Page 2 of Lord Appleby’s Gorgeous Imposter (Scarlett Affairs #3)

February 18, 1803

Théatre de la Ga?té

Paris

T ate Cantrell climbed the steps of the Paris theater on the left bank, weaving through the jostling, exuberant crowd. Good God, how many were here tonight to see the performance of the French star of Drury Lane? The wily one who had eluded him for five months?

The theater was jammed with eager patrons. He could not fault them. He himself was smiling that after those long months he had finally found the woman for whom he’d searched—and discovered her in Paris, of all places. Why she’d disappeared was a mystery, for the woman loved every bit of attention anyone paid her. Where she’d absconded to and why she had secluded herself, he had no idea. But he’d learn, by God. He wring it out of her.

He scoffed. He was an experienced British envoy. A seasoned spy for Scarlett Hawthorne, the heiress merchant, in London. He knew dozens who deceived easily and often.

Charmaine de Massé could easily be one of them. She had led a remarkable existence full of wealth, prominence, loss, deception, and cruelty. She was the oldest daughter of a well-intentioned minor Bourbon vicomte who worked for reform but who fell nonetheless to the guillotine courtesy of Robespierre. Her major characteristics, however, were her pride, her selfishness, and her artfulness. She’d had years of practice, lying to her family and cheating them out of a share of the family treasures she hocked. Charmaine de Massé was a clever charlatan who could easily pose as someone else. She’d often pretended to be sweet, innocent, and kind. Duping far too many.

He paused, seizing his anger at Charmaine’s disappearance and molding it to his purpose. His focus must be on the greater goal of finding—and keeping—her half-sister, Vivienne.

Dozens surged around him, talking of their excitement as they rushed through the foyer. Many buzzed, hoping Bonaparte and his wife would appear to honor the French émigré who had escaped Robespierre with her family. First Consul Bonaparte, who had reestablished order and sanity after the Terror, loved the theater and attended often and without prior notice. He also liked blonde actresses. Too much, too quickly, it was said, tongue in cheek.

“ Pardonnez-moi , monsieur.” Tate stepped to one side, the crush of theatergoers on the stairs enough to send one tripping down them.

He nodded to a few to whom he’d been introduced last night in Madame Récamier’s salon. That occasion had been acclaimed in the gossip sheets this morning as the notable Earl of Appleby’s third—if more louche— entrée to Parisian Society. His second had been at Bonaparte’s court in the Tuileries three nights ago. His first, at Lord Ashley’s home last week, had been his formal entrance. He was this time, after decades of secretive journeys throughout Europe, an official in Ashley’s entourage of British informal envoys responsible for aiding in the peaceful ties between France and her longtime adversary.

Of course, being in charge of balancing currency values for products imported and exported between the two former belligerents was a dry task to which he publicly applied himself. But wringing the neck of that acclaimed London actress Charmaine de Massé was his only goal. Shocked to learn this morning from his friend and spymaster, Kane, Lord Ashley, that Charmaine was in Paris, Tate readily accepted the invitation to attend. Backstage afterward, he would corner her and squeeze the truth from her lovely, deceitful lips.

He had searched for her last spring in England and found no traces. Wherever the wily lady had gone, she had influenced her youngest sister Vivienne to disappear as well. His tenants told him so. Whatever had induced Viv to leave her little cottage, her garden, and her beloved flocks of chickens and ducks, even her darling donkey Fred, had to have been momentous. To his eternal dismay, Tate had no clue what fable Charmaine could have woven to enchant Vivienne to follow. Viv brooked no nonsense from her oldest sister and had created a life without her.

“ Bon soir ,” he greeted one of Bonaparte’s generals upon the stairs up to the private boxes. Tate bowed to the lady on the officer’s arm. The military man came tonight with a ravishing brunette creature who was definitely not the plain-faced little wife Tate had met last night at Madame Recamier’s. Using his excellent French and anything else he’d learned in years abroad, he intended to make many friends.

“How are you this evening?” He met one and then another. “Well? Very good. Very good. As am I. Enjoy the play. I do love a fine comedy. Please, after you.”

