1939912059 (R) (38 page)

“I spent most of my time hanging over the railing of the boat, releasing my innards through my nose and my mouth. Other than that…it was pleasant.” Konstantin hesitated and cleared his throat. “I also wish to thank you, Your Grace. I really do. I am still a bit overwhelmed and still do not believe I deserve it. I am asking that you reduce the amount. I hardly think—”

Gérard snapped up a hand. “There is no need for us to discuss this. It is done. The money will be in your hands by the end of this week, and all I ask is that you not let others know where the money came from. We are merely good comrades and nothing more.”

“But the amount is—”

“The amount is respectable.” A hundred thousand was nothing. “Are you telling me my life is worth less?”

Konstantin blinked. “No, I—”

“I am a generous man, Levin. Let us leave it at that. I have endured a lot and never give any less than what I believe a man deserves.” He paused before Konstantin and lingered, staring him down through the slits of his mask. He gestured rigidly toward Konstantin’s exposed throat. “What is this? Where is your cravat? You did this last time.”

Konstantin’s hand jumped to his bare throat. “I never wear cravats. Unless I am required to.”

Gérard glared. The boy was going to make him look bad. “You cannot step out into public looking like you have lived in a cave all your life. ’Tis an insult to those who are forced to look upon you. Tomorrow, you are going straight to my tailor to conduct measurements for the sort of clothing a man like you should be wearing. Because if it looks cheap, it is cheap. And no one bows to cheap.”

Gérard leaned in and adjusted the lapel of Konstantin’s coat. He sighed. “I regret not giving you money sooner. When you awake tomorrow, my valet will properly shave you. With the amount of money going into your pocket, Levin, ’tis your duty to represent yourself well. Or no one will take you seriously.”

Konstantin swiped his hand across his unshaven jaw. “Forgive me. I get lazy sometimes.”

“I can see that.” Gérard glanced toward the clock on the mantelpiece and paused, realizing it was almost time for his ten o’clock evening visit. The one he always made every Friday night in passing since coming to London months earlier. “I do not wish to be rude, but I have an appointment to keep. Are you tired? Or are you up for joining me?”

Those brows shot up. “I would not be imposing?”

“No.” He sure as hell had nothing to hide. Gérard turned and strode toward one of the bookshelves. He ran a hand across the bindings of all the leather books before stopping and yanking one out. The usual fare.
Candide: or The Optimist
by Voltaire.

Gérard carried over the warped leather binding and held it out. “Take this for me.”

Konstantin took the book, eyeing it. “This has certainly seen a lot of use.”

“Good books usually do.” And he could say the same about the woman to whom it had once belonged. Gérard strode by trying not to get too agitated with the thought of seeing her still surrounded by countless men. It wasn’t as if he had refrained from women. Far from it. Between the two of them, they probably fucked half the world. “Come. And bring Voltaire with you.”

“Where are we going?”

Gérard paused, not looking at anything in particular. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold out staying away from her. His marred face aside, he genuinely feared being turned away and didn’t know what he’d do if she did.

Knowing the Russian was waiting for an answer, he offered, “I usually go alone, but I trust you. And truth be told, I would rather not be alone tonight.” He was tired of pretending that he could fill the void.

He never could. Not even after thirty years.

When his coach paused in the shadows before a very respectable-looking townhome, outside the light of surrounding gaslights, Gérard gestured toward the book with his cane. A cane Sade had gifted to him the night half his face disappeared. “Read.”

Konstantin shifted against the leather upholstered seat of the carriage and swiped up the book beside him. He hesitated. “Uh…is there a reason you want me to—”

“Start at part two on page one hundred and three.” Gérard pointed at him. “And above all, handle it with care. That is an original English printing.” It was also all he had left of Thérèse.

Konstantin paged through the book, eventually finding the page. He cleared his throat. “
Part Two. Chapter One. How Candide quitted his companions and what happened to him
.
We soon became tired of everything in life; riches fatigue the possessor; ambition when satisfied, leaves only remorse behind it; the joys of love are but transient joys; and Candide, made to experience all the vicissitudes of fortune was soon disgusted with cultivating his garden.”

Gérard unlatched the window of the carriage and leaned out, staring up at the window where Thérèse could always be found when he needed her most. A silver-haired beautiful, beautiful woman draped in an ivory robe sat beside the window reading by a brightly lit lamp that illuminated her pale face. She adjusted her silver braid over her shoulder.

Gérard continued to watch her, wondering what she was reading. Age might have changed the color of her hair and dabbed wrinkles around her eyes, but she was still so fucking gorgeous. She would always be. His only regret was knowing his marred face dictated his inability to call on her.

Konstantin leaned in and eyed the window. “Should we be doing this?”

Gérard tapped his lips with a finger, trying to focus, and gestured toward the book again, without looking away from Thérèse. “Read.”

Konstantin shut the book, slid over to the window and leaned toward him. “Let me give you some advice. I have no idea how the English conduct themselves here, but in Russia, men are arrested for such things.”

Gérard continued to watch Thérèse as she tilted her head, clearly thinking about something. Maybe him? He had wanted her to see him that one night. If only to see what would happen. Her in a faint said it all. “Since when is love a crime, Levin?” he asked in the darkness of the carriage.

Konstantin glanced back up to the window. “Who is she?”

In an effort to contain his angst, Gérard gripped his cane tighter, his black leather glove creaking. “A whisper of everything I could have had but never will.”

“Did she marry someone else?”

