Page 14 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
Even this one.
She sat up, angry at herself. To the devil with hearts and Tate Cantrell.
She put her feet to the cold floor, felt around for her slippers, and stood. Alice had closed the drapes, as she was supposed to each night after a performance.
Louis roused from his bed of old sheets and towels. In the reflected moonlight, she could see him lift his noble head, stare at her, and wait for her signal to return to his dreams. She smiled and waved a hand. With a groan, he lay down again.
Viv stepped to the window and flung wide the heavy blue velvet. She needed room-darkening drapes, total blackness, and silence to sleep. Even that did not bring her peace. Not in Paris. Not with what she’d promised to do.
“Give over,” she urged herself as she gazed out her bedroom window. She’d demanded the manager of the theater find her a house with bedroom suites facing the rear, away from the street. She did not mind the tinkling sounds of the little men who collected the midnight soil or the kitchen garbage in theruelle. They tried to be unobtrusive. Unlike anyone in the broader boulevard of rue du Bac who bustled about at all hours. What she had minded was that he chose a house in Saint Germain. True, it was close to the theater. But too close to the past.
She’d stop complaining. She’d count her blessings. She liked the dawn, the discovery of a new day and fresh opportunities, preferred it when she was not a woman of this ridiculous occupation with need to stay up half the night, preening and carousing, flirting with men she’d never allow to come to her bed, let alone take her heart.
She padded to her wardrobe and, in the light from the moon, pulled down from its hanger her old riding habit. Worn navy-blue serge of last year’s fashion, the outfit had one bright feature of convex buttons of dead gold. Buttoned at the waist, the lapels opened for a froth of cambric to spill out. The costume declared she was a lady, but an odd one. She might once have had fashion sense, but now had no notable means or endeavor. She was simply some young woman with limited means—and a taste for trousers out for a morning ride.
Eager for her outing and her anonymity to enjoy it, she slipped behind the coral Japan screen, relieved herself, and washed with the basin of cool water Alice always left for her.
In minutes, she slipped out the door, down the stairs, and through the kitchen to theruelle.
Sinking back against the solid oak door, she inhaled the fragrance of this part of town. Swept by the soft breezes of the Seine, this was sweet Saint-Germain. The part of the city from which she’d departed one night with her mother, two sisters, her dog Beau—and nameless crowds chasing after them. This house she rented was many streets away from that house of long ago. That one was in rue du Four. The house her father preferred. The house smaller than his officialhôtel particuliernear the Place Royale across the river. But the smaller house, quaint but as lavish, was the one he’d purchased for his mistress, her mother.
That house was close enough for her to walk to view it, if she wished.
She did. To behold it was one of the functions of her purpose here, wasn’t it? To face the past. Conquer it. Settle all hatreds. Then never think on it again.
But that was a process.
She ran a hand over her brow. Of course it was. She’d gather her stamina for it. Save the house for later. Today, she had other views to see.
This morning, she would begin at the stables, where her majordom, on her orders, had contracted to hire a spirited, responsive horse to give her the daily exercise she required. A fine mare who knew the city as she did not. One who allowed her to survey the town she had left as a thirteen-year-old, cringing at the mobs who banged on the door of an old hired carriage, stabbed at their horses, and abducted Diane.
*
This beautiful Februarymorning was crisp, the winds off the Seine brisk but refreshing. Viv sat tall in her saddle. This was her element. Her fingers caught the tendrils of her pale blonde hair escaping her tidy jockey’s bonnet. If she was to wish Tate Cantrell out of her hair, this was the weather in which to do it.
She grinned.
Only one man will do today.Her hired groom.
The fellow, riding close behind her, his pistol at his hip, was the very type of brusque male specimen she had requested from the stable master. Fortin was his name, Robert Fortin—and he was all she needed this morning to begin to familiarize herself with the city she’d never thought to see again.
From the cloudless skies and the blazing sunlight, she could say this placid place was a city she favored. Unlike her ugly memories, this city of gleaming white stones and glossy rose bricks buzzed with the early morningvendeurswho came from the countryside to sell their products. Housemaids strolled around to fill their baskets with eggs, winter turnips, and potatoes. The trinket sellers and pickpockets were not yet awake to irritate the crowds. Instead, the road along the Seine at this seventh hour of the day was filled with horsemen who came out for the air—and not for the company.
She liked her morning jaunt that way, too. Alone. The privacy, the serenity was what she needed, and would need often when she was here in Paris. Her mission was too roiling for her to be congenial to any and all. She would keep her acquaintances dear, but not close. She had little energy for friendships. Her best friend had been Tate, and that relationship gained her few satisfactions. Fewer as years rolled by.
Now she did not have the time or charms of duplicity to hold a friend. She hated her late nights at the theater, but she would simply drag herself out on as many mornings as she could find energy in order to find some balance to her task. No matter her fatigue. This morning, however, she had vowed she would force herself to view only a few places that marked her life here—and doomed her family.
Head high, she crossed the Seine on the famous old Pont Neuf. She surveyed the dark old frontage of the ancient royal palace of the Louvre, looted by the mobs so often during the revolution. But recently, First Consul Bonaparte had reopened a few of the rooms to show off the priceless art he stole from the Italians he had conquered. His belief that war should pay for itself in such booty made her smirk. The penalties that rubbed the noses of his enemies in the dirt of their defeat would come back to haunt him. For excess demanded revenge, didn’t it?
She snorted. An unladylike comment on the ways of Renégades, but then, only her groom was witness to her sneer.
She turned away from him so that he could not see her next expression. Because it was ironic—or perhaps diabolical—that her own reason to be here smelled of revenge. That she disliked the odor of her own goal spoke volumes of the dislike she had for the job she’d agreed to do.
Wrong you are even to debate it, Viv!
Angry at her wavering, she spurred her horse to trot onward. The Tuileries palace loomed before her, a gorgeousplace that once she recalled she had visited with her family. She remembered only a thousand bright flames, probably candles in cut glass chandeliers. Now it was the abode of Bonaparte, the house given to him by the generosity of the government he so eagerly led. The gardens, rather a shabby gray in the February chill, were still a grand parterre design, once the pride of the Bourbons. Even her father, minor member of that family as he was, had often remarked at their beauty, wishing he had the ability to duplicate it at their chateau so far away in the east.
Poor man. He had tried repeatedly to improve his lands. But he’d failed so often at agriculture that he had no money for the likes of parterres. He would instead bemoan his inadequacies and smother his shame in too many lost card games and too many conniving mistresses. In fact, until he took her own mother, his sister-in-law, as the one woman who could tame his excesses, he had not known any devotion to his crop production, his credit, or his mortal soul. Too bad it was too late to save his finances or his failing estate—or even his reputation as a roué.