He followed the crowd up, made the landing on the second tier, and turned to begin his hunt for box four. He was late. Had planned to be. He had little appetite for the conversations required in such situations when he had a precise mission. Or he should say, he did not care to indulge in such frivolous talk when he had so much anticipation of tonight’s long-awaited success.

He had searched for Charmaine Massey for too long. Tonight was his triumph. The end of his search for the woman who stole from so many for so many years.

Ah. Box four. He opened the door.

He was greeted by a chorus of welcome from Kane, the Earl of Ashley, whom he’d known since he was a lad of thirteen, and three of his friends, whom he’d met last week at Ashley’s reception. Aside from Kane and Tate, none in the box were agents. Or at least as far as Tate knew, they were not. The Chilterns and Lord Manning declared that they had come to Paris to enjoy the winter’s entertainments. They were not alone. Ever since Lord Cornwallis had signed the Treaty of Amiens last spring, hundreds of British had flocked to the French capital. Lord Elgin and his wife, the Cholmondeleys, and even Charles James Fox had come to drink the wine, stand for lavish new a la mode wardrobes—and hope to dine with the little Corsican and his oh-so-charming wife, Josephine, who ruled over the new beau monde .

Tate had no tolerance for politics. Not tonight. He had run to ground the woman who had disappeared last spring along with her younger sister. He would get from Charmaine where his darling Vivienne was. Then he would go find her and do what he had intended last spring. He would propose marriage.

Kane did his duties as host and introduced Tate all around as his newest colleague.

Lord Chiltern put down his monocle as they all took their chairs. “You’re to improve the rate of currency exchange for goods, Appleby?”

“I am.” Tate tucked his program inside his frock coat pocket. “My usual job.” Not my only one. With Scarlett, one tracks whatever mystery will lead to excellent intelligence.

“I understand you’ve practice,” said Chiltern with an arched brow, “with Italian funds and Ottoman.”

“Just so,” Tate said, his attention on the red velvet curtain.

“For the Levant Company out of Jaffa?” Chiltern persisted. “I understand they are very corrupt. Isn’t that difficult?”

“But interesting,” Tate demurred. It was not in his remit to discuss how well an official British company like the Levant managed its trade. Jerusalem’s prices rose and fell with the local sultan’s delight in his newest wife.

Meanwhile, Chiltern’s little wife lifted her chin, but she fluttered her fan. Her attitude denoted that she really could not care less about the specifics of money. “I simply do not understand exchange of coin. Though I do wonder how anyone makes a profit.”

“Confusing, I admit, Lady Chiltern,” Tate said blithely, “even to me.” Grateful for her interruption, he smiled. He wished no discussion of his expertise, and he was very happy that the orchestra offered up a round of ditties, a sign for the audience to quieten.

He wanted only to see Charmaine. The little cheat.

Just as everyone settled in for the curtain to rise, two more people entered the box. Lord Ramsey arrived with a lady on his arm. Ram, Kane, and Tate had been friends since they were children. With quick introductions by Kane, Tate learned Ram’s friend was Madame St. Antoine.

The name flitted through Tate’s memory. He’d read her dossier in Scarlett Hawthorne’s offices. Madame St. Antoine had been school friends with Scarlett, the young lady who ran their network from the offices of her merchant company in London. Madame St. Antoine was a fiery redhead of exquisite beauty whom no man worth his salt could ever ignore or forget. But Tate’s and Kane’s boyhood friend Ramsey appeared stiff, formal, as if he could not bear to notice that the ravishing widow on his arm was his most glorious asset this evening.

“I am delighted to meet you, madame,” Tate offered, raising her hand to his lips.

“ Merci beaucoup, Monsieur le Comte. As am I to meet you,” she said as she settled in the chair beside Tate. “Are you here for an extended stay in Paris?”

“ Oui , madame. I am to talk with a few financiers about the exchange of currency.”

“A difficult task, monsieur. Our first consul has not yet brought all the provincial currencies into line. And we have many who counterfeit with great abandon.”

Tate frowned. “I hear the government hunts for them diligently.”

“Indeed, sir. And quickly sentences them to death. By guillotine, no less.”

Tate winced. “Harsh. But it is right the government detains them. Destroys their presses. Nothing hurts commerce so badly as poor means to buy and sell goods.”

