Chapter Seven
Inès stopped at the corner of St. James’s Place and looked over her shoulder at the house for which she had signed a lease agreement yesterday morning.
A creamy white stone, the three-story townhouse had all the necessary elements to bring her smiles and the necessary placement in London Society.
She planned to quickly make herself known as the city’s supreme salonnière.
“You approve, mademoiselle?” Richard Hawkings, the butler whom she had hired yesterday afternoon at the local registry, paused beside her, and from the look of his dancing gray eyes, he was pleased with all they had decided and purchased since his appointment.
Gus had found the house and, with the owner’s agent yesterday morning, agreed it had the proper address to establish Inès among the ton. Amber had come with them and, once she’d toured the rooms, agreed.
“A shame you cannot take it for three weeks.” Amber glanced at the agent and pressed for a quicker claim. But the man shook his head. The current resident had extended his rental agreement only last week, and the owner had agreed.
The delay for Inès to move in did not postpone her plans to redecorate.
Amber had recommended a draper to do the upholstery and the effects at the windows for Inès’s grand salon.
Inès could envision the room eventually transformed in shades of peach and dark, earthy greens, colors that she knew showed her own complexion in its best lights.
She needed every advantage to be successful.
She would reupholster the four matching Chippendale chairs with soft peach, serviceable silks.
She would have the draper sew a grass-green velvet cover for the largest existing settee.
He was most agreeable and would take up her orders in two weeks.
She would enjoy working with him. In the meantime, she had to wait to move in to the house.
She hated to wait for three weeks to move in and four to hold her first afternoon reception.
Time was her enemy. Someone soon would approach her and demand an accounting of her progress.
The fact that she still had detected no one of questionable nature was no guarantee she was not followed, assessed, and critiqued.
While she waited for her few new pieces, she would have tea parties in her drawing room. Dinner parties would come soon after.
Her mother, who had been her teacher in rules of decoration, would be proud. The lady had been good at dramatic blends of color. The effect in their chateau’s public and private rooms, so said all who had visited, had been exhilarating.
But no one enjoys it now. The rooms sit in darkness, the furniture covered in old sheets as if they are ghosts.
Inès frowned and turned away.
The Chateau Bechard sat east of Amboise on the long, lazy Loire.
The thirteenth-century round white towers and the long knights’ hall to the private rooms had been empty since René Vaillancourt had arrested her brother more than two years ago.
He had sent Luc to La Force in Paris, accusing him of failure to pay taxes on their Loire River Valley estate.
When Luc protested that the grapevines had not produced a profitable harvest for more than four years, Vaillancourt dismissed Luc’s defense as immaterial.
Vaillancourt, Luc had told her weeks before his arrest, intended to take Luc prisoner because he suspected him of treason.
For that, Inès was fairly certain Vaillancourt had no proof.
But in Bonaparte’s empire, who needed evidence to convince a judge of a man’s guilt? Vaillancourt could and did arrest French men and women daily without proof of wrongdoing.
She clasped her gloved hands together and walked onward now.
Hawkins followed. Yet her anger remained.
She bristled at the memory of the moment when she learned Luc had been detained.
That day, she realized, Vaillancourt was coming to incarcerate her as well as Luc.
For if the deputy suspected Luc of espionage, he might well try the same with her. The man had no boundaries. No rules.
She was certain she had not let slip what she did to aid the cause of resistance to the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. Unlike Luc, her crime was not as simple or evident as nonpayment of taxes. But other things—smaller ruses, then one bigger deception—were her crimes.
She shivered at the memory, ever astonished at what courage she’d seized to do those deeds.
“Mademoiselle?” Her man Hawkins grew alarmed at her quiver. “Are you cold? I can return home to get a shawl to put over your coat.”
“No, merci beaucoup, Hawkins.” The November day was chilly but the wind did not make it worse. “Let us pick up our pace. I am excited to explore the local shops.”
He grinned. “Naturally, mademoiselle. A lady’s fondest adventure.”
They strolled down the side streets toward Piccadilly.
She’d brought Hawkins along with her because a maid was no guard worth her weight.
