- -
- 100%
- +
‘Forgiveness...is a strange thing to be talking about while we are naked,’ she said, reaching for the sheet. It was funny, but she was more aware of her nudity now they were starting to discuss feelings.
‘For instance, my parents were adamant that there was nothing to forgive.’ And perhaps there hadn’t been, not really. He might have toyed with her affections, but he’d drawn the line at seducing her. Given the reputation he’d since gained, it was amazing he’d behaved with such restraint. She’d been so infatuated with him he could very easily have talked her into bed. Well, it hadn’t exactly taken much to persuade her into it now, had it? A few smouldering looks, a couple of invitations, one hard kiss and she’d climbed five flights of stairs for the privilege.
‘They were quick to point out that you never proposed to me, so I had no right to complain, or even to feel hard done by.’ And for the first time, she could see their point. He’d stolen nothing beyond a few kisses. And he could have taken so much more. He could have ruined her before tossing her aside.
He reared up on his elbow.
‘What rot! I can’t let you shrug off my apology, saying the way we parted didn’t matter because I hadn’t actually made a formal declaration. I know I hurt you. I can still see the look on your face the night I cut you, then danced with every other girl in the place. Admit it. You were in love with me.’
He’d known how badly he’d hurt her that night? She’d shown it on her face? Well, she wasn’t an infatuated girl any longer, to wear her heart on her sleeve.
‘Why should I admit,’ she said haughtily, ‘anything of the kind?’
‘Because I was in love with you, too, that’s why. I did want to marry you.’ He rolled on to his back and stared hard-jawed at the ceiling. ‘We would have been perfect together,’ he said, in a voice that quivered with suppressed emotion. ‘My deepest wish, back then, was to live the life of a country gentleman, dabbling with my painting, raising a pack of happy children...’
Her stomach swooped. No matter how many people had told her she’d been mistaken, no matter how often she had told herself that she didn’t care, either, to hear him actually admit she’d been right all along gave her a tremendous surge of something that see-sawed between triumph and anguish.
‘So,’ she said coldly, ‘why didn’t you?’ What possible excuse could he give for ending it the way he had, if he’d really been dreaming the same dreams she had?
A muscle bunched in his jaw.
‘Because I was an idiot. A young idiot. I had no confidence in my own judgement. I believed...I was persuaded...that it was better to pursue a career, than to live my life in obscurity.’
Persuaded...
Her anger ebbed. Just a touch.
‘I know what it’s like to have an implacable, domineering father,’ she said, reaching for his hand. ‘And since we parted, I learned a great deal more about yours than I’d ever guessed when we were...’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to use the word courting, even though she now knew that was exactly what they’d been doing. ‘It is obvious, with hindsight,’ she said bitterly, ‘that he wanted better for you than a virtually penniless clergyman’s daughter from an obscure parish. He forbade the match, is that it?’
He groaned and flung up one hand to cover his eyes. He only wished it had been that simple. ‘It wasn’t exactly like that,’ he admitted ‘But if it’s any consolation to you, I definitely got my just desserts for not keeping faith with you,’ he said with a hollow laugh.
His breathing grew laboured as he considered flinging himself off the precipice of a total confession.
But as he lowered his arm and looked at her pinched expression, he took a mental step back from the edge. He hadn’t earned her trust yet, even though she was claiming she’d forgiven him. And if she knew it all...the thought of how she might react made his insides freeze.
‘I shouldn’t have brought it up, should I,’ he said ruefully. His selfish urge to salve his conscience had spoiled what had been a beautiful moment between them. ‘It is just,’ he said, rolling his whole body to one side to stare down at her, ‘that I want to get to know you again. The woman you are now. And we don’t have long, do we? You are only spending a short time in Paris.’
‘So there is little point in trying, is there?’ She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, struggling to keep the quilt covering what modesty she had left, and began to search for her scattered clothing.
As she attempted to fumble one stocking on to her foot without letting go of the quilt, he rolled off the bed and reached for his breeches.
‘Would you prefer me to leave you in privacy to dress?’
‘Yes. I would, thank you,’ she said, flushing, for it seemed foolish to feel shy after he’d had his hands and mouth all over her.
