The Counterfeit Mistress (19 page)

“But a Frenchwoman?” Lady Sophie said. “With your lack of experience, do you think it is wise?”

He found himself at a loss for words.

“I understand the appeal,” she continued. “Such a lovely language, for one thing. Even base matters sound elegant in French.
Merde
, for example. How much nicer that sounds than sh—”

“Aunt Sophie, I do not think Kendale's head gets turned by the sound of a language.”

“Nonsense. Everyone loves the French language and is lured by it. Goodness, my head was turned by a Frenchman who had nothing else to speak for him except the sound of his voice. I only acknowledge his limitations in hindsight, of course. At the time I was madly in love for a good fortnight.” She caught herself, and smiled apologetically. “I did not mean to imply that your current affair will only last a fortnight, Lord Kendale. I am sure it will see you through the Season.”

“It is reassuring to know that you believe I will have enough time as that.”

“You will have time if you make time and you take time, sir. Too many men do not comprehend that
l'amour
and impatience are not compatible. You appear puzzled. I would be happy to explain. If you have taken up with a Frenchwoman it would not do to have you ignorant. For the pride of England you must acquit yourself well.” She looked around, seeking a chair on which to perch so the conversation could continue.

“The garden, Aunt Sophie. I believe you said you wanted some air,” Ambury interrupted.

“I did? Well, it is a fine idea, so I will embrace it. Farewell, Lord Kendale. Call whenever you need advice. You will find none better than mine.”

“My apologies,” Ambury muttered while she walked to the garden doors. “She has lost all notions of discretion.”

“She could not be indiscreet with me unless others first were with her. I am glad my suitability to maintaining an affair with Miss Lyon is providing the entertainment in drawing rooms this week.”

“Hell, what did you expect? You accompanied her to Fairbourne's grand preview. The whole world saw you leave together too. Do not let it annoy you. The scandal sheets will move on to others soon enough.”

He had no idea he had been in the scandal sheets. He never read them and right now, even if he normally did, he did not have the time for such frivolities.

“What is that there?” Ambury pointed at the roll covered in muslin.

“A conundrum. You are going to help me see my way clear out of it.” He set the roll on the desk, untied the string holding the muslin in place, and allowed the whole of it to unroll.

Ambury bent his head to the engraving on the top. “Interesting. These are being made either for the French market, or to sell to the émigrés here. I would think the former. Who is he?” He pointed to Lamberte.

“A government lackey in one of the provinces.”

“Well, someone is accusing him of the sort of embezzlement that gets heads lopped off over there.”

“I was more curious whether you see anything at all on that image that might be other than it appears. A message, for example, that only the initiated would see and understand.”

“Do you mean a code?” Ambury peered hard at the image, then at the words engraved all over it. “Would have to be a very short message if it is among those sentences. I can see nothing to suggest such a thing. Can you?” He lifted the top image and held the paper to the window's light.

“No. However, I wanted another opinion, and another pair of eyes.” Satisfied, he began to roll the prints again. Half of his conundrum had been solved. He trusted Ambury to give good advice on the other half.

The door opened then, and Lady Ambury entered. She looked around the library, and sighed with exasperation. “Where has she gone? I told her to wait
here
. Ambury, did you see Aunt Sophie?”

“She has gone to the garden.”

“Oh,
no
. How could you allow that? We are to make calls together. Now she will be covered in mud and—” She noticed the engravings. She came over, curious. “What have you there? Ah, she has turned her scorn on French fools, I see. That is understandable, but I will miss how she skewered our English ones so neatly.”

“What do you mean,
she
?” Ambury asked.

“Why, Marielle. This is her work, I am sure. Did you not tell him, Kendale?”

“No, he did not, although one of his questions makes more sense now.”

Lady Ambury lifted the top print to reveal an identical one below. “Why, these are new. She has not sold any of them yet. I hope that you have not scolded about this, Kendale. Those views of hers are much more artistic, but they do not sell nearly as well as her satires.”

