by Laura Parker
“Nothing, je regrette.” Philadelphia watched him move closer after having paused to greet another of the guests. He was dressed as always in a tailcoat with a French ribbon of rank slanted across his narrow chest. It was his thinness that gave him the illusion of height when seen from a distance. In fact, he was only an inch taller than she, and scarcely broader in the shoulders. His hair was parted in the middle above his lean face and plastered to the sides of his head with a too generous application of macassar oil so that it gleamed in the gaslight. Everything about him was calculated to arrest the eye, from his hair to his curled mustaches to the fastidious details of his dress which made him a favorite among many of the ladies. He possessed the figure of a young man but his eyes were old, she thought with a shiver of distaste.
“Mademoiselle de Ronsard,” the Marquis d’Edas said with exaggerated pleasure as he bowed before her. “Again we meet, and again and again, and yet never is it enough.”
Philadelphia didn’t offer her hand as was customary. Though his expression was meant to convey ardent interest, she was aware that his eyes had strayed to the magnificent diamond necklace she wore whenever the occasion permitted. “You flatter me too greatly, Monsieur d’Edas. The other ladies present will begin to think you find their considerable charms less to your taste.”
The man’s pale blue eyes narrowed but his smile didn’t falter. “You tease me, but unmercifully, Mademoiselle de Ronsard, to say such a thing before the ladies. Ah, but I forgive you, I must forgive you anything!”
“Then you must prove your sincerity.” She gently took Julieanna by the upper arm and urged her to the edge of her chair. “Mademoiselle Wharton is dying to waltz. Only she is too shy to admit it.”
“Well, I—that is!” Julieanna’s fair complexion flooded scarlet with embarrassment.
“But of course I will dance with the fair Mademoiselle Wharton,” d’Edas said as he reached for the younger girl’s hand. “Mademoiselle de Ronsard will save a dance for me also?”
Philadelphia pretended to survey her dance card. “Oh, but I’m—how you say—filled up. Je le regrette, monsieur.”
The marquis bowed. “I, too, regret it,” he said with little pleasure for he had plainly glimpsed her card and seen that most of the spaces were empty. “Perhaps you will reconsider me at a later time?”
“Perhaps,” she murmured and looked away only to spy Henry striding toward her with a scowl on his handsome face. She rose quickly and thrust out both hands to him as he neared her. “Ah, but here is my partner. This is our dance, Henri, is it not?”
Henry didn’t know, nor did he care. Whenever Mademoiselle de Ronsard looked at him, he nearly forgot to breathe. Now she had said his Christian name in public, for all to hear, and the realization made him giddy. He caught her hands and led her out onto the floor to sweep her along into the graceful circle of waltzers.
Round and round they went, her lovely green silk skirts swirling out about her like a storm-tossed sea. The sheer pleasure of holding her nearly erased his anger of moments before. It was as though nothing had been whispered in his ear moments earlier. Breathing in the faint lavender scent rising from her skin, he could scarcely recall the accusations.
“How absurd,” he said, as though he’d spoken all rather than only the last of his thoughts aloud.
Philadelphia tilted her head back to look up at him. “What is absurd?”
He smiled down at her. “The very idea, saying that you couldn’t possibly be who you most certainly are. Oh, my dear! I do apologize for my clumsiness. Did I hurt you?”
“No. My fault,” Philadelphia replied, straining to recover from her misstep. But she could no longer feel the rhythm of the waltz flowing through her for the awkward pounding of her heart. “Who says I am not who I am?”
He shook his head. He was humming in tune to the music, something he had never before done, and enjoying it immensely.
She paused in the middle of a turn. “Who says I am not who I say I am?”
Confused, he frowned at her. “Who said? My dear mam’zelle, I do apologize for even mentioning it. The piker isn’t worth a thought.”
She held his gaze as she said carefully, “Who spoke so of me?”
He colored to the roots of his fair hair. “Oh, very well. This d’Edas made a comment to Mrs. Rutledge this morning while they shared a carriage ride through Central Park. He let slip the fact that he’d never heard of your family. Of course, he said he didn’t know every hanger-on at court but he knew nearly everyone of consequence in Paris.”
