Free The Courtesan by Susan Carroll Page B

you.”
    Remy flushed at the maid’s blunt words. “By God, madam, I would never look—”
    “Out!” Bette splayed her hands against Remy’s chest and propelled him firmly back toward the door. He allowed her to do so, but only because it was Bette’s goodwill that had permitted him to remain with Gabrielle in the first place.
    He had alarmed Gabrielle’s entire household with his sudden arrival on the doorstep and Remy could scarce blame them for that. Such a desperate vagabond as he must have appeared, bellowing for help, bearing their unconscious mistress in his arms.
    It was a miracle he had not been overpowered, Gabrielle wrested away from him while he was arrested and hauled off to face the nearest authorities. He had Bette to thank for the fact that he was not even at this moment clapped in irons.
    She had been one of the serving girls at Belle Haven. Bette had grown up and filled out considerably, changed into the very semblance of an elegant lady’s maid, so much so that Remy had scarce known the woman. He was fortunate that Bette’s memory of him was far clearer and that she had not been as overwhelmed by his return from the dead as Gabrielle.
    Remy craned his neck for one last glimpse of Gabrielle before Bette shut the bedchamber door in his face. Gabrielle still had not stirred and Remy tried to not let his mind leap to such dire things as heart failure and apoplexy. Gabrielle was young and healthy. Despite her resemblance to the fair and helpless damsel of folklore, Remy had long ago detected a strength and resilience in Gabrielle.
    She would be all right. All he had to do was wait, not the easiest thing for a man accustomed to action. He forced himself to lean back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest when what he really wanted to do was march restlessly up and down the hall. But he thought it less than wise to draw any more attention to himself. He was aware that he was being watched from the landing below by Gabrielle’s footmen, the servants regarding him as warily as if he’d come to steal the silver plate. Their supercilious stares made Remy all the more conscious of his disheveled state.
    He supposed that under normal conditions a vagabond such as himself would not even have been permitted inside the kitchen door of a grand establishment such as this. At this hour, most of the building was left in shadow, but when he’d carried Gabrielle up to her bedchamber, Remy had glimpsed enough of the place to discern this was a town house of opulent proportions.
    He wondered how Gabrielle came to be living here on her own in Paris, so far from her sisters and the Faire Isle. When her father, the Chevalier Louis Cheney, had been lost at sea, it was said that the knight had sunk most of the family fortune with him. So how then could Gabrielle afford to maintain this costly mansion?
    Remy knew what he had heard murmured in the streets about her, lies that even now caused him to grit his teeth and long to cut out someone’s filthy tongue. The most dazzling courtesan to descend upon Paris in many a day, the old woman in the wine shop had cackled about Gabrielle.
    Courtesan . . . a fancy name for a whore. If that hag had been a man, Remy would have run her through. By damn, he’d always hated Paris and this was but one of his many reasons. It was a viperous den of gossip from the palace to the backstreets, all scandalmongering and deceit. Small wonder that a woman as lovely as Gabrielle would become the target of such cynical and envious small minds.
    If they had but known Gabrielle as he had that summer, none would dare to slur her honor. A woman-child, striving so hard for sophistication and yet so touchingly innocent in the ways of the world. Warm and cold, kind and cruel by turns, her moods came and went like the wind. Her blue eyes could sparkle with laughter or be haunted with melancholy, but only when she thought no one was looking. He’d often glimpsed a sadness shadowing her face, an