But there was also, she thought, a faintly mocking twist to his lips that she could not exactly call a smile.
The Duke shook hands with Philippe Dubucheron and then, as the servants brought them glasses of champagne, Yvette Joyant began talking to the Duke in a soft velvety undertone, which showed only too clearly that what she said was for his ears and his alone.
Una moved a little nearer to Philippe Dubucheron.
“Do you think Papa’s picture will be hung here in this room?” she asked.
She looked round as she spoke, realising that nearly all the pictures were in keeping with the style of the furniture.
“I doubt it,” Philippe Dubucheron replied. “I think that His Grace will take the picture with him to England.”
“Are you talking about your father’s paintings?” the Duke asked.
“I was – wondering,” Una replied, “whether you would hang in this room the one Your Grace has just bought.”
“As a matter of fact I thought it would be out-of-place and the wrong period for this salon,” the Duke explained. “You are interested in paintings? You too are an artist?”
“I would like to be able to paint,” Una answered, “but I do not have Papa’s talent. When I tried to copy his pictures, he found my efforts very very amateurish.”
The Duke smiled.
“It is always a mistake to try to emulate one’s parents,” he said. “My father tried to make me into a cricketer and as a result cricket is a game I detest, which you must admit is very un-English.”
“But you patronise ‘the Sport of Kings,’” Philippe Dubucheron said. “I have read of your successes in the newspapers. You expect to do well this year?”
“I would like to win the Gold Cup at Ascot,” the Duke replied, “but at least fifty other owners wish the same thing.”
“You are not talking to me,” said Yvette Joyant, pouting, “and if you want my opinion, I find men far more attractive than horses.”
“That I can well believe,” the Duke commented.
She put up her hand covered in a long black glove and touched his shoulder.
“You like sports, monsieur?” she asked. “I can show you some which are very original and très amusante, but only for the connoisseur.”
She gave Una a disparaging glance, as if she resented the fact that the Duke had been talking to her.
“La jeune fille is listening to what I have to say to you, monsieur,” she said, “and little pitchers have long ears!”
It was the French version of the old English adage and it was offensive in a way that made the blood come into Una’s cheeks.
She turned aside.
Monsieur Dubucheron had been right when he said that Mademoiselle Yvette did not like women.
At the same time, Una thought, it would be most uncomfortable if she was going to jibe and jeer at her throughout the whole evening.
She suddenly felt that in a way she wished she had not come, but then she told herself that she was being absurd.
What could be more exciting and more interesting than to meet an English Duke, to see his magnificent French house and to be, for the first time in her life, at a really grown up dinner party?
‘Why should I care what this Frenchwoman says to me?’ she thought. ‘After all I shall probably never see her again after tonight.’
Her chin went up with an unconscious pride that would not permit her to be browbeaten.
She smiled at Philippe Dubucheron and said quietly,
“It is very exciting to be here and to see such lovely things all round us. Did you provide this house with all the pictures?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Philippe Dubucheron replied. “I believe the Duke inherited most of them. The house was bought over fifty years ago by his grandfather.”
“I am sure it has a history before that,” Una said. “Mama told me about another house in this street, which belonged to the Princess Paulina Borghese and which was bought by the Duke of Wellington for the British Embassy.”
“That is true,” said the Duke, who apparently had been listening to the conversation. “The Embassy is two doors away, but I like to think that my house is larger and more attractive.”
“Has it a very interesting history?” Una asked him.
The Duke was about to answer, but Yvette Joyant interrupted again.
“I will tell you a history that will make you laugh,” she said. “The history of a man and a woman, who might easily, if we twist the facts a little, be you and me!”
There was something very caressing and very personal in her voice and the slant of her eyes, but before the Duke could reply dinner was announced.
Chapter Three
At dinner Yvette Joyant monopolised the conversation and made it very clear both to Una and to Philippe Dubucheron that they were too unimportant to be of any consequence.
The Duke listened to what she had to say with a cynical smile on his face that made Una feel that he was in some ways rather intimidating.
She had never before met anybody who managed to seem aloof even when taking part in a conversation.
He appeared, she thought, to be watching everything that was taking place as if it was a theatrical performance and he was in the audience rather than being a participant.
She wondered if in fact that was how he always looked at life or if it was just because this evening was unusual.
Perhaps a small party of four people was indeed unusual to the Duke, who, she felt instinctively, was always the centre of a crowd of people listening to him and, of course, admiring him.
The dining room in the house was as magnificent as the salon.
There were fine paintings on the walls, this time of a later period in French art and the gold plate that decorated the table was the work of the great French craftsmen whom Una had read about.
She found it difficult not to stare round her in what her mother would have thought a vulgar manner.
But everything was so unusual and exciting that she had to force herself to appreciate the delicacies of the dishes, which were, she knew, culinary masterpieces.
