Murder While I Smile

by Joan Smith

  “You had best go now, Reggie,” she said, in that soft French voice. Not Reggie, but more like Rezhie, with the accent on the last syllable. He had never thought Reginald suited him, but pronounced in that foreign way, it sounded exotic, like the name of one of Byron’s amorous pashas.

  “When may I return?” he asked.

  “Whenever you wish to see me again,” she said. “Just send me a little note first, in case ... Oh, I plan to be rid of Yarrow. He has deceived me, Rezhie,” she said, and gave an agonized little hiccup of a sob. When she resumed speech, her voice had a tremolo. “You have no idea! Most men are wicked deceivers. Of course, I don’t mean you!”

  He felt this was a slur on Luten, and his heart swelled in triumph. “I am not most men,” he said, knowing it sounded pompous and foolish. But then a little folly was forgivable between lovers.

  “Ah no, you are sweet,” she assured him.

  Sweet? He felt the compliment was grossly inadequate. He was eager to be off. Much as he loved Yvonne, his baser nature craved to see Luten and fling in his face where he had been and what he had been doing.

  “I shall be free tomorrow afternoon,” she said, looking an invitation at him.

  “What time may I come?”

  “After three, I think. This suits you?”

  “Pas du tout. So many empty hours will seem an eternity, but I must do your bidding. At three I shall be here, begging an audience.”

  She smiled and stroked his cheek with her wanton fingers. How he burned at her touch! “You are too absurd,” she cooed.

  Reg hated to dress without his valet to assist him. Especially he disliked having to scramble into his clothes in front of the goddess, who did not bother to resume her gown but just drew a throw over her nakedness. Even in this dim light, the mirror told him his shirt and cravat were a disgrace. His face looked ravaged by exertion, though his tousled hair looked rather dashing. He would have to go home and make a fresh toilette before going to Birrell’s.

  “Do you think me horrid?” she asked, drawing her bottom lip between her white teeth and looking like an adorable child who has been caught with her fingers full of sugarplums. “To give myself to you so easily ...”

  “I think you are a sorceress,” he said. Also a mind reader, for it had occurred to him that it had been a pretty easy capitulation. More of an attack than a giving way to persuasion actually.

  “It is just that one gets so lonesome, and you—I felt a certain something—a frisson of recognition the moment I saw you. Was it only two days ago?”

  “I felt the same,” he said, and glanced at the clock. Eleven o’clock already?”A demain.” He reached down to place a chaste kiss on her damask cheek. Her cheek was cool. How was it possible? His whole body was aflame from remembered passion.

  He noticed, on his way out, that the Watteau in the hall had been replaced by an inferior landscape. This suggested that Yvonne was in dire need of funds. How much could he afford to give her? If he didn’t throw one of his extravagant parties for Luten and Corinne’s engagement, he could give her a thousand pounds. And there was that diamond necklace his mama had left him that was not entailed. The irony of commerce intruding on this moment of infatuation was not lost on him. It would find its way into the poem on the French Revolution.

  It was well after eleven when he finally reached Birrell’s rout. He gazed across the room and saw Luten smiling down at Corinne, and she smiling back at him, besotted. She had been redecorating herself. What had she done to her hair? And why did she wear a pearl comb in it when she was wearing her diamonds? Yvonne could teach her something about dressing. Not that Luten seemed to notice anything amiss in her toilette.

  He would soon wipe that smile from Luten’s phiz! He straightened his shoulders and went forth to do battle, in the name of love.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Prance went swanning across the busy ballroom, bowing to friends and acquaintances. “Charming, Lady Honoria,” he said to the youngest daughter of the Duke of Cheam, who looked particularly ugly that evening in a puce gown that ill became both her sluggish complexion and her years. She had apparently not heard his decree that only ladies over seventy with snow-white hair ought to be allowed to wear that overpowering shade of red. He continued on to Luten and Corinne, where he made a graceful bow.

  “Corinne, the belle of the ball, as usual. Lovely party.”

  As the party was far from a squeeze, and in fact very few of their friends were present, Corinne realized his euphoria had some other cause than the company.

