To Love a Wicked Lord (16 page)

“Carstairs? Oh yes, I recall. Clever chit,” he said in English. “Your grandfather taught you well. Enjoy your stay with us, mademoiselle.”

Then, actually inclining his head in a semblance of a bow, he left Pippa and walked down the line again.

Pippa turned speechlessly to Maxwell. He was looking at her strangely, she thought. She felt a little embarrassed, and yet at the same time immensely flattered and impressed. She tried to regain her composure, swallowed hard, and spoke. “Symbol? What symbol?” she asked him.

“You didn't know?” he asked as answer.

“Well, I wouldn't ask if I did,” she said, her spirit rising.

“Those flowers on the front of your gown,” he said.

She looked down. “Oh. They're pretty, what of it?”

“They're purple. They're violets. They're his symbol. You didn't know?”

“The royal bee is his symbol,” she said, thinking fast.

“And the violet. You have them in your hair too. The man likes symbols.” He smiled, at last. “He likes white bosoms too. But his Josephine was with him. My turn for a question. I assume he knew who you were because his spies know everyone who comes into his presence is. But why do you think he mentioned your grandfather?”

“I told you,” she said. “It must be because my grandfather has scholarly renown. He knows everything.”

“And every one,” her grandmother said testily. “So why didn't he stop to talk with me?”

“Because,” Maxwell explained, “his admiration for you must know no bounds. There's only so much he can hide from his lady.”

For the first time in a long time, Pippa got a glance of the grandmother she knew as that lady stared at Lord Montrose with a wry expression on her face. As her grandmother herself used to say, his explanation smelled so high that it could have been put in a basket and sold at Billingsgate.

“Fiddle,” Lady Carstairs said. “Phillipa's got a heavenly bosom. And the man may be careful in his wife's presence but he's still a man. Ah well. He'd have done more than stare at me in my day.”

“Without a doubt,” Maxwell said as Pippa said, “There's no doubt of it!”

Lady Carstairs looked mollified. Pippa and Maxwell's eyes met and they smiled. But Cyril suddenly started coughing and couldn't say a thing.

B
ut I didn't want to leave yet,” Lady Carstairs complained. “The shun hasn't rosen…risen. No one leaves a ball until the shun, sun, rises.”

“In London,” Maxwell said gently. “But here in Paris things are different. The First Consul has left, meaning the ball is over.”

Pippa thought that wasn't true, but she was glad they'd finally convinced her grandmother to leave the ball and get into a coach. Her grandmother was slowing down, at least she was no longer braying, but only slurring her words. Now they were riding back to their hotel, she and Maxwell flanking her to be sure she didn't try to stand while the coach was moving, or slide off the seat if the coach stopped short. Pippa's maid and her grandmother's sat on the seat opposite them, both looking amazed at seeing a grand lady like Lady Carstairs so drunken.

“And just think,” Maxwell told Lady Carstairs, “you'll have had a good rest and will be energetic and bright tomorrow so that you can visit your old friends and tell them about your experiences tonight.”

Lady Carstairs bobbed up, sitting like a little girl agog with anticipation. “Too true!” she crowed. “Be sure I'll tell 'em how the Firs' Consul himself stopped to chat with me.”

Pippa saw her maid turn her head to stare at her. Pippa shook her head and said nothing. Her grandmother had remade the incident. But what did it matter? It made her happy.

“They've lived here for years and years, and years, don'cha know, and never so much as clapped an eye on 'im,” Lady Carstairs gloated. “But he paused, he actually stopped to compliment me. One don' have to be one of his supporters,” she told Maxwell with oversized care, “but I believe even so, it was a great honor. And he did it with his Josephine at his side. A great honor,” she repeated with contentment. She sat back and closed her eyes.

Pippa spoke quietly. “I think she'll nod off,” she whispered to Maxwell.

“I hope so,” he said. “Even a wine cask has a bottom. I didn't know she could hold so much.”

“Neither did she,” Pippa said with a giggle.

They rode on to the hotel in a comfortable silence broken only by the soft buzz of Lady Carstairs's snores.

Once they arrived, they escorted a staggering Lady Carstairs up the stair. It took all three of them: Maxwell steering her and supporting her weight, Pippa murmuring to her about how nice a little nap would be, and the maids following, prepared to catch the lady if she stumbled. They stopped at last in front of Lady Carstairs's room. There, Maxwell handed her over to her maid.

“I think it will take two of you to get her to bed,” he told the maidservants.

“And then you're free,” Pippa told her maid, Anne. “We did leave the ball too early; it's not very late. And I'm not half ready for sleep myself. I'm going downstairs for a while. Don't wait up for me.”

