Regency Surrender: Passion And Rebellion

When she felt as though her whole life had been flung up in the air and hadn’t quite settled into place yet. If she could only get past how angry he’d made her, by assuming she’d sunk low enough to...well, never mind what he thought she and Monsieur Le Brun got up to. It made her feel queasy. What about the other things he’d said? About finding her attractive?

Never mind irresistible. Almost irresistible enough to have lured him away from his sensible arranged match, to live in relative poverty and obscurity.

Had he been serious? Not one man, in the last ten years, had come anywhere near kissing her, yet Nathan claimed to find her so irresistibly attractive he immediately assumed she must be making her living as a woman of easy virtue. He had seethed at her and fumed at her, and only stormed off when he was satisfied he’d rattled her.

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?

She reached for the sticky pastry the waiter had just brought and took a large bite, wondering if it might be a new Amy altogether. An Amy who was so sick of people assuming the worst of her that she might just as well be bad.

She licked her lips, savouring the delicious confection. She sipped her drink with a feeling that before she left Paris, there was a distinct possibility she was going to find out.

Chapter Five

‘How are you this morning?’ Amethyst asked Fenella, noting that she still looked rather wan and shamefaced.

‘Much better,’ she said, sliding into her place at the breakfast table and pouring herself a cup of chocolate with an unsteady hand. ‘Yes, much better.’

What Fenella needed was something to take her mind off herself, Amethyst decided. She could not possibly still be feeling the after-effects of drinking too much. She was just indulging in a fit of the dismals. Since offering her sympathy had done so little good, perhaps an appeal to her deeply ingrained sense of duty might do the trick. A reminder that she was supposed to be a paid companion.

‘I hope you do not think I am being strict with you, but I really must insist you get back to work today.’

Fenella sat up a little straighter and lifted her chin. Amethyst repressed a smile.

‘I need you to double-check any correspondence that Monsieur Le Brun may have written regarding the trade opportunities we’ve come over here to secure.’

At Fenella’s little gasp of dismay, she held up her hand. ‘My grasp of the French language is only very basic, so I need you to keep an eye on everything he does. It is bad enough having to rely on him to represent me at meetings,’ she grumbled. ‘Anyway, I have to spend some time reading the packet of mail which has caught up with me...’ she sighed ‘...before we can take Sophie out anywhere. It shouldn’t take me long, but I must just make sure there is nothing so pressing it cannot wait until my return. Jobbings already thinks I am flighty, because I have come jauntering off to foreign parts, as he put it. He fully expects me to fail in this venture,’ she said gloomily. ‘He doesn’t think I have a tithe of my aunt’s business acumen.’

‘You do not have a high opinion of him, either, do you?’

‘He is honest and diligent. Which is more than can be said for most men.’

Fenella cut a pastry into a series of tiny squares, her expression pensive. ‘What is your opinion of Monsieur Le Brun, now that you have got to know him better? Sophie said that you did not seem so cross with him yesterday as you usually are.’

‘Well, although he looks far too sour to have ever been a child, let alone remember what one would like, he did take us to a whole series of places which were exactly the kind of thing that a lively, inquisitive child like Sophie would really enjoy,’ Amethyst admitted.

‘Yes. Sophie told me all about it,’ said Fenella, lifting her cup and taking a dainty sip of tea.

‘I confess,’ Amethyst continued, ‘I had my doubts when he said that he did not mind having a child form part of our party. I got the distinct impression,’ she said with a wry twist to her lips, ‘that he would have said anything to get the post, so desperate was he for work. Even the testimonials he provided were so fulsome they made me a bit suspicious.’

‘So why, then, did you take him on?’

‘Because he was desperate for the job, of course. I thought if he would say anything to land the job, then he was likely to work harder to ensure he kept it. And so far, my instincts have not failed me. He has worked hard.’

‘Then you do not...’ Fenella placed her cup carefully back on to its saucer ‘...dislike him as much as you did to start with?’

‘I do not need to like the man to appreciate he is good at his job. So far he has proved to be an efficient and capable courier. And though his manners put my back up they have a remarkable effect on waiters on both sides of the Channel. He always manages to secure a good table and prompt service. I attribute that,’ she said, digging into her own plate of eggs and toast, ‘to that sneer of his.’

‘Oh, dear, is that all you can say? Is that really...fair?’

