"Why are you here, Michelle?" Malbourne asked, displeasure oozing from his voice as he entered his study. He had travelled from London for his brief monthly sojourn in the country, expecting no distraction from his estate business, since he had sent his needy mistress back to France the third time she mentioned marriage. Aside from meeting with his steward to collect the quarterly rents, he wanted only to blow off the stink of bowing and scraping to people less noble than he, not to entertain uninvited, unwanted guests waiting at his gate. He would have to leave on the morrow to return to the rank, dirty city, and he wanted nothing but quiet and the view of France from his cliffs between now and then.
Instead, he was forced to attend to this unwelcome female.
Having been ushered into his study and made to wait two hours without refreshment, the obsequious woman rose from the Bergère chair upon his entry into the room, curtseying deeply. Taking a seat at the gilded Riesener desk, he ran his eyes up and down his visitor, but did not invite her to sit. Her cheap, grimy, green cotton dress had no place in this elegant room, nor did the smell of weeks traveling by public coach and steerage. The aroma nearly made his eyes water, but he would never rise to open another window. It would only serve to emphasize how few servants he could now afford.
The sound of the waves crashing against his Dover cliffs flowed in through the open casement, not quite obscuring his profound irritation.
"It has been more than thirty years. I had hoped never to see you again."
"And still you look as handsome as I remember."
"Spare me the toadying. State your business."
The woman bowed her head, staring at the wall to her left. Her thinning red hair was matted and disheveled, falling from pins where it wasn't sticking out in tufts, above a sharp face set with deep lines, dark eyes flashing with fear—and something else familiar he was loath to define.
"Forgive me, Monsieur le Duc. I do not mean to disturb."
She nearly whispered, twisting her dress in her hands, as though she would wring out the filth onto his carpet. Finding himself disgusted by her state of disrepair, he turned toward the roughened, dented, patched suit of armor in the corner, worn by the first Duc de Malbourne in the seventeenth-century. The plated iron was one of the few items of family significance his retainer had found after the peasants overran the property. Like the stone walls, it had been impervious to fire and too unwieldy to carry off.
Preoccupied by the weight of his own history, he managed to sit comfortably in the fauteuil chair behind the desk, one ankle crossed over his knee. His riding attire was immaculate, not a stitch out of place, from the Trone d'Amour knot in his black silk cravat to the shine on his Hoby boots.
Were this unpleasant business complete, he could take one of his two remaining riding horses to the hidden cave in the cliffs at the back of his lifeless formal garden, the spot with the best view of Calais. He had sat there so many times that he could see and hear the docks in his mind, even if the city were obscured by fog, as it would be today.
He tapped his riding crop on the heel of his boot as he observed, "You look shabby, Michelle. Did you leave your bourgeois husband and the money he stole by guillotine?"
She flinched as if slapped. "Non, Monseigneur, he died many years ago and his money with him. I am untidy because it has been a long journey, and I came directly from the harbor." She glanced at the bag just inside the door. "I did not even stop to arrange lodging, for I knew you would want to hear my news without delay."
"You look like you serviced a boat filled with sailors to pay for the crossing," he sneered. "Did you plan to service me to secure your bed for the night?" When her head ducked away from his vicious tone, he added, "Perhaps if you go down on your knees for my stableboy, he will share his haystack."
Her face flushed, but she only said, "I have important information, Monseigneur."
"It must be vital," he said with a mordant jeer, "to bring you all the way from Épinal. What will your information cost me this time? I have no more family for your fiancé to ransom."
"Monseigneur, as always, I wish only to serve your interests." She failed to keep the reproof from her tone when she said, "You recall it was I who told you of the duchess's betrayal, and I who aided in your escape, at great danger to myself. I have been loyal to you since we were children, Monseigneur, and always a friend to your sisters before the—" Her voice broke. "I had hoped my long devotion to la famille Fouret would serve to assure you of my intent."
His face and voice remained cold, but he asked, for the first time without derision, "What has brought you so far from home?"
