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pain inside him.”
    Ariadne looked up, her expression openly skeptical, or so she feared. “Pain?”
    â€œHe has not had an easy time of it, but then who among us has? We all have a crying child trapped inside us, one we must feed chocolate to stop its tears.” She held out her cup for a refill, her green gaze wry even as she lifted a shoulder. “Or give the poor dear something even more delicious as she grows up, like love.”
    â€œOh, love.” Maurelle was politely amused.
    â€œBut yes,” the diva answered, her eyes sparkling. “We are none of us jeunes filles here, lacking the experience to understand that physical love can soothe more than a mere itch.”
    Maurelle chuckled. Ariadne mustered a smile but could not see that the sally required comment. “It appears you are in the gentleman’s confidence.”
    â€œA little, perhaps,” the diva allowed. “People talk to me, you see. I don’t know why it is, but there you are.”
    â€œMerde,” the parrot muttered with his eyes on his meringue.
    It was probably the lady’s abundant interest and tolerance, Ariadne thought while watching the bird’s antics, and perhaps her profession that was not known for its respectability. She might receive adulation, be feted for her achievements, but, rather like the sword masters, would never be accepted into the rigid ranks of aristocratic French Creole society. The prohibition might make her willing to overlook things that would shock those within the select and protected circle. Ariadne felt herself drawn to the diva, though what she really wanted of her was some indication of weakness in the gentleman they discussed, something that might be forged into a weapon.
    â€œHandsome, healthy, of good family in England,” she said with a twist of her lips, “what could possibly plague Monsieur Blackford?”
    The diva gave her a clear look. “As with so many others, his family connections rob him of peace. A mother whom he seldom saw as a child, a statesman father who was almost never in England, a grandfather who reared him but despised his preference for books and the sword instead of hunting and guns. Then there was his older brother, the heir apparent, intent on stepping into their grandfather’s shoes and titles, after their father, so he aped the old gentleman in all things. They fought, of course, as brothers do, but particularly when one is intent on making the other feel inferior. As the heir was seven years older, it was an uneven contest, with the younger of the two getting the worst of it. Except when it was a war of words. It was in these, I’m sure, that he learned the uses of biting wit allied to circumlocution.”
    Ariadne could easily imagine it, the two boys facing off against each other, the smaller one tearing the character of the older to shreds with lilting phrases, the older frowning, bull-like in his lack of understanding, unable to answer the high-flown invective except with his fists. Afterward, the younger boy lying bruised and bloodied, but grimly satisfied that the last word had been his.
    Abruptly, she shook her head. She didn’t want to think of it, didn’t want to envision Gavin Blackford’s sorrows and defeats or to be forced to feel sympathy because of them. What had happened to him as a child had nothing to do with his conduct as a man. At some point every person had to discard the past and all the grim things that had happened, to pick up the threads of their lives and weave them into a different pattern, one nearer the ideal they carried in their mind. Events of long ago could not be used as an excuse for whatever occurred, all the things people allowed because they could not, or would not, summon the will to make it otherwise.
    For a stark instant, she was reminded of the grief she had known and how it haunted her still. But she was doing something to put it from her, was she not? She had