Regency Surrender: Passion And Rebellion

They’d talked and talked, as she’d never talked to anyone before. He was genuinely interested in her opinions. He didn’t always agree with them and sometimes their discussions grew quite heated. But he never seemed to think less of her for disagreeing with him. In fact, if she grew too angry, he would get a wicked gleam in his eyes and tell her she was at her most alluring when she got angry, and then defuse all her irritation by flinging down his brushes, stalking to the couch on which she lay and making her come, over and over again, until she lay limp and sated in his arms. And had totally forgotten whatever it was they’d been arguing about.

‘For so long,’ she said to Fenella, ‘I have felt that I have no appeal as a woman whatsoever. And now the most experienced rake in two countries is hanging on my sleeve.’

Not trying to change her, or form her opinions, or punishing her for disagreeing with him, but allowing her, for the first time in her life, to be herself.

‘Do you think worrying about what people might say, if they were to find out, is going to prevent me from making the most of it, while it lasts?’

‘No. I suppose not. But...you will be careful, won’t you? I don’t want you to get hurt.’

She spun round, on the verge of asking Fenella what she thought it was going to do to her when she left her to marry her French Count, and took Sophie away, if not wound her to the core? Sophie had become almost like a daughter to her, while she’d never had a friend as close as Fenella. If Fenella really didn’t want her to be hurt, she wouldn’t be obliging her to return to Stanton Bassett and bear the brunt of all the talk there would be, and suffer the pitying looks, the moralising and the unsolicited advice—alone.

But she bit her tongue. She mustn’t let self-pity or jealousy ruin what they could salvage of their friendship.

Jealousy? She couldn’t possibly be jealous of Fenella, having Gaston, could she? No the notion was absurd. She didn’t want a husband. She didn’t want any man to have the power over her that a husband would have, by law.

‘Thank you Fenella, for your concern,’ she said stiffly. ‘But I can assure you that I have no intention of getting hurt. This is the man who led me on, then changed his mind once before, don’t forget. I know not to trust a single word that comes out of his mouth.’

She’d taken great care not to let Nathan touch her heart. Her body, yes, and her mind. She’d found it liberating to be free with both. But she’d kept her heart safely encased in a block of ice which no amount of passion, no matter how hot, could melt.

‘Oh, dear,’ Fenella said again. ‘That sounds so very...’ She shook her head. ‘So very sad. To have no hope that things might develop...’

‘It is not the least bit sad. It is practical. I am not going to marry some man and let him wrest control of my life from me.’

‘Marriage is not like that. I’m sure Gaston will never attempt to control me.’

‘And has he informed you yet where he plans to set up home, once you are married?’

Fenella flushed and her face fell. ‘Actually, he has. He has a little property near Southampton which he says will suit me and Sophie very nicely.’

‘Southampton! The opposite end of the country from Stanton Basset. About as far away from me as he can take you.’

‘It isn’t deliberate. It isn’t as if he bought the place on purpose to keep us apart. He knew nothing about either of us when he bought it.’

Amethyst drew a deep breath. ‘I will make quite certain he does not keep us apart,’ she said grimly. ‘I had already toyed with the idea of moving away from Stanton Basset. After this trip, going back there would feel like going back to a cage. So I had thought about taking a place by the seaside. Southampton will be as good a location as anywhere.’

It eased all the hurt of hearing Fenella was going to live on the south coast when her face lit up.

‘Oh, that will be wonderful. I was a little worried,’ she admitted, ‘about how I would cope in a new town, all on my own. Because Gaston is going to be away quite a lot.’

‘Is he?’

‘Well, yes. He’s...he’s hoping to continue working as a courier for English tourists. So he can return to France again and again, until the matter of his estates is settled. You will give him a good reference, won’t you?’

‘Is that why he sent you to speak to me this morning?’ A cold sliver of uncertainty snaked through her middle.

‘Oh, no! He is convinced that you hate him. He is even a bit worried you might try to take some form of revenge on him for stealing me away from you.’

‘But you don’t?’

