The advent of Jean Tresier into Zoë’s life marked a turning point. He was young, he was wealthy, he was received in the most prestigious salons of that new breed which now held sway in France, and he brought others with him. With the exception of her good friends, the Lagranges, and their small circle, Zoë had few friends. Suddenly, she was sought after. Scarcely a day went by that someone did not pay a call on the house in St. Germain, or take Zoë for a spin in his carriage. And none was more flatteringly attentive than one of the first friends Tresier brought with him.
Zoë recognized him at once. Paul Varlet had occasionally been a guest in the house in St. Germain. Like her father, he was a financier. According to Tresier, he was one of the richest men in France and had made his fortune in the last number of years as a supplier to the Revolutionary government for everything from tent poles to cannons.
By Zoë’s reckoning, Varlet was close to forty. His hair was dark with silver wings at the temples and cut in the new mode, just brushing the collar. With his aquiline features and somnolent expression, to Zoë’s eyes, he had the stamp of an aristocrat. She vaguely remembered her father having commented upon it at one time.
Though Varlet’s manners were charming, Zoë could never be quite comfortable in his company. She put it down to the difference in their ages. Or perhaps it was because he had a way of speaking to her that made her think he was playing Pygmalion to her Galatea.
“Zoë could be one of them if she had a mind to,” he remarked idly, his eyes scanning with approval Zoë’s yellow salle with its fine furniture waxed to a satiny patina, and its silk drapes and upholstery in shades of gold, the perfect complement to Zoë’s beauty. “What do you think, Jean?”
“Indubitably,” answered Tresier. His eyes were watchful.
Zoë lowered the lid of the piano and swiveled to face her companions. “What could I be if I had a mind to?” she asked.
With leisurely grace, Varlet crossed to the piano and lounged against it. “One of the lionesses of Parisian society.”
“You’re hoaxing me!”
“Why should you think so?”
“I don’t know the first thing about society or how to go on in it. You forget, I was barely out of the schoolroom when I fled to England.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You look older,” commented Tresier from across the room in his comfortable chair.
Surprise and pleasure etched Zoë’s finely sculpted features. Her eyes danced. “Do you think so?”
Varlet laughed. “You should be glad that you are so young. Innocence is a priceless commodity. Once lost it can never be regained.”
Zoë blushed, not quite knowing why she should do so. She was glad when Tresier joined them at the piano.
“What exactly have you in mind, Paul?” he asked pointedly.
Varlet made a leisurely study of the blushing girl. “I should like to make Mademoiselle Devereux over,” he said. “If she will permit it, that is. With the right clothes and coiffure, she would outshine every other lady of my acquaintance.”
“Why should you be the one to make her over?” asked the younger man, a note of hostility creeping into his tone. “Why not I?”
“I haven’t said that I wish to be made over,” protested Zoë. Her eyes dropped to take in the fresh white muslin, and her hands wandered to the neatly braided coronet on the crown of her head. “What’s wrong with the way I look?” she demanded.
“You look charming,” soothed Varlet, and then spoiled it by adding, “if you like the ingénue look.”
What Zoë wanted was that sophistication, that polish which was the mark of all her husband’s women, and which he had once denied that she possessed. And if she had to choose a mentor from between her two companions, she knew that she would chose Varlet over Tresier.
Varlet was older, more urbane, a connoisseur of everything from fine wines to correct etiquette. She sensed intuitively that he would know to a nicety how to help a lady acquire the polish she so much desired. Oh yes, as a mentor, Varlet would be without peer. But she knew that she would rather have Tresier for a friend.
“I have no wish to be made over,” she said, and rising to her feet, led the way to a circular table in front of the grate. “You’ll take a glass of chocolate?”
“Thank you,” said both gentlemen in unison.
Zoë graciously poured chocolate from the silver pitcher which Salome had set down only moments before. The door opened, and for some few minutes, conversation flagged as a magnificent black man, a giant of a person, resplendent in white satin breeches and scarlet tunic came sauntering into the room.
“My new footman,” said Zoë in an undertone and almost cringed when the giant bent over her. “Thank you, Samson.” She saw that he was offering her a tray of sweets and indicated that he should set it on the center of the table.
Having done this he straightened and stationed himself behind Zoë’s chair.
