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No. Nathan Harcourt wasn’t a man to cross with impunity. He’d get his own back on her somehow.
Well then. Her mouth compressed into a hard line. She’d just have to force herself to go and see him, one last time, before she left Paris. Offer him whatever he wanted to release the portrait to her.
Any sum of money, that was, no matter how steep. She would pay it.
And if his demands were not of the financial kind?
Well, he would be wasting his time trying to blackmail her into anything other than monetary payment. Marry him she would not. Nor let him touch her again.
Anything but that!
She’d just risen from her chair to get ready to go and tell him so when Fenella knocked timidly on her door.
‘I know you said you wanted to be alone this morning, but I thought I’d better let you know...that is...he’s here. Mr Harcourt.’
Amethyst dropped back down into her chair.
‘I tried to turn him away,’ Fenella continued apologetically, ‘but he’s most insistent...’
She’d just bet he was. He’d already worked out that he had a valuable bargaining chip in that portrait and was clearly determined to start negotiations for it before she left.
Her fingers clawed round the arms of her chair
‘Show him in.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure. His visit has saved me the bother of going out and seeing him, actually, which I had planned to do later on. He and I have a few matters we need to settle before I leave France. Private matters,’ she added, giving Fenella a stern look that sent her scuttling away just like the mouse Nathan had so disparagingly likened her to.
She took a deep breath as soon as the door shut behind her companion, suddenly wishing she’d taken a bit of care over her appearance when Fenella had persuaded her to roll out of bed this morning. She hadn’t bothered looking in a mirror, but since she’d scarcely slept last night, and spent most of the day before weeping, she must look a fright. Had she even brushed her hair? She raised a shaky hand to her head and confirmed her suspicion that she had not, when they met with a riot of tangled curls.
She let her hand drop to her lap where she clenched it into an impotent fist. She should have told Fenella to make him wait while she tidied herself up. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing how low he’d managed to bring her.
For the second time in her life.
But it was too late to do so much as reach for a comb. There was a scuffling sound from just outside the door, then it swung open and Nathan slid in sideways, his movements hampered by a huge, square package done up in brown paper.
A package that was the exact size of the portrait.
She shot to her feet. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
He propped up the package against the wall to the right of the door before looking her way. He seemed tense, but defiant, turning his hat round and round in his hands.
‘Thank you for agreeing to see me,’ he began.
‘Never mind all that.’ She made a dismissive gesture with her hand as she strode across to what might be her portrait.
‘I was hoping you would want to keep it,’ he said. ‘So I took the chance that it might be my ticket in to see you.’
She shot him just one suspiciously wary glance before tearing at the wrapping with her fingers to find out exactly what it was he’d brought with him. Who knew what kind of trick he might be trying to play on her? She cursed under her breath when she broke a fingernail. Where were the scissors when she needed them?
‘Here,’ he said, handing her a pocketknife.
She took it from him with an indefinable noise, halfway between the words thank you and a snarl, and severed the string.
It was the picture. Of her. Half-naked and looking at the artist as though she wanted to devour him.
With a shiver, she twitched the slashed wrappings back in place, then dragged the whole thing across the room and tucked it safely behind a sofa.
‘You may be able to hide that away,’ he observed, ‘but you can’t hide from what has passed between us this past month.’
‘Can you blame me for wanting to?’
‘Not if this was just some tawdry affair, no. But it is so much more. I’ve asked you to marry me, Amy—’
‘And I have said no.’
‘You said it when you were angry with me for discovering what an idiot I’d been before.’ The corners of his mouth tilted into a rueful, yet hopeful smile. ‘I was hoping your temper might have cooled somewhat since then.’
‘Oh, I’m perfectly cool today,’ she assured him haughtily. ‘You might say, to the point of chilliness. Why, towards you, I feel...positively frigid.’
‘Do you, though?’
He tossed the hat aside, strode across the room, hauled her into his arms and kissed her.