Fenella laughed. ‘Of course not! I know you better than that. You haven’t a vengeful bone in your body. You are all that is good,’ she said, pressing Amethyst’s hand affectionately. ‘Otherwise you couldn’t have let that man...Mr Harcourt...back into your life, could you?’

All of a sudden Amethyst felt like crying. Fenella’s faith in her was so touching. She was the one person who always chose to see some good in her, even when everyone else chose to think the worst.

She delved into her reticule for a handkerchief and blew her nose.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t mention him, should I?’ said Fenella. ‘It must be so difficult for you, having to bid him farewell and never be able to hope you will see him again.’

It was going to be a wrench, she couldn’t deny it. Nathan had made her feel...so alive.

‘I will always have the portrait to remind me of this time, though,’ she said, putting her hanky away.

‘You mean there really is a portrait?’

‘Yes. I’m going to view it today. And I’m going to buy it,’ she said decisively, ‘even if it is a bit of a daub.’

‘That is so like you,’ said Fenella, almost worshipfully.

‘Fustian! I won’t be doing it for him.’ Though she’d already decided she would find something complimentary to say about it, because he cared so greatly about his art. More than he cared about anything else in his life, if she’d read him aright. He’d told her, rather wistfully, when they’d first known each other, that he wished being a painter was an acceptable profession for a gentleman. But it wasn’t until these last few weeks that she’d realised that it was all he’d ever really wanted to do with his life. And now that his brief career as a politician had ensured nobody could possibly think of him as a gentleman any more, he was finally free to live the life he’d always dreamed of.

No, after all he’d done for her these past weeks, the way he’d made her feel, she wasn’t going to be the one to tell him he didn’t have the talent, if that was the case.

‘It is just that the painting is a bit, shall we say, risqué. I have to ensure that it cannot fall into the wrong hands.’

‘Oh, my word. Did he paint you...?’

‘Without benefit of clothing, yes,’ she said, checking her appearance in the mirror one last time. ‘I shall most probably have to shroud it in holland covers and hide it away in the attics.’

She walked briskly to the door. ‘I hope you and Sophie enjoy your day. I shall see you...later.’ And with that, she left.

* * *

She was glad she’d gone prepared to speak with tact, rather than total honesty, when she saw how on edge Nathan appeared the moment he opened the door to her.

As she followed him through to the studio, she wondered at her decision to keep the painting, rather than simply burn it the moment she had the freedom to do so. She wasn’t normally prone to making decisions based on sentiment.

Although...it would be pleasant to have a tangible reminder of this heady month, spent in a foreign country, in a handsome man’s arms. When she was old and grey, she could creep up to the attic, pull off the covers and warm herself at the memory of having, for one month of her life at least, had a man who found everything about her utterly feminine, and deliciously desirable, to boot. Or even before then. Whenever her father made one of his sporadic attempts to assert his will, she could remind herself that she’d been right and he’d been wrong about Nathan’s intentions. And by extension, everything else about her.

That wasn’t being sentimental. It was...providing herself with armour against the life she was going to have to live once Fenella left and she stood alone against a harsh, judgemental world.

Nathan paused in the doorway to the studio for a moment or two, before stepping aside and letting her enter. Before he let her see the finished portrait, which he’d turned on its easel to face the door.

‘Oh,’ she said, coming to an abrupt halt as the full impact of it hit her squarely in the chest.

Not that it was dreadful. She didn’t know why she’d ever thought it might be, given the skill he’d demonstrated when producing those swift pencil sketches. There was no problem with perspective, or the way the light shone on the drapery which made it look as though it flowed over her body, or anything like that. There was no mistaking that the woman in the picture was her, either.

Nevertheless, this painting was most definitely going to be consigned to the attics. She couldn’t possibly risk letting anyone see her portrayed like this. And it wasn’t just because he’d depicted her reclining on a couch, strategic folds of linen preserving her modesty, whilst advertising the fact that she was naked beneath it. It was the expression on her face that she daren’t let anyone ever see. He’d made her look like...like a woman in love. She was gazing out of the canvas as though she adored the man who was painting her. He’d made her look... She swallowed back something that felt very like tears. Younger. Less cynical. Vulnerable, even.