“And?” she demanded, uncaring that the other dancers had to pivot about them as they remained at a standstill in the middle of the floor.
“And,” he said impatiently, faintly embarrassed to have opened the subject, “when Mrs. Rutledge pressed him on the point, he suggested that, perhaps, you aren’t quite all that you seem.”
“What is it I seem, Henri?”
He smiled at her now, certain of what he would say. “You seem the very embodiment of dreams come true.” He hadn’t meant to say it with such eloquence but her beauty affected him far more than any other influence in his life. It moved him to strive for poetry, for a semblance of words that would convey this incredible feeling welling up inside him. “The man’s a fool.”
Philadelphia nodded once and resumed the steps of the waltz. “I must remember to send your sister a very large bouquet of flowers.”
“Whatever for?”
“Condolences,” she answered with a quick glance in d’Edas’s direction. He held the scarlet-faced girl more closely than was strictly proper, and the fact wasn’t going unnoticed by the matrons seated on the gilded chairs lining the ballroom. Poor Julieanna, she thought in sympathy. Yet the girl would survive. It was her own reputation that was in real danger.
When the waltz ended, she caught Henry’s sleeve. “Would you accompany me for a breath of air? The room is so crowded.”
“Delighted!” he said, his chest swelling until the buttons on his waistcoat were strained.
But the escape was not to be. She didn’t notice his approach, or that he had deliberately steered his partner in their path but suddenly she was facing d’Edas’s slyly smiling face. “Mademoiselle de Ronsard, does the orchestra not remind you of the orchestras of the Hiileries?”
She smiled stiffly. “I don’t recall but then I was merely a child, and in my family children were not permitted to run freely about the city.”
“But of course. Your family.” Once more his avid gaze lingered on the diamonds encircling her throat. “The collier de Ronsard. Mademoiselle Wharton has just been telling me that it’s quite famous.” He looked up into her eyes. “Il est magnifique! Enfin, it is most amazing I have never before heard of it. Where, exactly, did you say your family resides?”
“I didn’t.” Philadelphia heard Henry suck in a breath of surprise at her abrupt reply but the marquis had been rude in asking for her address in the first place. “They are dead, monsieur. They reside in their graves.”
“But I am too forward. Forgive me, mademoiselle. Adieu.” The Frenchman smiled cunningly but said under his breath in French as he brushed by her, “You little cheat!”
She turned away as though his words had failed to reach her but her hands were clenched into fists by her sides as she walked toward the doors which opened onto the balcony. Dimly, she was aware that Henry followed her but the desire to breathe air untainted by the marquis’s presence made her unable to consider the young man’s feelings.
D’Edas had called her a cheat, his hissing voice sounding as dangerous as that of a snake. He would find her out. It wasn’t the threat that frightened her, it was the realization that he could find her out to be a cheat because she was. The knowledge appalled her. How had she come so far from what she knew to be right and good and just?
“What’s wrong, dearest?” Henry stood irresolutely by her side in the darkness where she’d paused by the balustrade.
She turned to him, and in the illumination from the room behind him, he saw that she was close to tears. “Monsieur Wharton, I must tell you something, something that will make you like me less.”
All the tender feelings a man can possess for a woman in distress came rushing to the fore as he reached out to bring her into the circle of his arms. “Don’t say anything yet,” he whispered against her hair as he held her in a gentle embrace.
Grateful for his blind comfort, she rested her head against his shoulder a moment. But it was folly, and in the end she knew he would only be hurt when he learned of her duplicity in the face of his honest innocence. She leaned away from him and though he didn’t restrain her he didn’t release her.
“It’s that devil of a fellow d’Edas, isn’t it?” he said quickly. “He frightens you. Well, I don’t care if you’re not royalty. Don’t know that royalty has a place on Fifth Avenue.” He flushed at his own temerity. He was moving much faster than he’d expected to but events were forcing his hand and he wasn’t a coward. “I don’t care who your people were. It’s apparent that you’re a product of good breeding. Why, your table manners are impeccable and you light up a drawing room as no one else of my acquaintance. Then there’s your family jewels. If that isn’t proof of ancient lines, I don’t know what is.”
