City of Secrets (16 page)

“Oh, dear.” Maddie sighed and, glancing around the room, realized that many of these elegantly dressed people
were
staring at her, some discreetly but others quite openly. “I do wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“Oh, how can you say so, Mrs.—Madeleine,” Daisy exclaimed. Maddie had asked the younger girl to address her by her first name, but Daisy was not yet comfortable with the habit. “They all admire you so much. It must be thrilling.”

Maddie did not like to disillusion her, for it was obvious that Daisy had never enjoyed such heady attentions and envied the older woman for them. At least Daisy was not as a result self-conscious about her own looks and did not fuss over her new, lace-trimmed silk gown and the string of pearls Maddie had persuaded her was all the jewelry she needed. At the opera, too, Daisy had attracted almost as much attention as her companion. Maddie thought it best, for the sake of Daisy’s self-confidence, not to point this out to her. Laurie Fox’s notice was all she cared about, anyway.

Happily, Lady Jervis seemed to be capitulating to Mr. Fox’s charm as well, so that when he gallantly offered to escort her back to the hotel, she declined the offer—a little coyly, Maddie was amused to observe—and went off in a taxi by herself.

Midnight came and went over their
ostendes
and
marennes vertes
, but none of them grew in the least sleepy. The level of wine in the gilt-necked champagne bottle in the ice pail beside them went down, but Daisy said she could not possibly grow more giddy than the laughter and excitement all around had already made her.

But then the red-uniformed band struck up a waltz. Laurie and Daisy looked at each other as if wondering whether to dare convention and dance. And Maddie looked away from their flushed faces to allow them to savor the moment in private, and saw something that sobered her with a shock.

Standing in the entrance, looking lethally handsome in top hat and evening cloak, stood Devin Grant. He was scanning the room for someone, and Maddie found herself holding her breath, terrified that it might be someone else. But it was not. He saw her, and for an instant their glances met over the heads of the golden young couples on the lower floor. Devin removed his cloak and hat and handed them to the doorman, all in one graceful motion; then he came toward her, cutting his way smoothly through the crowd, and before she could adjust to the idea of his presence, he was standing in front of her. Neither spoke. Laurie stood up, however, and Devin introduced himself
to
him.

“Mr. Fox, I believe? How do you do.” Laurie introduced Daisy, who, entranced by this unexpected arrival and clearly intrigued by his possible relation to Maddie, boldly invited him to join the party.

“Thank you. I will.” He smiled at Daisy in a way that Maddie was glad he had never used on her and that clearly completed Daisy’s capitulation to his charm. Then he signaled the waiter for a chair and pulled it up next to Maddie’s.

“I see you are enjoying Paris, Miss Jervis,” he said, and Maddie thought, why
hadn’t
he ever smiled at her like that?

“Oh, yes!” Daisy exclaimed. “We’ve already been to the opera tonight,” she explained as if indulging in two forms of amusement in one night represented the height of dissipation.

“What was it?” Devin asked, and when Daisy looked puzzled, added, “the opera, I mean.”

“Why, it was—” Daisy glanced at Laurie, who supplied,
“The Barber of Seville.”

“Yes,” Daisy recalled, smiling, “all about a lady who is in love with her music teacher and writes a great many letters. Mama fell asleep in the second act and was too tired afterward to come here with us. Mad—Mrs. Malcolm and I got lost looking for the ladies’ cloakroom, and we saw
dozens
of statues and paintings and gilt mirrors and ... did you know, Mr. Grant, that the grand staircase is
all
marble?”

“So rumor has it.”

Maddie stepped on Devin’s foot, but he showed no sign of repentance for teasing Daisy, encouraging her instead to ply him with questions. He answered cheerfully, if, as Maddie suspected, not always truthfully, but at least Maddie had a little time to get her breath back.

She had been startled at just how breathless she felt merely sitting next to him. He had not yet spoken to her, nor touched her save to shake her hand in greeting, but she was acutely aware of his tall, masculine presence. Worse, she had been delighted to see him, a delight not at all diminished by the anger she had conjured up against him over the last few days. She needed those few moments Daisy provided her to recall that anger, but then it came out as simple, and unattractive, petulance.