Her father had always enjoyed good cooking and had said over and over again in the past,
“One of the few consolations of living in France is that one can eat food that is not only a delight to the eyes but a pleasure to the palate.”
Her mother had laughed in response and replied,
“Personally, Julius, I would give up all these artistic creations for a slice of really good roast beef and some Yorkshire pudding!”
She said it to tease her husband and he held up his hands in horror.
Because of hearing such conversations, Una had learnt to cook the dishes that her father liked from an old woman who came to their house more to oblige than because she needed the money.
It was her mother who had discovered that Madame Reynard had at one time, when her husband was alive, owned a restaurant in Paris.
She had retired to the village to spend her last years talking of the past and of all the important people who had patronised their restaurant because the owner was an exceptionally good cook.
However, she had found time heavy on her hands with nothing to do and although she was too grand to help with the cleaning of the house or even the kitchen, she would cook, as Una’s father said, ‘like an angel’ and so Una became her pupil.
She thought as she sampled a dish of Loire salmon stuffed with oysters and truffles that, if only her father was alive, she would be able to copy it for him.
As if the Duke sensed what she was thinking, he asked,
“Besides good paintings, I appreciate good food, Miss Thoreau.”
She smiled at him as she replied,
“I admit to being greedy when the food is as delicious as this!”
“You speak as if it is something new,” the Duke remarked.
“I have been living in Italy, Your Grace, and Italian food, however hard they try, can never be as good as the French.”<
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“That is what I have found,” the Duke agreed.
“But Italians make good lovers!” Yvette Joyant interposed. “And so do Englishmen when they take the trouble.”
She spoke in a provocative manner in her deep velvety voice and her eyes looking at the Duke promised exotic delights. He understood all too well what she was saying to him.
He thought that Philippe Dubucheron had been right when he had said that the contrast between the two women would be remarkable.
It would have been impossible, the Duke thought, to find such a contrast by chance and he supposed that Philippe Dubucheron had planned what was now happening very carefully.
He had known with his shrewd understanding that no man could fail to be intrigued if he was confronted with Yvette and Una at the same time.
The Duke did not believe for one moment that Una had arrived in Paris unexpectedly as Philippe Dubucheron had told him.
He had doubtless known of her for a long time and had been keeping her in the background for just such an occasion as this.
If he himself had not come to Paris at this precise moment, then probably this dinner party would have been taking place with another rich and distinguished man at the head of the table.
He did not trust Dubucheron, the Duke thought. At the same time there was no doubt that the evening, though different from what he had planned, would prove amusing.
At least tomorrow he would be in a position to tell Beaumont that he had been to the crossroads and which way he had turned.
Yvette Joyant, he thought, was original among the demi-mondaines with whom Paris abounded.
The Duke, like most Englishmen, came to Paris to amuse himself and amusement invariably meant meeting the courtesans, who were the Queens of their profession.
Each woman was an expert in les sciences galantes, considered her beauty her capital and made it pay breathtaking dividends.
He was quite certain that Yvette would extract every penny that was possible from him, but undoubtedly for most men the experience would be worthwhile.
If Philippe Dubucheron had said she was exceptional in that she was the most evil woman in Paris, then indeed she would be.
The Duke appreciated that she was indeed expert at creating an atmosphere around her that would make the man she wished to attract at least curious.
Every word she spoke had a double entendre and every look she gave him was calculated to arouse his senses and make the blood run a little faster in his veins.
The words she whispered continually in his ear were inflammatory in a manner that the Duke knew would have had, if he had not been so experienced where women were concerned, the result she intended.
He had in fact known many women in the same category as Yvette and, as he found that women on the whole were much the same whether they were in Buckingham Palace or the Moulin Rouge, he was not swept off his feet by everything that Yvette Joyant clearly offered him.
At the same time l’amour, which the French considered that they knew more about than anyone else, could be always new and could always be exciting even when it was unlikely that anything, as far as the Duke was concerned, would be a surprise.
Una, on the other hand, he thought, would only surprise him if she was really as innocent and as young as she looked.
He was quite sure that Philippe Dubucheron had dressed her for the part she had to play.
The Duke had not missed the fact that Una’s gown was that of a very young girl, modest and yet undoubtedly becoming.
His eyes noted her tiny waist and the way in which the tight bodice revealed her small breasts.
The décolletage was that of a jeune fille who had no idea that her mission in life was to attract men, while her hair, although extremely becoming, was obviously her own effort and not that of a hairdresser.
But he was not entirely sure.
Philippe Dubucheron was a very astute man and would be likely, the Duke thought, to have anticipated that his client, satiated with the familiar degradations of Paris, might be amused by purity and innocence.
‘But is Una in fact either pure or innocent?’ he asked himself.
