An Innocent in Paris Read online

  “Well, good night, Hartcourt. Enjoy yourself.”

  And Lord Hartcourt was now free to take off his decorations and hand them to Hickson. He picked up his top hat, gloves and cane and stepped into the motor car that would carry him to Maxim’s.

  Henriette had sent him a message just before he went in to dinner to say that she would meet him at Maxim’s. He had smiled over the note, written in her somewhat illiterate hand and heavily scented with her favourite perfume.

  He knew only too well why Henriette wished to get to Maxim’s before he did. She would tell him it was to save him trouble, but he knew it was really because she wished to show friends the emerald necklace and receive all their envious exclamations before he arrived.

  He wondered to himself as the car carried him towards the Rue de Madeleine whether Henriette’s friends thought him a fool or a benefactor.

  He was quite aware that had he raised his finger any one of them would have been only too willing to change places with Henriette. He was not so modest as not to appraise his own worth.

  There were many rich men in Paris, but the majority of them were not young, presentable and titled. What was more most were married and a wife always meant complications. It was unlikely that those of the Social world and the Demi-Mondaine would ever come into contact, but there was always the feeling, or so Henriette once told him in an expansive moment, that the wife was an enemy working to destroy her husband’s chère amie.

  “It gives you, how shall I say it,” Henriette had gone on, “a sinister feeling, as if there is someone standing behind you with a knife and knowing that she is praying always that you will have bad luck. It is so much more enjoyable when you are a bachelor.”

  “It is time I settled down,” Lord Hartcourt had replied. “I have a big house in England, a rich estate, and sooner or later I will have to provide an heir.”

  “Do you think I would look pretty in a coronet?” Henriette had asked him. “You should marry me and find out.”

  She had not been serious and they had both laughed at the suggestion. The French Demi-Mondaine knew her place and seldom if ever encroached on what was reserved exclusively for wives.

  Now, annoyingly, it seemed to Lord Hartcourt, this conversation came back to him. An heir! Yes, he would have to be thinking of one very soon.

  His heart sank at the thought of the many debutantes and their mothers who haunted the London ballrooms and somehow, deep in his heart, he knew that Henriette was right when she said that it was tiresome to have a married protector.

  Married men should stay at their homes with their wives, but God knew he would find that boring enough with the type of girl he had encountered so far.

  ‘So what is wrong with me? Why am I being so serious tonight?’ he asked himself.

  He knew that if he was honest he was not looking forward either to Maxim’s or even to the pleasure of seeing Henriette sporting the emerald necklace that was costing him so much.

  The first person he found as he entered Maxim’s was his cousin Bertie, propping up the bar and looking depressed.

  “She has not come,” he told Lord Hartcourt.

  Lord Hartcourt looked round the room as if he thought that Bertie must have overlooked the obvious.

  “Surely that must be the Duchesse over there?” he asked, seeing a large noisy party in the corner and thinking that it was impossible to miss seeing Lily de Mabillon with her faded blonde beauty, her spectacular jewellery and Baron von Knesebech, with his sinister features, seated beside her.

  “All the old gang. No little Gardenia!” Bertram said plaintively.

  “I suppose the Duchesse has locked her up in her room to keep her away from just such wolves as you,” Lord Hartcourt teased him.

  As he spoke, he saw Henriette threading her way through the crowds towards him. She was looking beautiful, he noted with satisfaction. The white chiffon dress she wore showed off the emerald necklace to perfection and there was a great osprey plume in her red hair and a fan of the same feathers in her hand.

  “What can I do?” Bertie asked. “You might help a fellow, Vane.”

  Lord Hartcourt felt suddenly sorry for his cousin.

  “Look after Henriette for a moment,” he suggested. “I will go and find out what I can.”

  He walked across the room and approaching Lily de Mabillon’s table bent over her chair.

  “May I thank you for a delightful party last night, madame?” he asked.

