Page 38 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
Tate bristled. “Who told you this?”
“The theater manager. In his cups, he was, but he retained enough sense to remember to tell me.”
Tate noticed no one following her. No one loitering outside her townhouse. “So do you think he is the same fellow?”
“I’m not sure. The description the manager gave me left much to be desired.”
He rode quietly for a few minutes. “Let’s stop at that café ahead to our left.”
She faced him, her pretty pink cheeks gone ashen. “I am afraid, Tate.”
“Not to worry, my darling. I am with you. Let’s stop and have a coffee and pastry, shall we? Then we’ll look at anyone who may have more interest in our coffee than we do, eh?”
*
“Let’s go,” Vivtold him minutes later. “I don’t see him.”
Tate checked on her groom. The man sat at another table, and the shake of his head told Tate he did not see anyone matching the description of the fellow.
Tate and Viv returned their horses and her groom Fortin to the stables, then continued down the thoroughfare toward rue du Four.
On their way, numerous pedestrians walked toward the abbey. As it neared the hour for morning mass, the bells tolled and the square was alive with the music of them.
“I never thought to see the likes of that again,” Viv said to him as they passed the entrance to the church. “So many hated the priests and their hold over people. They killed hundreds of them so brutally that same day they came for us. How do they go to mass now? How can they pray for the souls of those gone before when in fact they destroyed them with knives and hatchets?”
Tate took her arm and pressed it through the crook of his elbow. He patted her hand. “Bonaparte opened the churches for masses months ago. He needs peace, and so do the people.”
“They grew tired of their persecution, did they?” She scowled. “How good of them.”
Tate understood how she could vilify those who had come for them that night years ago. “They missed their God and their reason to live.”
She sniffed. “God has nothing to do with the reason to live.”
Such cynicism from her shocked him. “You used to believe that love was the best means to a happy life.”
She snorted, impossibly sad. “Did I?”
He stopped to put his arms around her. They stood near the turn into rue du Four. He cupped her cheeks. “My dear Vivi, I have no idea what you are doing here in Paris, but it has changed you in ways I do not understand. I want to hear you say you believe in love again.”
“A noble endeavor, sir.”
“To which I am devoted, my darling.” He dropped a sweet little kiss to her lips and silently led them both toward the house they both had known so very well.
*
She put ahand out to stop him from approaching the house. It rose above her, five stories tall, serene, stately. Built at the turn of the previous century, the facing was of that special Parisian white stone from a massive quarry north of the city that all prestigious architects bought. The elaborate scrolling above the door in the lintel was of grape leaves entwined with the petunias and geraniums of the east.
Now upon the broad front step, Tate gazed at her with compassion. “Pull the bell.”
Of course she would. She reached across the delicately carved front door, now a curious emerald green.
They waited.
“The caretaker may be on holiday,” she told Tate, anxiously tapping one foot to the cobbles. “He did not answer yesterday or the day before.”
“We can return if he does not come today,” Tate said. “It is important that we are here.”
But someone called within the house. A lock turned. The door swung wide.
