The Secret Life of Lady Julia (4 page)

Chapter 4

Paris

T
homas Merritt stared down at his dance partner, the wife of an English baron. She was chatty and flirtatious, ready for an adventure on her little junket to Paris. The city was full of English ladies now that the war was over. The newest French fashions called them across the Channel, and they were arriving daily, in droves.

He glanced at the open doors that led to the terrace. Gauzy white curtains swayed in the wind, beckoning him to waltz the lady outside.

The shadowed terrace was perfect for seduction. Under the guise of stealing a kiss, he could take much more. A caress of the cheek, a distracting, drugging kiss, and she wouldn’t even notice her jewelry was gone until she returned to her lodgings. And she would never know it was him. He was careful never to take too much . . . just a single earring, or a bracelet, perhaps—something that might be easily lost on an evening such as this, when she was dancing, or kissing a handsome stranger in a dark garden. He never took every jewel a lady had on, or even the most valuable piece she wore. He could, of course, if he’d wished to do so, but it would be dangerous. Someone might recall his face, or the fact that he’d danced with the victim of the theft and had left early. He took enough to pay for his rooms, his food, his clothes, and no more.

Tonight, the baroness’s diamond bracelet would be more than sufficient. She could keep the gaudy ruby necklace she’d dared to wear in Paris, of all places, where ruby necklaces still recalled the terrors of revolution, and the other kind of scarlet necklaces left by the guillotine.

The curtains brushed his pant legs with an encouraging caress as he waltzed the lady out of the heat of the ballroom and into the cool of the summer evening. He could smell roses, real ones now, subtler and better than the inexpensive and imperfect copy of their scent that the baroness wore. He breathed deeply, clearing his nostrils, and didn’t stop dancing until they had reached the end of the terrace, a dark and perfect place for stealing kisses and jewels.

He didn’t hesitate. He swooped in for a kiss, and she gave a token squeak of protest before she clasped her arms around him and pressed her breasts against his chest.

He cupped her cheek, relieved her of one diamond earring and pocketed it.

“What a lovely evening, in such charming company,” he said, running his hands along her arms, his fingertips raising gooseflesh. He bent for another kiss, his hands poised on the clasp of the bracelet as she gasped delightedly at his audacity.

Instead of swooning in his arms, she grasped his lapels and hauled him closer. A moment’s fear rushed through him as he thought himself caught. He let go of the bracelet and resisted the urge to push her away, to leap the balustrade into the garden and flee. Instead, he smiled at her and waited, caressing her hands, her wrists, the bracelet.

“Come to my rooms,” she murmured, her eyes half closed. “I’ll pay you.”

Now he did step back, shocked at the bold offer of payment for services rendered, the bracelet entirely forgotten. “I think you have mistaken me, my lady.”

Her eyes opened fully, passion gone, shrewdness replacing it. “Have I? You are an attractive man, but your cuffs are frayed. My guess is that you were born well but have fallen on hard times. I assumed you were interested in me for my money, sir, since I am a decade older than yourself. Even my husband never smiles at me the way you do, not even on our wedding day. What else could you want but my money?”

She was at least
two
decades his senior, and he was appalled. Appalled that he had fallen to such a point that a woman like this one assumed he was—a vile taste filled his mouth—
for hire?

He would not stoop that low. He still had honor, scruples, manners. He flicked a glance at the edges of his cuffs, at the monogrammed linen of the finest quality, which was indeed fraying after so many months of wear. At least he used to have honor. He’d discovered the hard way that a man cannot eat honor.

He gave her an aristocratic, go-to-hell-smile and bowed crisply. “As I said, you have mistaken me, madam. I am merely a foreigner here in Paris, like yourself, glad to see a fellow traveler from England. If my courtesy has left you with an impression of me I did not intend, then I apologize, and I shall bid you good night.” He turned on his heel and left. She did not call him back or follow him. Was she embarrassed, angry? God, he hoped so, because that was precisely how he felt. He walked briskly down the steps and let himself out the side gate, onto the street.

