Portrait of a Scandal
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She took in his unkempt clothing, the satchel over his shoulder, and put two and two together. Since this was a fashionable place for people to gather, he was bound to pick up custom here.
Yes, that explained his presence in Tortoni’s. But why was he coming to her table? What could he possibly want?
And then she noted the determined jut to his chin as he stalked towards them.
Well, she’d wondered how he would react to being given the equivalent of a year’s wages for a drawing that had taken him ten minutes, at most. It looked as though she was going to find out.
From the light of battle she could see in his eyes as he drew closer, she’d achieved her aim of humiliating him by highlighting the difference in their stations, just as he’d done to her ten years ago.
Only he wasn’t going to crawl away and weep until there were no more tears left, the way she’d done. He looked as though he was going to attempt to get even for the insult.
Well, let him try. Just see how far he could get, that was all. She was no longer some starry-eyed débutante, ready to believe glib flattery and vague half-promises. She was a hardheaded business woman.
And she never, but never, let any man get the better of her.
* * *
Indignation carried him all the way across the crowded café to her table. How dare she send her lover to his rooms with all that money?
The Frenchman had been every bit as condescending as he’d expected. The only thing that had surprised him was how early he’d called. Nothing would have dragged Nathan out at that ungodly hour if he’d had Miss Dalby in his bed.
Nor would he have stumbled to the door this morning if he’d had any idea he would have come face to face with the sneering Frenchman, rather than one of his neighbours.
And if he hadn’t been so fuddled with sleep he would have refused every last sou. Though it had only been after Monsieur Le Brun had sketched that mocking bow and he’d shut the door on him that he’d opened the purse and seen just how great an insult the man had offered him. Without having to say one word.
Sadly for him, he’d given himself away. The moment he’d bowed, Nathan recalled why his face had looked so familiar. So now he had the ammunition to make his stay in Paris extremely uncomfortable, if he chose.
He was here to deliver a warning of his own.
Get out of his city, or by God he would shout the Frenchman’s secret from the rooftops.
What a pair they were for secrets. Though it didn’t look as though she was trying to keep her secret hidden any more. The proof that she’d lied to him ten years before was sitting openly at table with her. Digging into her bowl of ice cream with a rapt expression, her little feet tucked neatly onto the top rung of her chair. Enjoying the simple pleasure with the total concentration of the truly innocent.
He snatched off his hat and thrust his fingers through his hair. She wasn’t just ‘an illegitimate baby’. She’d grown up, in the years since he’d learned of her existence, into a very real little person.
And no matter how much resentment he bore the mother, only a blackguard would expose a child to danger by telling the world the truth about its mother’s lover.
The child noticed him staring at her and looked straight back at him with unabashed curiosity.
He couldn’t see anything of Miss Dalby in her features. Nor her colouring. She must take after her father, he supposed.
Her father. He sucked in a sharp breath.
Of course the child had a father, it was just that he’d been too angry, before, to think of anything beyond the way Miss Dalby had deceived him. The night Fielding had told him about the rumour he’d heard about Miss Dalby’s having an illegitimate baby, he’d felt as though he’d been robbed at gunpoint. Those words had stolen his whole life from him. The life he’d planned on having with her. The house in the country, the children he’d imagined running about in the orchard where chickens scratched among the windfalls. Gone in the blink of an eye. He’d been incapable of thinking about anything beyond his own loss.
But she hadn’t come by a baby on her own. There had been a man. A man who must have had fair hair and blue eyes.
And no conscience whatsoever.
Damn it all, Miss Dalby had only been seventeen when he’d started to think he was falling in love with her. So she could not have been more than sixteen when...when some rogue had seduced and abandoned her. Nor made any provision for his brat, if she was obliged to hire out her body to men like this one.
He glared at her French lover again, though his anger was veering wildly from one player in the drama to another with confusing rapidity.
Her parents, for instance. They’d brought her up to London for that Season. They must have known. She couldn’t have hidden a baby from them. They must have told her to pretend to be innocent. At that age, and after what she’d already been through, she wouldn’t have dared defy them. Besides, properly brought-up girls did not set up their will in opposition to their parents.
