As they stepped into the dusky light of the Quai St. Bernard, Serena looked right while Monsieur Branley looked left.
“He’s there!” she said, not knowing thetête de noeud’s name, but he was leaning against a tree, looking at the Seine while smoking and chatting with two other men.
Her companion’s head swiveled round.
Without speaking, Monsieur Branley grabbed her hand and headed in the opposite direction.
She didn’t think they were spotted, since there was no outcry, but they ran around the corner of the building onto the Rue des Fossés Saint-Bernard before they began to stroll at a calmer pace up the boulevard away from the river.
How extraordinary!Suddenly, she was part of a caper, an adventure, something far more exciting than ballroom intrigue.
After a few minutes’ silent walk, Monsieur Branley asked, “Are you crossing to the Right Bank?”
“Yes,” she said. “I usually cross at the Petit Pont on this side.”
“Very well,” he said. “That’s where we’ll go.”
They turned right and right again toward the little bridge from the Left Bank to the small island in the Seine from which the Cathédrale Notre-Dame rose majestically. Serena felt giddy, keeping her hand tucked in the crook of his arm. The boredom and routine of her daily life had been replaced practically overnight by the presence of Monsieur Branley. For everyone else, the current upheaval was because of Napoleon’s return, but she considered the emperor to be of far less significance than the tall, dashing man striding alongside her.
They crossed onto the Île de la Cité, both of their heads naturally turning toward the cathedral. No matter how many times she saw it, Serena couldn’t help but gape at its magnificence and beauty.
“It’s breathtaking,” Monsieur Branley voiced her thoughts.
She merely nodded, saying nothing until they crossed off the small island on the other side via the Pont Notre-Dame, the bridge taking them to the Right Bank. Then she needed some answers.
“Why do you keep going to see that man, the one who wore the red kerchief, only to make him mad and then run from him?”
Instead of taking her question seriously, Monsieur Branley laughed.
“I suppose it looks like the actions of a madman.” Then he paused. Instead of answering, he asked, “Which way are you going now?”
She would never lead him back to her grandparents’ apartment in the fourth arrondissement, but they could go close by.
“To the Palais-Royal,” she said.
“Again?” he asked.
She nodded.
Then Monsieur Branley shrugged. “It is very different here than back home.”
She startled when he said the last word, thinking he knew she was English.
“The females in London,” he continued, “live in a far more restricted way than you Parisian ladies. I doubt one would have let me hide behind her in the wine market or walk with me such a distance or go to a café without a chaperone.”
She offered him a wry smile. She knew all too well how constrained her life would be if she were back in England among theton.
“I believe you are right. And I enjoy my freedom.” Serena realized at that moment, however, she was behaving exactly as her father had feared, and not at all properly. She sighed. Keeping up the appearance of propriety was more difficult than actually being proper, for she hadn’t done anything untoward since arriving in Paris.
“I thought you were agrisetteor a—” Monsieur Branley suddenly swallowed whatever he’d been about to say.
When he broke off so abruptly, she had to ask, “You thought I was what exactly?”
“My apologies.” He looked chagrinned. “I nearly said something far too familiar.”
“Go on,” she prompted.
“It’s simply that among certain circles, women without chaperones are either in the working class or they are ladies of leisure.”
