When she finally looked up at him and smiled, he said nothing. Nor did he return the happy action.
She was fast learning that the Comte had particular requirements when it came to the women he courted for the position of his paramour. Number one among them was obedience.
“Sebastien,” Dartois began. “You found him well?”
Emilie thanked the Marquis for distracting the Comte’s ire from her. She needed to keep the Comte on her side while she made her decision. If she said yes, she would be given financial security beyond what she ever could have imagined. If she said no… well, he could destroy her in Society.
The Comte had turned from the duo to observe the room. His eyes did not stop scanning as he withdrew a solid silver snuffbox from his pocket and flicked the lid open with his index finger. He proceeded to take a pinch in each nostril before deigning to answer his friend.
“Bien,” Vergelles replied, eyes drifting from one female to another around the room. “He has been very busy, our Sebastien. I understand his latest employee has proven a good return on investment already.”
Emilie noticed several of the young women blush under the Comte’s gaze before hiding their whispers and giggles behind painted fans.
“Positive news,” said Dartois, not in the least put off by the Comte’s impolite lack of attention. “I expect that return on investment to be passed on to us when the time comes.”
Emilie knew better than to join in with this conversation. She half-listened, fingers twiddling Lutin’s wispy hair into spikes along his back—her little hedgehog.
“You will tell him I am visiting him soon?”
“I already did,” the Comte replied, snapping the snuffbox shut. “Mademoiselle Cadeaux, are you of a mind to game or converse this evening?”
She was of a mind to do neither, but she knew better than to say so.
“Whatever my Lord desires.”
A smile crept slowly across the Comte’s face, not meeting the pale eyes that contrasted so shockingly with his coal-black brows. Others said he was handsome, but the sharp jaw and aquiline features were ones that Emilie tolerated, not admired. She accepted the Comte’s attentions because she understood her place in the world and its inherent precariousness. She did so because she wished to survive.
CHAPTER TWO
Half an hour later, Emilie and the Comte were at play with two others. Loo was the game, one which Emilie knew the Comte did not care for, but he would rather play than join in what he termed, ‘the pointless chatter of the would-be philosophers’.
While Madame Pertuis’ salons were held to discuss the latest works of the great thinkers of the day, there were plenty whose limited understanding led to uninformed debate, filled with ignorant rantings and self-assured statements that stood on little foundation and large ego. The Comte considered himself above all this. He had no use for chatter about abstract ideas that seemingly had no bearing upon him. Only where philosophy became action did he take note, and that was slow in fermenting in the French populace.
Emilie knew better than the Comte, though she would never say so. Yes, here were the arrogant and the narrow-minded, but there were also those who considered the challenges of the day, or grappled with the preconceived notions Society held. Those discussions, when Emilie heard them, were electric.
Because she was not from the world of these people—the nobility and the elite. She saw parts of Society they were not privy to. The parts that these Societal ideas could shape and affect. But as the Comte’s interest began and ended with his own affairs, she was not given the opportunity to listen to those around her. No. Instead, she was here at play with him and two unknown gentlemen.
“You play better than I,” said one of the strangers.
Emilie had not seen him before. He was English, and though every now and then she heard him converse a little in passable French, he mainly spoke in his mother tongue. She noted that when she had been introduced to him as the Comte’s companion, there had been the slightest hardening of his brown eyes and an almost imperceptible pursing of his lips.
“Merci,” was the only reply the Comte offered, laying another card on the table.
Vergelles did not appreciate chit-chat while at play.
“Have you been in Paris long, Your Grace?” the second stranger, one of Emilie’s own countrymen, asked.
“Nay—I have arrived only lately. A week on Wednesday. This is my first real venture into Society,” replied the Englishman in his deep voice.
He carried a tone of… what was it? Emilie couldn’t put her finger on the impression he was giving off. At first she thought it arrogance, that slow way of speaking, the drawl, but she was not sure from his relaxed pose and half-interest in the game. Perhaps he was one of the ton whose laissez-faire attitude was born from an excess of wealth. It would have no effect on the Englishman if he won or lost at the tables tonight.
“And your first engagement is to Madame Pertuis’ salon? God must be smiling upon you if you secured an invitation so readily,” the French stranger responded.
The Englishman smiled lazily, a note of mocking in his next words. “I am all gratefulness at such a happenstance.”
His cavalier attitude grated on Emilie. She found herself taking an instant aversion to the man. Madame Pertuis may occasionally grate on Emilie, but she was a gracious hostess and to mock the fortune of an invitation to her gatherings was insulting.
“As we all are,” Emilie said softly, laying a card and not looking up from her hand. Madame Pertuis had always treated Emilie as any other guest in spite of her low birth. She would not allow some upstart Englishman to deride her.
“I believe my name had much to do with it,” the Englishman carried on, either feeling no barb in Emilie’s carefully spoken words or choosing to ignore them. “It’s good to know it still works.”
“I was sorry to hear of your father’s passing,” the Frenchman replied. “The old Duke of Tremaine was a regular in Paris Society in his youth, I understand.”
Emilie’s heart twinged and she looked across at the Englishman to see any outward shows of grief.
She saw none. The gentleman in question, of medium height and broad shouldered, laying claim to heavily hooded brown eyes and a firm jaw, was dressed in the first stare of fashion. A little less flamboyant than the true dandies of Paris, but the cut of his jacket could not be described as anything less than exceptional, even if the wine colour was more muted than his sartorially daring French counterparts.
“Thank you for your condolences,” the Englishman said, “though we were never close. And now I’ve alienated my uncle as well. I’m afraid I ran through a great deal of money on inheriting, and he’s been forced to take the helm to right the ship. Or so he told me in his letter, and bid me, rather forcefully, come to Paris and desist from my wild activities. I’m afraid I’m quite out of sorts with my family.”
Emilie managed a few more surreptitious glances at the English Duke without drawing Lucien’s attention. He appeared to her completely unaffected by his father’s recent death or his family troubles. In fact, she was fairly sure she observed the light of amusement in his eyes.
“I am told I’m ruining the family name. But now I shall be able to write to my uncle and tell him all is not lost.” His expression amused—his audience rapt. “For I was invited to Madame Pertuis’ salon in under a sennight of my arrival in Paris.”
“Yes, but of course,” said the Frenchman in complete sincerity.
Clearly Emilie’s fellow countryman had not encountered English humour before.