  The Duchesse looked round and gave a little cry of pleasure.

  “Oh, Lord Hartcourt, how sweet of you. But I ought to thank you. I hear you were very kind to my little niece when she arrived unexpectedly in the middle of the night.”

  “It was a pleasure to do what I could,” Lord Hartcourt said. “I hope she is rested after her long journey.”

  “Gardenia is much better today. But, of course, she could not come here with me tonight. You do understand, it would not be comme il faut pour une jeune fille.”

  Lord Hartcourt was too surprised to say anything and after a moment the Duchesse went on,

  “But you must come and see us and she must thank you herself for all you did. What about teatime tomorrow? I promise you an English tea. I always have one myself.”

  “I was thinking that perhaps I might accept your kind invitation for the evening,” Lord Hartcourt said slowly.

  “Of course I am expecting you then, the evening would not be complete without you, but come to tea just with Gardenia and myself and we can talk about England then. I am feeling homesick and I am afraid Gardenia will be too. At four-thirty, I shall be very disappointed if we wait for you in vain.”

  She held out her hand and Lord Hartcourt knew himself dismissed. At the same time he was left in a state of bewilderment. Then it suddenly seemed to him that he saw the light!

  The Duchesse wanted the very best for her niece and who better than himself?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gardenia decided that she disliked the Baron heartily.

  She had the feeling that he was secretly amused by everything she said and she loathed the way he took her by the arm and paid her fulsome compliments with a note of insincerity in his voice.

  But there was no doubt that Aunt Lily was delighted with him. Whenever he arrived she would run towards him with the eagerness of a young girl. She agreed with everything he said and kept looking at him in what Gardenia could only describe as a peculiar way.

  Of course, Gardenia told herself, Aunt Lily was old and she could therefore be friendly towards a man without it appearing fast or reprehensible as it might in anyonn younger.

  At the same time it did seem odd that the Baron should have so much freedom in the house. In fact this evening, for instance, Gardenia could not help feeling that he behaved in many ways as though he was the host.

  It had all started when she had come down to dinner in the new gown that had just been delivered from Worth’s. It had arrived exactly an hour before dinner was due to start and Gardenia had been agitated and apprehensive that it was going to be late, that she would have nothing to wear and would therefore have to stay in her bedroom.

  When at last the box had been carried to her in triumph by Jeanne, she gave a cry of sheer relief.

  “Mon Dieu, c’est magnifique!” Jeanne exclaimed as she opened the white tissue paper to reveal a dress of white chiffon skilfully embroidered with tiny diamond drops.

  The two girls lifted it onto the bed. For the moment Gardenia just stood staring at it. She had never dreamt in all her life that she would ever own anything so lovely or so expensive.

  She could not help a sudden pang as she realised that even a hundredth part of what this dress had cost would have made all the difference to those last few months of poverty when she had had the greatest difficulty in procuring food for her mother.

  Yet she was not feeling bitter. She could so well understand how their difficulties had been forgotten by Aunt Lily or indeed had never been understood by her. At th
e same time, she felt almost guilty now in allowing so much money to be spent on mere ornamentation. But what was the point of repining?

  She knew only too well that her mother would have been very thrilled for her to have the opportunity of being in Paris and of wearing lovely clothes.

  Yet, for the moment, nothing had mattered except that she should be dressed in time for dinner. Jeanne had done her hair and she looked very different from the shabby country girl who had left London.

  Jeanne had her instructions from Aunt Lily, who had taken them from Monsieur Worth himself, as to how her hair should be done. Instead of being frizzed and curled and built up on her head in Merry Widow style. It was waved softly back from her forehead into a big coil that reached from the top of her head to the nape of her neck. It was a distinguished style and it made her look very young.

  At first Gardenia wondered if she would not appear strange and old-fashioned, but when the dress was finally fastened, it revealed the perfect curves of her breast and accentuated her tiny waist. Monsieur Worth had known what he was about and the whole effect was youthful, ethereal and just subtly provocative.

