He barked in laughter. “She is gone for good.”
“I would fight for you if I were sophisticated enough.”
“Come here.” He’d pulled her back into his embrace, settled her securely there and kissed her fragrant hair. “No more talk of other women, s’il vous plait. They are not your equal. You are the only one I wish to hold.”
The only one I wish to keep. Gazing at her in her wedding finery, he thought he saw contentment in her demeanor. Her cheeks were pink. Her green eyes danced. She radiated happiness. That warmed him, inspired him to thoughts of what he would propose to her once they were both in Paris again.
“I say, you look chipper.” Julian approached him.
Andre noted the weariness in his friend’s eyes. “Better than you, I dare say. What’s wrong?”
Julian inhaled sharply and indicated with a tip of his head his sister who spoke with her groom. The newly married couple stood nose-to-nose hotly whispering. “An hour into this arrangement and we have challenges.”
“We could intervene. But to what end?” Andre put a hand to Julian’s arm. “She’s smart. She’ll find a way to deal with him.”
“Not if he won’t compromise.”
“The mark of any sound relationship,” Andre offered.
“What I don’t understand is that we’ve known Carbury for years. I saw him with his first wife and I never suspected he could be such a bully.”
Andre considered the woman who had changed his own thinking about women…and marriage. The very thought of waking up each morning to see her, touch her, laugh with her filled his body with adolescent expectation and his heart with comfort. “Some people change us.”
Julian’s gaze turned to consider his own bride of three weeks. “Very true. And for the better.”
“You’re happy. You wear it like a glove.” Andre lifted his glass to toast his friend.
“Delightfully shocked too.” Julian arched his dark brows. “But I’m here to discuss your relationship.”
“Ah. Sent by your father-in-law, I assume.”
“He’s worried about Marianne’s reputation.”
Was the millionaire worried about his niece’s image or his own? “I have reassured him twice. What more can I do?”
“I understand you have sent your mistress packing.”
“You hear correctly. Is there a question in your statement?”
Julian smiled at him. “You know there is.”
Andre’s mood fell. “I court her. She is reluctant. I move slowly because I must, not because I wish it.”
“I would venture that I know what that challenge is.”
“Oh?” Andre considered the sparkling wine in his goblet.
“Lily tells me Marianne never speaks of her husband.”
“And there you have it. My challenge is to chase him from her mind. I see before me a woman who wishes to emerge from her old life. But that is as strong as marble, and I see her as she is meant to be free in her fullness. Effervescent. Gay. I wish her to emerge and she wants it too. She chips away at her prison and I help her remove her facade. I show her how to trust me. And come to me. One day soon, please God.” He drained his glass of wine.
Julian marveled at him. “I never thought to see you fall in love.”
“Nor I.” And I’m impatient to enjoy her. “Not to worry. After tomorrow, we go to Paris. The Hannifords and I. Next week, Marianne and I—”
“I will not, I tell you!” a woman yelled.
All in the room froze. The silence turned everyone to ice.
“You cannot force me.”
Julian and Andre pivoted toward the sound of Elanna addressing Carbury, each word a bomb.
“But I will, my dear.” Carbury tried to cover his sneer and took his bride by the wrist.
Hatred on her lips, she yanked free. She clenched her fists, triumph in the tilt of her head as she marched away.
Pierce came abreast of Lily. “Bastard. I could kill him.”
“Stop!” Lily caught his arm. “Dear god,” she whispered to her brother, “don’t move.”
Carbury’s eyes bulged from his head as he whirled on Pierce.
Julian stepped between the earl and Pierce. “Come now.”
“Nerves, nerves.” The duchess of Seton fluttered among them, her lips quivering with restrained anger and chagrin. “Nothing more. Do play on,” she encouraged the cellist who had been giving forth some Bach or Beethoven.
Carbury glared at Julian. Straightening his waistcoat, he reddened. “I’ll see to my bride.”
Julian turned aside.
The duke hastened behind Carbury, muttering to himself.
“Forgive me, Andre,” Julian said and followed his sister, parents and Carbury out the far door.
