City of Secrets (25 page)

“They’ll be wondering where we’ve got to,” he said, handing her back her jacket.

Maddie’s eyes widened. Daisy and Laurie! She had forgotten them completely. For the first time all afternoon, she blushed.

“I’ll think of something,” he said, understanding the reason behind her suddenly heightened color. Quickly, she buttoned up her collar and looked for her hat. He found it and replaced it for her.

“You look respectable.”

“I doubt that, but I suppose I’ll have to do.”

As it turned out, however, they were not the ones who had to make explanations. When they arrived back at the inn, the Daimler had not yet returned. Maddie looked to Devin. “Where can they be?  I do hope nothing untoward has happened.”

“I’ll go look for them. There must be a horse to be borrowed in the village.”

He went to find the landlord and asked for a room where Maddie could wait in privacy while he went out, and she went gratefully upstairs to make herself more presentable. She smoothed her skirt and shook bits of hay off her shoulders and brushed them out the window. She could hear Devin at the stables in back talking to a groom, but before he could leave, she heard another sound and leaned her head out the window.

He heard it too and looked up at her. “That must be they.”

She nodded, checked her face in the mirror again, and went back downstairs to find an abashed Laurie apologizing profusely to Devin.

“I’m ever so sorry, sir, but it broke down—not five miles down the road, I swear, but I couldn’t ask Daisy to walk back here, so I managed to fix it myself.”

Maddie looked toward Daisy, who was still sitting in the car. She rolled her eyes expressively at Maddie, who laughed. Laurie took offense.

“Well, I did fix it, didn’t I?” he said, glaring accusingly at Daisy and, belatedly, holding his hand up to help her down from her perch. Maddie noticed that she had acquired a light sunburn, but otherwise looked ridiculously happy. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to tease Laurie a little.

“Come along, dear,” Maddie said, putting her arm solicitously around Daisy’s shoulder. “There’s a little parlor upstairs where you can rest for a moment.” She shot a smiling glance at Devin, who took the hint and dragged a protesting Laurie around the inn to the stable pump to clean off his dust.

Upstairs, Daisy gave way to giggles and an urge to tell Maddie every detail of how she, and not Laurie, had been driving, because only she knew how, and how he had begged her to teach him.

“So I started to, but the first thing he did was to run the car into a ditch, so he had to go fetch a farmer with an ox to pull it out again, which took an age. I sat under a tree the whole time and tried not to laugh, and I must say Laurie was very good about it. He never lost his temper, and he forgot all about taking photographs!”

Maddie let her talk, injecting a comment only when Daisy paused for breath. She was glad the two young people had come to no harm and had even enjoyed their day, but at the same time she was grateful that she would not have to talk about how she had spent the time, at least not until she could invent something convincing to say about it. She wanted to hug the truth to herself a little longer, for it was too precious to share.

They returned to a golden Paris, and not just because the sun was setting over the city and casting gilt over the old stone of the buildings. For Maddie the whole world seemed golden that afternoon. She wished it did not have to end.

But it ended abruptly. Laurie was the first to notice the discreet but palpable excitement buzzing through the Ritz when they arrived. The lobby was even more tranquil than usual, but there was a sense of important things happening behind doors.

“What’s going on?” he said, reaching automatically for his camera before Daisy reminded him that he had run out of film long ago. Devin frowned and looked around. Half a dozen plainclothes Paris policemen trying to mingle with the crowd around the entrance intruded on his professional notice, and he let out a muttered curse.

“Devin?” Maddie asked. “What is it?”

“The prince is here.” He handed the key for the Daimler to Laurie with instructions to drive it around to the carriage entrance and leave the key with Henri at the door. Then he jumped out and ran up the steps into the hotel without so much as a good-night to any of them.

He hadn’t meant to be rude, but he was halfway across the lobby before he realized what Maddie might think. He came to a halt, cursed again, and was about to turn around when a familiar voice called his name. “Grant, my dear fellow!”

