The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (6 page)

“It's lucky, then, you got the places on the coach booked. If you reckoned we'd need them, why did you go haring off after Lady M?”

“It was a precautionary measure,” Alethea said wearily. “And a necessary one as things have turned out. Well, there is this to be said for it; the sooner we are on our way, the sooner will our travels be over. I can't wait to reach Venice.”

At least Miss Camilla wouldn't go giving her sister the cold shoulder. She was a lady as was up to snuff, as they said, and that Mr. Wytton was no unworldly clergyman; he'd have no problems believing what Miss Alethea had to say about that husband of hers and his nasty ways.

Figgins pulled the straps tight with a satisfied grunt. “There we are, all right and tight. I'll call the boy, and he can take this round to the posting office for us in his handcart. And do you cheer up, Miss Alethea. Every mile is a mile put between you and Mr. Napier, and a mile nearer your family as is going to stand up for you. You longed to travel when you was in that schoolroom with Miss Griffin; how you used to listen to her stories of people going here, there, and everywhere, all those wolves and bandits and spectres in the woods. I can see we're in for a lively time.”

“Yes, let us enjoy the journey as best we may, although I expect neither spectres nor bandits. A broken wheel is the most we have to fear, I believe.”

Figgins saw with foreboding that a gleam had come into Miss Alethea's eye. “Now, we have some hours to while away, let us not spend them cooped up in this inn; young men such as we now are may go where we choose and enjoy all the delights that Paris may have to offer.”

Figgins cried out at that, but there was no stopping her mistress when she was in that kind of a reckless mood.

“The joy of going about with perfect freedom,” Alethea was saying. “Only men have such freedom, so let us make the most of it.”

“And straight out into the Lord knows what dangers,” Figgins protested as Alethea bundled her into her coat and out of the door.

In his youth, Titus had loved Paris. Dirty, positively mediaeval it might be, and half the size of London, but it was a lively city, where persons of every class rubbed shoulders and lived side by side. There were none of the rigid boundaries of London, of preoccupation with which addresses were socially acceptable and which beyond the pale. He liked the liveliness of the place, the outdoor cafés, the musicians and jugglers in the Palais Royal, the buzz of conversation in the streets, the courtesy of the Parisians, high and low.

Thirteen years later, he had found a different, darker city caught up in the aftermath of defeat. That had been in 1815; now, five years later, the city had come back to life. Building was under way, there was talk that something was to be done at last about the mephitic drains and the mucky, unpaved roads. Parisians were smart and full of chatter and vivacity once more, but it seemed an empty parade; he wished he had not had to come to Paris. But Bootle was sure that Paris was George Warren's destination, and wherever Warren went, he would follow, until he laid the wretch by the heels and seized his Titian from his clutches.

He had made his own enquiries, and was convinced that the painting must be in Italy. However, buying and selling could be done in Paris as well as anywhere; Paris was a city full of stolen and looted art of every description; anything was available if the price were right.

Bootle was being a damn nuisance. On his mettle in this city of fashion, he was being finicky over every speck of dust, demanding perfection of every fold of master's neck cloth, insisting he wear the palest-coloured pantaloons and then moaning when he came in with dirt upon them.

“Paris is a dirty city, Bootle. Three steps beyond the door, and all your perfection is undone.”

“In which case, sir, why is it that these Frenchies keep themselves so smart?”

Bootle had set out to find out what he could about George Warren's whereabouts from the servants of English people currently residing in Paris. Titus visited art dealers, seeking out old acquaintances and finding who the new people were. Nobody had seen a Titian of the kind he described, no one had been offered any such painting, no one had heard any news of such a painting even existing.

“The late war,” said Monsieur Dubenois, shaking his smooth grey head. “So much of an upset to our business, such unsettled times. I fear that you must not place much faith in finding your father's painting.” His face brightened. “However, the recent troubles have also brought their opportunities. I have some very fine items that I am sure would interest you.”

They didn't. Titus wasn't in Paris to inspect or barter or buy. Then he had news of George Warren: the wretched man was moving in his silky way through the ranks of society, relishing the gossip, picking up the threads of old friendships, exactly what so many of his compatriots were doing.

He seemed only to be passing through Paris. Titus was soon sure that his visit here was entirely for pleasure and would not be of long duration, and moreover that he was not undertaking any kind of negotiations that had to do with the world of art. He was frequenting the salon of a certain Madame de Faillaise, so Bootle informed him when he finally came to report that he, too, had drawn a blank with regard to the presence of a notable Titian here in Paris.

Titus remembered Madame de Faillaise. She had a pretty foot, yes, her charms were just such as would appeal to Warren. The fiend take him, why could he not stop his dalliance and continue his journey?

He resented the time spent in Paris, was disinclined to enter into any social life and was annoyed when his cousin Eliza, a lively woman married to a diplomat, dragged him reluctant and protesting to soirées and balls.

