Forgive her husband? Barbary thought not. It was his offhand, unheeding conduct that had driven her into Lord Grafton’s arms, and look how that had turned out. Doubly cruel now to realize that Grafton had been much the lesser man.
Yes, and where was Conor’s opera dancer? Barbary looked around the room. “Are you alone, m’sieur?”
“Quite alone.” Conor quirked a brow. “Do you expect all Englishmen to travel with an entourage? I am a mere subject, not a diplomat or a general or a head of state.”
Conor Dennison had never been a mere anything in all his life. “I thought perhaps my cousin might be with you,” Barbary said wickedly. “Your wife.”
Conor looked profoundly disinterested. “I’ve no notion where my wife may be. Apparently you are unaware that we live apart.”
He truly didn’t care. Barbary found it very difficult to accept this facer with good grace.
She decided to award Conor with a dose of his own medicine. “I will confess I heard something of the sort. Barbary threw her hat over the windmill and ran off with a duke?”
Conor gave no indication that his own lack of title bothered him one whit. “It was something of the sort.”
It was nothing of the sort; Conor had run off with his opera dancer first. “I also heard that she was very happy,” Barbary said spitefully. “What woman wouldn’t be, riding off into the sunset with her own true love?”
“Is that what she did?” Conor crossed his elegantly trousered legs at the knee. “I was under the impression that she’d run off from her creditors, since a great number of tradesmen seem eager to get in touch with me. Now you tell me she eloped. One wonders with whom, since her inamorato has just betrothed himself to some whey-faced chit.”
So Grafton’s heiress was an antidote. And Barbary’s creditors irate. Conor was certainly well informed of the latest news from England. Barbary suffered a sharp pang of homesickness.
Conor must not be allowed to think her an object of his pity. “That is not the story that I heard. Barbary eloped with a handsome, wealthy gentleman of fashion. Even now he is probably strewing rose petals in her path. I believe he was a foreigner. Perhaps that’s why you didn’t know.”
Conor looked amused. “You sound envious.”
“Of course I am envious. What woman wouldn’t be envious of such a fate?” Barbary remembered, then, who she had claimed to be. Best to try for realism, in case Conor made inquiries about Mab. “Not that I would wish such a thing for myself, you understand. Me, I am an artist’s model. I wish only—” What
did
Mab wish? Barbary hadn’t the slightest clue. She thought of the cluttered studio. “Er, to carry on my papa’s work!”
“An admirable ambition,” Conor said gravely. “I applaud your dedication. Since we can hardly consider ourselves strangers, do you think I might know your name?”
Conor was showing a marked interest in his wife’s own cousin. Was no woman safe from the profligate? “Amabel Foliot. What brings you to Paris, m’sieur? Perhaps you are in search of your wife?”
“My wife, here?” Conor looked curious. “Why should you think that?”
Barbary was not so easily tripped up. “You said she had fled from her creditors.”
“Ah.” Conor smiled. “But you said she had not.”
“Yes, but you
thought
she had.” Barbary had forgotten how much she enjoyed sparring with her spouse. “And therefore might have been sufficiently concerned—”
“You misunderstand, Miss Foliot—it is miss?” Conor was not amused now, but very cool. “I have no concern for my wife.”
“Ah.” Of course the brute did not, or his wife would hardly have been in the pickle that she was. “It was a
mésalliance.
I see.”
“Do you?” Conor looked her over, head to toe. “You are a very unusual woman, Miss Foliot. Now that I speak with you, I realize that you are not at all like my wife, despite the superficial likeness. For one thing, you are older, I believe.”
Certainly Mab was older, by five years. Barbary was aghast to learn that her troubles had caused her to age so drastically. How like Conor to notice. She said, a trifle crisply, “What difference does it make?”
“No difference,” said Conor. “And perhaps all the difference in the world. It is a foolish man who marries a chit right out of the schoolroom, especially when she is very beautiful and also very spoiled. Your cousin was like a weathercock. She went one way, and then the other, and couldn’t make up her mind.” Suddenly he smiled. “But that is ancient history. You asked what had brought me to Paris. Mere curiosity, I confess. I wished to see the Corsican’s city.” He went on to mention various architectural marvels, including the Carrousel at the Louvre, atop it four bronze horses appropriated from St. Mark’s in Venice.
