Three Lessons in Seduction

by Sofie Darling

  “We’ve arrived,” Mariana began. “How shall we—”

  “I shall be your lady’s maid until I hear otherwise,” Hortense supplied.

  The carriage ground to a stop, and a coachman handed Mariana down. She heard the crunch of Hortense’s boot on gravel behind her.

  “This place is much grander than I’d ever imagined.”

  Mariana faced the girl. “Have you spent much time imagining the Folly?”

  Hortense shifted on her feet. “I’ve heard bits and pieces about Bertrand Montfort’s Folly,” she said, her gaze sliding away noncommittally.

  Mariana couldn’t recall ever having mentioned the place to Hortense in any detail, but once her feet crossed the house’s threshold, the sound of girlish laughter drifting down a corridor entirely distracted her from the matter. She didn’t want to continue with these spy intrigues; she wanted to feel the warm embrace of her sister and a pair of giggly girls.

  She wanted soft and fuzzy love, not cold, hard reality. In short, she wanted a respite.

  She assured the attending servants that she would prefer to announce herself before allowing her feet to cross the sun-bright foyer toward the inviting melodies of song, piano, and laughter. It was pure, unrestrained laughter—the sound of happiness and the joy of a family gathered round, enjoying a private joke. She wanted nothing more than to be nestled inside the center of that joke.

  When she reached the drawing room, she hesitated in the relative dark of the corridor and observed the tableau spread before her. Lavinia and Lucy, giggling and singing ditties at the piano, were on one side of the room, blithely indifferent to Olivia on the other side of the room. She was crouched nearly into a ball on a footstool, her eyes lifted toward the raucous duo, even as her hand busily moved across the paper on her lap. Everyone in the family had long grown accustomed to Olivia whipping out her sketchbook when inspiration struck, a pastime she’d taken up after Percy’s death.

  The pleasant momentum of Mariana’s thoughts screeched to a halt. Percy’s death.

  Percy wasn’t dead. Percy was alive.

  “Auntie Mari!” sounded Lucy’s voice.

  Mariana shook off the unwelcome thought of Percy and stepped out of the shadow, all three sets of smiling eyes upon her and making it easy to forget the unpleasantness of Paris.

  Lavinia sprang off the piano bench and bounded across the room into her arms. “I’m so happy to see you, dearest,” Mariana said into her daughter’s sable hair that smelled of lily and horse.

  “Me, too, Mamma,” she replied, already shaking off her mother’s embrace and scampering off to rejoin Lucy at the piano. “Did you hear our new song?”

  Mariana thought back. Ten seconds could have been ten days ago. “Was it Herr Beethoven’s Symphony Number 5?”

  “Lulu is writing lyrics for it,” Lavinia said, adoration for her slightly older cousin evident in her bright, shining eyes.

  As if on cue, Lucy began banging at the piano, reducing the sublimity of Herr Beethoven’s masterpiece to its most rudimentary notes. She cleared her throat before singing out:

  “Lavinia loves horses

  Catherine the Great did, too

  So much in fact

  It made her husband blue

  It’s even said . . .

  With horrible dread . . .

  That she took . . . them . . . to—”

  “Lucy,” Olivia cut in evenly.

  The musical interlude came to an abrupt stop, and a deafening silence filled the void. Olivia understood how to use her quiet reserve to great effect.

  “Yes, Mummy?” Lucy asked, eyes all wide innocence.

  “Perhaps this piece has veered a bit off track?”

  “Perhaps,” Lucy replied, sounding not at all convinced.

  Mariana caught Olivia’s eye. She recognized a smile in there for their precocious daughters. Words had never been all that necessary between them. Except now . . .

  Now she harbored a secret that would change, possibly destroy, the life Olivia had built for herself this last decade.

  As she closed the short distance between them, it occurred to Mariana that for the first time in her life she had no idea what to say to her sister. She settled onto the dense Aubusson carpet beside Olivia, who was still watchfully perched on the low footstool, and glanced at the half-finished sketch.

