The Dollar Prince's Wife Read Free Page B

men approach and, quite unaware of his presence nearby, begin a muffled conversation.
    â€˜Deadly boring tonight, eh, Heneage? Not that these pre-Season dos are ever anything else.’
    Heneage—it must be the pompous dandy whom Cobie had met at Susanna’s equally boring thrash.
    He was answering his companion in an amused knowing voice. ‘I know a better way of entertaining one’s self, Darrell, and it’s not far from here. Madame Louise’s place, in short. You can only visit there if you have the entrée —and I have. We could move on when I’ve done the pretty with dear Violet.’
    Darrell—that would be Hubert Darrell, one of the hangers-on to the coat-tails of the great. They were rather likethose extras in a play who are always shouting ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb’ at the appropriate moment. From the turn the conversation had taken Darrell was about to be introduced to some vicious inner circle.
    â€˜Bit dull, though, isn’t it, Heneage? Just the usual, I take it.’
    Heneage laughed patronisingly. ‘Oh, you can always find variety at Madame’s if you’re in the know, are discreet and have plenty of tin. You can have anything you fancy—anything—no holds barred. But mum’s the world, old fellow. Are you game?’
    â€˜Game for anything—you know me.’
    â€˜Then we’ll do the rounds here first, and sample the goods afterwards. I heard, don’t ask me how, that Madame has some new stuff on show tonight, very prime.’ Sir Ratcliffe’s voice was full of hateful promise.
    They moved out of Cobie’s hearing, leaving him to wonder what exactly was meant by ‘no holds barred’ and ‘good new stuff’—and not liking the answer he came up with.
    Curiosity now led him to enter Madame’s gilded entrance hall and to bribe his way past the giants on guard there since he came alone and unrecommended. This took him some little time. He thought, amusedly, that he might have been trying to enter a palace, not a brothel, so complicated was the ritual.
    He agreed to hand over his top hat and scarf to a female dragon at the cloakroom, but insisted on carrying in his all-enveloping cape—which cost him another tip for a sweetener. There were reasons why he wanted to retain it. He then made his way into an exquisitely appointed drawing room.
    Everything in it was in the best of taste. There was even a minor Gainsborough hanging over the hearth. Men andwomen sat about chatting discreetly. Among them he saw Sir Ratcliffe Heneage. He had a brief glimpse of a man being led through some swathed curtains at the far end of the room and could have sworn it was his brother-in-law, Arthur Winthrop, who had also left the Kenilworths’ ball early, pleading a migraine.
    Madame Louise was tall, had been a beauty in her youth and, like her room, was elegantly turned out. Her eyes on him were cold.
    â€˜I do not know you, sir. Since you have arrived without a sponsor or a friend, who allowed you, an unknown, to enter?’
    â€˜Oh, money oils all locks and bars,’ he told her with his most winning smile, ‘but should I require a friend I have one here—Sir Ratcliffe Heneage. I am sure that he will confirm that I am Jacobus Grant, the brother-in-law of the American Envoy, and a distant relative of Sir Alan Dilhorne, late of the British Cabinet. Does that make me…respectable?’
    Sir Ratcliffe, who had been watching them, was smiling with pleasure at the sight of the Madame of a night-house putting down the Yankee barbarian who had succeeded with Violet Kenilworth.
    â€˜Yes, Mr Grant is who he says he is. We have been introduced.’
    â€˜There!’ said Cobie sweetly. ‘What better recommendation could I have than one given me by Sir Ratcliffe? I may stay?’
    â€˜Indeed. It is my custom to give a new guest a glass of champagne and ask him, discreetly, of course, what his