She didn’t mind the spartan quarters. She was home so rarely. In another month, the opera company would go on tour. It made no sense to have a fulsome home sitting empty most of the time when a simple utilitarian one would do.
But there was no denying the house looked shabbier than usual after Sebastian’s grand country manor. Arabella glanced up and down the block, but saw no one out of the ordinary. If Sebastian’s men were watching, there was no sign of them.
Well, he said I wouldn’t catch them at it, didn’t he? she thought as she entered the green door that needed a fresh coat of paint.
“Oh, Miss St. George.” Her landlady called to her as she started up the stairs with her valise in hand. “There’s a gentleman caller waiting for you in your salon. He didn’t give me his name, but he said it would be quite agreeable with you if I let him in. He was such a forceful, lordly sort of fellow, I couldn’t say no. Did I do right?”
Her traitorous heart did a little jig. Forceful and lordly. Sebastian was there. Who else would know she was coming home today? Maybe he couldn’t live with the idea that they were finished and had come to amend their plans.
“Yes, Mrs. Burnham,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “You acted correctly.”
Arabella fought the urge to lift her skirt and run the rest of the way to her upper floor. When she pushed open her door, she found all the drawers in her bureau pulled out and the contents upended in the middle of the room. Sheet music was scattered across the floor. The bust of Mozart that had lived on her piano was lying on its side with its marble nose broken clean off.
Fernand de Lisle was lounging before her small, cold fireplace, one booted leg draped over the arm of her chintz-covered wing chair. He leisurely ripped pages from a libretto of the Marriage of Figaro.
“Bon jour, chérie,” he said without a glance in her direction. “Do you like what I have done with the place?”
Arabella set down her valise and advanced to the center of the room. The door to her bed chamber was ajar. Fernand had pulled her mattress from the frame for a thorough search. White feathers piled at the end of the bed like a downy snow bank. The Aubusson carpet was rolled to one side.
“At least you haven’t ripped up the floors,” she said, trying to project a calm exterior despite the fact that her insides were leaping about like tree frogs.
“Not yet.” He punctuated his words by quickly tearing out another page.
“There’s no need to destroy my things.”
He bared his teeth in a feral smile. “My poor Arabella. No chance of replacing them with new ones, eh? I saw from the window that His Grace did not return you to London in style. You kept that man for even less time than usual. Or perhaps, he was the one who would not do the keeping.”
“My personal life is none of your affair,” she said tight-lipped, irritated that Fernand read the situation as accurately as she could sight-read a cadenza. “I have what you want.”
“Ah, and I think I have what you want as well, non?”
“Yes.” Arabella forced herself to sit in the chair opposite him. “It has come to my attention that you have taken a closer interest in your daughter.”
“You give me too much credit. My feelings toward the child are far less patriarchal than you suppose.” He dropped the tattered remains of the libretto and leaned toward her. “However if you give me the envelope, she will be returned unharmed.”
“I have only your word that she is unharmed now,” Arabella said, her spine like steel. When she was onstage, she sometimes erected a barrier in her mind between herself and the character she portrayed. It was for her own protection. The mind could not tell the difference between real and pretend and if she must die nightly, a little distance between her real self and her character was essential. She erected the same barrier now. If she let herself actually experience the fact that her daughter was in danger, she didn’t think she could do what she must in order to free her. “I demand to see Lisette before I give you the envelope.”
“Do you have it with you?” Fernand asked in the same beguiling tone the Serpent must have used when he told Eve she would not surely die. “Bear in mind I would not find searching you distasteful in the least. I can be most thorough.”
“Give me credit for knowing that much about you, Fernand. You may believe me when I tell you I do not have it in my possession, but I know where it is. Now, where is Lisette?”
Fernand narrowed his eyes at her, clearly weighing her for veracity. “Tres bien, we shall grant your request. For sake of the old times, non?” He offered her his arm. “Come, chérie.”
She swallowed back her rising bile and laid a hand on his forearm.
Fernand escorted her out of the house and down the block to a busier street where he hailed a hansom. Bella resisted the urge to look for Sebastian’s men. If they were actually shadowing her, their task would be complicated by the cab ride. Her only consolation was that the London streets were clogged with market traffic and the going was slow.
She was surprised when Fernand signaled a halt before an old church and led her to the heavy oak door.
“Careful,” she said as they entered the cool, silent nave. “The Prince of Darkness ought to feel wary when treading alongside the angels.”
Fernand chuckled. “Have you not read that when the sons of God gathered in heaven, Lucifer was not shut out? He was allowed before the throne itself to accuse Job and no lightning bolts descended upon him. But you are right. I have no use for the church. However, today it will allow you to see that your Lisette, she is fine.” He led her to the winding stairs leading up to the bell tower. “For now.”