Devin fixed a civil smile on his face and made a bow as the imposing bulk of the Prince of Wales emerged from the private salon that had been set aside for his use on the ground floor; he wore a white flower in his buttonhole and a warm smile on his round face. One hand held his usual cigar, and the other was placed on Florence Wingate’s waist. Devin’s apology stuck in his throat as he took in this unexpected development.

“I hear you have been out cavorting in Rothschild’s motor,” the prince said. “Are you exhausted? You should be after all that fresh air.”

“Not at all, sir. I am at your service.”

“In that case, you must meet another who, although she does not, regrettably, share our nationality, claims the same devotion. My dear, allow me to introduce you to my most ardent protector—”

“Mr. Grant and I have met, sir,” Florence said, at her most Southern and with a smile that became an impish grin when she turned it on Devin while holding her hand out to him.

He shook it absently. “Mrs. Wingate. Sir, I must apologize for not being here to meet you. No one told me—that is, I neglected to check with the hotel on your arrival time when I left this morning.”

“Really, dear boy, you must rid yourself of this unfortunate habit you have of assuming blame that does not exist. It was simply that we stopped at Rouen for luncheon. Rouen bored me within the hour, so I made up our minds that we would travel directly on to Paris. And a fortunate thing it was that I did so, for I walked into the hotel at the same moment that Mrs. Wingate here was leaving it—a happy accident, indeed. We’re going to the Epatant tonight. Will you join us?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You needn’t make it sound like a chore, dear boy. You always have the damndest luck at baccarat.”

“If Mr. Grant wins at cards,” Florence said, “ah’m sure it is entirely through his skill. He does not look to be a man who leaves anythin’ to luck.”

The prince laughed at that and told Devin he must take care around clever American ladies who did not hesitate to speak their minds. They agreed on a meeting place later that afternoon, and the prince went off still holding on to Florence, who gave Devin a knowing look over her shoulder.

Devin waited until the prince had kissed Florence’s hand and got into the lift without her before he turned on his heel and went to make up for what he considered to be his lapse in duty. Nothing apparently was amiss in the security arrangements, the Ritz having become accustomed long since to the prince’s whims, but Devin could not help feeling that something was going to go wrong. He recognized that his concern probably stemmed from his dereliction of duty that afternoon, but that did not mean that something might not go amiss just the same. He was glad he had not been at Rouen when the prince’s other escorts were discommoded by his change of plan.

And so he erased from his mind, if not from his senses, the memory of Maddie’s lovely body, warm with sun and passion, and of the unexpectedly intense feelings she had evoked in him, and he focused his energy instead on looking after the prince. He had a word with the police detectives assigned to follow the prince’s carriage everywhere it went and satisfied himself that they were reliable. He took a cab to the Union Artistique, the exclusive club known to its habitués as 1’Epatant, to have a private word with the owner about the honor his establishment was about to enjoy.

Then he returned to the hotel to make a nuisance of himself with the prince’s equerry, who finally told him, “Look, Grant, I have no more control over the great man’s caprices than you do. Furthermore, although I shall deny it if you mention it to a living soul, I have no idea where else he plans to go today. He does
not
tell me everything. God forbid that he should.”

Devin had to laugh at that. “Sorry, Fritz, I suppose I’m just jumpy, what with all this talk of plots. Does he still insist on going to Baden, by the way?”

“He is convinced he ought to make a gesture of good will toward his cousin, Emperor Wilhelm, although personally I think mere gestures are lost on that stone wall.”

“I suppose we can be grateful to the Kaiser for closing the casinos,” Grant said, “so that there isn’t a great deal to do at any of the German spas. If this visit is cut short for
lack of amusement, we will both be spared a deal of trouble.”

Frederick Ponsonby looked at him sympathetically. Ponsonby was a good-looking man about Devin’s age, a former Guards officer who currently served as an assistant private secretary to the queen. But the prince liked him and had spirited him away from the gloom of Windsor for this trip. Devin knew Ponsonby had jumped at the assignment as a welcome change from dealing with an imperious old lady’s crotchets, but service to the Prince of Wales had its perils too, as Ponsonby was fast finding out.

“I’m more than happy to leave you to attempt to instill some sense of dynastic responsibility in him,” Ponsonby said. “I have only to keep his lady friends from meeting one
another.”

