Buch lesen: «The Dollar Prince's Wife»
‘I cannot believe that I have changed so much in a month,’ Dinah exclaimed.
‘Yes, you have changed, more than I could have hoped,’ Cobie replied. ‘Because you were loved and cared for.’
‘You have not loved or cared for me.’ There was almost accusation in her voice.
‘No?’ he queried. So much of what Madame had done, had been done because of his instructions.
The new savoir faire which Dinah had learned—and was still learning—informed her that, if she wished, she could make him hers at any time, whenever she pleased.
At the top of the stairs she saw the pair of them in a large gilt-framed mirror—and gasped. She was prepared for her husband’s splendor. Evening dress became him as nothing else did. But she was not prepared for the sight of herself.
She was his complement in every way. The girl who had hunched her shoulders and bent her head, lest the world look her in the face, had gone.
‘Yes,’ Cobie said in her ear. ‘We go well together, do we not?’
Dear Reader
Some years ago I did a great deal of research on the lives of those men and women who, for a variety of reasons, lived on the frontiers. Re-reading recently about life in Australia in the early nineteenth century, it struck me that an interesting story about them was only waiting to be told. Having written HESTER WARING’S MARRIAGE, it was a short step for me to wonder what happened to the children and the grandchildren.
Hence The Dilhorne Dynasty, each book of which deals with a member of the family who sets out to conquer the new world in which he finds himself. The Dilhornes, men and women, are at home wherever they settle, be it Australia, England or the United States of America, and because of their zest for life become involved in interesting adventures.
The Dollar Prince’s Wife
Paula Marshall
MILLS & BOON
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PAULA MARSHALL,
married with three children, has had a varied life. She began her career in a large library and ended it as a senior academic in charge of history in a polytechnic. She has traveled widely and has been a swimming coach. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Prologue
‘What I tell you three times is true.’ Lewis Carroll
Early March, 1892, Somerset
L ady Dinah Freville, the unconsidered half-sister of Violet, Lady Kenilworth, who always spoke of her in the most cavalier manner possible, was being equally cavalier in referring to her.
‘I really don’t want to leave you, Mama. You know how much I dislike staying with Violet—and how much she dislikes having me.’
She was staring through the window of the small dining room in her mother’s cottage in Somerset. Her mother, the widow of the late Lord Rainsborough, elegantly dressed in a loose silk Liberty gown of many colours, was busy with her canvas work.
She eyed the flowers she was stitching, yawned, and said gently, ‘I know, I know, but you can’t stay with me, my love. By my husband’s will, now that you’re eighteen, your guardianship will pass from me to your brother, and since he is still unmarried he has decreed that Violet will take you over and arrange for you to be presented at court. With luck, she will also arrange a suitable marriage for you. I can’t keep you here with me, however much I might wish to do so.’
Dinah’s frown grew. ‘I don’t want to live with Violet, I don’t want to be presented at court. I dislike the idea of the whole wretched business. I would much rather live with Faa if I can’t stay with you.’
‘Oh, that wouldn’t do at all!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘And I do wish that you wouldn’t call Professor Fabian Faa. You’re not supposed to know that he’s your father.’
‘I object to that too,’ returned Dinah mutinously. ‘Such hypocrisy! At least now that Lord Rainsborough is dead I don’t have to pretend that he’s my father any more.’
‘Violet,’ observed her mother, ‘thinks that you are a docile, spiritless child. I sometimes wish that she knew what you’re like when she’s absent. Does she really have such a dampening effect on you, my darling?’
Dinah spun round, turning to face her mother at last. ‘You don’t mind being in exile because you once weren’t, because once you had a name and a place, but I’m nobody—no, worse than nobody. I haven’t even a proper name, and every time I look at Violet—or anyone else from her world—I always know what they’re thinking. “That’s the one, the child whose existence ruined Charlotte Rainsborough who bolted with Louis Fabian—and didn’t even stay bolted with him once her child was born.”’
She suddenly fell silent, half-ashamed of her own vehemence. She looked at her mother’s placid face. ‘Why don’t you stop me when I’m being wicked, Mama?’
‘Oh, no, dear, much better to get it out of your system, as Nursie used to say.’
