City of Secrets (27 page)

“Yes, sir. Thank you!” Laurie said, not so overwhelmed by the honor bestowed on him that he was not quick to take advantage of it. Maddie was sure that he would not have been so amateurish as to forget to load the camera with
fresh film either.

Laurie jumped down from the carriage, made his bow, and aimed his camera. The prince, who was already well practiced in the ways of cameramen, assumed just the right posture and looked off to the right of Laurie’s ear just at the moment he snapped the picture. Laurie wasted no time in taking several shots but did not press his advantage.

“Thank you very much, sir,” he said, to indicate that he had finished. “I am much obliged.”

After exchanging a few more words establishing that Mrs. Malcolm was also stopping at the Ritz and that Mr. Fox
would send up a print of the photograph the next day, the
prince asked Maddie if she were going to the theater
the
following night to see the divine Sarah Bernhardt.

“I intend to, sir,” she said and saw Devin grin. She hoped his good will would extend to getting her tickets, for up to this moment Maddie had not even considered going to the theater.

“Splendid! I look forward to seeing you there, Mrs. Malcolm. Good day to you.”

He tipped his hat again, and his driver, obviously accustomed to these royal attentions to female admirers and the subsequent brusque royal dismissals, started up the horses again. A moment later the party, including Devin, was gone.

#

Maddie tried to tell herself it would be a mistake to hope for
too much, but she allowed herself to be happy about the
meeting in the Bois and to look forward to the evening. But when four theater tickets duly arrived, accompanied only by Devin’s note that he would try to see her in the interval, she had to steel herself against the possibility of not seeing him at all. Ridding her imagination of the dream of his making love to her again that night was harder.

Laurence Fox and Daisy Jervis were more than excited enough when they set off for the Theatre de la Renaissance to mask any apprehension on her part, however, and Lady Jervis acknowledged it only unwittingly, by treating Maddie like a contemporary and complaining good-naturedly about the high spirits and lack of discipline of the young.

It had been long enough since Maddie was last inside a theater to make her curious about it. Most of the ladies sat in the dress circle, while below them, a more gregarious group of people milled about the orchestra pit. The old-fashioned decoration reminded Maddie of the theaters in New Orleans, which was where she first went to a play with Teddy. He had enjoyed the theater, but like most of the patrons tonight, he enjoyed it most as a social occasion. Sometimes he even slept through the acts in order to be awake during the intermission, when he would go off and visit his friends.

She remembered that once, in St. Louis, she had watched him over the balcony as he made his way through the crowds below. It had been that period when he worked for Richard Brokmeyer, and Maddie thought he was particularly good at being friendly to people who might be of use to his employer. But then she had seen him deliberately cut someone—an old friend who looked after him in astonishment.

“Didn’t you see George Lasker waving to you?” she had
asked him when he came back to the box.

“I saw him.”

He’d looked at her then, as if at a child who could not be expected to understand, and explained that George had voted against Richard at the last council meeting.

“Well, why shouldn’t he? He belongs to another party and must vote his own way,” she had replied.

“But his was the deciding vote. We lost because of it.”

She’d asked him then if he’d still be talking to George if he’d been in the majority, which set off a quarrel between them—they were happening more frequently then. Maddie had been left with the uncomfortable feeling that her husband was an opportunist, and worse—one to whom honesty came naturally only when it came in handy.

She had managed to block that little incident out of her mind until now, and tonight she wondered if there had been more of them that she simply refused to recall.

Looking across the auditorium, she could see Devin Grant standing up in a box by himself. Presumably it was the prince’s, and Devin was making sure that everything was in order. He cast a critical eye over the rest of the theater, passing over Maddie’s box as if he didn’t see her in it. But then he did; his glance came back, and she saw that it was different for a moment. He smiled, but then continued his scrutiny with that same searching look.

It was only when the lights were beginning to dim for the start of the performance that the “Duke of Lancaster” entered his box. But he was instantly recognized, and a cheer went up from the pit. He waved in acknowledgment, then sat down as a signal that the play could begin.

