The Counterfeit Mistress

by Madeline Hunter

  “It is rare of you to flatter me, or anyone,” Ambury said. “Your curiosity must be intense.”

  “Not at all. It is a passing question that came to me as I watched those women back there gossiping.”

  “They may have only been chatting. The subject could have been art or literature, not gossip.”

  “The way they whispered and laughed after another woman passed indicated otherwise.”

  “You do have a talent for noticing the least favorable sides of people. What question did this inspire in you?”

  Kendale hoped he appeared nonchalant. “If a man has intimate relations with an innocent, he is a scoundrel and honor requires him to redeem himself and the female with marriage. And if a man has relations with a whore, he is guilty only of a sin that none take too seriously and he owes the female nothing but the price agreed to. What, however, are the expectations if he has relations with a woman who is not an innocent but also not a whore?”

  “A fallen woman?”

  “An experienced woman.”

  “Like a widow, you mean.”

  A nod seemed the best response, even if the widow status did not fit, to his awareness at least.

  “Is there a particular reason that you are asking me this question?” Ambury’s voice and face hardened. “If you are in any way alluding to my wife, you risk our friendship. I know of the talk about her and I know you believed all of it, but I’ll be damned if—”

  “Hell, it has nothing to do with that. Are conversations about women now impossible because you will see insult around every corner?”

  “You have never invited conversations about women, Kendale, so this one is very peculiar to me. I must conclude that Madame Peltier impressed you more than I expected. I even warned her off, lest she cast covetous eyes on you. I know how that annoys you.”

  “Madame Peltier is looking for a husband, I think, not a liaison.”

  “Let us say that she anticipates one day having a liaison that turns into a marriage. That is not uncommon in the situation you described. However, if the arrangement is clear and such expectations firmly discouraged, it is not required of a gentleman to wed an experienced woman should there be—how did you put it—intimate relations. I suggest with Madame Peltier that you clarify that before embarking on an affair, however. Make sure that she understands at the outset. No, before the outset.”

  “Did you?”

  “I did.”

  Kendale wondered how Ambury had raised such a delicate point with the woman, especially before having true cause to do so. He could think of no words appropriate to opening such negotiations. Did he just come out and say, Madame, I want to share your bed and enjoy your favors, but I must be sure you understand that afterward there will be no marriage?

  And Ambury accused him of being hard and coarse.

  “I also made clear that I would be generous in other ways,” Ambury said, warming to the lesson. “That is also customary.”

  “How generous?”

  “You cannot be serious. Even you are not so ignorant.”

  “Only on the nuances. I have seen men driven to ruin from being generous to women. I am trying to determine how much less would suffice.”

  “With Madame Peltier, I would think expensive but not ruinous jewels are required. A few gowns. The occasional delicacy for her table. The use of a coach would ensure a longer liaison than I enjoyed.”

  “Ah. I see. She threw you over for being ungenerous.”

  “No. I threw her over for thinking she might get a wedding after all. She is not for you, Kendale. Truly. I am delighted you are showing interest. However, you are not equipped for such as she. To start you should find some quiet, modest woman who is not too jaded and who does not have memories of the grand life of Paris in her head. Madame Peltier should not be engaged by anyone but a general, and in this war you are a raw recruit.”

  Since he had no interest in Madame Peltier, he would not lose a single battle to her. Unfortunately, on his own, for all his words, Ambury had not told him what he really wanted to know.

  “In such an arrangement, what else is owed? Loyalty? Constancy?” He tried to sound very casual indeed.

  It did not work. Ambury stopped his horse, turned in his saddle and scrutinized his face. “I should have known these were not idle questions. There is someone, isn’t there? And it is not the woman in question.”

  Kendale tried to demur. Ambury would have none of it.

  “Who? I demand to know. I won’t tell anyone. Not even Southwaite, who would only lecture you on discretion and not contribute anything useful, the way I have.”

  Kendale moved his horse forward. “You are boring me. I can ask a simple question without having you leap to stupid conclusions, I hope.”

  Ambury paced on too, then stopped again. “The Lyon woman?”

  “Who?”

  “Is it Marielle Lyon? Madame Peltier would move in similar circles. You might have recently met her in your quest to meet French émigrés. Miss Lyon is quite lovely. Perhaps lovely enough even to get you to notice.”

  “She is French.”

  Ambury smiled. “All the better. And she is one of the good French.”

  “You are mistaken. I have no designs on her, or anyone else.”

  “That is disheartening. However, you did want to meet her, as I remember. Say! Let us ride to Albemarle Street, and I can introduce you. I just remembered that this afternoon she will be at Fairbourne’s. Cassandra mentioned in passing that Miss Lyon will be bringing in a consignment of jewelry. Cassandra will be joining them to help Emma appraise its value.”

  Fairbourne’s auction house graced Albemarle Street with its stone façade and heavy oak door. Here Emma Fairbourne continued the business begun by her father. The world thought her brother the mind behind the business’s success, but Kendale had seen and heard enough to know that Emma, now the Countess Southwaite, gave so much advice that the true captain of the ship had become at best ambiguous.

