Stone's Fall полностью

'There is a great deal of gossip and nothing of substance. She is a widow, it seems. Tragic story; newly married and husband falls off a horse and breaks his neck. Wealthy, beyond a doubt, and came to Paris because – no one knows why. She moves in the very best society, and will, no doubt, shortly marry a duke, or a politician or a banker, depending on her tastes. Does she have a lover? No one knows. She is as enveloped in mystery as – well, as you are, but (if you will forgive me for saying so) she is very much more beautiful.'

'I would like to meet this woman.'

Lucien snorted. 'I would like to take tea with Queen Victoria,' he said, 'and that won't happen either. Everyone knows of her, some have been in the same room with her, few have met her.'

'So what's the secret?'

He shrugged. 'Who knows? She is no more beautiful than many a woman. She is said to be charming and witty. But so are many people. I do not know. She is one of those people whom others wish to be with.'

'In that case,' I said with a grin, 'I will ask her.'

And I got up from the table and walked straight across to her table. I coughed to get her attention as I bowed to the Minister and smiled as she looked at me.

'Good evening, Principessa,' I said, in a discreet voice loud enough to heard by those sitting nearby. 'May I pay my compliments to the most beautiful woman in France?'

'When you discover her, you may,' she said with a flash of the eye.

There I bowed, and retired, pleased with my success, and walked back to my table.

'I can't believe you did that,' Lucien said with something between shock and reproof.

'She's a woman, not Pallas Athene,' I replied, and returned to my meal, which now tasted very much better than it had before, and spent the rest of the evening being pleasant to his mistress, who seemed grateful for my attention.

I got back to my hotel some three hours later and there, waiting for me at the desk, was an envelope. Inside was a single piece of paper on which was written. 'Tomorrow. Two p.m. Villa Fleurie.'

'I liked the principessa part,' she said when we met. 'It adds to the mystery. It is all round Biarritz already that being Hungarian is merely a subterfuge, and that I am in reality a Neapolitan princess living incognito for fear of my husband.'

I shook my head. 'You don't look in the slightest bit Neapolitan.'

'I don't speak Hungarian either,' she replied. 'What do you want?'

Her brusqueness was understandable. I must have been one of the very last people in the world she wanted to meet.

Her circumstances had changed as much as her appearance, which is to say the alteration was total. She was living in an elegant new villa a few hundred yards from the Hôtel du Palais, in the midst of the most fashionable part of the town. This had been built some five years previously by a banker, who rarely used it and rented it out for a prodigious sum when he was not there. It was furnished tastefully and discreetly, and Virginie – or rather Elizabeth, as I must now call her – fitted into it as perfectly as did the hand-made furniture, and hand-blown glass in the art-nouveau style then coming into fashion. Neither the house, nor she, had any connection to the over-blown gaudiness normally associated with the grandes horizontales, for whom vulgarity was part of the allure.

The same went for her behaviour, which I had briefly witnessed the previous evening. Some of her sort would try to win attention by throwing diamonds across a restaurant for the pleasure of seeing the men scrabble to find them, or to see the disdain and fury on the faces of their women at the demonstration of how easily such men could be commanded. Others talked in loud voices, or stood up to dance on their own, making a spectacle of themselves through their display. They promised gratification, but for one night only. This woman implicitly offered far more than that.

Even the way she sat was impressive. Undoubtedly she was on edge, nervous, a little frightened. How could she not be? Yet there was not a sign of it on her face, or in her posture. Her self-control was extraordinary; superhuman, almost.

'I don't want anything,' I said simply. 'I recognised you and could not deny myself the pleasure. That is all.'

'All?'

I thought. 'I suppose not. I was curious. And, I may say, deeply impressed by your achievement. I wished to congratulate you, in a way. As well as renew an acquaintance.'

She allowed herself a small smile. 'And what are you doing here?'

'I am a journalist, of sorts.'

She raised a finely plucked eyebrow. 'Of sorts? That sounds as though you are really nothing of the sort.'

'No, Truly. I work for The Times. In a few days I will be able to show you a story about the anthracite market to prove it.'

'I don't believe you.'

'I don't believe you are a Hungarian countess either. We both have our secret past. Which is in the past and should remain there. Although I am curious to know where you got your name. Elizabeth Hadik?'