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He’d dressed with great care too, she noted the moment she entered the morning room, in immaculate breeches and topcoat, his pristine neckcloth foaming from a damask silk waistcoat. He truly was a sight for sore eyes.
He got to his feet and took a step towards her, then stopped, as though unsure of his welcome.
She smiled, or at least tried to. She was so nervous that it felt a little wobbly and yet tight at the same time.
‘Please, won’t you sit down?’ she said, waving to the seat on the other side of the fireplace as she took her aunt’s chair.
Some of the stiffness left his face at her tentative gesture of welcome.
‘I wasn’t sure if you would even let me in,’ he said, resting his arms on the arm of the chair and leaning forwards.
‘I shouldn’t have done,’ she replied. ‘It is not the thing to receive a single gentleman when I am without a chaperon. The whole town will be scandalised.’
A frown flickered across his face.
‘The last thing I want to do is plunge you into a scandal. That is why I decided it would be better if I got here well before you came back, so it wouldn’t look as if there was already anything between us. You made it so obvious that my notoriety would be an issue, here in this little town, that I have done all I can to prevent anyone knowing exactly who, and what, I am.’
Oh. That made perfect sense.
And was incredibly sweet of him.
‘That is why you are using an assumed name?’
‘Of course. You made it so clear you weren’t interested in marrying a man of my notoriety, that I was sure you wouldn’t want anyone knowing you’d had a liaison with the notorious Nathan Harcourt. So I took a leaf out of your courier’s book. He successfully managed to court your companion under the name of Brown. I hoped it might be as lucky for me.’
‘C-courting?’ Her breath hitched in her throat. He’d come all this way to court her. In spite of the way they’d parted, her conviction she’d driven him away for good. He must have meant every one of those proposals which she’d discounted, for varying reasons.
‘Yes. Courting.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘And I’d better warn you that I’ve spent my time in this town learning as much as I could about you—surreptitiously, of course—in the hopes that I might find a chink in your armour.’
‘B-but you love Paris. You were so happy there...’
‘It would have been a wasteland without you in it. Don’t you realise, yet, that I cannot be happy anywhere, unless you are with me?’
He did love her, then. Enough to abandon the work he loved and the home he’d made for himself. Assume a false identity and put up with Mrs Podmore taking him under her wing.
Nobody had ever exerted themselves to such an extent on her account.
‘Y-yes. Actually, I think I do,’ she admitted shyly. ‘Because I have been utterly miserable since our last meeting. I was such an idiot to drive you away.’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I was so scared I’d driven you away for good.’
He left his chair to kneel at her feet. He seized her hands.
‘Does this mean what I hope it means? I’ve been telling myself that once your temper had cooled and you could think things over rationally, you would be able to forgive me. And give me another chance.’
‘I will give you as many chances as you want, so long as you are able to forgive me for being so...’ She screwed up her face in disgust as she thought of how narrow-minded and judgemental she’d been. ‘For being such a...’
He placed one finger over her lips.
‘I’ve no right to condemn you for anything you’ve done, or thought. Not with my record.’
He tugged at her hands and drew her to her feet.
‘Miss Dalby, once and for all, will you forget all the past mistakes we’ve both made and marry me?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She sighed. And then, because her legs went limp, she leaned forwards, rested her head on his chest and said, ‘Yes, please.’
‘Thank God,’ he muttered fervently, putting both arms round her and hugging her tight.
And it felt like coming home. No, better than any home she’d ever known. He was the only person who’d ever accepted her, liked her, loved her, just as she was. Everyone else had tried to change her. Sway her opinions to match their own. But not Nathan.
And then just hugging him wasn’t enough. Amethyst raised her face hopefully and he obliged her by meeting her halfway in a kiss. A kiss that went on and on, as though they both needed to drink the other in.
It was only Adams, scuffling against the door as he prepared to bring in the tea tray, that made them break apart, smiling ruefully.
By the time he placed the tray on the table, they were both seated in the chairs that flanked the fireplace, looking perfectly respectable, if a little flushed and breathless.
Adams glanced from one to the other. His face went more wooden than usual and, without a word, he made a swift exit.
