‘You have the unmitigated gall to stand there and criticise both my morals and my taste without knowing the first thing about my circumstances. And then have the cheek to say you think you are a better prospect for me?’

‘Try me,’ he grated.

And then, before she had time to draw breath and make her retort—which would have been good and acidic, putting him neatly in his place—he grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her. Hard. Full on the lips.

She froze, shocked into indignant immobility. But only for a moment. Because, amazingly, hard on the heels of her indignation came a wave of such sheer pleasure it made her want to purr.

AUTHOR NOTE

Blame it on Paris …

Ever since my first visit to Paris I’ve been in love with the city, so it has been an extra-special delight to set my latest story there. When it looked as though Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated, and was in exile on Elba, the cream of English society flocked to the city which had been barred to them for the best part of twenty years. English tourists in Regency times marvelled at the treasures on display in the Louvre, strolled through the Tuileries Garden and visited restaurants in the Palais Royal—just as I have done.

Amethyst, my heroine, goes to Paris looking for a fresh start. Then she discovers she cannot move forward until she’s dealt with her past. Nathan, too, has gone to Paris to start a new life. They both find that there’s something about Paris—a city that has gone through so much upheaval—that makes them start questioning their own long-held beliefs. About themselves, about each other, and most of all about love.

Portrait of a Scandal

Annie Burrows

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ANNIE BURROWS has been making up stories for her own amusement since she first went to school. As soon as she got the hang of using a pencil she began to write them down. Her love of books meant she had to do a degree in English Literature, and her love of writing meant she could never take on a job where she didn’t have time to jot down notes when inspiration for a new plot struck her. She still wants the heroines of her stories to wear beautiful floaty dresses and triumph over all that life can throw at them. But when she got married she discovered that finding a hero is an essential ingredient to arriving at ‘happy ever after’.

Previous novels by Annie Burrows:

HIS CINDERELLA BRIDE

MY LADY INNOCENT

THE EARL’S UNTOUCHED BRIDE

CAPTAIN FAWLEY’S INNOCENT BRIDE

THE RAKE’S SECRET SON

(part of Regency Candlelit Christmas anthology) DEVILISH LORD, MYSTERIOUS MISS THE VISCOUNT AND THE VIRGIN (part of Silk & Scandal Regency mini-series) A COUNTESS BY CHRISTMAS CAPTAIN CORCORAN’S HOYDEN BRIDE AN ESCAPADE AND AN ENGAGEMENT GOVERNESS TO CHRISTMAS BRIDE (part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses anthology) NEVER TRUST A RAKE REFORMING THE VISCOUNT

Also available in eBook format in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone!:

NOTORIOUS LORD, COMPROMISED MISS

HIS WICKED CHRISTMAS WAGER

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To the ladies (and gentleman) of flat B1.

You know who you are!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter One

‘Madame, je vous assure, there is no need to inspect the kitchens.’

‘Mademoiselle,’ retorted Amethyst firmly as she pushed past Monsieur Le Brun—or Monsieur Le Prune, as she’d come to think of him, so wrinkled did his mouth become whenever she did not tamely fall in with his suggestions.

‘Is not the apartment to your satisfaction?’

‘The rooms I have so far seen are most satisfactory,’ she conceded. But at the sound of crashing crockery from behind the scuffed door that led to the kitchens, she cocked her head.

‘That,’ said Monsieur Le Brun, drawing himself to his full height and assuming his most quelling manner, ‘is a problem the most insignificant. And besides which, it is my duty to deal with the matters domestic.’

‘Not in any household I run,’ Amethyst muttered to herself as she pushed open the door.

Crouched by the sink was a scullery maid, weeping over a pile of broken crockery. And by a door which led to a dingy courtyard she saw two red-faced men, engaged in a discussion which involved not only a stream of unintelligible words, but also a great deal of arm waving.

‘The one with the apron is our chef,’ said Monsieur Le Brun’s voice into her ear, making her jump. She’d been so intent on trying to work out what was going on in the kitchen, she hadn’t heard him sneak up behind her.

‘He has the reputation of an artist,’ he continued. ‘You told me to employ only the best and he is that. The other is a troublemaker, who inhabits the fifth floor, but who should be thrown out, as you English say, on his ear. If you will permit...’ he began in a voice heavily laced with sarcasm, ‘I shall resolve the issue. Since,’ he continued suavely, as she turned to raise her eyebrows at him, ‘you have employed me to deal with the problems. And to speak the French language on your behalf.’

Amethyst took another look at the two men, whose rapid flow of angry words and flailing arms she would have wanted to avoid in any language.

‘Very well, monsieur,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I shall go to my room and see to the unpacking.’

‘I shall come and report to you there when I have resolved this matter,’ he said. Then bowed the particular bow he’d perfected which managed to incorporate something of a sneer.

‘Though he might as well have poked out his tongue and said “so there”,’ fumed Amethyst when she reached the room allocated to her travelling companion, Fenella Mountsorrel. ‘I think I would prefer him if he did.’

‘I don’t suppose he wishes to lose his job,’ replied Mrs Mountsorrel. ‘Perhaps,’ she added tentatively, as she watched Amethyst yank her bonnet ribbons undone, ‘you ought not to provoke him quite so deliberately.’

‘If I didn’t,’ she retorted, flinging her bonnet on to a handily placed dressing table, ‘he would be even more unbearable. He would order us about, as though we were his servants, not the other way round. He is one of those men who think women incapable of knowing anything and assumes we all want some big strong man to lean on and tell us what to do.’

‘Some of us,’ said her companion wistfully, ‘don’t mind having a big strong man around. Oh, not to tell us what to do. But to lean on, when...when things are difficult.’

Amethyst bit back the retort that sprang to her lips. What good had that attitude done her companion? It had resulted in her being left alone in the world, without a penny to her name, that’s what.

She took a deep breath, tugged off her gloves, and slapped them down next to her bonnet.

‘When things are difficult,’ she said, thrusting her fingers through the thick mass of dark curls she wished, for the umpteenth time, she’d had cut short before setting out on this voyage, ‘you find out just what you are made of. And you and I, Fenella, are made of such stern stuff that we don’t need some overbearing, unreliable, insufferable male dictating to us how to live our lives.’

‘Nevertheless,’ pointed out Fenella doggedly, ‘we could not have come this far, without—’

‘Without employing a man to deal with the more tiresome aspects of travelling so far from home,’ she agreed. ‘Men do have their uses, that I cannot deny.’

Fenella sighed. ‘Not all men are bad.’

‘You are referring to your dear departed Frederick, I suppose,’ she said, tartly, before conceding. ‘But given you were so fond of him, I dare say there must have been something good about him.’

‘He had his faults, I cannot deny it. But I do miss him. And I wish he had lived to see Sophie grow up. And perhaps given her a brother or sister...’

‘And how is Sophie now?’ Amethyst swiftly changed the subject. On the topic of Fenella’s late husband, they would never agree. The plain unvarnished truth was that he had left his widow shamefully unprovided for. His pregnant widow at that. And all Fenella would ever concede was that he was not very wise with money. Not very wise! As far as Amethyst could discover, the man had squandered Fenella’s inheritance on a series of bad investments, whilst living way beyond his means. Leaving Fenella to pick up the pieces...

She took a deep breath. There was no point in getting angry with a man who wasn’t there to defend himself. And whenever she’d voiced her opinion, all it had achieved was to upset Fenella. Which was the last thing she wanted.