No more than sons of the same age. He’d only been in London himself at the express command of his own father. Forbidden from exploring his talent as an artist, he’d been pretending to think about choosing some other, respectable profession, whilst really trying to work out if there was any honourable way he could break free from family expectations.
For his father wasn’t a man to cross, any more than he guessed the Reverend Dalby had been.
It had only been last night that he’d started to wonder what had become of her all these years. Before that, he’d refused to allow his thoughts to stray in her direction. But...it didn’t look as though her family had stood by her. Why else would she be sitting here with her daughter in plain sight, a lover at her side and no wedding ring on her finger?
Was her father the kind of man who would wash his hands of his erring child, just because she’d brought disgrace to the family? The way his own father had done? Had her attempt to inveigle him into marriage been her last, desperate attempt to appease them? Had he, Nathan, been her last resort?
No wonder she’d wept when he’d become betrothed to Lucasta instead.
Strange how the years brought a new perspective to the tragedies of youth. There was always more than one side to any story. And before this moment—at least, before he’d watched the child enjoying her ice cream—the only side he’d ever considered had been his own.
‘Are you a friend of Monsieur Le Brun?’
He blinked, to find the little girl was smiling up at him, her wide blue eyes full of curiosity.
‘No, Sophie,’ Miss Dalby hastily put in, while her lover was taking an indignant breath to refute the allegation. ‘This is Monsieur Harcourt. He is an artist. He drew a picture of me last night, while we were out at dinner. I expect he is hoping for more custom from us.’
The little girl’s face lit up. ‘Oh, could he do a picture of me? You said we might buy a picture today. I thought from a shop. But this would be even better!’
‘Yes. It would.’ Miss Dalby gave him a smug little smile.
And all his sympathy towards her evaporated. She’d found a man who did not care that she’d already borne a child out of wedlock. And she was going to take great pleasure in obliging him to sit at her feet and draw the child. The child whose existence had driven them apart. The child whose existence she’d tried to conceal, so that she could entrap him into a marriage that would have been...
At that point, his imagination floundered into a wall of mist. He had no idea what marriage to her would have been like, with an illegitimate child hovering on the fringes of it. Could it possibly have been any worse than the one he’d actually had? With a wife he couldn’t even like, never mind desire, once he’d got to know her? A wife who’d broadcast her contempt for him with increasing virulence.
But one thing he knew. He wouldn’t have wanted to stop bedding her. Even now, ten years later, with a gut full of aversion for her lies and scheming, he wanted her. The reason he’d been so slow on the uptake that morning had been because of the sleepless night he’d spent on her account, either brooding on the past, or suffering dreams of the kind that bordered on nightmares, from which he had woken soaked in sweat and painfully aroused.
Just thinking about the things he’d done to her, and with her, during those feverish dreams had a predictable effect.
Hastily he pulled up a chair to her table, in spite of her French lover’s scowl, pulling his satchel on to his lap to cover his embarrassment.
With quick, angry strokes, he began a likeness of the girl he might have been forced into providing for, had Miss Dalby been successful in her attempts to snare him.
Chapter Four
Grimly determined not to reflect on how handsome her father must have been to have produced such a pretty child, he concentrated instead on capturing what he could see of her own nature. With deft sure fingers, he portrayed that eager curiosity and trusting friendliness which had so disarmed him.
‘Oh,’ the child said when he handed her the finished sketch. ‘Do I really look like that?’
‘Indeed you do, sweet pea,’ said Miss Dalby, shooting him a look of gratitude over the top of the sheet of paper.
She was many things, but she wasn’t stupid. She could see he’d restrained his anger with her so as not to hurt the child.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Frenchman reaching for his purse. He held up his hand to stall him.
‘You do not need to pay me for this picture,’ he said. Then turning to the little girl, because he was damned if he was going to let either of the adults know that he would rather starve than take another penny of the man’s money, he said, ‘It is my pleasure to have such a pretty subject to draw.’
