Chapter Eighteen #2
On this particular evening, Evan and Inès had remained at home, hoping their guests would leave early so that they might enjoy a few evening hours alone together.
With two days before Christmas, they sat in their sitting room upstairs, Evan’s suite now hers as well.
Davis the butler knocked urgently and entered when bidden.
He seemed to get thinner each time Inès looked at him.
Always she wished he had a good comb, because his dark-brown, curly hair hung over his brow down to his owl-like glasses.
He waited until both Evan and she gazed at him. He always seemed to wait like an actor for the right moment to speak. “Forgive me the late intrusion, madam and sir, but you have two callers. Lord and Lady Carlisle are in the main salon.”
Evan was out of his chair at once. “This is odd.”
“The hour? Yes, sir.” Davis eyed both Evan and Inès, who had changed into their sleeping attire. “The Carlisles urge you to come receive them immediately. While they do not wish to inconvenience you, they emphasized the urgency.”
Evan tied the sash of his banyan. Inès did the same with her quilted silk robe. Then, hand in hand, they took the stairs down and into the salon. Davis had lit candles in the sconces, but the room was chilly, the evening fire behind the grate merely embers.
Inès noted at once the dour expressions on their friends’ faces as they paced by the window. Going to Giselle, she kissed both her cheeks and shook hands with Carlisle.
Evan greeted both and offered them the settee, though he remained standing, his mouth thin with tension. “Brandy?” he asked.
“Tea? Anything?” Inès sat across from Giselle and noted her pallor.
“Nothing, Inès. Merci.”
“What is amiss, Clive?” Evan asked his friend.
“We went to the theater tonight,” Carlisle blurted out.
“We saw only part of the first act, but came straight here,” Giselle added, her hands clasped tightly together.
“Giselle and I were in Rafe’s box.”
“Close to the stage, yes. A good view. I remember,” said Evan. “What happened?”
Carlisle turned to his wife and grasped both her hands in his.
Giselle fixed her eyes on her husband. “I saw La Mère.”
Evan swung away to narrow his gaze on the dimly lit coals in the grate.
The mother. Inès recognized the name of the French female spy who had attacked Giselle last summer. Would the woman be so foolish as to dare appear at the theater?
“She’s here,” Evan murmured with amazement, then whirled to face them all. “We thought she fled our little band and had taken a packet to France.”
Giselle spoke up. “A feint, perhaps, on her part. But tonight she was in the audience. On the floor. Third row from the stage. Two in from the center. I saw her. I did.”
“Can you truly affirm it was she?” Evan came forward to put his hands on the back of Inès’s chair. “Was she not masked when you saw her last summer?”
“She was. But allow me to remind all of you that I have a good eye for line, color, and style.”
Inès rubbed her arms. Of course she did. How else to sketch, draw, and paint?
“I would know her anywhere. She was a perfect lady, tall, with expertly coiffed chestnut hair and the latest Parisian-style gown. She has a fine porcelain complexion—and large, hooded eyes like two stones of jade. One would never expect that she is a ruthless torturer.”
Inès froze. “She tortured you?”
“She authorized it.”
Evan cursed beneath his breath. “We have been searching for this woman for years.”
Years? Inès panicked. She is experienced, then. Knows England and London well. And she travels in Society, tonight to the theater. But how can she go out easily among others? That could not be. If it were so, Kane and Gus, Amber and Ramsey, Carlisle, Durham, and Evan would have met her.
Carlisle winced. “We doubted she would dare to appear in public.”
“Who was she with?” Evan came around to face his friend.
“Another lady. Older,” Carlisle said. “White hair. Many diamonds around her throat, but, I daresay, not dressed in the latest fashion. Still, I do not know her, nor do I recognize the one we call the Mother.”
“I do wish you did!” Evan rubbed his thigh that still pained him now and then. He would not forget the lady who had wounded him.
“What does she look like without her mask?” Inès asked Giselle.
“She has a strong profile, proportioned nose and lips and jaw. She laughs gaily.”
“Did she recognize you?” Evan asked Giselle as he stood behind Inès and put both hands to her shoulders.
“No. I doubt it. As soon as I saw her, I told Clive we had to go. We did. The house tapers were still dimmed. Act one was not finished.”
“If,” said Clive pointedly, “La Mère had recognized us, I would have left and called for my two bodyguards stationed outside to barge inside and take her away.”
“You have guards who follow you?” Inès sat in wonder, but then, she recalled a bit of discussion with Gus when first she arrived in London. Many of Scarlett’s agents here in Britain were assigned guards.
“Oui,” Giselle told her. “We do not know if I am still a prime target to them.”
“To return you to Paris?” Inès thought herself an idiot to ask such a silly question.