“I do not think I have seen her views,” Ambury said.

“Nor I,” Kendale said.

“They are lovely. Scenes of the river, mostly. She would not show them to you. I am surprised she did with these. She would fear that you would be scandalized that she plied a burin on copper, just as the women who dab that paint never admit to others that they labor for pay in that house.” She stilled suddenly, as the last words emerged. She flushed. “She did not show these to you either, did she? You discovered them on your own somehow, and I have revealed something she would not want you to know.”

“Do not castigate yourself over it,” Ambury said. “Kendale here understands that Miss Lyon must earn her bread. He has seen that house. These can hardly shock him.”

“They do not shock me at all. I am glad to know she made them.” He could not decide if that would make what he had to do easier or harder.

“Her desire to remain anonymous would explain why there is no credit taken or any address, I suppose,” Ambury said. “I merely thought them unfinished.”

“They are unfinished, I believe,” Cassandra said, bending over the print. Her dark hair dangled in long tendrils that brushed against the paper. “I was once shown a satire she did and it had a name and address. All fictional. Her views will have her address, but not her name. She uses male names instead.”

“So the engravings being colored in that house are made by her,” Kendale said.

“Some of them. Mostly she brings in others from printers. If you asked, I am sure she would explain it all to you. Now, I must find my aunt before she pulls out half the garden. Please excuse me.”

After Cassandra left, he finished rolling the prints.

“Your question, about the code,” Ambury said. “You are still not sure of her.”

“I am sure of her. I was not sure about these.”

“Yet she makes them. So . . .” Ambury shrugged. “If we are all wrong, she is unlikely to do anything with you in her life. She would not have much chance for it, would she? Nor would she get away with it. I trust you have not embarked on this affair for that purpose, Kendale. To keep watch on her and her movements, that is. You risk far too much if you have.”

“I came here to be convinced that I was not making excuses and refusing to see what I did not want to see. Also, to ask for advice. She does not know that I have these. She thinks they were lost. I allowed her to believe that.”

“You lied to her.”

“At the time I believed I was lying to a spy. I would like to return them to her now, and explain.”

“You would like to rectify that lie so it might not stand between you in the future.”

“Exactly. How to achieve that has puzzled me. I thought you might help.”

“Let me see if I can provide you with the words.
My darling, at a time when I did not yet enjoy your favors and we were not as one, I discovered these images and kept them, unbeknownst to you, because I believed them to be evidence that I could use one day to have you hanged
.”

“I can be that clumsy all on my own. You are supposed to find a better way to say it, so I do not appear a scoundrel to her.”

“
My dearest, I have been in possession of some of your property for some weeks now, and thought it best if I returned it to you. My only excuse for my deception is that at the time I believed you to be the worst fraud, and entirely untrustworthy
.”

“That is hardly better.”

“Kendale, there is no good way to say it. It can't be prettied up with eloquence. Better to say it in your Kendale way and hope she has enough affection for you to understand.”

He left Ambury's house even less contented than when he had entered. By now the mystery of Marielle should be unwinding. Instead it only seemed to deepen. Ambury's questions did not sit well either.

He
had
toyed with the idea that an affair would keep Marielle close, so he could easily keep watch over her. It had been one possible excuse that he considered for doing what he wanted to do, during her first days at Ravenswood. She had convinced him she was not one, however. He did not want to think that had merely been lust making him blind after all.

This was not a time he wanted to be doubting her. Soon, too soon, he would embark on a mission that held risk and danger, and he wanted to spend the remaining time enjoying the rare contentment he experienced with her. Instead the last hour had him wondering if that contentment had turned him into the worst idiot, the kind he had sworn he would never be—a woman's fool.