Barbary had scant interest in such conversation. She could not bear to speak like this with Conor, and she also could not bear for him to disappear. “Where are you staying in Paris?” she interrupted. “Will you be here long? In case you should be right and I wrong—not that I expect it!—and I hear further news about my cousin.”
“How long? Who knows?” Conor executed a very Gallic shrug. “I have no desire to see Barbary, but I will be happy to give you my address. We are family of a manner, are we not?”
Conor had no notion of what manner of family they were, Barbary thought ruefully. “So it would seem, m’sieur.”
Conor stood up and held out his hand. “Then, my newfound relative, since the hour is growing advanced and I must leave, perhaps you will allow me to see you home.”
Barbary almost refused. The strain of speaking with Conor had further exacerbated her nerves. Fortunately, she recalled in time that she didn’t know the streets of Paris and hadn’t the slightest notion of how to find her way home. “M’sieur, I should be pleased,” she said, and allowed him to help her to her feet.
Chapter Eight
Tibble looked around the studio. He had performed many unusual services in the years of his employment, but this was the first time he had been called upon to clean house. He fancied he’d done a good job of it, moreover, despite the appalling lack of such necessities as beeswax and white sand. He had swept and dusted and tidied up the meager furniture; had attempted to impose some order upon the various items that cluttered the large room. Easels and plaster casts were the least of the miscellany. Among the props used by Mab’s papa Tibble had discovered costumes and armor; Oriental vases and feather headdresses; twenty-five different kinds of rifles and carbines and pistols; and an Eskimo kayak. The tattered drapery in one corner of the room had turned out to be a divan beneath a royal canopy. Tibble had immediately transferred the Duc to the divan and dragged the camp bed into the closet for himself. All in all, he’d done a good afternoon’s work. The studio looked immensely improved, as did his patient.
The front door opened. Mab walked into the room. She stopped, looking startled at the transformation that had been wrought during her absence. Tibble waited for her praise.
It was not forthcoming. “What have you done?” cried Mab. “Don’t you know that dust is bad for paintings? Whoever asked you to sweep the floor? And look at this table!” She pointed an indignant finger at the table where oil and paraffin, varnish and siccative, a piece of mirror and brushes and a cluster of plaster grapes marched in a neat row. “I shall never find anything!” Among the things Mab could not find was the camp bed. “
Merde!
What has my cousin done with the Duc?”
Tibble didn’t appreciate being scolded after his hard work. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Perhaps he did not. Or perhaps he was defending Barbary. Mab envisioned another scene, in which the Duc regained consciousness, found Barbary bent over him, and tried to kiss her. And then what? Mab recalled her cousin’s vow to have no more to do with the male sex. Had she reacted to the Duc’s advances with outrage, defended her honor in a manner that proved fatal to her suitor’s weakened state?
If so, where had she hid the body? They could not have gone far. Barbary could never manage to get the Duc down the stairs. Nor would she have left Tibble behind.
Mab could not imagine that Barbary had dragged the Duc into the closet. One alternative remained. Mab flung open the door of her bedroom.
The room was empty. Mab had expected to find Barbary
tête-à-tête
with a corpse, and now was even more dismayed to not find her at all. Mab made a thorough search, looking even under the bed. Wherever Barbary had gone, she hadn’t taken her portmanteau. Or, it seemed, any of her clothes.
Here was a mystery. Mab disliked mysteries. Without the slightest pang of conscience, she rummaged through Barbary’s portmanteau. There was little enough to interest her—but what was this? A packet of some sort. Love letters, Mab supposed. She had not the slightest interest in her cousin’s love letters, but opened the packet all the same. Perhaps its contents would give her some indication of what Barbary had done with the Duc.
The packet held not love letters, but documents that made Mab stare. Barbary in league with Jacobins? Impossible! What manner of conspirator would trust Barbary with papers such as these? Yet Mab could hardly ignore the evidence. Surely some error had been made?
She heard her cousin’s voice, then, in the studio. “Tibble,” said Barbary, “where is my vinaigrette? I meant only that you should use it, not keep it permanently. Oh! Such a day as I have had.” Quickly Mab thrust the packet into the bodice of her gown and shoved the portmanteau back under the bed.
