Petals in the Storm

Chapter 8

As the carriage rambled down the boulevard toward the British embassy, Maggie's hands were locked so tightly in her lap that her fingers must be white inside her gloves. She wondered if her voice had betrayed her near-panic at the theater riot.

The episode had brought back all her worst nightmares in hideous detail, and she had been so paralyzed by fear that she could hardly move when Rafe had dragged her from the theater. There had probably been little real danger-she routinely carried both a white and a violet handkerchief in her reticule, just in case- but panic was immune to reason.

While she would have forced herself to stay in the theater rather than give in to her fears, it had been a relief to go along with Rafe. Most of the time Maggie would fight hammer and tongs if a man tried to compel her against her will, but not tonight, not in the face of that seething brawl of mad humanity.

It had been profoundly comforting to have his strong arm around her, and pure pleasure to watch him dispatch those two ruffians so deftly. All in a day's work for the Duke of Candover, of course. He hadn't even wrinkled his perfectly tailored coat, and he had betrayed no more concern at the riot than if a mule cart had blocked his carriage.

She admired his imperturbability. Most of the time she could match it, but not when a mob brought back the horrifying scene that had killed her father and Willis, and changed her life forever.

She tried not to think of their impassioned embrace, even though her body throbbed with frustration. The attraction she had always felt for Rafe had reacted explosively with her fear to produce a shattering degree of need. Though he had responded fiercely, he had stared at her as if she were a stranger when they had separated. Dear God, what must he think of her?

The thought produced a wintry smile. His opinion of her was already so low that her acting like a wanton probably made no difference. A good thing they had been in a cramped carriage, or heaven only knew where it would have ended.

Disaster, that's where it would have ended.

Her hands had almost stopped trembling by the time they reached the British embassy on the Rue du Faubourg-St.-Honore. As Rafe helped her from the carriage, she smiled and said with her most ravishing Hungarian accent, "Lady Castlereagh's evenings are very splendid, with some of the best conversation in Paris. One may see anyone here."

Inside, Lady Castlereagh herself greeted them. Emily Stewart was not renowned for beauty or wit, but she was a kind woman, and she and her brilliant husband were devoted to each other. "Good evening, Candover, how charming to see you." She extended her hand. "I trust that Magda has been making you feel welcome in Paris?"

He bowed over her ladyship's hand. "She has indeed. The countess even found a theater riot for me this evening, so I should be well informed about the events in Paris."

"Unfair, your grace," Maggie said indignantly. "You chose the theater. I thought perhaps you arranged the riot as an alternative to the farce."

"Unfortunately, one needn't look far for disorders,"

Lady Castlereagh said wryly. "Nightly mobs in the Tuileries gardens, duels almost daily between French and Allied officers. There have been disturbances at each of the four theaters where I have boxes, and they are the staidest playhouses in Paris." She glanced at the door and saw another party arrive.

"I must excuse myself now, but I hope to speak more with you later. Was there anyone either of you particularly wished to meet? There's quite a crowd this evening."

"Is the Count de Varenne here, Emily?" Maggie asked.

A small line appeared between Lady Castlereagh's brows, but she said merely, "You're in luck, he arrived a few minutes ago. Over there, in the far corner, talking to the Russian officer." She nodded and left to attend to her hostess's duties.

The splendid reception room was crowded with people, and a dozen languages could be heard, though French predominated. Lord Castlereagh and the British ambassador, Sir Charles Stuart, were part of a group that included Prince Hardenburg, the Prussian foreign minister, and Francis I, Emperor of Austria.

Negotiations were at a critical phase now, and the key figures were striving night and day to reach agreement. With the support of Wellington, Lord Castlereagh's plan for an army of occupation was slowly coming to be accepted among the Allies.

Maggie's eyes lingered on Castlereagh for a moment. He was a tall, handsome man, reserved in public, but generous and unassuming in private. The foreign minister was known for both intelligence and irreproachable integrity, and his death would be a tremendous loss.