“Oui, and to Vaillancourt.”
Inès sat, stunned. Her thoughts drifted toward her husband. Aside from Hawkins, had Evan put guards on her comings and goings? If not, would he now? But he has reason to believe I may be wanted by French agents.
She shivered in disbelief. Her next thought was how she herself was wanted by Vaillancourt for reasons about which her husband knew nothing.
Evan was measured in his response. “I am glad you did not call for your men, Clive. And that you left. La Mère does not tend to go anywhere without Faucon close at hand.”
“I know,” Clive told him.
“We did not see him.”
“An usher, perhaps?” Evan asked.
“No. He was not there.”
Evan came around to sit on the arm of Inès’s chair. “Why would she take the chance of discovery and come out into the open like that?”
“She is tired of living in the dark?” Clive shot back. “Perhaps Faucon is not at her beck and call. Perhaps she needs excitement.”
“Or she came out as a warning,” Evan said with gravity in his voice, “to you.”
“But no,” said Giselle, looking at her husband, “she could not have known that we were to go to the theater tonight. Could she?”
“Not unless she has a genii living in our house,” Clive said.
“We did not even decide to go until an hour before curtain,” Giselle added. “My maid would have known. And Clive’s valet, too. Neither one is capable of betrayal.”
“Would they mention it to another servant?” Inès skewered them both with the question. It had been the problem that had ruined her in Boulogne.
Clive shook his head.
Giselle murmured that they would investigate the possibility.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Clive told them. “We wanted you to know. Safety,” he said, and ran his gaze to Inès, “is always our goal.”
Evan was solemn as he said, “Thank you for coming to tell us. I’ll see Durham at nine tomorrow morning and tell him.”
Clive offered a small smile of triumph. “You can tell him that one of my men is following the lady as we sit here. We will find her lair. I promise you that.”
“Oh, that is good news!” Evan brightened for the first time during this meeting.
Clive and Giselle left minutes afterward.
Evan went to the mantel to consider the last flickers of fire behind the grate.
“You are worried,” Inès said to him, and put her arms around his waist, her lips to his broad back.
“I am. This woman—this so-called Mother—does not come out to take the air of Society.”
“Usually she does not. But she had a purpose to appear. One you may never know. She sought someone or tracked someone. Perhaps that someone was not Giselle. Her role, as I understand it, is finished. She is no longer a person of interest. Then too, Giselle said she looks the part. She is a proud woman, mon cher. Why would she not wish to flaunt her good looks and fashion? Women do, despite making mistakes in the process.”
He spun and wrapped his arms around her. “La Mère is not a simple woman.”
“Darling, when it comes to dressing appropriately, no woman is simple.”
“No. She can afford luxury.”
“Paris must pay her,” she told him with assurance. Vaillancourt—it was bandied about in the faubourgs—paid his agents, near and far, very well.
“I wonder how much she earns,” Evan said.
“A lot, mon cher. All women can afford their fashion. They simply choose their price range and stick to it.”
He threaded his fingers into the long waves of her hair, and she sighed into his embrace. “I love you, wife of mine. You soothe me.”
Even though I myself am now agitated. On guard.
He kissed her with hunger in his passion. When he was done and she hung in his embrace for one thrilling moment, he smiled at her with laughter in his eyes. “How come your new gowns for the midwinter balls?”
She had recently ordered three new gowns at Evan’s insistence.
She had her own money, not only her continuing stipend from Scarlett’s bankers but also savings from that which Scarlett’s control agent had sent her in Boulogne.
She had converted that sum to English pounds upon arrival in London and saved much when she canceled the lease on her townhouse in St. James’s.
She had wanted to pay for the new frocks from her own accounts, but Evan had insisted she was his wife, she must keep her money, and she should pay her modiste bills from the family monthly income.
“One gown came today. The other two are nearly ready. I go for a fitting tomorrow.”
“And you will pay the modiste for her services from our accounts?”
“Certainment.” She nodded with an arch of her brow. “From our accounts, sir.”
He brought her close and skimmed his lips over hers. “Come to bed, then, and let me reward you for being an obedient wife.”
“Ah, sir.” She stepped backward and took him by the hand. She needed his arms around her—and his assurance that the world was loving and kind. “Come and I will reward you for being an agreeable husband.”
#
But hours later, as her husband slept beside her, snoring and sated, she lay flat on her back in bed, eyes trained on the canopy above her—and worried.
The description of La Mère had seeped into her system like bad water.
Was La Mère the lady who had approached her in Billingsgate?
How many could resemble another so closely?
How many could speak in dulcet French tones, and be so well attired with unblemished complexion and nut-brown hair?
The coincidence would be rare.
Very.
What could she do now but hunt that lady down?