Page 54 of Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure
He drank from his cup. “There were three men, all ragtag ruffians. They spoke French. Not Parisian. But Norman. From Le Havre or Calais.”
“Why did they carry away Giselle?” Langley asked.
Clive took another long drink of his coffee. It soothed his wearysoul and fortified his aching body. “She has an enemy in Fouché, and his deputy, René Vaillancourt.”
Both men froze.
Clive hastened to add, “She also works against the French.”
“Not for us!” Halsey blurted, red in the face.
Clive understood his colleague’s shock. “No. For Kane, Lord Ashley, and through him—”
“Scarlett Hawthorne,” Halsey finished.
Halsey was a tall, dark, severe fellow who was a light of London Society. He had a taste for horses, French wine, and exquisite women. Scarlett Hawthorne—beautiful, educated, and ruthless cit that she was—ran her deceased father’s merchant marine business and used his contacts all over the world to run her own espionage network. She did not admit such to anyone, but the successes she had tallied were innumerable. Every day, every night, she was a light of Society despite her mercantile background. Halsey, who advised the prime minister on all agents foreign and domestic, had courted her, as many men had, to little avail. The only man who got close to her was her chief clerk, a giant of a man named Todd Carlton. The other men whom she saw regularly were the ones who worked for her, like Ashley, Ramsey, and dozens more.
Halsey fumed. “How on God’s green earth did Madame Laurant get connected with Scarlett?”
“She was childhood friends with Augustine, Lady Ashley, and Amber, Lady Ramsey. They recruited her. For a few years now, she has worked for them.”
Halsey’s violet eyes shadowed with an urgent fear. “What does she do for them?”
Clive swiftly glanced at Langley. “Those sketches and paintings in the Hastings bookshop?”
Langley nodded. “Yes?”
Halsey knew of them, too. “What of them?”
“Giselle did them. She’s executed dozens of paintings and sketches since arriving here in England last autumn. She would visit the town, walk it, measure and define it, then render it in various mediums to place in locations where her contacts picked them up.”
“I’ve marveled at the exquisite nature of those drawings in the Hastings bookshop,” Halsey ruminated. “At the inaccuracies in them, too. I thought it was the mistake of the artist. Wondering too why they would be left, other than the fact that whoever was to pick them up saw the mistakes and left them there to rot.” He sat forward. “Unusual for a woman to draw landscapes so well…and so deceptively well. How did she learn to do any of that?”
“Ah.” That answer Clive had, and it brought a small smile of satisfaction. “When she was a child and her mother was in residence at Versailles, she met her mother’s friend.”
“Who is…?”
“Madame Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun.”
Halsey stared at Clive.
“That’s why,” said Langley at last with a shake of his head, “she was invited to Le Brun’s party here in Brighton a few weeks ago. They are friends!”
“What’s more, Giselle knows the Comte de Vaudreuil and studied with him as well.”
“That old roué?” Halsey crowed. The man was responsible for so many scandals at the French royal court that most marveled he yet survived the guillotine.
“He ran fast after the Bastille fell,” said Langley.
“Running away with the king’s young brother, Artois. Now he’s here to grace our shores with his simpering apologias for his sins,” Halsey added. “I’d pack him off on a convict ship if I could. He makes trouble for me every time he opens his mouth.”
“But he knows a fine artist when he sees one,” Clive said. “In Giselle, he spotted her ability to eye a landscape and create a realistic rendering.”
“Except,” Halsey said, “those Hastings drawings are not accurate.”
“No, they weren’t.” Langley fell back in his chair.
“Because… Dear God,” said Halsey, mesmerized, “she is drawing them incorrectly to delude the French! Astonishing. And what is her method?”
