PARIS―SIX YEARS LATER
She was supposed to be dead. Being a practical man, Will did not believe in ghosts so he couldn’t account for the apparition standing in front of him.
Elinor Dunsmore. Elle. The chatter of the surrounding guests winnowed down to a light buzz in his ears. It had been almost six years since the last time he’d set eyes on her, since the disastrous evening of her eighteenth birthday. She’d been dead for five years, although reports of her passing had clearly been false.
He adjusted his spectacles, his heart pounding hard against his ribs. His mind struggled to reconcile what his eyes were telling him. Elinor alive? How could it be? It was impossible. Unfathomable. If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect the lenses were failing him, but there was no mistaking that smoky gray gaze tinged with mischievous merriment. Had she been in Paris all this time?
“Drink?” Lucian Verney’s voice echoed from some faraway place. “I say, would you like a drink?” he repeated.
Dragging his gaze from Elinor’s ghost, Will focused on Lucian standing before him thrusting a wineglass in his direction. He took it and swallowed a fortifying gulp of the earthy burgundy. “The woman with Whitworth’s wife…who is she?”
“Devil if I know.”
“You’ve never seen her before?”
“Not in the two months I’ve been here.” Although Lucian was a few years younger, he and Will had moved in some of the same circles in London. Lucian had joined the diplomatic corps straight out of Oxford and was now stationed in the French capital.
Will stared at Elle, the old pain flaring in his chest again. How was it possible for her to be standing in a Paris drawing room making polite conversation with French officials and British diplomats? Tristan Fitzroy had sworn she was dead and buried in a Paris grave far from home.
Was it all an elaborate ruse? Outrage curled in his gut as he pondered the grim possibilities. Elle’s father had once loved Fitzroy—a friend and neighbor—like a son, but Fitzroy had recently proven himself to be an unscrupulous bastard capable of the greatest of betrayals. Could bearing false witness to Elle’s supposed death be another of them?
He kept his gaze trained on her, part of him fearful she’d vanish again if he looked away or even blinked. She had adopted the new French style of dressing, draping herself in fabric so sheer that no reasonable Englishwoman would ever dare appear thus in public.
His lungs ached as he drank in the sight of her. The diaphanous Grecian-like confection showcased her long legs, the flesh-colored drawers beneath adding to the illusion of indecency. The draping material seemed to caress the small bosom and slim hips he’d once known intimately—had practically worshipped, really—before she’d abruptly vanished from his life. Her sole concession to modesty was the gold embroidered shawl draped over one shoulder and tucked around her slender waist, but it did little to hide the full power of her feminine allure.
The Elle he remembered would not view her attire as scandalous; she would be attracted by its freshness and artistry. Even as a young girl, she’d always embraced the new and the different, had always sought the next exciting exploit.
Her exit from his life had forever altered him and the course of his future. He’d mourned her not once, but twice—first when she’d slipped away to marry her Frenchman without a word to him, and then again, about a year later, when he’d learned she’d died in the childbed. Yet here she was, looking decidedly robust for someone who’d supposedly been tucked up with a spade for several years. Whatever had delayed her journey to kingdom come, a deeply buried part of him was grateful; she was a welcome sight for his desolate eyes, for a heart still ravaged by her abrupt departure from his life.
How many times had he imagined this moment—the chance to see her again? How many conversations had he carried on with her in his mind, ranting at her for deserting him, then holding her close, offering reassurance that all was forgiven? He’d told himself that, given the opportunity to do it all over again, he wouldn’t leave her, not even for a day, and he would speak the truth of what was in his heart—that she was everything to him. That there had never been anyone else. Now, suddenly, by some unfathomable twist of fate, here she was, but he couldn’t think of anything to say to her, except to ask how her presence here this evening was even remotely possible.