“You may go, Samson,” encouraged Zoë. She breathed a sigh when, after a slight show of reluctance, the footman withdrew.
With a gesture, Zoë invited the gentlemen to help themselves to the sweets. Varlet demurred, but Tresier selected a marzipan and proceeded to munch his way through it. The conversation, quite naturally, turned to the friends and acquaintances the two gentlemen held in common. From there it moved to the salons of the foremost Parisian hostesses.
By a remarkable coincidence, these ladies were mostly known to Zoë, though distantly. Through marriage or birth, they were related to the great international banking families.
Madame de Staël, the wife of the Swedish ambassador, was the intellectual of the group. Poets, philosophers, and men of letters were the patrons of her salon. Madame Tallien was close to government circles. Her former lover, who had since wed her, was a powerful member of the Convention. And Madame Récamier, that child bride of Récamier the financier, attracted an audience of those who came merely to worship at the shrine of her beauty and charm. Of the three, Zoë had paid a morning call only on Madame Récamier, and with good reason. Salome, turning belligerent, had warned her young mistress off cultivating the acquaintance of ladies of tarnished virtue. Juliette Récamier was acceptable since she was as virtuous as she was beautiful.
“Does Madame Récamier frequent Theresia Tallien’s salon?” asked Zoë.
“She does. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.
Laughter glimmered at the back of Varlet’s eyes. As if reading her thoughts, he remarked, “We live in a new era, Zoë. The old manners and modes have all but vanished. Very few of us can afford to have the embers of our past histories raked over. You must either accept things as they are, or make up your mind to live in a cloister.” More gently he added, “Theresia Tallien is accepted everywhere. There is nothing amiss in your attending the salons of Theresia or Germaine, yes and even Josephine Beauharnais’s. However, it would be ill-advised for one of your innocence to make a confidante of these worldly ladies.”
Soon after, the two gentlemen took their leave, and Zoë flew to the long pier glass between the two windows. She turned herself first one way, then the other, and wondered, rather sadly, how it was possible to make herself over. Perhaps, if he raised the subject again, she would accept Varlet’s offer.
As she studied her reflection in the mirror, Salome wandered in unobserved. For a few moments, she regarded Zoë posturings before interrupting, “What was he doing here?”
“Who?”
“Varlet.”
“Just a morning call, nothing more.”
“He was here before.”
“Yes, Monsieur Varlet has called a time or two this past week.”
“No, no! Salome means long before. She had forgotten, but now she remembers. He came the morning after you set out for Rouen, when your Maman and Papa were arrested.”
“Really?” Zoë gave the matter some thought. “How strange that he never mentioned it. What did he want? Did he say?”
Salome snorted. “He said he had come to help after he heard your parents were arrested. When he found that you were not here, he was very angry.”
“How…how kind of him,” said Zoë. “I wonder if Monsieur Varlet was one of Papa’s special friends.” Suddenly, she was feeling very much warmer towards Paul Varlet.
“Salome sees the way he looks at you and she doesn’t like it,” said Zoë’s maid.
“By the holy virgin, Salome, he’s old enough to be my father! We’re friends, that’s all.”
“A man and a woman can never be friends,” disclaimed Salome. “He kissed your fingers.”
Zoë’s back was to her maid, the delinquent fingers busily adjusting the music on the piano. “What of it? With you and Samson always spying on me, what can go wrong? Lord, it’s embarrassing, sometimes, the way you both trot in every few minutes on some pretext or other. Nobody would ever think that I was the mistress of this house.”
“That’s not it,” said Salome. “Neither Varlet nor Tresier is the man for you. It was in the cards. There is one coming who—”
Zoë spun to face her maid. “Good God, Salome!” she cried out. “We’ll soon be stepping into the nineteenth century! We’re Christians, for heaven’s sake. You mustn’t practice that…that hocus-pocus which you brought with you from the islands. You’ll have us all taken for witches and burned at the stake if you’re not careful, that’s what you’ll do.”
Salome drew herself up to her full height. “Salome is a good witch and a good Catholic,” she said.
“Oh God!” groaned Zoë. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were a bad witch or—”
“Your maman knew it. She listened to old Salome.” Arms akimbo, head nodding, Salome went on inexorably, “You had better listen to old Salome’s words. Only bad cards have turned up for this family for years past. Now the cards have turned in our favor.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” said Zoë.
