Sherri Cobb South by French Leave Page B

Park Lane, a short distance away in a hired lodging in Clarges Street, a very different pair sipped their after-dinner port. Upon emptying his glass, one of these, a personable if somewhat foppish young man, reached into his pocket for his snuffbox and addressed his companion in French.
    “Tell me, Raoul, what think you of this blend? I bought it today at a little shop in the Burlington Arcade.”
    Raoul pushed the enameled box away petulantly and responded in the same tongue. “I am pleased to know you are amusing yourself so well, prowling about the local shops. Me, I have business to attend to.”
    “Perhaps you work too hard, mon ami. You should take time for the small pleasures.”
    Raoul’s only reply was a snort of derision.
    “And the great joy of these pleasures,” continued his companion, unfazed, “comes of their being so many times unexpected. What do the English call it? Serendipity! Yes, that is it. Why, only today I met a young lady—”
    “And you call this unexpected? I would be more surprised, Étienne, if you had not met a young lady.”
    “Ah, but this lady, she was French. And so young! Her hair, it was dark, and her eyes—”
    Raoul seized him by the sleeve. “You have found my cousin Lisette!”
    “Alas, she did not give her name,” Étienne admitted mournfully.
    “But you know it was she!”
    “If the lad we saw in Amiens was indeed your cousin, then it was very probably she.”
    “Did you follow her?” Raoul asked urgently. “Where did she go? What was she doing?”
    “Why, shopping, of course. That is what one does at the Burlington Arcade.”
    “Squandering her inheritance, no doubt,” Raoul said bitterly.
    “Mais non! Only purchasing le maquillage for her toilette. After a slight pause for dramatic effect, he added, “And this she did not pay for herself, but told the shopkeeper to send the bill to Lord Waverly.”
    “Waverly? The English aristo in Amiens?”
    Étienne nodded. “It would seem likely.”
    “What did she do next?”
    “She would have left, but I detained her. She would not accept my escort, but did allow me the honor of summoning for her a hackney. She instructed the driver to take her to Park Lane. To my infinite regret, I did not catch the number.”
    “It is not important, at least not yet. It is too fine a neighborhood for a young French girl in a strange city, n’est-ce pas? Depend upon it, the aristo has set her up as his fille de joie.”
    “I feared as much,” Étienne said with a heavy sigh. “And so all your plans come to naught.”
    “Mais non.” Raoul, forgetting he had no patience with such mundane matters, reached for his companion’s snuffbox and helped himself to a pinch. “I do not begrudge her, mon ami. The Englishman will tire of her soon enough, and then she will beg me to make an honest woman of her.”
    “You would wed a woman who has lost her virtue?”
    “Naturellement. After all, it is her forty thousand English pounds I wish to marry. As for the rest, it matters not.” He picked up the half-empty bottle and refilled the glasses. “Come now, let us drink a toast to my success, and on my wedding day you shall have five thousand English pounds for your able assistance.”
    Étienne needed no urging. The two men lifted their glasses and drank deeply.
     

Chapter 7
     
    So court a mistress, she denies you;
    Let her alone, she will court you.
    BEN JONSON, The Forest
     
    Lady Helen, along with her two closest friends, sat on a bench in Hyde Park, making small talk and watching from a distance as her children cavorted under their nurse’s watchful eye. Little Charles clapped his hands in delight as ten-year-old Lord Randall, the son of Lady David Markham by her first husband, sailed a toy boat in the Serpentine. Charles’s brother William, not content with such passive amusement, did his utmost to tumble headfirst into the water, and was thwarted in this ambition only through the frequent intervention of his long-suffering