“Heavens no. They’re for Ada. From the vicomte de Montresor.”
Andre knit his brows.
“You know him?”
“I do.”
The waiter arrived with an ice bucket, the bottle of champagne and two flutes.
“Tell me about him.”
“A few years younger than I. Educated. Of an ancien regime family.” Andre paused to watch the waiter pop the cork on the wine, pour it for him to taste. “Wonderful,” he said in approval to the garçon. “He’s a distant cousin.”
She gave a laugh. “You’re related to half of Europe.”
“A joy,” he said and leaned back while their waiter served them both a generous pour. “Also a terrible burden when one feels responsible for their failures. But Montresor is a good man if a little…”
“What?”
“A little more attached to his former governess than he can be to a comely young wife.”
Marianne snapped shut her mouth. “He has an entendre for his old governess?”
Andre took a hearty drink of his wine. “By all reports, a lovely blonde a decade older than he.”
“And does he keep her?”
“He does.” André nodded and put down his glass. “In fine comfort. In his house in the country. Or rather, I should say, she lives in the garden house.”
Marianne took a long sip. “Marvelous to learn. So you are implying his pursuit of Ada could not be for love?”
“Only he can say that. But he’s not destitute. Not yet. His mama lets every franc slip between her fingers. She speculates on every scheme that might immediately make her millions. But she chooses poorly. Hence, she’s in debt to her plucked eyebrows. So he’s intent upon a wife with a sizable dowry. The castle, you see, requires a new roof and the rookery is in disrepair. Has been since peasants burned it after Napoleon lost at Waterloo.”
“Well! Good to know. Ada would love a castle but wouldn’t begin to understand how to handle a man who kept a mistress. Or much about men at all. She simply adores each one who has a pretty face and an air of romance. Montresor is pretty. Too much so.”
“Enough of him.” Andre covered her hand with his upon the tiny table.
The women next to them saw, smiled and shared the naughtiness of it with a flash of widening eyes. Marianne decided not to care.
“I miss you.“ Andre whispered. “ I look forward to tonight when I may waltz with you.”
“I do too.” She got lost in his gaze. “I wonder…”
His expression hardened. “You don’t want to postpone, do you?”
“Not that. The girls would make me into mincemeat.”
He squeezed her hand and let go. “What then?”
The waiter arrived with a tray of crudités and little pillows of pastry dough steaming with the aromas of crab and butter. He served them each a few, left the salver and departed with a bow.
She sat forward. She was tired of catering to Ada and her friends. It was high time she took her happiness into her own hands. “Would you mind if we didn’t start at six o’clock?”
“Six? But—It’s nine that the dancing—” He frowned and when she grinned at him, hope danced in his eyes. “Are you saying you wish to change the terms of your proposal to me?”
“I do. Might you reconsider for…say, midnight?”
“After I return you and Ada home to Rue Haussmann?”
“And I have a few minutes to allow Foster to summon a hackney cab, yes.”
“You will ride in no public conveyance at that time of night, ma cherie.”
“Andre, I need an unmarked carriage.”
“I’ll send my own brougham. No crests on the doors. You’ll be safe.”
“I must go inside with Ada. Briefly. She mustn’t suspect me of shenanigans.”
“I understand.”
“Plus I’ll need time to change and collect my valise.”
“Ma petite,” he said with a pained look on his face, “you don’t need clothes.”
“I do. A gown. A robe. My hairbrush.”
“I have all that,” he said, his voice a rasp. “You’ll use mine.”
She grinned at him. “I need at least my own toothbrush, darling.”
“Say that again.”
“I need my own toothbrush…darling.”
He let his gaze drift over her curls beneath her prim little toque. “I will brush your hair. I want it loose, flowing through my fingers and wound around wrists.“
“Well, hello, there!” Ada stood before them, chipper as a bird, with her two friends. All three girls did a polite curtsy to Andre. “We’ve done with lingerie. Thankfully. Frightfully expensive there. I say, good to see you, Monsieur le duc.”
