Portrait of a Scandal

She stood stock still, her heart doing funny little skips inside her chest. She’d only ever been sought after seriously by gentlemen after they learned she was Aunt Georgie’s sole beneficiary.

But Harcourt assumed she was poor and desperate.

And he still claimed to want her.

‘Are you getting tired, Aunt Amy?’

Sophie had come running back to her and was taking her hand, and looking up into her face with concern.

‘No, sweet pea. I am just...admiring the gardens. Aren’t they beautiful?’

She hadn’t noticed, not until she’d worked out that Harcourt was suffering from jealousy, but the Tuileries Gardens were really rather pretty...in a stately, regulated kind of way, in spite of all the gruesome horrors which the citizens had perpetrated within it. The trees dappled the gravelled walks with shade, the sky she could see through the tracery of leaves was a blue that put her in mind of the haze of bluebells carpeting a forest floor in spring, and the air was so clear and pure it was like breathing in liquid crystal.

It was almost as magical a place as Hyde Park had been, when she’d been a débutante. She could remember feeling like this when she’d walked amongst the daffodils with Harcourt. Light-hearted and hopeful, but, above all, pretty. He’d made her feel so pretty, the way he’d looked at her back then, when she’d always assumed she was just ordinary, that there was nothing about her to warrant any sort of compliments.

That was because she’d always had to work so hard to please her exacting parents. She’d done her utmost to make them proud of her, with her unstinting work in the parish and her unquestioning support of her mother in bringing up the younger girls.

And what good had it done her? The minute she slipped, nothing she’d done before counted for anything. All they could say was that she was self-indulgent and ungrateful, and vain.

Though at least now she knew she hadn’t been vain. He must have liked more than just the way she looked, if he’d contemplated marrying her. He’d liked her. The person she’d become when she’d been with him. The girl who felt as though she was lit up from inside whenever she was near him. A very different girl from the earnest, constantly-striving-to-please girl she was in the orbit of her parents. He’d shown her that it was fun to dance and harmless to flirt. They’d laughed a lot, too, over silly jokes they’d made about some of the more ridiculous people they encountered. Or nothing much at all.

She’d slammed the door shut on that Amy when he’d abandoned her.

She’d tossed aside the former Amy, too, the one who was so intent on pleasing her parents.

It had been much easier to nurture the anger Aunt Georgie had stirred up. She’d become angry Amy. Bitter Amy. Amy who was going to survive no matter what life threw at her.

‘It is time I took you to another café,’ said Monsieur Le Brun. ‘It is a little walk, but worth it, for the pastries there are the best you will ever eat.’

‘Really?’ She pursed her lips, though she did not voice her doubt in front of Sophie. There wasn’t any point. The proof of the pudding, or in this case, pastry, would be in the eating. So she just followed the pair to the café, let the waiter lead them to a table and sank gratefully on to a chair, wondering all the while which, out of all the Amys she’d been in her life thus far, was the real one? And which one would come to the fore if he should come into this café, looking at her with all that masculine hunger?

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