The Earl's Untouched Bride

She shook her head mournfully. ‘No.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘All I have told you is part of it. All those good things would result if only you would marry me, and I will be glad to achieve all of them, but—’ She hung her head, burying her hands completely in the by now rather mangled bonnet. ‘My prime reason is a completely selfish one. You see, if only I can persuade you to marry me, then Papa would be so relieved that you are still to pull him out of the suds that he will forget all about compelling me to marry the man he has chosen for me.’

‘In short,’ said Charles, ‘I am easier to swallow than this other fellow?’

‘Yes—much!’ she cried, looking up at him with pleading eyes. ‘You cannot imagine how much I hate him. If you will only say yes, I will be such a good wife! I shall not be in the least trouble to you, I promise! I will live in a cottage in the country and keep hens, and you need never even see me if you don’t want. I shan’t interfere with you, or stop you from enjoying yourself however you wish. I will never complain—no, not even if you beat me!’ she declared dramatically, her eyes growing luminous with unshed tears.

‘Why,’ said Charles, somewhat taken aback by her vehemence, ‘would you suspect me of wishing to beat you?’

‘Because I am such a tiresome creature!’

If it hadn’t been for the fact Heloise was clearly on the verge of tears, Charles would have found it hard not to laugh.

‘Papa is always saying so. So did Gaspard.’

‘Gaspard?’

‘My brother. He said any man fool enough to marry me would soon be driven to beat me. But I feel sure…’ her lower lip quivered ominously ‘…that you would only beat me when I really deserved it. You are not a cruel man. You are not cold, either, in spite of what they all say about you. You are a good person underneath your haughty manner. I know because I have watched you. I have had much opportunity, because you never took the least notice of me when Felice was in the same room. And I would not be afraid to go away with you, because you would not ever wish to beat a woman for sport like he would…’

‘Come now,’ Charles remonstrated, as the first tears began to trickle down her heated cheeks. ‘I cannot believe your papa would force you to marry a man who would be as cruel as that…’

‘Oh, but you English know nothing!’ She leapt to her feet. ‘He would very easily sacrifice me to such a man for the sake of preserving the rest of the family!’ She was quivering from head to toe with quite another emotion than fear now. He could see that. Indignation had brought a decidedly militant gleam to her eye. She was incapable of standing still. Taking brisk little paces between the sofa and the fireplace, she did not notice that she was systematically trampling the bonnet, which had fallen to the floor when she had leapt to her feet. It occurred to him, when she stepped on it for the third time, that her sister would never have been so careless of her apparel. Not that she would have been seen dead in such an unflattering item in the first place.

‘And, besides being so cruel, he is quite old!’ She shuddered.

‘I am thirty-five, you know,’ he pointed out.

She paused mid-stride, running her eyes over him assessingly. The Earl’s light blue eyes twinkled with amusement from a face that was devoid of lines of care. Elegant clothes covered a healthily muscled physique. His tawny hair was a little disarrayed this morning, to be sure, but it was neither receding nor showing any hint of grey. ‘I did not know you were as old as that,’ she eventually admitted with candour.

Once again, Charles was hard put to it not to burst out laughing at the absurdity of this little creature who had invaded the darkness of his lair like some cheeky little song bird hopping about between a lion’s paws, pecking for crumbs, confident she was too insignificant to rate the energy required to swat her.

‘Come, child, admit it. You are too young to marry anyone!’

‘Well, yes!’ she readily admitted. ‘But Felice was younger, and you still wanted to marry her. And in time, of course, I will grow older. And by then you might have got used to me. You might even be able to teach me how to behave better!’ she said brightly. Then, just as quickly, her face fell. ‘Although I very much doubt it.’

She subsided into the chair opposite his own, leaning her elbows on her knees. ‘I suppose I always knew I could not be any sort of wife to you.’ She gazed up at him mournfully. ‘But I know I would have been better off with you. For even if you are as old as you say, you don’t…’ Her forehead wrinkled, as though it was hard for her to find the words she wanted. ‘You don’t smell like him.’

