Murder While I Smile (14 page)

Corinne’s head was too full of Luten and Chamaude to read any significance between the lines. She sent a note back to Prance. “Thank you, my friend. The flowers are beautiful. Shall we see you at Lady Birrell’s this evening? Save me a dance. Love, Corinne.”

“At least we know where he’s taking her. Birrell’s,” Prance said to Coffen. He had darted to Pattle’s place when he received her reply.

“We’ll tackle Luten after the party.”

“Yes, let poor Corinne enjoy her last evening with a joyful heart, for tomorrow...”

“Dash it, you sound as if she’s dying.”

Prance drew a deep sigh. “One can die of a broken heart, Pattle. At times, one wishes one could leave this vale of tears.”

But as he enjoyed life too much to even consider suicide, he decided that he could take some petty revenge on Luten at the rout party. Drop a few veiled threats that he knew all and watch Luten squirm. Now, what should he wear?

Chapter Thirteen

“He
is pulling out all the stops,” Prance said over his shoulder to Coffen, as they stood by Coffen’s saloon window, watching Luten accompany Corinne across the street to dinner. “Calling for her—he’s never done that before. And carrying a bouquet of flowers. Strange how a guilty conscience brings out the best in men’s behavior toward their victims. Many a wife owes her diamonds to her husband’s mistress.”

“If flowers are a sign of guilt, then you’re guilty as well. You sent Corinne a bouquet.”

“She is not my fiancée. I wager he sent Simon out for those flowers.”

“Why wouldn’t he? Simon has perfect taste.”

“Simon has good taste, Pattle.
I
have perfect taste.”

Coffen glanced at Prance’s new coiffure and just shook his head. “Keep your jealousy on the chain, lad. You’re making a fool of yourself.” As Luten’s front door closed, Coffen left the window. “I wonder what he’s feeding her,” he said.

“Compliments, evasions, outright lies, and presumably a sprinkling of kisses to help it all go down are the usual menu in such cases as this.”

“Luten ain’t like that. You haven’t got a case to stand on. A bunch of flowers? Rubbish.”

“It’s not just the flowers. It is his nature to be sly. He is not a successful politician for no reason.”

“I haven’t seen any success. The Whigs have been in opposition forever. Anyhow, I meant what is he feeding her for food.”

“Of course you did, plebeian.”

Coffen sniffed the air. “I believe I catch the whiff of mutton. Time
for fork work. Let us go and peck a little.”

Prance went on dragging feet to Coffen’s dining room, where his slatternly servants had thrown a handful of cutlery on a much-used tablecloth, stuck a few Michaelmas daisies in a glass jug, and called that a table setting. One thing Pattle did insist on, however, was decent wine, and plenty of it. The red burgundy was not what Prance would have served with a raised pigeon pie, or with ham either, but it was mellow on the palate.

“An excellent wine, Pattle,” he said, raising his glass in a toast. “I must get the vintner from you. The last burgundy I bought bites like green gooseberries. The bully of the vineyard, I call it.”

He toyed with a potato, mashed to anonymity, forming it into a pyramid with his fork, placed a Brussels sprout on top, and surrounded the mound with a moat of carrots, while Coffen watched irritably.

“Waste of good food,” Coffen said. “It ain’t Corinne you’re worried about, or Luten’s nasty stunt either. It’s the fail—the lack of success with your Rondeaux, but now that I’ve gnawed my way a bit deeper into them, I’m coming to think they ain’t so bad after all.” This was an outright lie but in a good cause.

“I have been bitten by cannibal critics before. It’s not my artistic failure that bothers me.”

“Then it’s that dashed Frenchie. She’s no good. Steal the ring from the pope’s finger as quick as she’d trot, but if you’re so mad for her, why don’t you call on her? How can you hope to win her if she never sees you? She don’t know you’re pining your heart out. Ladies like that in a fellow.”

Prance considered this advice and found it good, as Coffen’s advice, being based on common sense, often was.

“Yes, why not?” he replied. “Though if Luten has just bought her a house—well, there is no way I can match that.”

“You could match him—outdo him—outdo a whole roomful of gossips when it comes to talking. Talk your way into her heart. Turn her up sweet. She’ll be on you like a hound on a fox.”

“I do have rather a gift for words,” Prance allowed. “I’ll take her a little something as well, of course. That opal ring surrounded with ruby chips my aunt Ethel gave me.”

“I don’t know as I’d take her jewelry on the first call.”