But he didn’t mock her sudden attack of shyness. He just smiled at her and walked to the door. Though he hesitated on the threshold, leaning his arm on the jamb.
‘I can see you are determined to leave,’ he said. ‘But I hope I can persuade you to spend tomorrow with me.’
‘Oh, and just how do you propose to do that?’
He chuckled. ‘Not the way you seem to think.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said crossly.
He raised one eyebrow. Then straightened his face. ‘Of course you don’t. So I will just point out that the mouse and her Frenchman will be so wrapped up in each other that they will drive you to distraction. What’s more, they won’t even notice whether you are there or not. So you need have absolutely no qualms about spending every moment you have left in Paris with me.’
Which was all true. She had no stomach for trailing around behind Fenella and Gaston. And there was going to be an awful lot more time to endure in Paris, while Monsieur le Prune attempted to strike a deal with the contacts she’d made. Time she might as well spend with Nathan, rather than moping about the changes she’d have to make to her life once Fenella married.
Because she couldn’t deny she did enjoy being with him. Tonight, before they’d started talking about the past, and what had gone wrong, she’d enjoyed his company tremendously.
Yes—as a distraction from the prospect of potentially having to spend a bleak lonely future with one hired companion after another, he would be perfect.
‘And I still need you to sit for your portrait,’ he reminded her. ‘That could take hours,’ he said, stalking back to the bed and cupping her face before placing his mouth firmly on her own.
Her knees went weak at once. And after only a little longer, she was wriggling out of the quilt and winding her arms round his neck so that she could pull him back down on to the bed. Only the aggravating man drew back, gave her naked body a scorching look and said, ‘Hours and hours.’
The portrait. He was talking about the hours he would spend painting her portrait. Not the hours and hours she could have with him in bed.
Or was he?
That was the trouble with men like Nathan. They could say one thing and mean another. They called it flirting.
Well, no matter. As long as she didn’t believe his apparent eagerness to spend time with her was something on which she could base her life, the way she’d done when she’d been younger, she would be fine.
She returned his smile with a brittle one of her own.
‘Well, I’d better come for a sitting tomorrow then, hadn’t I?’
* * *
‘It occurred to me after you left last night,’ said Nathan as he handed her into the fiacre he’d hired to take her...well, he hadn’t told her where he was going to take her, yet. Aggravating man, ‘that you never finished telling me about those two.’ He jerked his head towards the window from which Fenella and Gaston were watching them drive away. ‘And there was something you wanted to rebuke me for, specifically,’ he said, folding himself into the seat next to her. ‘I think you should get it over with now, don’t you? Then I won’t have to live in terror of the moment when you decide to bring it up.’
‘Are you deliberately trying to provoke me?’
‘Is it working?’ He leaned back in his seat and spread his arms wide in a gesture of surrender. ‘Come on, do your worst. I can take it.’
She breathed in slowly through her nostrils, then lifted her chin and turned her head to look out of the window on her side of the carriage.
‘Not in the mood for fighting yet? Very well,’ he said, sitting up again and nudging her with his elbow. ‘But you really do need to finish the tale from which I...distracted you last night.’
‘I don’t see why. And anyway,’ she said haughtily, ‘I cannot recall exactly how much I told you.’ And she didn’t want to bore him by repeating a story that hadn’t been able to hold his attention the first time.
‘Just that they saw themselves as Romeo and Juliet, with you as both sets of parents. And how you grappled with your very natural desire to turn him off because he’d not only seduced your friend while she was foxed, but because he was trying to come between you, persuading her you would judge her for falling from grace.’
Goodness. He had not only been listening to her prattling on, as they’d made their way slowly up the Wilsons’ staircase, but had committed the whole thing to memory.
‘I was waiting with bated breath for you to get to the part where he confessed his real name, since you accused me of alerting you to the fact he’s currently using an alias.’
‘You knew, all along, that Monsieur Le Brun is in reality the Comte de...’ she frowned. ‘Well, he rattled off a very long list of names and honorifics, but I was so stunned that I cannot recall any of them now. It was the last thing I expected to learn about him.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘Why, that he was wanted by the law for some crime or other...’