He did not think she had used her wiles to obscure his thinking, but . . . An engraver, now. In England the daughters of the aristocracy might draw or do watercolors, but engraving? He thought it unlikely that the niece of a comte would have been taught this skill. Men in England served apprenticeships for such work. Using a burin on copper did not lend itself to dabblers. Cassandra had said that the other prints, the views, were lovely too. An expert engraver, then.

He wondered how many people knew she possessed this skill. The rumors she was a charlatan could have emerged from people learning about it.

He could no longer pretend that the rumors were wrong.

M
arielle loved the cottage. She enjoyed looking out the windows and watching buds and shoots emerge in the rustic garden outside. She found the low-beamed ceilings cozy and the big hearth domestic. She noted how, whenever André pulled up outside and she emerged from the carriage, it seemed she had stepped into another world.

A fantasy world, perhaps. One where no dangerous quest waited and no dangers lurked. One where, for a while, Kendale was not a viscount and lord, but just the man whom she embraced in peace and passion.

She had taken to arriving at the cottage early, so she would have a few hours to play at being a simple country woman with nary a care in the world. Today she sent André off with instructions to come back for her in the morning, and eagerly entered the house. She carried a basket of food that she had cooked in the kitchen of her house, darting in to stir the stew and knead the bread between dealing with the new engravings, some to be colored.

She set the bucket of stew near the hearth and stirred in embers she had brought in a firepot, so that there would be some warmth for both food and the night. She put the bread on the table and admired the fine job she had done with its form and baking.

The cook had found her intrusions into the kitchen odd and annoying, and even seemed surprised that she knew how to form a loaf. Marielle Lyon should not. It had given her joy to do it, however, and to know that Kendale would eat food made with her own hands. Quite a bit of nostalgia had filled those private moments too, and memories of doing this for her father.

Not a sound interfered with her hour in the cottage, other than those of nature outside. She savored the calm, and her happiness. Thoughts of Kendale's arrival brought poignancy to her heart, and also a stirring anticipation.

Two weeks he had said. The fortnight was almost over. She sat near the window and watched a mouse nose its way through some ivy in the garden while she clung to the joy that would certainly end soon. She would have to end it, wouldn't she, if she were to do what she had to do?

The sounds of another carriage worked its way up the lane. That would be Kendale. He too had one bring him here, so he would not have to deal with his horse on a property ill suited to maintaining one. She knew the sounds of all of his carriages now, and recognized the fine one that had called on her when their estrangement ended. Its wheels gave out that particular cry as they stopped.

He entered, his hair mussed from the breeze and his high boots dirty from a day of riding. He carried a long fat cylinder covered in muslin that he set on a chair, then came over and gave her a kiss.

“All is well at your house?” he asked.

She stood and linked her arms around his neck. “Very well. That man who was walking by still has not returned. Jacob and Pratt still watch out their window. The women are busy with a new stack of engravings sent by a book publisher. And Madame LaTour has been most helpful so that I can steal away to visit this little cottage.”

“You come early, so she must be very helpful.” He embraced her, but looked around the humble sitting room. “I was concerned you would find this too poor. It was all that was available immediately, however.”

“I find its simplicity charming.”

He looked down at her warmly, but she sensed a distraction in him. Not one that removed her from his attention. Rather it centered on her, and caused him to concentrate on her too thoroughly. She waited for words that she saw in his eyes and felt in the air.

Instead he kissed her. A mere brushing of his lips at first, then more fully. His arousal changed the kisses even more. It appeared the stew and bread would not be eaten for a while.

The kisses turned hard, devouring. His embrace encompassed her tightly. She recognized the signs of impatience. When he picked her up and carried her to the small bedchamber, she wondered if he would even bother to undress.

He surprised her, as he could at times. Instead of throwing her on the bed he set her on her feet and set about disrobing her. Suddenly he was taking his time, a lot of it, carefully unlacing her dress and working the hooks on the back. Reverently folding each garment and setting it on the chair. And always, each time he looked at her, that concentration.