Amethyst raised her brows, but that was not enough to deter Fenella. ‘You did make a good choice when you employed him,’ she said stoutly. ‘He is...’ She floundered.

‘Arrogant, opinionated and overbearing,’ said Amethyst. ‘But then he is a man, so I suppose he cannot help that. However,’ she added more gently, noting from the way Fenella was turning her cup round and round in its saucer that her companion was getting upset, ‘I am sure you need have no worries that he may take his dislike of me out on you. What man could possibly object to the way you ask for his advice? For that is what you do, isn’t it? You don’t challenge his dominance by giving him direct orders, the way I do, so he has no need to try to put you in your place. You just flutter your eyelashes at him and he does whatever you want, believing the whole time that it was all entirely his own idea.’

To her astonishment, Fenella flushed bright pink.

‘I am sorry if that unsettles you. I meant it as a compliment. You handle him with such aplomb...’

Fenella got to her feet so quickly her chair rocked back and almost toppled over. ‘Please, I...’ She held up her hand, went an even hotter shade of pink and fled the room.

Amethyst was left with a forkful of eggs poised halfway to her mouth, wondering what on earth she had said to put such a guilty look on Fenella’s face.

* * *

It took Amethyst less than an hour to run her eyes over the latest figures and tally them in her mind with the projected profits. At home, in Stanton Basset, she had always started her day by doing exactly this, and before she’d set out she had seen no reason why she shouldn’t keep up with the latest developments as assiduously as ever.

But she’d never felt so relieved to have got through the columns of figures and the dry reports that went with them. She couldn’t wait to put on her hat and coat, and get outside and start exploring Paris again.

She’d never enjoyed being in business for its own sake, the way Aunt Georgie had. It had always been more about repaying her aunt’s faith in her by making her proud. And as for coming to France to expand the business...

The truth was that the end of the war had come at just the right time for her. Everyone with means was flocking to Paris. It was the perfect time to break away from Stanton Basset and all its petty restrictions. To do something different. Something that was nothing to do with anyone’s expectations.

So why had she justified her decision to travel, by telling Jobbings her motive for coming here was to expand the business she’d inherited? Why was she still making excuses for doing what she wanted? Whose approval did she need to win now her aunt had gone? Not Jobbings’. He worked for her.

Was she somehow trying to appease the ghost of her aunt? She’d thought that coming somewhere different would jolt her out of the rigid routine into which she’d fallen and stuck after her aunt had died. But it wasn’t proving as easy to cast off the chains of habit as she’d thought it would be. She was still looking over her shoulder to see if her aunt would approve.

She eyed her bonnet in the mirror with dislike as she tied the frayed brown ribbons under her chin. It did nothing for her. She rather thought it wouldn’t do anything for anyone.

Well, while she was in Paris, she was going to treat herself to a new one. No woman visiting Paris could fail to come back with just one or two items that were a little brighter and more fashionable than she was used to wearing, would she? It wouldn’t exactly be advertising her wealth, would it?

And what was the point of having money, if all you ever did was hoard it?

‘I hope,’ she therefore said upon reaching the communal hall, where the others were waiting for her, ‘that we will be visiting some shops today. Or if not today,’ she amended, realising that she had not asked Fenella to make shopping a part of their itinerary, ‘tomorrow. I have decided that we should all have new bonnets.’

Fenella flushed and pressed her hand to her throat, but Sophie cheered.

‘Monsieur Le Brun has already said he is going to take us to the Palais Royale,’ she said, bouncing up to her with a smile. ‘He says it is full of shops. Toyshops and bookshops, and cafés like the one where we bought the water ice yesterday. I expect you could buy bonnets, too,’ she added generously.

The Palais Royale. Oh, dear. Well, at least she’d already come up with the notion of buying bonnets for all three of them. The prospect of getting something new to wear was bound to help take Fenella’s mind off returning to the scene of her downfall.

Though when she took another look at Fenella, it was to find that she still looked rather pink and more than a little uncomfortable.

‘A new bonnet,’ said Fenella. ‘Really, Miss Dalby, that is too kind of you. I don’t deserve—’

‘Fustian,’ she barked as she marched out of the front door. ‘You have both been ill. You deserve a reward for putting up so heroically with me dragging you and poor Sophie all the way out here.’

Fenella trotted behind her, twittering and protesting for several yards that the last thing she deserved was a reward.

