Free Royal 02 - Royal Passion by Jennifer Blake

later, if she stayed long enough with Roderic, there would be someone who would see her and draw the inescapable conclusion.
    It was possible it would not happen until she had done what she must—she prayed that it would not for the sake of her grandmother. But if it did, if it was discovered that she was in Paris rather than in the country with her grandmother, as her cousin believed, the scandal would be great. Paris, for all its cosmopolitan outlook, was provincial about some things. The appearance of virtue must be maintained. Some railed against such a bourgeois attitude, one that had emerged with the advance of the middle class after the revolution and steadily increased in strictness with every year since. But it did no good. A woman who cared for her good name did not live under the same roof with a man, especially one such as the prince.
    Once the tale was out, it would reach New Orleans without delay. What her father would say and do, Mara did not like to think. What she herself would do afterward, how and where she would live when her task was complete, she preferred not to consider. Her grandmother would be safe, and that was all that mattered.
    Mara was traversing the main gallery above the south entrance court after inspecting the public rooms when she heard the faint sound of barking. It was Demon, she was sure, though the sound seemed to be coming from some distance away. The acoustics in the house, as in all houses of any size, were peculiar. A person could yell herself hoarse in one spot and not be heard beyond the next room, while a whisper in another place would reverberate through the entire upper floor.
    She thought at first that the dog might be in Roderic's apartments. She had not penetrated into that section of the building, but knew that the rooms occupied by the cadre were located in the same wing, along one side of the east court, with the exception of Trude's, which was near to her own. The dog was surely with his master, Estes, since he was seldom far from the count's side. Estes would, in all likelihood, be with the other men of the cadre.
    She had not spoken to them since her arrival. They seemed to have a constant round of duties to carry out for Roderic, duties that took them to all parts of the city, moving back and forth in a steady stream. Their relaxation was pursued with the same intensity; they were always setting out for a cockfight or a prizefight, the theater or a drinking bout in the rooms above some restaurant. They must rest sometime, she knew, but she had not yet discovered where or when.
    She had not looked for Roderic's cadre, of course. She had been intent on her inspection of the building, on learning her way around it and discovering why it was in such disorder.
    She had come to the conclusion that it was one of two possible reasons. Either there was no money to hire the necessary number of servants to keep things as they should be or else there was no one to direct them and hold them responsible for keeping their jobs done. She thought it the latter, for she had come upon any number of men and women in livery and aprons standing gossiping in the corridors, drinking and arguing in the kitchens, or playing slap and tickle behind the doors of the guest bedchambers. It would be an enormous undertaking to bring order to the great house, but just the sight of all the grit and filth, to say nothing of slacking servants, made her itch to try it.
    The barking sounded again. She turned her head, listening. Combined with sharp, excited yelping were dull thumps and thuds, with now and then a shout. The noise was not coming from the east wing after all, but from the north court wing. Lifting her skirts, she hurried along the gallery, turning left into an antechamber, moving from it into an extra bedchamber with a dressing room beyond, then right into a long salon, which she crossed before turning right again into another long gallery.
    The room, lined with windows on both sides and