Her own arousal teased and played at her. Her body waited and her thoughts blurred. When she was naked, however, he traced the curve of her form from shoulder to thigh in a slow, careful line drawn by two fingertips. The way he looked at her then, that deep consideration, caused a note of worry in the melody of her bliss.

She stopped his hand by clasping his wrist. He had to look up at her then. “You look at me as if you are memorizing me,” she said. “Are you leaving?”

“My journey is not for a few days yet, at worst.”

She had not only meant that journey that he planned. Relief sighed through her heart when he only heard that question, however.

He laid her down then undressed himself. Instead of impatience he took infinite care in how he handled her. The pleasure was as slow and sweet as that night at Ravenswood, when she forced him to admit he wanted her. This time it affected her differently. He might not be leaving, but she could not ignore that he would be soon, and she would be too, and this fortnight of happiness had almost ended.

She clung to him as a result. She held him as closely as she could. She did memorize him while she caressed, and listened to his breaths and noticed every detail of his touch. Soon, very soon, the pleasure sank low in her and every kiss, every tease, deepened it so she was ready much sooner than he.

It maddened her to wait. Another day she might have demanded he join with her. But she sensed this slowness was not for her sake, but his. He did not lack desire. The evidence of that was undeniable and prominent. Rather that concentration distracted him still, and she guessed he was noting every touch as much as she did.

He could tell how much she wanted and needed him. She did not know how to hide it. He indulged himself a while longer anyway, carefully closing his teeth on one of her breast's tips while he flicked the other with his thumb. She cried out at what it did to her, and on impulse grasped his hand and tried to move it lower.

Instead he rolled and brought her above him. “Take what you want, Marielle. This way I can still admire you.”

Almost frantic now, she grasped him and rose up. She lowered herself and all of her gave a silent moan when he filled her.

She sat back, absorbing him and enjoying the welcomed fullness. Dusk gathered outside, and shadows grew in the chamber. No candles had been lit, so the light had turned gray and soft.

She enjoyed looking at him like this, at his handsome face and intense eyes. She reached out and caressed his hard shoulders and chest, moving down until her fingers touched the new scar, still somewhat red, from the wound he received in the alley. That made her look at her own body and the fine line on her hip.

She rose up and lowered herself again and watched his reaction.

“Slowly,” he said. “So it is a new revelation each time.”

She did it how he wanted. “That is almost poetic.”

He smiled in amusement at her description. It was the first smile of the day, she realized. He reached out and drew his fingertips along that welt on her hip. “I do not think this is the first time you have been hurt, Marielle. There are no other scars, but not all wounds leave them on the body. That is especially true for women.”

She stopped moving.

“There are things I have not thought much about,” he said while he caressed her slowly. “I chose not to, because one thing leads to another and they would all lead back to the mystery of Miss Lyon. But you were a girl when you came here, and you came alone. Unprotected. Were you hurt as you made your way through the hell that was France then?”

She leaned forward until her face hovered mere inches above his. She slammed shut the door in her heart that his words had nudged open, before too much sorrow could escape. “First poetry, then a cruel question guaranteed to ruin my pleasure. I expect you to make amends, my lord.”

“Of course. My social skills still need much work.”

He did make amends. He kept her in that position with kisses while his hands devastated her by teasing at her breasts. Each touch and flick made her tremble where they joined. He moved her forward so he could use his mouth and that made it wonderfully worse, especially since they barely remained connected then so the teasing created powerful shivers of pleasure. He finally released her when she had grown crazed, and she rose up on her arms and slammed her hips down hard so he filled her again.

She took what she wanted then, as he had said to. She moved this way and that, finding relief that also made the marvelous sensations of release begin. He grasped her hips and took over, and no longer was it slow and sweet, but almost violent in how he thrust into her. She came twice before he was done, and again at the end when, limp and exhausted, she accepted the last of his turmoil.

