As soon as they were alone, Rafe asked, "What is your judgment on the count?"
"I'm glad that the choice of targets rules him out as our conspirator, because he seemed utterly ruthless, as dangerous as his reputation." Remembering that black gaze, she repressed a shiver. "Who will be at Orkov's ball?"
"General Roussaye, our Bonapartist suspect." Rafe gave her a lazy smile. "Wear that green gown unless it would ruin your reputation to be seen in it again too soon."
"I think my credit will stand it," she replied. "I am only a poor Magyar widow. People will make allowances."
Rafe accompanied her into her house, this time without dismissing his carriage. For a moment there was uncertainty in the air, as if he were considering a kiss.
Not daring to find out, Maggie hastily turned away and led him to the chessboard, where they continued the game in progress. She wondered if anyone in Paris would believe that she spent private moments with Rafe playing chess. She had trouble believing it herself.
The game devolved into long pauses and steely contemplation, and ended in stalemate. She thought the symbolism was appropriate, since it was the story of their relationship.
When the game was finished, Rafe got to his feet. "I'm off to the Palais Royal to see if I can find the mysterious conspirator. The conversation was heard at the Cafe Mazarin?"
Maggie nodded and followed him to the front door. Rafe towered over her, strong, confident, and utterly in control. He would undoubtedly feel insulted if she betrayed a lack of faith in his abilities. Nonetheless, she had the most absurd desire to tell him to be careful.
Uncannily, Rafe seemed to be aware of her thoughts. "Never fear, I shan't stir the hornets up." He lifted her right hand and kissed it, not with a light, formal brush of his mouth, but seriously, his lips warm and sensuous against her fingers.
Then he was gone. Maggie involuntarily curled her hand into a fist, as if to ward off the tingles of pleasure his kiss had sent up her arm. Just that light caress revived the desire that had almost overwhelmed her earlier in the carriage.
Acidly she reminded herself that he probably had to cut notches in his bedposts in order to keep track of the women he had bedded. By now the posts must be whittled away to nothing.
Face tight, she headed upstairs to her chamber.
Where Rafe was concerned, her sense of humor wasn't giving her any perspective or amusement at all.
The Palais Royal had a long and checkered past. Cardinal Richelieu had built part of it, and sundry royal relatives had lived there. Shortly before the Revolution, the Duc de Chartres had built a huge addition around the gardens, renting out the lower levels as shops and the upper as apartments.
These days, the Palais Royal was the very heart of French dissipation, with every manner of vice available to the hopeful bucks who swarmed there. Externally it was the only really well-lit place in Paris, and idlers of every nation could be seen drifting under the arcades and clustering by the columns.
The only females visible were of the more public sort, and one of those approached Rafe as he alighted from his carriage. He wondered with some interest what kept her low-cut gown from falling off. A fortunate thing that the evening was mild, or she would be courting pneumonia.
She had plied her trade long enough to size up a man's nationality and wealth quickly. "Is the English milord here for pleasure?" she asked in a husky voice with a provincial accent. Her heavy mask of makeup couldn't conceal the lines in her face.
None of Rafe's distaste showed in his face. She was a coarse, unattractive creature and any man sampling her charms risked the pox, but she was no better or worse than half a hundred other women wandering the arcades and gardens. For that matter, she was little different from many of the great ladies of society except for her price, which was lower and more honest. Courteously he said, "I feel in luck this evening. I understand the gaming is good at the Cafe Mazarin."
"The cafe is that way." Tossing her head coquettishly, the prostitute added, "Perhaps later you will wish a companion to celebrate or commiserate with?"
"Perhaps." Making his way through a crowd of Allied officers, Rafe soon found a sign for the Cafe Mazarin. On the ground floor was a jeweler's shop, still open at this late hour in the hope that a lucky gambler might wish to buy some bauble to bestow upon his lady.
Beside the shop a dim staircase led up to the cafe. A flamboyantly dressed woman presided over the counter, her dark eyes shrewdly assessing new customers. Liking what she saw of Rafe, she came around her counter to greet him in person. "Good evening, milord. Are you here for dining or gaming, or perhaps to go upstairs?"
Upstairs would mean ladies of a higher grade than the streetwalkers outside. With luck, they would be pox-free and not steal the customers' wallets. "I've been told that the play is good here, madame. Perhaps later I will dine as well."
The woman nodded and led him through the dining room to the gambling salon. It looked like any number of other gambling hells Rafe had been in. In one corner was a rouge-et-noir table, in another a roulette wheel. A scattering of tables contained card games such as faro and whist.
The patrons ran the full range from innocent young pigeons to the Captain Sharps who preyed on them, and the smoky atmosphere was dense with the desperate excitement of serious gamesters. The low murmur of voices was punctuated by the rattle of dice at the hazard table and the soft slap of cards on green baize. All in all, a typical den of iniquity, and not the sort of place that Rafe had ever found attractive.
Still, he was here for information, not pleasure, so he spent the next two hours playing at different tables. Whist was the only game he would have enjoyed, because it was more a test of skill than chance, so he avoided the whist table lest it prove too absorbing. Over dice, cards, and wheel, he exchanged casual comments with other gamesters, listening more than he spoke.
Not surprisingly, much of the conversation was political. However, he heard only the talk that could be heard anywhere in Paris. This particular establishment was patronized by a mixture of Frenchmen and foreigners, but if any were extremists, they kept their mouths discreetly shut.
An hour past midnight Rafe was preparing to call it an evening and find some fresh air when his attention was drawn by a thin, dark-haired man at the rouge-et-noir table. The man had been winning earlier, but luck had turned against him and the bank had taken all his money. A wide scar across his cheek shone livid in the candlelight as he reached into an inside pocket to draw out his final stake. Defiantly he slapped a pile of notes on the red diamond.
In the hush that sometimes falls on a crowded room, it seemed that everyone was watching. Rafe was too far away to see the cards dealt, but when the scar-faced man whooped a moment later, it was obvious that he had won.
It would have meant nothing, except that the Frenchman next to Rafe said, "It looks like Lemercier is in the money again. The man has the devil's own luck."
The name was familiar, and after a moment Rafe remembered why. There was a Lemercier on the list of secondary suspects that Maggie had given him, a Bonapartist officer if he recalled correctly. Rafe studied the scar-faced man as he rose from the rouge-et-noir table. The fellow had a military bearing; now to see if he was Captain Henri Lemercier.
As the man crossed the room, Rafe casually intercepted him. "May I buy you a drink to celebrate your beating the bank?"
His quarry smiled jovially. "You may. Lost a few to the bank yourself, eh?"