Paris had seemed like the perfect solution. Since Bonaparte had abdicated, it had become extremely fashionable to hop across the Channel to see the sights.
Leaning one arm on the mantelpiece, he remarked, with an eloquent shudder, ‘I will never complain of that particular malady again, I do assure you.’
‘What is it?’ Conningsby asked. ‘What else has happened?’
‘Another murder.’
‘Du Mauriac again, I take it?’ Conningsby’s face was grim. The French officer was gaining a reputation for provoking hot-headed young Englishmen to duel with him, and dispatching them with a ruthless efficiency gleaned from his years of active service. And then celebrating his kill by breakfasting on broiled kidneys at Tortoni’s. ‘Who was it this morning? Not anybody we know, I hope?’
‘On the contrary. The poor fellow he slaughtered before breakfast today was a subaltern by the name of Lennox.’ At Conningsby’s frown, Charles explained, ‘Oh, there is no reason why you should know him. He was typical of all the others who have fallen by that butcher’s sword. An obscure young man with no powerful connections.’
‘Then how…?’
‘He served in the same regiment as my unfortunate half-brother. He was one of those young men who constantly paraded through my London house, attempting to rouse him to some semblance of normality.’ Sometimes it seemed as if an entire regiment must have marched through his hall at one time or another, to visit the poor wreck of a man who had once been a valiant soldier. Though few of them paid a second visit after encountering his blistering rejection. Captain Fawley did not want to be an object of pity.
Pity! If only he knew! If he, the ninth Earl, had been injured so badly, there would be not one well-wisher hastening to his bedside in an attempt to cheer him. On the contrary, it would be vultures who would begin to hover, eager to see who among them would gain his title, his wealth…
‘At least he was a soldier, then.’
‘He never stood a chance against a man of Du Mauriac’s stamp, and the blackguard knew it! He sat there laughing about the fact that the boy did not look as though he needed to shave more than once a week! And sneered at his milk-white countenance as he faced him…God, the boy must have been sick with fright.’
Charles smote one fist into his palm. ‘If only Lennox had asked me to be his second, I would have found a way to stop it!’
Conningsby eyed him with surprise. The only thing he had known about the Earl before his arrival in Paris was that, upon coming of age, he had caused a ripple through society by ousting his guardians from his ancestral home and subsequently severing all connections with that branch of his family. He had not known of a single man who dared claim friendship with the chillingly insular young lord. In Conningsby’s capacity as a junior aide at the English embassy, he had dutifully helped him to find these lodgings in the Rue de Richelieu, and generally smoothed his entry into the social scene. It had been quite a surprise, the previous night, when the Earl had reacted as any man might on discovering the beautiful Parisienne to whom he had just proposed had run off with her lover. He had gone straight home to drown his sorrows. Though his head had proved stronger than Conningsby’s.
‘Couldn’t have backed down, though, could he?’ he ventured sympathetically. ‘Wouldn’t have wanted to live with an accusation of cowardice hanging round his neck.’
‘Somebody should have found some way to save Lennox,’ the Earl persisted. ‘If only…’
He was prevented from saying anything further when the butler opened the door. ‘There is a visitor for you, my lord.’
‘I am not receiving,’ Charles growled.
Giddings cleared his throat, and eyed Conningsby warily, before saying diffidently, ‘The young person insists you would wish to see her.’ He stepped forward and, in a voice intended only for his master, said, ‘She says her name is Mademoiselle Bergeron.’
Charles felt as though he had been punched in the stomach.
While he struggled to draw breath, Conningsby, who had remarkably acute hearing, rose gingerly to his feet. ‘She has in all probability come to beg your forgiveness…’
‘She shall not have it!’ Charles turned to grasp the mantelpiece with both hands, his shoulders hunched. ‘I shall not take her back. If she prefers some artist to me, then she may go to him and welcome!’
‘But there may have been some dreadful mistake. Let’s face it, my lord, the Bergeron household last night was in such a state of turmoil, who knows what may have been going on?’
They had gone to escort Felice to a ball, where the engagement was to have been announced. They had found Monsieur Bergeron slumped in his chair, as though all the stuffing had been knocked out of him, and Madame Bergeron suffering from a noisy bout of hysterics upon the sofa. The only clear piece of information either of them had been able to glean was that she had turned off the wicked maidservant who had aided and abetted her ungrateful daughter to elope with a nobody when she could have married an English earl.
The Earl was breathing rather rapidly. ‘I am not safe to see her.’ He turned back to face the room, his entire face leached of colour. ‘I may well attempt to strangle her.’
‘Not you,’ Conningsby assured him.
The Earl looked at him sharply, then straightened up. ‘No,’ he said, his face freezing into a chillingly aloof mask. ‘Not I.’ He went to one of the fireside chairs, sat down, and crossed one leg nonchalantly over the other. ‘You may show Mademoiselle Bergeron in, Giddings,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the door.
Conningsby got the peculiar impression he had just become invisible. And, though he could tell the Earl would not care one way or another, he had no intention of becoming a witness to the impending confrontation. It was one thing helping a man to drown his sorrows in a companionable way. Hell, what man hadn’t been in a similar predicament at one time or another? But becoming embroiled with some hysterical Frenchwoman, with his head in its present delicate state, was asking too much! He looked wildly round the room for some other means of escape than the door through which Mademoiselle Bergeron would shortly appear. The only other exit appeared to be through the windows.
It took but a second to vault over the sofa on which he’d spent the night and dive through the heavy velvet curtains.
‘Mademoiselle Bergeron,’ he heard Giddings intone, as he fumbled open the shutter bolts.
Charles experienced a spurt of satisfaction when she paused on the threshold, her gloved hand fluttering to the heavy veil draped from her bonnet.
Instead of rising to his feet, he deliberately leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, eyeing her with unremitting coldness. She squared her shoulders, taking one faltering step forward. Then, to his complete astonishment, she broke into a run, flying across the room and landing upon her knees at his feet. Seizing his hand, she pulled it to her face, kissing it through the veil.
Impatiently, he snatched it back. Whatever she had been up to last night, he was not prepared to unbend towards her without a really good explanation. And probably not even then. To feel such strong emotions that they could reduce you to the state of mind where not even copious quantities of alcohol could anaesthetise them was something he did not care to experience again. He was just about to tell her so when she knelt back, lifting the veil from her face.
‘Oh, thank you, milord! Thank you for letting me in. I was so afraid! You have no idea how unpleasant it is to walk the streets unescorted with feelings running so high…’
Charles reeled back in his seat. ‘You are not…not…’
‘Felice? No.’ The young woman who knelt before him returned his look rather defiantly.