Andre stepped to join Marianne and her three cousins. Pierce fumed but the three women appeared stunned.
Marianne took his arm. “This marriage was never going to work.”
Ada glanced from Marianne to Lily. “They never liked each other?”
“Like?” Pierce gave a joyless laugh. “She loathes him.”
With a flick of her eyes, Lily warned her brother and sister to say no more.
“Should you go?” Marianne asked Lily as they watched the duchess scurry from the ballroom.
“Do not.” Remy stood beside them, his attention riveted on the vacant doorway. The duchess would cringe at the interference, jealous of her reputation as she was.
Down the marbled corridor from some far room, voices rose and rushed toward the reception in echoes of hate. Male, female, high-pitched, accusatory.
“I’ll get the butler,” murmured Remy to the assembled group. “I know him well. He must close all the doors. Excuse me.”
Out in the hall, the butler and two footmen stood gazing down the hall where the others had disappeared. Paralyzed in horror, the servants swung their attention to Remy.
“Let’s close the doors,” he told them.
“Monsieur le duc?” The butler looked fevered. “Shall we offer more champagne?”
“The doors, please. The guests need not hear this row.”
“No, Monsieur.” The portly butler shooed the two footmen to the task. They went so quickly, they were slamming the doors as they passed them. Farther down the hall, the screaming of insults and crying rent the air. Closed doors would not diminish the din.
Remy turned on his heel for the drawing room. But as he entered, a crash of china and a woman’s scream tore through the house.
With a wide-eyed look at Marianne, Remy pivoted toward the sounds.
Julian ran toward him. “Come, come quickly.”
At a jog, he followed Julian down the corridor. At the entrance, he came to a halt. The duke of Seton lay upon the bright red Axminster carpet, shards of a Ming vase lying about him, his arms out, jaw slack.
“No, no.” Julian knelt beside the body of his father. He pressed two fingers to his brow and picked up his wrist. “Oh, hell.”
“You did this,” the duchess seethed, rushing toward her daughter, hands out to grab her and shake her.
Elanna eluded her mother. Eyes blazing with fear and superiority, she barked. “Touch me and you will have the same from me.”
“You killed him! You ungrateful twit.”
“Stop it,” Julian yelled at them. “Remy, get me Lily and Marianne.”
He spun for the hall and the drawing room. He found them standing precisely where he’d left them. “Come quickly. They need you.”
Pierce sprang forward too, but Remy grabbed his arms. “Don’t move.”
“What’s happened?” Pierce demanded of him.
“The duke has had a stroke.”
Minutes later, Marianne and Lily gazed at each other over the body of the Duke of Seton.
Marianne shook her head.
Lily gazed up at her husband, tears in her eyes. “Your father is dead.”
Chapter 7
July 1878
Rue Laffitte
Paris
“I’ll go across the street to the cafe for a cup of tea while you finish your selections, Ada.”
“Oh, do. Then I won’t feel so badly that I take so long to decide,” Ada urged Marianne. In her corset and petticoats, her cousin turned this way and that in the mirror as she held up a bolt of pale pink taffeta to her cheek. “I can stand for the measurements by myself. Francine and Ezzie can advise me on the new rage in negligees. Can’t you?”
Marianne caught Ada’s wink at Francine Lang. Francine was a flibberty-gibbet, a spoiled American debutante with an angel’s face and a wizard’s dark eyes, who focused on nothing but men and how to catch one quickly. Ezzie Moore—Esmerelda by birth—was another American in Paris, a debutante brought by her parents to buy a husband. Both girls had attended the same finishing school as Ada and had come abroad a few weeks ago with their families. But plain-faced Ezzie hadn’t a clue about what color looked good on her let alone what fabric. While the other girl in the dressing room, Francine Lang, knew little that was good for her.
Ezzie was harmless.
