15

Paris, France

La Train Bleu in Paris's Gare de Lyon was a gem of a restaurant. Welcoming train passengers since the 1900 Paris Exposition

with elegant fares, steaming coffee, and helpful waitstaff, it truly was a reprieve from the smoke and grit and bustle of

the teeming platforms.

Esme sat on one of the blue leather banquettes in the dining hall, the table in front of her draped in white linen with shining

plates of small sandwiches and macarons, and a divine tea with steam drifting from the pot's spout. Paintings from the world's

most famous Belle époque hung on the ornate gilt walls. Chandeliers dripped from the ceilings, catching light from the dozens

of arched windows lining the paneled walls. Everywhere touches of luxury were set to the soft tune of clinking crystalware.

She enjoyed none of it. She might as well have been nibbling on a stale digestive biscuit washed down by wartime beef tea while sitting in the theater alley between performances for all she noticed of her current surroundings. Yesterday afternoon she had left Jasper behind. After arriving in Paris early this morning, she had wandered around the train station, but three hours was too long to wander without purpose as she waited for her next train. She'd found herself in the restaurant hoping a spot to eat would right the gnawing inside her. It didn't.

She stirred her tea. She was doing the right thing. Forgetting about Jasper. Completing the job for the dowager. Not getting

bumped off by Pirazzo. She glanced down at her suitcase sitting on the bench next to her. Handing over the tiara and getting

paid was the right thing. Not morally perhaps, but then, she didn't have the luxury of choosing morals. Not when those upright

principles prevented her from being able to afford food or a roof over her head. Survival had its own code of ethics, and

she had become rather good at deciphering it to her advantage. The teaspoon slowed its listless circling in the porcelain

cup. Survival had offered her daring purpose. Only, it was starting to lose its zing.

"Buongiorno." A meaty man slid into the chair across the table from her. Pirazzo. Somehow oilier and uglier than when he'd tried to break

her over a rail at Neuschwanstein Castle.

Every nerve in Esme's body crackled with fear, but she quickly quieted them. It would not do to appear frightened. Men like

him fed on it.

"Following me again?"

With deliberate slowness he plucked the black leather gloves from his scarred paws and laid them on the table. A stark contrast

against the snowy tablecloth.

"The countess is anxious because of your delays."

"She should know that retrieving this item was not a smash-and-grab job. It required a delicacy of timing." She stirred a

teaspoon of sugar into her tea. His untimely appearance did not bode well. Her nerves jangled into high alert.

"She is not paying you for your time. She is paying you to complete the job."

"As she pays you to hound me, it seems." As she raised her teacup for a sip, images of the countess poisoning her unsuspecting

rivals flashed through her mind. The old woman was nowhere in sight, but it wasn't past her doing to have Pirazzo slip arsenic

into the brew. She set the cup on the saucer with a clink . "You left me a bit bruised upon our last meeting."

"It is nothing to what I will do if you do not have the tiara. Where is it?" His eyes were as dark and bottomless as pits.

Nothing escaped from them. Not sympathy, not patience, and certainly not mercy.

Esme swallowed the lump in her throat. "Safe."

"In your possession?"

She nodded, sliding her gaze to her suitcase then back to him. "If you haven't noticed, we're in a train station. I am on

my way to deliver it to her in Milan today."

"Lucky for you, you now have a bodyguard to escort you the rest of the way. To ensure you do not become lost. Or allow phantom

distractions."

Phantom. Jasper.

"Distraction?" She forced a laugh past the constricting muscles in her throat and crossed her legs. All easy appearances belying

the tremor racing through her. "More of a passing flirtation. One he could not keep up with, for here I sit with the tiara.

He's returning to wherever he came from to lick his wounds and hopefully find a woman more attuned to his slow pace."

Pirazzo was a dog set to do his mistress's bidding, but hopefully distracting him with the tiara would keep him from sniffing

after Jasper. It was the least she could do after leaving him.

"Women and your petty flirtations." Pirazzo snorted with derision. "You turned out to be smarter than the others at least."

"Others?" A tremor crept into her voice.

One blunt finger scratched at a pockmark of scars on his bullish neck. "I have worked for the countess for many years. I have

seen the younger and prettier ragazze come and go, flirting with the old woman's leading men and drawing them away from her. I have watched her eyes narrow with

jealousy and her heart turn rageful with losing her place in the spotlight. She blames them all for taking it from her, but

not you. You have been clever enough to offer a trinket of her famed youth. This tiara is her fountain of youth and with it

she will take the stage once more, claiming the applause she lives for."

A diva's need for the spotlight never failed as long as she had her vanity to stroke her on. Not that many audiences turned

up to watch an eighty-year-old sing sonnets from her youth. Supposedly eighty. Esme wouldn't be surprised if the old woman

had shaved off a decade or two for the sake of vanity. Not that the public would notice. They might accept her performance

invitation to drink her champagne and eat her canapes, but Esme seriously doubted that anyone would be enraptured by her aged

voice. It was more likely to be a spectacle, a sending-off of the old dame before they cut the spotlight from her for good.

Not that the countess would slink quietly offstage. She would screech her protest of being forgotten until her bones finally

gave up after carting her around for so long.

"How does the Valkyrie factor into this celebration?" Esme asked. "Please don't tell me she intends to recreate a vengeful

Viking solo to spite this former flame who left her and gave the tiara to his bride?"

"The countess does not let go of grudges easily, if at all. That is why she has me. To take care of the scornful lovers and

bella little divas who cross the stage and mock her. My favorite is when they are together." He jerked his head, motioning her to lean forward. She did so by a terrified fraction.

