So in Love (6 page)

“I have a position,” he said, surprising her. “Although not carnal in nature. You’re a governess, and I have need of one.”

She glanced up at him, studying his face. “Do you?” she asked, feigning disinterest.

“Will you not consider it?”

“Caring for your child?” Was this hell, and she had somehow died in the escape from France? Was this the Almighty’s idea of a jest? Or was it, perhaps, one of her innumerable nightmares? No, she could feel her stomach clench and her knees weaken. That never happened in a dream.

Davis was suddenly there, tugging on her hand, pulling her back to her duties. Irritated at herself for so easily falling under the spell of the past, she turned away with no further word.

But he was not done with her, it seemed. He followed her and tapped her on the shoulder peremptorily.

She glanced at him and then away, realizing that she had never seen him angry before. He had only been a lover to her or a friend.

“You haven’t answered me, Miss du Marchand.”

“I have a position, Mr. MacRae. Thank you, but I believe I’ll keep it.”

“Even if you must become Hartley’s mistress?”

Davis looked at her curiously.

She turned and faced Douglas. “There are worse things than becoming a rich man’s mistress,” Jeanne said in a low voice. Her gaze was suddenly intent on the cobbled street below her feet.
You never cared what happened to me ten years ago,
the girl she’d been shouted at him.
Why do you now?
The woman, however, wisely restrained her words.

She left him before he could reach out and touch her again. Hearing his footsteps behind her, she gripped Davis’s hand tightly and nearly ran down the street.

Douglas MacRae, like France and all its memories, belonged in the past.

D
ouglas watched Jeanne walk rapidly away, thinking that he was three times a fool.

What had he done?

He was right: She’d changed. She’d become as arrogant as any French aristocrat.
Then I shall endure the situation
.

What the hell did
that
mean?

It was foolish to tell himself that she no longer had the power to elicit any emotion from him, because in the space of a quarter hour he’d felt irritation, anger, and curiosity. Without seeming to try, she’d pierced his self-restraint and proven that his indifference was only a façade.

She disappeared from sight and he found himself wanting to follow her and demand to know why she had stared at him as if she didn’t understand his suggestion, foolish as it was.

Despite her arrogance, however, her eyes had looked tired. And her fingers had trembled on the child’s shoulder. How old was the little boy? Six? Seven? The age of Hartley’s son was none of his concern. Nor should he have resented the child for her casual affection toward him.

Had he lost his mind? Evidently so.

One way she hadn’t changed—she was still one of those women who effortlessly attracts attention. Something about her, her stance, her poise, the look in her eyes, some indefinable essence of Jeanne made him want to study her. Her clothing wasn’t outlandish; her behavior wasn’t overt or brazen. If anything, she looked as if she had tried to minimize herself in her sober green dress and modest touches of lace. The bun at the nape of her neck was a hairstyle an older matron might wear.

Yet she still had an odd effect on him, something he would have to guard against.

Why, however, had he offered her a position caring for the very child she’d abandoned? Had he lost all sense he possessed? He didn’t want her in his home. He didn’t want her in his life at all.

Why, then, this insidious curiosity? Why did he want to know what had happened to her in the ten years since they’d parted?

Halting in the middle of the road, he stared down at his feet, not seeing the cobbles but instead Jeanne du Marchand as she’d appeared only a few moments ago. She was only a pale shadow of the girl she’d been. He didn’t see the wagon barreling down on him until the driver shouted, and only then moved swiftly to the other side of the street.

He made his way to his carriage, suspecting that the enigma of Jeanne du Marchand wasn’t going to be an easy puzzle to solve. He’d thought himself done with the past. But at the sight of her he was the boy he’d been, innocent, hopeful, viewing the world in a way he never had since.

There was nothing about that time he’d resurrect. The innocence and the hope had been transformed to a disillusionment so deep that it had colored the rest of his life. He should forget she was in Edinburgh, forget he’d ever seen
her, forget about ten years ago, and expunge all those memories he evidently still carried with him.

Entering his carriage almost angrily, he tapped on the roof so loud that there was no doubt of his mood.

