“A man?” Annabel said, turning. “What sort of man?”
Salomé’s mouth thinned. “I have his card.”
Annabel accepted it, turned it over. The inscription on the front was stingy, merely H. Quentin and an address in a rather seedy part of town. On the back, equally stingily, someone with a perfect copperplate had written, Louis Vasquez est mort.
“Mordieu,” Annabel muttered. A Bourbon pretender who was alive, self-important, and harmless was one thing; that same Bourbon pretender unexpectedly dead was potentially a much knottier problem.
“I will tell him you must not be bothered, mademoiselle,” Salomé offered. “He is a shabby Anglais and should know better than to trouble you.”
“Anglais? Truly?” It was not often one met with an Englishman in Nouvelle Orléans—or anywhere in Louisiane, for that matter.
“Yes, of course. He is not American. His manners are too good.”
“I will see him,” Annabel said—not that she wished to, but Sevier would want to know about any Anglais involved with Louis Vasquez, and if the young man was indeed dead . . . “Show him into the front parlor, please.”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” Salomé said, curtseying in protest. Annabel watched five minutes go by on her Limoges porcelain clock before following Salomé downstairs.
Monsieur H. Quentin was middle-aged, tall and slightly stooped. He was clean-shaven, which Annabel found more pleasing than the muttonchop whiskers currently en vogue, but his graying brown curls were untidy and overlong. Deep-set eyes of a light hazel were the only remarkable feature in a longish, indeterminate, but strong-jawed face. He was shabby, as Salomé had said, but clean and well-mended. He turned from his perusal of Annabel’s delicately scandalous Japanese prints as she came in, and she said, “M’sieur Quentin?”
“Mademoiselle St. Clair, I appreciate your agreeing to see me this morning.” His French was excellent, Parisian rather than Louisien. His hand, when he took hers, was as narrow and long-fingered as her own; he had a copyist’s calluses, which made sense of his beautiful, impersonal handwriting.
“You bring word that Louis Vasquez is dead,” Annabel said, dispensing with the civilities necessary in conversation with a Frenchman or a Louisien. “How?”
“That is indeed the great question. He dined here last night.”
“Are you with the police, M’sieur Quentin?” Annabel said, very politely.
“No, mademoiselle,” he said, equally politely; there were no Englishmen employed in any capacity by the governments of either Nouvelle Orléans or the Territoire Louisiane, and any resident of the city knew that as well as they knew to fear cholera in summer.
“Then I do not understand . . . ”
“The police do not yet know that Monsieur Vasquez ate his last meal here. I thought you might perhaps prefer that they not learn that. Or, at least, not yet.”
“Why do you imagine that I do not desire to help the police in their investigations in any way possible?”
The brightness in his eyes showed that he was enjoying the sparring as much as she was. “Because I, too, Mademoiselle St. Clair, know who Louis Vasquez was.”
“So, m’sieur. And who was Louis Vasquez?”
His lips quirked up. “A young gentleman of interest to Jules Sevier, who is well-known, in certain circles, to have taken you under his wing.”
“And are those the circles in which you move, m’sieur?”
“Yes.”
She tilted her head, considering him. It was possible that he was lying, that he had come by the information in some other way, but that did not change the fact that he knew who—and what—Jules Sevier was. And it explained what an Anglais was doing in Nouvelle Orléans.
“My uncle Jules,” she said, “has been most kind to me.” It was a lesson Sevier himself had taught her: admit nothing, even when cornered.
“Your uncle?” Polite skepticism.
She smiled at him brilliantly. “My mother was a Sevier, m’sieur.”
“Of course,” he murmured. “And did your uncle Jules also wish to be kind to Louis Vasquez?”
She widened her eyes at him, conscious of exhilaration dancing along her nerves, conscious also that they were both very close to laughter. “Why, how could he wish such a thing, m’sieur, when he never so much as met the unfortunate young man?”
“Ah. I thought perhaps he might have. It would explain . . . certain things.”
“Such as?”