  “You’ve captured them down to their most frivolous essence,” Mariana said, her eyes lifting toward the duo, who had moved on to Herr Mozart, judging by the rapid succession of notes sounding from the piano. “Have you and the girls had the house to yourselves?”

  “Until this morning,” Olivia replied, a distracted note in her voice as she continued watching the girls and scratching charcoal against paper. “Uncle and Aunt arrived just before tea, and now you’re here a few hours later.”

  “And where is Aunt?” Mariana asked when she really wanted to know about Uncle.

  How difficult it was to stop being a spy.

  “Resting,” Olivia replied. “The journey from Paris was quite traumatic.” Neither Mariana nor Olivia could resist a wry smile. They knew their aunt well.

  “And Uncle?” Mariana asked, trying to sound natural, which meant she surely didn’t. Olivia wouldn’t miss that, but she might keep it to herself. Her still waters ran deep.

  “In his study,” she replied.

  A comfortable silence settled in as they watched the girls compose another set of bawdy lyrics. Herr Mozart would have been delighted. Herr Beethoven? Likely not.

  Olivia’s hand stilled, and her discerning gaze focused on Mariana. “You are altered from when I last saw you.”

  “Me?”—Mariana forced a laugh—“I never change. You know that.”

  “Do I?” Olivia’s head tilted quizzically. “Sometimes I feel like there’s an entire world inside you that I know nothing about.”

  “You would be the only person who sees that in me.”

  “Oh, I think there is one other person,” Olivia said, discreetly returning her attention to the sketch.

  She was, of course, speaking of Nick.

  “You’ve always liked Nick,” Mariana said, trying, and failing, to keep a crack out of her voice. It was the first time she’d spoken his name since she’d left Paris.

  “For the most part,” Olivia said on a nod. “I just wish he’d made you happier, but with that poisonous mother and father of his, I’m not sure he knew how.”

  A sudden charge of emotion clogged Mariana’s throat. Olivia never wasted time with small talk. She cut straight to the quick.

  Olivia continued in her soft, reedy voice, “You found him?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mariana croaked. She couldn’t help a dry laugh. “Look at us. Two married spinsters.”

  Olivia’s eyebrows knit together. “I’m a widow, Mariana.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly, a needle of panic shooting through her.

  “But I do see what you mean,” Olivia continued.

  “You do?”

  “I’ve made the choice to be alone.” A moment passed. “Like a spinster.”

  “Is that what you truly want?”

  “Marriage isn’t for me. I’ve made my peace with that.”

  “Is peace of mind enough for you?” Mariana’s stomach twisted again into its familiar knots as she anticipated Olivia’s reply.

  Olivia, her blue eyes clear, bright, and razor sharp, faced her squarely. “Yes.”

  Mariana picked up on an unexpected hard edge in her sister’s voice. She also couldn’t help noting the blush pinking her sister’s cheeks. Olivia’s physical cues didn’t match the content of her words. If she disregarded those words, Mariana would suspect Olivia didn’t seem peaceful at all. Of course, Olivia rarely spoke of Percy. Ma
riana had always assumed it was because the past was too painful a place to revisit. But, just now, it seemed . . . different.

  “I forgot the anniversary of Percy’s death in July,” Olivia said, a humorless huff of a laugh escaping her. “The Duke had to remind me.”

  Mariana detected a strand of guilt in Olivia’s tone. A surge of anger and protectiveness swept through her at the very idea that Olivia would feel the slightest measure of guilt over a man like Percy.

  “Can you believe it’s been eleven years?” Olivia asked. “It feels like yesterday.”

  “Time can be a trickster,” Mariana said to buy time, her mind racing.

  Olivia deserved better than peace. She deserved better than to feel guilt over her conscienceless cad of a husband. She deserved the truth. She deserved . . .

