Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume by Kit Brennan Page A

a toad in its hole). He glared at me with a squinched-up face, though Franz told him nice, complimentary things. As we turned away, I could hear the ugly fellow mutter, “Heartless, demonic being.”
    I rounded upon him. “Who, me?” ( ¡Bastardo! ¡Cabrón! )
    Franz placed a hand on my arm.
    “I should think that you are the heartless being,” I snapped, “keeping us entrapped like that for so long!” Having delivered myself of this, I vowed to say no more, though the toad was looking me up and down with undisguised malice.
    “Good evening, then, Richard,” Franz said with a bow.
    “Her eyes are insolent.”
    “Her eyes see more than you and me,” Franz rejoined. He took my arm and urged me away through the departing crowds and then through the streets, back to our hotel.
    I was exhausted, it was two o’clock in the morning and Franz was as pale as milk, but I had to ask.
    “What did you mean by that, Franz? It sounded lovely, but what did it mean?”
    He was lying back upon the bed, without a stitch of clothing, and without desire. “Not tonight, Lola, it’s far too late.”
    I lay beside him, also naked. “Your friend, the composer. I’m sorry I said that, I really am. It’s just… It reminded me of—I get testy when…”
    “When what, my dear?”
    “When I’m treated dismissively. In Paris, another theatre man insulted me, just because he could, and I don’t think men should get away with that.”
    “I don’t either,” Franz said mildly, eyes closed.
    “It was Alexandre Dumas, a hippopotamus with a swelled head, a—”
    “Alexandre is a good fellow, Lola.”
    “What? You know him?”
    “He’s a large-hearted soul.”
    “Pooh! He is not.”
    Two years earlier, I’d been introduced to Dumas in Paris by the impresario Juan de Grimaldi, a man who’d seemed so willing to help my theatrical ambitions. Grimaldi turned out to be a government agent—yes, a spy—for exiled Spanish royalty. He was the one who had gotten me into the whole Spanish mess in the first place.
    “Alexandre Dumas is finally beginning to enjoy the success he deserves,” Franz was saying. “It’s been a long time coming, and he’s worked very hard.”
    “Hmph. What’s the success, yet another woman-belittling play?”
    “No, something else. Novels. In serialized form. A new thing, apparently, and it’s caught on. Marie is very interested in this. She’s dabbling, has friends in the business who attend her salons. She tells me that Alexandre is at the edge of a precipice of wild accomplishment.”
    I was disgusted: more adulation for that insatiable appetite in the shape of a man. I retorted hotly, “The last time I saw Dumas was at the funeral of a young girl who’d been murdered. He was unutterably rude and in a foul mood, completely absorbed with himself.”
    “He’s a writer,” Franz said.
    “That’s no excuse! I stood up in the church and in front of everyone, I challenged Alexandre Dumas to a duel!”
    Liszt’s eyes opened. He turned his head to look at me, a smile upon his lips. “You didn’t.”
    “I did.”
    His eyes closed again, and the grin spread. “Incorrigible.” And his prick began to rise.
    *
    I awoke the next morning to find that Franz was not in the bed. I could hear him moving around in the other room. A loud, repeated knocking at the door was probably what had woken me. “I’m coming,” I heard him say, then he turned to look back into the bedroom. “I’ll close you in, sleepy one, and get rid of whoever this is.” Tightening the sash of his smoking jacket, he gently shut the door.
    I lay back again, replaying images of passion from the night before. Every muscle in my body felt tired, but elated. I wondered what we’d do later that day, and I yawned voluptuously. Outside the bedroom, a little clatter as Franz opened the door of Number 17, followed by a deep rumble of unknown words as he spoke to whoever was standing there. Then suddenly, a woman’s curt voice.
    “So