Her jaw tightened; he would not become a victim of political terror if she could do anything to prevent it. She glanced at her escort and found the duke also gazing at the British minister, thoughts similar to hers reflected in his face. Sensing her regard, he glanced down and for a moment their eyes met in perfect agreement.

There were a number of Britons present and Rafe knew them all, so it was easy to progress indirectly toward their quarry while they exchanged greetings with fellow guests. Maggie studied the count as they drew closer. He was in his late forties, a powerfully built man of middle height with great elegance and an air of authority.

Mentally she reviewed what she knew of him. The last of an ancient family, he had been involved in royalist attempts to regain control of France ever since the Revolution. Circumstances had made him a dangerous and devious man, and he unquestionably had the knowledge to organize a conspiracy.

For the last decade he had been governor of a Russian province for the tsar. Napoleon's defeat had brought the count home, and he was now in the process of restoring his estate outside of Paris to its former splendor. As one of the most influential Ultra-Royalists, he was thought likely to be chosen soon for an important government post.

As they drew nearer to the count, Maggie was pleased to see that the Russian he conversed with was Prince Orkov, whom she had met several times before. Tucking her hand firmly in Rafe's elbow, she drew him up to their quarry at a lull in the conversation, cooing, "Prince Orkov, so delightful to see you again. Surely the last time we met was at Baroness Krudener's?"

Prince Orkov's eyes lit up with uncomplicated male pleasure. "It has been too long, Countess," he said as he bowed over her extended hand.

Introductions were performed all around, but Maggie's bright social smile froze when her eyes met those of the Count de Varenne. Most men stared at her with obvious physical appreciation. Occasionally that was a nuisance, but lust was normal and passion was warming. Varenne's gaze was pure ice, the cold, dispassionate evaluation of a buyer contemplating a possible acquisition.

For a moment she was off-balance. She could deal with any variety of passion, whether love or anger or hatred-she had liked Rafe better in the days when he had had emotions-but the count seemed like a man who stood apart from such human weakness.

Though uncertain of the best way to question him, she plunged in with a smile. "I have heard of you, Monsieur le Comte. It must give you great pleasure to be restored to your country and your estates after so many years of exile."

He paused, his black eyes flatly opaque, then said in a dark, whispery voice, "Satisfaction, certainly. Pleasure may be too strong a word."

She nodded sympathetically. "France must seem sadly changed, but now you and your royalist compatriots have the chance to rebuild that which was destroyed."

His mouth twisted. "We shall never be entirely successful with that, for too much has changed in the last twenty-six years. The misguided idealism of the radicals has wrecked France. Jumped-up bourgeois pretend to be aristocrats, the true nobility had been decimated or impoverished. Even the king himself is only a shadow of his distinguished ancestors. Who could look at Louis the Eighteenth and see the Sun King?"

His soft voice was peculiarly commanding, and Maggie wondered if she imagined the undertone of threat. "You seem very pessimistic for a man of the ruling party. Do you think matters are truly so desperate?"

"Difficult, Countess, but not desperate. We have waited a long time to reclaim our patrimony. We shall not lose it again." His gaze ran over her again, coolly dismissive. "If you will excuse me, I am expected elsewhere." With a polite nod to the others, he left the group.

Rafe and Prince Orkov had been discussing horses, that topic of universal and unending interest to the male half of the species. When she turned back to them, Rafe said, "The prince has invited us to a ball he is giving two days hence. Are we free to accept?"

Assuming that someone on the guest list would be of particular interest, Maggie said cordially, "We accept with pleasure, Your Highness. Your entertainments are legendary."

The prince took her hand and caressed it in a way that warned Maggie not to let him get her alone. "Your presence will add to its luster, Countess."

With some difficulty, Maggie extricated her hand and she and Rafe departed. They chatted with several more guests so that they would not appear to have lost interest after talking to Varenne, but within half an hour they were on their way back to the Boulevard des Capucines.

As soon as they were alone, Rafe asked, "What is your judgment on the count?"

"I'm glad that the choice of targets rules him out as our conspirator, because he seemed utterly ruthless, as dangerous as his reputation." Remembering that black gaze, she repressed a shiver. "Who will be at Orkov's ball?"