Barbary stood near the stove, clutching her vinaigrette. Tibble was applying some salve to a nasty-looking scratch on her other hand. Mab concluded that Barbary had tried to pet the concierge’s cat.
First Mab had been worried; now she felt very cross. “Where “have you been?”
Barbary was not in the best of tempers herself. After a very trying encounter with her spouse, it seemed highly unfair that she should return home to find Mab in a miff. “I went to buy some sausage and cheese,” she said.
This blithe rejoinder caused Mab further annoyance. “Sausage and cheese? I recall distinctly that I said you should not go out. I took
you
in, did I not, when you had nowhere else to go? Is this how you show your gratitude? Moreover, I thought you said you had been robbed. So where did you get the money for your little shopping expedition? I suppose you stole it from me!”
Barbary wished, fervently, that she did have somewhere else to go. During the years of their separation, Mab had turned into a shrew. Or perhaps she had always been one, and Barbary hadn’t realized. She supposed she should try to coax her cousin out of the sullens. “As if I would steal from you! I merely borrowed some money from the Duc. What maggot have you taken into your head?”
Now Mab had maggots in her head? This was the outside of enough. “Well! If that is
all you can say to me—” But she could hardly evict Barbary from the premises until she discovered what had become of the Duc. “What have you done with him? Where is he?”
How had Mab known about her meeting? Barbary sank into the battered armchair. “I don’t know where he is, probably on his way back to his hôtel. As to what I did with him, I did absolutely nothing, which I think shows great forbearance on my part.”
Forbearance? Barbary spoke of forbearance? Mab was oddly relieved to discover that the Duc was not dead. “He seems to have recovered very quickly,” she said.
“Recovered?” Barbary looked startled. “I suppose you could say that. But he is hardly one to suffer long from Cupid’s dart.”
Barbary blatantly announced her intentions to usurp the affections of the Duc. She had changed, and not for the better. “You admit it, then?”
“Admit what?” Barbary inquired crossly. It was prodigious unfair of Mab to kick up a dust over trifles in the very moments when Barbary most desperately to think. “Why are you in a taking? Anyone who saw me would have thought I was you. That’s why I borrowed your dress.”
So disturbed was Mab that she had previously failed to realize that Barbary indeed wore her gown. “To take advantage of a resemblance is bad enough, but to deliberately cultivate it is beyond everything!”
Barbary didn’t know what she had done that was so terrible. Nor did she know how Mab knew she’d done anything at all. “Did you see us?” she asked, perplexed. “No, of course you didn’t, because if you had you would perfectly understand why I had to pretend to be you. I could hardly admit to being myself!”
Here was contrivance of a staggering degree. Barbary had alienated the Duc’s affection for Mab while pretending to be Mab herself. “You must know that he will eventually find out that you have deceived him.”
Barbary shrugged. “I don’t see how.”
Mab could think of any number of circumstances in which the deception might be discovered. “Surely you don’t think to pretend and be me for the duration of your acquaintance. You ask too much, Barbary, indeed you do!”
All Barbary asked was a little peace and quiet in which to contemplate the events of the past couple hours. She retrieved a scrap of mirror from the table and inspected herself in it. “I don’t know why I shouldn’t pull it off,” she said gloomily. “He had no trouble believing I was you. He even said that I looked older. I have grown so hagged that even my husband doesn’t know me. He wouldn’t expect to see me in dress like this, but still— Sometimes I think that life is very bad!”
Mab thought that Barbary was very bad. She was also growing increasingly puzzled by the miraculous recovery of the Duc. And why had Barbary suddenly begun to talk about her husband? “He is not angry? What explanation did you give him?”
Barbary sighed. “I told him I had ridden off into the sunset with my own true love. Rather, you told him that I had. Not that he believed it for a moment, but I refused to admit the truth.”
Mab was beginning to wonder if her cousin had any acquaintance whatsoever with the truth. She held up her hand. “Let us begin at the beginning. You left here with the Duc.”
Barbary looked startled at the accusation. Tibble, who had been following this conversation with no little confusion, opened his mouth to speak.