To learn who really destroyed her family, Vivienne Massey will do anything...even impersonate her sister...and deny herself the man she has always loved!
He’s the last man Viv wants to see.
Vivienne de Massé goes to Paris impersonating her oldest sister, the infamous Drury Lane actress, Charmaine Massey. Viv has a reason…and a plan to avenge the capture and death of their other sister during the Terror. Only one man can stop her.
Tate Cantrell is the only man who sees right through her.
Tate Cantrell bursts into her dressing room one night in Paris, and calls Viv’s bluff. He reminds Viv she plays a role—and a dangerous game she cannot win alone.
He declares she needs him. She always has. Indeed, he’s spent the last decade helping the émigré Massé family—and falling in love with charming Viv. Now the Earl of Appleby, Tate works as a spy for Scarlett Hawthorne’s network on the Continent. He alone has the means and the connections to help her….if she’ll let him.
Haunted by their past, they’re desperate to save their future together…If they can survive those who would destroy them.
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A NIBBLE! YES!
Copyright 2024, Cerise Deland. All rights reserved.
“Mademoiselle de Massé!”
She made haste to her dressing room, a crowd of men on her heels. As she strode, she tore off her gloves and her cape, dropping them in her maid’s outstretched hands.
“Mademoiselle de Massé!”
“My wig,” she said like a curse, and worked the ugly thing off and into Alice’s care. Her own hair fell free, locks of it falling around her shoulders and freeing her of the ruse she had agreed to and hated.
“Mademoiselle!” The chorus of men clamoring at her dressing room door was gratifying but frightening.
She skirted around them. “Let me by. Let me by.”
A few were gentlemen. They stepped aside. But crowds meant chaos. Terror. She’d had enough of that in her life. Enough. Enough!
She stepped into her dressing room, and they followed.
She spun to her maid. “Close the door, Alice. Admit one gentleman at a time.” The woman was tall and sturdy, able to fight off hordes of men. Even those three who attacked us along the road near Rouen were discouraged by her.
And I was useless. Brandishing a pistol that shook in my grip.
She put a hand to her throat. The memory of the robbery outside Rouen made her angry. Her blood ran cold when anyone ran after her or called for her. But these men were praising her.
She swallowed. Do not be a ninny. The play had gone well. The applause was thunderous. The bouquets were so numerous that she could not leave the stage. The manager had to come help her walk away.
Now she had to react. Smile. Greet her public.
Mon Dieu, I hate crowds.
Alice had trouble closing the door. She kept telling those assembled to take their feet from the threshold, but they did not do it. They pushed and insisted. A few shouted.
“Miss! Miss, I cannot—!” Alice appealed to her.
“Mademoiselle!”
She stilled at the sound of one rich male voice.
No, no. I am dreaming.
But he called again—and his was a deep bass unlike any other man’s. Dark as fine Cabernet wine. Hard as iron. Unforgettable.
“Mademoiselle Charmaine de Massé?”
Insistent. A question with a touch of English accent on her family name. It should be pronounced “Massey.”
“Mademoiselle! Vivienne!”
No. Who would call for Viv? Not here. Not tonight.
“Vivienne!”
No, surely…
She craned her neck.
Tate!
She whirled away from the throng, a hand to her forehead, her smile dead on her lips.
It could not be Tate Cantrell! Why would he be here? Was he not in some tiny German town?
“Vivi.”
Tate. He’s come to the play. Here in Paris.
She turned slowly back. She always faced the inevitable, didn’t she?
Her eyes flitted over the crowd that filled her dressing room doorway.
It was Tate. He stood inches above the fray. Everywhere he went, he’d always brought color, action, relief, and succor. In the profuse candlelight of her drab dressing room, he illuminated the shabby grays of the décor. He moved relentlessly forward through the crowd toward her, determined, focused, so handsome she gulped back the urge to cry. But it was her Tate.
The irrepressible Tate had always brought brilliance to her life. From his wavy whiskey hair to his large blue-green eyes and the sharp arch of his ruddy cheeks, he was a delicious man to look upon. To talk to him, to see him smile, to make him grin was the ambition of many a girl. All tried. Few succeeded. I was one of them. But his gaze implied only friendship. Never more.
This was Tate. Her friend. Her best friend. Tate. Her tension dissolved. He was near, and that always meant that she was saved from…
No! I am not saved. Not redeemed.
