Joy V. Sheridan writes

Charity Amour

CHAPTER NINETEEN part 2

Thus he kept to his reconnaissance, secure, so he thought, in his subtle unobtrusiveness. Until a hand reached out and gently shook him by the elbow. Had he been capable of projecting himself, so that he might view his own figure and appearance as he loitered at this point in his near-somnambulistic wanderings, he would have had no doubts as to why he was apprehended. The stronger sunlight had hazed his silhouette with an aura of smudged light, so that it looked as though he were a figure cast from crystal. Yet, at the same time, because of the very darkness of his natural coloration, the lean vigour which he displayed in his carriage and limbs, he suggested masculine power at its zenith. And given though she was to the charms of Lesbosian novitiates, Madame d’Esprit had started her career-amatory, with a wild, passionate, headlong leap with a man not dissimilar to the type Lord Seyton Clover seemed to her immediately infatuated eyes, just then.

Shocked from his reveries and all but forgetting who he was, where he was and why, he turned his animated - yet strangely subdued - gaze upon the woman who stood before him. 

“Madame: I fear that I have wandered far from my constitutional path.” “Sire, do not heed that. I shall show you the shortest way out.” Shaking his head and smiling his most laconic and seductive smile at her, he begged her forgiveness for his trespassing. “Monsieur...” 

Regaining his sense, he offered a nom-de-plume – and what better than Le Bon! “Monsieur Le Bon,” Madame d’Esprit continued, for it was none other than she, “Perhaps you may wish to make amends for this... what shall we call it ... misdemeanor by attending my party tonight? It will commence at nine and I should be delighted to have the opportunity to make your acquaintanceship more intimately then. No, no, I shall not take a reply in the negative!” 

She smiled up at him, ensuring that she stood so that the light might make the most of her icen blue eyes. 

“Too kind, too kind,” Lord Seyton Clover murmured, taking her slender fingers and lifting them to his curving mouth. He pressed them with a strong, firm pressure, staring the meanwhile into the provocative, half-questioning gaze she directed towards him. 

“Now, if you please, I shall show you to the main entrance. We shall pass the house on the way, so you shall know where to present yourself this evening. Are you a stranger to these parts?”

Lord Seyton Clover’s lies flowed like honey as they continued their amble to his point of departure. Thinking quickly, he made up a believable weave of untruths, which seemed to satisfy Madame’s apparent, but idle, curiosity. She pointed the pathway which would lead him to the exit and watched him thoughtfully as he picked his way down the drive-way. 

He turned, as he was about to round a bend, which elbow of land was profusely covered in holly bushes, and waved back to her, the white of his handkerchief making a tantalising spectral arc to his lips and away again. He disappeared. Madame picked her way back to the gardens, a meditative smile upon her own mouth. Now there was a true aspirant if ever she had seen one; why, on deeper perusal of his subject matter, he could well prove to be a Master! She whistled lowly between her lips, then looked up and smiled as she heard Justine’s voice: “Coming darling, coming.” So it was that His Lordship, Seyton Clover, first made the acquaintanceship of the notorious Madame d’Esprit. And for his troubles had been asked to become better versed in the chapters which constituted the book of her being. He had returned to the hostelry, impatient to meet up with his ‘agent provocateur’ - John Fibbins - and his impatience reached near boiling point as the hour approached eight and Fibbins had still not shown up at the inn. 

All but stomping with fury, he had dressed himself in the sombre attire that he considered suitable: he was, however, confident that his apparel would allow him to blend in easily with the celebration. Thus were his jacket, breeches and greatcoat in black, with the added flourish of a brocaded gold waist-coat beneath. At his throat, creamy cravats and on his cuffs, the same edging of Brussels lace. His silver-topped swordstick completed his ensemble and borrowing a lantern from the inn, he made his way towards the Château des Amourettes. 

He had, however, held his tongue about his planned visit to the house and had slipped out quietly via the inn’s back entrance. He carried with him a small, cloth-bound parcel. It was in his mind to approach the Château at a leisurely pace, continuing to a degree his furtive mission of earlier in the day. For with Madame’s sudden appearance and the directions he had received to quit the premises as quickly as possible, no doubt delivered politely but delivered nonetheless; he had been irked to feel that he had left a mission uncompleted, a job undone.