of her features softening slightly as she looked at the younger woman. ‘You must not linger here, Lisette, when there are customers needing to be served.’
‘As you say, Helene.’ Lisette’s dark auburn lashes were lowered demurely as her aunt gave Christian one last warning glance before departing with a swish of her skirts. In the direction of the kitchen, it was to be hoped.
Christian found it curious that the younger woman addressed the older one by her first name rather than as her tante. Adding to the mystery of this relationship, that no amount of watching and spying on both André Rousseau before the man’s death, and Helene Rousseau in the months since, had managed to discover, let alone explain.
‘Would you care to sit down and join me, mademoiselle?’ Christian held back one of the chairs at his table.
Lisette eyed him curiously. ‘I am at work, Comte, not leisure.’ And she would not have frequented a tavern such as this one even if she were.
Until just a few months ago, Lisette had lived all of her nineteen years in the French countryside, far away from any city, let alone Paris. It had been a shock for her to suddenly find herself living in such a place as this tavern, after the death of the couple she had believed to be her parents.
Believed to be her parents...
The truth of the matter had only emerged on the day of their funeral, when a carriage had arrived at their farm late that afternoon and a tall and haughty blonde woman had stepped down, a look of complete disdain on her face as she stepped carefully across the farmyard to the house.
Learning that this woman was actually her mother had been even more of a shock to Lisette than losing the couple she had believed to be her parents.
Helene Rousseau claimed Lisette had been fostered with the Duprées since she was a very young baby, and that they had been sent money every month for her upkeep.
Having never so much as set eyes on this woman before that day, Lisette had been disinclined to believe her at first. Although she could think of no reason why anyone would want to make such a false claim; Lisette was not rich, and even the Duprées’ farm had been left to their nephew rather than Lisette.
The reason for which had become obvious with the arrival of Helene Rousseau.
The older woman had clearly been prepared for Lisette’s disbelief and had brought letters with her that she had received every month from the Duprées, in relation to Lisette’s health and well-being.
It was the non-appearance of this month’s letter that had alerted Helene Rousseau to the fact that something was amiss on the Duprée farm; enquiries had informed her that both of the Duprées had died when a tree had fallen during a storm and landed on that part of the farmhouse where the Duprées’ bedchamber was situated.
Lisette had only needed to read three of those letters sent by the Duprées to Helene Rousseau to know that the older woman was telling the truth; Lisette was indeed the other woman’s illegitimate daughter.
What had followed still seemed like something of a dream to Lisette—or perhaps it might better be described as a nightmare?
Her belongings had all been quickly packed into a trunk—Helene Rousseau had disdained the idea of spending so much as a single night at the farm—after which Lisette had been bundled into the coach with the other woman before then travelling through the night to Paris.
If Helene Rousseau had found the sight and sounds of the farmyard unacceptable, then Lisette had been rendered numb by the noise and dirt of Paris as the carriage drove through the early morning streets.
Tradesmen were already about, hawking their wares amongst the people lying drunk in shop doors and alleyways, several overpainted and scantily dressed ladies slinking off into those same alleyways as the carriage passed by them.
The tavern Helene Rousseau owned and ran had been even more of a shock, situated as it was in one of the poorer areas of the city, with patrons to match.
It had been no hardship at all for Lisette to remain apart from such surroundings. To keep mainly in the bedchamber assigned to her by Helene—even all these weeks later Lisette could not think of the older woman as anything more than the woman who had given birth to her before then abandoning her for the next nineteen years. As far as Lisette was concerned, sending money for her daughter’s upkeep did not equate to love on Helene Rousseau’s part, only a sense of responsibility; the other woman had made no attempt in all of those years to actually see or speak with her daughter.
Given a choice, Lisette would not have travelled to Paris with Helene Rousseau at all. But she did not have a choice. How could she, when she had no money of her own, her foster parents were both dead and their nephew had made it clear that she could not continue to live on the farm once he had moved there with his wife and large family?
But within days of arriving in Paris, Lisette had come to hate it with a vengeance. It was smelly and dirty, and the people she occasionally met out in the streets or the tavern were not much better. And Helene Rousseau proved to be a cold and distant woman with whom Lisette had nothing in common but her birth.
There was also deep unrest still amongst the Parisian people, who had first had a king, then an emperor, then a king again, and then again an emperor, only for that emperor to then once again be deposed and their king returned to them.
Such things had not affected Lisette when she’d lived on the farm with the Duprées. There they had only been concerned with caring for the animals, and the setting of and then bringing in of the harvest each year.
But political intrigues seemed to abound in Paris, with neighbour speaking out against neighbour, often with dire consequences.
Lisette also strongly suspected there were meetings held in one of the private rooms above the tavern, in which that political unrest was avidly and passionately discussed. Meetings over which Helene Rousseau presided...
‘Then perhaps you might meet with me outside and join me for a late supper at my home when you have finished your work for the night...?’
Lisette’s eyes widened in shock as she looked up at the handsome gentleman who did not seem as if he should be in such a place as this lowly tavern at all, let alone asking one of the serving women if she would meet him for supper.
No doubt he was one of those gentlemen the Duprées had warned her of when she’d reached her sixteenth birthday and had shown signs of developing a womanly figure. Gentlemen who gave not a care if they disgraced an innocent, before continuing merrily on their way.
‘I am afraid that will not be possible, Monsieur la Comte—’ She broke off as the lavender-eyed Comte stepped forward to prevent her from leaving. ‘I must return to my work, monsieur,’ she insisted firmly.
Christian found that he had no wish for Lisette to return to her work. Indeed, he discovered he was not favourably inclined to this young and beautiful woman working in this tavern at all.
It was a lowly, bawdy place, where he had just observed a man thrusting his hand down the low-cut bodice of a barmaid’s gown, before popping that breast out completely so that he might fondle and suckle a rosy nipple. Where in another shadowy corner of the tavern he could see another couple, the woman’s skirts pushed up to her waist, the man’s breeches unfastened, as the two of them actually fornicated in front of all who cared to watch.
Christian,