"General Roussaye, our Bonapartist suspect." Rafe gave her a lazy smile. "Wear that green gown unless it would ruin your reputation to be seen in it again too soon."

"I think my credit will stand it," she replied. "I am only a poor Magyar widow. People will make allowances."

Rafe accompanied her into her house, this time without dismissing his carriage. For a moment there was uncertainty in the air, as if he were considering a kiss.

Not daring to find out, Maggie hastily turned away and led him to the chessboard, where they continued the game in progress. She wondered if anyone in Paris would believe that she spent private moments with Rafe playing chess. She had trouble believing it herself.

The game devolved into long pauses and steely contemplation, and ended in stalemate. She thought the symbolism was appropriate, since it was the story of their relationship.

When the game was finished, Rafe got to his feet. "I'm off to the Palais Royal to see if I can find the mysterious conspirator. The conversation was heard at the Cafe Mazarin?"

Maggie nodded and followed him to the front door. Rafe towered over her, strong, confident, and utterly in control. He would undoubtedly feel insulted if she betrayed a lack of faith in his abilities. Nonetheless, she had the most absurd desire to tell him to be careful.

Uncannily, Rafe seemed to be aware of her thoughts. "Never fear, I shan't stir the hornets up." He lifted her right hand and kissed it, not with a light, formal brush of his mouth, but seriously, his lips warm and sensuous against her fingers.

Then he was gone. Maggie involuntarily curled her hand into a fist, as if to ward off the tingles of pleasure his kiss had sent up her arm. Just that light caress revived the desire that had almost overwhelmed her earlier in the carriage.

Acidly she reminded herself that he probably had to cut notches in his bedposts in order to keep track of the women he had bedded. By now the posts must be whittled away to nothing.

Face tight, she headed upstairs to her chamber.

Where Rafe was concerned, her sense of humor wasn't giving her any perspective or amusement at all.

The Palais Royal had a long and checkered past. Cardinal Richelieu had built part of it, and sundry royal relatives had lived there. Shortly before the Revolution, the Duc de Chartres had built a huge addition around the gardens, renting out the lower levels as shops and the upper as apartments.

These days, the Palais Royal was the very heart of French dissipation, with every manner of vice available to the hopeful bucks who swarmed there. Externally it was the only really well-lit place in Paris, and idlers of every nation could be seen drifting under the arcades and clustering by the columns.

The only females visible were of the more public sort, and one of those approached Rafe as he alighted from his carriage. He wondered with some interest what kept her low-cut gown from falling off. A fortunate thing that the evening was mild, or she would be courting pneumonia.

She had plied her trade long enough to size up a man's nationality and wealth quickly. "Is the English milord here for pleasure?" she asked in a husky voice with a provincial accent. Her heavy mask of makeup couldn't conceal the lines in her face.

None of Rafe's distaste showed in his face. She was a coarse, unattractive creature and any man sampling her charms risked the pox, but she was no better or worse than half a hundred other women wandering the arcades and gardens. For that matter, she was little different from many of the great ladies of society except for her price, which was lower and more honest. Courteously he said, "I feel in luck this evening. I understand the gaming is good at the Cafe Mazarin."

"The cafe is that way." Tossing her head coquettishly, the prostitute added, "Perhaps later you will wish a companion to celebrate or commiserate with?"

"Perhaps." Making his way through a crowd of Allied officers, Rafe soon found a sign for the Cafe Mazarin. On the ground floor was a jeweler's shop, still open at this late hour in the hope that a lucky gambler might wish to buy some bauble to bestow upon his lady.

Beside the shop a dim staircase led up to the cafe. A flamboyantly dressed woman presided over the counter, her dark eyes shrewdly assessing new customers. Liking what she saw of Rafe, she came around her counter to greet him in person. "Good evening, milord. Are you here for dining or gaming, or perhaps to go upstairs?"

Upstairs would mean ladies of a higher grade than the streetwalkers outside. With luck, they would be pox-free and not steal the customers' wallets. "I've been told that the play is good here, madame. Perhaps later I will dine as well."

