Chapter Twelve

M aking loving with Tate Cantrell left her in awe and yearning for more of him. After her first climax, she could not part with Tate and clung to him, astonished at the act and that she had finally had him as a woman takes a man she adores.

He made to move, and she complained. “I hate to let you go.”

He rolled her to her back and took her mouth in a demanding kiss. “I never go far from you. I aways return.”

With another kiss filled with yearning and acceptance, she did let him go. But he returned scant minutes later with warmer blankets that he curled around her shoulders. She watched him, still struck that he loved her, he was here, and they were one.

“You are a treasure.” He caressed her cheek. “I can scarcely believe you’re mine. But you are.”

She luxuriated in the bedding like an animal nesting. “We will do that again?”

“Oh, yes. And soon.”

She relaxed. “Not just once a day.”

“No.” He twirled a curl near her cheek. “Once an hour for many years.”

She guffawed. “You will never work again.”

He rolled over her, propped on his elbows, his enthusiastic body rising to declare his interest. “I’ve worked for years for others. Now I’d say it’s time I devote myself to my wife.”

Her heart danced. “You’ll marry me?”

“My fondest wish.”

“Soon? Not here,” she said, and pushed away thoughts of the necessary task before her. She could not marry him and begin a new life before besting all the devils of her former one.

“I think that would be difficult now. We could do it only if the ambassador married us, and he, I do believe, leaves Paris today.”

“But I am not English. Catholic, too. That’s a problem in the Anglican church.”

“Never worry.” He traced her lips and kissed her a thousand times. “We’ll get a dispensation. You will be mine. And I yours. Never to part.”

He made love to his fiancée then, with reverence because it was for only the second time in her life.

*

It was late afternoon when Viv roused from their bed and sat up. The sheets fell from her bare breasts, and the bass voice of approval from across the room drew her gaze.

Tate, naked as God had made him, sat opposite her in a large upholstered chair. One leg crossed at the ankle of the other, he crooked his fingers and bade her come.

“You were watching me sleep,” she managed in a sleepy voice as she curled herself onto his lap, naked, and seeking only his warmth and his passion.

“I was. A learning experience.”

“Oh?” She nipped his earlobe, inhaling his musk. “What did you learn?”

“You take up all the bed.”

She shot back, pretending to be horrified. “I do not!”

He touched her nose. “You also snore.”

“What?”

He demonstrated.

She pushed up, appalled. “I do not.”

“I’m afraid you do, my love.” He shook his head, severe and somber. “I simply cannot sleep with you.”

She tried to leave.

He chuckled and hauled her back to straddle him. “I doubt I will ever be able to sleep with you, sweet Vivienne.”

“You’re making that up.”

He filled his hands with both her breasts and swirled his thumbs on her nipples. He laved one and sucked the other.

She had her head thrown back, living for the feel of his tongue on her skin. “You have got to be wrong.”

He scooted her hips up his thighs and probed her open folds. “I will never sleep again, my dear. It’s this I’ll be doing with you till the end of time.”

She sank over him and gasped as he filled her completely. “Sleep is so unnecessary.”

*

“Come have luncheon,” Tate whispered in her ear minutes later.

Viv put her fingertips to his lips and caught his searing gaze. He loved her. His declaration was the very one she had wanted all her life and never hoped to gain. He had bared his soul to her. She owed him the same. She would tell him, tell him all she could. Save that one part that eludes me.

A shared union—and shared life—meant she should not keep any secrets from him.

She sat up and took from his hand the red silk banyan he offered. She followed him into his sitting room and went to the credenza, where his servants had laid out a display of sliced beef, a cool cucumber salad, and sautéed asparagus and squash. She took a small plate and filled it, then went to sit beside him on the settee. Finishing quickly, she set her empty plate aside.

“I wish to tell you about my reason to come here to Paris.”

His gaze consoled her. “Tell me quickly and we will be done with it.”

Would that were so… “And afterward you will decide if you still wish to marry me.” If you still love me.

“Nothing changes that, Viv. Nothing.”