A man was what she required—and her new butler might be fifty or more in years, but he was a tall, hardy-looking fellow.
She intended to fill his arms with packages.
Besides that, she intended to ask his advice on the quality of merchandise she hoped to buy from certain shop owners.
She knew French makers of quality items, like Sèvres for china and Aubusson for carpets, but she was not versed in English goods.
She welcomed his help. His previous employer had been an elderly lady, a baroness of some reputation as a leader of the ton.
Inès was pleased to snatch him up for her new household.
The afternoon was a happy expedition. She found a large Ch’ing vase for her drawing room mantel, similar to one her mother had been given as a wedding present.
Inès would have it to remind her of her family and more pleasant times.
She bought a landscape painting of dubious origin, but she liked that the men and women depicted were attired for a hunting party.
The dogs milled about the horses’ hooves and bothered the hunters for affection.
Inès appreciated the humor in that. A good note, she thought, for jolly conversation among her guests.
The two of them were standing on one corner waiting for a hired hack to pass them by when Inès spied a shop down the lane to the left. Sanders & Sons, Instruments, declared the white sign with the shop’s name and a few musical notes.
“Let’s inspect, shall we? See what they might have.” Inès was gone before Hawkins opened his mouth.
In the small window, upon a swath of purple velvet, sat a very old, very marred violin. They went inside to the tinkle of the bells above the lintel.
Two steps in and Inès sneezed at the dust. The shop was small, close, and needed a good airing. Every kind of instrument filled the nooks and crannies. String instruments, an old French army drum, short and long horns, a flute, some items gleaming brightly, others in need of a good washing.
“What can I show ye, milady?” The owner, an older lady with squinty eyes, smiled at her.
She had sized up the two of them and decided rightly that Hawkins was Inès’s servant.
“I have many good items. A few need a bit of polish or repair. But I must say,” she told them as she followed them down one narrow aisle and another, “I have no harpsichords. Most ladies want ’em. ”
“No, I want no harpsichord.” Inès had purchased yesterday from a St. James’s shop a good Anton Walter fortepiano out of Austria.
The shopkeeper and his two assistants were to hold it for her until she moved into her house.
Inès had even made an appointment for a tuner to come that very day.
She could not wait to hear the sound of it reverberate throughout her own home from her own fingertips.
Just then, from the corner of her eye, Inès saw what else she wanted.
She rushed toward it with a sound of sweet surprise, her arm out, her fingers dancing, yearning for it.
Standing leaning against the wall in the far corner, alone and unbowed, amid a jumble of drums, violins, flutes, cymbals, and horns, but in need of a good scrub and two strings, was a superb old violoncello.
The wood appeared beneath a good coat of dust. Dirty, oui, but lovely.
The bells over the shop door ting-a-linged. Voices of other patrons drifted toward Inès and Hawkins near the back of the store.
“That?” the shopkeeper asked Inès. “Ye like it?”
“I do. I do! May I see it more closely, do you think?”
The old woman looked at Inès oddly.
Did she detect her accent? Was she one of those English who thought every French person was a spy?
Inès had encountered that in the ice cream shop the other day, and the bookshop, too.
She did not blame them for their suspicions.
After all, we were all at war, and for many years, too.
But neither experience had been pleasant.
The woman shifted from one foot to another as if deciding whether she should continue with this customer or go to the new ones who had just entered. “I…I can push these things aside.”
Hawkins—perhaps sensing the problem—pitched in. Hands out, he moved a few pieces between them and the cello. “I will help. You like this, mademoiselle?”
If Inès’s accent had not established yet that she was French, Hawkins’s address left no doubt.
The old woman blinked hard and looked Inès up and down, up and down.
“I do. Oui, very much.”
“Allow me to help you, sir.” Lord Halsey stepped beside her butler, his fragrant cologne filling her senses. He had appeared from nowhere, but now began to lift out all the items between Inès and the thing she wanted most this day.
“My lord,” she addressed him, surprised and pleased to see him here.
He turned toward her momentarily. “Yes, good afternoon, mademoiselle. You like the cello?”
“I do, sir.”
“Well, then, I am happy to assist your man. How do you do, sir? Halsey here.”