“Have you been shadowing me all the way from London?” she asked him when Laurie finally asked Daisy to dance and took her away.

He laughed. “No, I expect you’ve learned to take care of yourself by now. I see you’ve even adopted a protégée, in fact. She’s a nice girl.”

“Nice?”
Maddie’s sense of humor surfaced to restore her equilibrium. “Is that all you can say after the effort I’ve spent on her? You should have seen her before I took her in hand.”

“
Very
nice, then. Are you going to have her under your wing forever?”

There was something behind the question that Maddie wasn’t sure she understood, but that unbalanced her again. She tried to disregard it. “Well, for as long as we’re in Paris, I suppose.”

“That’s what I meant.”

It was still there, that something.

“Not that I want to lose her, of course. I like Daisy.”

“Of course.”

He wasn’t going to give anything else away, Maddie could see, and much to her own surprise, she found herself explaining, “I can’t leave her alone with Laurie, for propriety’s sake, but I do feel sometimes like the well-known fifth wheel.”

He took the hint, letting her know he recognized it as such by grinning maddeningly at her. “I am at your service, Mrs. Malcolm, should you wish for an escort yourself on your ... on whatever it is the three of you do together.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grant. But may I remind you that you are also in my service for another reason? Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me what you’ve been doing about that ... all this time.”

She thought she saw a flash of anger in his dark eyes, and for an instant her heart leapt to her throat. She should not have prodded him like that. But he said only, “I have already seen your secretary.” When she looked surprised, he added, “How do you suppose I found you tonight?”

“I should have guessed. Do you mean I’ll have to wait to talk to Oliver before I hear whatever it is you have to report?”

“My dear, no one, not even an American, comes to Maxim’s to talk about business. Get up. We’re going to dance.”

She ought to have refused, Maddie supposed, or at least exhibited some reluctance, but just then she wanted nothing more in the world than to waltz with Devin Grant at Maxim’s, to join those dazzlingly beautiful lovers—for so they all seemed to be—on the dance floor. This was Paris, she told herself again, and believed it this time. She was going to enjoy it.

She gathered up her ivory satin skirts, glad now that she had endured the hours of standing still for them, for the look in his eyes when they took all of her in, from her upswept hair, studded with ivory and pearl rosettes, to her unadorned décolletage to the elegant folds at the waist of her gown and her high-heeled satin shoes. She felt herself preening like a cat and glanced up at him, smiling.

He took her hand in his, placing the other firmly around her waist, and even through his glove and her satin she could feel the warmth of his fingers pressing into her back. She scarcely heard the tune the musicians struck up; she did not have to listen, for he led her effortlessly, pulling her a little closer in a turn, tugging at her other hand to guide her in the other direction. It was like riding an ocean swell, and she reveled in the sensation of being carried along with no effort on her part.

It was warm in the room, and the air was heavy with perfume and the fragrance of the flowers massed in huge vases against the walls. The movement of the dance made Maddie’s pulse race, but it was Devin’s warm breath in her hair that made her feel as if she were floating weightlessly somewhere above common earth.

“You are magnificent,” he whispered into her ear.

“What?”

She had closed her eyes, and so absorbed was she with the movement of the waltz and the multitude of sensations it roused in her that she was not certain she had heard him, only that his husky voice added yet another sensation. He laughed softly but did not repeat what he had said, and a moment later the music died, and with it the warmth and the movement and the sound of his voice.

Only the memory of his hands on her did not fade, even as they went out into the cool night and walked home silently, no longer daring to touch each other, even with Laurie and Daisy walking in front of them, unseeing and unhearing as they exchanged their own secrets in the night.

#

She was only a client, Grant kept telling himself. He could send written reports, or telephone her, or deal with her secretary. He had never mixed business with pleasure before, and now he knew why. He had, in short, not expected to want to see her—if only to look at her—so much.