  “It is exquisite, mamselle,” Jeanne was murmuring in French and Gardenia knew that the compliment was not flattering but completely sincere.

  “All the gentlemen will be looking at you tonight,” the maid went on.

  “I am afraid I will not know anybody,” Gardenia said.

  “That won’t matter. They’ll soon get themselves introduced in this house,” Jeanne said, giving her a little sideways glance.

  “I am sure my aunt will introduce me to the people she will want me to know,” Gardenia said, rebuking what she thought was a slight impertinence on Jeanne’s part.

  “Many won’t wait!” the maid added irrepressibly.

  Gardenia twirled herself round in front of the long mahogany-framed swing mirror. The dress shimmered round her feet and the light caught the tiny drops of diamanté. It made her feel as if she was covered in dewdrops.

  Now ready, she walked slowly down the stairs to the small drawing room on the ground floor where she knew that her aunt was planning to receive the dinner guests.

  As she reached the foot of the stairs, she saw that the door of the drawing room was open and she heard voices. There was no doubt who was speaking.

  The deep guttural tones of the Baron were unmistakable.

  “This is ridiculous,” Gardenia heard him saying angrily. “You just cannot expect a chit of that age to alter everything.”

  “Not everything, Heinrich,” Aunt Lily responded. “I just meant that we should be a little careful. She is very young.”

  “Too young. If you take my advice, you will send her away.”

  “No, Heinrich. I cannot do that. I loved my sister and the child came to me. I cannot turn her away.”

  “Very well then, she must put up with things as they are. No more dinner parties like this one or I warn you I will not come.”

  “I am sorry, Heinrich, I am sorry.”

  Her aunt’s apology was almost tearful and Gardenia realised that she was eavesdropping.

  Softly, hoping that no one had heard her descending the stairs, she ran back up to the first floor to stand trembling with her hands locked together.

  What could that conversation mean? What was she disrupting and why should the Baron so dislike her arrival? What right had he to interfere? He had seemed pleasant enough when he had arrived and gone up to Aunt Lily’s boudoir as he had done the night before.

  What was it they talked about? And why did he call so early in the afternoon and then return for dinner? They were questions that Gardenia had no answer to and now, realising that it was nearly eight o’clock, she descended the stairs again, striving to compose herself and determined that none of her agitation and embarrassment should show on her face.

  Fortunately several guests arrived just as she reached the drawing room.

  There was no time to say anything except to listen to Aunt Lily’s exclamations of delight over her dress.

  “She looks charming, does she not, Baron?” she said in what was almost a pleading tone, and Gardenia now realised that, while she had addressed the Baron by his Christian name in private, in public she was correctly formal.

  “Charming indeed,” the Baron said with one of his leering smiles and Gardenia longed to throw his compliment back in his face.

  More guests arrived, the men young, the majority of them English. There were, however, several Frenchmen and one vivacious Italian who Gardenia learned was a newcomer to the Embassy of his country.

  The ladies were surprising as most of them were nearly the same age as Aunt Lily. The few young ones who were there seemed to be attached to the one particular man and thus not interested in talking to anyone else.

  The Baron, who had been given one of Aunt Lily’s contemporaries to take in to dinner, was scowling and Gardenia noticed as they reached the dining room that her Aunt Lily was talking rather too quickly and with an obvious pretence at brightness and gaiety.

  Gardenia, however, was so preoccupied with seeing the dinner table covered with gold ornaments, admiring the profusion of purple orchids that were laid between the dishes and being overawed at eating for the first time off silver plate, that it was some time before she could look around her.

  When she did, she saw the Baron still had a disagreeable look on his face, but the rest of the party was brightening up considerably. The men all seemed at their ease, elegant in their high stiff white collars, tailcoats and the red carnations that only the Englishmen sported in their buttonholes.