She dropped his hands and wandered about his sitting room, finding the right place to begin. Crossing her arms, she considered the tapestry upon the wall before her. Whoever built this mansion had had this fabric woven to portray the master of the house atop his white charger, his sons or retainers behind him in phalanx. All of them smiled. But they gazed at the carcass of a buck, strung upside down from a huge tree branch, gutted and bleeding to the forest floor. The deer was a sacrifice to this seigneur ’s pleasure of the hunt—or his family’s need for venison. Sport or survival.

She slowly faced Tate and smiled at him with all the yearning she had felt since she was a girl—and began her sordid tale. “Charmaine is very ill. Never to recover. She has been sick for years. A disease she acquired from her activities with those men she favored. She has been pregnant twice, perhaps more. I did not know then; I do not ask now. The babies did not live but for hours. They too carried this disease.”

She ran a hand over her brow. Blind to the brilliant colors of the room, she saw her sister as she had the last time she visited. Charmaine, who once resembled Viv, now looked like a scarecrow from the fields. Her luxurious white-blonde hair was almost gone. A few tufts stuck out from her bald head. Her sapphire eyes—once large, brilliant, and bold—were hooded, red rimmed, and dim. She had her voice, that dark contralto that ordered everyone about. If it was a few tones lighter and held a rasp, Charmaine did not comment on it. That had been days before Viv had left for Paris.

“She asked me to come tend her last spring. That is why you could not find me. I had left Norfolk, and she told me to leave no word lest others find where I had gone and trace her. She wanted no one to know where she was or why she secluded herself.

“I arrived in a new house she had rented on the edge of Richmond. I nursed her, paid her bills. Finally, to earn her wages to support us both, I agreed to impersonate her last winter. By then, she was so ill she could not work. She lured me, saying she needed the wages. About two years ago, she had begun to give me money, not that I needed it. But she had to give it to me. She had debts, you see, even then, and I was to pay them as I could. Then at Christmas, I agreed to be her double.

“I could do it. I was capable. After all, I was the one who used to make up the plays and demand that she and Mama and a few of your tenants do the parts. I could be Juliet or Desdemona. Odd, you know, last winter she was to star in Macbeth , and oh, did I love portraying that tragic lady.” Viv fisted one hand. “Charmaine got what she wanted.”

“None of it good,” he said with bitterness.

She nodded. “So you realize that, like her and those fellows there, I can have a taste for blood.” She tipped her head over her shoulder at the tapestry.

Tate shook his head, adamant. “Lady MacBeth also went mad. It was not her nature to kill. Nor is it yours.”

“Perhaps not. But there are times when I can taste victory like that…” Viv whirled on him. “Can you imagine what it was like to live with the question of what happened to Diane? To wonder if the maid told the police that we were going to leave that night? To ask yourself what you could have done to prevent her from being taken from you?”

His eyes went dead. “I do know that well.”

The force of his words hit her like a wall of stone. Her reminiscence had not been meant to make him regret the past.

Yet he still did mourn. “I have spent my life castigating myself for the failure to capture her. I ran from the carriage that night. I ran like a fiend. She was just before me, hurried along by two men. Were they police? Or soldiers? I did not see their clothes. In the melee, I could not tell who they were, what they were. I knew only that they rushed her through the throng. That others parted for them. That I was left scrambling to catch up—and I never could. Finally, near a high wall—a convent? A church? A government office? I cannot remember where it was, what it was, but the two men rushed her inside a door. Massive, it was. It was not wood but iron, and it clanged shut. In a moment, Diane was gone…and I could do nothing. Nothing.”

Viv went to him, her arms around his sagging shoulders. “I am no assassin. You are right. I have not the will. And you?” She ran her fingers through the thick satin of his hair. “You, my darling, are no failure. You tried to save her. You tried . The odds were against you. We cannot blame ourselves for those things we tried to do. It is important to mark that we tried. It is vital we praise ourselves for attempting to change our lives. Most often, I venture, we can.”

“So then you agreed to impersonate Charmaine and come here in her place. But you told yourself you would learn what you could about that night.”

She hated to tell him the rest. But she must. “I was so…angry at Diane’s loss! In and of myself, I was aggrieved. And yes, living with Charmaine did that to me. Listening to her rant and rave. I became more spiteful and vindictive. I was rabid to take her place and hurt anyone who had hurt Diane. Who had hurt us. My entire family was gone, and soon I would lose Charmaine as well.”