The woman nodded and led him through the dining room to the gambling salon. It looked like any number of other gambling hells Rafe had been in. In one corner was a rouge-et-noir table, in another a roulette wheel. A scattering of tables contained card games such as faro and whist.

The patrons ran the full range from innocent young pigeons to the Captain Sharps who preyed on them, and the smoky atmosphere was dense with the desperate excitement of serious gamesters. The low murmur of voices was punctuated by the rattle of dice at the hazard table and the soft slap of cards on green baize. All in all, a typical den of iniquity, and not the sort of place that Rafe had ever found attractive.

Still, he was here for information, not pleasure, so he spent the next two hours playing at different tables. Whist was the only game he would have enjoyed, because it was more a test of skill than chance, so he avoided the whist table lest it prove too absorbing. Over dice, cards, and wheel, he exchanged casual comments with other gamesters, listening more than he spoke.

Not surprisingly, much of the conversation was political. However, he heard only the talk that could be heard anywhere in Paris. This particular establishment was patronized by a mixture of Frenchmen and foreigners, but if any were extremists, they kept their mouths discreetly shut.

An hour past midnight Rafe was preparing to call it an evening and find some fresh air when his attention was drawn by a thin, dark-haired man at the rouge-et-noir table. The man had been winning earlier, but luck had turned against him and the bank had taken all his money. A wide scar across his cheek shone livid in the candlelight as he reached into an inside pocket to draw out his final stake. Defiantly he slapped a pile of notes on the red diamond.

In the hush that sometimes falls on a crowded room, it seemed that everyone was watching. Rafe was too far away to see the cards dealt, but when the scar-faced man whooped a moment later, it was obvious that he had won.

It would have meant nothing, except that the Frenchman next to Rafe said, "It looks like Lemercier is in the money again. The man has the devil's own luck."

The name was familiar, and after a moment Rafe remembered why. There was a Lemercier on the list of secondary suspects that Maggie had given him, a Bonapartist officer if he recalled correctly. Rafe studied the scar-faced man as he rose from the rouge-et-noir table. The fellow had a military bearing; now to see if he was Captain Henri Lemercier.

As the man crossed the room, Rafe casually intercepted him. "May I buy you a drink to celebrate your beating the bank?"

His quarry smiled jovially. "You may. Lost a few to the bank yourself, eh?"

The hostess set them up with a bottle of bad port in the cafe section of the establishment. Rafe discovered that the man was indeed Captain Henri Lemercier, and the port was obviously not his first drink of the evening.

As the level of the bottle dropped, Rafe learned that the captain despised all Germans, Russians, and Englishmen, present company excepted, and that he was a devil of a fellow. Soon he was boasting of the numerous times that his iron nerve had caused him to win when lesser men would have withdrawn from the game.

It was not an enlightening conversation, though Rafe was interested to learn that Lemercier was a regular patron of the Cafe" Mazarin. ("At least the tables are usually honest, my English friend.")

Lemercier had the nervous gestures and darting eyes of a ferret. Rafe guessed that he was an addicted gambler, the kind of man who would do anything for money. If the captain had political convictions, they would easily be subordinated to personal gain. There was an excellent chance that he was the Frenchman Maggie's contact had overheard here the night before. If so, who was the foreigner the captain had spoken with?

After half an hour of listening to the man's ramblings, Rafe decided that he was unlikely to learn anything more. He took his leave with mutual assurances of esteem and hopes of meeting at the Cafe Mazarin in the future. If he did seek Lemercier out again, Rafe made a note to do so earlier in the evening, when the man was more likely to be sober. He was not an interesting drunk.

Rafe paid the bejeweled woman behind the counter for the port. Before going downstairs, he cast one last glance across the room. His eyes narrowed when he saw a blond man taking the empty chair opposite Lemercier. In spite of the dark smokiness of the room and the man's distinctly French way of dressing, Rafe had no trouble identifying the newcomer who was talking so earnestly to Lemercier.

