years, filled with the ambiguous, incomplete scratchings of a man running out of time.

  The excitement almost burst his heart. He thought he would swoon. It was all he could do not to jump up and grab that old manuscript, to be sure he was right.

  He only controlled himself because Adrian was in the room. He would need the secretary’s help with the Arabic, but he must not let Adrian know what this text might really be about.

  If he was correct, the name Gustave Dupré would be immortalized for all time.

  He would also become one of the richest men in the world.

  A low fire crackled in the hearth. A tray sat on the table beside the bed. Diane could smell the cocoa steaming in its cup. On her third day here she had come upon Danie
l drinking some in the garden and he had pressed a taste of the thick, rich fluid on her. He had found her delight in it amusing, and ever since a cup had been brought to her each morning.

  A little ritual had developed to open each day. She would drink the cocoa while the hearth fire warmed the chamber. Then the maid would return and help her to wash and dress. She would go down to the breakfast room, where Jeanette would join her and they would discuss the day’s plans. Daniel was never there. By the hour she emerged from her chamber, he was long gone into the city to do whatever it was he did.

  Some mornings the ritual altered a bit. If Jeanette was delayed coming down, Diane went for a walk. No one had forbidden that, but she snuck out of the house through the servants’ entry anyway, and felt very daring and mature as she strolled among the city’s crowds.

  She lifted the fragile cup and the deep aroma beckoned her. She sipped the bittersweet substance.

  A girl could get accustomed to this.

  She gazed at the cocoa. Richly colored, deliciously flavored, very expensive. It trickled down one’s throat in a thick flow, bringing a sense of well-being. Like so much else in this house, it was a luxuriously sensual distraction.

  Yes, a girl could get accustomed to it, and when she took a position as a governess, the renewal of deprivations would chafe at her.

  She threw back the bedclothes and hopped down. She would not lie abed like some queen and await attendants today.

  She did for herself and it did not take nearly as long as it did with the maid. She brushed out her hair and secured it in a little knot on her nape and examined the effect in the mirror. It was not very elegant, but it would do.

  The breakfast chamber was not empty as she had hoped. Her anticipation of sneaking out for a walk died.

  Paul sat at the table in a pose very relaxed for a servant. Beside him, finishing the last of his meal, was the dark presence of Daniel St. John.

  Their conversation drifted to her as she passed through the threshold and walked to the sideboard.

  “All is in place,” Daniel said. “I should hear today exactly when to move. Is it ready?”

  “Only the details need to be added, once you get the draw—”

  Her back was to them, but she knew she had been noticed. She imagined Daniel’s hand rising in a gesture that cut the sentence off.

  Sounds scraped behind her. She helped herself to a plate of rolls and allowed herself the luxury of one little sweet cake. She turned, expecting to find the table deserted.

  It wasn’t. Paul had left, but not Daniel.

  He subjected her to a lazy inspection. His gaze lingered on her hair just long enough for her to wish it had been dressed properly.

  She could not stand there like some child caught pilfering food. She took a place across from him.

  He poured her some coffee from a silver urn on the table. “Your visits to the city are amusing you?”

  “Are you being treated well? Do you have any complaints? Are you learning your school lessons?”

  That brought his gaze on her very directly.

  “The questions. From the school,” she explained, too aware of how his attention still flustered her. “You continue to ask them, in a way.”

  “And are you being treated well?”

  His cadence made it clear that they now spoke of his care and treatment.

  “Very well. I am learning my school lessons too. It is a type of education that your sister gives me, is it not? The visits to this fine city and its many sites. The dancing lessons twice a week. The gentle instructions in comportment. Even the many visits to shops are classes in taste.”

  “Does this displease you?”

  “Only a nun would not enjoy it. I will be the most accomplished and elegant governess in England.”

  “A refined manner can only enhance your chance to get a position.”

  “I seek a position with a well-to-do family, not a duke.”

  “Well, perhaps you will obtain a better one now.”

  Perhaps she could, but that would not do. She had not been born in such an elevated world. The answers that she sought could not be found in it.

  Then again, maybe he was not referring to a position as a governess at all. Madame Leblanc’s warnings kept echoing in her mind as this largesse and training were heaped on her. She had concluded that was nonsense, but sometimes this man looked at her in a way that made her remember the breathless moment in her chamber that first day. Nothing would change in his expression, but a tiny flicker of time would expand into another mesmerizing eternity.

  Being alone with him here was making it happen again.

  She forced her gaze down to her plate, to break that spell. “Anyway, I do feel, sometimes, that I am still in a school.”