Amethyst’s hand was shaking too much to pour the tea.
‘Never mind that,’ said Nathan with a smile. ‘It wasn’t to drink tea that I came here today. I had this great long speech planned.’
She darted him a shy smile. ‘Should I apologise for stopping you making it?’
He grinned back at her. ‘Not in the least. It was just...well, I have a few things I do need to tell you, before I make an honest woman of you. I’d thought I would need to prove to you that I could at least appear respectable if I stood a chance of persuading you that I was husband material, rather than only being good enough for a temporary liaison...’
A pang of guilt shot through her. Had she really made him feel like that? It was so typical of the way she’d been—never giving a thought to what her actions might make other people feel like.
‘Which is one reason why I hired the biggest house I could find to rent in this area. Which, coincidentally, happens to be the nearest one to yours. I wanted to demonstrate, you see, that I have the means to support you. I realised, in Paris, that I might have given you the impression that I haven’t a feather to fly with—’
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter one bit, Nathan, you see—’
‘Please, hear me out. I need to explain why I was living the way I was when you found me. I was doing it to prove a point. I wanted to demonstrate that I was good enough to make a living from my work alone. And I did. But I have independent means, as well. I can keep you in tolerable comfort, Amy. You don’t need to fear that we’ll ever have to worry about where the rent will come from.’
‘No, we won’t. Because I have money, too. Quite a lot of it, actually. Which was one of the reasons I was so suspicious of all the proposals you made to me before. I thought you must have found out about it somehow and was trying to...’
His face froze. ‘Yes? Trying to what?’
‘I’m so very, very sorry. I know it was nothing of the sort, now. It is just that my aunt, the one who took me in and left me this house, would keep on about how important it was to keep the extent of our fortune a secret, or we’d become targets for fortune hunters. I was convinced that no man would ever show an interest in me unless it was because he wanted to get his hands on my money. It became second nature to me to conceal the fact that I’m a wealthy woman.’
‘A wealthy woman.’ He frowned. ‘Exactly how large is this fortune?’
She cleared her throat and then, in a matter-of-fact tone, told him exactly how large, and in what it consisted, and that moreover she had plans to expand into France now trading there was legal again.
By the time she had finished he was looking at her as though she’d become a total stranger.
‘So you are not some simple country girl, eking out your existence on a modest little windfall from the spinster aunt you cared for in her last days. And what of Mrs Mountsorrel? Was she really just a widowed friend with whom you threw in your lot?’ He flung the words at her as though he was accusing her of something.
Amethyst shook her head. ‘I hired her as my companion so that I could continue living in this house and run the business interests my aunt had taught me how to govern. Nathan, why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Can you not imagine?’
She shook her head again, her insides turning into a cold, solid lump as his gaze turned downright scornful.
‘I thought I knew you. I thought that in spite of the hard veneer you’d acquired, deep down you were still that girl who so enchanted me with her simple, direct approach to life. But you’re not her at all, are you?’
‘Yes, I am. Just because I’m rich, too—’
He got to his feet, his eyes suddenly blazing with contempt. ‘It’s not just being rich that is the problem though, is it? You run businesses. You own factories and mills and mines and God knows what else. And you sit here, in this stuffy little town, hidden away like some...spider, spinning a web. Aye, an invisible web, at that. For nobody is supposed to know that it is a woman at the heart of all this enterprise. I never saw it before, but the whole purpose is to make fools of men, isn’t it? You delight in making fools of us all. Well, you’ve certainly made a fool of me.’
‘No, I haven’t. Truly I haven’t. I’ve explained why I didn’t want you to know about it, at first.’
‘Not just at first. Even after we’d become lovers. Even when you spurned me, you never admitted the true reason. And it is what you thought, isn’t it? That I’m some contemptible fortune hunter. Little things you said to me, your attitude whenever I touched on making our relationship permanent, they should have warned me.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Do you think I could want to marry a woman for her money, again? After what I went through last time? Do you know what it does to a man’s pride to be labelled a fortune hunter?’
She hadn’t. But she was beginning to get an idea.