“May I keep you company?” Maxwell asked as they left Lady Carstairs to the care of the two maidservants.

“Certainly,” she said. “Let's go to the blue salon.”

“You're not worried about the scandal of being alone with me?” he asked.

“I won't be,” she said. “That's a salon for the guests and it's always occupied. Anyhow,” she said
softly, “after Grandmamma bawling ‘God Save The Queen' and then dancing with such abandon, I don't worry about scandal anymore. And too,” she said, taking his arm as they walked back down the hall to the stair, “this is France, after all.”

“And what's said and done here is echoed in London in the time it takes for another packet to sail to England,” he cautioned her.

“You? Worried about gossip?” she asked, pausing in the middle of the stair.

“About your reputation,” he said.

She shrugged. “I have none anymore.”

“Because that idiot jilted you? No, that only makes you more interesting. But sitting alone with me in a hotel? That's not done. Let's see if anyone's in there.”

They descended the stair and walked to the blue salon. “You were right,” he said, looking in. “There are living souls here,” he said, “but just barely.”

Pippa stifled her laughter. There was a pair of ancient men playing chess, and three elderly women sitting close together by a flickering fire in the hearth. The hotel had many elderly guests, and evidently the others were already sleeping. But it was a cool, beautiful spring evening in Paris and more guests than Pippa obviously didn't want to sleep all through it.

She and Maxwell sat on a long, ornate sofa to the side of the room.

“At last,” he said as he seated himself, “we are almost alone.”

She laughed. “I had such a good time in spite of my worries. Thank you.”

“For what?” he asked, surprised.

“For being our escort. We had the invitation but no lady goes to a grand ball without a male escort. That wasn't what had been asked of you.”

“It was my pleasure, absolutely,” he said.

“And I met the Grand Consul of France,” she said. “Really met him! I was so shocked that he noticed me.”

“Not I,” said Maxwell with a smile. “He's many things, but not blind.”

“And he's not that small,” she said with wonder. “Or at least not as small as I imagined.”

“Our journalists and caricaturists like to belittle him, literally,” Maxwell said. “It's another weapon against him. The man is said to be in love with himself in word and deed. Portraying him as a dwarf must irritate him.”

“But he's not our enemy anymore.”

“He's not our enemy at the moment,” Maxwell corrected her. “But I'm surprised too. You don't mind being left out of your grandmother's story?”

She shrugged. “What difference does it make, except that it makes her happy? I haven't got a clutch of friends to brag to, the way she does. At least I'll always know that the First Consul of France himself complimented me. Whatever his politics, that was immensely flattering, something to be remembered, and that's enough for me.”

“And soon, if rumor is to be believed,” Maxwell said slowly, “she may brag that she was singled out by the Emperor of France.”

Pippa frowned. “Is that a jest?”

“No, sorry, no,” he said. “I wish it were. Peace is lovely. But we fear it will be brief. A First Consul could be a democratic sort of fellow, willing to share with others. But an emperor is never happy with only one country to rule.”

“But he was for ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity,'” she said. “He promised it. Grandfather thought that was noble.”

“A noble speech,” Maxwell said, “does not make a noble ruler. But never mind the little—ah, not so little—colonel now. You enjoyed the rest of the ball?”

“Yes,” she said, stretching her arms above her head. “I love to dance and was sorry I couldn't, and yet now I enjoy the fact that it's over and I'm free.”

“I shall have to take you for another night of dancing,” he said.

She gave Maxwell a small sad smile. “That's not necessary. I have no complaints. I suppose that's why I'm feeling strange tonight, because I'm not worrying about anything. The ball is over and I didn't disgrace myself. I begin to see that my grandmother has nothing wrong with her reason. I think she was just kept home and alone too long, away from the Society that makes her so happy. And most of all,” she added, “I'm happy because I can give up the search for Noel now. That's done. So I have only to convince Grandmamma to go home, and my problems and my adventure is over.”

Maxwell said nothing.

She gazed at him. He still looked ready to take a princess to a ball. His black jacket, knee-length breeches, and black stockings were well fitted and wrinkle free. He scarcely looked as though he'd been in a crowded, overheated ballroom tonight. A person would never guess how often he'd danced, and how well he did it. His high neckcloth was perhaps a bit wilted, but if anything, she thought, it made him look even more masculine.

How handsome he is, she mused. And how
very well he knows it. Look your fill, my girl, she told herself, you'll not meet the likes of him again soon.

“Your adventure is far from over,” he mused, cutting into Pippa's thoughts. “Your grandmother won't be easy to persuade. And I can't blame her for it. She's not only accepted dozens of invitations to all sorts of parties for the next few weeks, or so she told me, but I guarantee there'll be dozens more delivered tomorrow, for her and for you. They all saw Bonaparte salute you. Prepare for fame, Phillipa.”