Finding it increasingly hard to keep his face straight, he said, ‘Perhaps you could encourage your suitor to bathe…’

Her eyes snapped with anger. Taking a deep breath, she flung at him, ‘Oh, it is easy for you to laugh at me. You think I am a foolish little woman of no consequence. But this is no laughing matter to me. Whenever he comes close I want to run to a window and open it and breathe clean air. It is like when you go into a room that has been shut up too long, and you know something has decayed in it. And before you make the joke about bathing again, I must tell you that it is in my head that I smell this feeling. In my heart!’ She smote her breast. ‘He is steeped in so much blood!’

However absurdly she was behaving, however quaint her way of expressing herself, there was no doubt that she really felt repelled by the man her father thought she ought to marry. It was a shame that such a sensitive little creature should be forced into a marriage that was so distasteful to her. Though he could never contemplate marrying her himself, he did feel a pang of sympathy. And, in that spirit, he asked, ‘Do I take it this man is a soldier, then?’

‘A hero of France,’ she replied gloomily. ‘It is an honour for our family that such a man should wish for an alliance. An astonishment to my papa that any man should really want to take on a little mouse like me. You wonder how I came to his notice, perhaps?’ When Charles nodded, humouring her whilst privately wondering why on earth it was taking Giddings so long to procure a cab to send her home in, she went on, ‘He commanded Gaspard’s regiment in Spain. He was…’ An expression of anguish crossed her face. ‘I was not supposed to hear. But people sometimes do talk when I am there, assuming that I am not paying attention—for I very often don’t, you know. My brother sometimes talked about the Spanish campaign. The things his officers commanded him to do! Such barbarity!’ She shuddered. ‘I am not so stupid that I would willingly surrender to a man who has treated other women and children like cattle in a butcher’s shop. And forced decent Frenchmen to descend to his level. And how is it,’ she continued, her fists clenching, ‘that while my brother died of hunger outside what you call the lines of Torres Vedras, Du Mauriac came home looking as fit as a flea?’

‘Du Mauriac?’ Charles echoed. ‘The man your father wishes you to marry is Du Mauriac?’

Heloise nodded. ‘As commander of Gaspard’s regiment, he was often in our home when my brother was still alive. He used to insist it was I who sat beside him. From my hand that he wished to be served.’ She shuddered. ‘Then, after Gaspard died, he kept right on visiting. Papa says I am stupid to persist in refusing his proposals. He says I should feel honoured that a man so distinguished persists in courting me when I have not even beauty to recommend me. But he does not see that it is mainly my reluctance that Du Mauriac likes. He revels in the knowledge that, though he repels me, my parents will somehow contrive to force me to surrender to him!’

Heloise ground to a halt, her revulsion at the prospect of what marriage to Du Mauriac would entail finally overwhelming her. Bowing forward, she buried her face in her hands until she had herself under control. And then, alerted by the frozen silence which filled the room, she looked up at the Earl of Walton. Up until that moment she would have said he had been experiencing little more than mild amusement at her expense. But now his eyes had returned to that glacial state which had so intimidated her when first she had walked into the room. Except…now his anger was not directed at her. Indeed, it was as if he had frozen her out of his consciousness altogether.

‘Go home, mademoiselle,’ he said brusquely, rising to his feet and tugging at the bell pull. ‘This interview is at an end.’

He meant it this time. With a sinking heart, Heloise turned and stumbled to the door. She had offended him somehow, by being so open about her feelings of revulsion for the man her father had decided she should marry. She had staked everything on being honest with the Earl of Walton.

But she had lost.

Chapter Two

It came as something of a shock, once the door had closed on Heloise’s dejected little figure, when Conningsby stepped in over the windowsill.