‘The last thing I want is to get leg-shackled to another woman who sees nothing wrong with telling lies to get what she wants. Who has so little integrity she has to buy friends and can only keep them with promise of advancement.’
What?
‘Nathan, you don’t mean that,’ she managed to gasp through the fingers of dread that were squeezing her throat. ‘I wasn’t lying to you...’ His face shuttered.
‘Not exactly...’
With a muttered oath he turned and strode for the door.
‘You were right all along,’ he said coldly, as he set his hand to the door latch. ‘We can’t go back. We aren’t the same people we were when we first met. I...’ His face twisted. ‘I thought I’d fallen in love with you, all over again, in Paris. I thought you’d got over the pain I put you through and had grown into a strong, admirable woman. A woman I would have been proud to call my wife, and bear my children. I thought...’
He closed his eyes, and shook his head.
‘I might have known it was too good to be true. It wasn’t real, was it? None of it was real. I’ve been chasing after a dream. Like some...’
He straightened up and opened his eyes. Eyes which had gone dead and hard.
‘Forgive me for taking up your valuable time. I will leave you now. And will not bother you again.’
‘Nathan...’ She tried to tell him to stop, but her words got tangled up in a sob. She slumped down on to her chair, all strength gone from her legs, as she heard the front door slam behind him.
Oh, why hadn’t she said yes, when she had the chance? If she’d said yes to him in Paris, and then explained about her money, he wouldn’t have flown into a rage like this, would he?
Would he?
Chapter Fifteen
Shock had taken her legs out from under her. She could no more have run after Nathan and begged him not to go than she could have flown to the moon.
One minute she’d thought all her dreams had come true. Next moment she’d descended into a hellish nightmare. She’d thought Nathan loved her just as she was, but then he’d said he’d never really known her. That he couldn’t marry her. That they weren’t the same people who’d fallen in love with each other in their youth.
Was he right? Was it too late?
She shut her eyes and bowed her head.
Had they only imagined they’d fallen in love again, in Paris, because they’d both been pretending to be something they were not?
No...no! It was real. She’d had all these long, lonely weeks to ponder it all and she knew it was real. Nathan hadn’t had time to think it through, that was all. She dashed a tear from her eye. He’d lashed out—the way she’d done when he’d shocked her with that confession about why they’d broken up the first time.
She leapt to her feet. He’d come after her when she’d lost her temper with him. When her habit of being suspicious had made her afraid to believe in their love. Now it was her turn to go after him and talk some sense into him.
She was halfway across the room to ring for a maid to fetch her coat and bonnet, when she decided she hadn’t the patience to wait that long. Far quicker to run upstairs and plunge her arms into her coat herself. Stuff her bonnet on her head as she hurried down the stairs and tie the ribbons as she trotted down the garden path.
She was in such a hurry to catch Nathan and tell him that he was wrong that she didn’t see Mrs Podmore coming up the front path until she almost barrelled into her.
‘Oh, good. I have just caught you,’ said Mrs Podmore, tilting her umbrella to one side to make room for Amethyst. ‘I can see you are in a hurry, but this won’t take a moment—’
‘I’m so sorry, but I haven’t time to stop and talk today.’
She tried to step round Mrs Podmore, but the path was narrow, and her visitor determined.
‘Wherever you are going, it cannot be so urgent that you have forgotten your umbrella.’
‘It is that urgent,’ she countered. ‘And I hadn’t even noticed it was snowing.’ Only tiny specks of it, but the first real snow of the winter, nevertheless.
As she looked up in wonder, she had a brilliant idea. She stopped trying to sidestep Mrs Podmore’s substantial bulk and looked her straight in the face with what she hoped was a confiding air.
‘You see, everything you have ever warned me about has come to pass.’
‘Oh?’ For once Mrs Podmore didn’t seen to know what to say.
‘You have been right to warn me, so many times, just how dangerous it is to be without adequate chaperonage.’
‘Was I? I mean, of course I was. But—’
‘Yes. You see, while Fenella was preoccupied with her own courtship, and there was nobody to make me behave...’ she lowered her voice ‘...I did something quite scandalous.’