“You’ll see. Salome will know him when he comes. And you had better not let this one slip through your fingers.”
“Who is coming?”
“You’ll see.” And with that unsatisfyingly cryptic rejoinder, Salome turned on her heel and left her mistress to the dubious consolation of her music.
When next Varlet paid a call on Zoë, Tresier was not present. He found her far more amenable to his suggestions than formerly. And when she shyly thanked him for coming to the house so soon after her parents’ arrest he understood the change in her. By the time he rose to leave, Zoë had agreed to allow him a free hand in preparing her for her entrance into Parisian society.
“We shall begin with the dancing master,” he said.
Zoë just looked at him as if he had gone stark, raving mad. She knew the steps of all the dances.
“Reserve all your mornings for the dancing master,” were the last words he called out before Zoë shut the front doors upon him.
The dancing master who introduced himself to Zoë the following morning was of the old school, that is, the instruction of dancing was only a very small part of his repertoire. Monsieur Montmercy regarded himself, first and foremost, as an educator, a purveyor of style, of that polish which a gentleman or lady of fashion must acquire. “Rank is nothing. Quality is everything” was his motto.
Laughing with disbelief, Zoë heard him out as the old chevalier instructed her on how to enter a roomful of people. The laughter was wiped from her face when she discerned that the old gentleman was perfectly serious. Over and over, time without number, he made her rehearse her steps, her smiles, her curtsies, her opening remarks after imaginary introductions were made.
“The entry of a young lady or gentleman into society requires serious study,” he was to repeat without ceasing in the days that followed. No gesture, no movement, was so elevated or so trivial that it could not be practised with profit.
She had not known that there was an art to putting on and taking off her bonnet. And who would have suspected that a lady’s skirts must be shaken out just so, as if she were a dancer in the chorus of the Opera? And it went without saying that the correct mode with a fan was a science which would take a lifetime’s study to master with anything resembling style.
Zoë set herself to practicing with religious zeal. Once having made up her mind that she would acquire “polish” or die in the attempt, she let nothing stand in her way. Nor did she make the slightest objection when Varlet engaged a modiste for her. She was paying the shot, she reminded herself. She was under no obligation to him. Still, she was curious.
“Why are you doing all this?” she was finally moved to ask. He had taken her to Tourtoni’s for one of its famous ices. She could not help remembering another occasion when a gentleman had taken her out for an ice. But that was in another lifetime. Rolfe’s face, as clear as a picture, flashed into her head. She stifled a pang and with great deliberation she forced the image to retreat. Giving her full attention to her companion she repeated, “Why are you doing all this?” Suddenly, she sliced him an affronted look and exclaimed, “Paul, if this has anything to do with a wager…”
“You misjudge me!” he protested. He stroked one long finger under his chin. He caught her stare, and smiled. “I’ve known you since you were in the cradle,” he remarked.
Zoë’s eyebrows winged upwards. “Have you?” she asked. “I had not known you were so old.”
Feigning an air of injury, he quizzed, “I attended many a reception at your parents’ home. Surely you must have noticed me?”
“Naturally! But only from a distance. I wasn’t permitted to attend grown-up parties.”
“I noticed you.”
“Did you truly?” She made no attempt to conceal her surprise.
“Peering over the balustrade in the gallery, your eyes as big as saucers.”
“I remember.” A small smile turned up her lips. Her eyes wandered and gazed into space. As from a great distance she murmured, “In those days, the ladies were all so beautiful, and the gentlemen looked like demigods.”
Covering her clasped hands with one of his own, he spoke softly, as if afraid to shatter the moment. “I think I lost a little bit of my heart to you even then.”
Her withdrawal was so gradual it was scarcely noticeable. Varlet was aware of it, and said in a more natural tone, “I always promised myself that one day, when it was time for you to enter society, I would be there, just for the pleasure of watching that little cygnet turn into a swan.”
His words startled a laugh out of her. “Cygnet! That’s not very complimentary!”
He guided her out of Tourtoni’s and handed her into his waiting carriage. She was comfortable with him again and on the return drive to St. Germain, he was careful to steer the conversation into neutral channels.
