“And then again maybe not.” Chris thought of the odd bargain he had made with Ariane. Somehow he did not think that it would allow him to sleep better anytime soon. Not unless he got very lucky. And if by chance he did, he would definitely not be spending his nights sleeping.
He frowned at his reflection in the mirror. What the hell was Ariane de Valmont doing in his dreams anyway?
Why was he dreaming again now? He’d kept dreams at bay for so long. He shivered. Even now, twenty years later, he shivered at the memory of the nightmares that had begun as his mother had lain dying.
But he had fought them, he reminded himself just a little desperately. Fought and obliterated them. He’d freed himself from all the fears, all the emotions. Now he didn’t need anyone anymore and he was determined to keep it that way.
Chris placed his card on the silver salver offered by the majordomo. While the majordomo strode off, another liveried footman showed him into a small salon. The room was elegantly furnished, but its empty feeling led to the assumption that it had no other purpose than to function as a kind of waiting room for visitors.
Minutes passed—five, ten, fifteen. Although Chris had spent most of his life in places where niceties like engraved cards and gloved servants and silver salvers were the exception, he understood the rules of society well enough. And he understood that the Marquise de Blan-chard was keeping him waiting in order to humiliate him.
He remembered a room much like this one. He’d sat there, expectant and excited as he waited with his father for his aunt, Leontine, to receive them. Then he’d sat there alone, fighting angry tears, after his aunt had had him removed from her presence. The old memories tugged at him, but he pushed them away. He was no longer a small boy who could be hurt by petty meannesses, he told himself. He was a man who had made something of his life.
With every appearance of equanimity, he extracted some papers, as well as a small notebook and pencil, from the inside pocket of his navy blue frock coat and began to make notes for the business meetings that he had scheduled in the coming days.
Almost half an hour had passed when yet another footman came to tell him that the marquise would see him now. Chris gathered up his papers without hurry, drawing a disapproving glance from the servant, and followed, the man.
The drawing room was overheated, overstuffed with excessively fussy rococo furniture and smothered in heavy velvet drapes, whose only saving grace was their brilliant azure color. The sweet, heavy scent of patchouli lay over the room like a pall. Chris remembered his father’s simple tastes and decided that it was no wonder that he had fled.
The Marquise de Blanchard sat on a fragile, gilt armchair as if it were a throne, the passionate hatred in her eyes belying the arrogant coolness of her features. A short, jowly man stood behind her, his hand curved on the back of the chair, his dark coloring and the embonpoint that strained his waistcoat making it obvious that he owed his appearance only to his mother.
“I thought I made it quite clear last night that I wanted nothing to do with you,” the marquise began without preamble, not even bothering to wait until the footman had closed the door behind him.
“Your effrontery in calling on me is quite staggering.” She paused. “Almost as great as your effrontery in daring to use the Blanchard name.” Contemptuously she tipped her plump chin toward the salver where his card lay.
“I regret to disappoint you, but although my birth was not sanctioned by marriage, my father adopted me. It is all quite legal. As for calling on you, it would not have been my choice to do so, madame la marquise,” Chris said, lifting one broad shoulder in a lazy shrug. “It was, however, your choice whether you choose to receive me or not”.
“You should have him thrown out on his ear, ma-man.” The lines of ill-temper around Maurice de Blanchard’s mouth deepened. “You have absolutely no reason to acknowledge him like this.”
“Do I assume correctly that this is my half brother?”
Maurice straightened as if he had been prodded with a hot poker.
“What excruciatingly bad taste to even mention that we are—that we could be related,” he corrected quickly. “But what can one expect from a man raised among savages?”
“An interesting concept.” Chris’s mouth curved in a derisive smile. “It could be worthwhile to debate which one of us was raised among savages.” Ignoring the marquise’s outraged gasp, he continued. “As far as the question of our being related is concerned, perhaps you should ask—” his cool gaze flickered briefly to the marquise “—madame votre mére if we are.”
Although she understood his implication perfectly, it was that transient look that the marquise found truly insulting. Jumping up, she advanced toward him.
“I will not endure your vulgarities any longer, monsieur.” She waved at him with a heavily beringed hand. “State your business and decamp.”
“I am here at my father’s request.”
The marquise gave a snort of a laugh. “The wretch probably wants to mend his fences, as he did after his—” her small mouth curled “—mistress died.”
Chris stiffened. “I beg to correct you. After my mother’s death, my father wanted to mend his fences with his sister. Only with his sister.”
“And whom does he want to mend fences with this time?” She laughed.
“I must disappoint you, madame la marquise,” Chris said softly. “My father died four months ago.” Grief welled up within him to clog his throat, but he kept his expression tightly controlled. This he would not share with them.
“Charles is dead?”
Chris fell absurdly touched by her stricken whisper. Words of condolence rose to his lips, but before he could speak, he saw the look in her small, black eyes sharpen.
“You said you were here at his request. Did he leave—”
“Was there a—” Maurice stepped from behind the chair.
“No.” Chris looked from the marquise to her son. Neither one showed even a perfunctory sign of grief. He could have forgiven them that, he thought After all, his father had wronged them both. But he could not forgive the gleam of cupidity in their eyes.
“That is no more than was to be expected,” the marquise snapped. “He probably didn’t have a franc to his name.” Feeling the unsteadiness of her hands, she linked them tightly to stop the hateful trembling. That one moment of hope could redeem a lifetime of humiliation tinged her next words with an extra dose of acid.
“What are you doing here then?” she demanded. “Making a collection so that you can have masses said for his black soul?”
Chris tamped down the anger that rose within him—anger not for himself, but for the gentle man who had been his father. Yes, he had had his faults. Yes, he had committed his sins. But surely he had not deserved this crude vindictiveness.
“If my father did not have a franc to his name, then it was only because he signed all his property over to me when his health began to fail,” he said, keeping his voice neutral with some effort.
Suddenly the acute instincts that had enabled him to hold his own and better in a hundred rough-and-tumble card games had him lifting his head like a wild animal scenting danger. The tension in the room had changed, intensified. There was more than simple greed here, he thought. There was the smell of a card player down to his last chips who had drawn a poor hand. There was the smell of desperation.
“He requested only,” he continued without missing a beat, “that I travel to France to inform his wife and children of his death.”
“How very generous of him,” the marquise mocked.
“No, madame la