Judging by her gown and her behaviour, she might be a well-rehearsed theatrical edition of what youth and innocence should look like.
Dubucheron had deceived him once before and the Duke told himself that he had no intention of being taken for a ‘mug’ a second time.
Yet it was impossible to believe, unless this girl was a young Rachel or a Sarah Bernhardt, that she could act so convincingly.
Just as Yvette exuded an atmosphere of eroticism, Una appeared to be enveloped by an aura of purity.
Because he was interested in both women, the Duke began to enjoy himself and to forget his boredom and his anger with Rose Caversham.
Also the slight fatigue he had felt after his long journey was beginning to disappear with what he ate and drank.
Besides the delectable enticements on either side of him, he also enjoyed talking to Philippe Dubucheron.
He had used the man for some years as a purveyor of pictures, information about Paris and frankly as a procurer of women.
But he was astute enough to realise that Dubucheron was in fact an interesting character, the type of man who had been created by Paris itself.
He could not really be found in any other Capital in the world and it was because he was unique that the Duke wished to probe into his brain and find out exactly why he was as he was.
By the end of dinner he began vaguely to understand that to Philippe Dubucheron life was a huge and amusing joke and the laughter he created paid him very large dividends.
He was not just a seeker after wealth but, the Duke thought, a man who saw life in all its aspects, as a pageant passing before him that enriched not only his pockets but his mind as well.
Philippe Dubucheron was therefore a very different person from the men who usually availed themselves of the Duke’s hospitality to talk of sport because they knew it interested him and of women because there they stood on common ground.
The Duke had long prided himself on being a good judge of character.
But, perhaps because he had probed so deeply into the characters of some of his so-called friends and some of the women who had said that they loved him, it had made him more cynical than he had been before.
It was amazing, he thought, how petty and how avaricious even the nicest people could be.
He often accused himself of being ultra-critical and, although he would not have admitted it to Mr. Beaumont, of expecting far more from those he knew than they were capable of giving.
He understood only too well exactly what his Comptroller had been saying to him today.
Yet he asked himself whether any life he chose to live would not, after a time, be just as monotonous and be a sameness that was inevitable.
But here tonight, he thought towards the end of the dinner, were two women who were a little different.
He began to wonder, as Yvette talked to him, whether there were erotic depths to which he had not yet descended but were there for him to discover.
He also found that Una’s performance was even more incredible, unless, of course, he was mistaken and she really was what she appeared to be.
Then he told himself that the excellent wines they were drinking must have gone to his head or else the trap that Philippe Dubucheron had set for him was even more cleverly baited than he had anticipated.
As the dinner ended, he knew from the way Dubucheron looked at him that he was expected to make a decision as to whether he would continue the evening with one of the women or the other.
It therefore amused the Duke to say as they drank their coffee,
“I think, as it is my first night in Paris for some time, that I should visit the old familiar haunts and see if they have changed since I last patronised them.”
“Which haunts in particular?” Philippe Dubucheron enquired.
The Duke smiled at him mockingly.<
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“Surely that is an unnecessary question. Where else but the Moulin Rouge?”
Yvette made an expression of disgust.
“The Moulin Rouge!” she exclaimed. “I will take you somewhere where we can see an exhibition that will be different from anything you have ever seen before.”
Her mascaraed eyes slanted mysteriously as she added,
“We will go alone and then you will see.”
The Duke allowed her to think for one moment that he would accept her invitation.
Then he said,
“You cannot expect me to abandon my friends. No, we will go together, all four of us, to the Moulin Rouge.”
Yvette shrugged her shoulders, but there was undoubtedly a glint of anger in her eyes and her lips tightened ominously.
She had been so sure, when Dubucheron had told her that she was to dine with the Duke of Wolstanton, that by the end of the evening she would be his mistress and the large pile of debts that were accumulating in her apartment would have a good likelihood of being paid.
Her extravagance was the talk of Paris, but that in one way was her attraction.
Every demi-mondaine knew that men appreciated only what they had to pay for through the nose!
The diamonds round Yvette’s neck and those that encircled her wrists had all been part of a payment that entitled a man to boast amongst his friends that Yvette Joyant had ‘cost him a packet’.
It had been established in the Second Empire that the courtesans of Paris were the most expensive and the most sensual in the world.
Then Napoleon III had set the pace by spending a fortune on his many mistresses and to be followed by the Prince Napoleon and every other man who visited Paris in search of amusement.
The golden era had been followed by a depression, which was only now getting back into its stride, but Yvette knew that, being the head of her profession, she was in fact worth all the millions of francs that were spent on her.
To be under the protection of the Duke of Wolstanton would, she knew, give her a new prestige, quite apart from the fact that, if Philippe Dubucheron had said he was rich, then he was very rich indeed.
Alone In Paris Page 6