Andre rose and bowed as Ada reacquainted her friends with him.
For the next half hour, Marianne marveled at her cousin’s sophisticated banter. Ada could rise to the occasion of social niceties. If her two friends achieved no such heights, but sat star-struck with the handsome prince and sculptor in their midst, Marianne could only smile to herself.
When he rose to leave them minutes later, Andre gave a small bow to each young lady. “Remember tonight to wear a day dress, very plain. No fancy hat, no gloves and no expensive jewelry. You must appear to be bourgeois.”
They happily agreed.
“Merci, Monsieur. We’ll be good,” Ada assured him.
“I count on it.” He took Marianne’s hand and kissed her on each cheek. “Au revoir, ma cherie. I’ll arrive promptly at nine.”
“None of these ladies comes alone?” She arched her elegant neck to note the hundred or more dancers on the sawdust-laden dance floor. Ada waltzed with his friend, the Comte du Maine, who’d come along tonight as additional escort for them. Francine and Ezzie were going round with two other friends of Andre’s, both painters who lived in Montmartre.
“A few, yes. They shouldn’t.” In the gaslight, Marianne looked made from starlight. Her heavy blonde hair in a carefree knot, fell about her temples and her cheeks. His body hardened, eager to touch her hair, the cords of her throat, the swell of her breasts. He’d spent his afternoon readying every inch of his Montmartre house to welcome her tonight. He, himself, had been prepared, starving to have her for months.
She glanced at him, whimsy in her gaze. “You’re not thinking of them.”
“No, I’ve done enough of that. I concentrate on you.” He leaned closer to her, his hand curving around her opposite shoulder and drawing her back into the circle of his arms. Soon he’d explore the perfection of her naked, as God had made her. He set his jaw as his cock turned to stone. “I’ve done my best for them. But they’re on their own. The rest of the night is meant for you and me.”
A frisson shook her. Gratified that he could stir her, he bent to put his lips to her ear. “Did you bring your hairbrush?”
Staring straight ahead, she arched her brows. “One small one.”
“You’ll use my robe?” he whispered as he bit her earlobe.
“Your robe, your sheets, your bed.”
He caught her back into the full embrace. She felt wonderful, completely his. “I have other delights for you.”
She snorted. Eyes still straight ahead, she said, “I dare not ask.”
“Mmm. I plan to give them to you one-by-one.” He nuzzled her neck behind her ear.
She swayed against him and beneath her breath, murmured his name. “Is seduction allowed here?”
“Only for me.” Their table nestled into a clutch of shrubs, secluded yet public enough to be proper.
“Ah. So you’ve seduced other women here before, have you?”
“Never.” He pulled away slightly and took her other hand in his to raise it, examine the length of her fingers and kiss each tip. “These are my friends. Renoir, over there. Alain du Bois, at the next table. They know I have never brought a woman here.”
She faced him, alarm in her darkened expression. “Why with me then?”
He cupped her hand in his and too
k it to his lap where she could feel the rigid outline of her effect on him. “You tell me why.”
Removing her hand, she swallowed hard and focused on the dancers. “I’m still leaving before six tomorrow morning.”
He nodded. “I assumed so.”
“You won’t stop me.”
He heard her statement as a question. But he knew what his answer must be. “No.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” If you wish to stay with me, it will be because you want it, never that I ask for it.
“I told my maid I would not need her in the morning.”
His heart took wing. No servant to check on Marianne meant she could escape the rigid timetable of the house if she wished. “Wise. She need not worry about you.”
“And your coachman?”
“Valmont has his instructions to wait for you across the street. When you emerge, he will draw up in front of your door.” Andre gave her a tiny hug. “I ordered him to take out the unmarked brougham. No one will know whose coach you enter.”
“I’ll wear a veil.”
“Of course.”
“And exit the servants entrance in the back.”
“So any observer would conclude a servant left the house?”
“Exactly.”