‘In a way, he is, or was. His parents went to the guillotine, you know. And he only narrowly escaped with his own life.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘At one time, I played a very minor role in an attempt to make sure that the very many French émigrés who cluttered up London were actually who they said they were and not spies.’
‘Goodness,’ she said, looking at him properly for the first time since he’d made that jest about doing her worst. ‘I knew you’d got into Parliament, but I never imagined you ever doing anything useful. I thought you’d been one of those who used their position to cut a dash in town and treated the House of Commons as nothing more than a highly select sort of gentlemen’s club.’
‘Oh, no, I wanted to use my position to make a difference,’ he said bleakly. ‘It just...didn’t work out that way.’
She decided not to press for reasons why it hadn’t worked. It wouldn’t be very pleasant for him to talk about his total failure as a politician, even in such a junior role.
‘Did you find out much about my Monsieur Le Brun? It is just that he claims to have property in England and the means to look after Fenella, as well as having a string of unpronounceable titles and a claim on some land in France. If he is lying, it would be tremendously useful to know about it now.’
‘I cannot recall much about him, to be honest,’ he told her. ‘It took me some time to work out where I’d seen him before, because I met him at only one or two gatherings thrown for émigrés claiming to be friends of England.’ And he’d done his best to blot out as much of that portion of his life as possible. If he didn’t dwell on it, he’d hoped it would all fade into the mist, rather than remain fixed at the foreground in lurid detail.
‘He was only one of many that were under subtle investigation. What has he told you?’
She pouted. ‘Well, he says that he is using his work as a courier as cover to enter France and see how the land lies. See whether it is possible to have some of what was confiscated from his family restored, now that the Bourbons are back in power. He claims he dare not move about openly under his true name, in case there are still enemies lurking in wait for him.’
‘It could all be true,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of people attempting to reclaim land and titles that were once theirs. And he was certainly introduced to me in London as the dispossessed Comte de...somewhere or other. It was what made me refer to him as the man who calls himself Monsieur Le Brun.’
‘It would certainly account for his excessive arrogance,’ she huffed. ‘There are times when I can quite understand why French peasants wanted to teach the aristocrats a lesson—though not, of course, quite such a brutal one—whereas Fenella finds his tale wildly romantic. Which was what made the rest of that outing almost unbearable.’ Her lips curled in disgust. ‘She would keep looking up at him as though he were a hero stepped straight out of the pages of some rubbishing novel. But,’ she concluded, ‘whether he really is a dispossessed French count, or just a mountebank, makes no difference, I suppose.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, if he is a mountebank, and has no real intention of marrying Fenella, it will break her heart. And if he is what he says he is and does marry her, it will break up our happy little household.’ For no man, particularly not a member of the aristocracy, could stomach the thought of his wife living anywhere but in his own home. ‘Neither of which outcome,’ she said glumly, ‘particularly appeal to me. I suppose that sounds selfish, doesn’t it? And it’s not that I don’t want Fenella to be happy. If anyone deserves to marry a title, even a French one—even a French one that might not actually exist any more—then it is Fenella. For she is a lady, you see. A lady born. She has been obliged to live with me only because her family cast her off when she married against their wishes. They really should have taken care of her,’ she added crossly, ‘once she was widowed. Yet they refused to have anything to do with her just because she’d married a man she loved, rather than one they approved of.’
He went very quiet for some time, before clearing his throat and saying, ‘She sounds like a very courageous woman. I was wrong to say she was mousy just because I couldn’t tear my eyes off you.’
She flushed and shifted, avoiding his gaze. She clearly wasn’t comfortable accepting compliments. Any more than he was to hear that a woman he’d dismissed as mousy had done what he’d not had the sense to do: defy his family and marry the woman he wanted.
Not that he’d ever got to that point. His father had tricked him into withdrawing before he’d come up to scratch.
The fiacre lurched to a halt.
‘Here we are,’ he said, leaning over to open the door.