“‘Pippa,'” she said absently, and then looked at him wide-eyed. “Fame? Lud! I don't want that!”

“It's what you'll have until you're home,” he said. “And even there, if you wish to make a splash in the ton, you have only to pass a season in London now. Everyone will want to meet you. You might even find a gentleman you can care for.”

She might have winced but the expression was gone in a moment. She waved a hand. “Oh lovely, just the life for me: a husband who is a figure of fashion and wants a ‘famous' bride. No, thank you. I want to go home to the countryside and live with my grandparents. They have no one but me. I won't drag my grandmother through all the fuss and frivolity again either. She may be enjoying her
self, but I don't know how good it is for her. I do know this sort of life isn't good for me.”

“You prefer a little country cottage with no one to talk to but geese?” he asked.

She laughed. “The Old Place isn't a cottage, or little. And I think all the geese are in London. I like listening to running brooks in the daylight, not the cursing of coachmen and horsemen when the traffic gets tangled. At night, I like to hear an owl, or leaves on a tree blowing in the breeze, and not the howls of roistering young bucks out on the town. And I like horses in the meadows, not clogging the streets, and dogs running at my heels, not cringing at them, as the poor starvelings do here as in London. What about you? A London ball or a harvest dance?”

He thought a moment. “Both,” he said. “Each in their season.” He straightened and looked around the room. “Ah, the chess masters have gone to bed and the three fates who were sitting by the fireplace have toddled off too. We are alone. And here we are, both free as birds. I'm not sleepy either. It's still Paris too. And so, what shall we do?”

“What do Parisians do?” she asked.

His smile was wide and wicked.

She blinked at what she saw in his eyes. He couldn't mean that. There was only so much one
could do in a respectable hotel's salon, even in Paris.

She tried to think of a light answer to turn the conversation. Although she'd loved to be in his arms, his answer was too ambiguous. She wasn't sure she was ready.

“But first,” he said, sensing her withdrawal, “let's do as the Parisians do in other ways. I'll get you some wine, and we'll share it by the fireside. You approve?”

She nodded, relieved and yet apprehensive. When he returned with a bottle and two glasses, she was already sitting in a settee by the hearth.

He settled down beside her, poured a glass of rich, red wine, and handed it to her. He poured another for himself, placed the bottle on the floor beside him, and raised his glass to her.

“Confusion to our enemies,” he said.

She laughed. “And luck to our friends.”

They drank and then looked at each other. She noted he kept gazing at her neckline, and wished she'd taken a shawl with her, though his glances made her warmer, not chilly.

And he watched her face reflecting her emotions, saw her hesitation, and wondered just what it was that she wanted from him.

“So,” she said, settling back. “I know I've asked
before, but I must again. How can you know so much about France, and not be a spy?”

“I can't,” he said simply, “but I'm not a very active one at the moment.”

She tensed. “For England?” she asked.

He laughed. “No, for Iceland. Of course, for England.”

“It's a dangerous occupation,” she said. She took another sip of wine, and peered at him over the top of her glass. “Doesn't your family worry?” she asked. Her lips opened in surprise at what she'd said. “There it is again!” she cried. “I don't know enough about your family. I'm not even positive you're not a married man, except that a married man wouldn't have…” She left the rest unsaid, and felt her face growing warm.

“A married man might,” he said lightly. “But I'm not married. And,” he added too casually, “I'm not aiming to be, at least, not for some time to come.”

She flinched. Her eyes turned steely blue as she looked at him. “I am not angling for your hand,” she said through her teeth. “I thought you understood that.”

She set her glass down on the floor and stood up, ready to stamp out of the room.

He rose as quickly, and seized her wrist to hold her back. “I didn't mean that.”

“Did you not?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.

He foundered and then blurted, “Then why the devil are you alone and here with me now? And what about the way you fit into my arms before? You're an unmarried lady, I'm an unmarried gentleman, the situation is ripe for a proposal. Any man might expect an enraged relative to come crashing in on our tryst, demanding I do the right thing.”

“My relative is not enraged,” Pippa said fiercely. ”You know very well that she's sleeping. And I didn't think this was a tryst,” she lied with less vigor.

He didn't smile. “I don't want to mislead you,” he said seriously. “I want you, Pippa. Very much. But I can't claim I'm in love. And,” he added, as she looked away, “neither can you. Or can you?”

She knew she'd rather eat raw snake than admit to what she was beginning to feel for him. She couldn't blame him for thinking that since she'd given up on Noel she was seeking a new fiancé, any fiancé.