He sensed her rapid pulse. “Look at me, please. If you wish to come to me and we only talk, we can do that.”
She opened her mouth to speak but her lower lip quivered.
He caressed her jaw with a swirl of his fingers. There was his biggest challenge with her rearing its head again. “You have not been with a man for many years. Whether you realize it or not, I know you may be as tender as a virgin, ma cherie. And I believe that by now you instinctively know that I would never hurt you. Say you trust me in that. Say it. You must. Or we will not go on until you can.”
“I do trust you. I’m just so…” She lowered her head and in the flickering gaslight, he saw her cheeks redden.
“So what?”
Her head came up and she was embarrassed. “Unschooled. Unsophisticated. And if you think that I am capable of—”
“Of what?”
“Effusive…”
He tipped his head in question.
“Erotic…” She waved a hand.
“Ah.” He pinched the tip of her nose. “Acrobatics? The can-can?”
She burst out laughing. “Oh, that would be lovely in your bed.”
He longed for the moment when he could haul her into his embrace. “The can-can in my bed.” He widened his eyes. “Revolutionary.”
“You are quite terrible, you know.”
“Where you are concerned, I am. Once an enfant terrible, I am a changed man. You make me patient. I have never been. You make me compassionate. I have never valued what I could not take. You make me happy. I have always been, but to make you happy has become the primary purpose of my life.”
If he ever thought he could seduce her with the power of his words, he saw that he could dissolve her into a flowing reservoir of delight. The expression on her face, the part of her lips, the mellow adoration in her dark eyes, was one he would carve into his memory and remember until his last breath. This was love. If she knew it yet or not, this was rapture. All he had worked for, all he had waited for with her was about to be his. Theirs. Maybe not tonight but soon. And when she came to him, without the shackles of her past or the lonely existence she had endured, she would come with this look of love. And he would have her, treasure her, ensure that she would gaze upon him like this and that she would enjoy her life. With him. Always with him.
He took her hand to his lips. “Come dance with me, mon amour. It’s time.”
Almost midnight. Marianne dropped her pocket watch into her tiny evening purse.
“I’m ready to leave, too.” Andre whispered into her ear as the two of them watched the three young women dance with partners on the wooden floor in the park.
She felt as if she were made of pins and needles, so alive so excited to make love to him soon. “They’re having such a good time, you realize we’ve created ravenous creatures. They’ll want to come every night.”
“Only if they stay on good behavior.”
He dragged his gaze from her toward Ada and her friends with his own. They’d danced for hours. “After this song, shall we leave?”
He slipped an arm around the back of her chair. The night she’d yearned for had come. “Let’s.”
“Stay here while I talk to Valmont over at the bar. He’ll have the groom bring the coach around to the entrance for us, then drive the brougham himself to Rue Haussmann to wait for you.”
At the notice that they were leaving, the three young women pouted and argued, but succumbed to the stern decrees of Andre and his friend, the Comte du Maine. They settled into the opposite seat of the coach, grim.
Ada perked up. “When might we come again? Do the same men go each night?”
“No.” The Comte du Maine, tapped his fingers on the armrest, the look of him was one of restrained amusement. He was a handsome man with red blonde hair and dark brown eyes, even tempered. He seemed older than Andre by a decade, yet he’d told her they were the same age. “A cross-section of gay Paris.”
“Wonderful.” Ezzie piped up. “Might we go tomorrow night? Will you please take us, Monsieur le duc?”
Francine scowled at Ezzie. “We shouldn’t. Remember that’s the day after tomorrow we come to your house, Ezzie, for your special party.”
“Oh, you’re right. I’d forgotten.”
“What party is that?” Marianne had no memory of any plans by Ezzie’s family to host an event.
The girl checked the expressions of Ada and Francine. “I’m hostessing my own ladies’ excursion.”
“I’m sorry, Marianne.” Ada did look apologetic. “I forgot to tell you.”
“It’s only for our friends who went to Miss Winston’s,” Ezzie added.