“With a lady like the comtesse, one takes a token, Pattle. Trust me.”

“You make her sound like a dashed light-skirt.”

“When one has reached her level of prominence, the more usual word is
courtesan.”

“Means the same thing, don’t it?” Coffen asked, spooning in a forkful of the mashed potatoes.

“No, it means about five thousand pounds more per annum.”

“Then forget her. You can’t afford her.”

“That is the very dilemma on whose horns I sit, most uncomfortably. I know she is bad for me. It is a part of her allure, that siren call to my fallen nature. Men have ever hankered after that sort of woman. Bad to the bone. Like Byron. Did you hear what Caro said of him? ‘Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.’ It might serve as an epitaph for la comtesse.”

“Not till she’s dead, I hope.”

“Such women ofttimes die young.”

“She’s escaped that anyhow. Nudging forty.”

“You will not dissuade me by these paltry objections, Pattle. It is you who has planted the seed of the idea in my head, and I shall call on her tonight, as I assume Luten is taking Corinne to Birrell’s. I shall go from Half Moon Street to the rout and shower Luten with barbs.”

“Tarsome fellow,” Pattle said, and helped himself to another glass of burgundy, then offered the bottle to Prance.

“I shall have another as balm for my emotional bruises.”

“To give you courage for your call on Chamaude, you mean.”

“That, too.”

* * * *

Across the street, Luten’s dinner party progressed more harmoniously. Corinne had often dined with him but seldom tête-à-tête. He had been at pains to arrange a romantic atmosphere with candlelight, wine, and a dinner prepared by his French chef. It was served in the more intimate morning parlor. Two at table in his long dining room designed to seat three dozen would feel like survivors adrift on the Atlantic.

Candlelight flickered on her raven hair and cast shadows on the delicate contours of her face. As the dinner progressed, she felt the worries she had been carrying around since Luten’s return melt away, to be replaced by a golden glow of love. She opened like a flower in the sun, forgiving all his little transgressions as they discussed their wedding and honeymoon.

“I thought we might go to Ireland to visit my family,” she said. “Since France and so much of Europe are out of the question just now, with Bonaparte on the loose, you know.”

“I look forward to meeting your family. We could be married there, if you like. Your sister, Kate, could be part of the wedding party.”

“I would love it, but we have so many friends here. Prance, you know, will want to be active in all the arrangements.”

“Active? He’ll insist on directing the whole show. We may count ourselves fortunate if he and Pattle don’t stow away on our honeymoon. We could go to Ireland for our wedding trip.”

Corinne smiled fondly. “I have been wanting Kate to meet them. I tell her all about our escapades.”

Corinne harbored a secret hope that Coffen would fall in love with Kate, marry her, and bring her to England, before she turned into an old maid.

“Then we must invite Kate to visit us in England, for I do not want that pair on our treacle moon. By the by, did you discover what they are doing tonight?”

“I told Prance where we were going. He sent me a bouquet of flowers from that little greenhouse of his, and I sent him a thank-you note.”

“Beating my time, is he?” Luten joked.

“He has given up flirting with me, since I am now engaged. He calls himself my true friend and faithful servant. Is that not charming?”

“He’s a good fellow, beneath all the rodomontade. Oh, speaking of rodomontade, the boxes
of Rondeaux
have arrived. I plan to ship half of them over to your place under cover of darkness tonight. You’ll help me dispose of them?”

“Of course. Pity about the
Rondeaux,
he spent so much time on them.”

“He should have taken another month and translated them into English. Contemporary English, I mean. All those medieval words—to say nothing of the footnotes.”

“And no King Arthur, no Round Table.”

“Worse, no Guinevere.”

At half past nine, Luten called for his carriage and directed his coachman to deliver them to Lady Birrell’s. As soon as Prance saw them leave, he put his aunt Ethel’s opal and ruby ring in his pocket and proceeded to Half Moon Street. The Provence roses were still in the rig but too passé to give her. Coffen was to meet him at Birrell’s.

Prance was admitted to la comtesse’s saloon without being kept waiting. In a high state of agitation, he failed to notice the Watteau was missing from the entrance hall. His heart thrilled to see her looking exactly as he remembered, with those liquid, brooding eyes. She wore black, a low-cut gown to display her impertinent shoulders and the incipient swell of white breasts. No jewelry tonight. How wise of her. Perfection has no need of garnishing. She reclined on a chaise longue in a dim corner with a glass of brandy on the table before her, looking very French, and very seductive. Her pale face seemed to float in a dark sea, like a Rembrandt painting, except that the face was lovely.

