Page 61 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
“It is.”
“If I may do anything for you in the future, I am at the ready, sir. You will call upon me, I do hope.”
“I will remember that.”
“Ram,” Amber called to him from the top of the stairs.
“Pardon me, monsieur.” Gaspard opened the front door and went to the street to hire a hack.
Ram heard Amber descend the stairs. Her skirts swished as she came.
She stood before him, and he summoned the ability to gaze at her one last time. She appeared pale, fragile. “I want to thank you—”
He shook his head. “You have chosen.”
She put a hand to his forearm. “I—”
He seared her with his gaze—and she dropped her hand. Yet in spite of it all, he gave her one departing gift. “If you need me, you know where I am.”
Her brown eyes opened wider at his words. She stepped backward. Tears dribbled down her cheeks. Her lips trembled. “I do.”
He needed air, the street, solitude. “À bientôt.”
*
She was aloneagain for the umpteenth time in her life. She had no idea why she had thought she’d be different, more assertive, even bold this time. That was not the case.
For weeks after she returned to her own house in rue Dauphine, she went nowhere. She could not manage the stairs down but remained secluded in her boudoir. She did not cry. She did not laugh. She simply sat, stunned at what she had done, leaving the possibility of happiness with Ram. And here she thought she knew herself so well.
Oddly not. Her staff were still there, doing as they had always done. After Maurice’s death and Vaillancourt’s pursuit of her, she had ordered her banker to pay her servants whether she was in residence or not. All of them were loyal and discreet. She wanted for nothing. She wanted only Ram. Pined for what could not be. Yet she had chosen to save others. Somehow sitting alone, empty of all emotion, she pondered how she had come to this—and had no conclusion. She knew only that she must do this, appease Vaillancourt’s need of her. Become his friend, if that were possible. Become his lover, if that were necessary. Though she recoiled at the mere thought, curling into a ball of misery alone in her rooms.
But as day after day eased her nothingness, she forced herself to her duty. As Ram had said, she had chosen. So she dressed, she dined, she feigned happiness before her mirror—and knew it was a farce.
Two weeks after her arrival at her home, Rene Vaillancourt sent her a missive. He was thrilled she had returned to Paris. He would be even more delighted when she returned to Society. She did not rush to respond, but waited a week. She wrote him she was pleased to be home and that she would soon rejoin Society. When she did, she looked forward to seeing him once more. If the man understood the lies in her words, he accepted them with a response that said only,I will wait for you.
By mid-August, Amber ventured out to see Aunt Cecily. The lady had written often and asked to host her, but Amber had begged off. She told her aunt that she was recovering from her trip to the countryside. That was true. But also false.
She recovered, if one could call the aching longing for Ram she felt in the pit of her stomach an attempt to recover. But she’d grown accustomed to his presence, his charm, his love for her. He had remained in Paris. Amber knew because his name appeared often in thelibelles. He still worked for Ashley as one of his envoys. He was linked with numerous friends, new and old, British and French, but none of them were ladies. For that, she rejoiced.
The autumn gave way in Paris to a resumption of regular court sessions with Josephine presiding like a queen. Madame Bonaparte received wives of envoys and Napoleon’s military with a graciousness noted by everyone. The lady was the little, coarse Corsican’s finest social asset. She appeared at the opera and theater. She stunned in the finest gowns and inspired all of Paris to ape her in donning expensive high couture.
Amber went slowly and deliberately back into Society. A dinner party one week, a ball the next. A theater performance. A friend’s garden party.
She also returned twice to Saint-Germain-des-Prés Abbey to her bench. No matter—her superior did not appear. She was well and truly done with her work. What remained bright and hot, however, was her need to foil the man who was determined to hurt her or love her, lure her friends and kill them. She took special care to learn all he did, all that was written about him too in the gossip sheets.
Rene Vaillancourt was a bachelor whom many women wished to make their own. Why not? He was attractive, if one liked the looks of a tall, sleek, dapper fellow with handsome sapphire eyes, a sun-kissed Provençale complexion—and theaura of a snake. He had had mistresses. Over the years, each woman fell by the wayside in a month or two. For the past few years, he was said to have only one-night rendezvous. But he put it out that the woman he would have as his very own one day was the ravishing widow, Madame Amber St. Antoine.
Bah.Amber cursed him and wished he’d find a new obsession. Alas, that was not to be.
Now that she was in Society once more, Vaillancourt appeared often at events to which Amber was invited. She was the very model of the merry widow enjoying herself. She presented as a leader of Society, happy in her role. Rumor had it that she had mourned her husband, and she had mourned the end of a secret affair with a certain British envoy. She accepted the compliments and flowers from a few men in Society, but none did she honor with smiles and a certainjoie de vivremore than the illustrious bachelor Monsieur Rene Vaillancourt.
The man approached her in tiny increments. A glance across a crowded room. A smile another night. A bow and a brief conversation during one of Aunt Cecily’s afternoon receptions. At a ball, he approached her and asked for a dance. She agreed.
At the next occasion when they met, Vaillancourt joined a general and his wife in their theater box. Amber too was a guest. Vaillancourt sat beside her, a perfect gentleman.
They grew closer, said thelibelles.
It was a ruse. Indeed it was. No man—certainly not the deputy chief of police—could match her darling Ram. But no one knew any of that. Not her maid. Not her aunt.
