Page 9 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
The orchestra’s serenade drifted to an end. The crowd hushed. The red velvet drapes swished open, the golden tassels swaying in the candlelight.
Tate sat, unmoving, triumph rushing through him that he had found the woman who’d had the gall to steal from him. After all he had done for her, her Aunt Madeleine, and her young half-sister, his darling Vivienne, Charmaine’s theft gutted him. He’d shepherded them from Paris to Norfolk. Protected them from cutthroats, aided them, offered home and peace, and, after his father’s death, even given them a small income. Yes, Tate had done what he could. But while some would call his actions kind, he called them atonement. He could never make amends for how he’d failed all three women. That night, he had failed to recapture Diane. It was one act he could never relive. Never change. The defeat for which he’d never find forgiveness.
Still, he had devoted much of his life to making up for it. He’d even used his associations with people, his language skills, and his understanding of French agriculture and products to allow him to stay in France and spy for Britain. Scarlett Hawthorne knew his talents and his desires. Over the years, he had brought to justice, and even with some finality, a few French agents who operatedcarte blanchein Paris and in London. But now to learn that Charmaine had suddenly reappeared in Paris alerted him to some new web she wove. It infuriated him. It alarmed him.
Perhaps she had her own reasoning for her actions. Charmaine always did. She’d taken jewels from her Aunt Madeleine. Published Diane’s diary as her own. She’d even stolen beaus from Vivi. Charmaine suffered no remorse. Madeleine had forgiven her. Vivi had not. Diane could not.Hewould never forgive her for her pride and her duplicity.
The audience laughed. The rafters shook with it. Tate was not amused.
He winced.The play, old man, the play!
The first act proceeded apace. It was an old play by Molière. Charmaine was known in England for her tragic heroines, Juliet and her Desdemona. But for her return to Paris, she had insisted that she would honor the occasion by performing only comedy, preferably Molière. Tate knew the works of the famous French playwright well. He had seen them performed in Paris and villages all over the country. To see a play full ofbon mots, a story of people who once loved and married, might have been a huge draw to Tate tonight, had the circumstances been different.
All at once, there she was. Graceful, artless, beautiful Charmaine de Massé, the oldest legitimate daughter of the Bourbon martyr Charles Gilbert Moreau, Vicomte de Neufchateau. Charmaine waltzed through her role like a woman in command. Tate commended her presence, her elegance of hand and body, her timing. But what a change she was from the girl who had acted in shame that night she and her family had fled Paris. She’d been perhaps fifteen, a girl, really. Yet he’d watched her lure a suave young man and take him from the likes of the family’s scullery maid. Charmaine was at that young age already a practiced coquette. For years, Tate had tried not to criticize her too much because a decade ago she had the naïveté of youth. Yet his view of her was always shaded by what had happened that night when the mobs came for them and tore at their clothes and ripped Diane from their carriage.
Tate scowled. He sat forward. He should be enjoying Charmaine’s performance. He hopedshedid. After all, once he got hold of her, he was not letting her go until she told him where Viv was. He’d arranged a carriage to spirit her away with him. He’d even rented a small room behind a café on the quay of the Seine. He’d frighten her. Yes, he would. But he would not relent until she told him what he needed to know.
It shouldn’t take long. Charmaine was many things—stubborn, stingy, and mean. But she was also a coward. Once shegave him what he needed, he’d let her go. He’d find Viv, bare his soul to her, and persuade her to make him her own. Then he would return here to finish his work for Scarlett and the Crown.
He inhaled. Satisfaction like red wine flowed through him. Warmed him with…
She glided across the floorboards. A lovely bit of fluff in purple and red satin, an elaborate wig of powdered white swaying on her head as she walked…and spoke.
What was wrong with her? She sounded as if she had frogs in her throat. Was she ill? Her voice was much too raspy. Too deep.
And the way she lifted her shoulder to give her male lead the cut direct was…not possible for Charmaine. She’d been injured in their flight from Paris when the coach lurched into a rut near Chartres. She’d broken her collarbone. Never to be mended as it should be because of delay, the bone had created for Charmaine what her detractors in London called her “stiff comedown” to male romantic leads.
“Do you know her?” Amber St. Antoine leaned toward him of a sudden to ask.
“Very well.” He could not drag his gaze away from Charmaine. She was…enchanting. Her voice too low, too much of a contralto, husky and bold. Her sounds were mellow seduction. Her glide across the stage was an angel’s. This wasnotCharmaine. By God, this one had never been anything like Charmaine.No.No, he knew this woman. This daring creature whose every word brought fire to his blood and yearning to his heart. “Too well.”
His mind reeled backward to the first time he’d met the three daughters of the Vicomte de Neufchateau. The oldest girl, Charmaine, was small, delicate, with rivers of angelic white-blonde hair. The second girl, Diane, was bigger boned than her older sister, with golden-red hair like the copper of her father’s. But the youngest girl, their half-sister Vivienne, was different.She was the child of the vicomte. The man proclaimed it often, for he loved her dearly. Vivi was illegitimate. Her mother was the vicomte’s mistress and the widow of his younger brother. When Tate first met Vivi, he thought he’d seen double and lost his mind. She was the exact mirror image of Charmaine. Her twin, but not. Not in temperament, not in wit, but in every little curve of her lip and arch of her elegant brows. In the classic oval of her face and the sparkling sapphire of her eyes, Vivi was Charmaine.
Their voices were different, Viv’s darker, deeper, rich with the sultry essence of earth. But more than that, what marked them as unique was their character. Gay to staid, spontaneous to calculating, the two could not be more different. And so this woman on the stage was definitely not Charmaine Massey of Drury Lane. This was his sweet Vivi of Cantrell Farm, who adored her dog, her donkey, her chickens, and her herb garden. This was Vivi masquerading, substituting as her older sister.
He sat back, mesmerized. He could not absorb her form, her stance, her sound fast enough to sate his madness. What was this? Some poor joke on Paris? Did Vivi and Charmaine work on this together?Why?
Oh, he would have Vivi spouting answers. Was she covering for her sister’s newest attempt at…what? But Vivi would never do such a thing for Charmaine. Vivi loathed her sister’s duplicity. Was Charmaine ill? Perhaps there was a simple explanation, a more innocent one. Was Charmaine ill and Vivi here to collect her sister’s wages?
He blew out a breath.
Beside him, Tate heard Amber St. Antoine lean over toward Ramsey and say, “Lord Appleby knows the actress. Have you heard of her before tonight?”
Ram did not even deign to look at the lady beside him, and only nodded. He would never divulge information that was not necessary. But he knew full well that Tate was very familiar withthe Massé family. Ram knew all the details of how, when, and why, too.
Yet all Ram said to Amber was, “I have seen her in a few comedies in London, yes. She is accomplished.”
Amber sat back, widening her eyes, perplexed by Ram’s seeming indifference, but trying to make conversation. “Word is that she supported her father’s mistress and her sister with her earnings in the theater.”
Charmaine sent a pittance. This one on stage raised animals and worked a garden so that her mother and she could eat.
“So I have heard,” Ram responded, his gaze never leaving the stage.
Did he see the differences in the Charmaine of London and this one?
Tate would ask Ram about it. Kane, too.Tomorrow.
Not tonight.