‘My God,’ the man blustered. ‘If I had known this room overlooked the street, and I was to have spent the entire interview wedged onto a balcony when I fully expected to be able to escape through your gardens…’

‘And the curtains were no impediment to your hearing every single word, I shouldn’t wonder?’ The Earl sighed. ‘Dare I hope you will respect the confidentiality of that conversation?’

‘I work for the diplomatic service!’ Conningsby bristled. ‘Besides which, no man of sense would wish to repeat one word of that absurd woman’s proposition!’

Although Charles himself thought Heloise absurd, for some reason he did not like hearing anyone else voice that opinion. ‘I think it was remarkably brave of her to come here to try to save her family from ruin.’

‘Yes, my lord. If you say so,’ the other man conceded dubiously.

‘I do say so,’ said the Earl. ‘I will not have any man disparage my fiancеe.’

‘You aren’t really going to accept that outrageous proposal?’ Conningsby gasped.

Charles studied the tips of his fingers intently.

‘You cannot deny that her solution to my…uh…predicament, will certainly afford me a great deal of solace.’

‘Well,’ said Conningsby hesitantly, loath to offend a man of Lord Walton’s reputation, ‘I suppose she is quite a captivating little thing, in her way. Jolly amusing. She certainly has a gift for mimicry that almost had me giving myself away! Had to stuff a handkerchief in my mouth to choke down the laughter when she aped your voice!’

The Earl stared at him. Captivating? Until this morning he had barely looked at her. Like a little wren, she hid in the background as much as she could. And when he had looked he had seen nothing to recommend her. She had a beak of a nose, set above lips that were too thin for their width, and a sharp little chin. Her hair was a mid-brown, without a hint of a curl to render it interesting. Her eyes, though…

Before this morning she had kept them demurely lowered whenever he glanced in her direction. But today he had seen a vibrancy burning in their dark depths that had tugged a grudging response from him.

‘What she may or may not be is largely irrelevant,’ he said coldly. ‘What just might prompt me to take her to wife is that in so doing I shall put Du Mauriac’s nose out of joint.’

Conningsby laughed nervously. ‘Surely you can’t wish to marry a woman just so that some other fellow cannot have her?’

The Earl returned his look with a coldness of purpose that chilled him. ‘She does not expect me to like her very much. You heard what she said. She will not even be surprised if I come to detest her so heartily that I beat her. All she wants is the opportunity to escape from an intolerable position. Don’t you think I should oblige her?’

‘Well, I…’ Conningsby ran his finger round his collar, his face growing red.

‘Come, now, you cannot expect me to stand by and permit her father to marry her off to that butcher, can you? She does not deserve such a fate.’

No, Conningsby thought, she does not. But then, would marriage to a man who only wanted revenge on her former suitor, a man without an ounce of fondness for her, be any less painful to her in the long run?

Heloise gripped her charcoal and bent her head over her sketchpad, blotting out the noise of her mother’s sobs as she focussed on her drawing. She had achieved nothing. Nothing. She had braved the streets, and the insults of those soldiers, then endured the Earl’s mockery, for nothing. Oh, why, she thought resentfully, had she ever thought she might be able to influence the intractable Earl one way or another? And how could she ever have felt sorry for him? Her fingers worked furiously, making angry slashes across the page. He had coaxed her most secret thoughts from her, let her hope he was feeling some shred of sympathy, and then spurned her. The only good thing about this morning’s excursion was that nobody had noticed she had taken it, she reflected, finding some satisfaction in creating a most unflattering caricature of the Earl of Walton in the guise of a sleekly cruel tabby cat. She could not have borne it if anyone had found out where she had been. It had been bad enough when her maman had laid the blame for Felice’s elopement at her door—as though she had ever had the least influence with her headstrong and pampered little sister!

With a few deft strokes Heloise added a timorous little mouse below the grinning mouth of the tabby cat, then set to work fashioning a pair of large paws. Folly—sheer folly! To walk into that man’s lair and prostrate herself as she had!