  Freedom.

  Impulsively, Mariana snatched up Olivia’s hand and rose, pulling her sister across the room and through the doorway. The girls at the piano didn’t notice. Mariana guided them to the little window seat situated beneath the crook of the main staircase. Many an afternoon she and Olivia had spent here telling each other their deepest, darkest secrets. Tonight, Mariana had one last deep, dark secret to tell.

  She looked into her sister’s eyes. “There is more about Paris.”

  A knowing smile lit up Olivia’s face. “Is it about Nick?” Olivia reached for Mariana’s hands and squeezed. “I am so happy for you. I knew you and Nick would find your way to each other again.”

  Mariana’s stomach simultaneously heaved and sank. “No, Olivia. Quite the opposite, actually.” She inhaled a deep breath and took the plunge. “Percy is alive.”

  Olivia’s wide, happy gaze transformed into one bewildered and incredulous. “Percy is alive,” she repeated. “It seems I would have heard about this sooner.”

  “I’m not sure you would know him. He is a spy, and . . . altered.”

  “Alive . . . a spy . . . altered,” Olivia repeated slowly. “You’re certain it was he?”

  Mariana nodded. “It was he.”

  Olivia’s gaze fixed on the dusky, bucolic view outside the window. Reserved and watchful Olivia always took her time to process her feelings. Much the opposite of bold, brash Mariana.

  “Did he happen to mention when he is coming home?”

  Mariana hadn’t imagined this conversation could get any more difficult, but it just had. “I don’t think he has any intention of coming home.” She hesitated, hoping to find any sequence of words that would comfort her sister. “I know you love—”

  Olivia pinned Mariana with a piercing glare. “Love? What on earth does love have to do with Percy and me?” She shot to a stand and gazed down at a confused Mariana. “You will stay with the girls and bring them back to London in a few days?”

  “You’re up to London?”

  Olivia nodded. “I must speak to the Duke.”

  “Be careful,” Mariana said. “It will be the shock of the Duke’s life to hear that his favorite son has risen from the dead.”

  Olivia leaned over and swiped a quick kiss onto Mariana’s cheek before whispering into her ear. “You will stand with me? No matter what I choose to do?”

  She shifted backward to better meet Olivia’s gaze. “No matter what.”

  Olivia nodded once before swiveling and dashing down the corridor to say good-bye to Lucy. Her eyes fast on Olivia’s receding back, Mariana knew that Olivia’s course was set, and that she would share her decision when she was ready. Mariana experienced a rush of hope for her sister.

  She allowed a few minutes to pass before she made her way back to the drawing room where Lucy and Lavinia were still busily composing lyrics to Herr Mozart, blessedly oblivious to recent familial developments. There would be time for that in the coming days, weeks, and months, she suspected.

  As if drawn by a magnetic force, her feet carried her past the girls and through the room, nimbly navigating Aunt Dot’s haphazard groupings of settees, tables, and randomly acquired bibelot from years of indiscriminate shopping excursions.

  At last, Mariana found herself standing before the set of French doors overlooking the terrace, across a wide expanse of closely cropped grass, and on down to the copse of trees on the other side of the ha-ha.

  Another moonlit night came to mind. A girl full of wild hopes, fears, and dreams she’d been that night. And now?

  Now she wasn’t as far removed from that girl as she liked to believe. Those wild hopes, fears, and dreams were like sticky burrs caught within her heart, tenacious little irritants that refused to let go and let be.

  Now that she’d told Olivia the truth, she understood it was impossible to continue with the fiction that she’d left Paris behind. Paris had followed her.

  Paris had reminded her of who she’d been all this time. She didn’t want to be a married spinster. She knew that fact deep within her bones. And she could no longer deny it. Perhaps there was a man for her out there . . .

