Page 48 of Sir Durham’s Disarming Asset

“Please do sit. I am so delighted to see you.” More than you know! “I wondered how you were, and where you were. I myself have been in London only a few months.” Zeph sat in a chair near her friend.

“We know,” Cosette told Zeph with eyes that spoke of happiness—and a caution. She had always rued her father’s association with disreputable politicians in Paris. René Vaillancourt was one of them—and Cosette also carried a particular distaste for the deputy chief of police. Her father had fled Paris because Fouché, Vaillancourt’s superior, accused him of embezzling government funds. Lenoir had taken Cosette abroad with him, reputedly because Fouché had told him to give back the money or he would lock him and Cosette in La Force. Wisely, Lenoir had fled. But the day before leaving with her father, Cosette had gone to Countess Nugent’s hôtel particulier on the Île Saint-Louis and said her goodbyes to Zeph. Fearing, because of Vaillancourt’s vows to ruin her, that she would soon be in prison herself, Zeph had given Cosette the other precious item she had stolen from Vaillancourt’s office.

“We have come today,” said her father in French, his small eyes yellowed with some sickness, his silver hair straight and thin, “because we saw your name in the newspaper.”

“We also asked our friend, Monsieur Tauzain, if he had heard of you,” Cosette continued in her native language—to please her persnickety parent, no doubt. “He knew where you lived.”

Zeph shook her head, feigning innocence instead of showing the fear that stilled her. To be known by others whom she knew not was one peculiar aspect of becoming so societally prominent that one’s name was in the newspapers. But for Zeph to be known by a Frenchman who was a stranger to her sent a chill through her. Containing her anxiety eluded her. She tried to smile and failed. “I am afraid I have not met Monsieur Tauzain.”

“Oh, he knows everyone in London,” Cosette said with a nod of confidence.

“An émigré, is he?”

“Certainement. He is here since the end of the Terror.”

“So many years. Wonderful.” How would this man know her if he had been in England since the Terror? She had been only a schoolgirl then, and unimportant. And why were they discussing this stranger Tauzain? “He must know every Frenchman in town.”

“I would say so,” said Cosette. “A very nice gentleman.”

“Is that right? Was his home Paris?”

“I…I think so. Was it, Papa?”

“Oui, from the Croix de Rouge,” Monsieur Lenoir put in.

Zeph shook her head. “I do not know that part of town.”

The man smiled, happy to fill in information. “Ah, he was part of the famous tribunals in that quarter on the Left Bank that sent so many to the guillotine.”

Zeph held her revulsion in check. “Lucky he has escaped the razor himself.”

Lenoir shrugged. “I have not asked him.”

Zeph did wish to know why this Tauzain kept himself so well informed. The idea that an émigré of little-known status would keep up with London Society, with her whereabouts, was odd. Did this Tauzain have a purpose? A mission? Was he an agent spying on Lenoir?

Zeph suppressed a shiver.

Monsieur Lenoir gave her a tolerant smile. “Tauzain rents the house next to ours.”

“A nice man,” said Cosette. “His wife died a few years ago, and he keeps himself busy with friends.”

“I see. French, I suppose.”

“I think so,” Cosette said. “Many come and go at his house.”

Zeph wanted to ask if Tauzain knew these two by their real names, but held her tongue. She did not wish to frighten them, although she was alarmed for them. “And where are you living?”

“In Lambeth,” Cosette provided with a fixed stare at Zeph.

“Is that near here?” Zeph had not yet learned all the areas of London, nor which were to be valued and which avoided.

“No, we took a fiacre,” Cosette said, her distaste for it in her pursed lips.

“A hack,” Monsieur Lenoir corrected his daughter, pronouncing the word with a disdain for the English vernacular. “That’s what they call public carriages here.”

“Oui, c’est exact.” Zeph took to her visitors’ habit in speaking French.

“Forgive me,” he said, but the expression on his face said he did it as a painful courtesy. “I do my best.”