The lady arched her lovely red brows. “The primary reason the Bourbons no longer rule is the abuse of finances. Bonaparte must get it under control or he will follow the ancien regime to the grave.”

Tate agreed with her. But he was grateful they were in a theater box full of British. Even she was by blood an Englishwoman. Adopted informally by a lady she called her aunt, Amber St. Antoine, née Gaynor, had lived since age nine in Paris. She had married a Frenchman, a vintner from the Champagne, who had died a few years ago. But it was clear by madame’s rhetoric that she sympathized with republicans.

Tate suspected she did more than sympathize. That was why Scarlett had allowed him to read madame’s biography in the merchant company’s records room. St. Antoine worked against the hegemony Bonaparte commanded over France and much of Italy. Scarlett would not have given him such information of St. Antoine’s activities unless it were vitally important he understand the lady’s sympathies.

The orchestra, small as it was, raised its decibel level. Tate set his jaw, anticipation mixing with satisfaction as he settled more into his chair.

The play would start soon. Tate folded his hands together, his attention on the floor, where most of the audience was composed of men. Dandies. Out for an evening to look over the newest actress to seduce.

Tate snorted. Charmaine was no jeune fille , not like Madame George, the girl of sixteen who had opened in Racine’s Phèdre the night before last at a theater across town. Charmaine refused to compete with the more famous French girl who was turning heads with her talent—and had demanded she debut after the girl. Returning to her country, according to the Paris gossip sheets, she had insisted that she would honor the occasion by performing only comedy.

Charmaine was crafty, wishing to grab the city’s attentions soon after the other girl debuted. Charmaine was older, twenty-five or -six. But she looked younger. Always had. Short, small boned, with a glorious mane of platinum hair, and perfectly formed doe eyes, aquiline nose, and exquisitely arched cheeks, Charmaine looked timeless.

And always she used it to her advantage. She was polite and exuberantly charming. Well read, too. But she possessed another quality, which few living men or women could match. She was that rare commodity, descended from Henry Bourbon in some obscure way, and an émigré of the noble lineage whose father had been ruthlessly hunted, tried ingloriously, and quickly guillotined.

With a bit of Bourbon blood from the Orleans branch, Charmaine claimed to be a minor princess. Josephine Bonaparte, said the gossips, had heard of Charmaine’s fame in London and the lady’s plight. With compassion for the actress, Josephine had personally persuaded the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Talleyrand, to invite Charmaine back to her homeland. After all, the talented woman did not ask for her lands returned. What, asked the first consul’s wife, could be the harm in having her on stage here in her home?

Charmaine’s denial of interest in claiming the estate was a prudent decision. In fact, it was a concession to those who had bought up pieces of her father’s estate since his death. But all of that was moot: Bonaparte had decreed that none of the properties confiscated by any government entity since the fall of the monarchy would be returned to any aristocrat who claimed previous ownership. Certainly no woman could make a claim.

As for how Charmaine’s reputation appealed to Parisians, it was rumored that she said she had long ago forgiven the terrorists who had run her and her family from her home. That she had not said she forgave those who’d abducted and killed her younger sister Diane, however, was a mark against her. Few remained alive or in power from the era of Robespierre, but it was not wise to speak against anything that had occurred then. Here in the country of her birth, Charmaine proclaimed she was now simply a humble actress who had earned her living in the theaters of Drury Lane for the past six years. She would be delighted to claim Paris now, too.

Tate shifted in his chair. The men below jostled about, laughing, joking, eager to view the French lady and raise her reputation…or lower it. Gossip sheets this past week proclaimed that the ethereal Charmaine de Massé (not that English bastardization of her family name, Massey) was a paragon. Even the stories of how her hired coach had been attacked by two highwaymen just outside Rouen on the journey here did nothing more than endear her to her countrymen. Word was that she had climbed from the carriage and faced the point of two pistols by the cutthroats, then offered up her money.

Tate scoffed. He bet she’d slipped her pistol from her reticule and threatened any idiot to come closer and steal her money. Too bad for them too if they tried to take her little dose of laudanum. The lady killed to get it—and would, Tate had always believed, to keep it.

If that story of her glorious heroism was not enough, he knew she most likely encouraged the stories of her youth to be broadcast by every rag in town. He had watched her share it often.