"The impresario for Don Giovani 's revival fifteen years ago was once her lover until his attention swayed to one of the chorus girls. I found them taking

a gondola along the Great Canal and made quick work of that affair."

The blood drained from Esme's face. On one of her first trips to Venice she'd heard rumors of a haunted gondola that had washed

up on the shore of one of the many nearby islands. Two lovers had been knifed to death and left for the fishes to feed upon.

Pirazzo's dark eyes glittered. He tugged his leather gloves back onto his solid hands. "I see you know of this. It is why

the countess hired me when she tired of using her own hands to poison lovers or drop weighted props onto her understudies.

Her ruthlessness is an inspiration."

"I shall leave the inspiration between the two of you. I'm merely hired to fetch the prizes." Gripping her handbag with whitened

fingers, she glanced behind him at the ornate clock on the wall. "My train arrives shortly, and I need to powder my nose.

Can't embark with a shine."

She rose, purse in one hand and suitcase in the other, and summoned a brilliant smile despite terror crawling through her

like ants. "It was good of you to see me off, but I can make the trip without fuss. I'm sure you have other more pressing

matters to attend."

"You are my only matter." Rising with her, he took her elbow and steered her out of the restaurant and down the sweeping double

staircase leading to the platform area.

Passengers carrying luggage and briefcases bustled by, eager to catch their trains before departure. Trolleys loaded with coffee and pastries were pushed among the crowd by enterprising bakers eager to sell their goods to hungry passengers. Uniformed gendarme patrolled the tracks with an eye out for trouble.

I've got trouble right here. If someone will just pay attention...

Pirazzo must have felt her tensing for action. His thick fingers dug into the tender flesh above her elbow. "Do not think

on this."

Esme moved her eyes all around in search of an exit. She lit on the nearest possibility, a door with ladies streaming in and

out of its perfumed sanctum.

"I am only thinking on how much you are wrinkling my sleeve. The ladies lounge will have an attendant to help smooth it. I'll

pop in and—"

He jerked her away from the lounge and into one of the several small rooms that were popular in generations before where women

waited to keep the soot and smoke from spoiling their fancy frocks and frothy chapeaus. A bench ran along one wall while a

lightbulb fizzed overhead. The space smelled of cigarettes and peanut shells.

"Whatever needs smoothing or powdering, you can do it in here," he said, releasing her arm.

"Sir, really." She resisted the urge to rub away the burning pain from where he'd gripped her arm and instead rolled her fear

into indignation. "This waiting room is hardly appropriate for a lady to prepare herself for the journey."

He reached a hand in his pocket. "Only one journey you need concern yourself about now. The final one." He yanked out a thin

cord and lashed it around her neck, then pulled the ends tight.

"The countess doesn't want loose ends like you. It's my job to tie you up, and then I'll be taking the tiara to her." Esme bucked and scratched at the cord cutting off her air, but Pirazzo merely pulled tighter. "She told me to tell you grazie ."

The cord cut into her neck. Black crowded her vision as her lungs screamed. With one last burst of effort, she swung her suitcase

up and back. It cracked against her assailant's head. The lock split. Clothes tumbled out all around them. Pirazzo fell to

the floor, a large gash bleeding from his head and splattering red droplets on her satin knickers.

Esme clawed the cord from her neck and heaved in great gulps of air, hissing out unladylike names to the prostrate bull at

her feet. He wouldn't stay down for long. Grabbing a pink-and-yellow silk scarf that clashed horribly with her navy travel

suit but had managed to escape blood splatters, she wound it loosely around her neck to cover the red line burning against

her throat and slipped out of the waiting room, closing the door firmly behind her. She cradled her handbag to her chest and

made her way through the crowd, blending in as another hurried passenger on their way to and fro. Exiting the station's front

doors, she hailed a taxi.

"Gare du Nord," she told the driver without thinking.

The auto rumbled into the traffic heading to the 10th Arrondissement, but Esme's legs didn't stop shaking until several streets

later. She relaxed against the leather back seat. She had to leave Paris immediately. All the trains from Gare du Nord went

north. Belgium, the Netherlands, Lille. Lille wasn't far from Calais. And Calais wasn't far from the shore of England. A short

boat ride across the Channel and she could arrive in London in a matter of days.

There was no better place to lay low or get lost in than the East End.

A tremulous smile fluttered across her lips as she eased the scarf from her tender neck. Home. She would go home. To most

people the thought of home would conjure images of lace curtains, a warm oven, a familiar creaking door, but to her it was

the smell of grease paint, warped stage boards, and zozzled gaffers cursing up a blue streak because the curtain was stuck

again. Wouldn't Mimsy be surprised? Her stomach soured. Best not to think about Mimsy until it was absolutely necessary.

The site of the former Bastille and the Crowne Plaza Republique flashed by her window. She took a shuddering breath to calm

her ricocheting nerves and unclenched her purse from her chest. The silver beading caught the weakened rays of sunlight and

bounced them off the taxi ceiling.

She fingered a loose thread near the bottom seam.

"Drat." Several beads had been ripped off in her struggle with Pirazzo. Squashing another unladylike word, she unclipped the

purse's clasp and peered into the satin-lined interior.

"You're proving to be a handful." The Valkyrie's diamonds winked up at her in shared conspiracy. Before Jasper had awoken

the previous day, she'd taken the precaution of dismantling the wings from the head circlet as the tiara was less conspicuous

to pack that way.

A smile, a real one, tugged at the corners of her mouth. "How do you fancy a trip to jolly old England?"