The scent of camellia warned him, but seconds too late. He was already inside his suite. Or more pertinently, Isolde was already inside.
And warned or not, he couldn’t retreat with Lucie asleep in her room.
He stood with his hand still on the door latch, his back against the closed door, exhausted, impatient, painfully aware Isolde was going to exact a high price for her presence.
“How did you get in?” he softly said.
Seated on the sofa, she faced him across the lamplit room. “The night clerk was so very accommodating when I told him I was your wife.” She was ablaze with diamonds, the richness of her toilette reminding him disagreeably of their wedding, when the papers had reported on the noteworthy value of her jewelry along with all the other details of the aristocratic nuptials.
“Where’s Mrs. Richards?” He spoke very quietly, his hands at his sides as though ready for a gunfight.
“With our darling daughter, of course. You needn’t glare like that, they’re both quite safe.”
The word “safe” brought with it apprehension. “Who else is here?” he asked.
“Just my driver and maid, darling.”
“Where?” His gaze swept the room.
“Why, protecting Lucie and Mrs. Richards.” Her reply held menace.
“You obviously want something, Isolde,” he carefully said, prepared to negotiate. “Why don’t we come to some agreement and you can be on your way?” He wanted her out of the suite and away from Lucie as soon as possible. He’d pay any price to protect his daughter. “You must want money. You never wanted anything else from me. Tell me how much.”
“What a cynic you’ve become, sweetheart. Your new little whore must be having a bad influence on you.”
“Look, Isolde,” he murmured, controlling his urge to strangle her and be done with it. “We can trade insults all night, but I’m in a damnable hurry, so if you’ll speak plainly, I’d appreciate it. I’m leaving for Montana on the eight o’clock train.”
“How convenient. We’ll go with you.”
“No.” Blunt as a hammer blow.
“Darling,” Isolde gently reproached, “how terribly rude. Do you mean to tell me I can’t come to Montana with you?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” He would manage to keep Lucie safe without the ultimate price of Isolde back in their life.
“I’m afraid, then, I’m going to have to disagree,” she calmly said, drawing a derringer from beneath the frothy folds of her skirt.
For a stark moment he couldn’t believe it. Twice in less than an hour, he thought. The dark spirits were looking for his blood tonight. He inhaled, slowly let his breath out, and quietly said, “What the hell is this all about, Isolde? You know killing me won’t make you any richer. You’re clearly left out of my will with the exception of the more-than-generous sum we agreed on for living expenses.”
“I’m interested in having sex with you tonight.” She could have been saying “Pass the salt,” so expressionless was her tone.
“Have you lost your mind?” For a man who prided himself on sangfroid, his astonishment showed.
“Really, dear,” she mildly observed. “You’ve always entertained a great number of ladies. It won’t take long.”
“I’ll pass.” With the same firm conviction he would reject the guillotine.
“I don’t recall asking for your approval.”
“Is this a command performance?”
“Merely a necessity.”
“I won’t under any circumstances. Shoot me,” he blandly said, the range on her derringer not sufficient to do more than wound him; his revolver, on the other hand, could kill her nicely.
“Why don’t I have my servants shoot Mrs. Richards instead?” Isolde said as if she were selecting a new hat from a number of choices. “She’s so much more expendable.”
She might. With Isolde he couldn’t be certain. He’d seen her beat a servant with a riding crop once, and if he’d not come in on the scene and stopped her, the girl would have been severely hurt. “Do you want to be fucked there on the sofa?” Adam coolly replied. “Or somewhere else?”
“The sofa will be fine. Let me call my two witnesses.”
And then he understood. Two witnesses were required to corroborate conjugal relations. Could she have anticipated his desire for an annulment after meeting Flora? But even children didn’t matter in an annulment, and certainly not conjugal relations. The second possibility was that she was pregnant and in the market for a legal father. The baron must have shirked his duty. His vote was for possibility number two.
How ironic. The woman he loved couldn’t have children, and the wife he despised wished him to be the father of her child.
Again.
When Isolde’s servants came into the sitting room from Lucie’s bedroom, Isolde’s handsome young driver gave Adam pause, and he considered perhaps he was standing in as father for a servant’s child. Isolde’s maid was a bold piece who cast a slow, appreciative glance his way and licked her lips as though she were anticipating the coming occasion with personal pleasure.
Adam calmly watched without expression when Isolde had her maid lock the door to Lucie’s room as a precaution against Mrs. Richards’s escaping. He took note of the time with a swift glance at the mantel clock, for he intended to be on the train when it left—with Lucie and Mrs. Richards safe and without the added baggage of his wife and her entourage. It wasn’t a matter of negotiating anymore; it was a question of survival.
“Is all in readiness?” Adam sardonically inquired as Isolde handed her derringer to her maid and the young manservant took a revolver from his coat pocket. “I can’t remember when I last performed for an audience. It was in my adolescence, I think, when debauch was a delight in itself.”
The manservant gazed at Isolde with a transient lasciviousness as Adam spoke, and Adam decided the paternity of Isolde’s child was definitely at issue.
“Kindly do what you do so well, Adam,” Isolde coolly said, kicking off her silk slippers and lying back on the sofa, “and we can all be on our way to Montana.”
“I’d forgotten how romantic your sensibilities are,” Adam murmured, moving toward her. “It certainly puts me in an amorous mood.”
“As I recall, mood has nothing to do with your amorous propensities. All you need is an available woman.”
“Well, we’ll certainly put rumor to the test now, won’t we, darling? I pray I don’t disappoint you. Do you still squeal when you climax?” he inquired, watching the young driver with an oblique look.