  “A more comfortable one, I hope. Indulge my sister. She has never had a protégée before, and it is giving her great pleasure.”

  That would be reason enough to set aside her misgivings. However, she could not shake the notion that she was not really Jeanette’s protégée, but his.

  “Paul is English, isn’t he?” she asked, to turn the conversation away from her. “You were both speaking English when I entered.”

  “He is.”

  “Are you? He speaks French with an accent, but you do not.”

  “I am a citizen of the world, but I am French by birth. I have spent many years among English-speaking people. Both languages are natural to me and I probably think of myself as more English than French now.”

  “That must have been awkward during the war.”

  “I spent little time in either country during the war. I was normally in the West Indies or the East.”

  Most of the time, but not all of it. Once a year he returned to France and visited a school in Rouen. She doubted that he had come back specifically for that.

  His willingness to speak of himself emboldened her. She had been curious about him for years.

  “Your name. St. John. Madame always pronounced it in the French way, Saint-Jean, but I saw it written once and it was English.”

  “I was blessed with a name that is very adaptable.”

  “So was I. Albret. Madame always spoke it Al-brey, but I knew she was wrong and that the ‘t’ should be clear, because I am English.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  What made her so sure of that? It was not only the fragments of old memories, and of crossing the water as a girl. She could not swear to which language had been spoken in those shadowy bits of her life. “I dream in English.”

  “Your dreams did not lie. You are indeed English. Did you speak English at the school?”

  “Madame was a great supporter of Napoleon and refused to hear it spoken even as a lesson.”

  “Have you lost it, then? Except in your dreams?”

  “I have a Bible that is English. I read it aloud every night.”

  “Of course. The Bible.”

  He seemed to withdraw, as if mention of the only thing that she had brought with her to France had opened a door that he wanted to keep closed.

  She forged on. This was the only chance that she had gotten in two weeks to ask her questions. “How did it happen, m’sieur? How did you come to bring me to France? You say you are not a relative to me.”

  She did not get her answer. Just as she finished speaking, Paul appeared with Jeanette in his arms, and Daniel deliberately turned his attention to his sister.

  Paul settled Jeanette into a chair and prepared a plate for his mistress.

  “You will be happy to know that soon we will get Diane out of those hideous sacks. Her final fitting is today,” Jeanette said.

  Paul placed the plate in front of her. “Unfortunately, mademoiselle, we will have to delay this excursion. M’sieur has requested that I do an errand for him,” he explained.

  Jeanette shot her brother a sharp glance. “Well, it can wait until another day.”

  “That is not necessary,” Daniel said. “I have no plans for the afterno
on. I will accompany you.”

  No one seemed surprised by the suggestion. Evidently, Daniel carried his sister about the city on occasion.

  Jeanette turned from her meal. “Your hair, Diane. Go and have it done so that we can see how the gowns will properly look.”

  Diane had forgotten about her hair. She excused herself.

  Daniel rose and joined her. They strolled along the corridor toward the grand staircase. “My sister is too strict. You hair looks charming like that.”

  Her heart fluttered at the compliment, gallant lie though it was.

  “We will speak English henceforth so that you grow accustomed to it again. You will need that when you go to London,” he said, slipping into the tongue of her dreams.

  She was glad for evidence that the journey to London had not been forgotten. “When I said that I dreamed in English, you seemed to understand. Do you dream in French?”

  “Not always. However, there are other times when my thoughts are only French.”

  “Which ones?”

  They had reached one of the doors off the corridor, and he stopped. “When I am in danger. Only French comes to me then.”

  The calm mention of danger stunned her. He spoke as if it were a common occurrence.

  He opened the door. She caught a glimpse of a man’s study.

  An amused, reflective expression entered his eyes. “And when I make love. Now that I think of it, I always do that in French.”

  “Too much lace, Jeanette. Have them remove the froth at the hem.”

  “If you keep this up, Daniel, it will be another week before she can leave the house in the evening.”

  Diane stood on display in the modiste’s sitting room in the Palais Royale, decked out in dark violet silk. She might have enjoyed the sibling warmth their bickering revealed, if she had not been the doll over which they fought.

  That was what she felt like. A doll being dressed. Not a fine one with porcelain face and hands as befitted these gowns, but a simple cloth doll who would never look quite right in them.

  Daniel seemed to understand that better than Jeanette. The sister’s own tastes tended toward the dramatic, and the designs had been commissioned accordingly. Now Daniel was demanding that they all be pared of half their embellishments.