have you been?’
Lisette, having just closed and locked the window behind her, after climbing back into the storeroom at the back of the tavern, now gave a gasp of shock as she turned to face her accuser.
Helene stood in the doorway in her night robe, her tall frame silhouetted by the candle left burning outside in the hallway, her hair loose about her shoulders, eyes glittering with her displeasure. ‘I asked where you have been,’ she repeated harshly.
Lisette swallowed, her lips having gone dry. ‘I could not sleep— I went— I thought to—’ She faltered as she realised that nothing she said was going to excuse the fact that she had obviously left the tavern sometime earlier tonight and was now sneaking back in again. Or change the fact that Helene had somehow discovered her disappearance. ‘I went for a walk.’ Her chin rose in challenge.
Helene reached for the candle in the hallway, bringing the light into the room to illuminate the stored barrels and sacks, as well as a defiant and no doubt dishevelled Lisette; how could she be any other when she had been climbing in and out of a window?
‘You went to Saint-Cloud.’ Helene’s nostrils flared with distaste. ‘Do not attempt to deny it; I saw you arrive back just now in his carriage.’
Lisette’s heart sank. She had told Monsieur le Comte, had in fact pleaded with him to let her depart the carriage in the street adjoining this one, but he would have none of it. Had instead insisted on bringing her to the back door of the tavern and waiting in his carriage until he was sure she had climbed safely back inside. She had seen his carriage depart as she closed and locked the window.
Well, the Comte was now gone, she was ‘back inside’, but the fury in Helene’s expression did not augur well for it being ‘safely’.
Helene carefully placed the lit candle down on top of one of the barrels. ‘I told you earlier that I did not approve of you associating any further with the Comte.’
‘I do not believe you actually told me not to—’
‘Do not contradict me, Lisette.’ The woman who was her mother glared at her furiously. ‘The Comte is a dangerous man.’
‘He has always behaved the gentleman towards me,’ Lisette defended, her cheeks burning as she knew that was not strictly true; after all, he had kissed her, not once, but twice.
Helene gave an impatient shake of her head at that telling blush. ‘You have not only openly defied me by meeting secretly with the Comte, but defiled your own reputation at the same time—’
‘I have done nothing wrong!’ she asserted heatedly.
‘I do not believe you.’
‘I do not care—’ She broke off with a pained gasp as Helene’s hand struck out at her face. Hard.
Lisette raised a shocked hand as she felt the sting of pain and then the flow of blood on her bottom lip, her fingers covered with the sticky redness when she looked down at them through tear-filled eyes.
No one had ever struck her before this. Not for any reason.
She kept her hand pressed against her bleeding lip as she glared her defiance at the older woman. ‘That was truly unforgivable!’
‘No more so than your own behaviour has been tonight.’ Helene looked at her coldly, unrepentantly. ‘I did not bring you to Paris so that you could whore yourself for the first titled gentleman to show you attention.’
‘Then why did you bring me here?’ Lisette challenged, chin held high. ‘You do not care for me. You do not even acknowledge me as your daughter,’ she added scornfully as she remembered what the Comte had said to her earlier. ‘What am I even doing here?’
Helene gave a snort. ‘What else was I supposed to do with you once I learned the Duprées were both dead?’
Lisette felt a fresh sting of tears in her eyes at this woman’s total lack of feeling for her.
If she had needed any confirmation of that, after Helene had just struck her without warning or sign of regret.
She straightened her spine. ‘In that case, it will be no hardship to you if I remove myself from here tomorrow.’
‘To go where?’ the older woman derided. ‘To your titled lover, perhaps? As if the Comte would have you! To a man such as he, you will either have been no more than a source of information about me—’
‘You flatter yourself, madame!’
‘—or a willing female body in his bed. If it was the latter, then I have no doubt he has already forgotten you!’
Lisette could not deny the truth of this last comment; that the Comte had gone out for further entertainment, after bringing her back to the tavern, proved that the kisses they had shared had meant nothing to him. As she meant nothing to him.
‘Do not assume everyone to have the same morals as yourself, madame,’ she hit back in her humiliation.
‘Why, you little—’
‘If you hit me again, then I shall be forced to retaliate!’ Lisette warned, her hands now clenched into fists at her sides as she faced the taller woman challengingly.
Helene fell back a step as grudging respect dawned in those icy blue eyes. ‘This is the first occasion when I have seen any visible sign that you are my daughter.’
‘And it will be the last!’ Lisette assured her scornfully. ‘I intend to pack my bags, such as they are, and leave here in the morning.’
‘As I asked before—to go where?’ The older woman looked at her coldly. ‘You have only the few francs I have given you since you arrived here; have no other money of your own. You do not own anything that I have not given you. You have nowhere else to go, Lisette.’
Another indisputable truth.
The very same truth Lisette had told Christian Beaumont earlier this evening...
‘If you choose to leave here, you will have no choice but to become a whore or to starve,’ Helene added cruelly.
‘Then I will starve, madame,’ she replied with dignity.
‘You are behaving like a child, Lisette,’ the other woman bit out impatiently.
No, what Lisette was doing inwardly was shaking in reaction to this unpleasant conversation, and her bottom lip now felt sore and swollen from the painful slap she had received from Helene Rousseau. Something Lisette still found difficult to believe had happened at all, when the Duprées, of no relationship to her at all, had shown her nothing but love and kindness for the past nineteen years.
Although that slap certainly made it easier for Lisette to accept her own lack of softer feelings towards Helene. Something she had felt guilty about until this moment. But no longer. Helene Rousseau was a cold and unemotional woman, and one Lisette found it impossible to feel affection for, let alone love. Now that she had decided to leave she did not need to bother trying to do that any more.
Helene was right, of course, in that Lisette
