“I know,” Clive told him.
“We did not see him.”
“An usher, perhaps?” Evan asked.
“No. He was not there.”
Evan came around to sit on the arm of Inès’s chair. “Why would she take the chance of discovery and come out into the open like that?”
“She is tired of living in the dark?” Clive shot back. “Perhaps Faucon is not at her beck and call. Perhaps she needs excitement.”
“Or she came out as a warning,” Evan said with gravity in his voice, “to you.”
“But no,” said Giselle, looking at her husband, “she could not have known that we were to go to the theater tonight. Could she?”
“Not unless she has a genii living in our house,” Clive said.
“We did not even decide to go until an hour before curtain,” Giselle added. “My maid would have known. And Clive’s valet, too. Neither one is capable of betrayal.”
“Would they mention it to another servant?” Inès skewered them both with the question. It had been the problem that had ruined her in Boulogne.
Clive shook his head.
Giselle murmured that they would investigate the possibility.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Clive told them. “We wanted you to know. Safety,” he said, and ran his gaze to Inès, “is always our goal.”
Evan was solemn as he said, “Thank you for coming to tell us. I’ll see Durham at nine tomorrow morning and tell him.”
Clive offered a small smile of triumph. “You can tell him that one of my men is following the lady as we sit here. We will find her lair. I promise you that.”
“Oh, that is good news!” Evan brightened for the first time during this meeting.
Clive and Giselle left minutes afterward.
Evan went to the mantel to consider the last flickers of fire behind the grate.
“You are worried,” Inès said to him, and put her arms around his waist, her lips to his broad back.
“I am. This woman—this so-called Mother—does not come out to take the air of Society.”
“Usually she does not. But she had a purpose to appear. One you may never know. She sought someone or tracked someone. Perhaps that someone was not Giselle. Her role, as I understand it, is finished. She is no longer a person of interest. Then too, Giselle said she looks the part. She is a proud woman,mon cher. Why would she not wish to flaunt her good looks and fashion? Women do, despite making mistakes in the process.”
He spun and wrapped his arms around her. “La Mèreis not a simple woman.”
“Darling, when it comes to dressing appropriately, no woman is simple.”
“No. She can afford luxury.”
“Paris must pay her,” she told him with assurance. Vaillancourt—it was bandied about in the faubourgs—paid his agents, near and far, very well.
“I wonder how much she earns,” Evan said.
“A lot, mon cher. All women can afford their fashion. They simply choose their price range and stick to it.”
He threaded his fingers into the long waves of her hair, and she sighed into his embrace. “I love you, wife of mine. You soothe me.”
Even though I myself am now agitated. On guard.