And even though she was still furious with him, especially since he had the nerve to try smiling at her, her body melted into him the moment he took her in his arms. Her own arms went round his neck. Her foolish lips parted for his and kissed him back. Only her pride stood apart, shaking its head in reproof.
‘You want me, Amy,’ he breathed, breaking their kiss. ‘Even though I’m no good, you want me. Don’t pretend you don’t. Don’t be a liar. That kind of behaviour is beneath you.’
‘Who are you to tell me how to behave?’ Injured pride had her pulling out of his arms. She managed to take two steps away from him, spied her chair and took another two steps, so that she’d put it between her and him.
‘The man who loves you,’ he said.
‘Oh, don’t start that again. You never loved me. You couldn’t have.’
‘Are you saying that because of the way I behaved, or because you believe there is something in you that makes you unworthy of love?’
‘What?’ She flinched. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, I think you do. I think you know exactly what I mean. I recognise that aspect of you, Amy, because I have it, deeply ingrained in me, too. Like me, I think you’ve always had to try to prove yourself to parents who expect more from you than you are capable of being. Who want you to be someone you will never be. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that, since we parted, you’ve carried on living the kind of life where people around you always measure you by a different set of standards from those that matter to you.’
She gasped and pressed one hand to her chest. It was as if he’d looked right into her soul and divined every last one of her secrets.
So she had no choice but to fight back. She reached for the cruellest weapon she had at her disposal.
‘You said it yourself, Nathan,’ she sneered. ‘You are no good. I can’t depend on a single word you say. You made me fall in love with you, then decided I wasn’t good enough. And now you talk about marriage, when all the world has seen what a dreadful husband you can be...’
‘I’ve already told you it wasn’t because you weren’t good enough! I confessed my darkest shame to you. You know why I spurned you, Amy, so don’t give me that excuse...’ He stalked up to the chair, stopping only when his knees touched the upholstered cushions. She gripped the back, but he was so close it scarcely formed a barrier between them at all now.
‘And as for being a dreadful husband—I’ll tell you about my first marriage, shall I? How I fell into it because I’d ceased caring what happened to me? There was great gaping hole in my future, a void where my dreams of being your husband had once been. My father was telling me that I had exhibited poor judgement and that it was better to let him organise my life. And I believed him. I thought I’d made a terrible error of judgement by falling for you. I had only two things left: a chance to redeem myself with my father, of making him proud of me by going along with his plans, and a burning desire to wound you the way you wounded me. Marrying Lucasta achieved both those ends. She was the perfect weapon. To prove to you that I didn’t care. To show you that I would rather marry a girl with a pedigree, and a fortune, than one with a pretty face.’
Amethyst flinched. She’d known it. She’d known he’d done his utmost to wound her. That he wasn’t the kind to turn the other cheek.
Any more than she was. Hadn’t she just said the very worst thing she could think of, with intent to wound him?
‘Father had chosen Lucasta for me because she was intelligent and ambitious, and of course well connected. He’d picked the same kind of wife for each of my brothers. Women who would be a help to them rising through the ranks, in whatever career they’d chosen. He matched Freddy to the daughter of an archbishop, the moment he chose to take holy orders. And Berty got the granddaughter of both an earl and a general when he joined the army. The only difference was that others had decided I ought to go into politics, rather than me showing any inclination for it. But nobody thought it would matter. Unlike any other profession, a man doesn’t need any aptitude to have a successful career in politics. He only needs the right connections.
‘The terrible irony of it all was that initially I fell in with my father’s scheme, because I thought he was showing faith in me. But it was the very opposite. He was putting his faith in Lucasta. He thought she would make me a success, no matter how inept I was. She was the one with all the ambition. She wanted me to reach the top by fair means or foul, whereas I...’
Something he said came back to her. ‘You wanted to make a difference.’