  “You are in high feather this evening, Prance,” she said. “Do I smell a romance between you and Lady Honoria?”

  Prance rolled his eyes ceilingward. “Please! I thought you knew my standards better than that. No, I prefer older ladies this season. Autumn is the time for a more mature lady. Someone who knows all the ways of love.”

  “Who is she?” Luten inquired. “Not Lord Halley’s wife, I trust? He called out young Franklin last week.”

  “It is bound to happen when a gentleman is so unwise as to go falling in love with his wife,” Prance said airily. He shot a keen glance at Luten and added, “But then I need not warn you of that, eh, Luten?”

  “The warning comes too late for me, I fear.”

  Prance gave him a deprecatory smile, then glanced sadly at Corinne and shook his head. “No, it is not Halley’s charming lady. Blondes have no appeal to me at the moment. It is a widow, so I need not fear her mari will challenge me, though I am not sure about her other lovers.” He trusted that French word would alert Luten as to the lady’s identity.

  If Luten understood the hint, he gave no indication of it. It was Corinne, with her sharp feminine intuition and her interest in the comtesse, who leapt on the truth.

  “Reggie! You are not seeing Chamaude!”

  He pokered up. “Have you something against the lady?” he asked

  “Oh, you don’t know what we discovered this afternoon. Tell him, Luten.”

  Luten was too suave to glower, but he shot Prance an icy stare from his cold gray eyes. “Perhaps this had best be discussed in private,” he suggested.

  “The library,” Prance said. “It’s bound to be empty. No one reads in this house.”

  Excitement caused unaccustomed flags of red to bloom on his sallow cheeks as he led the others to the library. Coffen spotted the group and went hastening after them, catching them up just as they reached the sofa.

  “How’d it go with Chamaude, Prance?” he asked, in no soft voice.

  “Your advice was sound, Pattle. It went—” He kissed two fingers to his lips. “Exquisitely. Perfection!”

  “So it is Chamaude!” Corinne said.

  “Indeed she is my new mistress. You may congratulate me that she chose me over other contenders.” A smirk decorated his lips as he looked at Luten. Luten stood impassive, not revealing by so much as a blink that he wanted to knock Prance to the floor and kick him. “Of course, I have the advantage of being a bachelor, not entangled with any other lady at the moment.”

  The “bachelor” might be a dig at Yarrow, but that telling “not entangled with any other lady” suggested to Corinne that Yarrow was not who he meant. The sly way he was looking at Luten, too, sent shivers up her spine. What did Prance know?

  “You wasn’t there long,” Coffen said. “Hardly seems long enough to be talking her up as your mistress. Liked the opal ring, did she?”

  “I didn’t give it to her. It proved an unworthy reward for her—” he gave a leering smirk “—shall we say, generosity? As to time, it is not quantity but quality that counts in a special relationship of this sort. You are well experienced in that line, Luten. Would you not agree it is quality that matters?”

  Luten said, “It has been my experience that it takes time to develop quality in relationships between men and women. Eh, Corinne?” he added with a smile. “It took us three years.”

  “Seven, if you count the time Corinne was married to deCoventry,” C
offen said. “Not that I mean you was carrying on behind—heh heh. You’ve known her for seven years is all I mean.”

  “The comtesse and I moved more swiftly,” Prance said. “Especially the comtesse. Those Sturm und Drang eyes fulfilled every promise.”

  “In just over an hour?” Coffen asked.

  “It will astonish you that love can develop so quickly, Pattle. I wonder if it really surprises Luten. Was Yvonne always so impetuous, Luten?”

  “I believe she had that reputation. Ladies’ natures are like leopards’ spots. They do not change. And now if you have finished hinting to my fiancée that Yvonne was once my mistress, which she was not, we have more important matters to discuss.”

  Prance adopted a moue. “I see the fact that I have fallen in love for the first time is not considered worth discussing.”

  “You can’t love her, Reg. She’s a criminal,” Corinne said. “That is what we wanted to discuss with you. Luten expressed interest in the Watteau hanging in her hall. Well, she had her footman trot it straight off to Boisvert to be copied.”