‘Sophie still looked dreadfully pale when Francine took her for a lie down,’ said Fenella, with a troubled frown.

‘I am sure she will bounce right back after a nap, and a light meal, the way she usually does.’

They had discovered, after only going ten miles from Stanton Basset, that Sophie was not a good traveller. However well sprung the coach was, whether she sat facing forwards, or backwards, or lay across the seat with her head on her mother’s lap, or a pillow, she suffered dreadfully from motion sickness.

It had meant that the journey had taken twice as long as Monsieur Pruneface had planned, since Sophie needed one day’s respite after each day’s travel.

‘If we miss the meetings you have arranged, then we miss them,’ she’d retorted when he’d pointed out that the delay might cost her several lucrative contracts. ‘If you think I am going to put mercenary considerations before the welfare of this child, then you are very much mistaken.’

‘But then there is also the question of accommodation. With so many people wishing to visit Paris this autumn even I,’ he’d said, striking his chest, ‘may have difficulty arranging an alternative of any sort, let alone something suited to your particular needs.’

‘Couldn’t you write to whoever needs to know that our rooms, and yours, will be paid for no matter how late we arrive? And make some attempt to rearrange the other meetings?’

‘Madame, you must know that France has been flooded with your countrymen, eager to make deals for trade, for several months now. Even had we arrived when stated, and I had seen these men to whom you point me, who knows if they would have done business with you? Competitors may already have done the undercutting...’

‘Then they have undercut me,’ she’d snapped. ‘I will have lost the opportunity to expand on to the continent. But that is my affair, not yours. We will still want your services as a guide, if that is what worries you. And we can just be genuine tourists and enjoy the experience, instead of it being our cover for travelling here.’

He’d muttered something incomprehensible under his breath. But judging from the fact these rooms were ready for them, and that a couple of letters from merchants who might take wares from her factories were already awaiting her attention, he’d done as he’d been told.

At that moment, her train of thought was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was the particularly arrogant knock Monsieur Le Prune always used. How he accomplished it she did not know, but he always managed to convey the sense that he had every right to march straight in, should he wish, and was only pausing, for the merest moment, out of the greatest forbearance for the unaccountably emotional fragility of his female charges.

‘The problem in the kitchen,’ he began the moment he’d opened the door—before Amethyst had given him permission to enter, she noted with resentment—‘it is, I am afraid to say, more serious than we first thought.’

‘Oh, yes?’ It was rather wicked of her, but she relished discovering that something had cropped up that forced him to admit that he was not in complete control of the entire universe. ‘It was not so insignificant after all?’

‘The chef,’ he replied, ignoring her jibe, ‘he tells me that there cannot be the meal he would wish to serve his new guest on her first night in Paris.’

‘No meal?’

‘Not one of the standard that will satisfy him, no. It is a matter of the produce, you understand, which is no longer fit to serve, not even for Englishmen, he informs me. For which I apologise. These are his words, not my own.’

‘Naturally not.’ Though he had thoroughly enjoyed being able to repeat them, she could tell.

‘On account,’ he continued with a twitch to his mouth that looked suspiciously like the beginnings of a smirk, ‘of the fact that we arrived so many days after he was expecting us.’

In other words, if there was a problem, it was her fault. He probably thought that putting the welfare of a child before making money was proof that a woman shouldn’t be running any kind of business, let alone attempting to expand. ‘However, I have a suggestion to make, which will overcome this obstacle.’

‘Oh, yes?’ It had better be good.

‘Indeed,’ he said with a smile which was so self-congratulatory she got an irrational urge to fire him on the spot. That would show him who was in charge.

Only then she’d have to find a replacement for him. And his replacement was bound to be just as irritating. And she’d need to start all over again, teaching him all about her wares, the range of prices at which she would agree to do deals, production schedules and so on.

‘For tonight,’ he said, ‘it would be something totally novel, I think, for you and Madame Montsorrel to eat in a restaurant.’

Before she had time to wonder if he was making some jibe about their provincial origins, he went on, ‘Most of your countrymen are most keen to visit, on their first night in Paris, the Palais Royale, to dine in one of its many establishments.’

The suggestion was so sensible it took the wind out of her sails. It would make them look just like the ordinary tourists they were hoping to be taken for.

‘And before you raise the objection that Sophie cannot be left alone,’ he plunged on swiftly, ‘on her first night in a strange country, I have asked the chef if he can provide the kind of simple fare which I have observed has soothed her stomach before. He assures me he can,’ he said smugly. ‘I have also spoken with Mademoiselle Francine, who has agreed to sit by her bedside, just this once, in the place of her mother, in case she awakes.’

‘You seem to have thought of everything,’ she had to concede.

‘It is what you pay me for,’ he replied, with a supercilious lift of one brow.

That was true. But did he have to point it out quite so often?

‘What do you think, Fenella? Could you bear to go out tonight and leave Sophie? Or perhaps—’ it suddenly occurred to her ‘—you are too tired?’

‘Too tired to actually dine in one of those places we have been reading so much about? Oh, no! Indeed, no.’

The moment Bonaparte had been defeated and exiled to the tiny island of Elba, English tourists had been flocking to visit the country from which they had been effectively barred for the better part of twenty year. And filling newspapers and journals with accounts of their travels.

The more they’d raved about the delights of Paris, the more Amethyst had wanted to go and see it for herself. She’d informed her manager, Jobbings, that she was going to see if she could find new outlets for their wares, now trade embargoes had been lifted. And she would. She really would. She’d already made several appointments to which she would send Monsieur Le Brun, since she assumed French merchants would be as unwilling to do business with a female as English merchants were.

But she intended to take in as many experiences as she could while she was here.

‘Then that is settled.’ Amethyst was so pleased Fenella was completely in tune with her own desire to get out and explore that for once her state of almost permanent irritation with Monsieur Le Brun faded away to nothing.

And she smiled at him.

‘Is there any particular establishment you would recommend?’

‘I?’ He gaped at her.

It was, she acknowledged, probably the first time he had ever seen her smile. At him, at least. But then she had never dared let down her guard around him before. She’d taken pains to question every one of his suggestions and to double-check every arrangement he’d made, just to make sure he never attempted to swindle her. Or thought he might be able to get away with any attempt to swindle her.

And he had got them to Paris. If not quite to his schedule, then at least in reasonable comfort. Nor had he put a foot out of place.

She was beginning to feel reasonably certain he wouldn’t dare. Besides, she had Fenella to double-check any correspondence he wrote on her behalf. Her grasp of French was extremely good, to judge from the way Monsieur Le Brun reacted when he’d first heard her speaking it.

‘The best, the very best,’ he said, making a swift recovery, ‘is most probably Very Frères. It is certainly the most expensive.’

She wrinkled her nose. It sounded like the kind of place people went to show off. It would be crammed full of earls and opera dancers, no doubt.

‘The Mille Colonnes is popular with your countrymen. Although—’ his face fell, ‘—by the time we arrive, there will undoubtedly be a queue to get in.’

She cocked her eyebrow at him. Rising to the unspoken challenge, he continued, ‘There are many other excellent places to which I would not scruple to take you ladies... Le Caveau, for example, where for two to three francs you may have an excellent dinner of soup, fish, meat, dessert and a bottle of wine.’

Since she’d spent some time before setting out getting to grips with the exchange rate, his last statement made her purse her lips. Surely they wouldn’t be able to get anything very appetising for such a paltry sum?

