“Pardon, Your Grace. We men do not know how to behave when there are beautiful women present. Allow me to take you in for supper. Lord Avers—” He held out a hand, staring challengingly at him. “No hard feelings?”
Avers debated whether to take the offered hand. Was this some kind of game he could not follow? Reluctantly he shook it and Dartois leant in to him, saying in a low voice, “Bon chance in your future endeavours, my Lord. You were a wholly unworthy opponent.”
Avers pursed his lips to hold back the unhelpful words that begged to be let loose, and drew back, glad to regain his hand.
“Now you will excuse us,” Dartois said, offering an arm to each of the ladies. “We are expected at our host’s table.”
Avers watched Emilie take the man’s arm and the trio walked away from him through the crowds. He stared after them, his mind trying to work out what to do next, and then he caught sight of Emilie looking briefly over her shoulder.
On one side of Dartois walked Avers’ past and on the other walked his future. When his eyes caught Emilie’s and they locked for a moment, his resolve strengthened. He’d found her. Now he had to save her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
In the mid-morning two days later, Avers sat half-clothed at his dressing table, pressing his snuffbox to his lips and thinking.
“I apologise, my Lord, but the water is running slowly today so we must wait a little longer before adequate can be drawn and heated for your bath,” said his valet, entering his master’s bedchamber and breaking his reverie.
Like many of the wealthy residences, Avers’ house paid a small fee to pipe water off the main wooden conduit directly to the house. With the growth of the city and the system’s reliance on gravity, however, there were days when the pressure ran low.
As his valet passed by the bed, Lutin, who was curled up on the covers, growled softly at the intruder without bothering to raise his head.
“I’ve ordered two of the footmen to fetch water from the well so you are not kept waiting, my Lord.”
“Hmm?” Avers looked over at his valet just as the servant was glaring at the growling dog.
He had been lost in thought, trying to find a way out of the coil Emilie was in, that he barely took in what Simmonds was saying. Putting down his snuffbox, he raked a hand through his hair, feeling the knots and realising it needed a good wash. Perhaps the bath might loosen some kind of plan from his mind as well as the dirt from his head.
“I suspect they’ll get caught up nattering at the well,” Simmonds continued, still on the same theme. “Can’t trust them to be quick about it, these youngsters.” Avers’ valet, came around the bed to lay out his master’s clothes and pick up the discarded nightcap. “Beg pardon, my Lord, not that I wish to speak ill of them, but they lack a sense of urgency. Always wanting to find out the goings on. One of them—I shall not name them, my Lord—had the nerve to tell me he had heard about this and that from my Lord Worth’s residence. I shan’t repeat it. But being as they are particular friends of yours, I boxed his ears! Doesn’t matter to me that he’s a young man and not a boy. Need to learn their place.”
Simmonds’ words washed over Avers. He’d leant back in his chair again, lost in thought. This time his mind could not help but wander towards the new Duchess of Gravesend. It was obvious that Dartois had known what he was doing. He must have heard of Avers’ attendance at the masquerade after he worked out his true identity, and purposely brought the Duchess across his path to throw him off.
He had been—momentarily.
In truth, he’d been surprised by the strength of his emotions when meeting the Duchess again. The woman had not been in his mind for weeks. When he had first left for Paris several months ago he had believed she would forever haunt him, just as she had done in the months before. But with all the events that had transpired as he played the fake Duke of Tremaine, she had fallen completely out of his thoughts.
He could have said it was the distraction of adventure, or the presence of the dark-eyed and worthy Mademoiselle Cadeaux in his life, but he wasn’t sure those were the reasons. They played their part, to be certain, but he knew when his feelings and attitude towards his old amour had changed.
It had been when he had chosen to forgive her, just as Mademoiselle Cadeaux had urged him to do. It was not an instant change, and in reality, the situation had not altered, but he had. The love which he had harboured for her—an emotion which had seemed so eternal three months ago—had died. In choosing to forgive her, those feelings and the hold they had over him, had been dealt a death blow. He’d mourned them and the future he had imagined with her. And beyond the grief lay hope—a knowledge that the Almighty’s plan for him went beyond that period of his life
Despite the shock of seeing her again, he realised now the depth of emotions he had felt for her were no longer a part of him. They felt like a phantom of something that had been and no longer was. A scar that showed what had transpired, ceasing to cause raw pain, just minor twinges every now and again. As it had at the Peregrines’ ball.
That final act of forgiveness had freed him. And then there was Emilie.
Emilie
The thought of her evoked such deep emotion within him he almost sprang from his chair. She was like no one he had ever met before. Her quiet resolve, her strength against poor odds, and her sense of what was right.
Emilie.
He could not—he would not—leave her to her fate.
“They had best not delay.” Simmonds was still going on about the errant footmen. “I shouldn’t care what gossip was being spoken about at the well. Just so long as they don’t divulge the goings on of this house.”
Such inconsequential complaints when Emilie’s future hung in the balance. Servants always gossiped, and such a place of congregation was bound to see tidbits passed from one to another, and thence across London. It must be worse in Paris where the population relied on public fountains and the service of water bearers who held no allegiance to the houses where they delivered the essential commodity.
Aunt Goring should purposely send one of her servants to her local well even if she had no need of the water—that was if she did not already do so. Such a perfect way to…
Spy.
Individuals coming and going from houses largely unnoticed.
Persons whose presence was not considered.
People with access to establishments and… papers.
Avers leapt up from his chair and began pacing. Water bearers would not have been considered and vetted like the full-time staff in Wakeford’s Paris offices. In fact, they probably weren’t even there when the questioning had taken place. They would be in and out in the morning before anyone of consequence had arrived. It was the perfect access.
Hadn’t the Comte mentioned something about the water bearers when Avers had met them at the Café Procope in Paris? Had the noble really been so brazen as to boast about their secret lines of communication in such a fashion?
Avers was so lost in his thoughts that he almost collided with his valet as he re-entered his room carrying a tray with the day’s letters.
If Dartois intended to sell the papers here in London he would have to be discreet. Would he use the same means of communication here in England as he had in France? Was that the way to catch him—to watch the consul’s residence and try to intercept whatever water bearers came and went and bribe them to expose the man?
He sat back down at his dressing table and tossed off the remainder of the cold coffee he had been served half an hour since. Unthinking, he began to leaf through the letters Simmonds had left on the silver salver on his table while his mind continued to think up possible ways forward.
That hand—Avers recognised it. The letter was from Wakeford.