* * *

When they finally reached the Palais Royale and caught sight of the shops by daylight, however, her final protest dwindled away to nothing.

The people thronging the gravelled courtyard were all so exquisitely dressed. It made their own plain, provincial garb look positively shabby.

And the shops were full of such beautiful things.

It occurred to her that Fenella didn’t often have new clothes. She couldn’t outshine her own employer, after all. But now Amethyst wondered how much she minded dressing so plainly, when she spent so many hours poring over fashion plates in the ladies’ magazines.

‘Oh, just look at that silk,’ sighed Fenella, over a length of beautiful fabric draped seductively across the display in a shop window. ‘I declare, it...it glows.’

‘Then you must have a gown made up from it,’ declared Amethyst. Before Fenella could come up with a dutiful protest, she interjected, ‘It is ridiculous to go about looking like dowds when I have the means for both of us to dress stylishly.’

‘Oh, but—’

‘Neither of us have had anything new for an age. And nor has Sophie. You have to admit, that shade of blue would suit you both admirably.’

‘Well...’ Fenella bit her lower lip, which was trembling with the strain of knowing quite the right thing to do in this particular circumstance.

‘I have made up my mind, so it is no use arguing. Both you and Sophie are going to return to Stanton Basset in matching silk gowns.’

Sophie’s face fell, predictably. She knew that visiting a modiste meant hours of standing about being measured and dodging pins.

‘But first, where are those toyshops Monsieur Le Brun promised us?’

Sophie’s face lit up again and she skipped ahead of them to a shop she must have already noted, so swiftly did she make for it.

The adults followed more slowly, glancing into all the windows as they went past.

Until they came to a shop that sold all kinds of supplies for artists, at which point Amethyst’s feet drifted to a halt. Did Harcourt buy his supplies here? Or perhaps, given the preponderance of tourists milling about, he would frequent somewhere cheaper, known only to locals. Although the money she’d given him for that quick portrait would ensure he could buy the best, for some time to come.

She frowned. She didn’t like the way her mind kept returning to Harcourt. It was a problem she’d struggled with for years. Every time his name appeared in one of the scandal sheets, all the old hurts would rise up and give her an uncomfortable few days. It was too bad he’d had to flee to Paris, of all places, when London grew too hot for him.

She heard Sophie laugh and turned to see that the rest of her party were going into the toyshop already. She chastised herself for standing there peering intently into the dim interior of the artist’s supplier. She’d actually been trying to see if she could make out the identity of any of the customers. There was no reason he would be there, just because she was.

Sighing, she tore herself away from the window and moved on to the next shop, which was a jeweller’s. Once more her feet ruled her head, coming to a halt without her conscious volition. As her eyes roved over the beautiful little trinkets set out on display, she heard her aunt’s voice, sneering that women who adorned themselves with such fripperies only did so to attract the attention of men, or to show off to other women how much wealth they had.

‘Wouldn’t catch me dead wasting my hard-earned money on such vulgar nonsense.’

She bit her lower lip as she silently retorted that it might very well be vulgar to wear too much jewellery, but surely it wouldn’t hurt to own just a little?

Her eyes snagged on a rope of pearls, draped over a bed of black silk. She’d worn a string just like it, for the few short weeks her Season had lasted. She’d been so happy when her mother had clasped them round her neck. She’d felt as if she was on the verge of something wonderful. The wearing of her mother’s pearls signified the transition from girlhood into adulthood.

Something inside her twisted painfully as she remembered the day she’d taken them off for the last time. They’d gone back in their box when her mother had brought her home from London and she hadn’t seen them again for years.

Two years, to be precise. And then they’d been round Ruby’s neck.

And her mother had been smiling at Ruby and looking proud of her as she’d walked down the aisle on her father’s arm to marry a wealthy tea-merchant she’d met at a local assembly. They hadn’t even had to splash out for a London Season for Ruby. No, she’d managed to get a husband with far greater economy and much less fuss. And she therefore deserved the pearls.

Amethyst might not have minded so much if any of her sisters had spoken to her that day. But it was clear they’d been given orders not to do more than give her a nod of acknowledgement. She’d pinned such hopes on Ruby’s wedding. She’d thought the fact her parents had sent her an invitation meant that she was forgiven, that they were going to let bygones be bygones.

No such thing. It had all been about rubbing her nose in it. Ruby was the good daughter. She was the black sheep. Ruby deserved the pearls and the smiles, and the bouquet and the lavish wedding breakfast.

