The Rake's Revenge

She had him there. “No,” he admitted.

“Voilà! C’est moi.” There was a note of triumph in her voice, as if she had surprised even herself.

“Will my doubt prevent you from giving me a reading?”

Madame Zoe sat back, folded her hands in her lap. “Mais non, m’sieur. Do not concern yourself. The cards are what they are. But I feel the doubt in you. You do not think telling the future is possible, no?”

“Pray, do not allow my reservations to hinder you. This is my first time at a fortune-teller. You must allow me my little doubts.” He took the chair across from her and folded his arms across his chest.

She appeared to be weighing her words, deciding what to say, or how much. “You are a warrior, m’sieur. You ’ave come ’ere with the…plan. The strategy. There is something you wish to know, but you will not speak it aloud.”

He raised an eyebrow. That was a clever ploy. While quite true of him, the same could be said of nearly everyone who visited a fortune-teller. “Hmm. Must I speak it aloud, madame, for you to answer the question?”

“No. I confess it would be easier, but not needed.” She pointed to the ten of spades. “I think it ’as to do with the revenge. I do not see a ’appy outcome, m’sieur. Revenge is a two-edged sword. It draws blood on both sides, n’est-ce pas? One cannot be certain ’oo will be cut.”

A remarkably good guess, he thought. “Sometimes the reason for revenge makes it worth the risk.”

She shook her head slowly. “Mais non, m’sieur. There are only two reasons for revenge. Both silly.”

“And those reasons would be…”

“L’amour ou l’argent, monsieur.”

Of course. Love or money. One did not have to be a fortune-teller to know this. “Which do you think is my motive?” he asked, unable to keep the challenge from his voice.

Her own voice was steady and sure. “Love. You are not a man to quibble over money.”

“You are very logical, madame. Very perceptive.” Was it perception that passed for fortune-telling? Did she merely tell people what she guessed they wanted to hear? Was she little more than an intuitive observer?

“Not logical, m’sieur. I only speak what the cards say.”

“Balderdash!” The word was out before he could stop it.

A small muffled laugh emerged from beneath the veils. “I am sorry you think so. Néanmoins, you ’ave come for the reading, and I shall oblige.” She bent over the spread cards once again in an attitude of rapt concentration, turning the facedown cards up in a precise pattern. “You, and you alone, ’ave the power to determine your future. What I tell you now is only what could be…what might be. You must choose your course.

“You are now suffering from…’ow you say—chagrin d’amour?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You say, ‘a broken ’eart.’” At last Madame Zoe was going astray. Maeve and Hamish’s deaths had not broken his heart, they had hardened it.

“Oui, ’eartbreak. But you must not worry, m’sieur. You will love again. You will love deeper.” She pointed to the queen of clubs. “She was not your grande passion. You will ’ave la grande passion. If…”

“If?”

She shrugged. “If you let go of your ’urt. If not, your quest for revenge will poison you and those around you.”

Dangerously close! How could she garner that from a few common cards? “You misunderstand, madame. What you call revenge, I call justice. As for putting it aside—that’s easy to say, impossible to do.”

“M’sieur, I…” She trailed off in a sigh.

“If you have something to tell me, madame, do so,” he said.

She leaned over the cards again and turned another three up, then another three, stopping to study the way the cards had fallen. “Danger. Clearly, danger. Spreading in a radius around the king—you, m’sieur. Alas, I cannot tell if the danger is to the king or from the king. It may be both. You must be very careful, m’sieur.” She fell silent, her head bent over the cards.

Damnation. Was she about to give him a warning from the cards? Had he just tipped his hand? He stirred uneasily as he waited for her to finish. “Madame? Have you fallen asleep?” he asked when the silence stretched out.

When she answered, her voice was subdued, and he felt for the first time that she was hedging. “You must not worry, m’sieur. The matters that are troubling you will soon come clear.”

“Is that what your cards tell you?”

She touched her forehead through her veil. “I…I ’ave suddenly come over with the malaise, m’sieur. I will instruct my factor to reimburse you.”

“I do not want reimbursement, madame. I want a reading.”