As they climbed, the stairs narrowed till Fernand’s shoulders brushed both sides of the ancient stone. Bella strained her ears, hoping to hear Lisette’s small voice above her, but only the whispered sibilance of air currents whooshing through the tower brushed by her.
When they emerged beneath the broad single bell in the tower, Bella discovered no one else there. “You promised to take me to see Lisette.”
“And so I shall,” Fernand said. “Never let it be said a Frenchman’s word is not honored.”
He pulled a small spyglass from his pocket and positioned himself to view through the wooden slats that protected the verdigris-covered bell from the worst predations of weather. “And there is your little cherub now. Come. See.”
Arabella took the spyglass from him and trained it in the same direction. “I don’t . . . oh.”
Lisette was in a small garden behind a rickety tenement, chasing a puppy around the clumps of plantings as fast as her childish legs would carry her. An elderly woman watched from the back stoop and a lean, much younger man stood sentinel at the garden gate.
“I don’t understand. You said you would take me to her.”
“Non, I said you would see her. I did not promise she would see you. As you can tell, she is unharmed.” Fernand leaned on the large bell and forced the clapper to strike the side with a long ringing tone. “Whether that happy state continues, it is entirely in your lovely hands.”
While Arabella watched, the old woman’s gaze jerked toward the bell tower. She scooped up Lisette and took her inside. The young man followed them back into the house.
“They will remove to a different location now,” Fernand said. “On the off chance that you are foolish enough to believe someone might be able to snatch her from me.”
Bella balled her fingers into fists at her side. If Sebastian’s people were watching, they’d have no way to see where Lisette was and no hope of retrieving her. In this chess game of wits, Fernand was at least two moves ahead.
“Now, before my patience is exhausted, where is the envelope?”
Their opening gambit had failed. She had no choice but to make the next move. “It’s hidden at the Olympic.” She hoped to heaven Sebastian had found time to stash its replacement there.
“This I will not believe. Your dressing room I have already searched.”
“It’s not in my dressing room, but trust me, it’s in a very safe place.”
“If the envelope is in the theatre, why did you not give it to me the night I first demanded it?”
It was time to brazen out the play. Bella leaned toward him and patted his cheek. “Because, Fernand, you are only a French viscount of no fortune. I had a duke’s coach and pair waiting for me at the stage door. There was simply no time for you and your dodgy games. Besides, I knew the envelope would still be where I left it once I returned to town.”
He clamped her wrist in a painful grip. “You had better be telling me the truth.”
She lifted her chin, unwilling to let him see he was hurting her. “You have my daughter. I have no reason to lie. There is a way for both of us to get what we want here. Give Lisette back to me and we’ll go to the theatre to retrieve your envelope.”
He released her wrist and motioned for her to descend the bell tower stairs. “First, we will visit the Olympic.”
* * * * *
Sebastian watched from his perch on the back of a hansom as Bella and the Frenchman emerged from the old church and re-entered their cab. It was Sebastian’s idea to switch jackets and hats with Mr. Harris and hide in plain sight while the Bow Street Runner was disguised as his fare. No one ever marked a hack driver, and no one would expect to find the 8th Duke of Winterhaven in the gig’s high seat. He rapped twice on the cover of the coach. Mr. Harris climbed out and went through the motions of paying for his ride.
“The child’s not in the church or Miss St. George wouldn’t have left without her,” Sebastian said, one eye trained on the retreating cab Arabella and de Lisle entered. “She must be someplace near though. Have your men do a thorough search of the surrounding blocks. Find her, Harris. Everything depends upon it.”
Then Sebastian flicked the ribbons over the back of the pie-bald cob and set off at a trot after Arabella. He was careful to hang back so as not to be noticed. When it became clear the Olympic was their destination, he pulled into a side alley, tied the horse to a lamp post and walked the rest of the way.
Much as he chafed to bring the confrontation with de Lisle to a head, he couldn’t follow them into the theatre. It would endanger Arabella now. He had to let the Frenchman make the first move. Only once de Lisle made an attempt on his life would Sebastian be free to act.
He wondered if things would have been different if he’d behaved in a more gentlemanly manner toward Arabella that first night. If he hadn’t assumed she’d become his mistress, hadn’t acted as if their relationship was a fait accompli, would she have mistaken him for the sort of man to whom she was supposed to give the traitorous envelope?
Like everything else in his life, he expected her to fall neatly into his plans, never considering that her life might have its own twists and wrinkles that needed straightening.
He’d been a selfish bastard.
He checked the time on his pocket watch. Only five minutes had passed, but it seemed like an eternity since she disappeared through the theatre’s side door. He really ought to have left this watchful waiting to his subordinates, but he couldn’t bear to cool his heels in his townhouse, all the while tormenting himself with the thought of her forced to bear the company of a man who’d brought her such grief.