Genuine laughter shook Dinah. ‘Why didn’t you, Mama? Stay with him, Faa, I mean?’
‘Oh, no, once Rainsborough refused to divorce me it would have ruined poor Louis if I had stayed with him. I had no money of my own to keep him. No, Louis and I had our fun, one splendid summer, and then he could go back to being an Oxford don, and I was only too happy to be Rainsborough’s exiled wife—much better than having to live with him.’
She fell silent, contemplating that long-ago year when she had had a passionate affair with the young man who had been brought to Borough Hall to tutor her indolent son before he went to Oxford.
No, she told herself firmly, no, I won’t think of the life Dinah and I might have had if Rainsborough hadn’t played dog in the manger, roaring at me that dreadful day, ‘By God, Charlotte, if I can’t have you, neither shall he. I’ll be damned if I divorce you, and if you still run to him I’ll see him ruined, and he shan’t have the child, either. He, she, it, will be mine, will take my name, and be damned to the pair of you!’
No, she couldn’t ruin Louis, so she had accepted her husband’s terms, and her daughter Dinah was now Lady Dinah, who might have been a nameless bastard otherwise. But Rainsborough had taken good care that everyone knew the child’s sad history. Both her half-brother, who was always called Rainey, and her half-sister Violet, now married to Lord Kenilworth, but also the latest mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales, were hardly subtle in their constant, unkind reminders that she was only one of them by grace and favour…
Dinah plumped down on her knees and gently took her mother’s hand in order to stroke it lovingly. ‘The grand passion which only lasted six months. Is that how long all grand passions last, Mama?’
‘Yes, if you like, Dinah.’ What else could she say?
‘But I lasted longer.’
‘To my pleasure, yes. And now I must give you up. And do forget all this nonsense about having no name. Too middle class! My husband acknowledged you. You are Lady Dinah Freville, and the world accepts you as that. You aren’t the only one, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know that, Mama. And it doesn’t comfort me. What would comfort me would be to go to Oxford, to live with Faa and be an undergraduate at Somerville College. But I can’t have that, can I?’
‘No, my darling, we’ve had this out again and again. It’s imperative that you go to live with Violet, make a good match and be settled in the world. You haven’t time to play at being a scholar.’
‘Faa says that I could do more than play at it, Mama. He says that I have a good mind.’
‘Don’t think about that, my dear. You know very well how little money Rainsborough has left—my late husband spent it all on high living—and so your brother can’t afford to let me have more than a pittance. You won’t even have much of a dowry, and without a reasonable marriage you will be penniless. Just thank God that you’re not like some—thrown out to starve—and me, too.’
Dinah began to prowl restlessly around the room, avoiding her own image in the mirror facing the windows. She was ready at last to say the unsayable, the stark truth which her mother always avoided, but which Violet was constantly throwing in her face.
‘Who in the world is ever going to offer for me, Mama? I’m not like you or Violet. I have no looks and no light conversation.’
She was only too well aware of her own limitations. She was neither blonde, nor pretty. She was dark and slender, with no bust, she told herself despairingly, and precious little in the way of hips. Nothing about her was at all like the voluptuous women pictured in fashion plates and in the picture postcards of society beauties sold in every newsagent’s shop.
‘The fashionable clothes of the day aren’t meant for me, either. They stifle me. They’re meant for buxom, blue-eyed girls with ringlets, not a thin brown girl with raven hair and dark eyes.
‘And since I shan’t have a decent dowry, either,’ she ended ruefully, ‘there’s no fear, at least, that anyone will want to marry me for my money!’
‘Dear, dear,’ yawned her mother. ‘We have had this conversation so many times before. Sing another song, darling.’
‘Oh, I know I never sing the right one—and certainly I shall never be able to sing one which will please Violet. Please God that now that she’s taken up with the Prince of Wales she won’t have any time for me.’
‘Naughty thing,’ said her mother, laughing.
She looked thoughtfully at her daughter. For a moment there when she had spoken of Violet and the Prince her face had become animated, had glowed, had suddenly revealed quite a different person, a person of character and passion. It was as though the Dinah of the future had been superimposed on the Dinah of the present before disappearing again.
