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

this is where you’ve been hiding. Very luxurious, I’m sure, and very expensive. Will you let me in, or must I stand out here like one of your admirers?”
    Lusty images fled—I bolted upright, covering my breasts with the rumpled sheets. The woman spoke in French, with traces of a German accent.
    “Marie, my dear, what are you doing in Dresden? I thought you were not well—”
    “True, thanks to you I am very unwell, but that doesn’t mean I should never go anywhere.” The woman—Countess Marie d’Agoult, it must be—was walking back and forth around the outer room in an agitated manner. “I decided to visit my people in Frankfurt, if it’s any business of yours—and then, since I’d come so far, to come along and see what you’ve been doing with yourself. Performing your tricks for anyone who’ll pay to listen. Have you been having fun?” Her voice was brittle and angry.
    Merde , and triple fuck ! What in God’s name was I going to do? My heart had leapt into my throat with a sickening bound. I’d never been the culprit in this dreadful, clichéd situation, and I wished devoutly that I could melt into the mattress, disappear, hear nothing more! Definitely not to be a major player in this (no doubt) swiftly approaching scene.
    “I hear that George is here,” the woman’s voice continued. “Frédéric has been complaining bitterly that she’s abandoned him. I know the feeling.”
    “My dear Marie—”
    “I hope you haven’t decided to bed my best friend. I know she’d love it, if only for the experience, and to be able to talk about it to everyone and anyone, then write it down in one of her sordid little novels.”
    “Please, stop, don’t say such things—”
    “Well, one of these days she’ll laugh out of the wrong side of her face. I’ve put things in motion, I’ve been meeting with de Girardin at La Presse and he’s very interested in an idea that I’ve had. Are you? I think not.”
    “What idea? Marie? Sit for a moment, you seem rather—”
    “I’ve been sitting for hours; I don’t feel like sitting, if it’s all the same to you.”
    “Very well. How are the children?”
    Her voice rose another octave—if that was possible. “Always the children! Have you asked after me, how I am? Do you care?”
    “I wish you to come outside with me, Marie; let us go to the garden just downstairs, it’s peaceful…” Franz’s voice sounded steady and sad; I imagined him trying to catch her arm and perhaps hold her in both of his own, but it seemed as if she’d flung herself away again. I couldn’t move, couldn’t bear to think what could happen at any second; my eyes were fastened upon the door handle, willing it to remain as it was, closed and still. An image of myself on the other side of this same situation flashed across my mind: I’d caught an earlier lover, George Lennox (the cad), bouncing the fat, white ass of a third-rate actress named Angel, and could picture the creature again in my mind’s eye, scuttling away, naked, across the parquet. Oh my God, was I now such an appalling, thoughtless thing as that ? What to do, what to do!
    “I’ve come this far; you’ll not turn me aside so easily, Franz. Mein Gott , to leave me month after month, when you know how ill and melancholy I am! Where is George, anyway? She’s not at the Hotel de Saxe, too, I hope? You tell me you’ve never slept with her, but I’m not convinced you haven’t slept with others—these actresses and singers you seem to keep company with. And what about this Spanish one?”
    Oh dear saints and apostles, and other celestials of any sodding stripe! This was terrible.
    “You’ll catch the morbus gallicus , Franz,” she hissed, “and then you’ll be sorry. Don’t come crying to me when you’re ill and bits of you are falling off!”
    His equable voice remonstrated, “You know that you’re the one who asked me for a permission d’infidélité— in writing, remember? For that Bulwer-Lytton