Chapter Seven #2
He bade both ladies good day and took the lane straight before him. As he passed the corner into which madame had retreated, he noted from the corner of his eye that she had disappeared.
The obvious answer was that she knew Lady Ramsey and/or Lady Ashley, and did not wish to speak with them.
Why? What was her fear of being discovered by those two ladies?
He hurried back to his rooms. He had a report to write for Foreign Secretary Mulgrave.
His questions about Madame Laurant had to wait until later. Better yet, this business in the Lanes warned that he should forget her.
But recent attempts throughout his days and nights said that was not so.
*
Giselle sank into the hollow crevice behind the corner of two shops. That had been close to disaster. She had covered her shock at Gus and Amber’s early arrival in town, and properly so.
Had she continued and approached them, Lord Carlisle would have seen by Amber and Gus’s reactions to her that they and she were acquainted.
Both ladies were expert at discretion, but Giselle wished not to navigate the murky waters of espionage in the presence of Carlisle. The less he knew about her, the better.
Three years ago, each of the two ladies had met the men to whom they were now married. Agents for a network of spies managed here in London by a lady merchant, both Lords Ashley and Ramsey had left France after the declaration of war and brought their lady loves with them here to England’s shores.
Giselle had not seen either lady since they had met in Paris until she’d arrived in England last autumn.
That journey from her home near Blois, along the Loire River, had been long and dangerous.
Only with the help of one of Ashley’s men—his former majordomo of his house in Paris—had she been able to make secret connections to get to Le Havre on the coast. Not only was she escaping from Joseph Fouché’s deputy, René Vaillancourt, but she was gifted with a rare talent.
Amber and Gus knew that skill could help the British cause.
They and their husbands had welcomed her to England, smuggled in as she was by one of their colleagues.
Jacques Durand, by name. It was Durand’s associate who had not posted a few nights ago outside the hotel.
She winced. She had too much on her mind to play the polite lady who met old friends on the street.
Never had she been a good actress. It was her frankness, her lack of subterfuge, that had created the tensions with her husband.
But it was on her ability to truly see people for what they were that she had built her strength and survived her husband’s cruelty and his embezzlement of public tax money.
The French deputy had argued that to scrub the public records of her husband’s theft, she could become Vaillancourt’s mistress.
She knew it a false and vengeful offer. Vaillancourt had loved only Amber St. Antoine, now Lady Ramsey.
His loss of her to Ramsey in a scene that denigrated Vaillancourt publicly sparked that man’s resentment of Amber and all her friends.
Giselle’s alternative, he said, was to be shackled and go to the infamous Parisian prison of La Force.
Long ago with the death of her husband by Vaillancourt’s order, Giselle had vowed never to allow another man to mistreat or abuse her.
She summoned now the pride that she had escaped Vaillancourt’s threats and concentrated on her future.
She turned and walked back at a brisk pace.
She’d return to the Lanes tomorrow for her supplies.
Three days’ hence she would meet her two friends in the house they had rented here.
That had been the plan for the three of them to meet.
Gus, Lady Ashley, had sent a letter to her at the hotel last week confirming that.
Clearly, they had changed their plans unexpectedly and arrived earlier.
Giselle hurried along, calming herself. There had been no mishap. She was fine, saved from a tense scene. She intended to live a very long time in serenity. Rewarding herself was her way to calm her nerves and grant herself those little prizes that made her life enjoyable.
So as reward, when she returned, she would sketch for herself a new gown or two, serviceable styles to replace those so recently ruined by the sea and the rain.
She would also sketch a new embroidery design for a bodice.
Or perhaps for the cover of a new reticule—and take them all to the modiste in the Lanes who created her new royal-purple silk gown.
She deserved nice things. Beautiful things.
She’d have them…and once her work here was done, she might even allow herself a true holiday.
She’d go, perhaps, to Cornwall. There, she’d heard, were dramatic coasts and landscapes in that far corner of England to rival those on the French Normandy coast near étretat.
She could live as she wished—and immediately a vision of Carlisle stood before her.
Tall, bold, laughing, he could be in her life after this task of hers was finished.
He could be hers in the fullness of time.
She saw the interest in the sparkling depths of his silver-gray eyes.
She could have him, perhaps not forever but for a day, a week, an interlude filled with rapture.
But no. No! She was not for him. She was not a virginal lady with a pristine past and only a spotless future before her.
Still, she closed her eyes. She could imagine him without all the folderol of his cravat and this and that and other.
Naked to her eye and her hand, he would be a marvel in bed.
Inventive and tender, he would fulfill her one desire for bliss she’d barely glimpsed.
He would be a man she could savor for as long as he wished, for as long as she cared to amuse him.
Oh, she was quite mad for him, wasn’t she?
She sped along. She was fantasizing now. Crazy, you are, Madame Laurant.
She chuckled at herself and slowed. She picked another dream. Achievable, too. She could live in Cornwall for a long time, find a man who appealed. She would be picky. Choose a nice man. A kind man. Someone who resembled one dashing marquis she was beginning to suspect she would never forget.
But was there anyone his equal?
No. Do not fool yourself, Giselle.
There is no one.