If she could look like that more often, then perhaps the child might attract someone who could see beyond the obvious, beyond the fashion plates and the picture postcards of society beauties, might even recognise her bright spirit, free it, and allow it to soar into the heavens.
Charlotte Rainsborough shook herself. Goodness, what brought that on? She said prosaically to her daughter, ‘One last thing, my dear, you will be careful when Violet takes you into society. There are those who prey on young things like yourself.’
‘Oh, no need to worry about that,’ replied Dinah, her face alight with amusement. ‘I’m sure that I’m most unlikely to attract either predators or pussy cats. As well imagine I could seduce the Prince himself—or any other of her lovers—away from Violet, or attract any of the men around them. Besides, you’re always telling me that men don’t like women who argue with them, so I shall know how to put off anyone whom I dislike.’
That last statement ended their discussion. Her mother shook her head at her, tea came in, and visitors, and for a time Dinah was able to forget her future. A future in which she would be sent off, like a parcel, to Violet’s grand home, Moorings, to be groomed for the Season where she would be inspected, and almost certainly passed over, before she could retreat into private life again.
Chapter One
‘N o, really, Cobie, no one should look like you, it isn’t decent,’ exclaimed Susanna Winthrop, wife of the American Envoy in London, to her foster-brother Jacobus Grant, always called Cobie.
In reply he offered her his lazy smile over the breakfast table—which was sufficient to exasperate her all over again.
It wasn’t just the classical perfection of his handsome face, nor his athletic body, nor even the way in which he wore his clothes, or his arrogant air of be damned to everybody which all combined not only to fascinate and to charm, but also to arouse a certain fear, even in those who met him briefly, which was enraging her. No, it was the whole tout ensemble which did the damage, so many remarkable things combined together in one human male.
She was so fierce that he could not resist teasing her. He said provokingly, ‘Well, nor am I decent. So what of that?’
For a brief moment the sexual attraction between them, long dormant on Cobie’s part, had been revived.
‘That’s what I mean,’ she retorted, still fierce. ‘To answer me like you do! You’ve neither shame nor modesty—and you only believe in yourself.’
His brows lifted, and like Susanna he felt regret for the love which had once existed between them, but was now lost. Alas, that river had long flowed under the bridge, and would not return again.
‘Who better to believe in?’ he asked, and his grin was almost a child’s, pure in its apparent innocence.
‘Oh, you’re impossible!’
‘That, too,’ he agreed.
Susanna began to laugh. She could never be angry with Cobie for long. She had loved him ever since she had first met him when he was a fat baby and she was nearly ten years old. He was the supposed adopted son of Jack and Marietta Dilhorne—in actuality their own son, made illegitimate by the machinations of Marietta’s jealous cousin Sophie. Susanna was the daughter of Marietta’s first husband and, as such, no blood relation of Cobie’s.
Ten years ago their affection had blossomed into passionate love, but Susanna had refused to marry him, seeing the years between them as a fatal barrier. His calf-love for her had inevitably died, but she was still agonisingly aware that her passion for him was still burning strongly beneath her apparent serenity. Susanna had thought she knew him, but ever since he had arrived in London she had begun to realise exactly how much Cobie had changed—and how little she had.
Eight years ago he had returned from two years spent in the American Southwest and the man he had become was someone whom she hardly knew: a man quite unlike the innocent and carefree boy whom she had refused. She had married in his absence, and had spent her life alternately trying to forget him, or wishing that she had married him, and not her unexciting husband.
Her annoyance with Cobie this time was the consequence of what had happened the night before at a reception which she and her husband had given and which the cream of London society had attended.
Inevitably—and unwillingly—Susanna had been compelled to introduce Cobie to that society’s most notorious beauty, Violet, Lady Kenilworth, the Prince of Wales’s current mistress. She had known only too desolately well what would follow when such a pair of sexual predators met for the first time.
Belle amie of the heir to the throne Violet might be, but she could not resist the challenge which Apollo—as she had instantly named Cobie—presented to her.
‘Half-sister?’ she queried after Susanna had left them.
‘You might call her that,’ Cobie replied in his society drawl, which was neither English nor American but something carefully pitched between the two.