She conversed animatedly with two Englishwomen, including the formidable wife of Lord Whitworth, the Crown’s current ambassador to Paris. A barrel-chested man with an erect posture approached the ladies and placed a proprietary hand at the small of Elle’s sylphic back. She greeted the man with a cool smile that revealed the animal-like points of her incisors, a charmingly imperfect smile that tinged her aristocratic bearing with a certain recklessness that never failed to stir him.
Jealousy stabbed his gut, the heat of it spreading through his belly like a contagion. There was no mistaking the newcomer’s falconlike features and permanent scowl. Gerard Duret. He wondered what the devil Elle was doing cavorting with members of Napoléon’s inner circle while her family in England mourned her death.
“But I do know the cull with her,” Lucian was saying. “That’s Général Duret. He’s the one you have to watch out for. He’ll be the first to drive a sword through our collective heart once the peace fails.”
Will was well acquainted with the man’s reputation. Général Gerard Duret of the Corsican’s police ministry was highly placed in Napoléon’s intelligence network.
“Ah, here’s your French ami.” Lucian turned to greet Henri D’Aubigne and gestured in Elle’s direction. “Naismith is inquiring after Duret’s companion.”
“You speak of Madame Laurent?” The freethinking writer seemed to know everyone in Paris and his fervent dislike of Napoléon made him a valuable informant. “She is most charming. Duret is so entranced that he guards the lady like the most precious of diamonds. It is understood that his wife is most displeased.”
“Is he docking her?” Lucian asked.
“So it is rumored.” Henri selected a quenelle from the silver tray proffered by a roaming footman. English funds kept the portly sybarite well supplied with rich food and quality spirits, indulgences evidenced by his perpetually flushed cheeks and the strain of his silk waistcoat across a generous abdomen. “But one never knows for certain.”
Duret’s mistress. “Does she live here in Paris?” Will asked.
“She used to reside in the city with her husband, the Vicomte Rodolphe Laurent, but she disappeared for many years after the vicomte’s tragic end.”
His chest burned at the mention of Elle’s dead husband. It was pathetic to be jealous of a corpse, but he couldn’t help harboring bitterness for the nobleman Elle had chosen over him.
“What happened to the husband?” Lucian asked.
“He departed for his club one evening and never returned.” Henri’s shiny, bald pate glistened as he bit into the meatball. “Laurent’s body turned up a few days later. His sad demise was either the handiwork of footpads or the unfortunate result of lingering revolutionary fervor.”
Will watched Elle lean closer to Duret to whisper into his ear. “But that was years ago. Where has she been since then?”
“Je ne sais pas. She reappeared a few months ago and has taken to hosting salons, which are de rigueur in society this Season.”
“Have you attended her gatherings?” Will asked.
“I have had the pleasure.” Henri spoke around the meatball stuffed in his mouth. “As I said, the lady is charming. She invites artists, academics, and diplomats, and keeps an excellent table.”
“I have not been invited,” Lucian said, looking offended at the oversight.
“And does Duret attend?” Will asked.
“But of course.” Henri swallowed the last of the quenelle. “If he hasn’t already taken her to bed, it is clear he desires to. He rarely leaves Madame Laurent’s side.”
“What does he see in her?” Lucian craned his neck for a better view of the woman in question. “She’s comely enough, but not exactly a diamond of the first.”
Will studied the achingly familiar lines of Elle’s face; the high-sloped cheeks and large, wide-set eyes balanced by a straight nose and full lips. It was true. She was not a great beauty. She was much more than that. Elle was the most vitally alive person he’d ever met. Refreshingly honest and candid, she’d always lived in the moment, ready with a lusty laugh, humor glinting in her eyes when she’d teased him away from his studies.
Few could help being drawn by that exuberance; he certainly hadn’t been able to resist her considerable charms. But even as he’d fallen foolishly and irrevocably in love, he’d known she was above his touch. He turned to Henri. “What do you know of her?”
“Not much. She is English—highborn, it is said—but her French is impeccable.”
