by Edith Layton
It was of a rich and ruby red, and it was so low in front that even her spanned hand could not cover the naked expanse it showed. Looking down, she could clearly see her breasts as they appeared to her when she was in her bath. The reflection showed little less. The waist was high and its folds clung and draped about her lower person so that she seemed to have been mired in some rich red sea kelp that outlined all her lower body. Her hair, untidy from changing so often, had loosened and curled. The whole effect was that of a wanton.
“No,” she said desperately, “I know the duchess would never approve.”
The dressmaker snorted.
“In a pig’s eye, my girl. Didn’t I have the entire dressing of Violet? And then Rose? Never fear, the duchess will approve. Come,” she said, more kindly, “it’s the very thing. It’s all the rage. You’re going to Paris, my lady, and anything else would make you a dowd. And the duchess can’t abide dowds.”
Seeing the indecision on Catherine’s face, the dressmaker began to chuckle, as if struck by a new idea.
“Come, let your maid see it. She’ll tell you what all the fine ladies wear, and what the duchess likes. Come along, come with me.” And taking Catherine by one cold hand, she pulled her into the outer room.
Catherine allowed herself to be tugged forward by this intractable little woman and before she had time to think of the audience that lay outside the door, she found herself the center of their attention.
She stood, cheeks high in color, eyes wide and expectant, in her incredibly indecent gown, in the midst of all the strangers waiting in the front room. There was a sudden quiet as she entered. Conversation ceased as they caught sight of the lovely young woman before them. Catherine held her head high and wished to disappear into the ether as she heard the dressmaker, through the pounding in her ears, ask the little maid what she thought the duchess would say. But curiously, the dressmaker’s eyes were not on the little maid, but rather watching the tall blond-haired female she called “La Starr” in the bright amber dress. The blond woman had been posing and turning and posturing in it, showing it off to a gentleman, before Catherine appeared. And the moment that Catherine appeared in the doorway, the gentleman’s eyes left her and did not return to her. She stared angrily at Catherine.
Catherine looked over in their direction and saw the amused gray eyes staring at her insolently. It was incredible how she had not forgotten a detail of his face since that morning in the fog. He stood leaning against a mantel, his long athletic form impeccably clothed in gray again. His face resembled, Catherine thought, a picture she had seen of a red Indian, with his cool angular good looks, high cheekbones, and black hair. But his look held mockery and disdain and an infuriatingly belittling humor.
He glanced over at the dressmaker. “I applaud you, madame,” he drawled, “as I am certain the duchess will. You have turned a little country mouse into a dazzler. Congratulations.”
He walked slowly over to where Catherine stood poised for retreat, although perversely refusing to flee in the face of his impudence.
“I see you found the right place, little one.” He smiled with what was not at all a smile. His eyes lingered at her breasts, and while her hands itched to fly up and cover herself, she only stood stock still and tried to return his stare with all the dignity she could muster. “See if you can make my little Starr something on this order,” he said over his shoulder. “It is a most impressive display of…taste.” And then, with a careless shrug, he turned and went back to the blond female, who was darting glances of the purest dislike at Catherine.
“Who,” Catherine panted, stripping herself out of the hated dress with fever in the curtained alcove, “was that insolent man? That popinjay, that man who spoke to me?”
The dressmaker spoke through a mouthful of pins.
“Who?” Catherine insisted, buttoning herself all wrong in her haste to get back into her good, decent little gray dress again.
“He is the Marquis of Bessacarr,” the dressmaker said placidly. “A neighbor of the duchess’s. I expect that’s how he knows you. And you should be flattered that he did. He doesn’t acknowledge everyone, you know.”
“He need not acknowledge me,” Catherine insisted, setting herself aright again. “He need not ever acknowledge me again.”
Catherine left, with her maid in tow, carrying the few parcels the dressmaker had readied for her. The rest, she promised would be delivered as soon as might be. She had turned a deaf ear to all of Catherine’s protests, telling her she knew well enough what would be a suitable wardrobe for the duchess’s companion.
Catherine swore to herself, on the way home in the carriage with the stony-faced maid, that she would sit up nights if need be, adding on fabric to those indecent bodices. Style or no, she was never again to be ogled in that fashion.
*
Madame Bertrand sipped her tea and chuckled at her work table. It had been worth it, even though it had cost her some trade, just to see the look on La Starr’s face. Brazen little hussy, going to her competitor for her dressing when she was in funds, and coming back to her dear Madame Bertrand when she was sailing the River Tick. Madame Bertrand knew her clientele well—they were the cream of the demimonde. And she had discovered that La Starr was going to a society modiste when she was in clover. But now, when her protector, the marquis, was growing bored with her, she had entreated her old friend to let her pose in a few gowns to see if he would bite and purchase them for her. But he had paid for only the blue one, after all. And after seeing that black-haired new beauty, he might not buy her any others either. Well, Madame Bertrand thought, there were plenty more where La Starr came from, both for herself and for the marquis.