“The young man was murdered, mademoiselle, but not robbed, and in Nouvelle Orléans that is very much a surprise.”
“Sloppy,” she said, remembering Louis Vasquez’s exceptionally fine pocket-watch.
“Yes. And I find that rather disturbing.”
“Sometimes, m’sieur, when one goes walking in this quarter at unwise hours of the night, one does simply get murdered, for no better reason than that one is there.”
“Yes, but after one has gone to the trouble of ridding oneself of one’s . . . interested followers?”
Which is how he knows that Vasquez dined here last night. Of course. “I do not know why anyone would put themselves to the bother of murdering Louis Vasquez.”
“No?”
“He spoke of Saint François, not Paris. He wished, he said, to see Indians.”
“And yet he was killed last night. And not, let me be perfectly clear, by any subject of our most gracious Queen. We were intrigued by the young man, but not homicidal.”
“You would hardly be homicidal,” Annabel said tartly. “And please, M’sieur Quentin. Your most gracious Queen. I am not English.”
“But you are not French, either.”
“I am Louisienne. And I cannot help you.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“Cannot, although I do not expect that you believe me.”
“It is the hazard of our profession.”
“Truly. Courtesans are such notorious liars.”
He colored slightly and murmured, “Touché, mademoiselle.” They smiled at each other, very much like fencers after a touch. “Shall I inform the police?”
“As you wish,” she said. “He was not murdered here, and not even the police of Nouvelle Orléans are stupid enough to believe that a woman would follow him through the streets to murder him—or that she would succeed if she tried.”
“Your most obedient, mademoiselle,” he said, bowing, and left. Something in his manner told her that the police would go unenlightened.
She went back upstairs to continue her letter to Jules Sevier—including now the news of Louis Vasquez’s murder and the information that the English had been sufficiently interested in him to have him followed. She did not expect to see M. Quentin again, and if the thought caused her a certain amount of melancholy, she did not confess it to anyone.
Louis Vasquez’s death was not of great moment to most of Nouvelle Orléans. He was not the first young Frenchman—nor would he be the last—to meet his death through foolhardy exploration of the city after nightfall, and most people were perfectly satisfied with that explanation. And those who knew of Louis Vasquez’s potential second identity as Louis XVIII of France had no eagerness to advertise their doubts about the popularly accepted story. Their investigations proceeded, but quietly and very much under the table. They were not distressed by the young man’s death (Jules Sevier said to his “niece”), but they were definitely disquieted; he had been murdered, neither by accident nor by chance, but without official sanction from the emperor or his ministers.
Annabel, on her knees before him—for Sevier had ever believed in combining business with pleasure—made no response. None was expected, and a few moments later, Sevier lost the train of his remarks, his clutching fingers dislodging the pink silk rosebuds twined in her hair.
She had assumed she would not see M. Quentin again, but in the following week it came to seem as if she could not stir from her house without falling over him. At the symphony, at the opera, at balls: when she made discreetly carele
ss inquiries, she discovered that he was generally known to be connected in some fashion with the English embassy. She wondered if he had been there all along and she had simply not noticed him, dismissed him as too shabby to be worth her while. It was a lowering thought, and she countered it by starting a fiercely vivacious flirtation with him. He surprised her by responding very much in kind, and with the air of a man who was long-accustomed to such things. She wondered even more what he had been before he came to Nouvelle Orléans.
Quentin was very glad to be summoned into Annabel’s box at the opera from his seat in the pit; they argued about music in preference to discussing matters which would force one or both of them to lie. They danced together at the public balls, matched in lightness of foot as much as in height. And the moment inevitably came, having sought respite from the crowd and hellacious heat in a private parlor, when Quentin said to Annabel, out of a flurry of gentle, semi-nonsensical repartee, “Does an amante dorée ever stoop to kiss a man who cannot pay her?”
Annabel became very still. “Are you propositioning me, M’sieur Quentin?”
“Do you wish me to, Mademoiselle St. Clair?”
