Though she'd read that the city aspired to be the new Paris, she hadn't expected a very near copy of it. Certain sections of the city, with its solidly neoclassical edifices, their friezes and cornices plastered in motifs botanical and mythological, could easily have passed for parts of the Right Bank. And one particular church she passed on the way to her hotel had been an unabashed copy of Notre Dame.
She could scarcely control her labored breathing, though she walked with all the speed of a reform bill plodding through parliament. Steady traffic flowed up and down the avenue, a percussive chorus of hooves striking pavement and wagon wheels creaking under their load. From a nearby street came the rumble of an elevated train. The air, though less polluted than London's, emanated the familiar notes of horseflesh and industry, though it also hinted faintly, and ever so exotically, of sausage and mustard.
She made sure to inspect all the hotels, the shopfronts, and all the millionaire manses that crowded lower Fifth Avenue. Still, the distance disappeared in no time. Suddenly she was at the right intersection, the right address. She clenched her fingers about the whalebone handle of her parasol and wrenched her gaze from the opposite side of the street.
No, she must be mistaken. Camden, in his perfect breeding, had always been so modest, so restrained in everything he did. There was nothing in the least modest about this gorgeous manor that looked as if it had been bodily lifted from some nobleman's estate in the heart of Europe. The facade was of pearl-gray granite, the jaunty, polygonal roof dark blue slate. The windows sparkled like the eyes of a flirtatious belle at her most successful ball. And every ornate line and sensuous curve spoke of high baroque and lavish wealth.
She felt like she had the first time she'd seen Camden naked: flabbergasted, speechless, and just about falling down with excitement. She had not come properly prepared. To storm this particular citadel, she'd need much more of the paraphernalia of her own wealth and station to convince a suspicious butler that she was the real Lady Tremaine and not some imposter out to steal the silver.
When the door opened, however, the butler recognized her nearly immediately, judging from his jaw bouncing off the black marble-tiled vestibule. He recovered quickly, stepped back, and bowed. “My lady Tremaine.”
Gigi stared at him. The man looked vaguely familiar. She was sure she'd seen him before. She was—
“Beckett!” Amazement and guilt muddled her veins. When her scheme had fallen apart, she hadn't been the only one punished. As surely as the Empress of India was an Englishwoman of German blood, Beckett had abruptly left Twelve Pillars because Camden had discovered his role in the scam. How could he, then, of all people, head the staff in Camden's service?
“You are . . .” What could she say to him? And had he guessed, over the years, what her role had been in all this? “You are in New York.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Beckett said respectfully, as he took her parasol, but offered no elaborations. “May I offer you some excellent tea from Assam while we see to your luggage?”
The anteroom was glorious, the drawing room nearly rapturous in its opulence. She'd been in royal palaces that were less rich in furnishing and art—and what art, as if someone had taken a section of the grand gallery of the Louvre and made it into a living space. Not that she didn't find it perfectly to her taste, but what had happened to Camden's preference for understated houses and Impressionist paintings?
“I have brought no luggage,” she said. Now, the all-important question. “Is Lord Tremaine home?”
“Lord Tremaine has gone sailing with a group of friends,” said Beckett. “We expect him to return no later than five o'clock in the afternoon.”
Surely they couldn't be speaking of the same Lord Tremaine. First a house in which a cake-loving Marie Antoinette would have felt quite at home. And now this supposedly hardworking entrepreneur out frolicking when it wasn't even remotely Sunday?
“In that case, I will call another time,” she said. She couldn't possibly sit in the drawing room and sip tea for the next five or six hours. It'd be too strange.
She was beginning to regret a little that she'd asked every person in England who knew Camden's whereabouts not to breathe a word of her Atlantic crossing to him. Perhaps she should have sent advance notice.
“Lord Tremaine is hosting a dinner tonight. Should I send around a carriage to fetch your ladyship from your hotel?”
Gigi shook her head. Before a crowd of strangers was hardly the way she'd envisioned their reunion. “I will arrange for my own conveyance, if I decide to attend. And you need mention nothing to Lord Tremaine.”
“As you wish, ma'am.”
“You should have your own children,” said Theodora.
She stood in a pretty powder-blue frock against the foredeck rail of La Femme, the forty-footer Camden sailed for pleasure now that he used the Mistress mostly for business. Beyond the fluttering ribbons of her hat, a thicket of masts bobbed sedately—a thousand ships before the topless towers of the Financial District.
Camden looked up from the plate of lemon cookies he was sharing with Masha. “How do you know I don't?” he said.