  Her gaze caught a movement at the edge of the woods and narrowed. A responsive spark raced through her, lighting up dormant nerve endings as it went. Only a few weeks ago, she would have thought nothing of that shadow. Now she pressed her nose to the glass and tracked the shadow as it moved along the edge of the tree line. It could be a deer, a hare, an owl on his first flight of the evening . . . Her gut told her otherwise. She waited, her breath accelerating . . . And waited, her heart threatening to pound through her chest . . . She waited so long that she nearly gave up—patience had never been her signature virtue—when the shadow emerged from the copse, efficiently scaled the low ha-ha wall, and sprinted across the lawn toward the house.

  Uncle Bertie’s study lay at the end of that particular wing, and only one man moved like that particular shadow. Paris wasn’t finished with her yet.

  Instinctively, she turned the door handle and was halfway across its threshold before she remembered the girls. “I think I’ll catch a breath of moonlight,” she called over her shoulder.

  Just as the door was closing behind her, she heard Lucy’s voice sing out, “Lavinia, let’s try Moonlight Sonata!”

  The door snapped shut, muting the raucous sound of Lucy and Lavinia, and night quiet settled into the air around her. Her back pressed against a chilly pane of glass, and her heart raced to the speed of her mind. She couldn’t be absolutely certain that the shadow had been him. There was but one way to find out.

  She flattened her body against the house and began moving carefully in its shadow, her feet creeping along its length, her deepest dread the snap of a twig or the twist of an ankle. Although it felt like it took forever, she reached the nearest window of Uncle Bertie’s study in a matter of seconds. Cautiously, she ducked and stopped, hoping to steady her breath.

  On the surface, all she could hear was the symphony of night—crickets chirruping, frogs croaking, owls hooting. As her breath settled, she began to discern another sound, a sound soft and persistent. The muffled sound of deep, masculine voices at odds, but intent on privacy, drifted from the study.

  A quick appraisal of the French doors to her right revealed them to be cracked open a sliver. From her crouched position, she waddled closer in small increments. With each inch, the soft murmur of the voices coalesced into syllables, then words.

  She counted to three before venturing a peek through glass. It was as she suspected: Uncle Bertie and Nick. While instinct bade her rush in and confront the two men, good sense dictated she stay put. More was to be gained from listening. For now.

  “Those men in your hotel suite were intended to scare you off, except—” This was Uncle’s deep, mellifluous voice.

  “They didn’t,” Nick interrupted. “I stayed and went underground, and you had to find a way to flush me out.”

  The deep notes of his voice emerged strong and assured, appealing to the wron
g side of her. She had an incurable sickness for the man.

  “I figured she would do the trick.”

  She? In a flash Mariana knew that she was she.

  “You didn’t count on her partnering with me,” Nick stated flatly.

  Partnering? The word sounded so very . . . equal.

  Was that how Nick saw her? As his equal?

  “I didn’t think you would be foolish enough to involve her,” came Uncle’s response.

  What was so foolish about involving her?

  Before she could reconsider, or even consider, her intent, her palm pressed flat against the door, pushing it wide, and her feet boldly led her through its threshold.

  Twin incredulous expressions greeted her, releasing another frisson of excitement inside her.

  “I would appreciate it if you would stop talking about me as if I’m not here.”

  Chapter 27

  Brim: (Abbreviation of Brimstone.) An abandoned woman; perhaps originally only a passionate or irascible woman, compared to brimstone for its inflammability.

  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

  Francis Grose

  Nick must appear an utter simpleton, flat-footed and flummoxed, as Mariana sailed into the room like a wrathful fury, chest heaving, eyes flashing. But there was no help for it.

  “I shan’t be discussed like some pawn in your game of chess,” she stated, coming to a decisive stop before him and Montfort. “I’m a woman of means, both worldly and intellectual, who makes her own decisions.”

  “My dear,” Montfort began on a plaintive note.

  Nick’s ears perked up. He’d never heard that particular sound emit from the unflappable Bertrand Montfort. This night grew more interesting, and more confounding, by the moment.