He snorted in derision. ‘She just wanted me to vote the way I was told. She was furious when she discovered I wasn’t the shambling, indolent wastrel my father had persuaded her she could push into doing whatever she wanted. I started to wake up, you see, not long after the nuptials were over. And stopped dumbly agreeing with everything that everyone told me. Voiced a few opinions of my own. Once or twice I even had the unmitigated cheek to vote according to my conscience. A young pup like me, who had no experience, no brains, no judgement... They kept telling me I shouldn’t think for myself. That I should let older and wiser heads guide me. Which had the opposite effect. I made a couple of dramatic, rebellious gestures that made me look more of a fool than ever.’
In spite of her determination not to believe one word he said, this rang so true she couldn’t help it. Hadn’t she made the dramatic, rebellious gesture of going to live with her spinster aunt rather than back down when her family had told her she hadn’t known her own mind, that she’d misunderstood his intentions?
‘And as soon as Lucasta saw she’d been sold a pig in a poke, as she put it, she started to try to punish me.’
He gave a bitter laugh that tugged at a place deep inside her that had long lain dormant. She swallowed it back down, nervously.
‘Her opening gambit was to start spreading tales about her disappointment with my prowess between the sheets. I suppose in a way she had cause to complain. I’d never had that much enthusiasm for her, and what little I managed to muster waned remarkably swiftly once I realised what she was like. But still, I had this stupid, unfashionable notion that what went on between a husband and wife was private. She didn’t. She wanted a life lived in the public eye. And when I refused to employ the kind of tactics she wanted me to take in order to start climbing the greasy pole, she took her revenge in public.’
His cheeks flushed dull red as she recalled some of the things she’d read about him in those days. The hints that he wasn’t much of a man. The cartoons depicting him as a sort of wilting flower, blowing about with every breeze as he voted not according to the party line, but with the prevailing wind of public opinion.
‘Even the fact that I wouldn’t break my marriage vows made her despise me more. I made it a point of honour, you see, to show the world that I wouldn’t sacrifice my integrity for my own comfort, let alone her ambition. But she even managed to twist that into something...foul.’ His mouth twisted with bitterness.
‘When, eventually, I suggested we might both be happier if I retired to the country, out of her way, she reminded me that her family had paid a great deal of money for me and I owed it to them to at least go through the motions. Even if I couldn’t be a husband she could be proud of, I had no right to make her forfeit the life she loved. Hosting political gatherings, being in the thick of all the intrigue...
‘She was right, of course. I stayed in London and...endured. My God, but I was relieved when she died. That makes me sound heartless, doesn’t it? But you have no idea what it’s like to live with that level of contempt, day in, day out.’
Actually, she rather thought she did. She’d had a taste of it from her family, before her aunt had swooped in and rescued her. Only she hadn’t had to endure it for years. Only a few months.
‘I wasted no time in embarking on a very public affair with a notoriously rapacious widow,’ he said with a touch of defiance. ‘A notoriously gossipy, rapacious widow, who was not averse to telling anyone who showed any interest that I was most definitely not a disappointment between the sheets. And after her, I went a little mad, I suppose. Taking whatever was on offer, proving Lucasta a liar, over and over again. Nobody has any doubt about my masculinity, not any longer.’
‘Oh,’ said Amethyst faintly. That made perfect sense. She could see exactly why he’d gone out and proved his manhood, over and over again, in as flagrant a way as possible. He hadn’t let her leave his bed that first time, until he’d demonstrated his ability to take her to the heights of pleasure. He took pride in his prowess as a lover.
‘That’s right. Your sexual career made all the papers.’
His face darkened.
‘Yes. All of it. I made sure it all got published, even though my father tried his damnedest to suppress it. It was my way out.’
‘Your way out?’ She injected as much cynicism into her voice as she could muster. She couldn’t believe that in a few short minutes he’d practically demolished beliefs she’d held firmly for ten years. But she wouldn’t let him convince her he had any excuse for being involved in that Season’s most lurid scandal. Lifting her head, she looked down her nose at him. ‘The way I heard it, they threw you out.’