That would have been a blessing. She would have been to bed with only one man, instead of the countless she had embraced over the years. He sometimes wished he hadn’t hired investigators to tell him about her life. Not that he had been a saint. Far from it. “She married every damn man in sight.”

There was a pause. “I am very sorry to hear it.”

Fuck. Blaming her in front of a man who did not know her was not what he wanted. She deserved better than that.

Gérard hit the end of the cane on the floor of the carriage. “I used to blame her for the path she took. But I have long since come to recognize it is I who destroyed her by not making an honorable woman of her. I was the one to drape her with her first set of diamonds.” And pearls. How she loved her pearls.

Yes, he had bought her for his schemes, but had paid for her with his soul.

Gérard glanced back toward her window again and paused, his cane stilling. The window was now dark, reflecting the emptiness she had left within him.

An exasperated breath escaped him. Re-latching the carriage window with an agitated swipe of his gloved hand, he settled back against the seat and muttered, “She has retired for the night.” Lifting his cane, he hit the roof of the carriage, commanding the driver to leave.

The driver snapped the reins and the carriage rolled forward, causing them to sway forward and back.

Gérard lowered his eyes to the gold head of his cane and rigidly tapped the palm of his gloved hand against it. He only got in a few minutes of looking at her. “Next time, I come alone. You talk too much.”

Konstantin quirked a brow. “Do you mean to tell me, since coming into London, you have been doing this every night?”

“I would never admit to such a thing.”

“Which means you have been.”

Gérard shifted his jaw. He used to come to her window every night when he first arrived in London. Glimpsing her was like drinking brandy. He couldn’t get enough of it. He had eventually dwindled his nightly visits down to mere Friday nights. For the sake of what remained of his sanity. “What of it?”

“Is she the reason why you came to London?”

There was no sense in lying to a Russian. “Yes.” And it took him too many years to find her.

“Have you called on her?”

Fuck that thought. “I would never.”

“Why?”

Lifting his cane up toward his face, Gérard edged the gold handle across the left side of his tied mask, causing it to shift. “This.” He lowered the cane from his mask. His marred face only bothered him when it came to Thérèse. The last thing he wanted was to see pity in her eyes.

His face aside, and the early financial struggles he had endured, which his mother’s family in England had kindly helped him through, he had actually led a good life.

After leaving France, everything had miraculously turned to gold. Quite literally. It was as if he had merely been living in the wrong country with the wrong people all his life. Everything became whatever he wanted it to be. Except for the one thing he had always wanted most: Thérèse.

Konstantin gripped the book. “Forgive me for prying, but what actually happened between you and her?”

“Too much.” His words of what had come to pass between them were blurred. Some things he remembered all too well, others he did not. Not because age had erased the past but because he and his soul wanted to erase the past. He wanted to replace it with something new.

He averted his gaze to the dark night beyond the glass window at his shoulder. “I had to let them go.” And the worst of it? He had never even gotten a chance to see his son again. A babe in a cradle is all the boy would be to him. Both in his mind and in his heart.

He seethed out a breath, and verbally related more to Konstantin, half of which meant nothing to him. Because it didn’t matter anymore. It changed nothing.

Gérard rolled his eyes. “I have heard she associates with an array of men because of some
school
where she gives men advice on-on…
private matters
.” He shook his head, not at all surprised. “She was always outrageous. She lived for it.” His fisted hand hit the seat hard, reverberating through the carriage. “I need brandy,” he breathed out.

It was a pathetic way of letting himself whine given he hadn’t touched brandy or any liqueur after the woman called him a drunk and a liar the night they parted. Those words had burned the brandy right out of him. He had refused to even listen to the doctor when he was told to drink a good bottle of any spirit to quell the pain that marred the left section of his face not even two hours after she had left him.

In some way, he knew he had earned it.

Whilst on the ship with half his face bandaged and suffering in agonizing pain, a bright-eyed Japanese stowaway had taken pity on him, shared his opium, and despite their little language barrier, introduced him to the art of knotting
Asanawa
ropes to keep his hands and his mind occupied through the pain. It turned into a passion of perfecting an elaborate array of knots that represented who he was and how he felt.

Konstantin squinted. “So you have been in London these past few months and still have not called on her or your granddaughter?”

Gérard tossed his cane from one hand to the other, back and forth, knowing full well what the boy was getting at. “My face aside, I genuinely doubt Thérèse would permit me to have an association with Maybelle. She and I did not part on the best of terms.”

There was a moment of silence. “How do you know what she will or will not allow if you have not called on her?”

He didn’t know. Gérard glanced toward the window and the night beyond. He knew he was wasting what little was left of their time. If he called on her, at least he would finally know what was or wasn’t possible. He also wanted to meet his granddaughter. Usually, the girl sat with Thérèse at the window, but for some reason, she hadn’t been at the window in weeks. It bothered him.

“Call on her.” Konstantin leaned closer. “After everything you survived, including a whole revolution, there is no shame in what you endured or why you wear a mask. Call on her.”

Gently tapping the cane against the floor of the carriage, Gérard fixed his sight at nothing in particular. “Will you go with me if I call on them?”

“It would be an honor. When do you want to go? Shall we go tomorrow?”

Gérard’s gaze snapped toward him, his throat tightening at the thought. “Are you mad? No. The day after.” He hardly looked decent. “I need time to trim my hair. As do you.”

Konstantin bit back a smile. “The trimming of our hair should only take a half hour.”

Lowering his chin, Gérard drawled, “Whilst I appreciate your intentions, I ask that you refrain from any further comments.”

Konstantin held up a hand and then set it against his mouth.