  “She’d never try to sell Luten a forgery.”

  “I know, we have been talking about that. We think she plans to sell Luten the original and sell someone else the copy, probably someone from out of town, who will never know the difference and never hear that Luten has the same painting.”

  “Perhaps she just wants the copy for herself,” Prance said at once. “No harm in that.”

  Corinne looked at Luten. “Perhaps that’s it,” she said.

  As Luten had not confessed he had seen the comtesse and invented a country friend, he could only shrug, as if accepting this notion.

  “About my Poosan,” Coffen said, scratching his ear. “I wonder if she sent me the copy by mistake, then had her friend make the switch. Still, I don’t see why she wouldn’t have told me. Who’s this Boisvert anyhow?”

  “An artist in Shepherd’s Market,” Corinne said. “Luten and I went there this afternoon.” She told them of the plan to search the shop while Boisvert was at the Clarendon Hotel the next afternoon.

  Coffen said, “I wonder if he made any more copies of my Poosan for Chamaude to peddle. A hundred years from now when it’s worth something, I might have a spot of trouble proving I have the real one.”

  “Will you really care, a hundred years from now?” Prance inquired.

  “No, but my son might. Or my grandson. Or would it be my great-grandson?” He began counting off the generations on his fingers. “Great-grandson, I think.”

  Prance was still stinging from the short shrift his fabulous announcement had been given. To retaliate, he said to Luten, “Oh, by the way, Luten, did Pattle tell you the house on Grosvenor Square has been sold? The one Yvonne was thinking of buying. I drove by this afternoon and saw ... er, a couple looking at it. Then later Pattle and I returned, and it was sold—to a melord, the agent said. He was just removing the sign.”

  Corinne had been reassured when Luten announced categorically that Yvonne had never been his mistress. Her suspicions came galloping back at the sly way Reggie was looking at Luten. The clenching of Luten’s jaws told her the gibe had hit home, too.

  Luten looked daggers at Prance. “That suggests Yarrow, does it not?” he said. “You have stiff competition for the lady’s affections, Prance. Take care or she’ll beggar you.”

  “Oh, she is finished with Yarrow. She told me so this evening. He has deceived her, she said.” Then he added with another of those piercing looks, “No doubt that is why she is on the qui vive for a new patron. But I believe she has become disenchanted with unfaithful melords and has decided to put herself under my protection instead.”

  “Why did you decide to call on her this evening?” Luten asked, reining in his temper.

  “It was my idea,” Coffen said. “Mean to say, he was pining away for her. Fast sinking into one of his dashed declines. Seemed worth a try, before he had his door knocker muffled and straw laid in the street.”

  “Well worth it!” Prance said. “I shall never be able to thank you, Pattle. And now that we have discovered the reason Yvonne is having the Watteau copied, shall we return to the ballroom? You and I have not had a dance, Corinne.”

  He sensed Luten’s irritation with this. Before leading her away, he murmured softly to Luten, “Don’t worry, I shan’t reveal your nasty little secrets.”

  Luten went on nettles to the ballroom, where he watched Corinne like a hawk while she performed the cotillion, trying to judge by her expression what Prance was saying to her. Coffen, who was not much of a dancer, accompanied him during his vigil.

  “Hope I didn’t do wrong by sending Prance off to call on the comtesse,” he said in a rather apologetic way.

  “She’ll eat him alive. I think you and Prance and I had best have a talk this evening. I haven’t told you the whole of what is involved.”

  “I haven’t told you everything either. Prance saw you and Chamaude at that house on Grosvenor Square this afternoon. Have to tell you, Luten, if you’re setting her up as your mistress, I don’t mean to let you marry Corinne. Ain’t right. I’m her cousin. Someone has to look out for her interests. Besides, Prance would never let you get away with it. He’s straining at the leash to tell her everything.”

  “I know it,” Luten said. He didn’t think Prance had told her yet, however. At just that moment, she looked across the room and smiled at him. His heart swelled, then clenched in fear that he was going to lose her—and over a French whore who had been too forthcoming and obvious for him ten years ago. With another decade of experience and maturity under his belt, he despised her. “I didn’t buy her the demmed house! I suspect it was Yarrow.”

