Surrender The Heart

Ariane stared uncomprehendingly at her father for a moment before she made the connection.

“The Charles de Blanc hard who was married to Cousin Odile?”

“Yes. Don’t you understand?” He gestured with his fist. “He left her for another woman and this man is their child.”

He was still glaring at her, but she saw that the unreasoning rage had passed.

“But, papa,” she said, “that was at least thirty years ago.”

“So?” he growled. “Odile still remembers very well that she and her children were abandoned. And we cannot afford to insult her. She will be invaluable in introducing us to the right people.”

“Papa—”

He silenced her with a gesture. “All that aside, someone of his parentage would not be a suitable husband.”

“Papa—”

“The discussion is over, Ariane.” Valmont subsided against the cushions of the carriage and, forgetting his daughter’s presence, tugged his wife out of the corner where she was still sniffling and put his arm around her shoulders.

Ariane watched her mother smile tremulously and go into her husband’s arms with no hesitation, his roughness of a few moments before already forgotten.

Her stomach twisting, she looked away. She would never allow herself to love a man, she thought. Never.

Chris swore under his breath as he nicked his chin. Reaching blindly for the soapstone to stop the small trickle of blood, he managed to send a glass tumbling into the washbowl. The sound of breaking glass had him swearing again. Damnation, he seemed to have two left hands today—both apparently equipped with five thumbs.

Sam, who after twenty years was more companion than servant, looked up from brushing a suit, his thick black eyebrows raised in surprise.

Chris met Sam’s gaze in the mirror and suppressed the urge to growl. He was in a foul, edgy mood after a restless night full of dreams. Shadowy dreams that he could barely remember and explicit dreams that even now had his body stirring.

She was crowding him. Not a moment seemed to go by that he did not find himself remembering something about her. Her lovely face. The texture of her skin. The look in her extraordinary eyes when she had suggested her outrageous bargain. And then there was the taste of her mouth.

Suddenly he snapped back to reality and found Sam’s fingers circling his wrist.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

“Your eyes got all dreamy like. Wouldn’t want you to cut up that pretty face of yours.” Sam grinned. “Why don’t you let me finish doin’ that?”

Chris frowned, but did not protest as Sam took the razor.

“You sure did a lot of dreamin’ last night,” Sam said conversationally, bending his knees to accommodate the difference in their height. “Lot of talkin’, too.”

Chris slanted a look up at Sam, a glimmer of humor entering his eyes for the first time that day. “Are you trying to tell me something, Sam, or ask me something?”

“Both, I guess.” Sam grinned again. “You took to speakin’ Frenchie half ways through the night.” Adroitly he scraped away the last of Chris’s beard. “She must be somethin’, this Areeann, huh?”

“Something,” Chris agreed, deciding that this was possibly more apt than any description of Ariane he had come up with.

“Some female company’ll do you good.” Sam pronounced sagely. “Maybe you’ll sleep better at night.”

“And then again maybe not.” Chris thought of the odd bargain he had made with Ariane. Somehow he did not think that it would allow him to sleep better anytime soon. Not unless he got very lucky. And if by chance he did, he would definitely not be spending his nights sleeping.

He frowned at his reflection in the mirror. What the hell was Ariane de Valmont doing in his dreams anyway?

Why was he dreaming again now? He’d kept dreams at bay for so long. He shivered. Even now, twenty years later, he shivered at the memory of the nightmares that had begun as his mother had lain dying.

But he had fought them, he reminded himself just a little desperately. Fought and obliterated them. He’d freed himself from all the fears, all the emotions. Now he didn’t need anyone anymore and he was determined to keep it that way.

Chris placed his card on the silver salver offered by the majordomo. While the majordomo strode off, another liveried footman showed him into a small salon. The room was elegantly furnished, but its empty feeling led to the assumption that it had no other purpose than to function as a kind of waiting room for visitors.

Minutes passed—five, ten, fifteen. Although Chris had spent most of his life in places where niceties like engraved cards and gloved servants and silver salvers were the exception, he understood the rules of society well enough. And he understood that the Marquise de Blan-chard was keeping him waiting in order to humiliate him.

He remembered a room much like this one. He’d sat there, expectant and excited as he waited with his father for his aunt, Leontine, to receive them. Then he’d sat there alone, fighting angry tears, after his aunt had had him removed from her presence. The old memories tugged at him, but he pushed them away. He was no longer a small boy who could be hurt by petty meannesses, he told himself. He was a man who had made something of his life.

With every appearance of equanimity, he extracted some papers, as well as a small notebook and pencil, from the inside pocket of his navy blue frock coat and began to make notes for the business meetings that he had scheduled in the coming days.

Almost half an hour had passed when yet another footman came to tell him that the marquise would see him now. Chris gathered up his papers without hurry, drawing a disapproving glance from the servant, and followed, the man.

The drawing room was overheated, overstuffed with excessively fussy rococo furniture and smothered in heavy velvet drapes, whose only saving grace was their brilliant azure color. The sweet, heavy scent of patchouli lay over the room like a pall. Chris remembered his father’s simple tastes and decided that it was no wonder that he had fled.

The Marquise de Blanchard sat on a fragile, gilt armchair as if it were a throne, the passionate hatred in her eyes belying the arrogant coolness of her features. A short, jowly man stood behind her, his hand curved on the back of the chair, his dark coloring and the embonpoint that strained his waistcoat making it obvious that he owed his appearance only to his mother.

“I thought I made it quite clear last night that I wanted nothing to do with you,” the marquise began without preamble, not even bothering to wait until the footman had closed the door behind him.

“Your effrontery in calling on me is quite staggering.” She paused. “Almost as great as your effrontery in daring to use the Blanchard name.” Contemptuously she tipped her plump chin toward the salver where his card lay.

“I regret to disappoint you, but although my birth was not sanctioned by marriage, my father adopted me. It is all quite legal. As for calling on you, it would not have been my choice to do so, madame la marquise,” Chris said, lifting one broad shoulder in a lazy shrug. “It was, however, your choice whether you choose to receive me or not”.

“You should have him thrown out on his ear, ma-man.” The lines of ill-temper around Maurice de Blanchard’s mouth deepened. “You have absolutely no reason to acknowledge him like this.”

“Do I assume correctly that this is my half brother?”

Maurice straightened as if he had been prodded with a hot poker.

“What excruciatingly bad taste to even mention that we are—that we could be related,” he corrected quickly. “But what can one expect from a man raised among savages?”

“An interesting concept.” Chris’s mouth curved in a derisive smile. “It could be worthwhile to debate which one of us was raised among savages.” Ignoring the marquise’s outraged gasp, he continued. “As far as the question of our being related is concerned, perhaps you should ask—” his cool gaze flickered briefly to the marquise “—madame votre mére if we are.”

Although she understood his implication perfectly, it was that transient look that the marquise found truly insulting. Jumping up, she advanced toward him.

“I will not endure your vulgarities any longer, monsieur.” She waved at him with a heavily beringed hand. “State your business and decamp.”

“I am here at my father’s request.”

The marquise gave a snort of a laugh. “The wretch probably wants to mend his fences, as he did after his—” her small mouth curled “—mistress died.”

Chris stiffened. “I beg to correct you. After my mother’s death, my father wanted to mend his fences with his sister. Only with his sister.”

“And whom does he want to mend fences with this time?” She laughed.