Francine, however, was not to be trusted. She, more than Ada, had little interest in the finer points of decorum. Worse, she was often rude, cutting into others to speak over them. The girl, who was the daughter of a Manhattan department store owner, had arrived in Paris in June with her mother. That woman, once a salesgirl in her husband’s Fifth Avenue store, had polished up her manners and pushed Francine at every eligible man between twenty and eighty.
“I’ll wait for you there, Ada. Good afternoon, Ezzie. Francine. We’ll see you at nine this evening.”
They all bid her adieu, Francine practically frothing to get rid of her. Ada looked like she’d just swallowed laughing gas.
They’re planning something.
Irritated that Ada would risk her future on a lark with her friends, Marianne made her way down the stairs to the foyer and out to the bustling boulevard. On the cobbled footpath, she snapped open her parasol and hurried across the boulevard. Her minutes alone were few. Her minutes with Andre these past three weeks even fewer. Plus, Madame Chaumont had been ill, out of reach, since they’d returned. As a result, Marianne was on duty, in charge, round the clock, seeing to Ada’s fittings, her etiquette and language lessons and the tours of Paris meant to educate Ada in provisioning a noble household.
Each day, Ada objected to the rounds. She abhorred the cathedral at St. Denis. “Too many statues of dead kings.”
She found the tour of the Sèvres china factory unnecessary. “Why do I have to know how it’s made? I’ll just buy what I like.”
She cancelled her French tutor three times last week, proclaiming he was a bore. “Forever talking about verbs.”
In addition, she was becoming petulant and argumentative. Though she’d always been impetuous, she’d never been so whiny.
Three days ago, the morning after a supper party for twelve at Rue Haussmann with Ezzie and her mother plus the three Langs in attendance, Uncle Killian had summoned Ada and Marianne to his library.
“I don’t approve of Francine Lang,” he said from behind his massive desk. “Never have.”
“Oh, Daddy, she’s just fun.”
“Ada, she’s a disaster. She laughs like a loon. Hasn’t learned a lick of French. Chatters of nothing but silks and diamonds. To say nothing of her blasted father’s dry goods store. I won’t have you associating with her in private. Marianne needs to be with you whenever she’s about.”
Marianne smarted at the task. They’d been in Paris three weeks and though Andre had been to supper twice and tea often, she hadn’t had any opportunity to talk with him alone and didn’t expect she would any time soon.
Ada gaped at her father. “But Francine expects it. Needs me. Her mother is so gauche.”
“Exactly.” Killian peered over his glasses at his youngest daughter. “I won’t have you destroying your good name.”
“You mean yours,” Ada tossed back at him.
“Don’t be impertinent.”
Ada bristled. “We all know Lily had to marry her duke. I’ll bet any day we hear her announcement that she’s enciente—”
“Enough!” Killian slammed a hand to his desktop. “It’s worked out well. She cares for him and he for her. If you continue with that Lang girl and get yourself in a pickle, I can’t guarantee I be able to get you out.”
“What if I don’t want to get married?”
Marianne shut her eyes. The only thing Ada had ever spoken of was finding a beau who adored her. She’d declared herself “in love” so often, she might wind up with ten husbands.
“Don’t want…?” His face turned red in anger. “And what would you do instead?”
“Perfect my poker.”
Killian shook his head. “That’ll take a few years.”
“I’ll go to Texas and—”
“Ride herd on cattle?”
“I can do that,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Oh, my girl, as if that was ever your preference. Go to your fittings. Call upon Esmerelda Moore. Ask her to tea.”
“Oh, Daddy, Ezzie is so dull.”
He rose up from his chair, put two hands to his desk and leaned toward her. “Then help her become exciting.”
Ada jutted out her chin. “And if I won’t?”
“Then you will return to Texas. You’ll herd cattle with the vaqueros.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Try me.”
“I’ll run away.”
“Not without any money, you won’t.”
That set her back in her chair. “I have to have some fun.”
Her uncle turned to Marianne. “Find her some.”
“Sir?” Marianne was surprised at this request. Since the family had returned from London and the funeral of Lily’s father-in-law, the Duke of Seton, all the Hannifords had refrained from balls and soirées out of respect. As distant relatives, Uncle Killian had decreed they didn’t have to observe a year of mourning. Not in Paris, certainly. Plus he had business to conduct that could not wait.