‘Might you?’ Violet was all cool charm. ‘You’re not a bit like her, you know.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Cobie replied to this impertinent remark which broke all society’s rules—but Violet, like Cobie, always made up her own. Then, with a touch of charming impudence, ‘And are you like your sister, Lady Kenilworth?’
Violet threw her lovely head back to show the long line of her throat, her blue eyes alight beneath the gold crown of her hair. ‘God forbid!’ she exclaimed. ‘We are quite unlike in every way—to my great relief, she’s the world’s greatest bore—and call me Violet, do.’
Despite himself Cobie was intrigued. What in the world could the sister be like who inspired Violet to be so cuttingly cruel? Nevertheless he merely bowed and said, ‘Violet, since you wish it. For my part I wish that I were more like Susanna.’
‘I don’t,’ said Violet, full of provocation. ‘Not if it involved you turning into a dark young woman. I much prefer tall, handsome, blond men.’
Seeing that the Prince of Wales was neither tall nor blond and was certainly not handsome, this riposte amused Cobie—as it was intended to. Before he could reply, Violet was busy verbally seducing him again.
‘You are over from the States, I gather. Is it your first visit? I do hope that you will make it a long one.’
‘It will be my first long visit,’ he replied, his mouth curling a little in amusement at her naked sexual aggression barely hidden beneath the nothings of polite conversation. ‘I have made several short ones before—on business.’
‘Business!’ It was the turn of Violet’s mouth to curl. ‘Forgive me, but you seem made for pleasure.’
The buttons were off the foils with a vengeance, were they not!
‘A useful impression to give if one wishes to succeed in business—’ he began.
‘But not this visit—’ she said sweetly, interrupting him—so for quid pro quo he decided to interrupt her with,
‘No, not this visit. I have been overworking and I need a holiday.’
‘The overwork is truly American,’ pronounced Violet. ‘The holiday part is not. I thought that Americans never rested, were always full of—what is it?—get up and go!’
‘Ah, another illusion shattered.’ Cobie was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘The first of many, I hope. It all depends on what kind of get up and go we are speaking of.’
‘All kinds, I hope,’ murmured Violet, lowering her eyes, only to raise them again, saying, ‘Now we must part—to entertain others. Before we do so, may I invite you to visit us at Moorings, our place in the country. We go there in ten days’ time to spend a few weeks before the Season proper starts.
‘In the meantime, allow me to inform you that I am always at home to my true friends from two o’clock. Pray don’t wait until four-fifteen—only the bores visit then.’
Cobie bowed, and she moved away. He was aware that he had become the centre of interest. He was, Susanna told him later, socially made now that Violet Kenilworth had taken him up. Not all the eyes on him were kind, among them those of Sir Ratcliffe Heneage to whom Arthur Winthrop introduced him later.
Sir Ratcliffe’s eyes raked him dismissively. He was everything which an American thought of as a typical English aristocrat. He was tall, dark, impeccably dressed, authoritative, well built with a hawk-like face. He was a junior Cabinet Minister, a noted bon viveur, was part of the Prince of Wales’s circle, and had once been an officer in the Guards.
The assessing part of Cobie, however, which never left him, even when he was amusing himself, told him that, disguise it as he might, Sir Ratcliffe was on the verge of running to seed. His face was already showing the early signs of over-indulgence.
‘Related to Sir Alan Dilhorne, I hear,’ Sir Ratcliffe drawled condescendingly to this damned American upstart, only able to enter good society because of his immense wealth—made by dubious means, no doubt.
‘Distantly.’ Cobie’s drawl matched Sir Ratcliffe’s—he made it more English than usual. ‘Only distantly.’
‘Getting old, Sir Alan—giving up politics, I hear. That’s a dog’s life, you know. Can’t think why I went in for it. Who wants to sit around listening for division bells and all that? Gives one a certain cachet, though. You in politics back home?’
‘Not my line,’ said Cobie cheerfully. ‘Too busy earning a living.’ He wondered what had caused the waves of dislike emanating from the man opposite. ‘Takes me all my time to survive on Wall Street.’
And, oh, what a lie that was!
Sir Ratcliffe’s lip curled a little. ‘In business, are you?’ he asked, his tone showing what he thought of those who worked for a living rather than played for it. ‘Sooner you than me, old fellow. Miss it while you’re over here, will you?’