Mrs Podmore instinctively leaned closer to hear the whispered confidence, her eyes wide with curiosity.
‘I went to Mr Brown’s studio, the one he had in Paris, quite alone, to have my portrait painted.’
‘No!’ Her eyebrows shot up and disappeared into the ruffles under her bonnet.
‘Oh, yes. We were alone in his studio for hours at a time. And worse, he persuaded me to pose for him...naked.’
‘Naked?’ Mrs Podmore screeched the word, her shock temporarily robbing her of discretion. The baker’s boy, who’d been walking past, jumped and dropped his tray of rolls, which went tumbling all over the street.
‘And, of course, you must know what inevitably followed.’
Mrs Podmore’s eyes grew rounder still. Amethyst could see her mind racing.
‘I cannot bring myself to say what I fear you are alluding to.’
‘Well, I can,’ said Amethyst cheerfully. ‘We embarked upon a wildly passionate affair.’
‘A what?’
The baker’s boy’s head popped up over the hedge, his eyes wide with glee.
‘And now he’s pursued me all the way to England. Don’t you think that’s romantic?’ She pressed one hand to her chest. ‘I do.’ She sighed theatrically. ‘And so I’ve decided to run off with him.’
‘Run off with Mr Brown?’
If he’d have her. And if not, she already had plans to move to Southampton, so nobody would know any different when she disappeared.
‘Yes. I enjoyed travelling so much that I can’t wait to set off again. We might return to Paris, where we were so happy. Or we might go and see what Italy is like. He’s always wanted to go to Italy. And,’ she put in before Mrs Podmore could accuse Nathan of latching on to her because of her money, ‘I can afford to take him there.’
‘No! You must not. Only think what people will say...’
That was exactly what she was doing. Between her and the baker’s boy, the news would be all over town within minutes.
‘I don’t care what anyone says,’ she declared. ‘I cannot live without him.’
She beamed at Mrs Podmore, who was opening and closing her mouth like a landed trout.
‘Good day,’ said Amethyst and managed to nip past Mrs Podmore while she was trying to untangle her umbrella from the overhanging branches of her cherry trees. Past the gaping baker’s boy, who’d abandoned any pretence at retrieving the spoiled rolls. Up the hill and through the market square she sincerely hoped she’d never have to set eyes on again, before much longer, and along the lane that led to the Murdoch place.
* * *
It wasn’t long before she caught sight of Nathan in the lane ahead of her, because he was walking really slowly, his head bowed. Impervious to the snow, which was settling on his shoulders and the crown of his hat.
Hope surged. He couldn’t look so sad if he didn’t still love her. Didn’t regret having left her the way he had.
‘I have just one thing to say,’ she said as he reached his front door.
He spun round. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the carefree young man who’d argued with her about the Rights of Man over a bottle of beer in a Parisian dance hall. But then his face changed. And the cynical, embittered, disgraced politician stood in his place.
‘I have nothing further to say to you, madam,’ he said coldly.
‘Well, you can just listen then,’ she said, pushing past him into the house as an unsuspecting butler opened the door.
‘I have had longer to think about...us. Knowing all about the discrepancy in our wealth. And do you know what I have realised?’
‘You clearly mean to tell me,’ he said wearily. ‘You had better come in here.’ He pushed open the door to a sparsely furnished parlour and ushered her in.
‘Well, let’s start with why I’ve been afraid, for so many years, that no man could ever love me.’
He flinched and walked away from her to stare out of the window.
‘Exactly. You hurt me so badly that I lost my ability to trust men. Well, actually, it wasn’t all your fault. My father’s attitude played a large part in it, too. And then my aunt fostered that suspicion. Because she really, really hated men. She said I’d had a lucky escape anyway, because marriage was nothing but a trap for women. A cage in which some despotic male would lock her. I could understand why she thought like that, but I never wanted to end up like her. She was so...so miserable! She had so much money, but it never did her any good. It didn’t make her happy. It didn’t compensate for whatever it was that had set her off on her quest for revenge on the entire male sex.