She snapped aside. Focused on the man right before her. Forced a smile to him. A tall, dark fellow in impeccable silks with his knee out, his hand toward her, like a courtier from her father’s entourage. A man out of time, yet in this one, he struck a pose that shot her to the past, her childhood. A supplicant to her father. A man bent on seduction of her mother…or her oldest sister, the flirt.
She blinked. This man in front of her now simply wished to make himself known to her. To capture the latest Paris sensation and take her home.
Another man of similar fashion maneuvered the first away. He sought to gain advantage. “Mademoiselle de Massé,” he murmured, pronouncing her family name as it should be in this country of her birth, not like the English bastardization of it.
The way we were known after the fall. And ever after. When we were taken in by the English who sought to ease our pain of loss. The English. The Cantrells.
“Oui, oui, I am happy to accept your cards,” she told each man in turn. All handsome devils. Outfitted in their finest to impress her. But then, hope was eternal—and always perilous.
She knew her callers’ expectations, their assumption that they might offer her supper after her performance, wine, the allure of their apartments, a kiss, later a dalliance, perhaps? And in time, a more permanent relationship?
Alice caught her eye from across the room. Yes, it was time.
Alice bent and disappeared to open the little basket that was Louis’s wicker cage. The little dog burst out, yipping above the din of the appreciative male audience and nipping at a few ankles of those who did not move as quickly as they should. Louis, smart fellow, claimed what distance she could not as readily.
I like my space. She smiled at the next man who inched his way forward and lifted her hand to his lips. He had a flat face and a funny, tiny nose and nibbled at her hand…like a rabbit.
She snapped to attention. Whoever this man was, she wanted no part of him. She could do much here in Paris. Act. Pretend. Deceive.
Yet she was incapable of some things.
“Know thyself.” That was her mother quoting the Greek maxim.
I do. And entertaining men who can never appeal to me physically will not aid me in my goal.
“Mademoiselle de Massé.”
Tate.
She surrendered. She had to. He stood right before her and she could not help herself—she stared at him. Her heart sank to her knees. She had not thought that her skills as an actress would be tested so soon in this city. Nor did she imagine that this man, above all others, would be the one to call her to task.
Had he not been in the little German margravate of Baden? Before she left London six days ago, that was what she’d read in a gossip sheet. Tate, the charming Earl of Appleby, had always gadded about Europe. She had read the scandal sheets in London that told of so many British abroad. She’d believed what she’d read and thought her way clear of him. For she knew that if Tate Cantrell were in Paris when she was, he’d meddle in her plans. And that, she could not tolerate.
“Bon soir, mademoiselle.” He took her hand, pressed his warm mouth to her flesh, and made her belly quiver.
“Bonjour, Monsieur le Comte.” She inclined her head. She knew him—she could let the gossips spread that fact. After all, she’d spent the last decade in his country, on his lands, in a cottage on his manor grounds. One fact she would not now acknowledge publicly was how their relationship had once been more than that of friends. So she lied and said, “How lovely to see you here this evening.”
He looked up at her through those thick, caramel-colored lashes of his, and his jade-green gaze warmed and challenged. “How I have missed you.”
Of all the compliments he could have given, he chose the one that churned her anger at him. She had missed him all her life. Loving him, wanting him, watching him come and go, accepting finally that he would never be hers. She licked her lips. “I am honored.”
“Are you? I am undone. I thought I had buried in my heart how bewitching you are,” he said in the mellow voice that could melt her like a candle. “I was wrong. One glimpse, even so far from the stage, and I knew—”
“Excusez-moi, monsieur.” She put her other hand atop his and squeezed. He spoke French and so did she, but she could not have anyone overhear what he might say. “Do not—”
“Hurt you?” He turned to English. His large eyes turned mellow and reassuring, his soothing expression taking her back to the weeks when they fled the mobs and he had saved them all from disaster. Mama, her sister, even Beau had been the beneficiaries of his courage and his kindness. “Never, mademoiselle. I simply must talk with you in private.”
“Not here. Not now.” She had to collect her responses. Were there not scripts for occasions when you confronted by surprise the love of your life?
“Then later. Where do you lodge?”
“Please. Do not press me.”
“I must. I will. You know I will not rest until—”
“Yes. Yes, that I do know.”
“When?”