She loved to tell it with sighs and wringing hands, and it always contained the same bleeding-heart prose. For many years of her youth, she had endured poverty and exile with her family. The story served to burnish Charmaine’s triumphal return to her native land. She’d been a young girl who fled Paris in a rickety carriage, sitting on a valise in which she’d stuffed the family’s diminished fortune. Then, hiding beneath her cloak her two little sisters and her mother from the mobs, she had encouraged them all as they endured three weeks’ sojourn through hail and rain and flood to the coast of Brittany. There they departed on an English smuggler’s sloop for the rocky coast of Southern England. In that country where most could not bear the look or sound of a French man or woman, Charmaine had helped her family rise above the suffering and shame of their impoverished immigration to a land where no one loved them.

Tate swallowed bile at the tale.

Too bad it’s all lies.

He grumbled to himself about lies people told themselves…and embellished for others. No wonder Charmaine became an actress. She lied with practiced ease.

The orchestra’s serenade drifted to an end. The crowd hushed. The red velvet drapes swished open, the golden tassels swaying in the candlelight.

Tate sat, unmoving, triumph rushing through him that he had found the woman who’d had the gall to steal from him. After all he had done for her, her Aunt Madeleine, and her young half-sister, his darling Vivienne, Charmaine’s theft gutted him. He’d shepherded them from Paris to Norfolk. Protected them from cutthroats, aided them, offered home and peace, and, after his father’s death, even given them a small income. Yes, Tate had done what he could. But while some would call his actions kind, he called them atonement. He could never make amends for how he’d failed all three women. That night, he had failed to recapture Diane. It was one act he could never relive. Never change. The defeat for which he’d never find forgiveness.

Still, he had devoted much of his life to making up for it. He’d even used his associations with people, his language skills, and his understanding of French agriculture and products to allow him to stay in France and spy for Britain. Scarlett Hawthorne knew his talents and his desires. Over the years, he had brought to justice, and even with some finality, a few French agents who operated carte blanche in Paris and in London. But now to learn that Charmaine had suddenly reappeared in Paris alerted him to some new web she wove. It infuriated him. It alarmed him.

Perhaps she had her own reasoning for her actions. Charmaine always did. She’d taken jewels from her Aunt Madeleine. Published Diane’s diary as her own. She’d even stolen beaus from Vivi. Charmaine suffered no remorse. Madeleine had forgiven her. Vivi had not. Diane could not. He would never forgive her for her pride and her duplicity.

The audience laughed. The rafters shook with it. Tate was not amused.

He winced. The play, old man, the play!

The first act proceeded apace. It was an old play by Molière. Charmaine was known in England for her tragic heroines, Juliet and her Desdemona. But for her return to Paris, she had insisted that she would honor the occasion by performing only comedy, preferably Molière. Tate knew the works of the famous French playwright well. He had seen them performed in Paris and villages all over the country. To see a play full of bon mots , a story of people who once loved and married, might have been a huge draw to Tate tonight, had the circumstances been different.

All at once, there she was. Graceful, artless, beautiful Charmaine de Massé, the oldest legitimate daughter of the Bourbon martyr Charles Gilbert Moreau, Vicomte de Neufchateau. Charmaine waltzed through her role like a woman in command. Tate commended her presence, her elegance of hand and body, her timing. But what a change she was from the girl who had acted in shame that night she and her family had fled Paris. She’d been perhaps fifteen, a girl, really. Yet he’d watched her lure a suave young man and take him from the likes of the family’s scullery maid. Charmaine was at that young age already a practiced coquette. For years, Tate had tried not to criticize her too much because a decade ago she had the na?veté of youth. Yet his view of her was always shaded by what had happened that night when the mobs came for them and tore at their clothes and ripped Diane from their carriage.

Tate scowled. He sat forward. He should be enjoying Charmaine’s performance. He hoped she did. After all, once he got hold of her, he was not letting her go until she told him where Viv was. He’d arranged a carriage to spirit her away with him. He’d even rented a small room behind a café on the quay of the Seine. He’d frighten her. Yes, he would. But he would not relent until she told him what he needed to know.