Nevertheless, she did not voice that particular suspicion. Having watched her intently as he’d described what were clearly more expensive establishments, he was probably doing his best to suggest somewhere more economical. He wasn’t a fool. His manner might infuriate her, but she couldn’t deny he was observant and shrewd. Because she’d made him suffer enough for one day and because Fenella had a tendency to get upset if they quarrelled openly in her presence, she admitted that she rather liked the sound of Le Caveau.

* * *

It wasn’t long after that she and Fenella had changed, dressed, kissed a drowsy Sophie goodnight and were stepping out into the dimly lit streets of Paris.

Paris! She was really in Paris. Nothing could tell the world more clearly that she was her own woman. That she was ready to try new things and make her own choices in life. That she’d paid for the follies of her youth. And wasn’t going to carry on living a cloistered existence, as though she was ashamed of herself. For she wasn’t. She’d done nothing to be ashamed of.

Of course, she was not so keen to start becoming her own woman that she was going to abandon all her late Aunt Georgie’s precepts. Not the ones that were practical at any rate. For her foray to the bargain of a restaurant that was Le Caveau, she wore the kind of plain, sensible outfit she would have donned for a visit to her bankers in the City. Monsieur Le Brun had just, but only just, repressed a shudder when he’d seen her emerge from her room. It was the same look she would have expected a member of the ton, in London, to send her way.

Provincial, they would think, writing her off as a nobody because her bonnet was at least three years behind the current fashion.

But it was far better for people to underestimate and overlook you, than to think you were a pigeon for the plucking. If she’d set out for the Continent in a coach and four, trailing wagonloads of servants and luggage, and made an enormous fuss at whatever inn they’d stopped at, she might as well have hung a placard round her neck, announcing ‘Wealthy woman! Come and rob me!’

As it was, they’d had to put up with a certain amount of rudeness and inconvenience on occasion, but nobody had thought them worth the bother of robbing.

And there was another advantage, she soon discovered, to not being dressed in fine silks. ‘I can’t believe how muddy it is everywhere,’ she grumbled, lifting her skirts to try to keep them free from dirt. ‘This is like wading down some country lane that leads to a pig farm.’

‘I suggested to you that it would be the mode to hire a chair for your conveyance to the Palais Royale,’ Monsieur Le Brun snapped back, whiplash smart.

‘Oh, we couldn’t possibly have done that,’ said Fenella, at her most conciliatory. ‘We are not grand ladies. We would both have felt most peculiar being carried through the streets like—’

‘Parcels,’ put in Amethyst. ‘Lugged around by some hulking great porters.’

‘Besides,’ said Fenella hastily,’ we can see so much more of your beautiful city, monsieur, if we walk through it, than we could by peeping through the curtains of some sort of carriage. And feel so much more a part of it.’

‘That is certainly true. The mud certainly looks set to form a lasting part of my skirts,’ observed Amethyst.

But then they stepped through an archway, into an immense, brilliantly lit gravelled square, and whatever derogatory comment she might have made next dried on her lips.

And Monsieur Le Brun smirked in satisfaction as both ladies gaped at the spectacle spread before them.

The Palais Royale was like nowhere she had ever seen before. And it was not just the sight of the tiers of so many brightly lit windows that made her blink, but the crowds of people, all intent on enjoying themselves to the full. To judge from the variety of costumes, they had come from every corner of the globe.

‘This way,’ said Monsieur Le Brun, taking her firmly by the elbow when she slowed down to peer into one of the brightly lit windows of an establishment in a basement. ‘That place is not suitable for ladies such as yourselves.’

Indeed, from the brief glimpse she’d got of all the military uniforms, and the rather free behaviour of the females in their company, she’d already gathered that for herself.

However, for once, she did not shake Monsieur Le Brun’s hand away. It was all rather more...boisterous than she’d imagined. She’d found travelling to London, to consult with her bankers and men of business after her aunt’s death, somewhat daunting, so bustling and noisy was the metropolis in comparison with the sleepy tranquillity of Stanton Basset. But the sheer vivacity of Paris at night was on a different scale altogether.

It was with relief that she passed through the doors of another eatery, which was quickly overtaken by amazement. Even though Monsieur Le Brun had told her this place was economical, it far surpassed her expectations. She had glanced through the grimy windows of chop houses when she’d been in London and had assumed a cheap restaurant in Paris, which admitted members of the public, would resemble one of those. Instead, her eyes were assailed by mirrors and columns, and niches with statues, tables set with glittering cutlery and crystal, diners dressed in fabulous colours and waiters bustling around attentively.

And the food, which she’d half-suspected would be of the same quality she’d endured in the various coaching inns where they’d stayed, was as good as anything she might have tasted when invited to dine with the best families in the county.

But what really made her evening, was to see that the whole enterprise was run by a woman. She sat in state by the door, assigning customers to tables suited to the size of their party, taking their money and tallying it all up in a massive ledger, spread before her on a great granite-topped table.

And nobody seemed to think there was anything untoward about this.

* * *

They had just taken receipt of their dessert when a man, entering alone, inspired a grimace of distaste from Monsieur Le Brun. Her gaze followed the direction of his to see who could have roused his displeasure and she froze, her spoon halfway to her mouth.

Nathan Harcourt.

The disgraced Nathan Harcourt.

Her face went hot while her stomach turned cold, curdling all the fine food inside it to a churning mass of bile.

And the question that had haunted her for years almost forced its way through her clenched teeth in a despairing scream. How could you do that to me, Nathan? How could you?

She wanted to get up, march across the restaurant and soundly slap the cheeks that the proprietress was enthusiastically kissing. Though it was far too late now. She should have done it the night he’d cut her dead, after making a point of dancing with just about every other girl in the ballroom. The night he’d started to break her heart.

He hadn’t changed a bit when it came to spreading his favours about, she noted. The proprietress, who’d merely given them a regal nod when they’d come in, was clasping him to her bosom with such enthusiasm it was a wonder he didn’t disappear into those ample mounds and suffocate.

Which would serve him right.

‘That man,’ said Monsieur Le Brun at his most prune-faced, watching the direction of her affronted gaze, ‘should not be permitted in here at all. But it is as you see. He is in favour with madame, so the customers are subjected to his impertinence. It is regrettable, but not an insurmountable problem. I shall not permit him to disturb you.’

It was too late for that. His arrival had already disturbed her—though Monsieur Le Brun’s words had also roused her curiosity.

‘What do you mean—subjecting the customers to his impertinence?’

‘He does portraits,’ said Monsieur Le Brun. ‘Quick studies in pencil, for the amusement of the visitors to the city.’

As if to prove his point, Nathan Harcourt produced a little canvas stool from the satchel he had slung over one shoulder, crouched down on it beside one of the tables near the door, took out a stick of charcoal and began to sketch the diners seated there.

‘Portraits? Nathan Harcourt?’

Monsieur Le Brun’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. ‘You know this man? I would never have thought... I mean,’ he regrouped, adopting his normal slightly supercilious demeanour, ‘though he is a countryman of yours, I would not have thought you moved in the same circles.’

‘Not of late,’ she admitted. ‘Though, at one time, we...did.’

All of ten years ago, to be precise, when she’d been completely ignorant of the nature of men and from too sheltered a background to know how to guard herself against his type. And from too ordinary a background to have anyone sufficiently powerful to protect her from him.

But things were different now.

Different for her and, by the looks of things, very, very different for him too. Her eyes narrowed as she studied his appearance and noted the changes.

