The governess's flush deepened. "Well, we shall see what the prince has to say," she muttered.
Leo gave her a cold nod and departed. Cordelia seemed to have created a fair amount of havoc in the short time she'd been in the rue du Bac. She'd made an enemy of the governess, angered her husband, and seemed set upon continuing to do so. She didn't have Elvira's subtlety and sophistication, qualities that would have enabled her to get her own way without causing trouble. She was too young and too straightforward.
But had Elvira managed to avoid trouble? The question lurked uneasily in his mind. It had never before occurred to him that his sister couldn't manage Michael. Leo himself had never liked his sister's husband. He was too rigid and self-serving, but Elvira had accepted the marriage perfectly willingly. She'd laughed at her brother's reservations, maintaining that a high position at the court of Versailles was worth a stuffy husband. Elvira had wanted a literary salon of her own. She had been a close friend of Madame de Pompadour and had been seduced by the power and influence that could be wielded by a clever woman at Versailles. She had seen marriage to the Prussian ambassador as her passport to that influence.
Elvira had never met a person she couldn't manage-in the nicest possible way. And Michael had always appeared a devoted husband. Leo had never had cause to question his treatment of his wife, despite Elvira's occasionally unusually subdued demeanor. She had always had a plausible reason for it. And he'd certainly never seen Michael chastise Elvira as he had done Cordelia. But no doubt Michael saw his second wife as a child, to be formed, educated. Not an unreasonable viewpoint, considering the difference in their ages. But his harshness was disturbing.
He took the main staircase down from the nursery floor, and the girls' voices reached him from a pair of double doors standing ajar along a corridor leading off the first landing.
He knew the room. It had been Elvira's boudoir. He felt a sudden reluctance to enter there. On the occasion of his last visit, his sister had been vibrant and alive. He could still hear her laughter, feel her goodbye kiss on his cheek. When next he'd seen her, she'd been in her coffin, barely recognizable, skeletal against the white satin, her once rich golden hair thin and straggly. What dreadful curse could have wreaked such devastation in such a short space of time?
He forced himself to the doorway. Both girls were talking at once, their voices rising excitedly as they competed for attention. Leo smiled involuntarily. He couldn't remember hearing them chatter with such uninhibited gaiety before. Without further thought, he stepped through the open door.
Cordelia was sitting on a low stool, the girls kneeling on the floor beside her. They were playing cat's cradle, and one exuberant child was trying to transfer the complicated net of wool from her own tiny dimpled hands to her sister's.
Cordelia looked up as she sensed Leo's silent entrance. Her color ebbed, then returned. She smiled at him over the children's heads, and the nakedness of the smile made his heart turn over. It was filled with warmth and promise and longing, brimming with the love she had so often expressed. And it was a smile paradoxically so vulnerable and so full of danger that he wanted to shake her into awareness of reality. Either that, or turn and run.
"Monsieur Leo!" Amelia, or so he assumed from the hair ribbon, saw him first. Both girls jumped to their feet, then stood awkwardly, curtsying, Amelia's hands still occupied with the cat's cradle.
"Viscount Kierston." Cordelia also rose and curtsied. "This is an unexpected pleasure." Her voice was a honeyed caress, her eyes deepest sapphire. There was no sign of the earlier shadows.
"I wished to visit the children," he said, struggling to sound cool and matter-of-fact in the face of that overpowering sensuality. "They were not in the schoolroom and Madame de Nevry told me I would find them with you."
With relief he dropped his gaze from the burning intensity of Cordelia's and bent his eye on the two small faces staring anxiously up at him. "And how are my little mesdames?" he inquired with a smile.
"Very well, thank you, sir," they said in unison, curtsying again. They seemed to be waiting for permission to move. Cordelia wondered whom they expected to give it. They were looking over their shoulders at her, their eyes wide in appeal, and she finally realized with something of a shock that in the absence of their governess she was the authority in question.
"Amelia and Sylvie and I were getting to know each other," she said, coming over to lay her hands lightly on their shoulders. "But you and they are old friends, of course."
"Oh, Monsieur Leo's been our friend since our mama died," Amelia confided, losing her stiffness. She put her hand in Leo's.
"We were only babies then. How could he have been our friend?" Sylvie scoffed, edging forward to put her hand in Leo's other one. "Babies can't be friends with people."
"Yes, they can. Can't they, Monsieur Leo?"
Leo laughed. "I don't see why not."
"I told you so!" Sylvie declared in triumph, giving her sister a little push.
Amelia pushed back, her cheeks pink with annoyance. "Well, I say they can't. Babies don't talk. Of course they can't be friends with people."
"Who wants to see what I have brought?" Leo interrupted this escalating argument, dropping their hands to reach into his pockets.
The girls crowded around him, gasping with excitement as he gave them each a tiny tissue-wrapped packet.
"Oh, mine's a pony!" Sylvie held up a china miniature. "For our collection, Melia."
Amelia's fingers trembled as she tore off the paper to reveal a miniature cat. "Oh, she's so pretty. I shall call her kitten." She held it up to her cheek, crooning softly.
"They have a collection of china animals," Leo told Cordelia quietly.
"They seem to have little else to play with," she returned. "Will the dragon lady approve?"
Leo grinned involuntarily. "I can't say I give a damn whether she does or not."
Cordelia touched his hand. He withdrew it with a jerk. For a moment they were silent. Then Leo spoke, his voice soft beneath the children's prattle.
"I wonder if it's wise of you to set yourself up against your husband so soon."
Cordelia said nothing immediately. She stared straight ahead, frowning at the painted panels on the door as if she were trying to identify the flowers depicted there. Then she said, "I must do what I think right. He doesn't wish me to be a mother to the children, but I know that I must be their friend, whether he wishes it or no."
"It does you credit," he said quietly. "But you should proceed with caution."
Cordelia suddenly shuddered. It was an involuntary movement and again he saw the shadow flicker across her eyes. Then she shrugged with an assumption of carelessness. "I'm not afraid to do what's right, Leo." But the disturbing shadow deepened.
He changed the subject. "I understand Michael will be escorting you to Versailles for the wedding."
"Shall we meet there?" She responded to the change with a note of relief that she couldn't disguise.
"I shall be at court."
"Will you be able to do anything for Christian, do you think?" Her eyes kept sliding away from his as if she were suddenly afraid to meet his gaze. But Cordelia was never afraid to look a person in the eye.
"I have a possible patron in mind. The Due de Carillac," he replied in a neutrally conversational tone that covered his unease.
"Monsieur Leo, will you take us for a ride in your carriage if Madame de Nevry permits?" The shy approach of Amelia and Sylvie, each clutching her china miniature, brought a welcome diversion.
"If I give you permission, then of course you may go," Cordelia said. She glanced up at Leo, her chin lifted unconsciously as if she challenged him to argue with her.