The Earl's Untouched Bride

‘Well, your proposal was so sudden,’ he teased her. ‘It took me by surprise. Naturally I had to consider…’

She shook her head. ‘No, I may have surprised you, but you had made up your mind it was an absurd idea.’

‘So absurd, in fact,’ he countered, ‘that nobody would credit it. Nobody would believe I would take one Mademoiselle Bergeron merely to save face at being embarrassed by the other Mademoiselle Bergeron. And therefore they will have to believe that you were the object of my interest all along.’

When she continued to look less than convinced by his complete about-face, he decided it was high time he regained control of the conversation.

‘Now, getting back to the ring. May I enquire, although I somehow feel I am about to regret doing so, why your sister left it with you? The normal practice, I should remind you, when an engagement is terminated, is for the lady to return the ring to the man who gave it to her.’

‘I had it with me when I came to visit you this morning,’ she declared. ‘I was going to return it to you for her if you should not agree to my suggestion.’

‘Indeed?’ His voice was laced with scepticism. ‘And yet somehow it remains in your possession. How did that come about, I wonder?’

‘Well, because you were so beastly to me, if you must know! I told you the deepest secret of my heart and you laughed at me. For the moment I quite lost my temper, and decided I should do with it exactly as Felice said I ought to do! For you are so wealthy it is not as if you needed to have it back, whereas for me…’

She let go of his arm again, folding her own across her chest with a mutinous little pout which, for the first time in their acquaintance, made Charles wonder what it would be like to silence one of her tirades with a kiss. It would probably be the only way to stop her once she had built up a head of steam. Something in the pit of his stomach stirred at the thought of mastering her militant spirit in such a manner. He shook his head. It was not like him to regard sexual encounters as contests of will. But then, he frowned, when had he ever had to do more than crook his finger for a woman to fall obediently in line with his every whim?

‘I take it you meant to sell it, then?’

Heloise eyed his lowered brows contritely.

‘Yes,’ she confessed. ‘Because I needed the money to get to Dieppe.’

‘Dieppe?’ He shook himself out of his reverie. ‘What is at Dieppe?’

‘Not what, but who. And that is Jeannine!’

‘Jeannine?’ he echoed, becoming fascinated in spite of himself. ‘What part does she play in this farce, I wonder?’

‘She was Maman’s nurse, until she eloped with Papa.’

‘There seems to have been a great deal of eloping going on in your family.’

‘But in my parents’ case it was a good thing, don’t you think? Because even if they were terribly poor for the first few years they were married, since my grandpapa cut her off entirely, she was the only one to survive the Terror because her family were all so abominably cruel to the menu peuple—the common people, that is. Jeannine was cast out, but she married a fermier, and I know she would take me in. I would have to learn how to milk a cow, to be sure, and make butter and cheese, but how hard could that be?’

‘I thought it was hens,’ he reflected.

‘Hens?’

‘Yes, you said when you married me you would live in a cottage so that you could keep hens. Now I find that in reality you would rather milk cows and make cheese.’ He sighed. ‘I do wish you would make up your mind.’

Heloise blinked. Though the abstracted frown remained between his brows, she was almost sure he was teasing her. ‘I do not wish to milk cows at all,’ she finally admitted.

‘Good. Because I warn you right now that no wife of mine will ever do anything so plebeian. You must abandon all these fantasies about living on a farm and tending to livestock of any sort. When we return to England you will move in the first circles and behave with the decorum commensurate with your station in life. You are not to go anywhere near any livestock of any description. Is that clear?’

For a moment Heloise regarded the mock sternness of his features with her head tilted to one side. She had never been on the receiving end of one of these teasing scolds before. Whenever he had been playful like this, she had never been able to understand how Felice could remain impervious to his charm.

‘Not even a horse?’ she asked, taking her courage in both hands and deciding to play along, just once. ‘I am quite near a horse already, sitting up here in your carriage.’

‘Horses, yes,’ he conceded. ‘You may ride with me, or a suitable companion in the park. A horse is not a farm animal.’

‘Some horses are,’ she persisted.

‘Not my carriage horses,’ he growled, though she could tell he was not really the least bit cross.