“Better you than me,” Devin retorted, making Ponsonby laugh.

“Do you know what I’ve already had to deal with?” he asked, relaxing for a moment and ticking the items off on his fingers.  “One social-climbing German tourist who wants the prince to officially open his carpet factory in Berlin. An ex-army officer who claims he served the prince’s father and was promised a pension he never got. And an opera dancer who wants a copy of the key to the royal suite so that she can give him a private performance!”

“What did Mrs. Wingate want with him?”

“Who?”

Devin explained, and Ponsonby rolled his eyes. “I missed that one, apparently.”

Devin grinned. “Yes, I can see that taking care of him out of doors, in the sight of thousands, is infinitely easier than minding his business behind closed doors. But don’t worry about the Wingate. I doubt she’s clever enough to hold his attention for long, and in the meantime I can keep an eye on her.”

“Thank you,” Ponsonby said, restored now to his usual even temper. As Devin went out, he promised to let him know at once about any changes in the prince’s social calendar of which His Royal Highness might see fit to inform his humble servant.

#

That very day proved the impossibility of keeping up with that calendar, for the prince told his staff no more than that he was in Paris to enjoy himself and that the best way to do so was to remain open to any amusing novelty that came along. The prince was an ardent Francophile; he spoke the French language and understood the French style better than any other Englishman. He crossed the channel several times a year for no more reason than that he felt an inclination to stroll along the boulevards, looking into shop windows and purchasing a dozen shirts at Charvet, a hat at Genot, and a diamond necklace—presumably for the Princess Alexandra, but no one was so indiscreet as to ask—at Cartier. He registered at the Ritz as the “Duke of Lancaster,” deceiving no one but maintaining the fiction that he was no different from any other tourist.

The “duke” wasted no time getting on with his pleasures, and that very afternoon Devin found himself accompanying him on a promenade up the Champs-Elysées to the Café des Ambassadeurs, after which it was time to go to dinner at Léon’s and then to the gaming room at l’Epatant, where Devin sat opposite the prince, watching Florence Wingate whisper advice to him from her vantage point just behind his ear. Fortunately, Geoffrey Wingate soon joined them, and when the prince’s party went on to finish the evening at two a.m. at the cabaret at the Lion d’Or, Florence was no longer with them, relieving Devin of
that worry, at least. He even allowed himself to sit down and order the first wine he’d considered all evening.

He sat there in the semidarkness watching the prince and his
Jockey Club friends only a few tables away, loudly applauding a new, very young and pretty
chanteuse,
who was well aware of her audience and played to him shamelessly. The contingent of French policemen, appropriately disguised as patrons of the café, was still doggedly in
attendance and holding up better than Devin was. He hoped this would be their last stop. He would need his sleep, for tomorrow promised more of the same, starting with a drive in the Bois de Boulogne and ending with a visit to the theater where, if Grant was lucky, the prince would
not
join the cast as he had been known to do in the past.

It was noisy in the café, but the part of the noise that was directed at the prince was within normal limits—Grant could always hear when a sour note struck—and none of it mattered to him personally, so he blocked it out and for a few moments indulged in conjuring up images of Madeleine Malcolm, of her soft skin and the perfume that came from her
hair—he’d have to find out what scent she used and send her some—and her smile. It pleased him that she smiled so much, not just at him, but because she found beauty in the world. That was more important to him than if she smiled like some coquette, only to please him. She smiled at life, and that had the effect of dissipating some of the tension that had been building in him lately and of softening the hardness he had developed as both a professional and a personal defense.

But how was he going to tell her the truth that would make that smile die in her? He hadn’t lied to her thus far, but he hadn’t told her every truth either. He should have told her at the beginning, but they hadn’t trusted each other enough for that. Now...

It had been just too coincidental that she should have come to him just when she did, when he was frustrated in his own search for a simple answer to the valet Lamont’s murder. Every lead he had followed had turned up new questions and no answers, so it was not surprising that he had looked to her for one. It was also too much of a coincidence that her husband’s body had been fished out of the Seine just when it had, even if she didn’t believe it was really his.