Some of them were just due to the passage of years and were pretty much what she would have expected. His face was leaner and flecks of silver glinted here and there amidst curls that had once been coal black. But it was the state of his clothing that most clearly proclaimed the rumours that his father had finally washed his hands of his youngest son were entirely true. His coat only fit where it touched, his hat was a broad-brimmed affair of straw and his trousers were the baggy kind she’d seen the local tradesmen wearing. In short, he looked downright shabby.

Well, well. She leaned back and observed him working with mounting pleasure. When he’d achieved the almost-impossible feat of becoming too notorious for any political party to put him up for even the most rotten of rotten boroughs, he’d vanished, amidst much speculation. She’d assumed that, like the younger sons of so many eminent families, when he’d blotted the escutcheon, he’d been sent to the Continent to live a life of luxurious indolence.

But it looked as though his father, the Earl of Finchingfield, had been every bit as furious as the scandal sheets had hinted at the time and as unforgiving as her own father. For here was Nathan Harcourt, the proud, cold-hearted Nathan Harcourt, forced to work to earn a crust.

‘I shall not be at all displeased if he should come to my table and solicit my custom,’ she said, a strange thrill shivering through her whole being. ‘In fact, I would thoroughly enjoy having my portrait done.’

By him. Having him solicit her for her time, her money, her custom, when ten years ago, he had been too...proud and mighty, and...ambitious to have his name linked with hers.

Oh, what sweet revenge. Here he was, practically begging for a living and not doing too well from the look of his clothing. While here she was, thanks to Aunt Georgie, in possession of so much wealth she would be hard pressed to run through it in ten lifetimes.

Chapter Two

Nathan stood up, handed over the finished sketch to his first customer of the night and held out his hand for payment. He thanked them for their compliments and made several comments witty enough to hit their mark, judging from the way the other occupants of the table flung back their heads and laughed. But he had no idea what he’d actually said. His mind was still reeling from the shock of seeing Amethyst Dalby.

After ten years of leaving him be, she had to go and invade territory that he’d come to think of as peculiarly his own.

Not that it mattered.

And to prove it, he would damn well confront her.

He turned and scanned the restaurant with apparent laziness, hesitated when he came to her table, affected surprise, then sauntered over.

If she had the effrontery to appear in public, with her latest paramour in tow, then it was time to remove the gloves. The days were long gone when he would have spared a lady’s blushes because of some ridiculous belief in chivalry towards the weaker sex.

The weaker sex! The cunning sex more like. He’d never met one who wasn’t hiding some secret or other, be it only her age, or how much she’d overspent her allowance.

Though none with secrets that had been as destructive as hers.

‘Miss Dalby,’ he said when he reached her table. ‘How surprising to see you here.’

‘In Paris, do you mean?’

‘Anywhere,’ he replied with a hard smile. ‘I would have thought...’ He trailed off, leaving her to draw her own conclusions as to where he might have gone with that statement. He’d made his opinion of her very plain when he’d discovered how duplicitous she’d been ten years ago. Back then, she’d had the sense to flee polite society and presumably return to the countryside.

He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on what might have become of her. But now she was here, why shouldn’t he find out? He glanced at her hand. No ring. And she hadn’t corrected him when he’d addressed her as Miss Dalby, either.

So it didn’t look as though she’d ever managed to entrap some poor unsuspecting male into marriage with a pretence of innocence. This man, this sallow-skinned, beetle-browed man whose face looked vaguely familiar, was not her husband. What then? A lover?

‘Are you not going to introduce me?’ He cocked an eyebrow in the direction of her male friend, wondering where he’d seen him before.

‘I see no need for that,’ she replied with a stiff smile.

No? He supposed it might be a little awkward, introducing a former lover to her current one. Especially if he was the jealous sort. He gave him a searching look and met with one of mutual antipathy. Was it possible the man felt...threatened? He could see why he might look like a potential competitor. Without putting too fine a point on it, he was younger, fitter and more handsome than the man she’d washed up with. Not that he saw himself in the light of competitor for her favours. God, no!

‘After all,’ she continued archly, ‘you cannot have come across to renew our acquaintance. I believe it is work you wish to solicit. Is it not?’

Of course it was. She didn’t need to remind him that whatever they’d had was finished.

‘I explained to madame,’ put in the man, proclaiming his nationality by the thickness of his accent, ‘that this is how you make your living. By drawing the likenesses of tourists.’

It wasn’t quite true. But he let it pass. It was...convenient, for the moment, to let everyone think he was earning his living from his pictures. And simpler.

And that was why he’d strolled across to her table. Exactly why.

There could be no other reason.

‘Madame wishes you to make her the swift portrait,’ said the Frenchman.

Miss Dalby shot her French lover a look brimming with resentment. He looked steadily back at her, completely unrepentant.

Interesting. The Frenchman felt the need to assert his authority over her. To remind her who was in control. Or perhaps he’d already discovered how fickle she could be, since he clearly wasn’t going to permit her to flirt with a potential new conquest right before his eyes.

Wise man.

Miss Dalby needed firm handling if a man had a hope of keeping her in her place.

He had a sudden vision of doing exactly that. She was on her back, beneath him, he was holding her hands above her head... He blinked it away, busying himself with unfolding his stool and assembling his materials. No more than one minute in her presence and he was proving as susceptible to her charms as he’d ever been. The Frenchman, on whom he deliberately turned his back as he sat down, had every reason to be jealous. He must always be fighting off would-be rivals. What red-blooded male, coming within the radius of such a siren, could fail to think about bedding her?

Even though she was not dressed particularly well, there was no disguising her beauty. As a girl, she’d been remarkably pretty. But the years—in spite of what her lifestyle must have been like to judge from the company she was now keeping—had been good to her. She had grown into those cheekbones. And the skin that clad them was peachy soft and clear as cream. Those dark-brown eyes were as deep, lustrous and mysterious as they’d ever been.

It was a pity that for quick sketches like this, he only used a charcoal pencil. He would have liked to add colour to this portrait. Later, perhaps, he would record this meeting for his own satisfaction, commemorating it in paint.

Meanwhile, his fingers flew across the page, capturing the angle of her forehead, the arch of her brows. So easily. But then she wasn’t a fresh subject. Years ago, he’d spent hours drawing her face, her hands, the curve of her shoulder and the shadows where her skin disappeared into the silk of her evening gown. Not while she was actually present, of course, because she’d been masquerading as an innocent débutante and he’d been too green to consider flouting the conventions. But at night, when he was in his room alone, unable to sleep for yearning for her—yes, then he’d drawn her. Trying to capture her image, her essence.

What a fool he’d been.

He’d even bought some paints and attempted to reproduce the colours of that remarkable hair. He hadn’t been able to do it justice, back then. He hadn’t the skill. And he hadn’t been allowed to pursue his dream by taking lessons.

‘It’s for young ladies, or tradesmen,’ his father had snapped, when they’d discussed what he really wanted to do with his life, if not follow his brothers into one of the traditional professions. ‘Not a suitable pastime for sons of noblemen.’

He could do it now, though. He’d learned about light and shade. Pigment and perspective.

His fingers stilled. In spite of what his friend Fielding had said, she wasn’t merely a brunette. There were still those rich, warm tints in her hair that put him in mind of a really good port when you held the glass up to a candle. Fielding had laughed when he’d admitted his obsession with it and clapped him on the back. ‘Got it bad, ain’t you?’

He glanced up, his hand hovering over the half-finished sketch. He might well have had it bad, but he hadn’t been wrong about her hair. It was just as glorious as it had ever been. After ten years, he might have expected to see the occasional strand of silver between the dark curls. Or perhaps signs that she was preserving an appearance of youth with dyes.