Yes, that was what she objected to. She didn’t mind a reminder that she was capable of being feminine, but he’d gone too far. There was not a trace of the hardheaded businesswoman she’d become. Let alone the rebellious daughter, who was the despair of her father, or the shrew from whom Monsieur Le Brun had thought he needed to protect his gentle, ladylike Fenella.

‘You don’t like it.’ His voice was flat.

She shook her head. ‘Nathan, you have real talent. I can see that. You have made me look...beautiful. Which is very flattering. But it is not me, that woman there. It makes me feel as though you don’t really know me. Or as though you have been looking at me through a...through a prism.’

‘That is the most perceptive thing I have ever heard you say.’ He turned her round when she couldn’t tear her eyes from the vision of womanly submission on the canvas, obliging her to look directly into his face. ‘In a way, I have been looking at you through a kind of prism. I have been looking at you through the eyes of a man in love. Desperately in love.’

Something coiled in her stomach and slithered its way up her spine. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

There was only one thing that could account for him saying such a thing. Somehow he must have found out how wealthy she was.

‘Love?’ She shook her head. ‘Do you take me for some kind of fool? You don’t love me. You don’t even know me,’ she cried, waving her hand at the portrait of a woman who was a far cry from the person she knew herself to be.

‘But I do know you, Amy. I know better than anyone else how badly you were hurt as a girl and that it made you close yourself off from the possibility of ever getting hurt again. I understand why you have become a cynic. I also know you don’t want to hear what I’m going to say next, but I’m going to say it anyway. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself when you leave here and return to England. I can’t bear to lose you again. Marry me, Amy.’ He went down on his knees. ‘Please. I asked you before if I could come back to England with you because I couldn’t bear the thought of you being lonely. But now I can’t bear the thought of you finding someone to save you from that loneliness, if that someone isn’t me.’

She drew back.

‘I am not going to be taken in by you,’ she hissed. ‘I won’t let you deceive me. You chose your last wife for what you could gain and I—’

‘No! That is not true.’ He got up. ‘I’m not going to let you believe that lie for one second longer.’ He clenched his fists. ‘I did not marry my first wife for gain.’ His face leached of colour. ‘I married her to wound you.’

‘You...what? But why? Why would you want to wound me?’

‘I was deeply in love with you, Amy. Well,’ he hedged, ‘as deeply as a boy of that age could be. I’ve already told you that I wanted to marry you. I confided as much to one or two people, one night, at one of my clubs. They’d been teasing me about what a stranger I was becoming there and how I seemed to be spending all my time mixing with, forgive me for repeating their words, but they described your set as the shabby-genteel.’

She flushed. It was true that he’d seemed out of place at most of the gatherings she’d attended. That she’d always known he was way above her own more humble station. But that was no excuse for doing what he’d done.

‘You stopped courting me because your friends teased you about marrying below your station?’

‘No! How could you even think I’d do something so...shallow?’ He turned away, took a few paces away from her, then turned back, his face implacable. ‘I’m just trying to help you see how it must have all come about. I paid no attention to the teasing, knowing it was nothing compared with the opposition I’d have to face from my father. And probably yours. I was plucking up the courage to approach him and ask for your hand in form, knowing that I had little to recommend me. If I could get him to look favourably on my suit, I would have been more than capable of braving my own father’s displeasure. I had reached a crossroads in my life. I’d always been something of a disappointment to him, whereas my brothers had all made him proud. So I stopped asking his permission to travel to Italy to study art. I’d agreed to spend that Season in London considering professions he deemed suitable for a man of my background. And then I met you. And—’

He broke off, paced away, paced back again.

‘Well, before I got round to approaching either of them, one of my friends told me he’d heard something that made it impossible for him to stand back and let me throw myself away on you.’

He was shaking, she noted with surprise. Actually trembling. He licked his lips, with what looked like nervousness, before saying, ‘He told me that he’d heard, from a reliable source, that you were no innocent. That you’d actually borne a child out of wedlock and had come up to town for the sole purpose of luring some poor unsuspecting male into the trap of providing for you and your child. Preferably a man with a title, a man powerful enough to protect you from the scandal.’

