Comte knew the slight was intended for him, a host whose aristocratic lineage, far superior to Lady Bankfort’s, quite frankly rankled. He also knew that Lady Bankfort and the rest of his guests were conveniently forgetting the moral and material excesses of previous decades when enmity with the French loosened both fashions and mores.
He circulated with an air of entitlement among his guests, his expression faintly patronizing. Relinquishing his glass of champagne to a passing footman, he went to stand within a few feet of a gleaming mahogany Broadwood pianoforte. A hush descended as the candlelight flickered around the man for whom, gossips liked to say, libertinage was a religion. With a string of mistresses, one more beautiful than the last and, conveniently, a wife and requisite heirs permanently traveling abroad, Comte Henri de Maupassant lived as if the ancien régime had never gone the way of the guillotine.
The family history was well known, the lives lost to the Terror, and the quick escape to England with a cache of gold and jewels dating back to the Middle Ages. Le Comte had all but been raised in England save for forays to the continent to reclaim gradually the ancestral lands in France.
“That’s where he found her,” someone in the front row of the assembled guests whispered, “at the Conservatoire in Paris.”
Le Comte smiled faintly in acknowledgment of the remark, his face the detached mask of the polished host. He raised a white-gloved hand for silence and turned to the fashionable crowd who were having trouble dissembling their unfashionable excitement.
Ah yes, the right combination of scandal and titillation always served as the most delectable kind of enticement.
He was certain that Wellington, Whitehall, and the Marquess of Blackburn were all too aware of whom he was dangling right in front of their noses. What delicious irony, ensnaring England’s master spy to do his bidding at long last—and in the most banal way possible. Through the seductive allure of a woman.
“Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began. The sibilant tones carried just a charming hint of accent. “My most heartfelt thanks to all of you for granting me this opportunity to introduce a remarkable sensation.” Le Comte paused deliberately for a moment, lingering on the syllables of that last word, relishing the palpable tension in the room.
“I know that many of you are truly devotees of music, worshippers at the shrine of Apollo, loyal disciples to the world’s greatest composers,” he continued with the barest trace of irony. His words drifted over the candelabra bracketing the footmen who were positioned around the alcoves of the ballroom. Only the fine murmur of expensive fabrics and hushed breaths punctuated the absolute stillness.
“And to do justice to this great devotion, I have the honor of introducing to you this evening my most recent protégée, a young woman recently arrived from France whose talent at interpreting the work of one of our greatest composers is, I submit to you, unparalleled.”
A few nervous coughs as the audience shifted in their chairs and several of the men endeavored not to lean noticeably forward, monocles raised in anticipation.
De Maupassant turned expectantly to the back of the ballroom and began again: “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, Mademoiselle Devon Caravelle.”
As though perfectly choreographed, a figure emerged into the light from under one of the alcoves. As lorgnettes and monocles were raised to catch a glimpse of Le Comte’s latest paramour, she glided toward the pianoforte silently, a column in a swathe of silver tissue. Her slender neck was set off by a square bodice unadorned except for a single choker of emeralds, a deliberate sign to all society of her protector’s possessiveness. Walking gracefully, she held her head high.
Le Comte watched as she reached the small podium which had been positioned in the center of the ballroom. For a moment, she stood facing her audience, her white expanse of shoulders posed against the rich brown of the Broadwood, her expression giving no ground. Her luminous gray eyes regarded her audience almost brazenly, radiating an intelligence and bravado that were shocking in the rarefied elegance of the room.
He bowed slightly as Devon sat before the pianoforte, her dark red hair a halo of fire against the purity of her profile. A few men in the front rows shifted in their evening finery, Le Comte noticed with satisfaction, hardly immune to the strikingly sensuous figure Devon Caravelle presented. She paused, hands held quietly in her lap, her slender legs still. Le Comte took his seat, pleased beyond measure as the first chords of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” were struck.
Strong, wild, and tempestuous, the notes filled every corner of the great space, feeding the growing excitement and disapproval of the assembled guests. It was astounding, scandalous, a woman playing Beethoven when everyone was expecting, at best, Bach. And the choice of music, the “Appassionata.” Everyone knew it had been inspired by the composer’s young mistress.
A totally inappropriate selection, yet how astonishingly and ardently she played. Her supple hands coaxed from the instrument emotions both voluptuous and controlled, her beautiful gray eyes closed to all but the music within her. Dynamic chords set the finale, dissipating to a subtle and haunting conclusion.
She finished to a stunned and thundering silence before launching into the first movement of the Waldstein, an unleashing of demoniac forces that swept the ballroom like the strongest gale. She played with an abandon immodest in its intensity and no man could tear his eyes from the young pianist, her movements a seductive invitation into a world mysteriously closed to them.
Devon played with no respite until the last echoes of the “Sonata in C Major, the Waldstein, slowed to greet another astonished silence from the audience. The lit tapers had burned down with the approach of midnight and Le Comte watched as Devon rose from the bench as if awakening from a deep reverie. The slightest pink tinged her cheekbones, and the emeralds around her throat winked in the candlelight. Her gaze swept the ballroom briefly, but she acknowledged neither her benefactor nor her audience. Cool and distant, without saying a word, she rested a pale hand on the gleaming rosewood of the pianoforte. Then a small, enigmatic smile tilted the corner of her full lips as she stepped away from the instrument and dissolved from the ballroom like a goddess slipping into the night.
But Le Comte knew better. Devon Caravelle was no goddess. She wasn’t slipping away into the night’s ether but toward a hard and inescapable reality in the form of the Marquess of Blackburn. Not even the threat of a torturous death for his brother had brought the proud and incorruptible Marquess to his knees, his self-control and iron will impenetrable.
The Broadwood piano gleamed under the light of the flickering candelabra. He now had the Marquess exactly where he wanted—under the spell of Devon Caravelle. Together they were an unmatchable combination, the only combination that would deliver into his hands the formula for a weapon that would make him the éminence grise of the most powerful emperor the world had seen since ancient times—Napoleon Bonaparte.
By resurrecting Napoleon from St. Helena and by unleashing the terrifying prospect of destruction upon Europe and beyond, Le Comte would reclaim a hundredfold the power, riches, and prestige lost by his family during the Revolution.
Just bring him to me, Devon, the one man who stands in my way.
His fingers gripped the fine stem of his crystal glass in obsessive anticipation.
Devon glanced over her shoulder in the shadowy hallway outside the ballroom, looking for Blackburn—before he came looking for her. The corridor stretched in front of her like a board game with its neatly formulated black and white marble tiles. She stifled the urge to run from all of this, damning the thinness of her gown, the delicacy of her slippers, the parody of a recital. Unlike the usual feelings of euphoria that floated