The ride in the fresh air seemed to be doing him good. He was far less tense than he had been when they set out. Oh, it was not to be expected that he would get over Felice all at once, but if she could make him laugh now and again, or even put that twinkle in his eye that she could see when he bent his head in her direction to give her this mock scold, she would be happy.

‘What about dogs, then? What if I should go into some drawing room and a lady should have a little dog. Must I not go into the room? Or should I just stay away from it? By, say, five feet? Or six?’

‘Pets, yes—of course you will come across pets from time to time. That is not what I meant at all, you little minx!’

Pretending exasperation he did not feel, to disguise the fact he was on the verge of laughter, he said, ‘No wonder your brother said I should end up beating you. You would drive a saint to distraction!’

‘I was only,’ she declared with an impish grin, ‘trying to establish exactly what you expected of me. I promised to behave exactly as you would wish, so I need to know exactly what you want!’

He laughed aloud then. ‘You, mademoiselle, were doing nothing of the kind.’ Why had he never noticed her mischievous sense of humour before now? Why had he never noticed what an entertaining companion she could be when she put her mind to it? The truth was, he decided with a sinking feeling, that whenever Felice had been in the room he’d had eyes for nobody else. With her sultry beauty and her vivacious nature she had utterly bewitched him.

Flicking the reins in renewed irritation, he turned the curricle for home.

Chapter Three

His eyes, which a moment ago had been twinkling with amusement, had gone dull and lifeless. It was as though he had retreated into a dark and lonely room, slamming the shutters against her.

She was positively relieved to get home, where her maman greeted her with enthusiasm.

‘I never thought to have secured such a brilliant match for my plain daughter!’ she beamed. ‘But we must do something about your attire,’ she said as Heloise untied the ribbons of the one bonnet she possessed. ‘He cannot want people thinking he is marrying a dowd.’

Hustling her up the newly carpeted stairs to the room she had shared with Felice, her mother grumbled, ‘We do not have time to cut down one of Felice’s gowns before tonight. If only I had known,’ she complained, flinging open the doors to the armoire, ‘that you would be the one to marry into the nobility, we could have laid out a little capital on your wardrobe.’

Nearly all the dresses hanging there belonged to Felice. From the day the allies had marched into Paris the previous summer, what money her parents had been able to spare had been spent on dressing her sister. She had, after all, been the Bergeron family’s secret weapon. She had flirted and charmed her way through the ranks of the occupying forces, playing the coquette to the hilt, whilst adroitly managing to hang onto her virtue, catapulting the family to the very heart of the new society which had rapidly formed to replace Napoleon’s court.

‘Nobody could have foreseen such an unlikely event,’ Heloise replied rather dispiritedly, hitching her hip onto her bed.

She worried at her lower lip. What was her sister going to do now? She had left carrying only a modest bundle of possessions, and her young husband would not have the means to provide either the kind of dress allowance she had enjoyed for so long, nor the stimulating company of the upper echelons of society.

Heloise sighed. ‘What about the lilac muslin?’ she suggested. It was quite her favourite dress. She always felt that it made her look almost girlishly attractive, though the underskirt, which went with the full, shorter overdress, was embroidered about the hem with violets. Surely she could not be taken for a supporter of Bonaparte if she appeared in public on the arm of an Englishman?

‘Where is His Lordship taking you tonight?’ her maman enquired sharply.

‘To the theatre first, and then on to Tortoni’s for ices.’

Her mother clicked her tongue. ‘Muslin to the theatre? I should think not!’ she snapped, entirely overlooking the political symbolism of the violets, Bonaparte’s emblem. ‘When Felice went to the theatre with him she wore the gold satin!’

‘I cannot compete with Felice, Maman,’ Heloise remonstrated. ‘Nor do I think it would be wise to try to be like her. Do you not think he might find it in poor taste if I did?’

‘I had no idea,’ her mother remarked sarcastically, ‘that you had such a grasp of what is in men’s hearts.’ Flinging a bundle of Felice’s discarded gowns to the bare boards, she gripped the iron foot-rail of the wide bed the girls had shared. ‘Don’t, I beg of you, do anything to make him change his mind about marrying you.’

‘He has only taken me to save face,’ Heloise pointed out. ‘I know he still loves Felice. Nothing I do will matter to him.’