  He was the last person to criticize Southwaite for permitting this secret vocation. Emma Fairbourne had been born to this trade and felt estranged from her own life and person without it. Why shouldn’t she exercise her God-given abilities the way nature intended? He knew what it was like when that happened, and how nothing really filled that void.

  He expected she avoided gossip about it by never publicly taking the role she played. At the auctions last fall her brother oversaw everything, while she attended only as a potential patron on her husband’s arm. Today he saw the other reasons why she could maintain such discretion. An auction house was not like a typical shop. It only opened to the public when an auction loomed. Otherwise no one entered. Even if they did, they would have to seek out the private office in order to witness Emma at work.

  That is where Ambury took him, their bootsteps echoing in the empty exhibition hall. They found Emma and Cassandra in the office, head-to-head, examining a small cache of jewelry and debating values.

  Cassandra looked up. “Ambury, what a surprise.” Her blue eyes sparked with happiness at the sight of her husband. The lights dimmed considerably when she greeted Kendale in turn.

  Ambury looked down at the jewels on the desk. “Did Marielle bring these? Has she already gone?”

  Emma swept her hand in a gesture over the glittering objects. “She arrived with them at my home last night. It was most peculiar. I did not mind, but after arranging last week for her to come here today, it seemed a mysterious thing to do.”

  “Most irregular,” Ambury said.

  “That is Marielle however,” Cassandra said with a laugh. “She works very hard at it, I think. Being mysterious.”

  “Surely she gave an explanation for intruding so late and unexpectedly,” Kendale said. “I do not know our French guests well, but I have never heard them described as deliberately rude.”

&nb
sp; “She said that due to an unexpected meeting elsewhere, she could not come today and wanted me to have these now.”

  Kendale lifted one of the earrings. If Marielle had arranged last week to deliver these, she had them two days ago when intruders entered her house. She must have had them very well hidden if they were not taken. Perhaps she kept them on her person.

  “Did Marielle mention where she was going for this meeting?” he asked while he judged whether a bag with these jewels would fit in deep pockets.

  Silence pulled his attention away from the desk surface. Three pairs of eyes looked at him with curiosity. He realized he had spoken of her with intimate familiarity. He attempted to appear merely curious himself. “To intrude on an earl’s household at night—the reason would have to be very important for the niece of a comte to do that.”

  “I thought so too,” Emma said. “It worried me and she appeared very distracted and that worried me more. I asked if I could be of any assistance to her but Marielle is not one to confide or to request help. She only said that she had to leave early in the morning. It sounded like she intended a journey of some kind.”

  That was not what he wanted to hear. She had been attacked and her home ransacked, and now she had probably left London. For good? He had asked if her own people might be after her. All it would take was one enemy denouncing her to the right ear and that could happen.

  “She is probably only visiting some friends,” Cassandra soothed.

  “Perhaps, but seeing her last night was too odd. Lord Kendale thinks so too, so I am not being dramatic.”

  “Ambury, have you learned or heard anything to suggest she is . . . in trouble,” Cassandra asked. “What with the stupid rumors about her, perhaps some fool in the government decided to threaten her and she has run away out of fear.”

  There were times when being a man not known for conversation had its benefits. This was such a time. Since he might be the fool in question, he did nothing to draw attention to himself.

  “I have heard nothing,” Ambury said. “I will ask and see what I can learn, however, if it will relieve your concern.”

  “Please do,” Emma said. “I will talk to Darius and have him quiz a few men as well.”

  “If you learn the names of the knaves, please tell me first,” Cassandra said. “When I think of the kindness and help she showed my aunt, I want to have first go at anyone who drove her out of London.”

  Kendale doubted that Cassandra would care much that in truth he had tried to obligate Marielle to remain in London. If she learned of his recent involvement in Marielle’s life, she would blame him for frightening her away.

  He took his leave of them all and went out to his horse. While he rode to the City, and the remnants of its north wall, he assessed if he had healed well enough for a night in the saddle.

  If Marielle had left London, he thought he knew the direction she would take. She was heading east or south, to the coast. It should not be hard to learn which. He would ask at the coaching inns that served those routes. If Marielle Lyon had paid a fare and boarded a stagecoach, she would be remembered by any man who witnessed it.

  Chapter 9

  Marielle knew only one person in Dover. After a teeth-chattering ride that took forever, she stretched herself in the yard of the coaching inn and debated how to find him.

  She did not like to visit the eastern coast. She did not care for the damp of it, nor the mix of people in the towns. Dover in particular always seemed gray to her, and its houses appeared bitten by the sea. Too many men loitered about, many of them sailors waiting for a ship.

  Fewer could be seen this time. The press gangs must have come through recently. A smart sailor made himself scarce when unemployed, else he might find himself serving His Majesty under conditions little better than that of a galley slave. Thus did England remain a power at sea. Of course, with conscription into the army allowed now, France was no better.