She stepped out of the carriage, to see they were in front of a church that reminded her just a bit of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
‘The Pantheon,’ he said, having paid off their driver. ‘After we’d talked about the way the very air of Paris seems full of revolutionary ideals, I thought you might like to come and see the tomb of the man responsible for so much of it.’
‘You’ve brought me to look at a tomb?’
‘Not just any tomb. The tomb of Voltaire. Besides, there’s much more to see in here than tombstones. Have you ever seen anywhere quite so awe-inspiring?’
She had to admit the building was impressive, with its soaring pillars and multiple domes. They wandered about, admiring the place for some time before coming to a halt before the tomb Nathan had said he’d brought her here to see.
‘There was a girl,’ she said, ‘selling lemonade from a stall on the Boulevard, who had a copy of the Henriade in her pocket. I so wanted to ask her what she thought of it, but Monsieur Le Brun wouldn’t let me stop.’
‘Well, he probably doesn’t approve of peasants having any education. Or they wouldn’t have risen up and thrown his class out.’
‘Your class, too,’ she reminded him.
‘Ah, but not in Paris. Didn’t I tell you, now I’m in Paris I can be whoever I want to be?’
‘Do you think...no, never mind.’
‘What? You can ask me anything, Amy.’
‘You won’t like it.’
‘How do you know, unless you try me?’
‘Because you’re a man,’ she said with disgust. ‘Men don’t like women to have their own ideas.’
‘Ouch.’ He pretended to flinch. ‘That is a little unfair, even for you.’
‘Very well, then,’ she said, flinging up her chin. ‘I will tell you what I wanted to ask that lemonade seller, shall I? I wanted to know if women here in France really do have more freedom than the English. Because everywhere I look, there are women presiding over the cash desks of bars and businesses. Clearly the ones in charge. And it isn’t just because they’ve had to, because the men have all gone off fighting. The men are coming back. And instead of taking over their old jobs, they’re hanging around in packs, in their uniforms, letting the women carry right on running everything.’
He stroked his chin with one hand. ‘I hadn’t really noticed it. But you are right.’
She blinked. ‘I am?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised. You are clearly an intelligent woman. And you are looking at this city with a woman’s eyes. You are bound to see things I’ve missed.’ When she continued to gape at him, he chuckled. ‘Has nobody ever paid you a compliment before?’
‘Not about my intelligence,’ she said. ‘Not men, anyway. Most men want a woman to stay quiet, or agree with everything they say.’
‘No chance of that with you, is there?’
‘Not any longer, no. Not after the way—’ She bit back what she had been going to say.
‘The way I let you down?’
She shook her head, frowning. ‘It wasn’t so much what you did, Nathan. It was how my family treated me. I was...well, there’s no point in trying to deny it, since you claim you knew how badly you hurt me. I was devastated. I needed them to comfort me, but instead they...they turned against me.’
He took her arm and started strolling towards the door. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t treated you so badly. It was inexcusable. Did I put you off men for life? Is that why you never married?’
‘What makes you think I had a choice?’ She didn’t want to make it sound as if she’d been wearing the willow for him all these years. She had her pride.
‘Because you are so beautiful,’ he said bluntly. ‘Men must have been queuing up to pay their addresses to you.’
She snorted in derision. ‘Far from it. The only men who have ever shown an interest in me were...’ She’d been about to say tempted by her aunt’s money. But she didn’t want to go into that. ‘Let’s say they were put off by the claws I’ve developed over the years.’ She wasn’t the dewy-eyed débutante she’d been when she’d gone up to London for her Season. She was as far removed from that open, trusting girl as a domestic cat was from a caged lion. She trusted nobody these days, particularly not if they wore breeches. ‘When I see right through their empty compliments, they accuse me of being a harridan.’
‘Perhaps not all their compliments are empty, have you ever considered that? Just because I let you down, that doesn’t mean all men would.’
There were bound to be men out there, somewhere, who could match her. Who wouldn’t be put off by her defensiveness.
He rubbed at his stomach, wondering at the queasy feeling that came from picturing some other man courting her, marrying her and making her happy. Instinctively he made for the open air, where he would be able to breathe more easily.