“Two more arrived last week from New York,” Francine hurried on. “At ten o-clock, we’re meeting at Gare de L’Est, boarding the train to Rheims to tour the cathedral.”
“A church?” Marianne focused on Ada. “I thought you’d given them up?”
Ada flourished a hand. “Aren’t you pleased, Marianne? Be pleased. All the kings of France were crowned there. A bit of history for us, you know.”
“We’ll stay the night in a fine hotel,” Francine announced. “My mother chaperones and my maid comes along. Ezzie’s too. They’re very old, you know. And mine’s French.”
“I made all the arrangements myself,” Ezzie announced with great pride.
Did you? “I’m certain,” Marianne said, “your mother is very proud.”
“Indeed she is. She wants me to become more assertive.”
And right she is to encourage that too. Especially with Francine hanging around.
Andre sent Marianne a consoling look, then crossed one leg over the other. “I can arrange a luncheon for you at a friend’s, if you like.”
“Oh, no!” Ezzie shot a glance at Francine. “We can’t. I mean…another time, perhaps?”
Francine quelled her friend’s outburst with one firm shake of her head. “Any other day, we’d welcome it, Monsieur. Merci beaucoup. Is your friend young and unmarried?”
Marianne fought the urge to roll her eyes.
Andre had the good manners not to show any offense. “She is. And she owns vineyards. She makes champagne.”
Ada and Ezzie, both sheepish, sat quiet.
Francine narrowed her big dark eyes at Andre and said, “I’d be delighted to learn. We all would, wouldn’t we?”
Ezzie nodded like an eager three-year-old.
“But I think,” said Francine, “another time would be best. My mother, you see, doesn’t like to amend her schedule.”
“I do understand,” Andre acquiesced.
Alarm in her crystal blue eyes, Ada stared at Marianne then turned to Andre. “Thank you, Monsieur le duc. I look forward to the educ
ation.”
Ada’s gratitude pleased Marianne. But something disturbed her about her friends’ behavior. Was the trio planning some escapade during their trip to Rheims? What could they slip by Francine’s mother? Leave the woman? Go off on their own? No, surely, they’d not try that in a strange city.
Marianne would ask Ada later. She had greater delights to think of and she settled back between the two men, content for now to feel the warmth of Andre’s thigh against her own.
The ride could not go quickly enough.
Valmont had his instructions to deliver the Moore girl and Lang to their home first. Next he drove round to the home of the comte du Maine.
That man did his duty bidding Ada good evening then focused upon Marianne. “I enjoyed meeting you, Madame Roland. I hope we see each other again soon. When we all return to town for the autumn, I will plan a dinner party and would like all of your family plus this devil, too. Of course.”
“Merci, Monsieur le Comte. I know my family will be honored as I am.”
“So would I,” Andre added with a wicked eye at his friend.
“Au revoir,” Maine dipped his head in homage and climbed down from the carriage.
The ride to Rue Haussmann was brief. So was the conversation.
“Thank you, Monsieur le duc,” Ada said, a carefree toss of a smile as she gathered her skirts and her purse. “I hope we can go again.”
“We will, Miss Hanniford.”
“A promise?” She urged him a twinkle in her eyes.
“Certainly.”
With a wink at Marianne, Ada murmured au revoir and out she got.
Marianne picked up her skirts. Her heart pounded so heavily she could have sworn Andre could hear it.
He seized her hand—and frowned.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “ I won’t change my mind.”
“Can you see Valmont on the opposite corner?”
“I do.” She leaned across Andre to peer out at the black unmarked carriage parked beneath the golden gaslight. Valmont’s reed-like figure was unmistakable in silhouette. The horses stomped and snorted. “I’ll come quickly. The animals are restless.”
Andre squeezed her hand, then lifted it to his lips. “As others are too.”
She grinned. “The sooner you let me go, the sooner I appear in your studio.”
Daring Widow: Those Notorious Americans, Book 2 Page 13