But that hair was not dyed. It could not look so soft, so glossy, so entirely...natural and eminently touchable...

He frowned, lowered his head and went back to work. He did not want to run his fingers through it, to see if it felt as soft as it looked. He could appreciate beauty when he saw it. He was an artist, after all. But then he would defy anybody to deny she had glorious hair. A lovely face. And sparkling eyes.

Though none of that altered the fact that she was poison.

He looked up, directly into her eyes, eyes that had once looked at him with what he’d thought was adoration. He smiled grimly. It was easier to read her now that he was older and wiser. She was looking at him assessingly, challengingly, with more than a measure of calculation simmering in the brew. All those things she’d taken such care to hide from him before.

Yes, she was poison right enough. Poison in a tantalising package.

From behind him, he heard her current lover shift impatiently in his chair. He probably regretted allowing her to have her way in this. It must irk him, having her looking at another man with such intent, while he was sitting mere inches away. But he was doing so, as though he was powerless to deny her anything.

God, she must be extraordinarily gifted between the sheets...

His mouth firming, he dropped his gaze to the page on his lap, adding a few deft strokes which put depth to the image he was creating.

‘There,’ he said, taking the finished sketch and tossing it to her lover.

The man looked at it, raised his brows and handed it across the table to Miss Dalby, who snatched at it.

‘This is...’ She frowned as she scanned the picture. ‘It is amazing, considering you did it so quickly.’ The expression in her eyes changed to what looked almost like respect. And he felt that glow which always came when people recognised his talent. His gift.

They might say he was a failure in every other department of his life, but nobody could deny he could draw.

‘How much do you charge?’

Miss Dalby was looking at the picture she held in her hands as though she couldn’t quite believe it. He stood up, folded up his stool and gave the insouciant shrug he always gave his subjects. And gave her the answer he always gave them, too.

‘Whatever you think it is worth.’

* * *

Whatever she thought it was worth? Oh, but that was priceless! She would have paid any amount of money to have him sitting at her feet, a supplicant. Ten years ago he’d swaggered everywhere, bestowing a smile here, an appreciative glance at some beauty there, with the air of a young god descended to the realms of lesser mortals. It was worth a king’s ransom to see him reduced to working for a living, when at one time he’d thought that she, with her lowly background and her lack of powerful connections, could be tossed aside as though she were nothing. And a delightful notion sprang to her mind.

‘Monsieur Le Brun.’ She beckoned the courier, who leant closer so that she could whisper into his ear. ‘I should like this young man to have the equivalent of twenty-five pounds. In French francs.’ It was the annual wage she paid her butler.

‘Do you have sufficient funds about you?’

His eyes widened. ‘No, madame, to carry such a sum on my person would be folly of the most reprehensible.’

‘Then you must draw it from the bank and see that he gets it. First thing tomorrow.’

‘But, madame—’

‘I insist.’

After a moment’s hesitation, he murmured, ‘I see, madame’, with what looked, for once, bafflingly, like approval. And then, ‘As you wish.’

He reached into his pocket and produced a heap of coins, which he dropped into Harcourt’s outstretched palm.

‘Please to furnish me with your direction,’ he said, ‘and I will call to settle with you for the rest.’

* * *

Nathan’s lips twisted into a cynical smile as he scrawled his address on the back of the sketch he’d just drawn. It was obvious this impudent fellow meant to call round and warn him to stay away from the beauty he currently had in his keeping. From the sneer about the fellow’s lips, the Frenchman assumed he was penniless. It was the trap so many people fell into where he was concerned, because he wore old clothes when he was sketching, clothes that he didn’t mind getting ruined by charcoal dust, or from sitting in the dirt when there was an interesting subject he simply had to capture.

This Frenchman planned to make the point that Nathan need not bother trying to compete. He had the wealth to satisfy her. To keep her. And what did he, a shabby, itinerant artist, have to offer?

Apart from relative youth, good looks and a roguish smile?

And all of a sudden, he had an almost overbearing urge to do it. To take her away from this slimy excuse of a man. To pursue her, and win her, and enslave her, and bind her to him...and then throw her away.

Because, dammit, somebody ought to punish her, for every single thing he’d gone through this last ten years. If she hadn’t set her sights on him and damn near enslaved him, then he wouldn’t have been so devastated when he found out what lay concealed behind the pretty façade. He would not have agreed to the disastrous marriage brokered by his family, or embarked on an equally disastrous political career, from which he’d only managed to extricate himself by committing what amounted to social suicide.

Oh, yes, if there were any justice in the world...

Only of course there wasn’t. That was one lesson life had taught him only too well. Honesty was never rewarded. The devious were the ones who inherited the earth, not the meek.

Tucking the pile of coins into his satchel, along with his supplies, he employed the smile he’d perfected during his years in politics, directing it in turn at the Frenchman, at Miss Dalby, and at the mousy woman who was sitting with them at table.

And strode out of the door.

* * *

‘Goodness,’ breathed Mrs Mountsorrel. ‘I have heard of him, of course, but I never expected him to be quite so...’ She flushed and faded into a series of utterances that could only be described as twittering.

But then that performance was the one he’d used so many times to reduce susceptible females to a state of fluttering, twittering, hen-witted compliance. Having those heavy-lidded, knowing hazel eyes trained so intently on her face would have had the same effect upon her, too, if she hadn’t been enjoying seeing him grovelling at her feet quite so much. And then again, there was something about the combination of those aristocratic good looks, and the shabby clothing, that might have tugged at her heartstrings, had she any heart left for him to tug at.

‘He has the reputation with the ladies rather unsavoury,’ put in Monsieur Le Brun, at his most prune-faced.

‘Oh, yes, I know all about that,’ twittered Fenella. ‘Miss Dalby is always reading accounts of his doings that appear in the newspapers. Why, his wife wasn’t dead five minutes before the most terrible rumours started up. And then, of course, when he fell from grace so spectacularly, there was no doubting the truth of it. He would have sued for libel if the papers had been making it up. Or is it slander?’

‘You sound as though you find him fascinating,’ he said, with narrowed eyes.

‘Oh, no, not I. It is Amethyst who followed his career in public life so closely. I mean, Miss Dalby, of course.’

He turned to her with a frown.

‘Well, madame, I...I commend you for wishing to aid someone you have known in the past. And being so generous, it is one thing, but I implore you not to be deceived by his so-charming smile.’

Oh. So that was why, for once, he hadn’t argued with her about the way she chose to spend her own money. He thought she was being generous to a friend who’d fallen on hard times.

If only he knew!

‘It is rather distressing,’ put in Fenella, ‘to see a man from his background sunk so low.’

‘He brought it all on himself,’ said Amethyst tartly.

‘And yet you have been so generous to him,’ said Monsieur Le Brun.

‘Well...’ she began, squirming in her seat, and blushing. It hadn’t been generosity, but a desire to rub his nose in the reversal of their fortunes that had prompted her to pay him a year’s wages for five minutes’ work.

‘I don’t see why you should be so surprised,’ said Fenella stoutly. ‘I thought you were more perceptive than that, monsieur. Surely you have noticed that she doesn’t like people to know how generous she is. She hides it behind gruff manners, and...and eccentric ways. But deep down, there is nobody kinder than my Miss Dalby. Why, if you only knew how she came to my rescue—’

Amethyst held up her hand to silence her. ‘Fenella. Stop right there. I hired you in a fit of temper with the ladies of Stanton Basset, you know I did. Mrs Podmore came round, not five minutes after Aunt Georgie’s funeral, telling me that I would have to employ some female to live with me so long as I remained single or I would no longer be considered respectable. So I marched straight round to your house and offered you the post just to spite them.’