The girl blushed and hung her head to study her portrait. Her mother gave him a tight smile, while the Frenchman openly smirked.
And all of a sudden, it was too much for him. He was burning with an unsavoury mix of frustration, anger and lust as he stowed his materials back in his satchel.
A waiter provided a very convenient diversion at that moment by arriving at the table to ask if they required anything else, or if they were ready to pay their bill. While the Frenchman was preoccupied, Nathan leaned towards Miss Dalby and muttered, ‘Is he really the best you can do? You are still young and attractive enough to acquire a protector who could at least dress you in something approaching last year’s fashions, couldn’t you?’
Her eyes snapped with anger as she opened her mouth to make a retort, but then something stopped her. She subsided back into her seat.
‘You think I am...attractive?’
‘You know you are,’ he growled. ‘You know very well that ten years ago I thought you so attractive I almost threw caution to the winds and made an honest woman of you. But now...now you’ve grown even more irresistible.’
From her gasp, he could tell he’d shocked her. But what was more telling was the flush that crept to her cheeks. The way her eyes darkened and her lips parted.
‘You should not say such things,’ she murmured with an expression that told him she meant the exact opposite.
‘Even though you enjoy hearing them?’ He smiled at her mockingly. She wanted him. With a little persuasion, a little finesse, he could take her from this mean-looking Frenchman and slake all the frustrations of the last ten years while he was at it.
And then, because if he carried on muttering to her with such urgency, people would start to notice, he said in a clear voice, ‘It will be my pleasure to do business with you again, at any time you choose. Any time,’ he said huskily, ‘at all.’
* * *
Amethyst blinked and looked around her. They were standing in some vast open space, though she could not for the life of her recall how she’d got there.
Did Nathan Harcourt really think she was in some kind of irregular relationship with Monsieur Le Brun?
And had he really been on the verge of proposing to her? All those years ago? No matter how much she argued that it could not be so, what else could he have meant by those angrily delivered, cryptic sentences?
The Tuileries Gardens. That was where she was. Where the three of them were.
‘On court days,’ she registered Monsieur Le Brun say, ‘crowds of people gather here to watch ministers and members of the nobility going to pay their respects to the King.’
‘Can we come and watch?’
While Monsieur Le Brun smiled down at Sophie and said he would see what he could arrange, Amethyst’s mind went back to the day she’d stood in her father’s study, trying to convince them that she’d believed Harcourt had really loved her.
‘If you got some foolish, presumptuous thoughts in your head regarding that young man,’ her father had bellowed, ‘you have nobody but yourself to blame. If he had been thinking of marriage, he would have come to me first and requested permission to pay his addresses to you.’
She wished she could stand next to the girl who’d cowered before her father’s wrath, bang her fist on his desk, and say ‘Listen to her! She’s right! Harcourt did want to marry her.’
But it was ten years too late. The girl she’d been had trusted her parents would understand. When they’d wanted to know why she’d been so upset on learning of Nathan’s betrothal, why she couldn’t face going to any more of the balls and routs they were trying to push her to attend, she’d blurted it out. Oh, not all of it, for she’d known it was wrong the very first time she’d let him entice her into a shadowy alcove, where he’d pressed kisses first on the back of her hand, then on her cheek. She couldn’t admit that she had hardly been able to wait for the next time they met, hoping he’d want to do the same. She’d been so thrilled and flattered, and eager to join him when he’d taken her out on to a terrace and kissed her full on the lips. They’d put their arms round each other and it had felt like heaven.
All she’d been able to do was stammer, ‘But he kissed me...’
And her father had thundered she was going to end in hell for such wanton behaviour. He’d whisked her straight back to Stanton Basset where, in order to save her soul, he’d shut her in her room on a diet of bread and water, after administering a sound spanking.
As if she hadn’t already suffered enough. Harcourt had made her fall in love with him, had made her think he loved her, too, had then coldly turned away from her and started going about with Lucasta Delacourt. She’d been convinced he must simply have been making sport of her, seeing how far from the straight and narrow he could tempt the vicar’s daughter to stray.