‘When she died, I almost slid into the trap of becoming like her. Partly because I had to fight the men around me to hang on to what she’d left me. And I enjoyed winning. I won’t deny that I liked it a lot. I liked seeing bullies having to back down, rendering them powerless and sending them away with a flea in their ear.
‘But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to sit here like—well, you said it—like a spider in my web, holding all the threads together. I didn’t want to shrivel up inside, like she had, just because things hadn’t turned out the way I wanted.
‘Which was why I went to Paris in the first place. I needed to...break out. Find out what I wanted to do with my life. And then I met you.’
She walked across the room to stand behind him. Tentatively she placed one hand on his shoulder.
‘I thought you were a penniless artist. And believing that of you was what gave me the courage to take you as a lover. If I’d known you were still comfortably off and only taking a sort of...holiday, I would never have been able to open up to you the way I did. Your privileged background had come between us before. It would have felt like an unbreachable barrier if you’d been swanning about Paris, trading on your right to be treated with the deference due to the son of an English earl. When you started making advances I would have been afraid you were only toying with me, the way I believed you’d toyed with me in the past.’
He made a sort of growling noise and, though he didn’t turn round, she could see his cheeks flush. He might accuse her of lying, but he hadn’t been completely honest with her either.
‘And you wouldn’t have pursued me at all, had you known the extent of my wealth, would you?’
‘I thought I’d just made that perfectly clear.’
‘It wasn’t just my wealth that would have kept you away, Nathan. You didn’t know I was a virgin, either. You jumped to the conclusion that because I was with a man, I must be his mistress. You most definitely wouldn’t have got so jealous of poor Monsieur Le Brun if you’d known I was innocent of everything they told you about me. I suppose you might have still wanted to paint my portrait, perhaps as a memento of the girl you once loved, before I broke your heart and shattered your dreams, but not the rest.’
‘I—’
‘No, Nathan. Don’t you see? If we hadn’t both been trying to conceal some aspect of our lives, we would never have got together at all. There were too many obstacles. Too much hurt and suspicion on both sides. The way we got together was the only way it could have happened.’
‘But—’
‘But none of the things that would have kept us apart mattered one jot when we became lovers, Nathan, and don’t you dare try to say they did! We were just a man and a woman, rekindling a love we’d both mourned as lost. And it was a deeper, more meaningful love than the naïve, tentative relationship we started the first time round. Because we were both free to spend every moment with each other, untramelled by chaperons, or restrictions imposed by class. You cannot give up on it, just because you’ve found out I’m wealthy. It’s...stupid. And I know exactly how stupid because I did it first. I rebuffed you in just such a welter of suspicion that you are suffering from now. And I’ve spent the last few weeks working out that I’d been wrong to cast you as the villain of the tragedy I endured as a girl. You were as much a victim as I was.’
‘That was then,’ he growled. ‘This is different,’ he said harshly, spinning round so abruptly that it knocked her hand from his shoulder.
‘No, it isn’t,’ she said firmly. ‘We fell in love with each other in Paris and that hasn’t gone away. It cannot. Ten years and gallons of suspicion weren’t able to drown it. The moment we set eyes on each other again, neither of us could rest until we’d come together, in the fullest sense possible.’
‘It is no use, though,’ he said. ‘It cannot work.’
‘Of course it can work. It worked in Paris, didn’t it? So we can make it work again. If I can forgive you for believing the worst of me, if I can believe that you never proposed to me because you secretly wanted to gain control of my money, if I can stop fearing the loss of my independence, then surely you can see that I am not going to try to control you either? I know I wasn’t completely frank with you when we first met in Paris, but surely you can see I’m nothing like Lucasta? I want to marry you because I love you. You, Nathan. The man you are. I don’t want you to become something else. I don’t want to mould you, or push you, or treat you like a puppet by pulling your strings. I just want to make you happy.’
‘And what of all your money? What of that?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t matter!’ He made an angry, impatient gesture. ‘I have my pride, you know. In fact, it’s about damn near all I do have left.’
‘No, it isn’t. You have my heart, too. It’s yours whether you want it or not. And there’s nothing else of any value at all. Without your love, my life is completely empty. Hollow. Money cannot fulfil me.’