“I cannot imagine what might have given you that idea,” she said, turning toward the closed jalousies.
“The way you look at me, mademoiselle. The way I know I look at you.”
“M’sieur, you know what I am.”
“I do,” he said, and she heard the rustle of cloth as he approached. “And you know what I am.”
“A spy and an Englishman.”
“Just so. And you are a courtesan, an American, and a spy for the interests of the French emperor.”
“It is true.”
“We need tell each other nothing. Annabel—”
“Oh, this is foolish. I do not even know your Christian name.”
“Horatio, but I dislike it. I like the way you say ‘Quentin’ very much.”
“Quentin, I—” She turned and found he was much closer to her than she had expected, closer than she was prepared for.
“Annabel,” he said gently, “you cannot be afraid of me.”
“Of course I am not.” But she felt herself take a step backwards regardless. Her pulse was pounding in her throat, and she could not quite keep her hands from coming up as if to fend him off.
“You know I will not hurt you. If you do not wish a liaison, you have only to say so.”
But he was so close, and it was not the liaison that she did not wish. His hands caught hers gently; she had to tilt her head back only slightly to meet his lips.
For a moment, the kiss was perfect, their bodies pressing close together through the layers of their clothing. Then Quentin pulled back, his grip hard on her wrists, his eyes wide, dark, both shocked and intent. And then he moved, fast as a cat, pinned her against the wall, his hands clenching in the lace draperies of her bodice, tightening. He said, almost conversationally, “You are not a woman.”
“I am!” Desperately, she kneed him in the groin and bolted past him, leaving a good foot of dyed lace twisted in his fingers. She clutched her bodice together with both hands, aware of the cacophony of the ballroom, knowing she did not dare to scream.
He had staggered against the wall, but not fallen. His face was ashen, his expression . . . she turned away. “I am sorry to have hurt you, m’sieur. You frightened me.”
“What are you?”
“Exactly what you called me. A courtesan, an American, and a spy.”
“But you . . . you . . . ” He drew himself upright. “I beg your pardon. It would be best if I did not further impose upon you. I shall fetch your cloak.”
She had taken her lower lip between her teeth to keep from saying anything; she stayed as she was, her shoulders straight but her head bowed, as he silently left the room and silently returned, putting her cloak on a chair by the door. Only when the door latched shut behind him for the second and final time did she sink to her knees, folding around the throbbing, aching hardness in her groin, her fingers catching the lace that Quentin had dropped on the floor. Soundlessly, Annabel St. Clair began to cry.
The next day, Annabel did not leave the house. Her servants went about their duties in silence; she knew how bad she must look by the fact that Salomé did not seek her out, did not ask. But on the Monday, she could not stay hidden. The scandal had not broken; Quentin had held his tongue. She did not want to receive a letter—or worse, a visit—from Jules Sevier, chastising her for neglecting her responsibilities. She went out in the evening, danced, laughed, flirted madly. When she came home, she did not drink herself into a stupor, despite the temptation.
And she was glad of it the next morning, when the first post brought her a message from Sevier.
He had a task for her.
He had reason to suspect that Spain was involved in the death of Louis Vasquez. Annabel frowned, rereading Sevier’s note. It made no sense. The Spanish had maintained their independence from France by the skin of their teeth—and the surrender of their holdings in the New World. They pretended complaisance, but no citizen of France doubted the ardor with which they desired the return of Floride, Mexique, and Californie. There had even been, in recent years, some amelioration of the centuries-old hostility between Spain and England, as the two battered European powers began to jockey against the might of France. The last thing in the world Ferdinand VII would want to do was rid France of a young man who was at the least an embarrassment and at the most a potential disaster. And, moreover, a kinsman of his—assuming that Louis Vasquez’s claims were true, which had never been established.
And whether his claims were true or not, Louis Vasquez was hardly the first Bourbon pretender to show up in Nouvelle Orléans. Many of the others had also met their ends in its sweltering streets—but not at the instigation of the Spanish. But the Spanish ambassador’s secretary, Don Carlos Morado y Soto, was asking questions, poking around in the affairs of both the embassy treasurer and the spymaster. Clearly, he believed there was collusion somewhere. The question was, wrote Sevier, what did he know, and what did he suspect?