He had certainly not expected to be so distracted by her heady perfume, her delicious skin so tantalizingly exposed above that unbelievably becoming gown, her magnificent body so little hidden beneath it despite the layers of satin and petticoats. But he was being distracted and, curse her and lecture himself as he might, he wasn’t getting anything else done. At least not well.

Only too aware that he would never be able to sleep after that waltz at Maxim’s, Grant had made up his mind to try to forget Madeleine Malcolm by doing something that needed to be done, something physical that would make him forget those other sensations she had imprinted on his body.

The Prince of Wales would be in Paris in six days, and Grant had done nothing about it. He would be staying at the Ritz, of course; when Cesar Ritz opened his magnificent new hotel the year before, the prince had been the first to change his allegiance to the new palace-away-from-home at 15, Place Vendôme.

“My dear fellow,” the prince had said when Grant vainly suggested somewhere less ostentatious, “I ask of a hotel only that they treat me like a prince, but the Ritz does better—there I am already a king! The food is superb, the bath is as large as a whole room at the Bristol, and the maids are delightful.”

“And your suite faces the square—and a hundred windows that might hide an assassin.” “I shall stay away from the windows.” And that was as much as the prince would promise him, for talk of assassins never failed to make him peevish. So Devin had his work cut out for him.

His own room was on the floor above the one reserved for the prince and afforded him the same view across the square and precluded—he hoped—the possibility of anyone’s breaking into the prince’s suite immediately below. But to be certain of the security of the location, he decided to try himself to get into the reserved suite from the roof, to see if he could do it without being spotted.

Attempting to think like a criminal, he dressed in black with a cap covering his hair, darkened his face with charcoal, and went up to the roof armed with a rope and some jeweler’s tools to cut the glass with. He intended to replace the windows with shatterproof glass, in any case, so the Ritz could not complain about his little experiment.

The door to the roof was unlocked, already a bad sign; he made a mental note to inform the management. Once outside, however, he realized that the steep slope of the roof would probably discourage any but the most determined burglar, although assassins were notoriously single-minded, not to say foolhardy. It was all Devin could do to maintain his balance as he tied one end of his rope around a pair of chimneys.

He glanced down as he took hold of the rope with both hands and adjusted his footing. He couldn’t see the square from here, and he could not be seen; he would have to make a note to station a man on the roof across the way, or better still, at the top of the Vendôme column.

Letting rope out cautiously, Devin lowered himself as far as the gutter drain pipe and had another look down. Four stories below, the cobblestones of the Place Vendôme were now clearly visible, damp from the street cleaners’ activities and gleaming in the lamplight. There were only two men in the square, walking unsteadily across it, as if on their way home from some late revelry; they did not look up. He checked the rope for firmness and let himself over the side of the building. The night was warm and still; if he dropped anything, the noise would echo from every corner of the square.

Directly below, as he had calculated, was the ledge of one of the windows of the prince’s suite. The ledge, he noticed, was nearly as steeply pitched as the hotel roof; something as simple as greasing it might be sufficient to prevent anyone getting enough purchase to break in. He began to feel a little more satisfied with the building. It was a fortress, a formidable obstacle, all by itself.

Nevertheless, he let himself down gingerly until his feet touched the ledge, where there was just enough space for him to crouch down to reach the latch. He tested it, and it moved. No need to use the glass cutter, which was just as well because he wasn’t sure he could reach his pocket from this position. He eased the window open and slid his body in over the sill, hips first for purchase. Guessing that there was thick carpeting even just below the window, he jumped in. His landing made no sound, and he let his breath out in a sigh of relief.

He listened and heard nothing. But instinct told him—too late—that there was something alive in the room.

“Haut les mains!”

Too startled to do anything else, he raised his hands automatically, still clutching the rope, however, so that it did not slide back out the window. Peering into the darkness, he could just make out a figure in a long white nightshirt, its arms stretched out in front of it. The metal of a pistol barrel glinted in the dim light.