‘Precisely! If I hadn’t done something that drastic, my father would have picked another girl, from another political dynasty, and it would have started all over again.’
Dammit! She knew he’d come up with something to make even the end of his political career seem justified.
‘So, those last affairs you had, with...’
‘Two of the most influential women I could seduce,’ he agreed with a cold, hard smile. ‘At the same time, too, so that even if their husbands could overlook the affairs, the offended wives could not. If there is one thing a certain type of woman will not tolerate, it is infidelity in her lover.’
‘Indeed?’ She’d thought he would at least tell her that the stories about that last scandal had been exaggerated. Instead he was confirming them. She shuddered.
The thought of him coldly seducing two women, married women at that, concurrently, made her feel sick.
His face shuttered.
‘You didn’t question a single word of it, did you? You read it in print, so you thought it must all be true.’
She glanced up at him as he huffed out a bitter laugh.
‘But you’ve just told me that it was...’
‘And you were ready to condemn my behaviour without knowing what lay behind it. Or considered there might have been people whose sole aim in writing the stories was to blacken my name.’
She drifted blindly away from the chair behind which she’d been cowering and sank down on to the nearest available sofa she could reach without having to walk past him.
‘I can excuse you for not seeing my true motives for the way I’ve behaved,’ he said. ‘Because you knew nothing of my misery, my sense of utter failure. So now, will you have the honesty to think about my earlier failure to believe in you? Remember, all I knew of you was that although you professed to be from a very strict background, you never protested when I crossed the line. You did not put up even a token protest that first time I kissed you. You wanted me to kiss you. You didn’t seem to care if we got caught, either.’
‘But that was because...’
‘You loved me. I know that now. And I should have believed in it at the time, too. But what Fielding told me put a very different complexion on your behaviour. It was all just credible enough to make me wonder. So before you condemn me for not being able to somehow discern that you were totally innocent of all the charges laid at your door, let me ask you this: When the situation was reversed, did you believe in me?’
No. She hadn’t. She’d been so angry with him for the way he’d cast her aside that she’d wanted to believe the worst of him. Stoking up her hatred had given her the strength to go on living. She’d pored over those newspaper stories, believing the very worst of him without a shred of evidence to back any of it up.
So how could she condemn him for believing what a true, honest, good friend had told him, from the best of motives? Especially when, now she looked back on it openly and honestly, her own behaviour might have made the accusations against her seem plausible?
She’d been so bowled over when the handsome, charming young son of such a notable family had paid her attention that she’d forgotten every principle she’d ever had. She had encouraged him, as much as she’d dared. When he’d snatched that first kiss, a hasty peck on the cheek, she hadn’t protested. She’d blushed and giggled, and let him engineer situations where he could do it again. They’d rapidly progressed to kisses on the lips. Then heated kisses on the lips.
She caught her lip between her teeth.
‘What a pair we are,’ he said. ‘Neither of us can quite believe in love. I couldn’t believe you loved me ten years ago and you cannot believe I love you now. Or perhaps you are just looking for excuses to escape me. I’m not much of a catch, am I? You’ve made it clear that I’m good enough for a fling, but not a lifetime.’
He walked over to the window and stood with his back to her for some time, in complete silence. When she darted a glance in his direction, it was to see his shoulders hunched in an attitude of defeat.
She wanted to cry out that she’d been too hasty. That, perhaps, if he gave her time to think it over, she might be able to...
To what? Believe in him? Trust her entire future to his hands? When by his own admission he’d proved himself capable of the vilest kind of behaviour?
‘I may as well go,’ he said, whirling round and making for the door. ‘Forgive me for haranguing you. I hope your voyage back to England will be uneventful and that your memories of your stay in Paris are...sweet.’
And with that, he walked out.
Leaving his hat lying on the floor where he’d dropped it.
Amethyst stared wide-eyed at the closed door through which he’d gone. He’d given up. He’d seen that she couldn’t ever trust him fully again and he’d given up. And gone.
Just like that.
