Free The Adventuress by Carole Nelson Douglas

the worst upon finding my basque disarranged. Then I felt a dull ache and discovered the... disfigurement. Not only had the villains abducted me, but they had marked me forever with their cruelty and my shame!”
    “Barbaric,” Godfrey murmured in a low, angry voice, so sincerely that Louise looked directly at him for the first time. She was barely twenty, I estimated, and certainly not immune to so dashing a champion as Godfrey.
    “My dear young woman,” he said, sensing his advantage, “you must tell me the exact circumstances if I am to help. Who were ‘these villains’? When and where did they abduct you?”
    Louise forced her hands to her lap, where they folded and remained as still as if cast in plaster.
    “First, Monsieur, you must understand my position. I am of good family”—smug looks were exchanged at this confirmation of previous speculation—“though of impoverished circumstances. My mother died in childbirth and my father, distraught, began to lead the careless, dissolute existence that was to end his days prematurely.
    “I became the care of my Aunt Honoria, no relative save by marriage, but devoted to me and very kind. Her husband became my guardian. Uncle Édouard was Father’s older brother; to him had gone all the family’s lands and assets.
    “As I grew older, I learned of my father’s weaknesses, particularly for games of chance. I also learned that my uncle might provide me with some small dowry should I prove myself a steady, well-behaved person prone to none of my father’s follies.
    “I cannot complain of my childhood, though Uncle Édouard was remote and stern, as if expecting me to follow in my father’s footsteps. Aunt Honoria was my salvation, particularly when my father died in so shocking a manner.”
    Louise paused. We kept silent, each wondering how to broach the indelicate subject.
    Casanova’s voice floated from the other room: “What? What?” he croaked.
    “What manner, you ask?” Poor Louise was so distracted that she had not noticed the nonhuman nature of her interlocutor. “By the rope. Oh, not by legal decree, but by his own hand. In Monte Carlo. The casino, you see. He had lost everything, save the little that remained. I was only five. From that moment on, Uncle Édouard began to watch me as if I, too, would succumb at any instant to gambling fever, or to scandal, or to some misstep.
    “It was only long after my father’s death, which was highly publicized of course, that letters began coming to Uncle from Central America, London, the south of France, even from Africa. They began three years ago and upset him enormously. After one was received, he would glare at me as if I were a criminal. The entire household came to dread the appearance of one of these ominous missives upon the silver salver in the front hall. All of our breaths hushed, mistress and maid alike, until Uncle came home at six o’clock and read the post. The letters were sealed with a clot of marbled black-and-crimson wax impressed with some strange device. The sealing wax smelled of sandalwood.”
    ‘The wax was foreign, then?” Godfrey inquired.
    “So it struck me.”
    “But the letters came from many nations,” Irene put in.
    “From a number of correspondents, then,” Godfrey said.
    “Or a single one who traveled widely,” she amended.
    “When did your father die?” Godfrey asked Louise.
    “Fifteen years ago. It was a horrid scandal. That is why I must... erase myself somehow. I cannot face Uncle’s disappointment and rage. Once I reached a certain age, he had his man accompany me upon the most innocent of errands, as if he suspected me of wrongdoing. Now that I am quite literally marked, I am worth no dowry. No man will wed me. I am as utterly ruined as if I had in truth followed in my father’s profligate footsteps!”
    Louise broke into soft sobs.
    “Nonsense, my girl.” I was surprised to hear myself speak. “You must not despair. I myself was orphaned before I was