  She walked to the shop she sought, trying to battle the emotions provoked by these streets. Mostly she disliked Dover because it was the first English town she set foot in after climbing off a longboat up the coast some miles. Her first knowledge of Dover had been full of fear and exhaustion and the kind of cold that only wet shoes in winter can create. She had been past gratitude for being alive by then, and devoid of the alertness that comes when death tracks you. Numb and alone and sick at heart, she had lagged behind the others and found a doorway where she sat down and cried.

  Dominique, who had been on the same boat, had noticed and taken pity on her. It had been the first kindness anyone had shown her in over a month. She felt that motherly arm around her now, as if Dominique once more walked beside her, helping her take the steps to safety.

  There was no Dominique with her now, however. After the intrusion on the house, they dared not risk another by having only Nicole be there at night. She hoped the intruders did not come back while she was gone. It would be self-defense when Dominique killed them, but that would not avoid the attention and disruption of a magistrate’s inquiry.

  She found the stationer’s shop that she sought. The proprietor recognized her at once. He returned to his patron while she stood back and pretended interest in his fancy papers. When the patron left, the shop owner barred the door so there could be no unexpected interruptions.

  “It has been a long time,” he said. “Over a year.”

  Had it really been that long? She had perhaps been negligent in her duties, and lacked constancy in her goals. The life she had built distracted her with its many details. She had become Marielle Lyon, French refugee, perhaps too thoroughly.

  “Éduard and Luc did not meet me as planned last time, Monsieur Farmen,” she said. “So I have brought my things to you to pass on to the men with the boat.” She set down a roll of prints that she had carried with her. Not a fat roll, like the one she lost in the alley. Even paying the printer for the use of his press all night, she had only been able to make a dozen good impressions.

  Monsieur Farmen looked out his window, as if checking to make sure no one peeked in. “I’ll see they get it. You have the coin for them?”

  She set down over four shillings. They would sell the prints in France to a bookseller or print shop, and make more money yet. The smugglers did well for their efforts, but they also took the risks.

  “Do you know where I can find Éduard or Luc? I want to know if they have chosen not to come to London in the future. If so, I must find others.”

  “I do not think they will be doing this anymore. I think— I do not know for certain, but I think they are dead.” He watched her carefully. Perhaps he thought she would swoon. “There’s two men laid out in that French tailor’s house—Lebois is his name. He took them, since no one knew their families. That is what I heard at least. Also that one is named Éduard. I think it is our Éduard, see.”

  “You have not gone to check?”

  “Would be odd if I did. How do I explain it? Say I have come to pay my respects to a man I hired to transport goods to and from smugglers up the coast?”

  “You could say you had become friends with him, and shared some ale at times at the tavern. No one will question you, least of all a tailor who is not his family.”

  “Best if that is not commonly known that we had a friendship or business together, I think. Others probably know what he was up to. And there is more to it that says best to stay away.”

  “Where is this tailor? I will go and see if it is the Éduard we knew. I will say . . . something. I will be one more Frenchwoman with whom he flirted if necessary.”

  “Best you stay away too. See, like I said, there is more. It was no accident, how these two died. They were knifed up, and beaten badly I hear. Maybe they helped themselves to someone’s goods and he came looking for them. Anyway, you stay away if you are smart. I’ll be finding others to take their place. English this time, I thi
nk. Safer. Three weeks from now you go to the meeting as you used to, and they will be there.”

  He appeared resolute. He would be no help. Marielle left, still carrying her prints and her shillings. She would find this tailor on her own. Then she would find the smugglers too. She would not go back to London and wait three weeks. If Éduard and Luc had been killed, she might not have that long.

  Kendale swung off his horse in front of the tailor’s shop. Beechem the magistrate did the same.

  “He has them in a shed in the back. Wants them out soon, though. No one claimed them, and they are getting very ripe,” Beechem said. “We’ll be planting them today, so it was fortuitous you came now.”

  Kendale had not come for this. However, as long as he made the ride to the coast, he had called on the magistrate to learn about these murders that had been reported by their watchers. He would look, find nothing, and carry on with his real mission.

  The tailor greeted them in the shop. A short, slightly built man with an unexpected mustache, he did not hide his disappointment that the bell had been rung by Beechem instead of a patron looking for a coat.

  Beechem explained that the bodies would be gone in a few hours. The tailor appeared relieved.

  “Did anyone come to pay their respects?” Kendale asked.

  “A few the first days. Then nothing until one of the bigger man’s cousins asked after him. Seems his name was Éduard Villon. She thinks the smaller one’s name was Luc, but she did not know his surname.”

  “Éduard Villon. Well, that is something,” Beechem said. “Why did it take her so long to come here?”

  “She said she lives west of here, and only learned of these deaths several days ago. Her cousin had gone missing, so she thought to come and see if he was here.” The tailor shook his head. “Pretty lady. So sad she was when she saw him. Despite the smell she stayed in there a half hour. I left her to her grief. Eventually she came out and sat outside for a long while. Many hours.” He shrugged. “Perhaps she knew those others would come, and waited for them.”