When had God created a man so beautiful that to look at him blinded a woman to all else in the world? He seemed broader of shoulder, sturdier of muscle than when last she’d beheld him. His hair—that cinnamon blond the English defiled by calling ginger—fell over his broad brow. The lines fanning from his eyes told of the years he bore, the years they had been apart when she had yearned for him—all in vain.
She wanted to ask him truly how he was, where he’d been, why he was here in Paris. But she dared not. Whatever his reason to be in Paris, it was not her business. She was here not to meet him or enjoy his company, but to conduct her own affairs. Conversely, what she did was none of his affair.
“When? When will you see me?” He leaned closer. That cologne that distinguished him all his adult life—that grassy mix of German vervain and orange—washed over her and took her breath. He kissed her wrist, far from the place where the rabbit had put his lips, and with two fingers to her chin, Tate raised her face. In English, he whispered, “It must be soon.”
“Monsieur.” She gave him her mask of polite refusal. “Please, do nothing rash.”
“Never, mademoiselle. Not to you.”
She snatched back her hand. “I have an engagement for which I must prepare.” That was in French, loud enough for others to hear.
“Skip it.”
“Impossible,” she told him, and at Tate’s heels, her little dog proclaimed loud and long how he needed Tate’s affections now.
She bent to pick up the dog. Louis had not nipped Tate’s heels. Of course not. Animals never attacked those they loved.
“Bonjour, Louis,” Tate whispered, and put his large hand to the head of her hairy little mutt. If Tate were a harsh man or an angry one, he could take her little dog’s head and crush it in his fingers like so much paper.
But Louis—remembering the man whom he had loved above all other males—nuzzled into the fond embrace of big, bold, sappy Tate Cantrell, now the Earl of Appleby, the man who had given Louis to her as a pup and who had given her, her mother, and her half-sister Charmaine a cottage, income, beds to sleep in…and hope to live on.
“Surely…mademoiselle,” he began, obviously avoiding use of her given name in this crowd, dwindling though it was. “Surely you agree about the need to talk.”
She shook back her long, pale curls that flowed over her shoulders. Then she gave him her most impervious stare. She had to convince him to stay away from her. To never reveal, never voice her worst fears and say her name. “Monsieur, I am very busy. As you can see. And I am tired.”
He scoffed, his hand still caressing her sweet Louis. The dog was a traitor to cuddle Tate like a long-lost father. “A few minutes tonight.”
She needed to prepare what to say to him. So much for being a good actress. “I must ask you to leave.”
“Make me go.”
She swallowed her anxiety that he would make a scene and ruin her entire plan.
“Alice!”
The maid stepped forward. She was nearly as tall as Tate. He noticed with a smirk.
“Go with this gentleman to the wig closet”—she lowered her voice even though she spoke English to her—“and give him my address.”
The first man who had paid her attentions must have overheard and understood, because he raised a hand and stepped forward.
She put up one staying hand. “Un moment, monsieur, s’il vous plaît.”
“I won’t be put off.” Tate bit off the words.
She set her eyes on him with all the power that her older sister would have used on an adversary. But her tone was soft, as she did not wish to be overheard by any of these flaneurs. “You are not. Alice will give you my address. Come day after tomorrow.”
“Tonight.”
“No. I am committed. Sunday, monsieur, or not at all.”
He bowed, but his eyes gave no quarter. “What time?”
Persistent cuss. “Alice will send it.”
“Tell me now—”
She huffed. “Do not make a scene here, Tate.”
His eyes flared wide at mention of his given name.
Her gaze fell to his appealing, full lips. Oui, I recall too well their luscious feel. “Please. Leave me. I have an engagement. Alice, take this gentleman out and lead the others as well.”
Tate clutched her hand once more. “I am thrilled to have found you.”
His delight could never temper the fact that he had discovered her. Now she had to stop him from doing her any more harm.
“You may call upon me day after tomorrow, monsieur. At two o’clock.” She smiled perfunctorily at him, then threw an apologetic look to the other men who’d been eager to have their time with her.
Tate set his jaw. “I do not breathe until then.”
She caught her own breath. How could he so unravel her fine coil of good intentions in a few stirring words?
“Louis,” Tate crooned to the dog, “I will see you again very soon. Take good care of your mistress.”
Wiggling in discontent, the dog whimpered as Tate put him back to her arms.
Viv set her jaw and called forth all her determination to complete this plan of hers with speed. Tate could ruin every detail. “Avoir, monsieur.”
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