Later, as his valet de chambre assisted him to dress for a night on the town, his thoughts wandered to Zoë as he had remembered her as a little girl. It was the elder sister, Claire, who was always referred to as the beauty of the family. But it was the younger girl with her lost, doe-eyed air which had made the lasting impression on him. She still had that same look of innocence.
It was fortunate that he had not declared himself that afternoon. To do so would have been premature. She would have refused him. He must approach her cautiously, persuade her by degrees that marriage to him was eminently suitable.
Varlet was not the only gentleman who harbored thoughts of wedded bliss with Zoë. Jean Tresier was reflecting that already he felt a great affection for the girl. In the meantime, it could only do him good to be seen in her company. His creditors would know what to make of it. The thought that his motives were entirely mercenary, he rejected out of hand. He was genuinely fond of Zoë. She needed someone, some man, to manage her affairs. It was no fault of his that the Tresiers had lost their vast wealth. While other speculators had made capital of the upheaval in France with the advent of the Revolution, his father had seen fit to squander the Tresier fortune on the losing Royalist cause. The knowledge that the debts which he had since incurred were for nothing more pressing than to maintain a style of living well beyond his means, did not trouble him overmuch. Once he married Zoë, his troubles would be at an end.
He must warn her off Varlet. Without conceit, he knew himself to be a far more preferable suitor for the girl’s hand than the debauched older man, even supposing his debts were astronomical.
“Jean?”
Rose was restless. He adjusted his naked body to the fit of hers. “What is it, chérie?”
“What are you thinking, Jean?”
He would have to tell her soon, of course. But not yet. He would delay for as long as possible. Rose might be only his mistress, but she truly loved him. He cupped a hand round her breast. “That is what I am thinking,” he whispered. And very soon after, he proved the truth of his words.
How odd, thought Zoë, a fortnight later, that having just acquired a whole new wardrobe of gowns and having paid no inconsiderable sum for that pleasure, all she could see when she opened the press in her chamber was a cloud of white fluff.
“They’re all white,” declared Salome gratuitously. She peered into the cavernous depths of the clothes press.
Immediately on the defensive, Zoë protested, “Yes, but no two gowns are alike.”
“They all look the same,” insisted Salome.
Stifling her own thoughts on the subject, Zoë adopted a superior air. “If you look closely, Salome, you’ll observe that the muslin of each gown is vastly different.” Those were the very words the modiste had used when Zoë, herself, had voice a similar misgiving. She tried to recall more of what the modiste had said. “Details, Salome,” said Zoë airily. “It’s the details that make the difference in the new fashion. Sleeves, hems, embroidery, ribbons, feathers, and such like—ladies of discriminating taste know what to look for.”
Salome pressed her lips together, and Zoë was saved from further defense by the arrival of the hairdresser. Clad only in a silk wrapper, she stared solemnly at her reflection in the mirror as Monsieur André brushed out her waist-long hair.
“Your hair is very beautiful,” remarked that gentleman, cocking his head first one way then the other, “but so démodé. When I have finished with Mademoiselle, the transformation will be astounding. Not all ladies have the head and face to carry off the new mode. This long neck?” He held the weight of Zoë’s hair over her crown to make his point, “It will show the ringlets to advantage. And those enormous eyes of yours? We shall brush the tiny curls forward to emphasize them even more. Oh yes, when I have finished with you, Mademoiselle, you will resemble Aphrodite herself.”
The scissors were poised to sever the offensive mane when Zoë cried out, “Wait!”
“Ah,” said Monsieur André, lowering the scissors, “I know how it is. It feels like an amputation, non? It is always the same with ladies who have preserved their locks for so many years. May I suggest, Mademoiselle, that you close your eyes?” He angled her an encouraging smile. “The surgery is quite painless.”
But it wasn’t painless, not really. Her waist-length hair symbolized her last link to Rolfe. He had forbidden her ever to cut it. At each slice of the shears, something inside her seemed to wince in pain. Tears squeezed from beneath her lowered lashes.
It was absurd to be moved to tears by the loss of her hair when she had been dry-eyed on the day she had taken the irrevocable step of divorcing her husband. Charles Lagrange had accompanied her to the law courts. In a matter of minutes, the thing was done. And she had a piece of paper to show for it.
