In various quarters in the city of London, grand houses, some rented, some purchased outright, had been made ready as a temporary shelter for those French refugees who were arriving in England, friendless and without a sou to their names. In the Gloucester Road area, in the district of Marylebone, a whole row of Georgian houses was turned over for this purpose. It was to one of these residences that Zoë came on the first day of her arrival in London. She was taken in hand by a member of the reception committee whose purpose it was to interview these new émigrés and help them get settled.
Madame Bertaut was not herself French, but the widow of a French diplomat. She was an affable lady in late middle age. Her friendly manner and unfailing tact inspired confidence. With many encouraging smiles and long, patient silences, she gradually jogged Zoë into revealing the salient details of her background and circumstances.
“Leon Devereux? That name rings a bell.”
“My father was a banker.”
“Good heavens! Those Devereux?” exclaimed Madame Bertaut. She looked at Zoë more closely. “My late husband mentioned your father quite frequently. Before the war, his financial empire spanned the English Channel, I was given to understand.”
Zoë remained silent. She knew nothing about her father’s business.
After a moment, Madame Bertaut continued, “Your parents were arrested, you said?”
Zoë had to search to find her voice. Without elaboration she told of her parents’ arrest and subsequent removal to Carmes.
Madame Bertaut made notations on a piece of paper as Zoë gave her explanation.
“And your brother and sister? What happened to them?”
“We became separated,” answered Zoë. To reveal the assumed names and identities of her siblings was to place them in jeopardy. Claire had been very firm on that point before Zoë left Rouen. Until they were all safely together in England, she must employ the greatest circumspection. It was no secret in France that her parents were awaiting trial. It was perfectly safe to reveal as much as she knew about their circumstances. With respect to her brother and sister, she must remain obstinately vague.
“How old are you?” asked Madame Bertaut.
“Seventeen.”
The pencil stopped scratching. Madame Bertaut’s head tilted inquiringly. “Seventeen?”
Warm color heated Zoë’s cheeks. “This is merely a disguise.”
“You don’t have to explain to me, my dear. I understand perfectly. I’ve seen young women dressed as boys, men dressed as old women, and…well, you know what I mean. Best to keep these things to ourselves. A loose tongue might very easily prove disastrous for those who are risking their lives to bring others out of France. Do you take my meaning?”
Zoë signified that she did. She had been enjoined to secrecy in the livery stable at Coutances. Wild horses could not drag from her either the name of her savior or the means he had employed to get her safely to England.
A moment or two later, Madame Bertaut set down her pencil and surveyed her companion. Smiling, she observed “Zoë. That’s an unusual name. I like it.”
She could not have known the effect of those few words on the grave-faced girl who stared at her unblinkingly. At the sound of her name, something inside Zoë, a tangled skein of suppressed emotion, seemed to unravel. Only then did she begin to feel a shadow of the old Zoë stir in her. It would be an exaggeration to say that she smiled. But her features softened with a becoming animation. She was Zoë again.
“We try to find everyone employment as soon as may be,” explained Madame Bertaut, and thereupon launched into an account of opportunities which were available for a girl of Zoë’s education and aptitude. “Fortunately, your English is impeccable,” she confided.
Zoë was assigned to a small box room in the attic which she was to share with another unattached young female. Francoise had been in England for a number of months, and was older than Zoë by several years. Her poise, her quick intelligence was something to be envied, in Zoë’s opinion, as was her sleek good looks. Soignée was the word that came to Zoë’s mind. Soignée and very French, with her modish cap of dark curls and deeply set, chocolate brown eyes.
Over the next little while, Francoise became something of a mentor to Zoë. She found Zoë suitable clothes to wear and showed her how to adapt them to the current mode. She offered a hail of advice on how Zoë should conduct herself in society. And she introduced Zoë to the other residents of the house.