He knew he was probably saying too much but she was staring up at him mutely, and so he felt free to babble to his heart’s content. “Aunt Hedda likes you, too. Says you’re worth any dozen of the season’s debutantes and though she doesn’t often approve of what I do and say, she’d clearly approve of having you in the family. ‘New bloodlines, that’s all that will save the Wharton line,’ is how she put it.”
Caught between amusement and faint horror at this declaration of—of, well, she supposed it was affection with intent to wed, Philadelphia changed her mind about what she had been about to say. “Henri, you’re a dear, dear man and I’m afraid that if you don’t release me this moment I’ll fall in the most deplorable state of love with you.”
Deplorable. Love. The words collided in his rioting thoughts as he released her. “Are you saying—”
“I’m saying the situation is impossible,” she supplied with a gentle smile. “You’re a young lion of society. I’m but a poor exile. Without a home or family or even the wherewithal to protect myself from the slander of strangers, I will always be the target of speculation—and rumor,” she added in a rising tone that forestalled his protest. “It is my destiny. And so you must allow me to leave your life as much a stranger as I came into it. Only know that your concern for me has made this parting a little easier to bear.”
“Parting? But I wish to marry you!” he declared, casting away twenty-one years of training in appropriate conduct.
Philadelphia sighed. “Marriage is impossible. No, don’t say more.” Acting on impulse, she rose up on tiptoe and briefly pressed her mouth to his. “Adieu, mon cher. Adieu.”
She moved back from him with a smile but it never fully formed. Instead she blanched, staring across his shoulder as though a ghost had suddenly appeared on the balcony beside them.
Henry whipped about but saw nothing unusual, only the familiar shape of her East Indian servant Akbar, who stood with his back to the open balcony doors. He turned back to her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Too caught up in the moment to question her more closely, Henry saw only a reflection of his own misery in her stricken gaze as it came to rest on him once more. She had refused his proposal before he’d properly made it.
Philadelphia stared at Henry Wharton as though he were a stranger. She was no longer capable of being with him. Akbar had returned! And she’d just kissed another man! Even though Akbar’s back was turned when she spied him over Henry’s shoulder, she wondered if he’d seen her in Henry’s arms. The thought sent a shiver through her, though she couldn’t say why.
Ashamed and annoyed at the same time, she backed away from Henry. “Good-bye, Henry,” she said in English as she moved away from him.
As if on cue, Akbar moved away from the open doorway and entered the house where he walked swiftly onto the ballroom floor, and right into the crowd of dancers.
Philadelphia tried to follow him, heedless of the surprised glances that followed her across the floor, but the dancers seemed to block her path even as they had parted for him. She was a lady seeking her servant. Surely they were aware of that and saw nothing untoward in it. Or was there? Was it there on her face for all of them to read, the heady excitement, the flush of embarrassment, the high hope and shameful secret of the joy she felt in knowing that he had returned?
When she finally reached the opposite side of the room she could no longer find him. She moved into the foyer only to be told by the liveried butler that her servant had left the house. “Call a cab for me at once!” she demanded in agitation.
“That won’t be necessary if Mademoiselle de Ronsard will allow me the privilege of providing her with the service of my carriage.”
Philadelphia knew who addressed her before she turned. “Monsieur le marquis. Merci, but that won’t be necessary.”
He was smiling, a small cold smile that managed to dim a little of her excitement. “Enfin, mademoiselle, I must insist,” he said as he came closer. “You and I have never been properly acquainted and now is the perfect time for a little private chat, n’est-ce pas?”
“That’s totally out of the question,” she answered firmly and turned again at the butler, “A cab, s’il vous plaît?”
“There’s one waiting just outside, miss,” the man answered smartly. “At your convenience.”
“My convenience is now,” she answered without even a backward glance at the marquis.