*
“Sinjun,” the blond woman cooed at her companion as they walked down the street, “did you not like that amber gown? I swear I thought it would suit you down to the ground. “
“It would hardly suit me, my dear. Amber is not my color,” he said in a low amused voice, “and it did not suit you so well either. But that is not strictly true. Truly, I grow weary of clothes shopping with you. I think in future you should go yourself. I will draft you a check, my dear, to better enable you to do so. Oh, don’t look crushed. It will be a very substantial amount—just recompense for the delightful time we have spent together. But I think the exclusive nature of our acquaintance is over. After all, I plan to be traveling again soon, and it would not be fair to tie you to one companion now.”
“Travel to Paris, for example,” she said spitefully, “where the duchess might have a companion to compensate your idle hours?”
“Hardly,” he said, with real amusement. “Her companions are not so exclusive, you know. And it was the exclusivity of our relationship that I valued. As well as your own delightful self. One may admire a thing without wanting it,” he said slowly, “much as one may admire a public prospect, such as this pleasant well-worn thoroughfare, without wanting to spend all one’s time on it. It is too public a place, after all. Private places bring more pleasure.”
Mollified, she sauntered along with him.
“Sinjun,” she asked sweetly, “shall we have a farewell party exclusively and privately together tonight? At my expense?”
He smiled down at her.
“You do me honor,” he replied.
“You will have to do me a great deal better,” she said roguishly.
And, laughing, they went on, in total understanding and accord.
*
The gentleman was not laughing a few short hours later. In fact, St. John Basil St. Charles, Marquis of Bessacarr, paced the floor of his study in a singularly humorless state.
“Damn it, Cyril,” he swore, with unaccustomed vehemence, “I thought it was to be Vienna. That is where all the business is going on. Why in heaven’s name did he decide upon Paris? It is over and done with there. What earthly good can I do for you there?”
His friend sat and watched the marquis in his travels around the carpet.
“S
injun, the old chap is never wrong, you know. I thought it was to be Vienna too. But he said that he had enough of his fellows there. What he needs, he says, is a good ear in an unexpected place. Paris, he said, and it is Paris he meant. You will be seeing him soon yourself, and doubtless he can explain it better than I can. But he fears treachery on all sides, and his man in Paris is a looby, he says. ‘Sinjun’s the chap for it,’ he says. Everyone will accept you as just another merrymaker, and you can find out whose loyalties belong to whom. It’s a hotbed over there now, he said, with some supporting the old Bourbon and some still working for Bonaparte. He won’t be easy in his mind about Bonaparte till he’s two years dead, you know.”
“And that I can’t blame him for,” the marquis said, sinking at last into a chair. “But I had felt that I could do more good in Vienna. I have done before, unless he’s come to doubting me now?”
“Nothing like it,” his friend assured him. “He still thinks you one of the best agents he has. But you’re well known in Vienna now, for all your subterfuge. You’ve practically got the stamp of the foreign office upon your forehead, he says. And you can’t work well unless there’s some doubt as to your aims, you know.”
“It’s not so bad as that.” The taller man grinned. “But I’ll grant that there may be a suspicion there that I’m not just another disinterested tourist. But Paris just now is filled with fools, with empty-headed nits who’ve gone for the fun and games of it. And I suppose I’m to be just another one of them?”
His friend nodded with a sympathetic smile.
“Ahh, my reputation,” the marquis sighed, passing a hand over his forehead. “My lamentable reputation.”
Cyril laughed aloud at that. For the marquis had posed as many things, many times, in his jobs for the foreign office. Aside from that, if there was ever a man who cared less for his reputation in the ton, Cyril did not know of his. The marquis had never cared for what any other soul in the kingdom thought of him, or any other soul in Spain, or France, or Italy, or any of the places to which he had traveled since he had enlisted his services in the war against Bonaparte. It was that, the old chap said, coupled with his winning manner and his natural intelligence, that had made him such an invaluable asset to their operations.
“Paris it is, then,” the marquis said derisively. “I will have to pack my dancing slippers.”
Cyril rose to go and stretched himself.
“I suppose,” he yawned, “that you’ll be taking Jenkins? Where is he, by the by? I haven’t set eyes on him in some time.”
“Down at Fairleigh, taking care of estate business. He’s very good at that too, you know. But he’ll be here like a shot when he gets my message. He’s like an old gun dog—one sniff of powder and all else flees from his mind.”
“Just like his master, eh?”
“Don’t let him hear you say that; Jenkins has no master. He chooses to stay on with me and work for me. We have no title for his duties as yet, not even after all these years. He is estate manager, overseer, accountant, and, most of all, friend. As it is, I’m delighted to just be his friend and be able to employ him. He’s the one man I trust in this whole weary world.”
Cyril turned back at the door and pulled a hurt face.
“Oh, you don’t trust me, Sinjun?”
“Not so far as I could toss you, old dear.” The marquis smiled slowly. “For if the old chap told you to place a knife in my ribs, you’d do it without a backward glance.”