The house was crowded to the rafters. Whole families were domiciled in a single room. Few of the residents had any pretension to blue blood. They were journalists and professional men, with a sprinkling of officers of the old guard. Some of them were ardent Royalists. Most of them were moderates, idealists who were appalled when they found themselves the scapegoats of extremists on either side of the political spectrum. They gathered in the front parlor at all hours of the day and night. As the womenfolk bent over their embroidery or knitting, the gentlemen would hotly debate French politics, and relive the old quarrels in France. These were safe topics. There were few among them who did not show some reticence in revealing their personal histories, and Zoë divined that, like herself, they had family and friends in France they wished to protect.
From time to time, a courier would arrive at the house with reports of what was happening at home. As one day followed another, the news became more disquieting. The terror was growing in momentum and there seemed to be no end in sight to its excesses. Of her own family, Zoë heard nothing.
“The English have a saying: ‘No news is good news.’”
The comment came from one of the newer residents. Charles Lagrange, a journalist, and one-time editor of the Paris Liberté, had arrived in England almost at the same time as Zoë. She judged him to be something under fifty. He was thin almost to the point of emaciation. The rumor was that he had been hiding for months in a friend’s cellar before he found safe passage to England.
“What does it mean, ‘No news is good news’?” asked Zoë.
He put his hand on Zoë’s shoulder in a consoling gesture and withdrew it almost immediately. “What it means, ma petite, is that there is still hope.”
Zoë’s eyes traveled to the young couple who were on the point of leaving the room. Madame Bertaut was with them. Her expression was grave. No one doubted that she was the bearer of bad tidings.
No news is good news. In the days that followed, Zoë was to cling tenaciously to that worn, English proverb. And though there were few occasions for rejoicing in the house in Gloucester Road, she, like the others, maintained a cheerful facade from the moment she stepped outside her chamber until the candles were doused every evening.
In the close confines of the small room which she shared with Francoise, it was inevitable that the girls would begin to confide in each other. Even so, there was a certain circumspection which was impossible to overcome. By tacit consent, each girl permitted the other the privacy she wished for herself.
It soon became evident to Zoë that their reasons for drawing a veil over the past were far different. Zoë’s one wish was to protect her family. Francoise was alone in the world. It was her sanity she wished to protect. She could not recall the last weeks of her life in France without falling into a deep despondency.
Happily, there was no dearth of amusements in London to distract those of a melancholy turn of mind. The members of the more established French community had taken it upon themselves to arrange outings and parties, duly chaperoned, for their more recently arrived compatriots.
London was far different from the Paris Zoë remembered. And though she did not consider the English capital the equal of its French counterpart in grandeur or beauty, in all other respects she much preferred it. To walk through its streets without fear of molestation was an experience to which she felt she would never become accustomed. The shops on Bond Street, no less than the fashionables who crowded its pavements, quite bowled her over. There were trips to Ranleagh Gardens in Chelsea and to Vauxhall across the river, and not even the chill December weather could dispel one iota of her pleasure. Hyde Park was within walking distance and scarcely a day went by that Zoë and Francoise did not persuade one of the gentlemen to act as their escort. More often than not, it was Charles Lagrange who accompanied them. With Zoë his manner was avuncular. With Francoise he was invariably scrupulously correct.
“Hyde Park again?” he asked, mildly teasing. “That’s the third time this week. What’s the attraction?”
“Nothing…nothing,” answered Zoë at once, avoiding Francoise’s eyes. “Merely a walk to work up an appetite for dinner.”
She missed the amused glance her two companions exchanged. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, the moment when the fashionable houses of nearby Mayfair disgorged their blue-blooded occupants for their daily rendezvous in the park. The stylish carriages, the thoroughbred horses with their equally thoroughbred riders, the celebrated beauties—Zoë had never witnessed so much refinement in one place or such a display of elegance. Not that she would have admitted as much to her companions. Her extravagant admiration she deemed childish, and the last thing Zoë wanted was to be regarded in that light.
Her conviction that Hyde Park at five o’clock in the afternoon was the acme of elegance was dispelled on her first visit to the opera in the Hay Market’s King’s Theatre. The gorgeously bejeweled ladies in their opera boxes had her gaping. Surely Versailles at its zenith could not have boasted such splendor or ladies of such irrefutable breeding and grace.