The performance was only of mild interest. It was a pallid revival of a Rostand drama Madame Bernhardt had played before, and most of the audience were far too interested in what was going on in the Duke of Lancaster’s box, which was directly opposite Maddie’s, to watch the stage. The prince was an ardent admirer of Bernhardt, however, so the actress was not ignored entirely, although Maddie for one thought her style rather stiff.

When the lights went up again for the intermission, Maddie could see Devin at the rear of the prince’s box, apparently performing as gatekeeper, letting in only the select few he knew the prince wished to see. That meant he would not be coming to her.

“Shall we try to gain entrance?” Laurie asked, having spotted Devin, too.

“No,” Maddie said, unwilling to go begging, especially if she were to be rebuffed.

“You may be right. I don’t have the finished print for him yet, in any case, since a person who shall remain nameless spilled my last bottle of fixative.”

Daisy sniffed. Laurie’s exclusive meeting with the prince in the Bois that afternoon still rankled with her, and it was only partly compensated by this visit to the theater, where Daisy was obliged to gaze at the prince through her opera glasses as everyone else was doing. She raised them now and observed that Mrs. Wingate had just sat down next to the prince.

This, obscurely, doubled Maddie’s determination not to join the throng; but when by the end of the second interval Devin had still not come to see her, she began to realize that her pride would not warm her in bed that night. Besides, she could no longer even catch glimpses of him at the back of the royal box.

Only when the lights had dimmed for the last act did she became aware of the door opening at the rear of her own box. There was no further sound for a moment, so she leaned toward Lady Jervis to say she had a headache and was going to the ladies’ withdrawing room for a moment. Then she rose quietly, so as not to draw the attention of Daisy and Laurie sitting in front of her, turned, and walked into Devin Grant’s arms.

He had waited for her on the other side of the curtain that separated the box from the door to the corridor, and when she parted the curtain, he reached out for her and, before she could say anything, covered her mouth with his. She could not resist—this had been too much on her own mind not to welcome it—and she melted into his long, almost desperate embrace.

“Oh, God, I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” he whispered, when he finally let her breathe again.

She smiled up at him and stroked his cheek with her hand. “Couldn’t you wait another hour?”

He looked down at her, and despite having tried to prepare herself, the confirmation that he would not be coming to her after all still came as a shock. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.”

She had been so noble that morning, so secure in her confidence that she would be able to wait for him. Yet now she had to resist the impulse to berate him like an angry wife, to accuse him of breaking promises he had never made. She said nothing, but she could not help pushing away from him, her desire suddenly cooled, and he understood.

“I’m sorry, Maddie. I can’t come to you tonight, and I can’t tell you why I can’t. You must see that it will always be like that, whatever my private desires, and however strong they may be.”

“Of course.”

Even Maddie could hear the ice in her own voice. She didn’t mean it like that, but she couldn’t help it. Suddenly he pulled her to him again and kissed her, harder, with passion but without the gentleness he had shown up until now. His body was hard and rough against hers, his mouth cold and hurting, tearing at the tender places he had caressed before, forcing her to submit to his deliberate assault.

“Don’t be that way!” he said, when finally he let her go and thrust her against the opposite wall. “Don’t be ordinary! I don’t want to be apart from you any more than you—”

He stopped, apparently aware that his anger added to hers was twice as wasteful as one alone. He looked at her once more, in sorrow rather than anger, which made her long to take it all back, to beg his forgiveness.

But he was gone before she had even thought it.

#

Louise had fallen asleep on the sofa where she had been waiting for Maddie long before her mistress came in at almost three o’clock in the morning. Maddie looked at her, her
heart, despite its own bruises, going out to her loyal Louise, and she tiptoed softly past her so she would not wake her from the rather awkward position she had fallen asleep in and would doubtless awaken stiffly from in the morning. She began to undo her own buttons, but gave it up finally and lay down on the bed without removing her clothes.