It shouldn’t take long. Charmaine was many things—stubborn, stingy, and mean. But she was also a coward. Once she gave him what he needed, he’d let her go. He’d find Viv, bare his soul to her, and persuade her to make him her own. Then he would return here to finish his work for Scarlett and the Crown.

He inhaled. Satisfaction like red wine flowed through him. Warmed him with…

She glided across the floorboards. A lovely bit of fluff in purple and red satin, an elaborate wig of powdered white swaying on her head as she walked…and spoke.

What was wrong with her? She sounded as if she had frogs in her throat. Was she ill? Her voice was much too raspy. Too deep.

And the way she lifted her shoulder to give her male lead the cut direct was…not possible for Charmaine. She’d been injured in their flight from Paris when the coach lurched into a rut near Chartres. She’d broken her collarbone. Never to be mended as it should be because of delay, the bone had created for Charmaine what her detractors in London called her “stiff comedown” to male romantic leads.

“Do you know her?” Amber St. Antoine leaned toward him of a sudden to ask.

“Very well.” He could not drag his gaze away from Charmaine. She was…enchanting. Her voice too low, too much of a contralto, husky and bold. Her sounds were mellow seduction. Her glide across the stage was an angel’s. This was not Charmaine. By God, this one had never been anything like Charmaine. No. No, he knew this woman. This daring creature whose every word brought fire to his blood and yearning to his heart. “Too well.”

His mind reeled backward to the first time he’d met the three daughters of the Vicomte de Neufchateau. The oldest girl, Charmaine, was small, delicate, with rivers of angelic white-blonde hair. The second girl, Diane, was bigger boned than her older sister, with golden-red hair like the copper of her father’s. But the youngest girl, their half-sister Vivienne, was different. She was the child of the vicomte. The man proclaimed it often, for he loved her dearly. Vivi was illegitimate. Her mother was the vicomte’s mistress and the widow of his younger brother. When Tate first met Vivi, he thought he’d seen double and lost his mind. She was the exact mirror image of Charmaine. Her twin, but not. Not in temperament, not in wit, but in every little curve of her lip and arch of her elegant brows. In the classic oval of her face and the sparkling sapphire of her eyes, Vivi was Charmaine.

Their voices were different, Viv’s darker, deeper, rich with the sultry essence of earth. But more than that, what marked them as unique was their character. Gay to staid, spontaneous to calculating, the two could not be more different. And so this woman on the stage was definitely not Charmaine Massey of Drury Lane. This was his sweet Vivi of Cantrell Farm, who adored her dog, her donkey, her chickens, and her herb garden. This was Vivi masquerading, substituting as her older sister.

He sat back, mesmerized. He could not absorb her form, her stance, her sound fast enough to sate his madness. What was this? Some poor joke on Paris? Did Vivi and Charmaine work on this together? Why?

Oh, he would have Vivi spouting answers. Was she covering for her sister’s newest attempt at…what? But Vivi would never do such a thing for Charmaine. Vivi loathed her sister’s duplicity. Was Charmaine ill? Perhaps there was a simple explanation, a more innocent one. Was Charmaine ill and Vivi here to collect her sister’s wages?

He blew out a breath.

Beside him, Tate heard Amber St. Antoine lean over toward Ramsey and say, “Lord Appleby knows the actress. Have you heard of her before tonight?”

Ram did not even deign to look at the lady beside him, and only nodded. He would never divulge information that was not necessary. But he knew full well that Tate was very familiar with the Massé family. Ram knew all the details of how, when, and why, too.

Yet all Ram said to Amber was, “I have seen her in a few comedies in London, yes. She is accomplished.”

Amber sat back, widening her eyes, perplexed by Ram’s seeming indifference, but trying to make conversation. “Word is that she supported her father’s mistress and her sister with her earnings in the theater.”

Charmaine sent a pittance. This one on stage raised animals and worked a garden so that her mother and she could eat.

“So I have heard,” Ram responded, his gaze never leaving the stage.

Did he see the differences in the Charmaine of London and this one?

Tate would ask Ram about it. Kane, too. Tomorrow.

Not tonight.

Because tonight, I am going to the dressing room of that French imposter down there and getting the truth straight from her lovely, lying lips.