"It is about the duchesse, Monseigneur."
He sat up swiftly, his knuckles white on the edge of his desk. "Amelia?" His lips were drawn in a thin line, eyebrows a dark slash in a face suddenly drained of color. "What information can there be about her?"
"There was a man asking questions, seeking out servants from the château. Of course, very few remain in Épinal, but he was quite determined to discover the circumstances of her death."
"La maréchaussée?"
"Non, Monseigneur, not the constabulary, nor the king's men. Un Anglais. He said he knew her as a child."
He sat back to consider what Englishman might be asking questions after thirty years. Amelia's family was long dead, and once he had disposed of the peasant with whom, according to Michelle, his wife had betrayed him, she'd had no friends to make inquiries. He had never taken her to Court, nor made his marriage known there, and she had never been allowed the freedom to become known in Épinal. Aside from the few servants who had attended her at the château, most also now dead, he couldn't think of one person in England or France who would even remember his wife's name.
"Who is he?"
"I do not know, Monseigneur," she winced, turning her face away as though expecting a blow. "He paid well to ensure no one spoke his name, and did not find me before he returned to Paris." Implied in her tone: of all his servants, she was the only one who had kept her silence about him, though he knew that was probably why no one gave her the man's name.
"From what I have been able to learn, he left only with suspicions. You recall, I am sure, not so many of us know the whole truth."
His nostrils flared, "Do you mean to threaten me, Michelle?"
"Non, Monseigneur, non," she pleaded. "Of course not, my lord. Only to say I do not know what the man might have heard elsewhere. No one knows Pierre Bouchard's direction, and he is the only other who—" His sharp look nearly stopped her breath. "It is said he worked as a spy for the usurper, but no one in the Vosges has seen him since the Revolution. He might be anywhere; he was only ever a legionnaire."
Malbourne slammed his fist down. "Merde!" She jumped when his hand hit the desk. "After all this time! That stupid, lying slut is still a stone under my heel after all this time."
As he yelled, her breathing quickened, and she shuffled back and forth on the balls of her feet, stepping closer as if drawn by a cord. He reined in his temper with the discipline of a lifelong equestrian, although his breathing remained fast and shallow. Standing, walking around the desk, he placed himself directly in front of her, tipping her chin up with his riding crop, turning her face right and left to take in the ravages of time and circumstance, watching her eyes avoid him as he slowed his pulse.
"It does not escape me you have come a very long way to inform me of this, Michelle, when there are many other ways you might have sent word. Perhaps you have another reason for your voyage?" She swallowed hard, but didn't answer.
His expression remained cold and inflexible but he allowed the slightest bit of warmth to enter his voice as he asked, "Have you troubles to flee in Épinal, ma chère? Do you seek my protection from some danger?"
Her chin evaded him. She dropped her gaze to his chest until he crossed his arms and sat back onto the surface of the desk, deceptively calm. The hint of tenderness was lost as he used his voice like a lash. "Answer me, girl! Now. Or get out." He ground his teeth waiting for her response.
Her fingertip touched a button on his waistcoat before she pulled her hand away, as from a glowing ember. Her voice lost forty years in the space of one breath, suddenly reminding him of his first fumbling sexual encounters with her in the servants' hallways of the château.
"It has been a very long time, Dofi." He sucked in a breath at the diminutive he hadn't heard in decades. "I only thought we might... renew our friendship."
He drew away sharply and slapped her face with the back of his hand, using all of his considerable strength. "Putain! You forget your place!" She was left reeling, thrown to the floor.
The fear in her eyes turned to anticipation as she regained her balance and touched the rising welt, finally looking him directly in the eye. She crawled on her hands and knees to his feet, still holding his gaze, hand moving with confidence to the fall of his trousers as he reached to tangle his fingers in her tousled red hair.
"Non, Monseigneur," she said as she opened his buttons, "I have not forgotten. You will find I remember my place very well."