“I’m hurt, old fellow, wounded to the quick. For I would give a backward glance, you know. To see if Jenkins was after me with another knife.”
They laughed and parted with a handshake.
The marquis went to his desk to write a note to his estate manager, valet, traveling companion, assistant, and friend, Jenkins. He smiled to himself and was actually laughing softly as he added a last flourish to the note. That would get the old boy running, he thought. A hint of subterfuge, spying, lying, and the possibility of mayhem, and Jenkins would drop anything he was doing to come along. Cyril was right, he thought, Jenkins was just like him. When they had met those years ago in Spain, they had each recognized it. The marquis had been on the crown’s business, and Jenkins a batman who had just lost his officer. Exactly who had saved the other’s life when they had met they had never resolved, but each had instantly appreciated the other. Regardless of class distinctions, education, and lineage, they had banded together, recognizing their common bond.
There was a time, the marquis thought, the smile fading from his lips, when style and reputation had meant everything to him. More than honor or love or duty. And only now could he jest about it, only now could he remember it without shrinking, as though remembering a thing he had read once in an old book rather than lived himself.
For he had been born to a title, and born to a dignity. Yet before he had reached his majority, his father had gambled it all away, as well as his mother’s health and life, all save his title. And he had inherited nothing but the title and a mountain of debts. And a handsome visage and a strong body and agile mind. He had gone out and earned his money, at tasks and trades he chose not to mention to the world, and invested the proceeds wisely and husbanded them well, and not only rebuilt his father’s lost fortune but added to it as well. But all the while he had worried about his dignity and his reputation. And what would become of him if people knew his methods.
He had done all so that he could present an unblemished name to the world. He had cared about his world and what it thought of him. And all that he did that enriched or amused him—all the trafficking in trade, all the consorting with women of the demimonde, all the gaming and the pleasures—he had tried to hide from the world.
“Ah,” he thought, scowling, it pained him to think of it even now. He had been such a callow fellow. And it had, in the end, cost him dearly. The one woman whose mind he admired the most, whose temperament most nearly matched his own, he dallied with and then dropped, because he had felt her face did not match the ideal of what the world would think his marchioness’s face should be. And by the time he discovered how he missed her and how unimportant a face could be, only important if that certain face bore a smile for him alone, she was gone to another man wise enough to know the difference between a package and its wrappings.
And there had been another woman, whose face was so glorious that he forgot to look into her heart. And whose position and status were so low that he did not seriously think of her for his marchioness, for he thought the world would not either. So he only offered her a paid position as his mistress. But she too had found a wiser man, who had looked beyond the surface and not thought of the world’s opinion, and offered her his hand as well as his heart. And he, the marquis of impeccable birth and reputation, had been left with an impeccably empty heart.
Such memories were only cold ashes to rake over. Valuable only because he had learned from his mistakes, they had served their purpose well—let them lie at rest. He had found occupation in serving his country; spying suited his temperament. He no longer cared for appearances; he, of all men, knew what a sham reputation and titles could be. He had learned to look beyond the obvious, to seek the truth beneath the surface clutter. And so he no longer cared for his own name; his reputation was no longer of any importance to him.
And the cream of the jest was that once he had left off caring and dissembling and trying to impress the world with his purity, his popularity soared. And his reputation, which no longer interested him, was pronounced to be of the highest. He gamed openly—he was called a daring gentleman. He wenched openly—he was called a dashing ladies’ man. His growing cynicism was thought to be wisdom; his rudeness, wit; his unapproachable air, dignity. He sought no wife and was deemed the most eligible of the ton.
Someday he would have to marry, he expected, but he would remain heart-whole. He could not see himself letting his estates go to his only sister’s eldest, a spotty, disagreeable little boy who whined. But even though the marquis had reac
hed the age of five and thirty, he was in no hurry to be bound in matrimony. He thought of marriage in much the same way that a sinner thinks of confession and redemption, as something to be done at the last moment, on the deathbed preferably.
For with all of his wide experience with women, the marquis did not trust his perceptions of them too far. He shied from involving himself with them seriously, as he had been wrong once too often. He was scrupulously honest, however, with them and about his expectations of them. He enjoyed them physically and had learned to give them pleasure as well, and asked no more of them than that, and promised them no more than that. This attitude caused him no impediments to his desires. There were too many females eager to accept him on his own terms.
And those few who tried to change the terms were soon brought to realize their folly.
The marquis glanced at the note in his hand and rang for a footman to collect it from him. When the difficulties with France were finally irrevocably ended, he supposed he might find boredom at last. An emptiness might enter his life without occupation that did not offer such danger and interest. But he had learned to push such thoughts away. For now he was content to be a superior spy, and that was all that he cared to dwell upon.
St. John, Marquis of Bessacarr, darling of the ton, peer of the realm, patron of the frail sisterhood, social lion, and most superior spy, impatient with waiting for a footman to answer his summons, stepped out, on his way to a farewell dinner with his mistress, to send a message to his one true friend, his accomplice. And the message was to come to London instantly. For the assignment was at hand and they were off to Paris!