‘What she hasn’t told you,’ said Fenella, turning to Monsieur Le Brun who was regarding his employer with raised eyebrows, ‘was that she’d never been able to abide the way everyone gossiped about me. But she’d never been able to do much about it apart from offer her friendship until after her aunt died.’

‘Well, it was dreadful, the way they treated you. It must have been hard enough, coming to live in a place where you knew nobody, with a small baby to care for, without people starting those malicious rumours about you having invented a husband.’

‘For all you knew, I might have done.’

‘Well, what difference would it have made? If you had been seduced and abandoned, surely you were due some sympathy and support? What would you have been guilty of, after all? Being young and foolish, and taken in by some glib promises made by a smooth-talking scoundrel.’

Was she still talking about Fenella? Amethyst wondered as she shakily reached for her glass, and downed the last of its contents. Or had it been seeing Nathan Harcourt that had stirred up such a martial spirit? And bother it, but Monsieur Le Brun was leaning back in his chair, his eyes flicking from one to another with keen interest.

They were both revealing far more about themselves and their past than he had any right to know.

‘I think we have said enough upon this subject,’ she said, setting her glass down with quiet deliberation.

‘She always gets embarrassed when anyone sings her praises,’ Fenella informed Monsieur Le Brun. ‘But I cannot help myself. For she didn’t just give me work to support myself and Sophie, she made sure my little girl finally had all that a gentleman’s daughter should have had. All the things,’ she said with a quivering lip, ‘that my own family denied her, because they never approved of Frederick. A nurse, beautiful clothes, a pony and, best of all, an education...’

‘Well, she’s such a bright little thing.’ And it wasn’t as if Amethyst was ever going to have any children of her own. At seven and twenty she was firmly on the shelf. No man would look twice at her if it weren’t for the fortune her aunt had left her. As she knew only too well.

‘So don’t you go thinking,’ she said, hauling herself up by the scruff of the neck, ‘that I’m...a pigeon for the plucking. Put one foot wrong and I will give you your marching orders,’ she finished.

‘Miss Dalby!’ Fenella turned a puzzled, disappointed face towards her. ‘There is no need to keep on treating Monsieur Le Brun as if he is working out ways to rob you. Hasn’t he proved over and over again on this trip how very honest, hard working and...ingenious he is?’

And he was sitting right there, listening.

‘If you must discuss Monsieur Le Brun’s many and various skills, please have the goodness to do so when we return to the privacy of our own rooms.’

‘I expect it was the shock of seeing Nathan Harcourt that has made her so out of reason cross,’ Fenella explained to Monsieur Le Brun, who was by now starting to look rather amused. ‘They used to know one another quite well, you see. He led poor Miss Dalby to believe they might make a match of it—’

‘Fenella! Monsieur Le Brun does not need to know any of this.’

Fenella smiled at her, before carrying on in the same confidential tone. ‘He was the youngest son of an earl, you know. Well, I suppose he still is.’ She giggled.

And that was when it hit Amethyst.

‘Fenella, I think you have had rather too much to drink.’

Fenella blinked. Her eyes widened. ‘Do you really think so?’ She peered down at her glass. ‘Surely not. I have only been sipping at my wine, and, look—the glass is still half-full...’

What she clearly hadn’t noticed was the way the waiters kept topping up the glass. And taking away the empty bottles and bringing fresh ones.

‘Nevertheless, it is time to go home, Monsieur Le Brun, wouldn’t you say?’

It said a great deal for the amount of wine Fenella had inadvertently consumed that it took both her and Monsieur Le Brun to get her into her coat and through the door. Then, when the fresh air hit her, she swayed on her feet. Monsieur Le Brun proved to have remarkably swift reflexes, because he caught her arm, tactfully supporting her before she could embarrass herself. Just to be on the safe side, Amethyst took her other arm, and between them they steered her through the crowds milling about the central courtyard of the Palais Royale.

But she was almost certain she heard him chuckle.

‘This is not funny,’ she snapped as they ushered her through the archway that led into the street that would take them home.

‘She isn’t used to dining out like this. Or having waiters going round topping up her glass. And as for that wine...well, it was downright deceitful. It tasted so fruity and pleasant...more like cordial than anything with alcohol in it.’

‘It was not the wine. It is Paris,’ said Monsieur Le Brun with an insouciant shrug. ‘It has the effect most surprising on many people. So we must make sure, as her friends, that we take especially good care of her from now on.’

Her friends? Monsieur Le Brun considered himself Fenella’s friend? And what was worse, he was putting himself on a level with her, as though they were...a team, or something.

Well, that would not do. It would not do at all.

And just as soon as she could think of the right words to do so, she was going to put Monsieur Le Brun firmly in his place.

But not until they’d got Fenella safely home.

Chapter Three

‘I have let you down,’ moaned Fenella.

‘Nonsense,’ Amethyst murmured soothingly. It had actually been rather cheering to see her friend was not a complete paragon of all the virtues.

‘It is just...foreign travel,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps, as Monsieur Le Brun says, the excitement of being in Paris...’

Fenella rolled on to her side and buried her face in the pillow.

‘There is no excuse for what I did...’

‘You just had a little too much to drink and became rather more talkative than usual, that is all.’

‘But my judgement...’ Fenella protested, albeit in a very quiet voice.

‘Well, it is not a mistake you will make again,’ said Amethyst bracingly, ‘if this is how ill you become after partaking too freely. You wince whenever you try to open your eyes. Let me make you more comfortable.’

‘I shall never feel comfortable again,’ she whimpered as Amethyst crossed the room and drew the curtains, plunging the room into darkness.

‘How am I ever going to face Sophie? Oh, my little girl. When she finds out...’

‘Why should she find out? I am certainly not going to tell her anything more than that her mama needs to stay in bed this morning, because she is a little unwell. Heavens, she has had to have enough days in bed while we’ve been travelling to assume that the rigours of the journey have just caught up with you.’

‘But to lie to my own child...’

‘You won’t have to lie. Just not admit to the truth.’

Amethyst strode back to her friend’s side and smoothed her hair back from her flushed face. It was an indication of just how ill Fenella really felt that she flinched back from her touch.

‘I promised to take her out to see the sights of the city today. She will be so disappointed.’

‘No, she won’t, for I shall take her myself. You look as though you need to go back to sleep. Don’t even think about stirring from this room until after you have had your luncheon, either. Which I shall order the staff to have brought to your room.’

Fenella caught her hand and kissed it. ‘You are too good to me. Too kind. I don’t deserve your understanding...’

‘Fustian! It is about time you stopped being so perfect. I like you the better for it. Makes me feel less of a failure, if you must know.’ Usually, she felt like a hardheaded, prickly, confrontational excuse for a woman in comparison to the perfect manners of her elegant and utterly feminine companion.

Amethyst was wealthy, courtesy of her aunt, and she had a good head for business, but she didn’t make friends easily and simply could not imagine ever getting married. If a man made up to her, it was because of her wealth, not anything intrinsically attractive about her. She’d learned that lesson the hard way when she’d been too young and vulnerable to withstand the experience. It had scarred her. Wounded her. She’d felt a staggering amount of empathy for those beggars they’d seen so many of, lying by the roadsides of every French town they’d travelled through, for a vital part of her had been ruthlessly amputated in battle and she would never be quite whole again.