‘I’ve come to enjoy myself,’ was Cobie’s reply to that. The man’s patronising air was enough to set your teeth on edge, he thought.
‘Plenty of that on offer—if you know where to look for it. Shoot, do you?’
‘A little,’ lied Cobie, who was a crack shot with every kind of weapon, but for some reason decided not to confess to that. There were times when he wondered whether he would ever be permitted the luxury of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!
‘A little, eh? Don’t suppose you get much chance to shoot anything in Wall Street, hey! hey! Or anywhere else for that matter.’
‘Exactly,’ drawled Cobie, suppressing a dreadful urge to tell the languid fool opposite to him that there had been a time when Cobie Grant, then known as Jake Coburn, a six-shooter in his hand, had been a man to fear and to avoid.
On the other hand, if Sir Ratcliffe chose to think him a soft townie, then it was all to the good. It usually paid to be underestimated.
At breakfast that morning, Susanna explained why Sir Ratcliffe disliked him so much.
‘He saw Violet was taken with you, didn’t he? She was looking at you as though you were a rather delicious meal laid out for her to enjoy. He’s been after her for months—with no luck. He’s made an ass of himself over the Prince’s favouring her. On top of that, the rumour is that he’s in Queer Street financially, and there’s you, an enormously rich Yankee, fascinating Violet without even trying.’
Of course, Sir Ratcliffe had been right to be jealous—and so had Susanna, which was why she was reproaching Cobie for being the man he was and not the man he had been.
Susanna had been only too well aware that Cobie would take up Violet’s two o’clock invitation at the earliest opportunity—which he promptly did, that very afternoon. At the Kenilworths’ town house in Piccadilly he enjoyed, for what it was worth, what a famous actress and beauty had once called the hurly burly of the chaise-longue rather than the deep peace of the marriage bed. One disadvantage being that one remained virtually fully clothed.
He also, a little reluctantly, agreed to visit Moorings several days before the rest of the guests arrived. Violet had smiled at him confidentially, and drawled, ‘As early as you like so that we can enjoy ourselves in comfort.’
Cobie was not sure that he wished his affair with her to be more than a passing thing. Violet had not improved on further acquaintance, and to some extent he was regretting having pursued her at all—but he could not refuse to visit Moorings without offending her—and he had no wish to do that. It was plain that she saw him as a trophy, and was determined to flaunt him before the rest of society. He wondered a little what the Prince of Wales would think of Violet taking a second lover, but she made nothing of that.
‘I understand that your nickname in the States is The Dollar Prince,’ were her final words to him, ‘which means that I now have two of such name.’
He was tempted to say, ‘No, Violet, you certainly don’t have me,’ but he was well aware that it would be unwise to make an enemy of her, so he merely bowed in acknowledgement of her mild witticism when taking his leave before the bores arrived at four o’clock.
Well, at least he would be able to enjoy living for a few weeks in one of the most spectacularly beautiful country houses in England, even if he did have to pay for it by pleasuring Violet!
It was for that reason, but not for that reason alone, that two evenings later he left the ball which she and her husband were giving at Kenilworth House long before Violet wished him to. He had bidden her ‘goodnight’ with all the charm which he could muster, but it was not enough to mollify her.
‘Leaving already!’ she had exclaimed, her beautiful brows arching high. ‘The night is yet young, and many who are years older than you are will not be giving up until dawn.’
‘Alas,’ he told her untruthfully, ‘I have been busy in the City all day, and such a concentration of effort carries its own penalties—I am sure that Kenilworth will have told you that.’
Cobie had always wondered at the workings of chance, and that it might be unwise to ignore them. Chance had led him to overhear something odd that night, something which had stayed in his memory. It was for that reason only that after leaving Kenilworth House, he did not go straight home to the Winthrops’. Instead he dismissed his carriage and walked down the Haymarket, which was so brilliantly lit that it might as well have been day.
The usual stares at his splendid self from both men and women followed him: he ignored them all and carried on his solitary way until he came to an alley about a hundred yards beyond the Haymarket Theatre. Looking down it, he could see a group of top-hatted men of fashion standing and smoking under a swinging lantern over an eighteenth-century doorway.