Amethyst didn’t even warrant an enquiry after her health.

She dug into her reticule, fished out a handkerchief and blew her nose. That was ages ago. She didn’t care what her parents thought of her any more. They’d been so wrong, on so many counts. Why should she stand here wasting time even thinking about them, when they probably never spared her a second thought?

And then somehow, before she even knew she’d intended any such thing, her militant feet had carried her into the shop and over to a counter. Her mother had decided she didn’t deserve the pearls. And her aunt had held the opinion that wanting such things was vulgar anyway. But neither her aunt nor her mother was in charge of her life, or her fortune, any longer. If she wanted to drape herself with pearls, or even diamonds, she had every right to do so. Why shouldn’t she buy something for the sheer fun of splashing out her money on something that just about everyone in her past would have disapproved of?

The shop was a veritable treasure trove of the most beautiful little ornaments she had ever seen. One object in particular caught her eye: a skillfully crafted ebony hair comb, which was set with a crescent of diamonds. Or possibly crystals. Since she had so little experience of such things, there was no way she would ever be able to discern whether those bright little chips of liquid fire were genuine or paste.

But whatever it was, she wanted it. It wasn’t as if it was a completely useless ornament, like a rope of pearls would have been. Besides, she sniffed, she didn’t want to buy something that would remind her of such a painful episode in her past.

She glanced warily at the man presiding over the shop, who was watching her with a calculating eye. For one fleeting moment she wished she had Monsieur Le Brun at her side. He wouldn’t let a shopkeeper chouse him. With that cynical eye and world-weary manner he would put the man in his place in an instant.

She shook the feeling off. She could manage this herself. She might have no experience with jewels, but she had plenty with people. Aunt Georgie had taught her how to spot a liar at twenty paces. She wouldn’t let him dupe her into paying more than she decided the item was worth.

She took a deep breath and asked how much the comb cost.

‘Madame does realise that these are diamonds?’

She couldn’t help bristling with annoyance. Why did Frenchmen persist in addressing her as madame? It made her feel so...old. And dowdy.

And all the more determined to dress a little better.

So she nodded, trying to look insouciant, and braced herself to hear they cost an exorbitant amount, only to suck in a sharp, shocked breath when he quoted her a sum that sounded incredibly reasonable.

Which meant that they couldn’t possibly be real diamonds. He was trying to trick her.

Like all men, he assumed she must be too stupid to notice. Her eyes narrowed. She stood a little straighter, but was prevented from saying anything when the door burst open and Harcourt strode in.

‘I had almost given up hope of catching you alone,’ he said, taking hold of her arm. Somehow she found him drawing her away from the counter and into the darker recesses of the shop, away from the window.

She ought not to have let him do any such thing. But then she wasn’t in the mood for doing as she ought today.

Besides, there was something in his eyes that intrigued her. It wasn’t the anger he’d displayed during their previous two encounters. It was something that looked very much like...desperation. And his words made it sound as though he’d been following her. Seeking an opportunity to speak to her alone. After the Frenchman’s attitude, she could help being just a little bit flattered.

‘When last we met, I should have said...that is...dammit!’ He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving furrows in the thick, unruly mass.

My goodness, but he was worked up. Over her.

‘I can’t stop thinking about you. I am in torment, knowing you are here, in Paris, so near and yet so...out of reach.’

A warm glow of feminine satisfaction spread through her, almost breaking out in the form of a smile. Almost, but not quite. She just about had the presence of mind to keep her face expressionless.

She hoped.

‘Would you consider leaving your Frenchman?’

Well, that put paid to looking cool, calm and poised. She felt her jaw drop, her eyes widen.

She managed to put everything back in place swiftly, but even so, he’d seen her reaction.

And he didn’t like it.

‘I know I don’t look as though I am a good prospect,’ he said, indicating the scruffy clothes he was wearing. ‘But honestly, I am not as hard up as these clothes suggest. They are practical for when I am working, that is all. I get covered in dust and charcoal, and...but never mind that. The point is, you could do better than him.’

‘You...you said that before,’ she replied. And she’d been simultaneously flattered and insulted by his assumptions about what sort of woman he thought she was. Well, she might be flattered, but she wasn’t going to melt at the feet of a man who kept on delivering his flattery wrapped up in insults.