The hand on her forehead began to tremble, and Rob realized she was not feigning to get rid of him. She was actually in distress. He leaned toward her, surprising himself with a quick pang of concern. “Do you require assistance, madame?”

She waved one hand to prevent him from coming closer. “’Ow kind of you, mais non. I must ’ave quiet. I cannot see your future, m’sieur. There are clouds, barriers—”

“Ah.” He nodded “The doubts you spoke of earlier.”

“Oui,” she sighed.

“Then can you tell me the past?”

She studied the remaining cards after fanning them in an arc across the table. “Your past is filled with, ah, turbulence. And much pain, I think. There ’as been betrayal and injury. You ’ave learned not to trust. You…you are a man of strong passions, though you ’ide it well. You are intelligent, thoughtful, deliberate—relentless in pursuing your goal. Alas, m’sieur, you are not ’appy. You ’ave the deep ’urt. You must overcome these things if you are to live again. In the present, m’sieur, you do not allow for the—’ow you say—caprice of life. For the whim, the ’umor or the silly thought. You ’ave not learned that dreams, no matter ’ow impossible, make dreary lives worth living, and that when ’ope dies, the ’uman spirit dies. You ’ave not found within you the ability to laugh at life’s absurdities. The world does not turn because you turn it, m’sieur. Au contraire. It turns of its own accord. Time is even more relentless than you.”

He narrowed his eyes at the unvarnished rebuke. She had not falsely flattered him, nor couched her message in a veil of euphemisms. And her reckoning was dead-on. He hadn’t a single whimsical bone in his body. That she knew so much about him made him uncomfortable. He began to think that, however misguided, she might be sincere in her delusions of “knowing all.”

“You are loyal to your friends,” she continued, “and will not ’esitate to protect them, even from themselves. You—”

“Enough!” he snapped. She was more than a fortune-teller—she was a witch! He stood so quickly the little wooden chair tipped backward and clattered on the floor. “That is enough for today. I will be back for my money’s worth, madame. You may count on that.” Feeling as if the walls were closing in on him, he turned on his heel and headed for the door. He could have sworn he heard a muffled curse on his way out.

In all, though, his visit had been a success. He had learned a great number of interesting things about the infamous Madame Zoe. Her soft youthful voice betrayed the fact that she could not be an ancient French émigré. Unless he missed his guess, she could not be above twenty and five. Her size was another clue. Despite the mourning weeds, he could tell that her figure was more willowy than that of an aging matron, her posture straight, not hunched. Her scent, lilies of the valley with the underlying hint of greens, was unaffected and free of the cloying heavy scents of musk and rose so popular today. It was a fragrance that had brought his blood up instantly.

But even more interesting, Madame Zoe was not French at all. No, when speaking the foreign words, her accent was flawless, but when speaking English, her affected French accent was appalling. Truly one of the worst he’d ever heard.

Best of all, now he had her address. He knew where to find her when he was ready to come for her. And that would be soon.

Oh, yes. Mr. Evans had been right. She’d been worth the five pounds. And Rob would gladly pay the price again for another visit.

Chapter Three

A fton glanced around the grand ballroom of the Argyle Rooms. The elegant setting, replete with crystal chandeliers and fresco-painted walls, was like something from a fairy tale. Everything was perfect and boded well for Dianthe’s further success. It would never do to have other guests at the Lingate fete overhear their conversation and ruin it all.

She pulled her aunt toward a quiet corner. “I tell you, Aunt Grace, it was eerie,” she whispered. “I know what each of the cards is supposed to mean, but I could not make out the meaning in the way they fell. I was in his fortune, and I was a danger to him—or he to me, I could not tell which. I tried to think, but I kept hearing the word danger, and I could not banish it from my mind. I vow, for a moment I thought it was Auntie Hen whispering to me.”

Grace blanched. “You do not think—”

“No! Oh, no. Of course not,” Afton assured her. “It wasn’t real. The voice was in my head—more like a memory. But it distracted me, and Lord Glenross must think I’m quite mad. I had only started to tell his future when I…became mystified. He said he would be back.”