“Titus, I declare you are behaving like a curmudgeonly old man, when I know for a fact you are not much above thirty. Here are beauties aplenty, French and English and every other nationality under the sun. If a man cannot find a delightful companion in this city, then there is no hope for him.”

“If by companion you mean—” he began.

She gave him a saucy look. “I mean it is time you married and set up your nursery, all the family say so. Here is your chance, here are all these delightful creatures, spring is in the air, the very trees breathe amour, you must not sit and frown, but take your place in the dance and show that you can enjoy life.”

“Oh, as to that, I am a confirmed bachelor, you know.”

“That's not what I heard. I heard that Emily turned you down, so you see you are a marrying man, and just as you get back on a horse when you have a fall, so you must enter the lists of love again, quickly, quickly, not fall into a melancholy because one woman rejected you. I have the highest regard for Emily, but she would not do for you, indeed she would not. She made you too comfortable; you need to find a young lady who leads you a dance and takes you out of yourself.”

Titus felt his anger rising. How dare she come trampling on his feelings like this. First his sister, and now his cousin. Why did women think they had the right to say whatever they liked on such matters? “You do not know what you are talking of,” he said coldly.

“But indeed I do, and it is what everyone is talking of, and so you owe it to your family to hold your temper and show the world that you do not give a button for Emily, and that you have other amorous interests to amuse you.”

“Your levity and impertinence grow every time I see you,” he said crossly.

Eliza's withers were quite unwrung. “How ungallant of you to make such a remark; why, you are a perfect bear. Come to my party tonight, I can promise you a bevy of pretty girls and beautiful women.”

He had gone, and had found she had spoken the truth. Pretty they were, indeed, and with some beauties among them, but they left him cold. He hadn't loved Emily for her beauty, although she had always been a well-looking and elegant woman, but for her humour and warmth and kindness.

The gaiety of the scene, the sparkling eyes and deliciously displayed bosoms, the inviting glances, the ripples of laughter, the perfumes lingering on the air—all this served only to enhance his mood of bleakness. The close presence of so many desirable women aroused his ardour, but the sensations brought him no sense of power or happiness. He could spend a night with any one of them and forget her the next morning. The emptiness in his life was for a different kind of woman, one who filled more than a hollow in the bed and an itch in the loins.

He made his excuses and left early. It was a warm evening, he would walk back to the Rue du Pélican, where Bootle would be waiting up to whisk away his evening clothes. He was in no hurry to get back to that nagging voice, and he wandered to and fro across the bridges of Paris, looking now into the murky depths of the swiftly flowing Seine, now across to the twinkling lights on each bank.

The city was alive and alert, and a more attractive place to his mind now that darkness had fallen, like an ugly whore who took on once again the lineaments of her youthful attractiveness in the soft light of dusk and candles.

He had just decided to return to the Right Bank across the Pont Royal when he heard a cry of alarm, a scuffle, and the sound of running feet. The next minute a figure came pelting round the corner of an insalubrious street and ran straight into him.

The apologies were made first and instinctively in English, then, as the slight figure regained his balance, he switched to French.

“English will do,” Titus said in that tongue. “What's amiss? Were you set upon? You were a fool to go into such a street.” It was obvious that this was a very young man, no doubt visiting Paris with his father or a tutor; he was well spoken and seemed gently bred.

“I took a wrong turn and was lost in a maze of streets. Thank you, sir. My apologies for running into you, but the presence of another person has scared my pursuer off.”

“Why are you alone? Paris is a dangerous place after dark, or indeed, in those streets, at any time.”

They had moved into a pool of light flooding out from an eating place. Titus was struck by the youthful good looks, the soaring, well-defined eyebrows and the generous mouth. The face looked familiar; who was this handsome boy?

He caught himself up, shocked. That had never been his inclination, not even in his schooldays; not through lack of adventurousness or curiosity, but because his attention had early been drawn to the attractions of the fairer sex. Then it came to him. Christ, this was no well-bred young Englishman out a-whoring on his first trip abroad, as he had thought. It was a girl, dressed in men's clothes, doubtless out touting for those clients whose tastes lay that way.

To think that she had deceived him for even a moment, he must pull himself together. A good-looking girl, and young, it seemed a pity that she should have taken up such a life.

The boy-girl muttered a few words of thanks and then, before Titus could put out a restraining hand, had twisted away and was off.

The girl can run, Titus thought. I wonder where she learned to speak English like that. And then, I hope she comes to no further harm.

Which brought to his mind the shapely form of one Mathilde Rosarie, niece of the Comte de Montesquieu, whom he had met at Eliza's soirée. She had intimated that a late evening caller might be made welcome. “We play cards until dawn upon occasion,” she had informed him. He was not in a gaming mood, but he had a sudden craving for company, a wish to be away from these dark streets, and besides, who knew how a card game might end if the stakes were high? Mathilde had a head of glorious dark red hair, Titian red, the colour that went with a creamy skin and luminous hazel eyes. He imagined the hair spread in abandon across a satin pillow, and quickened his step.