And, given her past history with Don Carlos, Sevier wanted Annabel to find out.
She pushed aside her accounts book and began to consider ways and means of accidentally encountering Don Carlos Morado y Soto.
Don Carlos was the personal secretary to his Excellency the Ambassador: middle-aged, close-mouthed, and very good at his job. He also had a terrible weakness, of which neither his wife nor his employer was aware, and it was that weakness that had brought him into Annabel’s orbit.
Like many of her other patrons, he considered her a godsend. She was beautiful, notorious; to be seen with her conferred upon a man that certain distinction which only other men appreciated. And yet, in bed . . . She guarded their secrets, and they guarded hers. It was—and Annabel admitted it—a particularly genteel form of mutual blackmail, but it provided her security. There were a shocking number of highly-placed men in Nouvelle Orléans who had a vested interest in keeping as silent as the tomb the fact that Annabel St. Clair was not what she seemed.
Once, Salomé had said severely, “Someday, chérie, you will drop one of these eggs that you are juggling.”
“Yes, and all Nouvelle Orléans will go up in flames,” Annabel had said, laughing. “It will be worth it.”
It was not, however, an eventuality she sought, and thus the myriad careful games she played with her admirers, both those who did not know and those who did. And thus the very little effort it took her to manipulate circumstances in her favor. She would not ordinarily have chosen to attend a performance of the latest German opera, preferring the lighter and more mannered Italian style, but she knew Don Carlos’s tastes, and her surprise when he presented himself at her box during the first intermission of Tristan und Isolde was entirely manufactured.
It was a simple matter to cut him out of the pack of her admirers, simpler still to ascertain what she already knew, that Doña Mercedes, Don Carlos’s Haitian-born wife,
had returned to the island for reasons Don Carlos did not mention but which Annabel knew had to do with a particularly ugly imbroglio in the Spanish embassy involving Doña Mercedes and the son of the Ambassador’s stablemaster. It was a good time for Don Carlos to be proving himself virile, a very good time for him to be seen in the corridors of the embassy with an amante dorée. She wondered, tucking away a smile before it could become a smirk, if she should write a letter of thanks to his wife.
She promenaded with him through the inevitable soirée in the embassy’s main hall, kept her smile pleasant and her eyes soft. She drank wine with him in his suite, an Amontillado as dry as Don Carlos’s voice when he spoke of his wife. She allowed him to take her into his wife’s bedroom, to remove her clothing one careful button at a time, to remove the pins from her hair and run his hands through its sunlight length. At his asking, she spread herself for him across his wife’s bed; whether he held his wife in any regard or not—a question Annabel was disinclined to ask—Doña Mercedes had grievously wounded his pride.
Don Carlos was a courteous lover, unlike some of her patrons who seemed to wish to punish her for the desires they found unacceptable in themselves. He was never rough, never sought to humiliate her; she thought, if she had asked it of him, he would even have been willing to take her face to face.
She did not ask; she preferred her face to be hidden, just as she preferred the question of her arousal and how she achieved it to be largely academic to the men who shared her bed. Many of them did not care if she reached climax. Others, gentlemen like Don Carlos, wished her to receive pleasure as well as give, and if they were incidental to that pleasure—well, they did not ask, and she did not tell them. Her own hand at her groin and a headful of reliable fantasies did the trick quite nicely. If that night in the Spanish embassy, the man she dreamed of had Quentin’s face and sharp, English-cadenced voice, it was of no concern to anyone but herself.
If it had been Quentin, she would have wanted to see his face when he spent himself. If it had been Quentin, she would not have had to bite her lip to keep from crying out his name. If it had been Quentin, perhaps she would not have wished so painfully to escape his post-coital embrace, would not have had to let her nails dig into her palms to keep from betraying distaste or impatience.
Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Page 8