It was Francoise who disabused her of such foolish notions.
“Fashionable impures?” repeated Zoë.
“That’s what the English call them. Look at them — like merchandise in a shop window! They rent these boxes at astronomical prices to sell their wares to the highest bidder.”
“Are you saying they are common prostitutes?”
“There’s nothing common about them,” Francoise snorted. “They’re at the top of their profession. Some of them are mistresses to the wealthiest titled gentlemen in all England.”
“Mistresses,” said Zoë, and shuddered. She felt as if someone had just walked over her grave. “What are you wearing to the party at Devonshire House?”
The subject of mistresses was dropped, as Zoë hoped it would be. But she could not shut her mind to the distasteful thoughts which the word had evoked.
The Christmas party at Devonshire House was an event which Zoë anticipated with mixed feelings. The do was in the nature of a charitable gesture towards the French community in London. And though Zoë deemed the duchess of Devonshire’s motives as the highest, she did not care to think of herself as the object of anyone’s charity.
She voiced that thought to Francoise and was reproached with the older girl’s irrefutable logic. “We are charity cases,” said Francoise. “The bread we eat, the garments we wear, the roof over our heads, even our pin money—where do you think it all comes from?”
Zoë had no answer. “Where?” she asked.
“From the fat purses of people like the Devonshires, that’s where. We should be grateful to them, Zoë.”
Zoë hastened to assure her friend that her gratitude was bottomless. Nevertheless, it was borne in upon her that she must give serious consideration to her future. She could not forever depend on the charity of others. If her parents did not come for her soon, she must strike out on her own. Madame Bertaut had intimated that there was time enough to find suitable employment in the new year, when the members of the ton returned to town from their great houses in the country.
“Madame has every confidence that she can place me as a companion or a children’s governess,” Zoë informed Francoise one evening as they undressed for bed.
“You know my feelings on that subject,” answered Francoise flatly.
Since Zoë’s first day in town, Francoise had dropped some elaborate hints about her one and only experience as a governess. As Zoë understood, she had been forced to hand in her notice or else be hounded into accepting carte blanche from the master of the house.
“Wedlock, Zoë. It’s the only solution for girls like us. Find yourself a young man before you are whisked off to some godforsaken place in the country. You’ll never find a husband there. Englishmen are not like to offer for dowerless French girls, whatever their pedigree.”
“I have no wish to marry,” demurred Zoë. At her friend’s words, her thoughts had taken flight. She was thinking of a young man with blond hair, whose eyes changed color with his moods. Her chevalier. “Rolfe.” She mouthed the word silently, over and over, as if it were a benediction, and wondered if it were his real name and where he was and what he was doing.
Rolfe eased back on the large fourposter bed, savoring the release of sexual tension which left him pleasantly replete. The warm, naked woman at his side moved restlessly and Rolfe stilled her with one arm flung carelessly around her waist.
“Rolfe?”
“Mmm?”
“You mustn’t fall asleep! Not here! Not unless you’re prepared for some very unpleasant consequences. I thought I told you. George is due to arrive within the hour.”
Roberta Ashton raised on one elbow and with the pads of her fingers lightly traced the slumberous features of the man who had just made love to her.
“George?” muttered Rolfe, and batted her hand away.
“My husband,” retorted his companion.
Rolfe opened one eye. “I thought you were separated.”
“He wants a reconciliation.” Amusement coated her voice.
“Damnation!”
In one smooth movement, Rolfe threw back the bedclothes and rolled to his feet. Unashamedly naked, he stalked the room, retrieving the garments he had practically torn from his person a scant hour before. The woman watched the play of candlelight on Rolfe’s sleek, muscular torso, and a soft purr caught in her throat.
“Don’t worry, darling,” she crooned, “George was never known for his punctuality.”
“I’m not worried.” The response was muffled. Rolfe was pulling his shirt over his head.