Alethea judged it impossible to find Figgins out in the streets; she would return to the Poisson d'Or and await her there. She was worried; would Figgins, with barely a word of French, be able to find her way back to the inn?

Her fears were groundless. Figgins was ahead of her, waiting in her chamber, her thin face alive with concern. “Well, there you are, Miss, I mean Mr. Hawkins, sir, and here's me been sitting here this half hour on tenterhooks with no idea of where you might be or even if you was alive.”

“Why should I not be alive?”

“One minute you was standing there, beside me, in among all those jostling Frenchies, and I took my eyes off you for one moment, just to take note of a velvet gown cut in the new way, very smart, worn with a stomacher, and you disappeared like you were never there. What was I to think? So when I had done my best to find you, I thought there was nothing for it but to come back here and frighten myself into fits thinking what might have happened to you.”

She gave Alethea a shrewish look. Alethea, her colour as high as her spirits now that she had found Figgins safely back at the inn, lay back on the bed, her feet still on the floor, and gave way to laughter.

“Why, I have had an adventure,” she said when she had stopped laughing. “And been rescued by a handsome English gentleman, who looked at me in such a way, and then with so much anger and puzzlement in his face that I had to run away!”

“Rescued!”

“It was when I was standing beside you. I was not wasting time on any velvet dress, but I was watching the fire-eater; I do long to know how he does the trick. Then I felt someone pressing against me, in a manner too familiar to be accidental. A lady of the night, I thought, but no such thing; when I turned round, it was a man. A kind of a man, that is to say, with so much rouge and such a soft mouth. He was tall and very elegantly dressed, not some thief with his hand reaching for my pocket as I for a moment imagined.”

Figgins's eyes were huge and furious. “A gentleman, making up to you? I never heard of such a thing. How dared he.”

“Of course you heard of such a thing, for did we not find when we were out and about in our breeches in London that as many men as women gave us both the glad eye?”

“As to that, there are too many nasty men who like a lean boy instead of a woman, but here in Paris, on the street! Where anyone might see what he is about.”

“I didn't give him the chance to be about anything. I moved away from him, swiftly, as you may imagine, and that was when I lost sight of you. However, I had not shaken off this persistent gentleman, who was edging his way towards me again, so I dived into the crowd and took to my heels as soon as I could.”

“It's a wonder you didn't get lost.”

“Oh, but I did. I found myself in a maze of narrow, foul-smelling streets; I had no idea of where I might be.”

“Of course not, with dirty streets wherever you go in Paris. Whatever did you do?”

“Ran even harder, when I found my fine gentleman still coming after me. I tripped over a doorstep in my haste, and he caught up with me. So I shouted, in French, and remembering to keep my voice as low as I could, while I kicked out at him. I think I hurt him, for he cried out and let go of me so that he could hold his leg. That was my chance, and I could see the river at the end of the street. The river, you know, is a great help in a city such as Paris. It was when I reached the corner that I ran into the other man, the one who wanted to come to my assistance.”

“And what was he doing, roaming about in such a district? Just such another, I warrant you, on the prowl for a molly or a slut.”

Alethea thought back. Her impression of the man had been swift, instinctive, and favourable. She also felt that she had met him somewhere, and had not been at all surprised when he addressed her in English. Although there had been that glint in his eye; she did not care, these days, for a glint in any man's eye. Such glints had brought her nothing but trouble. At least Monsieur Rouge Cheeks only fancied her because he had mistaken her, reasonably enough, for a youth.

She yawned. “Figgins, I neither know nor care. I shall see neither of them again; it was but a chance encounter in each case, and there's an end of it. Lord, how sleepy I am.”

Sleep didn't come swiftly or easily to her that night. She had tasted once again the delights of freedom, not merely freedom from the shackles of her disastrous marriage, but freedom from the constraints of the feminine world. However good a face she put on it, she had been frightened; she would not for the world have Figgins know just how frightened at the time, even though she could see the amusing side of her escapade once within the safe walls of the inn.

Both she and Figgins must needs be a great deal more careful. It was as well that their route would take them through no more cities such as Paris. Bern, for all she had ever heard, was a dull and sober city. They would find a respectable inn there, and in all the other towns on their way, and not venture out. Her mind drifted away to thoughts of Venice, and of Vivaldi, whose music she had heard performed at the concerts of the Society of Ancient Music. To thoughts of canals and carnival and masks and, with a sense of relief, thoughts of her sister and Wytton.

Wytton would know what was best to be done, was her last thought. Wytton might be shocked, and angry, but he wouldn't turn away from her, as Georgina had done.