She inhaled and cleared her mind. “Then suddenly you were here, before me, questioning me, warning me, helping me see that…see that I am not one who can exact retribution without conscience. I am not that strong.”

“No,” he said, “you are not that perverse.”

“When I go home and tell her what I’ve learned, she will accuse me of believing others’ lies. She will deny it all. Then she will accuse me of being weak.”

“She should declare you brave, braver than she. But then, she serves only herself, Viv, and never sees what she truly is.”

She nodded. “You are right. Of course.”

“Now there are a few facts more you can discover about what happened to Diane.”

She let her head fall back and stared at the frescoed ceiling. Above them, cherubs cavorted around a carousel. Oh, to be so carefree and laugh like that. “Yes. With what the maid has revealed, now I can go to Vaillancourt and ask what he did for Charmaine and the maid.” She scoffed. “Do I have the courage? No, no. But I have the curiosity. That , I have in abundance. And I have the need to know. To confront Charmaine. But then, it is a risk, eh? Will he even let me in to see him or answer my questions? Will he answer? Ha. He has no reason to. He could deny it all and show me the door.”

“But if you went with more proof of what he did, he might not be able to deny you the truth.”

“I have no idea where to get that.”

“I do.”

She rounded on Tate with wide eyes. She could not imagine how he’d know. “Tell me.”

“A friend of mine is acquainted with a lady who was in Carmes.”

“The prison?” she whispered in awe.

“Yes.”

Viv blinked. A memory crossed her mind, and so did anger—and she quickly defined why she was agitated. “Charmaine had once talked about a Paris prison near Saint Germain where she thought Diane might have been sent. I always wondered why she would think that.”

“Perhaps she had heard much about the place,” Tate offered.

A hand to her mouth, Viv made an ugly sound. “Or she knew Diane had gone there.”

Tate could only stare back at her, sorrow in his gaze.

“And this lady who was in Carmes? Who is she? Can we speak to her?”

“The English Countess Nugent, Cecily Struthers-Sumner. Well known to Society.”

“The woman who was mistress to the old Duc d’Orleans, the liberal Bourbon prince who was guillotined?” Viv asked.

“You have heard of her, then?”

“Who has not? The duke was one my father knew and worked with. I had no idea the countess still lived in Paris.”

“She does. A close friend now of Josephine Bonaparte. Both of them survived a sentence in Carmes.”

Viv could not catch her breath. “I must call on her.”

Tate stood and took two strides to take her in his arms. “I will go with you.”

*

Late that afternoon, Tate saw Viv to her home in the same unmarked old carriage they had used to go to Passy. They had agreed on a few things. First, he would talk with his friend Ramsey and ask for an introduction to the infamous Countess Nugent, then write to ask for an audience with her.

While they waited for the woman’s response, Viv agreed to prepare to leave Paris. She would order her household staff to begin to close the house. She would also order Alice to return home tomorrow, and take little Louis with her. Viv told the maid she must not go to visit Charmaine, but take rooms in London to await her mistress’s return. She gave her an address of a small hotel near the city, respectable and quiet. Alice would want to wait for Viv to travel with her, but Viv had no idea when or if she could meet with Countess Nugent. The maid and Louis were to go. Tonight, however, Alice and another upstairs maid would pack Viv’s trunks and the majordom would make arrangements to send them via barge toward London. The address they were to be sent to was Tate’s house in Berkeley Square.

“I will perform tonight,” she told him as the carriage stopped behind her house. “This is too late to cancel. After this performance, I give my notice. Come here when you know more about when we might meet with the countess.”

He kissed her to seal their agreement. “Have a valise ready and sew your passport into your clothes.”

“Into the hem of my shift.” Like I did more than a decade ago. “I will.”

“I will call for you tonight at the close of the play.”

She beamed at him, the novel security of being with him enveloping her. “Thank you. You will stay the night with me, I hope. I do not wish to lose you now that we have found each other again.”

“Never worry,” he whispered. “We are one; the world is right. That will not change.”