She gasped. ‘But that’s absurd! You know it is. Why, I was a virgin when we...’

The edges of the room seemed to blur and darken. There was a roaring sound in her ears as her mind flew back to his shock, the night he’d first taken her to bed. How his attitude towards her had gone from scornful and aggressive to remorseful and caring.

‘You believed it,’ she whispered. ‘You believed I would be that wicked.’ Now her own legs were shaking. For a moment, she wondered if she was going to faint. But then fury surged through her veins, giving her strength to stand and speak her mind, instead of crumpling under the weight of hurt and shock.

‘You didn’t even demand proof from this so-called friend of yours. You couldn’t have done. You didn’t confront me with the tale either. You just...you just spurned me!’ Why had everyone, at that period in her life, been so ready to assume the worst of her?

‘I was devastated, Amy. I was so angry and hurt to think you could deliberately set out to deceive me that I lost my head.’

‘Because you believed it. How could you?’

‘Because Fielding, the friend who plucked up the courage to come to me with the tale, had been well chosen,’ he said bitterly. ‘He was the one friend I had who I knew would never tell a deliberate lie. He was not only too honest, but also not bright enough to spin any kind of yarn. He’d never have been able to keep all the threads straight. And he was torn, Amy. He hated having to speak ill of a lady. He only did so because he was convinced someone had to do something to save me from the clutches of an ambitious schemer.’ He huffed out a strange, bitter laugh. ‘That was what made him so convincing. The fact that he believed it so completely. The poor sap was such a slow-top that he couldn’t imagine anyone inventing a deliberate lie about a lady. He was so gullible he genuinely believed that if my father had breached the gentleman’s code by repeating such a foul tale about a lady, it could only have been from the best of intentions.’

‘You have a nerve to describe him as a slow-top,’ she breathed. ‘You fell for exactly the same lie he did.’

‘Did I? I’m not so certain any more. Deep down I think I always knew my father was behind it. I knew what my father was like. I should have known he would thrust a spoke in my wheel, if he were to discover I’d decided to marry you, rather than tamely submit to the plans he’d started making for me. He must have been livid when his spies brought back tales of me planning to marry a nobody, and settle down in obscurity, just as he thought he’d finally got me to knuckle under. And even if it wasn’t true, about you...but I told myself it must be. It made sense, you see.’

‘What do you mean? How could it make sense? What had I ever done to make you think I was...that kind of woman?’

‘You’d appeared to fall for me practically at first sight,’ he said bleakly. ‘When everyone else knew there was nothing special about me. I was only the youngest son of four. The runt of the litter. The one with no ambition. The one whose only talent was for drawing, a subject more suited to women than to real men.’

‘That’s utter nonsense.’

‘It was what I felt, at the time. That you couldn’t possibly have seen anything in me to admire, apart from my susceptibility to your charms. I could believe you might have seen me as a pigeon ripe for plucking. And then there was the matter of your behaviour.’ The corners of his mouth pulled into something very like a sneer. ‘You were the daughter of a vicar. At first you seemed so prim and proper, but in no time at all you were letting me lure you into secluded places. Nay, you encouraged me to lure you into secluded places so that I could kiss you, Amy. So you could set my blood on fire. And I was always the one to call a halt. I got the feeling you would have let me do whatever I wanted...’

Yes, she would have done. Because she’d loved him. Loved him! And all the time...

Something inside her snapped. She flew at him, pounding at his chest with her fists. He grabbed her wrists to hold her at a distance, which so infuriated her she kicked out at his legs, twisting and hissing like a cat.

But Nathan was far stronger than her. He just held her at arm’s length until, exhausted, she would have collapsed into a sobbing heap at his feet if he hadn’t scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the sofa where he cradled her on his lap, rocking her as she carried on weeping.

‘I hate you,’ she said, when she could at last find the breath, and the control, to form words.

‘It’s no more than I deserve.’