But sleep would not come. As soon as Maddie’s head touched the pillow, her mind came awake again. Staring at the white-painted ceiling, she saw the sun-dappled whiteness of that pond off in the distance behind the River Inn—but then the clouds seemed to cover the sun and the water turned dark and angry. Turning her head, she saw in the hotel’s window curtains the curtains of that little upstairs parlor in the inn waving gently in the afternoon breeze—and then the heavy red velvet curtain closing over the theater door after Devin left her.

She knew she would not sleep tonight. She got up again to close the drapes over the window. But then she stopped to look down into the Place Vendôme, where the kind of night light that is just preparing for morning sprinkled the cobblestones with silver that gleamed with a promise of rain. No one moved in the square, but it seemed alive, or at least more alive than Maddie felt just then.

Quietly, she took up the opera cloak she had discarded on the sofa and let herself out of the room without waking Louise. A drowsy night concierge came to life when she reached the lobby and went out to signal a cab for her from the rank at the corner.

“Pont Sully,” she told the driver. That was the bridge where Teddy’s body had been found and, presumably, where he had died. Maddie had never gone there before, but then, she had not up until now admitted to herself that Teddy really was dead.

She asked the cabbie to wait at the end of the bridge while she walked out onto it. The moisture in the air was gathering into mist, which would soon fall as rain, so no one else was there; even the Ile Saint-Louis was deserted. Downstream, Notre Dame Cathedral loomed up blackly in the damp night. The gas lamps at either end of the bridge did little to illuminate the river below, which Maddie could hear more clearly than she could see, swishing softly against the stone supports of the bridge. She stared down into the darkness, willing her eyes to penetrate it, to reveal its secrets to her.

Perhaps Devin had been right, so long ago in London. Perhaps she had not wanted to face the truth of Teddy’s death because it meant she must let him go without being able to tell him good-bye or that she was sorry for not really having loved him. She could admit now that she had not loved him—now that she understood only too clearly what loving meant. But if she could only have ended it more finally with Teddy, she would feel freer now to love Devin.

Devin had said, too, that she might have embarked on this search with no real hope of success because she felt responsible for Teddy’s leaving.

She picked up her head, frowning. The only time they had talked about that at all had been that afternoon in the country, yet he had been remarkably perceptive all along. How could he have known so much about her, even at their
first meeting?

Maddie shivered a little in the damp air. She could not resolve these things tonight, so she sighed and turned to signal the cabbie to come for her. But just at that moment, she saw someone standing under the lamp at the end of the bridge. A man. She took a step forward, gasped, and suddenly the man darted down the steps leading to the street, then down an alleyway.

Maddie ran to her cab, her heels clicking loudly on the slick stones of the bridge, and pulled the door open. When she called to the driver to follow the man, he shrugged but turned the cab around anyway while Maddie drummed her fists impatiently on the rolled-down window. But when they were facing the other way again, the streets were still. There was no sign of the man. Maddie looked out the window and saw that the chase was hopeless; wearily she told the driver to take her back to the hotel.

The man she had seen was Teddy.

She was almost positive it was. His height and hair and clothing and the way he stood there under the lamp—she was certain it was Teddy.

But why had he run from her?

And why, when she ought to feel renewed hope at finding him alive after all, did she feel such a crushing sense of loss?

Dawn was breaking when Maddie returned to the hotel. Before she allowed herself time to think about it, she went up to Devin Grant’s room and knocked. And knocked again, but there was no one there. She returned to her own suite and picked up the telephone, but he did not answer her ring either.

Then Louise woke up and began to fuss. Had Maddie just come in? Why had she not awakened her sooner? “You took pale,” Louise continued, “What’s the matter?”

Maddie listened to one last ring and gave up, replaced the receiver, and submitted to Louise’s ministrations. She crawled into bed half an hour later, and the last thing she saw was Louise pulling the heavy drapes across her windows to shut out the morning.