For a while she’d felt as though her whole world had collapsed around her like a house of cards.
Eventually they’d let her out of her room and told her she could eat meals with the rest of the family again, but she had no appetite. She stumbled through her duties about the house and parish in a fog of misery that nothing could lift. Then her mother, rather than offering her comfort, had rebuked her for setting a bad example to her younger sisters.
Her father might have accused her of being a trollop, but her mother had heaped even more crimes upon her head. She’d accused her of being vain and self-indulgent, of getting ideas above her station...
Which was ironic, because the last thing she had been interested in had been his connections. Others might have simpered and sighed, and tried to capture his attention because his father was an earl, but she’d just liked him for himself. Or the image of himself he’d projected, whenever he’d been with her.
The last straw had been the attitude of her sisters. The sisters she’d cared for as babies, sat up with during illnesses. They’d closed ranks with her parents. Shaken their heads in reproof. Shown not the slightest bit of sympathy.
She understood them doing so when their parents were around. But couldn’t one of them have just...patted her hand as she wept alone in her bed? Offered her a handkerchief even?
Surely what she’d done hadn’t been that bad? Besides, they could see she was sorry, that she’d learned her lesson. Wasn’t anybody, ever, going to forgive her?
She’d begun to sink into real despair. Until the day Aunt Georgie had descended on them. Sat on the edge of her bed and told her, in that brusque way she had, that what she needed was a change of air.
‘I shall tell your parents I mean to take you on a tour of the Lake District, to give your mind a new direction.’ Though she hadn’t, Amethyst recalled with a wry smile, done anything of the sort.
They hadn’t been on the road long before Aunt Georgie had been obliged to come clean.
‘I’ve a mind,’ she’d said brusquely, ‘to buy a couple of factories that some fool of a man ran into bankruptcy.’
Amethyst had been stunned. Women did not go round purchasing failing businesses.
‘He’s claiming the workers are intractable,’ her aunt had continued. ‘Has suffered from riots and outbreaks of plague and God knows what else. We’ll probably find that he’s a drunken incompetent fool. Naturally we cannot let anyone know our true purpose in coming up here.’ Aunt Georgie had smiled at her, patted her hand and said, ‘Your breakdown has come at a most convenient time for me. Perfect excuse to be wandering about that part of the countryside in an apparently aimless manner. I can sound out people in the know and find out what is really going on.’
‘You can’t use me as some kind of a...smokescreen,’ Amethyst had protested. ‘I’m—’
‘Getting angry at last. That’s the ticket. Far healthier to get angry than mope yourself into a decline. That young man,’ she’d said, ‘isn’t worth a single one of the tears you’ve shed over him. And as for your father...’ She’d snorted in contempt. ‘What you ought to do, my girl, is think about getting even with them. If not the specific men who’ve conspired to crush you, then as many of the rest of their sex as you can.’
Get even. She’d never thought a chance would come for her to get even with Harcourt. Though she’d wondered if there wasn’t some divine justice at work on her behalf anyway. It didn’t seem to have done him much good, marrying that woman. In spite of all the connections she had, in spite of all the money her family spent on getting Harcourt elected, his career never went anywhere. His wife died childless. And then he’d created a scandal so serious that he’d had to disappear from public life altogether.
She’d crowed with triumph over every disaster that had befallen him, since it seemed to have served him right for toying with her affections so callously.
But now he’d admitted that he had been seriously thinking about marrying her. That he’d almost thrown caution to the winds.
Thrown caution to the winds? What on earth could he have meant by that?
Oh, only one of half-a-dozen things! There had been the disparity in their stations, for one thing. He was the son of an earl, after all, albeit the very youngest of them, while she was merely the daughter of an insignificant vicar. Nobility very rarely married into the gentry, unless it increased their wealth. And she’d had no dowry to speak of. Not then.
But that Miss Delacourt had. The one he’d become engaged to so swiftly after he’d given her the cut direct.
