“Aunt, she speaks English,” Mariana repeated, “and she can hear you perfectly well. I would ask that you lower your voice or, better yet, keep such thoughts to yourself,” she finished on a firm note. Years spent alongside the stern headmistress, Mrs. Bloomquist, hadn’t been lost on her.
Hortense brought the tray around and began pouring. A much-chastened Aunt Dot watched in silence, even as her unsparing gaze caught every nuance and stored away every perceived mistake for future conversation. A small prick of guilt jabbed Mariana’s conscience. “Was your journey in good order and comfortable?”
“Oh, my dearest dear, the roads.”
Mariana awaited further clarification, but that was all her aunt would say on the matter.The roadsspoke volumes.
Not a sip of tea later, Uncle Bertie pushed off the settee to a stand. “Well, we must be off.”
Aunt Dot reached out and squeezed Mariana’s hand. “My dear, will you be well in our absence?”
“I shall manage,” Mariana replied as Aunt released her hand. She ushered the pair to the door. “Thank you for your visit and for your . . . concern.”
The instant the door clicked shut, Mariana called out, “Hortense, will you pour me a bath?” Partially obscured by a silk chinoiserie screen, stood a claw-foot tub, soft and inviting with mid-morning light.
Once again, she settled into the familiar chair and rested her head against its firm cushion, eyes closed, while the bath was readied.
Uncle Bertie knew something about the life Nick led on this side of the Channel, of that she was certain. Ever since she could remember, he’d been involved in vague governmental activities, like so many second sons of their class. In fact, it was Uncle Bertie who had paved the way for Nick, another second son, with the consulate.
She felt in her gut that her earlier suspicion was correct: Uncle Bertie had received a note, too. Why hadn’t he said so? She couldn’t slough off the feeling she’d mishandled the situation by telling him that Nick was alive. She kept getting it wrong at every turn when it came to this spy business.
She released a groan of frustration. Nothing was what it seemed. First Nick, then Hortense, now Uncle Bertie . . . Whowasn’tinvolved in this intrigue?
Of course, she shouldn’t feel all that surprised. Nick had always withheld the core of himself from her. In the early days, she’d felt it with a deep certainty in the way only a girl wholeheartedly in love for the first time could intuit every straight and curve of her lover’s heart. And, in the way of a young girl, she’d accepted it. He was five years older; of course, he would have a past. Wasn’t his mystery part of his allure?
Now that past was out of the shadows and in the light, but still between them. It was a whole new, strange world that unfurled before her. An image of Yvette and Lisette kissing sprang to mind. What sort of life did Nick lead?
Her finger ran along the space between her breasts where her gold locket should lie. A stab of regret for its loss pierced her. What had possessed her to gamble her locket away?
Not whiskey. Rather, it was a dangerous high-spiritedness that at times overtook her good sense and led her down paths wild and unknown, sometimes destructive. In all likelihood, and at this very moment, her locket was gracing the décolletage of a French strumpet named either Yvette or Lisette. She squeezed her eyes tight at the thought of what activity said French strumpet could be engaged in—
“Madame, your bath is ready,” came Hortense’s soft, husky voice.
Mariana stood and shrugged off her bathrobe as she closed the few steps between her and the blessed pleasure of a piping hot bath. No click of a ring sounded as her fingers closed around the tub’s edge, and she lowered herself into its steaming depths. She’d stopped wearing her wedding band years ago, the moment she’d learned about Nick’s affair, not from the gossip rags—they traded in lies, after all—but from his own lips.
But she’d never stopped wearing the locket with the cameo inside. Not for a single occasion. The cameo represented an ideal, one they’d achieved together for a single perfect moment in time. She sank further into the water’s sultry embrace, banishing the thought and the regret.
Eyes closed, her mind traveled to a different time and place, far away and long ago toward a memory long-suppressed. It was out of self-preservation, to be sure. But here, in the foreign environs of Paris, she could indulge in the luxury of such a memory—not just any memory, her favorite memory. The day she’d known Nick was hers forever.
Chapter 11
Arsy varsey: To fall arsy varsey, i.e. head over heels.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
The Cotswolds
24 March 1812
Unlike her twin sister Olivia, Mariana didn’t fall in love with her husband at a ball or anywhere near the glittering flow of theton. If she were to characterize Society as a set of colors, its palette would glow bright gold and hard platinum.
In direct contrast stood the place where she fell for Nick: a color palette of soft ambers and gentle greens, the palette of the countryside.
As the younger brother of Mariana’s father, the Earl of Surrey, Uncle Bertie had been entitled to the Cotswolds estate that had been part of their mother’s dowry. From the earliest age, Mariana loved traveling to Little Spruisty Folly.
To get to the heart of the estate, one turned off the main road and rode for more than half a mile down a wide lane flanked on either side by stately horse-chestnut trees before one caught sight of the main house. Although neither house nor grounds were “little,” and neither a single folly nor a solitary spruce pine were to be found anywhere on the entire estate, the name somehow fit the sprawling house constructed with various architectural styles, ranging from the original Tudor to the latest Georgian. It was a patchwork quilt of a house, and one not soon forgotten. One could easily become lost inside its jumble of rooms for hours, days, and even weeks.