She got to her feet and ran to the window. One last look. She would take one last look at him as he walked away until the crowd in the street swallowed him from sight. She laid her hand flat on the window pane, as though she could reach through it and touch him. Knowing she couldn’t.
She’d blamed him for destroying what they’d had, before. But this time, he was right, she was the one who’d destroyed it. She hadn’t been prepared to trust him. To forgive him. Worse than that, she hadn’t even tried.
She could justify ignoring that first proposal. The night he’d discovered she was still a virgin and guilt had reared up and slapped him round the head for what he’d done. But the subsequent ones? If he didn’t know about her wealth, if he was really trying to get her to marry him because he loved her...
She shook her head, tearing herself away from the window and returning to her chair.
Where her eye fell on the portrait that he’d brought to her. For no other reason, according to him, than that he thought it might be a way to get to speak to her again. Was that true? He certainly hadn’t attempted to use it against her, the way she’d expected.
A shaft of cold dread speared down to her stomach. What if he’d meant it? What if he really did think he was in love with her?
No. She took a deep breath, pushing the possibility to the back of the sofa where she’d stashed the portrait. It couldn’t possibly be love. He probably thought marrying her would mean returning to a time before his life had gone so catastrophically wrong. To a time when he’d thought he could just marry a simple country girl and live in a sort of bucolic idyll.
But she wasn’t that girl any more. She ran businesses. She could never retreat to the country and live the way he’d said was his own fantasy.
It just wasn’t possible.
He wasn’t the rather dreamy boy he’d been either, who talked about the beauty of nature, and how wonderful it would be to visit Italy and see the works of art on display in so many cities. He’d become a rake. A man who was capable of carrying on affairs with two women at the same time, to deliberately wreak as much destruction and pain as he could.
That wasn’t a man she could love, was it? If she was capable of loving anyone at all.
And anyway, why was she sitting here arguing with herself about it? He’d gone. Defeat in every line of his body. He’d realised it was over between them. That it had been destroyed ten years ago and there was no putting it back together.
So that was that.
Chapter Thirteen
Men were good at saying all the right things, but actions spoke louder than words.
Nathan had said he wanted to marry her, that he loved her, that he couldn’t bear to think of her leaving Paris. But after one rebuff, he’d disappeared. If he’d really meant what he said, he would have called, every day, begging her to reconsider.
But he didn’t call.
Though what would be the point, she didn’t know. It had been one thing having an affair with him here, but to make a new life with him in England? Impossible. Even if he still wanted her, which, apparently, he didn’t.
Or he would have called.
And since he hadn’t, it meant that he’d lost interest.
He was probably painting another woman right now. Telling her she had glorious hair as he sifted it through his long, supple fingers.
Telling her whatever was most likely to get her into bed.
She straightened up from the trunk she was packing, welcoming the flare of anger that had just flowed through her. Anger was what had kept her going for so many years. Without it, she didn’t know what might.
She certainly didn’t want to return to Stanton Basset looking as if she’d had all the stuffing knocked out of her, which is what she’d felt like after that final scene with Nathan.
Only she couldn’t seem to get a solid grip on it. It was as if she didn’t have the energy to sustain a decently solid bad temper.
She slumped on to a chair, looking at the belongings strewn across the room. They’d acquired so much stuff since arriving in Paris. It would be no use trying to travel home the way they’d come. It was a symptom of her state of mind that she hadn’t raised even a token protest when Monsieur Le Brun decided to hire a wagon to carry all the trunks that contained both hers and Fenella’s new wardrobes. And a second carriage to contain the maid he’d insisted on employing for Fenella. A French woman, naturally. He didn’t consider English domestics worthy of a place serving his wife.
Amethyst picked up a scarf and absentmindedly rolled it into a ball. Far from being annoyed with Monsieur Le Brun for taking over all the arrangements that had at one time seemed so important, she’d been grateful. Left to herself, she wasn’t sure she’d have managed to leave Paris at all. Because once she did, then it really was over.