N
ight had fallen. He did not sleep. Marielle did not either. He could tell, even though she did not move in his arms. She rested in the crook of one, with her head on his chest. Her palm lay flat on him over his heart.

His reluctance to leave the bed came from many things. The comfort of holding her. The new questions that would not leave his head. The roll of muslin out in the sitting room.

“I was not hurt as such,” she said into the silence.

“Do not speak of it if you do not want to. It was churlish of me to say anything.” It had been an impulse, a thought spoken aloud as he looked at that knife wound and thought about Marielle the mystery and how much he had assumed that had probably been very wrong.

She did not respond, so he assumed she did not want to. But she shifted in his embrace and, it seemed to him, huddled closer.

“You said you were at Toulon, so you saw how it could be when rebellions against the new government were put down. It was the same elsewhere. France was as bloody after the revolution as during. There was much killing.”

Especially in the west.
She does not speak like a person from Provence, but from the west.
Two people had told him that.

“I expect the entire country was not safe,” he said. For a girl to travel alone— He did not want to imagine the kinds of danger she would have seen.

“Not safe at all. Every man loses a part of his humanity in such a world. I saw enough to know how it might be when I fled. So, as I left, I arranged to be protected.”

Of course she had. It had been the smart thing to do, and she was very smart. “Were you hurt?”

“Not the way I think you mean. He was someone I knew, not a stranger. I understood the bargain as I took it. I was not forced, if that is your question.”

That she assumed it was gave him some relief. If Marielle did not know how some men hurt women as part of pleasure, he would leave her with that small corner of innocence.

“It was as if it were happening to someone else,” she said. “That was my only memory of it, in truth. Other emotions, bigger ones, occupied me. I was glad to have a man with a pistol and some bravery guiding me to the coast and helping me find a boat. But, of course, I would never be an innocent again. I had lost so much of my childhood from what I had seen, it seemed a small loss in comparison, however.”

It touched him, how matter-of-fact she spoke of it. He debated anew whether he really needed to know anything else about her. Perhaps all the rest really did not matter.

He laughed at himself, but not happily. Here he was again, finding reasons to avoid learning the truth. He could only hope she did not realize what an idiot he had become because of her. For her. It was a hell of a thing to find yourself counting on the good character of a person you had sworn could not be trusted.

“I expect that you learned to live with fear during that time,” he said.

“It was my constant companion.” She turned and looked down at him. “It is interesting how that changed people. I have noticed that some of us live in fear still. It will not go away now no matter how safe we are. Others of us learned that one must move forward even when afraid.”

“Which are you?”

“I was the latter, but—I have learned that it does not take much for it to own me again.”

He almost wished it owned her, if it meant she did not move forward on whatever scheme she had in mind. She did have one. Those engravings and that visit to the coast said as much. If she was not a spy—and his heart said she was not no matter how often his brain debated it still—then she schemed in some other way. Probably a dangerous one.

He caressed her face until his fingertips found her mouth. They rested there, on their softness. His eyes could not see her face, but his mind could. She had worn many masks with him in the past, but he guessed that now, in the dark, as they held each other, she did not.

“It does not have to own you. If you ever need protection, I will give it to you. Even if we are no longer lying together like this, I will keep you safe if you allow it.”

She opened her lips and caught his finger between them. Then she pressed them to his chest. She sat up, and gave him a little poke. “You may not have a stomach, but I do. There is food waiting.”

T
hey ate her stew on the little table, both in dishabille. He wore pantaloons and a shirt, and she her chemise and her shawl. He built up the fire some so the night would not make them cold in such undress.

“This is good bread,” he said, breaking off another piece. “You have a better baker than I do at Ravenswood.”

She nibbled on her own, secretly pleased at the compliment. From where she sat she could see that roll of muslin that he had brought. She wondered what it was. Not a gift for her, from the looks of it. Perhaps one of those men would visit tomorrow and take it away.

“You said that you would not be leaving on your journey for several days at least,” she said. “Or perhaps not at all?”