“If you want my opinion,” Bertram Cunningham said, “his illness was entirely due to too much Maxim’s and the expenses of that little ladybird he was always taking to Cartier the morning after.”
“I should not be surprised,” Lord Hartcourt replied to him in a somewhat bored tone.
He disliked conversation that verged on gossip and it had never interested him.
“Incidentally,” Bertram Cunningham chatted on, while we are talking of ladybirds, what is this story André de Grenelle has been telling me? I met him riding in the Bois de Boulogne. He was full of a sensational denouement at Lily de Mabillon’s last night.”
“Never, never listen to anything the Comte has to say,” Lord Hartcourt said coldly. “It is inevitably inaccurate if not entirely invented.”
“Oh, don’t be stuffy, Vane,” Bertram Cunningham said. “There must be something in the story. Why, de Grenelle told me that the Duchesse had imported a new turn from the Moulin Rouge, who looked like a nun or even a schoolgirl. But before she could appear upstairs she collapsed into your arms and you carried her away into another room and locked the door!”
Lord Hartcourt laughed briefly, but the sound had no humour in it.
“Well, is it true?” Bertram Cunningham persisted. “I just cannot credit de Grenelle with having made all that up.”
“It has a slight element of truth somewhere, lavishly ornamented with the Comte’s very vivid imagination,” Lord Hartcourt said drily. “Mind you, I do like de Grenelle up to a certain point. He is amusing when a trifle foxed. But the morning after he is a dead bore. Personally I avoid him and I advise you to do the same.”
“Now stop evading the question,” Bertram said, slapping his whip down on the polished desk. “I want to know what happened and by Jove, Vane, you are going to tell me!”
And if I don’t?” Lord Hartcourt enquired.
“Then I shall go straight round and demand to see Her Grace and find out what really went on.”
Lord Hartcourt laughed again.
“You will get very short shrift at this hour of the morning. Besides I can imagine nothing more depressing than to see the debris after one of the more spirited parties chez Mabillon!”
“Then who was the charmer? André was extremely flowery in his description of her. Fair hair, grey eyes and heart-shaped face combined with an air of real or assumed innocence. It sounds most intriguing to me.”
“De Grenelle was drunk!” Lord Hartcourt pointed out.
“I should not imagine any of you were very sober,” Bertram Cunningham chaffed, “but it is just my luck to have to escort the Ambassadress to a party when all those excitements were going on. Very dull it was too. Would you believe it, we sat on gilt chairs for over two hours listening to some long-haired Pole playing the piano and afterwards we danced. There was not a woman in the room under fifty!”
This time Lord Hartcourt laughed without reservation.
Then he rose from the desk and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder.
“Poor Bertie. You really do earn your salary at times like that.”
“I don’t mind telling you now,” Bertram said hotly, “if there are many more of them I am going to send in my resignation. I am becoming fed up with the whole thing. If it was not for you being here and one or two other chaps, I would then go straight back to London. After all it will be Royal Ascot in a few weeks.”
Lord Hartcourt sauntered over to the window and looked out over the Embassy garden. The lilacs and magnolias were in full bloom and tulips made a glorious patch of red beneath a tree of golden laburnum.
“England is always beautiful at this time of the year,” he said quietly. “Perhaps we are fools to waste our time and our money in any foreign country, even Paris.”
“Henriette being difficult?” Bertram asked with a sudden sympathy in his voice.
“Oh no!” he replied. “She is as entrancing as ever. It is just occasionally, Bertie, I find the whole thing so damned artificial. Too many parties, too much drink, too many people like the Comte making a drama about nothing.”
“You still have not told me what ‘nothing’ was,” Bertram Cunningham said pointedly.
Lord Hartcourt turned from the window to walk back to his desk.
“It is of little significance. As the Comte and I were leaving, we found a girl sitting in the hall. She was English, shabby, travel-stained and obviously very out of her element and when De Grenelle tried to kiss her she protested. And I obviously had to go to her rescue. Then she fainted from lack of food, not from fear of the Comte’s Latin attentions.”
“So he was telling the truth,” Bertram Cunningham exclaimed. “Was she outstandingly pretty? André has gone into eulogies over her.”
“I really did not notice,” Lord Hartcourt relied in a bored voice. “I told the servants to bring some food, gave her my advice, which she had no intention of taking, and came away.”
“You left her after all that excitement?” Bertram Cunningham asked.
“It really was not very exciting,” Lord Hartcourt said with a twist of his lips. “The girl was exhausted. She had been travelling since early morning and, I fancy, the wooden coaches of a French train are none too comfortable.”
“But who is she? Did you find out?” Bertram Cunningham enquired.
“She said she was the Duchesse’s niece.”
“Her niece!” Bertram exclaimed. “In that case André is most likely right. She is a chip off the old block! You undoubtedly spoiled her grand entrance. According to André she was going to get into her trunk in her dress and get out with little on save a few spangles!”
“De Grenelle talks the most utter nonsense,” Lord Hartcourt said. “I don’t think for one moment that she was anything but a genuine traveller. As for being a niece of the Duchesse, who knows?”
He shrugged his shoulders and started to tidy the papers on his desk.
“What are you doing, Bertie?” he asked. “Let’s go and have lunch at the Traveller’s Club. They have hired a new chef who can produce the best roast beef I have tasted outside Piccadilly.”
“All right,” Bertram agreed. “And I tell you what, Vane, we will drop in on the way and see what this new protégée of Lily’s is like. She is worth a look over. It will be amusing to get in before André and the other boys. He is swearing that nothing will keep him away from Lily’s tonight, but his Mama is holding a Reception which all the Diplomatic Corps are going to, so I don’t know how he is going to get out of it.”
“I never have been able to face the Duchesse or her like in the daytime,” Lord Hartcourt confessed stiffly.
“Oh, Vane, really! The old girl’s not quite as bad as all that. My father says that thirty-five years ago she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And I can assure you that my Papa was an experienced judge in his day!”
“Really?” Lord Hartcourt observed and it seemed just for a moment as if he was slightly interested. Who is she by the way? I always thought that her title was entirely bogus.”
“Oh no. You are wrong there,” Bertram Cunningham replied. “The Duc actually existed. I saw him myself many years ago when I was only a boy. I remember it well. I came over to Paris in the holidays. My father was First Secretary then and he took me to lunch at the Ritz.”
“You had better see the elite of the Capital now, my boy,” he told me. “It will stand you in good stead when you are in the Foreign