Her earring burned in his pocket like shame.

He walked the dark streets at an angry pace, his heels ringing on the greasy cobbles. He needed more pleasant company. For that, he had been seeing Millicent Carlyle for some weeks while she and her husband spent the summer in Paris. She was young, her husband old. She had a soul like Thomas’s own, out for pleasure, without a care for tomorrow. While her husband visited the brothels of Paris, she invited Thomas to dine with her in the evenings. It was an uncomplicated relationship, without demands or awkward questions. They drank champagne in her boudoir, made each other laugh, and ended up in bed. She didn’t notice his frayed cuffs. Millicent was easy company, and she made him forget what he’d become—a thief, a scoundrel, and a liar.

She’d sent him a note this afternoon, inviting him to come and play once her husband had left for the evening. How could he resist?

He knocked softly on the door of her hotel suite in the English fashion. French lovers scratched on the panels, and he did not want her to mistake him for someone else.

She opened the door and gave him a slow smile when she opened her robe to show him she was naked underneath. She didn’t want to talk tonight, or drink champagne. Wonderful, perfect Millicent! Thomas took her in his arms with sigh of relief and slipped the silken garment off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor as he pressed his lips to her exposed flesh.

Millicent pushed him away, her nose wrinkling. “You smell of roses! Have you come to me from another woman?”

The baroness’s cheap perfume. He forced himself to grin. “It’s summer in Paris. The roses are blooming. I must have brushed past a blossom or two on my way here.”

“And you did not think to pick one for me?” she pouted.

She led him to a screen in the corner and pointed to a basin and pitcher. “Wash off the scent, if you please, or I will be suspicious all night. Use my soap. It is made with jasmine.”

She went to lie naked on the bed, spread invitingly. “Hurry.”

He could hear her beyond the screen, writhing on the sheets in anticipation. He lathered his face and neck, and the scent of this woman’s perfume replaced the last. How had he come to this, the son of an earl, the brother to another?

He’d been disowned, that’s how. And the irony was that while he had been guilty of many sins, he was innocent of the one his brother accused him of, he thought bitterly. His brother’s young wife, his new countess, had stood wide-eyed before her husband and said nothing, allowing him to take the blame for her sin. He gritted his teeth at the memory. That had been the last time—if one excluded his encounters with Julia Leighton—he’d behaved with chivalry.

He froze when the door opened.

“Jonathan!” Millicent cried. “You’re back.”

“Is it a crime in Paris for a husband to come home early?” her husband demanded gruffly, and Thomas waited, motionless, for him to ask his wife why she was stark naked. “Were you waiting for me?”

“I just finished my bath. I was about to go to bed,” she said breathlessly.

“Then I’ll join you. Do I smell roses?”

Millicent trilled a nervous little laugh. “It’s summer in Paris, and the roses are in bloom,” she parroted Thomas.

Thomas listened to the rustle of Lord Carlyle’s clothing being discarded, heard the Englishman grunt as he mounted his wife. He listened to the rhythmic creak of the bedsprings and rolled his eyes, waiting.

He remembered the night his brother had thrown open the door to his bedroom and found Joanna there, half naked. He was in bed, had just woken at the sound of her entrance, but his brother suspected the worst. He didn’t wait for an explanation, hadn’t wanted one. And Joanna didn’t say a word. He remembered how she came to see him the next day with tears in her eyes—and bought his silence with her earrings—his mother’s earrings, actually, and before that his grandmother’s, and most recently Edward’s wedding gift to her. She needn’t have bothered. He would have kept his silence for honor’s sake alone, but he took them anyway.

Beyond the screen, Lord Carlyle grunted again, reminding Thomas that at least this time he was actually guilty of the sin, even if he hadn’t been caught. Yet.