7
The plodding ride up Fifth Avenue did nothing to calm Philadelphia’s agitation. The pace of the late-evening traffic seemed deliberately designed to stretch her patience to the breaking point.
“Can’t we have speed?” she cried as she thumped the hansom roof with her gloved fist.
“We’re just about there, miss,” came the cabbie’s startled reply.
“Hurry!” she countered and sat back, crossing her arms tightly across her bosom.
In her rush, she’d left behind her shawl. The night air puckered her arms with gooseflesh but her body’s reaction made little impression on her. She gazed out at the gaslights lining Fifth Avenue, their golden nimbi shining brightly through the black shroud of night, and in each she saw a reflection of Eduardo Tavares’s face.
Why had he reentered her life without warning and then left again without so much as a word? Couldn’t he guess how much she’d missed him and been afraid that something was wrong? Well, when she caught up with him, she’d have more than a word to say to him, and he would listen until his ears blistered from the tirade!
When the hansom pulled up before the Ormstead residence she climbed down unaided and marched up the steps to ring the bell.
The butler appeared at once, surprise showing on his face when he realized that she was alone.
“Pay the cabbie, please,” she said peremptorily.
“Certainly, miss,” he answered as she brushed past him on the scent of violets and youth. Belatedly, he called after her, “Your servant has returned, miss. Came in just now.”
“Merci.“ She didn’t pause but a smile of joy replaced the determined look on her face. Heart pounding in time to her quickened steps, she climbed the stairs to her floor, traversed the hall, and flung open the door to her bedroom, half-expecting that Eduardo had sneaked into her rooms to wait for her return.
He wasn’t there.
Disappointment jagged down through her, leaving her torn between hurt and annoyance. She closed the door and marched across the floral carpet while stripping off her white kid gloves. When she reached the dressing table she dropped them there and then pulled the pins from the garland of violets which decorated her ha
ir and flung it down beside the gloves.
When she glanced up at her reflection in the mirror she was amazed by her expression. Her cheeks were deeply flushed and her eyes shone with the inner light of fine topazes, but there familiarity ended. Her hair was a strange dark shade and her lips had been cunningly rouged to mimic the deep natural rose of a brunet. In her eyes she looked cheap and theatrical. Everything about her was a sham. She seemed to be drowning in the sea of deception and duplicity which she had helped fashion but could not control. She needed a harbor, an anchor, protection from uncertainty and doubt. In Eduardo Tavares, she thought she had found a savior, someone on whom she could depend. Perhaps she had been mistaken.
A slow flush crept up over the low neckline of her ball gown. Perhaps Senhor Tavares had seen her kiss Henry Wharton. It was brazen and unlike her to do such a thing. Yet if he had seen the gesture, it might answer the question of why he had simply walked away. Perhaps her kissing Henry had offended him.
Resentment pricked through her embarrassment. He had no right to be insulted, to judge her actions when he knew nothing of the anxiety in which she had lived these last days. He didn’t know about Monsieur d’Edas and his innuendos, nor the fear that she would trip herself on her own lies.
She glanced at the millefleur needlepoint bell pull that hung beside the fireplace. She would send for him. She reached for the bell only to be interrupted by a knock at her door. Startled, she whipped around. “Yes? Oui. Come in!”
The maid appeared from behind the opening door. “Do you require help in undressing, mam’zelle?”
“Yes. No! I require nothing!” Philadelphia snapped.
“Very well. Good night, mam’zelle.”
“Wait!” She forced a smile to her lips. “I’m told my servant Akbar has returned. Where is he?”
“Can’t say for certain, mam’zelle, but I expect he’s retired. Anyways he ain’t below stairs.”
“Thank you. You may go.”
She felt stifled by the burden of the clothing she wore. She reached up and removed the diamond necklace and earrings, pausing to look at them. The lamplight caught fire in the center of each stone, sending riotous rainbows of pure colors dancing among the shadows of the ceiling. No wonder the Marquis d’Edas was fascinated by the jewels. The stones were perfect and exquisite.