Page 60 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
She sat up and took from his hand the red silk banyan he offered. She followed him into his sitting room and went to the credenza, where his servants had laid out a display of sliced beef, a cool cucumber salad, and sautéed asparagus and squash. She took a small plate and filled it, then went to sit beside him on the settee. Finishing quickly, she set her empty plate aside.
“I wish to tell you about my reason to come here to Paris.”
His gaze consoled her. “Tell me quickly and we will be done with it.”
Would that were so…“And afterward you will decide if you still wish to marry me.”If you still love me.
“Nothing changes that, Viv. Nothing.”
She dropped his hands and wandered about his sitting room, finding the right place to begin. Crossing her arms, she considered the tapestry upon the wall before her. Whoever built this mansion had had this fabric woven to portray the master of the house atop his white charger, his sons or retainers behind him in phalanx. All of them smiled. But they gazed at the carcass of a buck, strung upside down from a huge tree branch, gutted and bleeding to the forest floor. The deer was a sacrifice to thisseigneur’s pleasure of the hunt—or his family’s need for venison. Sport or survival.
She slowly faced Tate and smiled at him with all the yearning she had felt since she was a girl—and began her sordid tale. “Charmaine is very ill. Never to recover. She has been sick for years. A disease she acquired from her activities with those men she favored. She has been pregnant twice, perhaps more. I did not know then; I do not ask now. The babies did not live but for hours. They too carried this disease.”
She ran a hand over her brow. Blind to the brilliant colors of the room, she saw her sister as she had the last time she visited. Charmaine, who once resembled Viv, now looked like a scarecrow from the fields. Her luxurious white-blonde hair was almost gone. A few tufts stuck out from her bald head. Her sapphire eyes—once large, brilliant, and bold—were hooded, red rimmed, and dim. She had her voice, that dark contralto that ordered everyone about. If it was a few tones lighter and held a rasp, Charmaine did not comment on it. That had been days before Viv had left for Paris.
“She asked me to come tend her last spring. That is why you could not find me. I had left Norfolk, and she told me to leave no word lest others find where I had gone and trace her. She wanted no one to know where she was or why she secluded herself.
“I arrived in a new house she had rented on the edge of Richmond. I nursed her, paid her bills. Finally, to earn her wages to support us both, I agreed to impersonate her last winter. By then, she was so ill she could not work. She lured me, saying she needed the wages. About two years ago, she had begun to give me money, not that I needed it. But she had to give it to me. She had debts, you see, even then, and I was to pay them as I could. Then at Christmas, I agreed to be her double.
“I could do it. I was capable. After all, I was the one who used to make up the plays and demand that she and Mama and a few of your tenants do the parts. I could be Juliet or Desdemona. Odd, you know, last winter she was to star inMacbeth, and oh, did I love portraying that tragic lady.” Viv fisted one hand. “Charmaine got what she wanted.”
“None of it good,” he said with bitterness.
She nodded. “So you realize that, like her and those fellows there, I can have a taste for blood.” She tipped her head over her shoulder at the tapestry.
Tate shook his head, adamant. “Lady MacBeth also went mad. It was not her nature to kill. Nor is it yours.”
“Perhaps not. But there are times when I can taste victory like that…” Viv whirled on him. “Can you imagine what it was like to live with the question of what happened to Diane? To wonder if the maid told the police that we were going to leave that night? To ask yourself what you could have done to prevent her from being taken from you?”
His eyes went dead. “I do know that well.”
The force of his words hit her like a wall of stone. Her reminiscence had not been meant to make him regret the past.
Yet he still did mourn. “I have spent my life castigating myself for the failure to capture her. I ran from the carriage that night. I ran like a fiend. She was just before me, hurried along by two men. Were they police? Or soldiers? I did not see their clothes. In the melee, I could not tell who they were, what they were. I knew only that they rushed her through the throng. That others parted for them. That I was left scrambling to catch up—and I never could. Finally, near a high wall—a convent? A church? A government office? I cannot remember where it was, what it was, but the two men rushed her inside a door. Massive, it was. It was not wood but iron, and it clanged shut. In a moment, Diane was gone…and I could do nothing. Nothing.”
Viv went to him, her arms around his sagging shoulders. “I am no assassin. You are right. I have not the will. And you?” She ran her fingers through the thick satin of his hair. “You, my darling, are no failure. You tried to save her. Youtried. The odds were against you. We cannot blame ourselves for those things we tried to do. It is important to mark that we tried. It is vital we praise ourselves for attempting to change our lives. Most often, I venture, we can.”
“So then you agreed to impersonate Charmaine and come here in her place. But you told yourself you would learn what you could about that night.”
She hated to tell him the rest. But she must. “I was so…angry at Diane’s loss! In and of myself, I was aggrieved. And yes, living with Charmaine did that to me. Listening to her rant and rave. I became more spiteful and vindictive. I was rabid to take her place and hurt anyone who had hurt Diane. Who had hurt us. My entire family was gone, and soon I would lose Charmaine as well.”
She inhaled and cleared her mind. “Then suddenly you were here, before me, questioning me, warning me, helping me seethat…see that I am not one who can exact retribution without conscience. I am not that strong.”
“No,” he said, “you are not that perverse.”
“When I go home and tell her what I’ve learned, she will accuse me of believing others’ lies. She will deny it all. Then she will accuse me of being weak.”
“She should declare you brave, braver than she. But then, she serves only herself, Viv, and never sees what she truly is.”
She nodded. “You are right. Of course.”
“Now there are a few facts more you can discover about what happened to Diane.”
She let her head fall back and stared at the frescoed ceiling. Above them, cherubs cavorted around a carousel. Oh, to be so carefree and laugh like that. “Yes. With what the maid has revealed, now I can go to Vaillancourt and ask what he did for Charmaine and the maid.” She scoffed. “Do I have the courage? No, no. But I have the curiosity.That, I have in abundance. And I have the need to know. To confront Charmaine. But then, it is a risk, eh? Will he even let me in to see him or answer my questions? Will he answer? Ha. He has no reason to. He could deny it all and show me the door.”
“But if you went with more proof of what he did, he might not be able to deny you the truth.”
“I have no idea where to get that.”