Not that it mattered, according to Aunt Georgie. Lots of people led perfectly good lives in spite of what other people thought of as handicaps. So what if she could never trust a man again? Neither did her aunt.

‘Useless pack of self-serving, scrounging scum, if you ask me,’ she’d sniffed disparagingly, when she whisked Amethyst from the village on what was supposed to have been a therapeutic trip round the Lakes. ‘Don’t understand why any sensible woman would wish to shackle herself to one. And I’m beginning to think you are capable of being sensible, if only you will get over this habit of thinking you need a man in your life. All any of them do is interfere and ruin everything.’

After what she’d been through, she’d been inclined to agree.

Fenella moaned again, drawing her attention back to the present, and then she flung the back of one hand over her eyes.

Amethyst pursed her lips. She sympathised with Fenella for having a sore head. She sympathised with her feeling embarrassed at having to be helped home. But...

‘Good heavens, Fenella, anyone who is not used to drinking might have made the same error. It is not the end of the world.’ And there was absolutely no need for all these theatrics.

‘I know what you’re doing. You are worrying about what people will say. But nothing is ever solved by worrying about what other people think of you. Especially not the sort of people who would love nothing better than to condemn you. They’re mostly cowards, you know. Too scared to take life by the scruff of the neck and live it. Instead, they prefer to sit about gossiping in a vain attempt to liven up the boredom of their useless, unprofitable lives. You should never modify your behaviour in an attempt to win the regard of their sort.’

Good heavens. Had she really just repeated one of Aunt Georgie’s favourite homilies? In the very tone of voice her aunt would have employed whenever Amethyst had been a bit blue-devilled?

She had.

She wrapped her arms round her waist and walked rather jerkily over to the window. For years, people had been warning her that if she wasn’t careful, she’d end up just like her aunt. But she’d told them she didn’t care. She’d been so grateful to her for the way she’d stood up to Amethyst’s father. From the moment Aunt Georgie had gone toe to toe with him in his library, telling him he’d been a pompous little boy who’d grown into a pompous prig of a man without a shred of compassion in him, her life had begun to take an upward turn. Well, she could hardly have sunk any lower. So she hadn’t listened to a word of criticism levelled at her aunt, not from anyone.

But sometimes...

She thought of the single tear she’d seen tricking down Fenella’s face, a tear she’d provoked with that heartless little homily, and wanted to kick herself. She’d sounded as callous and unfeeling as Aunt Georgie at her very worst.

‘It’s different for you,’ said Fenella woefully. ‘I am a mother. I have to think of Sophie. Whatever I do has an impact on her. And there are certain things a lady should never do.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Amethyst, going back to her bedside and perching on the nearest chair.

‘I’m sorry I spoke harshly. It’s just—’

‘You are so strong that it is hard for you to sympathise, sometimes, with weakness in others.’

‘I wasn’t always strong,’ she said. ‘You know I would have gone under if Aunt Georgie hadn’t stepped in to rescue me when she did. It was her example that gave me the determination to do something for you. I knew what it was like to be alone, unjustly accused of something I hadn’t done, with nobody to defend me.’ It had been hellish. Her whole family had turned their backs on her just when she’d needed them the most. ‘You needed a friend, to stand with you against all those wagging tongues. Just as I needed Aunt Georgie to believe in me. Just as you need me to be a friend now, not...not tell you to pull yourself together. Forgive me?’

‘Yes, of course, but—’

‘No. Please don’t say another word about it. I know it must have been distressing to have been helped home, slightly foxed, last night, but I’ve already told you I do not think the worse of you for it. And who else knows about it? Only Monsieur Le Brun, and if he dares to make you feel in the slightest bit uncomfortable, he will have me to deal with,’ she finished militantly.

Fenella pressed her hands to her eyes and whimpered.

‘I will leave you now,’ she said, far more quietly. It had occurred to her that a loud voice might bring more distress than comfort, no matter what words she actually said, and that Fenella just needed to sleep it off.

‘I will look after Sophie today,’ she said, tiptoeing towards the door. ‘And make sure no word of what you got up to last night ever reaches her ears.’

She shut the door on yet another moan of anguish, only to jump in shock at the sight of Monsieur Le Brun standing in the corridor, not three feet away.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to startle you. I only meant...that is...Madame Montsorrel. How is she?’

‘She is feeling very sorry for herself. And very guilty.’

Monsieur Le Brun lowered his head. ‘I hope you have not been too harsh with her. Indeed, the fault was not hers. It was mine. I should not have—’

‘Oh, don’t you start,’ she said. ‘She made a mistake. That was yesterday. And anyone can see how sorry she is for it. But if you think it was at all your fault, then all you need do in future is to make sure the wine we order is not so strong. And that none of us has more than a couple of glasses. We lived very simply in Stanton Basset and never partook of more than one glass of wine or Madeira, and that only on special occasions.’

‘The wine,’ he gulped. ‘Yes, yes, but—’

‘No, I don’t wish to discuss this any more.’ She was getting a most uncomfortable feeling, seeing him look so concerned about Fenella’s health. She’d have assumed he would have been irritated, not remorseful. If she wasn’t careful, she might stop disliking him. And then where would she be? Vulnerable!

‘We have a busy day ahead of us. Have you dealt with Monsieur Harcourt yet?’

He already had on his coat and was turning his hat round and round as she spoke, as though he had just snatched it off. Or was he just about to put it on?

‘Yes, madame, I went first thing. I could not sleep, you see. I—’

She held up her hand to silence him. If he wasn’t going to volunteer any information about his encounter with Nathan she didn’t want to know. ‘If your accommodation is unsatisfactory for some reason,’ she therefore said tersely, ‘you must change it. You can spare me the details.’ Only yesterday he’d claimed it was his duty to deal with the matters domestic. What was wrong with him today? ‘What I do want to hear about is any progress you have made with our contacts. Have you managed to reschedule any of the appointments we missed because of our late arrival?’

He straightened up and gave her a brief, if slightly disappointing, account of his efforts on behalf of George Holdings.

‘So the rest of our day is effectively free, then?’

‘I regret, madame, that yes.’ He spread his hands wide in a totally Gallic gesture of apology.

‘Well, in that case we can devote it to Sophie. The poor little girl has been through torment to get here. The least we can do is make it up to her by giving her a perfectly splendid day. I want to take her out somewhere today that she will enjoy so much it will prevent her from worrying about her poor mama. Any ideas?’

‘Yes, madame. Of course madame. But—’

‘We will be ready to go out in half an hour,’ she said, turning on her heel. ‘And it’s mademoiselle,’ she threw over her shoulder as she stalked along the corridor to the nursery.

‘How are you, my little sweet pea?’ she said as she strode into Sophie’s room. All her irritation vanished the moment Sophie leapt to her feet, ran across the room and flung her arms round Amethyst’s waist.

‘Feel better this morning, do you?’

‘Yes, Aunt Amy! I have such a lovely view out of my window,’ she said, tugging her across the room to show her. ‘I have seen so many people walking by. The ladies wear the most enormous bonnets so you can’t see their faces and their skirts look like great big bells swinging along the street. And the buildings are all so tall, and grand, but the people who go into them are all muddled up.’

‘Muddled up?’

‘Yes. You can’t tell who the house belongs to by watching who goes in. Not at all. I thought that one over there...’ she pointed to the hôtel immediately across the street ‘...must belong to someone very important, because a great big coach drew up last night and people dressed up in fabulous clothes got in, but then this morning, some people came out looking as though they were going to work. A man with a leather satchel and a quite poor-looking woman carrying a bundle...’