Lucian eyed her gossamer gown. “She certainly seems to have adopted the Paris style of dressing. No respectable Englishwoman would don the indecent gowns these French chits parade around in.”
Henri took a healthy draw of his wine. “It is the result of our revolutionary affection for the values of republican Rome.”
Lucian frowned. “How so?”
“Even our fashion must reflect these new philosophical and social ideals. The dressmakers are expected to produce a maximum of elegance with a minimum of fabric.”
Lucian shook his head. “It’s a wonder they don’t catch their death.”
“Alas, some do,” Henri returned cheerfully. “Our Merveilleuse sometimes suffer from Muslin Disease.”
Lucian blinked. “What the devil? You are making that up.”
“Not at all.” Henri chuckled. “It is an unfortunate respiratory condition, but one suffers as one must to be in the first stare of fashion.”
“It’s practically obscene,” Lucian said heatedly as he turned to Will. “Wouldn’t you say so?”
“I notice the dandies are not expected to endure the same discomfort as the ladies,” Will replied, running a distracted gaze over the young bucks known as the Incroyables. They wore their hair long over their ears and favored coats nipped at the waist and flared in the skirt, invariably worn with canary yellow or bottle-green breeches. At least they were clothed, unlike their female counterparts, the so-called Marvelous Ones, who’d adopted the same classical Greek style of dressing as Elle.
Henri waggled his eyebrows. “Despite its lack of practicality, I find the current style for ladies most pleasing.”
“No doubt,” Will said dryly.
That Elle would embrace a daring new fashion didn’t surprise him, but why desert her old life? Had she abandoned her only child in favor of becoming one of Paris society’s Marvelous Ones? Or some frog’s whore? He closed his eyes and forced a deep, calming breath. Imagining Elle in Duret’s bed sickened him, but the idea that she’d willingly placed herself there threatened to drive him to bedlam. He opened his eyes to find Henri’s craggy face studying him.
“Do you know the lady?”
He swallowed against the lingering soreness in his chest. “We were acquainted once, but it was a long time ago.”
They were interrupted by their hostess, Lady Whitworth, who had taken a position at the front of the room. “May I have your attention,” she called out. “The auction is to begin shortly.” Elle said something to the general, who smiled and watched after her as she and a number of other ladies in attendance began moving toward the front of the room.
“Auction?” Will murmured to his companions.
“For an opportunity to waltz with the lady of your choice,” Henri said. “The monies collected will be donated to the Women’s and Children’s Home in Paris.”
Lucian inhaled a shocked breath. “Auctioning off ladies of good family to the highest bidder? You’d think we were at King’s Place off Pall Mall,” he said, referring to a bawd house frequented by gentlemen of the upper orders in London.
Henri chuckled. “Must you English be so provincial? You are not purchasing the lady’s virtue, just the opportunity to take her for a turn on the dance floor.”
“Still, it is hardly proper,” Lucian said stubbornly. “This sort of thing would cause a scandal at home.”
“But you are in Paris,” the Frenchman said jovially. “Why not enjoy all the delights our fair city has to offer?”
Will swallowed the last of his wine and placed the empty glass on a passing footman’s tray with a decided thud. “Why not indeed?”
Elle watched the bidding with detached interest, certain that Gerard Duret would outbid everyone, mostly through sheer intimidation, for the opportunity to take a turn with her. Few risked crossing a man reputed to be more ruthless than Robespierre.
The lady ahead of her moved forward as the bidding began. Elle shifted into the place the woman had deserted, ready to take her turn next. Her gaze ran over the vibrant blue and red uniforms worn by Napoléon’s officers, interspersed with the gauzy Greek-inspired styles worn by the women. It was strange to be back in society after so many years. Yet she was as much a prisoner now as she’d ever been.
Frustration churned inside her chest as she scanned the crowd in desperation. Still no sign of Moineau, the man who’d promised to help her. It had been more than a month since she’d last heard from him. Where could he be?