The lady dragged herself to a sitting position and artfully arranged the covers so that her up-tilted breasts peaked over the edge of the sheet. Her green eyes widened. Her lips pouted. She ran her fingers through her short titian ringlets, arranging them into a reasonable semblance of order. If Rolfe cared to glance in her direction, he must surely be struck by the picture she presented.
Rolfe looked straight at her. “Where are my boots?” he demanded.
“Try under the bed, darling.” Her tone was dulcet. It was through sheer force of will that she managed to restrain herself from gnashing her teeth.
The Honorable Mrs. Roberta Ashton prided herself on her strength of will. In her short liaison with Rolfe Brockford, the marquess of Rivard, she’d had more need of it than she’d had in the previous thirty years of her life. Not that the lady looked her age. With her high-breasted girlish figure and translucent complexion, she could easily pass for a woman a good five years younger, if she had a mind to. It so happened that she had a mind to.
“You have only to say the word, Rolfe, and I’ll send George packing.”
In the act of pulling on his boots, Rolfe stilled. He half-turned in his chair, and gave her a long level look. “Now why should you wish to do that?”
An angry flush spread from her throat to her hairline. This was not the answer she wanted. Her little ploy was meant to bring the marquess to heel. She knew, of course, that she was not the only woman in his life. He had never pretended otherwise. But she was the only woman of any significance. To her knowledge, Rolfe had never remained as constant in his attentions to any woman as he had to her. It was this thought which had given her the confidence to force his hand. She was coming to perceive that she had acted prematurely.
“I see,” she said carefully, and reached for a silk negligee which was spread on a chair beside the bed. She slipped her arms into it, and came to stand beside Rolfe. He was shrugging into his coat.
“You are jumping to conclusions, Rolfe. I didn’t say that I was returning to my husband. Nothing could be farther from my mind.” She touched a hand to the lapel of his coat and smoothed an imaginary wrinkle.
“You should give it some thought,” he answered seriously.
She stiffened. “So that’s it!” she exclaimed.
His eyebrows lifted.
“Off with the old love and on with the new?”
“What does that mean?”
“The opera dancer? The little brunette in the chorus? Your eyes never wavered from her all evening! Is that why you were as hot as coals for me tonight? You must think I’m a veritable innocent if I don’t know when a man is making love to me but thinking of another woman!” She could scarcely believe that she had betrayed herself by voicing the ugly suspicion. If she didn’t find her control, she knew she would lose him. “Forgive me, please? It’s…it’s been a wretched month without you.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “I’m jealous of any woman you look at. Can you blame me? Not only are you the most eligible bachelor in the whole of England, but the women who are eager to share your bed are legion.”
“Oh, legion!” he drawled.
“Darling,” she wheedled, “don’t you love me a little?”
“About as much as you love me, I should say,” he answered softly.
The snap of her teeth almost gave her away. Recovering quickly, she soothed, “If you only feel a fraction of what I feel for you, I shall be well satisfied.”
“Look, I do have to go. Do you mind?” Rolfe took a step backwards and her hands fell away from his shoulders.
“Shall…shall I see you tomorrow at the Devonshires’ do?”
“What about your husband?” He was scanning the room to see if he had left anything.
“Darling, I’ve already forgotten him.”
Before she could think of a way to detain him, he was striding out of the room. She ran to catch up with him and halted with one small hand on the balustrade. “Will you be at the Devonshires’ party?” Her eyes followed him as he descended the stairs two at a time.
When he reached the marble foyer, he glanced in her direction. After a slight hesitation, he answered, “I’ll be there.”
As he made his exit a frigid draft fanned the flames of the candles in the silver candelabrum which was set on an elaborately inlaid commode. The front door latched gently at his back. The lady turned aside and entered her chamber. The slam of her door reverberated ominously throughout the house.
