Page 11 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
She whirled away from the throng, a hand to her forehead, her smile dead on her lips.
It could not be Tate Cantrell! Why would he be here? Was he not in some tiny German town?
“Vivi.”
Tate. He’s come to the play. Here in Paris.
She turned slowly back. She always faced the inevitable, didn’t she?
Her eyes flitted over the crowd that filled her dressing room doorway.
ItwasTate. He stood inches above the fray. Everywhere he went, he’d always brought color, action, relief, and succor. In the profuse candlelight of her drab dressing room, he illuminated the shabby grays of the décor. He moved relentlessly forward through the crowd toward her, determined, focused, so handsome she gulped back the urge to cry. But it was her Tate.
The irrepressible Tate had always brought brilliance to her life. From his wavy whiskey hair to his large blue-green eyes and the sharp arch of his ruddy cheeks, he was a delicious man to look upon. To talk to him, to see him smile, to make him grin was the ambition of many a girl. All tried. Few succeeded.I was one of them.But his gaze implied only friendship. Never more.
This was Tate. Her friend. Her best friend.Tate.Her tension dissolved. He was near, and that always meant that she was saved from…
No! I am not saved. Not redeemed.
She snapped aside. Focused on the man right before her. Forced a smile to him. A tall, dark fellow in impeccable silks with his knee out, his hand toward her, like a courtier from her father’s entourage. A man out of time, yet in this one, he struck a pose that shot her to the past, her childhood. A supplicant to her father. A man bent on seduction of her mother…or her oldest sister, the flirt.
She blinked. This man in front of her now simply wished to make himself known to her. To capture the latest Paris sensation and take her home.
Another man of similar fashion maneuvered the first away. He sought to gain advantage. “Mademoiselle de Massé,” hemurmured, pronouncing her family name as it should be in this country of her birth, not like the English bastardization of it.
The way we were known after the fall. And ever after. When we were taken in by the English who sought to ease our pain of loss. The English. The Cantrells.
“Oui,oui, I am happy to accept your cards,” she told each man in turn. All handsome devils. Outfitted in their finest to impress her. But then, hope was eternal—and always perilous.
She knew her callers’ expectations, their assumption that they might offer her supper after her performance, wine, the allure of their apartments, a kiss, later a dalliance, perhaps? And in time, a more permanent relationship?
Alice caught her eye from across the room. Yes, it was time.
Alice bent and disappeared to open the little basket that was Louis’s wicker cage. The little dog burst out, yipping above the din of the appreciative male audience and nipping at a few ankles of those who did not move as quickly as they should. Louis, smart fellow, claimed what distance she could not as readily.
I like my space.She smiled at the next man who inched his way forward and lifted her hand to his lips. He had a flat face and a funny, tiny nose and nibbled at her hand…like a rabbit.
She snapped to attention. Whoever this man was, she wanted no part of him. She could do much here in Paris. Act. Pretend. Deceive.
Yet she was incapable of some things.
“Know thyself.” That was her mother quoting the Greek maxim.
I do. And entertaining men who can never appeal to me physically will not aid me in my goal.
“Mademoiselle de Massé.”
Tate.
She surrendered. She had to. He stood right before her and she could not help herself—she stared at him. Her heart sank to her knees. She had not thought that her skills as an actress would be tested so soon in this city. Nor did she imagine that this man, above all others, would be the one to call her to task.
Had he not been in the little Germanmargravateof Baden? Before she left London six days ago, that was what she’d read in a gossip sheet. Tate, the charming Earl of Appleby, had always gadded about Europe. She had read the scandal sheets in London that told of so many British abroad. She’d believed what she’d read and thought her way clear of him. For she knew that if Tate Cantrell were in Paris when she was, he’d meddle in her plans. And that, she could not tolerate.
“Bon soir, mademoiselle.” He took her hand, pressed his warm mouth to her flesh, and made her belly quiver.
“Bonjour, Monsieur le Comte.” She inclined her head. She knew him—she could let the gossips spread that fact. After all, she’d spent the last decade in his country, on his lands, in a cottage on his manor grounds. One fact she would not now acknowledge publicly was how their relationship had once been more than that of friends. So she lied and said, “How lovely to see you here this evening.”
He looked up at her through those thick, caramel-colored lashes of his, and his jade-green gaze warmed and challenged. “How I have missed you.”