  “Said she’s through with him. She’d hardly ditch him if he’d just bought her a house. Of course, she could be lying a blue streak. Talking don’t butter no parsnips. Thing to do, keep an eye on Half Moon Street. See if Yarrow is still calling on her. But about Chamaude...” He leveled a piercing blue eye on his friend. “You did drive out with her this afternoon in your hunting rig. To a country inn.”

  Luten gave a jump of alarm. “Did you tell Corinne?”

  Coffen snorted. “Is the pope Protestant?”

  “You mean Catholic.”

  “Nothing of the sort. I mean no, I didn’t tell her.”

  “Thank God for that.” He took a deep breath to settle his nerves. “I see you spent your afternoon spying on me!”

  “Not me, just Prance. Mind I don’t say I wouldn’t have spied if I’d caught you dead to rights smuggling her into your rig.”

  “I could hardly drive her to Hyde Park.”

  “Why’d you have to drive with her at all? Asking for trouble.”

  “Because I didn’t want to be at her mercy in that brothel on Half Moon Street.”

  “So you put yourself at her mercy at a country inn instead? Don’t see much difference myself.”

  “Yarrow was not likely to find us together at a country inn. We had tea, Pattle, and nothing else except talk. I wonder if Prance has thrown a spanner in the works by telling her I’m engaged.”

  Coffen’s blue eyes narrowed to slits. “Why shouldn’t he?”

  “Because Yvonne will be more revealing if she thinks I’m interested in offering her a carte blanche.”

  “Don’t see why she can’t reveal whatever it is you want to know to Prance as well as you.”

  “Prance is besotted. This calls for a clear mind.”

  “What are you trying to find out anyhow?”

  “How she was involved in the contract to Gresham for the rockets.”

  “You think she sweet-talked Yarrow into voting for Gresham, then dumped him?”

  “I shouldn’t be at all surprised. And there’s damn-all Yarrow can do about it.”

  Coffen thought it all over for a moment, then said, “Don’t see why he’d go buying her a house if that’s the way the land lays. You figure she’s holding him to ransom?”

  “Yarrow is too cunning for t
hat. He wouldn’t have written anything incriminating. The house was probably sold to some melord who wants a house on Grosvenor Square.”

  “We ought to look into it.”

  “I am.”

  “Don’t see why you’ve left the rest of us out of all your doings, Luten. We always worked together before. Because of Corinne, is it?”

  “I was afraid you might inadvertently let something slip— or Prance would make hay of it. Corinne wouldn’t understand.”

  “She’d never sit still for your making up to Chamaude, if that’s what you mean. Nor would I. If I was a lady, I mean. Ain’t there any other way you could go about it?”

  “If I could think of any other way, I wouldn’t be seeing Yvonne.”

  “Been throwing herself at you as well, has she?”

  “She has let me know she’s available.”

  “A dangerous thing in a woman. Well, I’ll not tell Corinne what you’re up to, but you’d best get it all settled dashed soon, for Corinne has her eye out for trouble where Chamaude is concerned. She was looking sharp as a fox when Reg was dropping all them hints.”

  “I know it.”

  At the end of the set, Corinne was still smiling at her fiancé.

  “Shall we all retire to the refreshment parlor for wine—or whatever Lady Birrell is serving?” Prance suggested, clamping his hand on Corinne’s elbow. “With this company, I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s orgeat and punch.”

  “You go ahead, Reg,” Coffen said, and lifted his hand from Corinne’s elbow. “I’ll stand up and jig it with Corinne.”

  As he led her off, he gave a wink over his shoulder at Luten, as if to say, “Have no fear. I am a perfect oyster. She’ll get nothing out of me.”

  Luten led Prance back to the library, where he had a conversation similar to that he had just had with Coffen.

  “Do I have your word as a gentleman that you’re not interested in becoming Yvonne’s patron?” Prance asked, when all had been revealed.

  “I am offended that you ask, Prance, but you have.”