She gave him a demure smile with just a Gallic hint of wickedness lurking in it. How did she do it? Was it the gentle lifting of the eyebrows that imbued her welcome with invitation? For a moment he stood silently gazing and feeling barbaric for not cropping out into poetry or song.

“Sir Reginald, how kind of you to call,” she said in her charming accent and a voice like Devonshire cream, all rich and soft. She offered him a languid hand.

“How kind of you to receive me, milady,” he replied, with an exquisite bow. As he bent over her, he thought he saw a trace of tears on those porcelain cheeks. Her shoulders drooped. The words of Suckling’s (dreadful name!) poem flashed through his mind. “Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale?” Was it Luten she yearned for? “I came to call this afternoon and just missed you by inches,” he said, looking about for a seat.

“Ah
oui,
I was out. A friend took pity on me and took me for a drive in the country. I trust Mr. Pattle is happy with his Poussin?”

Prance did not wish to discuss the Poussin. He said nothing about Pattle’s mysterious caller the night before. “Delighted! The only dissatisfaction in it is that it reminds one of your financial difficulties.”

Her dark eyes moved lingeringly over her caller. A very large diamond in his cravat, a jacket by the vastly expensive tailor Weston, of Bond Street. Everything about him smelled of money. And the “Sir,” she had discovered, indicated a baronet, not just a knight.

“You are too kind to worry about me,” she said. “I am surprised a handsome young bachelor like you is not out at some do or other.”

“There is nowhere I would rather be than here, no one with whom I would rather be than you, Yvonne. May I call you so?”

She neither agreed nor objected verbally, but when she fluttered her long lashes at him and patted the edge of the chaise longue, he took it for permission. He went forward and lowered himself gracefully to the floor, not at her feet, but nearer her head. She put out her hand to him, and he raised it to his lips. He felt he was approaching the portals of paradise as his lips caressed her velvet fingers, perfumed with attar of roses. The third finger looked about the right size for the opal and ruby ring. He noticed the wedding ring had been abandoned.

Then she destroyed the mood by saying, “Where is your friend Luten tonight?” That was gauche of her!

“Out with his fiancée, Lady deCoventry,” Prance said, trying to conceal his irritation. There was considerable satisfaction in his tone.

Let us see how she reacted to that stunning news. She obviously wasn’t aware that Luten was engaged. He felt the white hand he was holding stiffen, heard a quiet little gasp. Then her dainty fingers tightened convulsively on his.

“Of course. Foolish of me to ask,” she said in a nearly normal voice. That would be the actress in her. He peered up to judge her expression. She leaned toward him, gazed into his eyes, and said in a voice of satin seduction, “Lovers should be together at night,
n’est-ce pas?”
Then without further ado, she tilted back her head, closed her eyes, and offered him her lips.

The wayward animal in him gave a leap. He seized her lips in a frenzy of rapturous disbelief. For a long moment their lips clung without any other part of their bodies touching. A poignant moment, and the best part of the embrace in Prance’s view. When she opened her lips to him, he drew her into his arms and squeezed gently. The openmouthed kiss was not the disgusting suction of a giant leech attacking him but a gentle, sensuous mating of liquid tongues. He tasted the echo of fine brandy on hers. It was a sublime kiss, the sort of kiss to instigate wars and legends. Helen of Troy and Paris might have kissed like this.

When she stopped kissing him, she lifted a silver hand bell by the chaise longue and gave it a tinkle. The boulevardier-butler appeared at the door. “We do not wish to be disturbed, Lalonde,” she said, without ever removing her eyes from Prance. The butler directed a knowing look at Prance, bowed, and closed the door as he left.

“Now, where were we?” she asked with a coquettish smile. Her white fingers moved with languid grace to unbutton his waistcoat. There was no effect of rushing it, but before you could say Jack Robinson, she had it off, and her own gown as well, while Prance removed his trousers. He could not quite keep pace with her. He had to leave his shirt, unbuttoned, on his back as he proceeded to the carnal core of the business. Twice. The woman was a genius in the
ars amatoria.
Her fingers slithered like tiny, willful snakes over every part of his quivering body. Her tongue licked at him like liquid flame, igniting him to unsuspected, nay, unimagined, heights of delightful depravity. He felt a deep and profound pity for every man who was not he.