It was Robert Anderson, the ubiquitous underling from the British delegation. Maggie's lover.

The Englishman was tense even though he had made this blindfolded journey once before. The summons from Le Serpent had been curt, with no explanation of why his presence was needed. Once again a hackney circled through Paris and the silent escort refused all conversational overtures. However, this time when he was brought into Le Serpent's presence, the sibilant voice instructed him to remove his blindfold.

The Englishman felt a stab of fear that the order meant he would not be leaving, but a hoarse chuckle allayed that. "Don't worry, mon Anglais, you will not recognize me. You will need your eyes for what you must tell me tonight."

Pulling off the blindfold, he found himself in a dark room lit by the feeble glow of a single candle and furnished only with a desk and two chairs. Le Serpent sat behind the desk, his face masked and a black cloak disguising his body so thoroughly that it was impossible to tell if he was tall or short, fat or thin.

Disdaining preliminaries, the dark figure said, "Draw me a detailed sketch of the British embassy stables. There have been changes since the Princess Borghese sold it to Wellington, and I need to know about them. I am particularly interested in where Castlereagh's horses are kept. I want you to describe his beasts exactly, in both looks and temper."

The Englishman's eyes widened. "You're plotting against Castlereagh? If anything happens to him, there will be hell to pay. Wellington is his best friend, and he would set the whole British Army to searching for assassins if necessary."

And a diligent investigation might uncover matters to the Englishman's detriment. Only a complete lack of suspicion had made it possible for him to pass so much information.

Reading his mind again, Le Serpent smiled nastily. "You needn't fear for your worthless neck. Whatever happens to Castlereagh will seem like an accident. Soon the illustrious duke himself will be in no position to investigate anything."

As the Englishman started sketching floorplans of the stable and its yard, his mind was racing. It sounded like his repellent host wished to eliminate both of the top British officials, a fact that had interesting ramifications. Clumsy attempts had been made on Wellington's life before, but there would be nothing clumsy about an attempt by Le Serpent. The question was, how could this information be turned to account?

Le Serpent asked a number of questions about the routine of the stables and the grooms, curtly demanding that his visitor find the answers to anything he couldn't answer immediately. After discussing the stables, he made exhaustive queries about the daily routines and habits of Castlereagh and Wellington.

Tiring under the interrogation, the Englishman said irritably, "Surely you know that the duke prefers low company-he doesn't even live at the embassy. How am I supposed to know about all his movements?"

"I am quite aware that Wellington lives at Ouvrard's Hotel," Le Serpent replied. "Nonetheless, he is often at the embassy, and if you have the brains of a rodent you should be able to learn what I require. I will expect a report with the answers you could not supply tonight within forty-eight hours."

"And if I decide I no longer wish to be in your employ?" It was an ill-chosen time for defiance, but the Englishman was too tired and irritated to be wise.

In a voice heavy with menace, Le Serpent hissed, "Then you are ruined, mon Anglais. I can have you assassinated, or I can let Castlereagh know of your duplicity and your own people will destroy you. Publicly, so that every one of your relatives and friends, if you have any, will know of your humiliation. Do not think you can buy your life by informing against me, because you know nothing."

He slapped his hand on the desk and pushed himself to his feet. "You live on my sufferance, you dunghill cock. I own you, and you are fortunate that I am a man of honor. If you serve me well you will prosper, unless you are caught through your own stupidity. If you try to betray me, you are a dead man. Those are the only choices you have."

The Englishman's eyes fell as he tried to hide his fear. That was what led to his stroke of luck; the hand his adversary had braced on the desk bore a heavy gold ring with a complicated crest on it. He knew better than to stare, but his quick glance showed that the central coat of arms was twined by a three-headed serpent.

It would take time to identify the owner, but at least the Englishman had a clue. Slumping in pretend defeat, he muttered, "I will serve you well."

Inside, his heart sang with inner exaltation. He'd find out who Le Serpent was, by God, and then the bastard would be sorry for his insults. If he played his cards right, he would be able to come out of this a hero-a rich hero.