Apparently she does, he thought with amusement; the man’s face had flushed a rosy hue.
Sitting on the couch at Isolde’s feet, he slipped his shoes off, smiled at the witnesses, and sardonically said, “Pay attention, now, I don’t care to repeat this.” Then, turning to the woman who had made his life hell on numerous occasions the last five years, he added, “Shut your eyes and think of money.”
Leaning forward, he pushed her skirt up with both hands and, taking her by the shoulders, moved as if to adjust her beneath him. But his left hand flashed downward, slid under his trouser cuff, closed on the bone handle of his knife, and wrenched it from its scabbard. Jerking Isolde upright, he swung her around so she faced their audience and pressed the razor-sharp blade against her throat. Two drops of blood trickled down her pale neck.
“Now, then,” Adam serenely said, “let’s discuss this situation. Not you, Isolde, you could bleed to death if you so much as move. I can’t guarantee my temper at the moment.” And he took vengeful delight in her wide-eyed fear. In all the years of their marriage he’d never raised his hand to her, but she’d finally demanded too much. “Hand me both those guns first,” he ordered the servants, sliding his revolver from his holster and aiming it at the driver. “Don’t dally. I’d really like to kill my wife. I may anyway,” he thoughtfully added, “but if you cooperate,” he went on with a tight smile, “at least I won’t kill you.” He had no intention of firing his weapon unless absolutely necessary. With the limited time before train departure, he couldn’t afford the imbroglio sure to follow a discharge of firearms inside the Clarendon.
The guns were immediately turned over because neither servant cared to die for Isolde. She didn’t inspire loyalty. After disarming them Adam directed the maid and driver to the bureau drawer that held his latest poker winnings. “You may divide it between you,” he said, “and then kindly leave Saratoga. There should be enough money to satisfy you both.”
It took some time for the servants to count the money, but when the last bill had been tallied in a perfect division of spoils, they cheerfully left.
“You should pay your help better. Isolde,” Adam suggested as the door clicked shut behind them, “and they might be willing to put up a slight struggle for you.” Releasing her, he pushed her away, tired of her machinations, genuinely fatigued, pressed by time to arrange his departure. “If you need money,” he said, leaning back against the sofa, the weariness in his voice profound, “tell me and I’ll write you a draft. But I don’t want to see you again.”
“You can’t get rid of me that easily, Adam,” Isolde replied with a loathsome smile. “We’re married and we’ll stay married, despite what you wish.” She held the final card, the unbeatable one, with divorce illegal in France. “Your engagement to that Englishwoman will have to be eternal.” She reclined against the sofa arm in a casual languor as if they were enjoying a late night tête-à-tête.
“Maybe I should just kill you now,” Adam said with disgust, sick to death of her viciousness, of her venal self-interest. “I could strangle you, pack your body in a trunk, and toss you off the train our first night out. Don’t press your luck. Now, if you want money, tell me. I won’t offer again.”
His voice held a morbid finality Isolde hadn’t heard before. An astute observer of the male sex and a businesswoman at heart, she sensibly said, “Fifty thousand.”
“Go to Morrissey’s in the morning and they’ll give you the money.” His voice was no more than a murmur, his eyes half-shut.
Reaching down for her silk slippers, Isolde slid them on and, rising, straightened her skirt as if they’d just shared no more than a cozy chat. “You know a divorce isn’t possible,” she coolly said, “even if I was obliging enough to give you one. And you know how your brothers feel.”
“I don’t care how they feel. If I did, I’d be a martinet like them with my major interest court politics and the price of the emperor’s favor.”
“Napoleon’s made them extremely wealthy.”
“Our father left us wealthy. Napoleon’s friendship just helped. Maybe you chose the wrong brother to ensnare.”
“I don’t like court.”
“Reason enough, I suppose,” he sarcastically drawled. Looking up at her, he wondered what made her so malevolent. Although, knowing her family, he thought, it was understandable. “I don’t care to discuss any of this with you,” he deliberately said, and rising from the sofa, he moved away. The camellia scent surrounding her almost made him nauseated. “Just go.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you in love, Adam,” she said, intent on a last uncharitable comment before she left. “It’s quite unmistakable. Like a sad young boy,” she chided. “But, then, I shouldn’t complain,” she went on with a flaunting smile. “It’s made you more generous than usual.”
He turned away from her because he didn’t trust his temper, concentrating on the garden scene outside the window. And when he heard the door click shut, he exhaled like a man reprieved from a death sentence.
He didn’t unlock Lucie’s bedroom door until he’d secured the suite door behind his wife. As if her spirit might still return to harm his daughter.
Adam found Mrs. Richards seated beside Lucie’s bed, his daughter blessedly asleep. “They’re gone,” he quietly said. “Did Lucie know—”
“The darling slept through everything,” Cook quickly interjected. “Thank the Lord. I just knew you’d send them on their way once you came back, Mr. Serre, but I don’t mind saying, those two servants made me a mite nervous. They’d steal the gold from a dead man’s teeth.”
“I appreciate your taking such good care of Lucie. I’m deeply in your debt.”
“Is she coming to Montana?” Mrs. Richards inquired, her tone contemptuous.
“No,” Adam firmly declared.
“Good!” Cook declared, rising from her chair. “I’ll finish packing, then. I was almost done when she came in,” Mrs. Richards darkly noted.
“Just take what we can carry ourselves. The rest can be sent later. I don’t want our departure to cause attention.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”