She shivered as she cast her mind back to the way he’d looked at her that night. As a rule, she tried not to think about it. It hurt too much. Even now, knowing that he hadn’t been simply playing some kind of a game with her, she recoiled from the memory of the coldness in eyes that had once seemed to burn with ardour.
She dragged herself out of the past with an effort to hear Monsieur Le Brun was now telling Sophie a gory tale of an uprising that had been quelled upon the very spot where they stood. He pointed at some marks in the wall, telling the fascinated little girl that they’d been made by bullets.
She shuddered. Not at the goriness of the tale, though she would claim it was that if anyone should question her. But, no—what really sickened her was the thought that Harcourt assumed she was having intimate relations with this stringy, sallow-faced Frenchman.
Why was everyone always ready to assume the worst of her? All she’d done was leave Stanton Bassett to take a little trip. She’d followed all the proprieties by hiring a female companion, yet just because she’d stepped outside the bounds of acceptable female behaviour, just the tiniest bit, suddenly Harcourt assumed she must be a...a woman of easy virtue!
Based on what evidence—that she was with a man to whom she was not married, dressed in clothing that indicated she was relatively poor? And from this he’d deduced Monsieur Le Brun must be her protector?
Didn’t he remember she was a vicar’s daughter? Didn’t he remember how he’d teased her about being so prim and proper when they’d first met?
Although he had soon loosened her moral stance, she reflected on a fresh wave of resentment. Quite considerably.
Perhaps he thought she’d carried on loosening after they’d parted.
Next time she came across Harcourt she would jolly well put him right. How dare he accuse her of having such poor taste as to take up with a man like Monsieur Le Brun?
If anyone had bad taste, it was he. He’d married a woman with a face like a horse, just because her family was wealthy and powerful.
Or so her parents had said. ‘The Delacourts wouldn’t let one of their daughters marry in haste. If they’ve got as far as announcing a betrothal, negotiations must have been going on for some time. His family might even have arranged the thing from the cradle. It is the way things are done, in such families. They leave nothing to chance.’
The certainty that they were right had made her curl up inside. It had seemed so obvious. He couldn’t have walked away from her, then proposed to someone else the next day. Miss Delacourt must always have been hovering in the background.
But now...now she wondered just how deliberate and calculating his behaviour had been after all. He’d talked about finding her so attractive he’d almost thrown caution to the winds.
As though...as though he hadn’t been able to help himself. As though he’d genuinely been drawn to her.
But in the end, it had made no difference. He’d married the girl of whom his family approved rather than proposing to the girl he’d only known a matter of weeks.
Though none of that explained why he seemed so angry with her now. Surely, if he had been toying with the idea of proposing to her back then, he should be glad they’d finally met up when both of them were free to do as they pleased?
Only—he didn’t think she was free, did he? He thought she was a kept woman.
Oh!
He was jealous. Of Monsieur Le Brun.
That was...well, it was...
So preposterous she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. When Monsieur Le Brun shot her a puzzled glance, she realised that, in stifling it, she’d made a very undignified sound, approximating something like a snort.
She made a valiant attempt to form sensible answers whenever Sophie spoke to her, but it was very hard to pretend to be interested in all the things Monsieur Le Brun was telling them about the park through which they were walking and the momentous historical events which had occurred on just about every corner.
When she felt as though her whole life had been flung up in the air and hadn’t quite settled into place yet. If she could only get past how angry he’d made her, by assuming she’d sunk low enough to...well, never mind what he thought she and Monsieur Le Brun got up to. It made her feel queasy. What about the other things he’d said? About finding her attractive?
Never mind irresistible. Almost irresistible enough to have lured him away from his sensible arranged match, to live in relative poverty and obscurity.
Had he been serious? Not one man, in the last ten years, had come anywhere near kissing her, yet Nathan claimed to find her so irresistibly attractive he immediately assumed she must be making her living as a woman of easy virtue. He had seethed at her and fumed at her, and only stormed off when he was satisfied he’d rattled her.