He looked around his hiding place as he buttoned his shirt. It contained hooks for her clothes, a copper hip bath, and the washstand. Three bars of jasmine-scented soap lay in a crystal dish next to the basin, and beside that he saw a little porcelain trinket box. He stared at it while fastening his flies, then opened the box. It contained a few bits of jewelry, including a simple pair of garnet and pearl earrings, and he took one, a parting souvenir. It would pay for a bottle of champagne or two.

Carrying his coat, he tiptoed out from behind the screen. The gray-haired lord was pumping heroically into his pretty wife. He had a red birthmark on his broad backside. Millicent’s blue eyes widened over her husband’s shoulder as she caught sight of him, and he blew her a farewell kiss as he opened the door silently and slipped out.

“T
wo earrings? Is that all? They don’t even match!”

Thomas opened his eyes the next morning and glowered at his valet.

Patrick Donovan wrinkled his nose. “And you reek of perfume. What kind of flower is that?”

“Jasmine,” Thomas muttered. “Or roses. Get me a bath.”

“I should say I will,” Donovan grunted.

“Then you can break up the earrings and sell the stones. They should fetch enough for breakfast at the very least.”

“Bread, cheese, and olives yet again,” Donovan muttered. “I miss a good English breakfast. A beefsteak and some sausage—”

“Then go back to England, my friend, by all means,” Thomas snapped.

“And leave you to hang for your crimes? Which you will, if some husband doesn’t shoot you between the eyes first, or between the—”

“Is this the part where I say you mean far more to me than a mere servant?” Thomas asked, pushing back the sheets. They positively stank of cologne. He didn’t much care for the perfumes ladies drenched themselves with—rose, lavender, lily-of-the-valley, gardenia, jasmine. In his opinion, the artifice of cheap scent mocked both the flower and the lady who wore it.

Except violets. Violet perfume smelled like a garden after the rain, sweet, innocent, yet tantalizing, and . . . He rubbed his eyes, trying to remove the image of the one woman he knew who wore violet scent from his mind. The lovely Julia Leighton had been a lady to her fingertips, and she was probably married by now, a lofty duchess who had forgotten him entirely. He’d be willing to wager
she
was enjoying a fine English breakfast at this very moment. His mouth watered—but for her, not the beef.

He got up and crossed to the basin, wanting the insipid scent of his almost-lovers off. He would never see either lady again.

He sank into the bath while Donovan busied himself preparing the shaving kit. The silver handles and leather case were still monogrammed with Thomas’s family crest. He’d pawned it and redeemed it a dozen times, but couldn’t let it go permanently. It reminded him of who he’d been on the days he could not bear to think of what he was now.

He shaved himself while Donovan pried the jewels out of their settings and held them up to the light.

“The diamond is nice. So are the pearls with it. You should have taken both earrings.”

“Against the rules,” Thomas muttered as he drew the razor over his cheek.

“Your rules,” Donovan muttered. “We need a necklace, or a tiara, or both, if you’re to end this.”

“It will end when I say so,” Thomas said, and hissed when he cut his chin.

Donovan tossed him a towel. “You’re the one always going on about finding a better life, not me. Ah, well. I should be back within the hour, since there is so little to haggle over.”

Thomas dressed himself and stood in the open window, looking out over the city of Paris. It was touted as the most magnificent city in Europe, filled with everything and anything a man could want, if that man had the price, the guile, or the right friends to get it.

He had the guile, and when that succeeded, the price, but he was friendless, except for Donovan, and that’s the way he liked it. Still, he’d been in Paris long enough, and he couldn’t wait to leave. But where he might go next was the problem. He couldn’t go back to London, and he had no interest in joining the Grand Tour of Europe or seeing German spa towns. He was a man without a home, like a mongrel dog.

He looked down at the street below and watched a coach drive by, the horses’ hooves clattering on the cobbles. If he leapt from this window, he could land on the roof, knock the driver off his box and steal the vehicle. He’d drive it to the sea and take the first ship going to—