‘You...you...destroyed me...’

‘My father destroyed us both. The last ten years have been sheer hell, Amy—’

‘No. You destroyed us. You had no faith in me. Not even when we met again. You deliberately seduced me, for...for revenge, I suppose.’

‘Yes.’ There was no point in denying it. That was exactly what he’d done. ‘At first, I did want revenge. Until I discovered the truth. And then all I felt was remorse. I wanted to make reparation for all the misery I caused you. I wanted to wipe out the misery by making you happy instead. By giving you one perfect month. A month where you had all you’d ever wanted. But somewhere along the way I fell in love with you all over again.’

‘You don’t love me. You never loved me. You couldn’t, to have believed such foul lies.’

‘I did love you, Amy. Not enough, it is true. But I love you more now. For knowing that you were innocent. For growing into the woman you are now. Strong, and independent, and wary, and fiery...’

‘You don’t know me any better now than you knew me then,’ she cried, wriggling off his lap. ‘Not if you think I’m going to have anything to do with you ever again, after learning what you did to me.’

‘Amy, please...’

He reached for her, but she darted away from him, towards the door.

‘Don’t leave like this,’ he begged her. ‘Not while you are so upset. You shouldn’t be alone...’

‘I have been alone,’ she breathed, ‘for the last ten years.’ She dashed a tear from her cheek with an angry swipe of her hand. ‘And alone is exactly how I like it. If you don’t let anyone near you, then nobody can hurt you.’

‘That’s true. But it’s going to be a lonely life, if you cling to that belief and never let anyone near.’

‘No. It won’t be. Lonely is when you are surrounded by people who betray you. And despise you. And only pay you attention when they want something. That is loneliness.’

She flew to the door and ran out.

Oh, God, she was so angry she couldn’t see straight. He should know. He’d been in just such a fury on the night Fielding destroyed his hope in the possibility of marrying for love. So he plunged straight after her. He couldn’t bear it if some harm befell her on the crowded streets.

He didn’t try to stop her, for he knew she was in no fit state to listen to reason. He just kept her in his sights, ready to intervene should she run into danger, until he’d seen her reach her lodgings safely. And then he went to find her friend, and her French lover, to tell them that she needed them. She wouldn’t tolerate him anywhere near, for a while, but she must not be alone.

Eventually, the first flood of her anger would recede, and then, by hook or by crook, he would make her listen to him again.

That was the one advantage he had now, which she had lacked the last time this same lie had driven them apart. She’d had no weapons with which to defend herself. No idea she’d even needed to prove her innocence. She’d been completely in the dark.

But this time, they both knew exactly where they stood. And he wasn’t going to give her up without a fight. He was no longer an insecure youth, torn between staying loyal to his family and taking a chance on love. He was a man now. A man who’d learned that love was worth fighting for.

Whatever it took. No matter how long it took.

Chapter Twelve

She had to get the portrait from him.

She couldn’t believe, now, that she’d been stupid enough to pose for it. Naked. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, which were burning with mortification.

If he was desperate enough for security to ask her to marry him, he’d have no compunction about selling it if she left it behind in Paris. Or deliberately displaying it somewhere if he decided to take a more humiliating revenge for her refusal. He had a reputation for not being particularly kind to former lovers. And she had turned him down in the most insulting terms. She’d called him a slow-top, she’d accused him of being shallow and marrying his first wife for her money, of being faithless and worthless and she didn’t know what else.

Oh, yes. She’d told him she hated him, and then, when ten years of repressed rage had swelled up, the dam had burst and she’d physically attacked him.

Not that he didn’t deserve every name she’d called him, but it hadn’t been a wise move to make an enemy of him all over again. Only look what lengths he’d gone to the last time, when he’d only thought she’d betrayed him. He’d coldly, deliberately done the very worst thing he could have done to her. He’d flaunted another woman—a rich, titled woman—in her face. Even gone so far as to marry her to make doubly sure he inflicted the maximum hurt he possibly could.

Not only that, but he’d held on to his anger for ten years. He’d admitted he started up their affair because he wanted revenge.