Cursing the driving sleet, Rolfe turned up the collar of his greatcoat and struck out towards Piccadilly and his club in St. James. He was too keyed up, too restless, he decided, to go back to the big empty house in St. James Square. In a day or so, he would go down to Rivard Abbey. The thought should have filled him with pleasure. He cursed again, and wondered why the release of sexual tension left him strangely dissatisfied of late.
He must be tiring of his mistress, he decided. The thought amused him. It hardly seemed possible. Roberta Ashton was everything a man could possibly want in a mistress. Beneath her ethereal beauty beat the heart of a voraciously passionate woman. She was experienced and knew how to appease a man’s desire as well as rouse it. And if she occasionally showed symptoms of a jealous nature, he had no real quarrel with that. What woman didn’t? It was an annoyance men learned to tolerate.
That she was a married lady and moved in his own circles did not weigh with Rolfe. To his knowledge, the marriage was virtually over. It wasn’t only that George Ashton was a complacent husband. He was almost in his dotage. His grown children by his first marriage were older than his wife. The poor clod had mistaken the character of the dowerless young beauty who had latched onto the wealthy widower in her first season. He’d soon wakened to his mistake when his wife had taken a string of young lovers. Ever the gentleman, George had retired to the country, permitting his wife to go her own way.
Damn! He hated these games women played! She’d thought to make him jealous! Jealous! Her ploy was so patent that a callow youth could have seen through it. It was she who was the jealous one, as she’d proved by her reference to the little opera dancer.
She could not have been more mistaken in her assumptions. His attention had been fixed on the girl simply because she reminded him so forcibly of the child he had conveyed from Rouen to Coutances. Fleur Guéry. He’d promised himself that he would look her up once he was back in England. He’d been back for over a week, but there had been little enough time to find her direction. There had been a succession of interminable meetings with Tinténiac as Rolfe related some of what he’d observed in France. He’d never undergone such a thorough interrogation and had wondered what it might mean.
One thought led to another. He was almost at King Street before he realized he’d been so lost in reverie that he’d gone the length of St. James Street without turning into his club. Shrugging philosophically, he allowed his long strides to carry him forward.
The house in St. James Square was as fine as any to be found in the whole of London. Nevertheless, Rolfe was toying with the idea of putting it up for sale. There was no doubt that in the last number of years, the square had lost caste. Most of the nobility and gentry had moved westwards to Mayfair. Their places were being taken by rich cits, or worse, gaming dens and select bawdy houses. Behind those imposing facades, God only knew what depravities were being committed. Even to walk the length of King Street was an undertaking in itself. Ladies of the painted frailty with their retinue of liveried servants were very much in evidence. Not that Rolfe minded for himself. But his mother was scandalized by the incessant comings and goings in the square at all hours of the day and night. She was angling for a move to Mayfair. The most persuasive argument that she had put forward to date was that should her son marry in the near future, his bride’s innocence must be corrupted by the iniquities which were so blatantly perpetuated in and around St. James.
Wedlock. As he nursed a glass of fine French brandy before the blazing grate in his bookroom, Rolfe let the thought revolve in his mind. Again a feeling of restlessness swept over him. That he could not put his finger on the source of his dissatisfaction irked him excessively. Until less than a month before, he had not been plagued by such vague feelings of discontent. He had a full life. He wanted for nothing. He was seldom bored. How could he be in his line of work? Danger and boredom were, in essence, irreconcilable. On the other hand, wedlock and boredom were bedmates, if ton marriages were anything to go by. Perhaps it was boredom he craved?
From contemplating wedlock, Rolfe’s thoughts turned to his nieces. Spoiled little brats, he thought affectionately. The unspoken words immediately brought to mind the picture of another little girl, Fleur Guéry, with her huge doe eyes and solemn little face. Something about the child must have captivated him. Scarcely a day went by but his thoughts were drawn to her.
Stretching out his long legs, he crossed one booted foot over the other, wondering why it was he could not seem to put her out of his mind. His mistress, he knew, would be mortified if she knew that his thoughts dwelled more on this one slip of a girl than on any other female of his acquaintance. Frowning, he set down his glass sharply. A moment later, he took himself off to bed.