It must be Madame Louise’s: the brothel where the quality went, where discretion and high prices reigned. The conversation which he had overheard at the Kenilworths’ ball had him intrigued enough to consider going in. He had been leaning against a pillar, half-hidden, tired of the nothingness of the whole business, when he had heard two men approach and, quite unaware of his presence nearby, begin a muffled conversation.
‘Deadly boring tonight, eh, Heneage? Not that these pre-Season dos are ever anything else.’
Heneage—it must be the pompous dandy whom Cobie had met at Susanna’s equally boring thrash.
He was answering his companion in an amused knowing voice. ‘I know a better way of entertaining one’s self, Darrell, and it’s not far from here. Madame Louise’s place, in short. You can only visit there if you have the entrée—and I have. We could move on when I’ve done the pretty with dear Violet.’
Darrell—that would be Hubert Darrell, one of the hangers-on to the coat-tails of the great. They were rather like those extras in a play who are always shouting ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb’ at the appropriate moment. From the turn the conversation had taken Darrell was about to be introduced to some vicious inner circle.
‘Bit dull, though, isn’t it, Heneage? Just the usual, I take it.’
Heneage laughed patronisingly. ‘Oh, you can always find variety at Madame’s if you’re in the know, are discreet and have plenty of tin. You can have anything you fancy—anything—no holds barred. But mum’s the world, old fellow. Are you game?’
‘Game for anything—you know me.’
‘Then we’ll do the rounds here first, and sample the goods afterwards. I heard, don’t ask me how, that Madame has some new stuff on show tonight, very prime.’ Sir Ratcliffe’s voice was full of hateful promise.
They moved out of Cobie’s hearing, leaving him to wonder what exactly was meant by ‘no holds barred’ and ‘good new stuff’—and not liking the answer he came up with.
Curiosity now led him to enter Madame’s gilded entrance hall and to bribe his way past the giants on guard there since he came alone and unrecommended. This took him some little time. He thought, amusedly, that he might have been trying to enter a palace, not a brothel, so complicated was the ritual.
He agreed to hand over his top hat and scarf to a female dragon at the cloakroom, but insisted on carrying in his all-enveloping cape—which cost him another tip for a sweetener. There were reasons why he wanted to retain it. He then made his way into an exquisitely appointed drawing room.
Everything in it was in the best of taste. There was even a minor Gainsborough hanging over the hearth. Men and women sat about chatting discreetly. Among them he saw Sir Ratcliffe Heneage. He had a brief glimpse of a man being led through some swathed curtains at the far end of the room and could have sworn it was his brother-in-law, Arthur Winthrop, who had also left the Kenilworths’ ball early, pleading a migraine.
Madame Louise was tall, had been a beauty in her youth and, like her room, was elegantly turned out. Her eyes on him were cold.
‘I do not know you, sir. Since you have arrived without a sponsor or a friend, who allowed you, an unknown, to enter?’
‘Oh, money oils all locks and bars,’ he told her with his most winning smile, ‘but should I require a friend I have one here—Sir Ratcliffe Heneage. I am sure that he will confirm that I am Jacobus Grant, the brother-in-law of the American Envoy, and a distant relative of Sir Alan Dilhorne, late of the British Cabinet. Does that make me…respectable?’
Sir Ratcliffe, who had been watching them, was smiling with pleasure at the sight of the Madame of a night-house putting down the Yankee barbarian who had succeeded with Violet Kenilworth.
‘Yes, Mr Grant is who he says he is. We have been introduced.’
‘There!’ said Cobie sweetly. ‘What better recommendation could I have than one given me by Sir Ratcliffe? I may stay?’
‘Indeed. It is my custom to give a new guest a glass of champagne and ask him, discreetly, of course, what his preferences are. You will join me?’
Cobie bowed his agreement, secretly amused at her using the word guest instead of customer. A footman handed him his champagne and Madame asked him, discreetly again, ‘Are your tastes as unorthodox as your mode of entry, Mr Grant?’
‘Alas, no. I am distressingly orthodox in all I do, if not to say uninventive.’
He looked as pious as a male angel in a Renaissance painting when he came out with this lie, invention being the name of every game he played. He was not yet sure what game he was playing at Madame Louise’s, but he hoped to find out soon.
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