‘I expect it is the same as this house, then,’ she explained. ‘Each floor is rented out to someone different. The grand people with the coach would have the ground floor and the woman with the bundle probably lives up in the attics somewhere.’

Sophie’s brow wrinkled. ‘Are we very grand, then?’

‘Because we have rented the ground floor of this house?’ Amethyst smiled. ‘No. We are not grand at all. Only...quite well off.’ Fabulously well off, thanks to her aunt’s shrewd business brain. And, lately, to hers. People who knew she’d been her aunt’s sole beneficiary expected her fortune to dwindle, now that she was at the helm. Only a trusted few knew that her aunt had trained her in every aspect of managing her vast portfolio, after discovering she, too, had a knack with numbers. An ability to spot an opportunity for investment that others overlooked, which stemmed, in part, from a refusal to accept the general consensus of opinion in the masculine-dominated world of finance.

‘I just wanted,’ she explained to the inquisitive child, ‘you and your mother to have the best that money could buy for our little adventure.’

‘Where is Mama?’

‘She is not feeling well this morning. I have told her to stay in bed.’

Sophie’s face fell.

‘She will not be coming out with us today, but Monsieur Le Brun has promised that he will show you a lot of very interesting things.’

‘But Mama won’t see them. I would rather she was with us...’

‘Yes, so would I,’ Amethyst replied with feeling. A whole day sightseeing with Monsieur Le Prune, without Fenella’s soothing presence to act as a buffer between them, was bound to end in them having words. ‘But you can tell her all about them when we come home. And perhaps buy her a little present to cheer her up.’

Sophie’s face lit up. ‘A monkey. I saw a man with a monkey go past just now, wearing a red jacket and cap.’

‘No, sweet pea. I do not think your mama would enjoy having a monkey for a pet.’

Sophie looked thoughtful. ‘No, I suppose not. She...likes quiet things, does she not?’

‘Yes.’ That was very true. Sophie had much more of an adventurous spirit than her mother. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she didn’t take after her rather reckless father in temperament, though she was a miniature image of her mother, with her light-brown hair and soft, smoky blue eyes.

‘We could buy her a picture. She would like that, wouldn’t she? Are there shops that sell pictures?’

‘I am sure there must be.’ For there were certainly plenty of artists about. Infiltrating restaurants and invading people’s dreams...

She shook herself. He had not invaded her dreams on purpose. It was her own stupid fault for spending the last few moments before she fell asleep savouring the way it had felt to have him come to her and beg for custom. And then imagining all sorts of other ways she could make him rue the day he’d spurned her for that horsey-faced female, simply because her father had a seat in Parliament in his pocket, rather than just a modest parish to govern. In her dreams, he’d gone from crouching on that canvas stool, to kneeling at her feet, begging forgiveness and swearing that he’d made a terrible mistake. That he’d been punished, for years, for the callous way he’d broken her heart. And only a kiss from her lips could assuage his torment...

She’d felt most uncomfortable when she awoke. Gracious heavens, she didn’t want him to beg her for kisses, or anything else. She was well rid of him. She’d told herself so every time she’d seen his name in print in conjunction with tales of his ineffectiveness, or lack of loyalty to his party and the men who’d sponsored his career. And eventually, when his penchant for sordid sexual scandals got so out of hand that no amount of pressure from his influential family could undo the damage, she had incontrovertible proof.

He was no good.

And she’d had a lucky escape.

‘I’m ready!’

She blinked to see Sophie hopping from one foot to the other, her coat buttoned up, her bonnet tied neatly under her chin.

Time to go out.

And push the feckless, faithless Nathan Harcourt from her mind. She had better things to do with her day than think about him. About how much more handsome he was than she had remembered. How much more vital and alive as he crouched with his pencil in his hand in that restaurant than he’d seemed as a young man. He’d strolled through the ballrooms of polite society, in those days, with a jaded air, as though nothing and nobody could possibly interest him. That had been the cynical ploy of a rake, of course. When he’d deigned to pay her a little attention, it had made her feel there must be something special about her to have dissipated the pall of boredom hanging over him. And when he’d smiled at her that first time, in response to some silly quip she’d made, as though it had been something brilliantly witty, she’d felt as though she’d met the one person in the world who completely understood her.

A little grunt of vexation escaped her mouth, which made Monsieur Le Brun, who was waiting for them in the hall, start guiltily.

She didn’t correct his assumption that she might be cross with him. It would keep him on his toes.

Besides, before the end of the day, she was bound to be.

Sophie skipped up to him and smiled. ‘Aunt Amy says you are going to show us lots of interesting things. Do you know where the man with the monkey lives?’

His face softened. It was amazing the effect Sophie was beginning to have on him. Even though she’d suspected him of lying about his willingness to take charge of a party that included a child, he had never exhibited the slightest sign of impatience with her. He might have fretted about the delay to his schedule, but he’d never taken out his frustration on her.

‘I know Paris well, but alas,’ he replied with a shrug, ‘I do not know everyone who lives in every house. Especially not now, when my city is so full of visitors. But I can show you the best of it. We shall commence,’ he said, gesturing with his hand to the hall door, ‘with a stroll along the Boulevard.’

Amethyst grimaced. ‘Should I have worn pattens?’

Monsieur Le Brun drew himself up to his full height.

‘The Boulevard has gravelled walkways along both sides, shaded by trees. You will not need to worry about soiling your gowns when walking there, I promise you.’

‘Hmm,’ she said, pursing her lips. Well, she would soon see.

* * *

But as it turned out, the Boulevard was an utter delight. Not only was it flanked by the most impressive buildings she’d ever seen, beyond the trees which provided welcome shade, but also there were stalls selling everything from lemonade to toys. There were street entertainers every few yards, as well: jugglers and acrobats and even a one-man band. Sophie was particularly taken with the man who professed to be a scientist, demonstrating the amazing hydraulic capabilities of water. What he actually did was squirt it at unsuspecting passers-by through a variety of ingenious contraptions, to the delight of his audience.

Eventually, just as her feet were beginning to feel rather too tight for her walking boots, and Sophie’s energy was visibly waning, Monsieur Le Brun indicated a café.

‘Tortoni’s,’ he said. ‘It is, at night, the most fashionable place to be seen after a trip to the opera. But it also sells the best ice cream in the world. Mademoiselle Sophie will love it.’

Amethyst bit back the urge to enquire how he knew the ice cream was the best in the world, since she was perfectly sure he’d never travelled that far, for Sophie’s tired little face had lit up at the mention of ice cream.

And today was all about Sophie. She would do nothing to mar her enjoyment.

She was glad she’d kept her tongue between her teeth when Monsieur Le Brun promptly secured them a table in a very good spot, in spite of the popularity of the café.

‘This is lovely,’ she therefore said, as they took their places at a table which had a view over the bustling Boulevard.

He almost dropped his menu.

Amethyst couldn’t help smiling. He’d got so used to her sniping at him over every little thing that he didn’t know how to handle a compliment. She just couldn’t resist the urge to shock him even further.

‘You have made Sophie very happy this morning. Thank you, monsieur.’

His cheeks went pink.

Dear Lord, she’d actually made the poor man blush.

She gave him space to recover by helping Sophie choose what flavour ice to have.

And when she next looked up, it was to see Nathan Harcourt making his way across the crowded café to their table.

What was he doing here?

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.

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