“How about an exhibition?” he asked Marianne.
“Oh, Daddy, I do hate the Louvre. That’s what Marianne likes. All those paintings and sculptures. May I snore?”
Marianne set her jaw.
“Be kind.” Killian gazed at his daughter with a hint of humor. “Besides, I bet you’ll appreciate naked statues.”
“Well,” Ada said, tossing her head to and fro, “now that you mention it.”
“Marianne, take her up to the Butte. Show her the view of the city and how the builders have progressed on Sacre Coeur.”
“A church, Daddy?” Ada groaned.
“When the Duc de Remy comes to tea today, I’ll ask him to take you both to Montmartre to one of those summer balls.”
“Oh, Daddy.” Ada glowed in expectation. “And Francine and Ezzie, too?”
“Very well. Maybe it’ll wean the wildness out of all of you.”
“I know the duke doesn’t want to dance with me especially.” Ada beamed at him with a sly look at Marianne. “But if he agrees, I’m ready now.”
Andre had promptly decided that Ada, her two friends and Marianne needed their outing immediately. Tonight, he’d bring a friend and the two men would escort the four women to the Bal du moulin de la Galette.
“Bonjour, Madame,” the waiter broke her reverie. She indicated she’d like a table outside on the terrace under the awning. From there, she could watch who came in and out of the front door to Madame Rousseau’s lingerie house. Ada possessed some judgment, but she could be easily led by the likes of Francine. Ezzie was just an innocent, led to any escapade, by her own desires to keep the other girls’ friendship. Marianne had to keep an eye on all of them.
“Bonjour, Monsieur.” She closed her little parasol and followed him to the table. At once, she returned the menu to the man without looking at it. “Je voudrais commander du vin blanc, s’il vous plait.”
“Une moment, Garçon.”
Marianne gazed up into the tanned face of Andre Claude Marceau. He was grinning at her, handsome and dashing in his casual day attire of white shirt, azure linen waistcoat and tailored navy suit.
“Bring us a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and an hors d’oeuvre of crab en croûte.” He swept off his straw hat. “May I join you, Madame?”
Instead of the chair opposite her, she indicated the one beside her. She’d like him as near as propriety might allow. “I’d welcome the superb company. A diversion from my normal diet.”
“Too much of one thing is bad for one’s digestion.”
“Or one’s sanity.” She laughed, aware two ladies at the next table stared at Andre and whispered behind their fans. With a new commission for the City of Paris and articles about him in newspapers, he was famous. Invited everywhere, he declined most invitations and told all he focused on his work. But he came almost daily to Rue Haussmann for tea. And with hot regard in his velvet blue eyes, he courted her with every word he uttered.
He took his seat, his hand briefly brushing hers as he sat. His generous mouth curved up in humor. “I happened to pay a call on my banker and saw you emerge from Madame Rousseau’s. Is chiffon the fabric of the season?”
She rolled her eyes. “I haven’t the foggiest clue. But I have learned that rose is not the best color for a girl with sallow skin.”
He grimaced. “You’re having a terrible day.”
“Weeks, Monsieur. Weeks.”
“Je suis désolé.”
“Ha, I’m sorry too.” She examined his marvelous face, the contours so bold, so balanced. Every time she saw him, he became the embodiment of masculinity. “Suddenly I do feel better.”
He leaned close and in the moment, she caught a whiff of his cologne. Fresh and subtle, the hint of lime and some other manly fragrance wafted through her senses. She relaxed in his company, her nerves unraveling.
“I called at Rue Haussmann earlier. Happily, Foster told me where you’d gone.”
“Foster, good man. I’ll speak to my uncle about giving the man an increase in his wages.”
“I was right behind a messenger who delivered camellias.”
“Oh, god. Another bunch.”
“For you?” he asked with an edge to his voice.
Daring Widow: Those Notorious Americans, Book 2 Page 12