  The ladies were laughing loudly and, to Gardenia’s mind, rather noisily. She could not imagine her mother or any of her friends throwing back their heads in an almost abandoned manner at some joke or leaning forward, their elbows on the table, which revealed an almost indecent amount of their bosoms.

  But, of course, the majority of the women were French and that, Gardenia told herself, accounted for a great deal.

  She had an elderly man at one side at dinner and on the other side the young Italian from the Embassy. Her elderly partner obviously had no intention of exerting himself by talking to her until he had eaten a great deal and drunk even more.

  She made two or three tentative remarks to him, only to be received with grunts or a bare monosyllable in reply. He was rude, she thought to herself and he obviously considered her of no importance and was therefore determined to make no effort.

  The Italian on her other side was, however, all smiles and chatter.

  “You are beautiful, very beautiful,” he told Gardenia. “I did not expect to find so much beauty in Paris. Chic, elegance, yes! But not the beauty of a Goddess.”

  Gardenia laughed.

  “I don’t think you can have been here very long. I am quite sure there are thousands of French women that you will be able to say that to in a week or so.”

  He shook his head.

  “The French are Latin, just like my own countrymen. They are dark, very attractive and sometimes have the beauty of a Madonna but you, with your fair hair and white dress, you look like an angel.”

  Gardenia laughed again. She could not take this young man seriously and therefore she was not embarrassed. He only amused her.

  “At the moment I have no desire to be an angel,” she said. “I want to enjoy Paris, I want to see it all, the beautiful buildings, the Seine, the Parks and all the gay places too.”

  “And you will let me be your escort?” the Italian asked.

  “You will have to ask Aunt Lily,” she told him and saw a look of surprise in his eyes.

  “Cannot you go anywhere or do anything you like?” he enquired.

  “Not without asking my aunt,” Gardenia exclaimed. “You see, I am living with her. My mother and father are dead and naturally she is rather strict as to what I do and where I go.”

  Now there was no mistaking the look of almost astonishment on the Italian’s face.

  “I don�
��t understand, but I will speak to your aunt. She really is your aunt?”

  “But, of course, she is,” Gardenia said. “What did you think she was?”

  The Italian did not answer, but she had the impression that he could have told her what he had thought had he wished to do so.

  As dinner drew to an end, the guests seemed to get noisier and noisier. The footmen in their gorgeous uniforms and powdered wigs were filling up the glasses as soon as they were empty and now at last the Baron began to mellow a little and from the end of the table he raised his glass towards the Duchesse.

  “To our charming hostess,” he said. “I think that is a toast that we would all agree on, gentlemen.”

  The gentlemen in question rose a little unsteadily to their feet.

  “La Duchesse, God bless her,” they chanted and swallowed the wine in their glasses in one gulp.

  “Thank you,” Aunt Lily smiled and Gardenia noticed that now her face was flushed she looked younger and really remarkably beautiful. “Thank you and I hope you all have a good time tonight. A lot of friends will be coming in later and I hope that besides gambling some of you will dance. My niece is young. I know she will enjoy the music of Ventura’s band.”

  Aunt Lily rose as she spoke and started to shepherd the ladies out of the dining room, but Gardenia heard the disagreeable man on her right murmur as she left,

  “Ventura’s band! Flying a bit high, isn’t she? I thought he only played for Royalty and Embassies.”

  A woman passing his chair heard what he had said. Stopping, she bent down to murmur in his ear,

  “Why should you complain? Have you not heard that Lily de Mabillon is known as the Queen of Demi-Paris?”

  The old man gave a cackle of laughter that Gardenia could not help feeling was meant unkindly. But there was nothing she could say and anyway she did not comprehend what the woman had meant.

  Now her aunt had reached the door of the dining room and the ladies were crowding out after her. Only one was left behind on the other side of the table.

  Before she moved she put up a long white arm, drew the head of the man sitting beside her down towards her own and kissed him passionately on the lips.