Divorce, as she understood, was almost impossible to obtain in England. Short of murdering her, there was no way Rolfe could have extricated himself from his unwanted marriage. She could almost imagine his relief when he was informed that she had no claims on him. Charles had undertaken the office of conveying the report of the divorce to Rolfe. Zoë had no notion how this might be achieved, especially as their two countries were at war. But Charles had assured her that, for those in the know, the lines of communication between France and England were still open.
Rolfe’s sense of relief, she was persuaded, could not be greater than her own. She could never think of him without experiencing the humiliation she had suffered at his hands. She had tried to put it from her mind, to no avail. It seemed that she must relive, in minute detail, that last scene between them, when he had called her by another woman’s name.
In the days which had followed, during that last week in England, she’d been tormented by thoughts of Rolfe with the girl called Rosamund. Without betraying her interest, she had persuaded the Lagranges to take her to Covent Garden. For her vulgar, almost obsessive curiosity, she had paid an exorbitant price. Roberta Ashton, the lady at the Devonshires’ Christmas party, pretending to be her friend, had carried her off to her own box during one of the intervals, and had put her wise to what Rolfe had been up to whilst his wife was buried in the depths of the country, callously abandoned to the mercies of his mother.
And this was the man she had hero-worshipped? This was the man whom she’d considered the brightest and best of everything England had to offer, the epitome of the English gentleman, the flower of English manhood? The man was a faithless libertine, indulging in every debauchery her young mind could conceive. And if he had not made her a laughingstock, it was because scarcely a person knew of her existence. How should they? He had made no attempt to introduce her to any of his friends. He was ashamed of her. He didn’t want her, had never wanted her, and she was coming to realize how wise she was to return to her own kind.
But there was one more wrenching mortification to endure before the awful, horrible evening came to an end. As Charles Lagrange handed her into his hired carriage, she looked over his shoulder and she saw him, there, in the shadows, coming out of the theatre, his arms wrapped around a woman, dragging her to him for an openmouthed kiss that had Zoë’s stomach clenched in knots. She knew the color rushed from her face. Lagrange twisted his head, following her gaze. Thankfully, he did not know her husband, did not recognize the face of the man who was embracing the woman so passionately, making a public spectacle of himself.
Lagrange had made some biting comment about the vulgarity of the younger generation and had thrust Zoë inside the carriage. She had not said two words on the drive to Soho Square, but her thoughts were killing her.
Wave after wave of shame washed through her. His mother had told her the truth, and she had not believed her. Charlotte had tried to explain the English mode for married couples, and she had supposed that she knew better. Oh God, in her abysmal ignorance and innocence, she had offered herself to a man she must, in her saner moments, despise. She did despise him. It was an illusion she had loved. That man of her dreams was only that—a dream. He had no existence outside of her imagination. And soon, she would cease to think of him altogether.
She was free. She was independently wealthy. And she had an entrée into the most prestigious salons in the world. Paris was her oyster, and she would be a fool if she could not be the happiest of girls.
There, it was done. Her head was shorn and the heavy weight of her hair lay in discarded skeins at her feet. She tossed her head, testing the new freedom.
“Mademoiselle is pleased?”
“Oh yes,” she said without having to think about it. She ran her fingers through her short crop of dark hair and admired the way in arranged itself into tiny waves and curls. She smiled cockily at the image in her mirror, and the new Zoë, remarkably matured, smiled back at her.
Later that evening, decked out in one of her new transparent, gauze evening dresses and with her shorn locks clinging like a silk cap to her shapely head, Zoë made her entrance into Madame Tallien’s salon on Paul Varlet’s arm. Her manners, her address, no less than her beauty, won instant admiration. There was nothing unusual in this. Paris had a surfeit of beautiful women who could hold their own with rapier-sharp wit. But it was soon perceived that Zoë had a talent which few could boast. She had an unerring tact which deflected the poisoned barb before it could find its mark. She was a soft-hearted girl, virtuous without being a prude. Oh yes, Mademoiselle Zoë could flirt with the best of them, and remain politely but firmly chaste. And who could deny that she played the piano like an angel? By the end of the week, Zoë was acclaimed as the darling of society. When she opened the doors to her own salon, all Paris flocked to it.