Page 10 of The Beautiful Ones

“What is it?” I whispered.

Cécile looked at me, then pointed urgently toward the man below.

“You know him?”

She nodded.

“From where?”

Her lips parted, but no sound came.

Below us, the messenger withdrew a letter.

Cécile seized my wrist.

Then I understood.

“Commander Vale?”

Another nod.

Not Vale himself.

His messenger.

A man she had apparently seen often enough to recognize even beneath the road dust coating his clothes.

Monsieur Lebon recognized him too.

Whatever greeting he might otherwise have offered disappeared the instant the man extended the letter. Monsieur glanced toward the upper windows, closed his hand around the envelope and hurried the messenger toward the house without opening it.

Even from above, I saw the color leave his face.

“Did he see us?” I whispered.

“He sees what concerns him,” Dinah answered as she released Cécile. “Don’t be of concern, child.”

The messenger removed his hat once more and wiped his forehead with his sleeve before following Monsieur inside. He had ridden hard to reach Le Champ des Fleurs; dust covered the shoulders of his coat, his boots were white with it, and even his horse stood beneath the portico with its head lowered and foam gathering around the bit.

Within moments, the bell in Monsieur’s study began ringing, sending a sharp summons through the house.

The household responded like a dry field touched by a spark. A footman hurried toward the front hall, another was sent to find Madame, and someone called for brandy although it was not yet nine o’clock in the morning. Doors opened and closed along the passage below us while hurried voices carried up the staircase, each one lowered as soon as its owner remembered that Cécile’s bedroom stood directly overhead.

Cécile remained at the window, staring at the place where the messenger had disappeared.

“You are certain he belonged to Commander Vale?”

She hurried to the writing desk and took up her pen.

He carried Nathaniel’s letters.

“How often?”

Often enough.

Of course she would remember him.

Nathaniel Vale had not merely been a visitor to Le Champ des Fleurs. For a time, before his name became something respectable people lowered their voices to discuss, everyone had expected him to become part of the family.