Polite applause signaled the end of the latest round of bidding. The flushed-cheeked lady moved into the crowd to join the gentleman who had won a dance with her.
“And now, I give you the exquisite Madame Laurent, a vision whose presence illuminates any room,” said the auctioneer, a trim, lugubrious-faced man of medium height.
Elle stepped forward with a good-natured smile and executed an elegant curtsy. The crowd applauded and the bidding began.
“Three francs!” called the portly Monsieur Henri D’Aubigne, a Parisian writer of middle age she found quite amusing. She saw he stood next to Lucian Verney, a newer arrival to the city who worked for Ambassador Lord Whitworth at the embassy. She made a mental note to introduce herself to the young gentleman soon. Mr. Verney might prove useful.
Several others entered the bidding and drove up the price. In the few months since reopening the Paris house, she’d emerged as a popular hostess and sought-after guest. Elle had always had a way with people, and she intended to use it to her advantage, especially now, with so much at stake. The more people she encountered, the better the chance she’d meet someone of influence who might assist her in her search.
“Eight francs,” called the auctioneer. “Do I have an offer for eight francs for Madame Laurent, the most enchanting of ladies?”
Once the price for the pleasure of her company had grown too steep for many of the early bidders, Duret moved to the front center of the crowd so that he stood only a few feet away from Elle. He dipped his chin, signaling his acceptance of the price to the auctioneer. His emotionless raven gaze held hers, barely concealed desire emanating from his solid, square frame. With his silver-streaked thick, dark hair and strong features, he was not an unattractive man, but the hungry intensity with which he regarded her made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.
“Général Duret bids eight francs for a waltz with the lovely Madame Laurent!” The auctioneer’s words tumbled into each other, belying his nerves now that the powerful police ministry official had entered the fray. “A very generous offer, indeed.”
Elle smothered all outward signs of discomposure and smiled coquettishly. “Oh, la. Surely I am worth more than a mere eight francs.”
The crowd laughed, and a few called out that she was infinitely more valuable.
“Do I have an offer for ten francs?” the auctioneer called without much vigor, clearly expecting the transaction to be at an end given the reputation of the gentleman who’d made the last bid.
“Twenty francs.” The self-assured masculine baritone rang out from somewhere near the back of the room.
Surprised anyone would challenge the powerful general, even in this insignificant way, Elle looked in the direction of the smooth rich voice—obviously that of an Englishman—but couldn’t see to whom it belonged. The man stood near Henri and Mr. Verney but was obscured by the crush of people around them.
The permanent scowl on the general’s face deepened. “Twenty-five,” he said in a voice thick with displeasure.
“Twenty-five francs from Général Duret,” said the auctioneer with obvious relief.
“Forty.”
Duret’s expression hardened. He clasped his hands together and manipulated them until his knuckles cracked, a habit she detested. A murmuring hush swept the crowd as more heads turned toward the back of the room for a glimpse of the man who dared to publicly challenge Napoléon’s malevolent lieutenant.
“We have a bid for forty francs.” The auctioneer blotted perspiration from his forehead with a well-worn graying kerchief that had probably been white once. “Do I have an offer of forty-one, perhaps?” He gazed hopefully at Duret.
The general stared at him for a moment, banked fury evident in his dark eyes. “Alas, non,” he finally said in a light tone. “Sadly, I shall not dance with the lovely lady in public this evening.” The crowd seemed to release its collective breath and the chattering resumed.
Elle stepped aside to make room for the next lady on the auction block and proceeded through the horde, straining for a glimpse of the gentleman who’d paid so outrageously for the privilege of dancing with her. He stood with his back to her, mostly obscured by the crowd, but she caught a glimpse of dark copper hair. Her scalp tingled. There was something about the man…
She reached Henri and Mr. Verney, and her buyer turned. Their gazes met, and her heart dropped like a boulder off a cliff.