Deanna Raybourn - A Spear of Summer Grass

Regine bowed low over my hand, but then placed it firmly in the crook of his or her arm.

“My heart weeps, dear mademoiselle! I hear that Paris is about to lose one of the brightest stars in her firmament.”

Such flowery language was par for the course with Regine. I smiled a little wistfully.

“Yes, I am banished to Africa. Apparently I’ve been too naughty to be allowed to stay in Paris.”

“The loss is entirely that of Paris. And do you travel alone to the pais sauvage?”

“No. My cousin is coming. Regine, have you met Dora? Dora, say hello to Regine.”

Dora murmured something polite, but Regine’s eyes had kindled upon seeing her long, lugubrious features. “Another great loss for Paris.”

Dora dropped her head and I peered at her. “Dodo, are you blushing?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “The lights are red.”

Regine shrugged. “A necessary artifice. One must believe one is truly a tourist in Hell at the Club d’Enfer.” With that, Dora received a kiss to the hand and blushed some more before Regine disappeared to order more champagne and some delicious little nibbles for us.

Quentin shook his head. “I must admit I’m a bit worried for you, Delilah. Africa won’t be anything like Paris, you know. Or New York. Or St. Tropez. Or even New Orleans.”

I sipped at the champagne, letting the lovely golden bubbles rush to my head on a river of exhilaration. “I will manage, Quentin. Nigel has provided me with letters of introduction and very sweetly made me a present of his best gun. I am well prepared.”

“Not the Rigby!” Quentin put in faintly.

“Yes, the Rigby.” It was the second gun I learned to shoot and the first I learned to love. Nigel had commissioned it before travelling to Africa, and it was a beautiful monster of a firearm – eleven pounds and a calibre big enough to drop an elephant.

Quentin shook his head. “Only Nigel would be sentimental enough to think a .416 is a suitable gun for a woman. Can you even lift it?”

“Lift it and fire it better than either of his sons. That’s why he gave it to me instead of them. They’ll be furious when they realise it’s gone.” I grinned.

“I can’t say as I blame them. It must have cost him the better part of a thousand pounds. I suppose you remembered ammunition?”

“Of course I did! Darling, stop fussing. I will be perfectly fine. After all, I have Dora to look after me,” I said with a nod toward where she sat poking morosely at a truffled deviled egg.

“Poor Dora,” Quentin observed, perhaps with a genuine tinge of regret. Quentin had always been sweetly fond of Dora in the way one might be fond of a slightly incontinent lapdog. The fact that she bore a striking resemblance to a spaniel did not help. She was dutiful and dull and had two interests in life – God and gardens. We were distant cousins, second or third – the branches of the Drummond family tree were hopelessly knotted. But she was a poor relation to my father’s people, and as such, was at the family’s beck and call whenever I required a chaperone. She had dogged me halfway around the world already, and I wondered if she were growing as tired of me as I was of her.

She looked up from her egg and smiled at Quentin as I went on. “Dora’s going to have the worst of it, I’m afraid. My lady’s maid quit when I told her we were going to Africa, and it didn’t seem worth the trouble to train a new one just to have her drop dead of cholera or get herself bitten by a cobra. So Dora is going to maid me as well as lend me an air of respectability.” She made a little sound of protest, but I kept talking. “I started her off at the salon. I dragged her to LaFleur’s and made Monsieur teach her how to cut my hair.” I might have been heading to the wilds of Africa, but there was no excuse to look untidy. My sleek black bob required regular and very precise maintenance, and Dora had been the natural choice to take on the job. I told her to think of it as a type of pruning or hedge control.

Quentin laughed out loud, a sure sign that the champagne was getting to him.

I fixed him with my most winsome expression. “You can do a favour for me while I’m away.”

“Anything,” was the prompt reply.

“I have garaged my car in London.” I reached into my tiny beaded bag and pulled out the key. I flipped it into his champagne glass. “Take her out and drive her once in a while.”

He stared at the key as the bubbles foamed around it. “The Hispano-Suiza? But it’s brand new!”

It was indeed. I’d only taken possession of it two months before. I had cooled my heels for half a year waiting for them to get the colour just right. I had instructed them to paint it the same scarlet as my lipstick, which the dealer couldn’t seem to understand until I had left a crimson souvenir of my kiss on the wall of his office. I had ordered it upholstered in leopard, and whenever I drove it I felt savagely stylish, a modern-day Boadicea in her chariot.

“That’s why I want it driven,” I told Quentin. “She’s like any female. If she sits around doing nothing for a year, she’ll rust up. And something that pretty deserves to be taken out for a ride and shown off.”

He fished into the glass and withdrew the key, wearing an expression of such wonder you’d have thought I just dropped the crown jewels into his lap. He dried the key carefully on his handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. Cornelia wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t care and neither did Quentin.

Just then the Negro orchestra struck up a dance tune, something sensual and throbbing, and Quentin stood, holding out his hand to me. “Dance?” I rose and he smiled at Dora. “We’ll have the next one, shall we?”

Dora waved him off and I went into his arms. Quentin was a heavenly dancer, and there was something deliciously familiar about our bodies moving together.

“I have missed this, you know,” he said, his lips brushing my ear.

“Don’t, darling,” I said lightly. “Your mustache is tickling me.”

“You never complained before.”

“I never had the chance. I always meant to make you shave it off when we’d been married for a year.”

His arm tightened. The drums grew more insistent. “Sometimes I think I was a very great fool to let you go.”

“Don’t get nostalgic,” I told him firmly. “You are far better off with Cornelia. And you have the twins.”

“The twins are dyspeptic and nearsighted. They take after their mother.”

I laughed as he spun me into a series of complicated steps then swung me back into his arms. He felt solid under my touch. There had never been anything of the soft Englishman about Quentin. He was far too fond of cricket and polo for that.

I ran a happy hand over the curve of his shoulder and felt him shudder.

“Delilah, unless you plan on inviting me up for the night—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. We both knew I would. We’d spent more nights together since our divorce than we had during our marriage. Not when I was married to Misha, of course. That would have been entirely wrong. But it seemed very silly not to enjoy a quick roll in the hay when we both happened to be in the same city. After all, it wasn’t as though Cornelia had anything to fear from me. I had had him and I had let him go. I wasn’t about to take him back again. In fact, I rather thought I might be doing her a service. He was always jolly after a night with me; it must have made him easier to live with. Besides that, he was so lashed with guilt he invariably went home with an expensive present for Cornelia. I smiled up into Quentin’s eyes and wondered what she’d be getting this time. I had seen some divine little emerald clips in the Cartier window on the Rue de la Paix. I made a note to tell him about them.