‘It is nothing to do with you, whether I’ve married or not, you arrogant... Ooh, you make me so angry!’
‘Yes, it is,’ he said, stopping under the great portico and pulling her into his arms. ‘Just a little bit, anyway. Admit it. I ruined you for all other men.’
‘You conceited—’ But he cut her words off with a kiss. A kiss that started out fiery with her rage and quickly turned heated with passion.
‘Nobody else will ever kiss you like that,’ he husked, drawing back just far enough that he could speak. But his lips were still so close to hers she could feel their echo. ‘No other lover will ever make you feel the way I do.’
When she opened her mouth to make a pithy retort he silenced her with another kiss. A kiss that she felt right down to the core of her being. By the time he finished it, she’d forgotten what they’d been arguing about.
‘I think we’ve done enough sightseeing for one day, don’t you? Let’s go back to my studio and work on your portrait.’
‘In broad daylight?’ He wasn’t talking about painting her portrait at all.
‘The light in my studio will be perfect, about now,’ he said, glancing up at the sky, ‘to capture...’ he cupped her face with his hand, caressing her jaw as his words caressed her other senses ‘...all those subtle flesh tones.’
* * *
For the next few days they didn’t bother with the pretence they were going to explore Paris together. Amy went to his studio at first light and let him capture her subtle flesh tones. With his hands, his mouth, and then, later, when she was too sated to bother protesting, she let him arrange her on his couch so he could paint her.
‘What are you thinking?’ He’d stopped working, and was looking at her steadily from round the edge of the canvas he refused to let her so much as catch a glimpse of.
‘Nothing much. Nothing that would interest you, anyway.’
He pursed his lips. ‘Amy, how many times do I have to tell you that every single little thing about you fascinates me?’
When she snorted in derision, he shook his head at her. ‘It is true. Why would you think I’d bother to lie about it? I can still get you into bed any time I want. I only have to look at you like this...’ and he waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively ‘...and you turn wild.’
Only a few days ago she would have been furious at the suggestion he had any influence on her, but she’d got used to his teasing ways now. Besides, he might joke that he only had to give her a heated look for her to go up in flames, but nine times out of ten she’d done something to provoke the heated look in the first place. Such as lick her lips in a certain manner, or merely twine one of her curls round and round her finger meditatively.
He came across to the couch, knelt beside it and dropped a kiss on her exposed shoulder.
‘I will be able to paint a much better portrait if I know your innermost thoughts. I will be able to capture your essence. What makes you uniquely you.’
‘Oh, I see, it is for your art.’
‘If you like.’ He buried his face in her neck to kiss her throat. And breathe her in. And commit her fragrance to memory. The more time he spent with her, the more he regretted letting her go so easily when they’d been young enough to have forged a life together. He couldn’t help thinking that if he’d even had the courage of the mousy Fenella, they would have been together for ten years by now. Not that he wanted to get married again. It was just...if he had married Amy, it wouldn’t have been hell, that was all. From the things she’d said, he could tell that if he’d gone into politics from choice, rather than drifting into it because he’d stopped fighting his father, and if Amy had been his wife, she would have supported his wish to make a difference. She wouldn’t have sneered at every opinion he expressed that didn’t align exactly with her own. He might even have become a halfway-decent politician. Oh, nothing to compare with a Wilberforce, or a Hunt, but a man who would have been able to look at his own reflection in the mirror without despising what he saw.
But these few days she was in Paris would be all he’d ever have of her, now. He had to make them count. He had such a short time to create a lifetime of memories.
‘Well, I was thinking...’
‘Yes?’ He nuzzled the sheet she’d been using to preserve her modesty to one side.
‘About how unfair it is.’
‘What is unfair?’
She speared her fingers into his hair as he sucked one nipple into his mouth.
‘That the same rules don’t apply to men that so restrict women. A single man can take a lover and nobody much cares. But if a woman does so, she runs the risk of becoming a social pariah.’
He looked up at her sharply. ‘Are you afraid that there will be repercussions because of our affair, Amy? We’ve been discreet. I’ve deliberately kept you out of the public eye as much as possible. Well, after the Wilsons’, anyway.’