“To Leith,” he told Stephens, determined to purge Jeanne du Marchand from his mind.

The air smelled of soot, nothing like the air of Paris, or the sweet perfume of the Loire valley. Nicholas, Comte du Marchand, scowled at a man who smiled at him and nodded to a woman who decorously turned her head. There were so few individuals with manners left in the world.

Edinburgh did not impress him much. The greatest cities were those in France and the greatest city of all, of course, was Paris.

Since the rabble had overtaken the city, it had lost its magical charm. But he had hopes that there would come a time when reason would return once more to France, and with it the aristocracy.

Hereditary titles had been abolished and the fools in the government had actually declared war on the Austrian portion of the Holy Roman Empire. In addition, they’d arrested the King and his family last year, a hint of the increased radicalism of the government.

The journey to Edinburgh had taken him nearly a month. Nicholas found himself annoyed by the discomforts, and more determined than ever to find his daughter and recoup a small portion of his wealth. He’d learned from Justine that Jeanne was determined to leave France. From the trail he followed, it was evident that she had, indeed, done so. Survival was a du Marchand trait, it seemed.

Once in Edinburgh, however, his quest grew more difficult. Jeanne wasn’t with her aunt. Evidently, his sister-in-
law had died a year earlier, leaving him the further irritating task of having to search for Jeanne. A modiste, a fellow émigré, had told him that Jeanne had gotten employment. Another person shared the information that he’d given Jeanne a brush that had belonged to his dead wife. Still another told him that she’d given Jeanne a selection of her dresses in payment for caring for her sick daughter. One person led him to another, all of them émigrés and all of them too eager to exchange stories about Paris, or to ask him what he knew of missing relatives and friends.

He masked his irritation and answered as well as he could. In payment for his days of patience and hard-won tolerance, he finally located Jeanne’s address.

Now he stood in front of the large and prosperous-looking structure and wondered if she’d sold the ruby after all. Or could she have married in the short time she’d been gone from France?

Providence, previously so miserly, evidently decided to reward him for his efforts. As he crossed the street, she exited the house by the side door, holding a small child’s hand. She passed by him, and for a moment he wondered if she would look his way. But she seemed intent upon answering the boy’s questions and didn’t glance in his direction.

He followed her, curious. Not a wife, but a servant, he realized as she shifted the basket on her arm. A flush of anger raced through his body at the thought of a du Marchand in servitude. His family had commanded kings. But here she was, his errant and recalcitrant only child, attempting to shame him once again.

Nor was her appearance worthy of a du Marchand. Jeanne’s hair was pulled back in a severe bun and her face was arranged in a perfectly amiable expression, a look that revealed nothing of her emotions. Her mother, Hélène, had done that often enough around him, especially during the latter years.

He almost hailed her, and then realized that she might well repudiate him on a public street. The last time he’d seen his daughter she had been in a carriage screaming at him, tears and rage twisting her features until she was a discordant creature, something only barely human.

As he watched, she took the child’s hand and entered a small discreet shop.
CHARLES TALBOT, GOLDSMITH
, was inscribed upon the window. He waited until she was finished with her business, emerging from the shop a few minutes later. Only then did he follow her. A man spoke to her, the meeting so obviously unplanned that he hung back, watching with interest. When she walked away, he decided not to follow her. It was obvious she was attending to a servant’s duties and he would not demean himself by trailing after her. There would be time enough to confront her, now that he knew for certain where she lived. No, there was another errand that interested him more than greeting his daughter.

He returned to King Street, and watched to ensure that no other customers were inside. Only then did the Comte du Marchand enter, closing and locking the door behind him.

“Are you Charles Talbot?”

The man who faced him was in his middle years and showing a paunch. His face was narrow and lined, his lips thin, and his eyebrows were curiously bushy, giving him an unkempt appearance.

“I am. May I help you, sir?” the shopkeeper asked, managing to sound obsequious while staring at him offensively.

“You had a customer a few minutes ago. A young woman with a child. What was the nature of her business?”

The man who faced him smiled thinly. “I am afraid, sir, that I’m known for the confidential nature of my dealings. I do not share the business of one customer with another.” He tilted his head to the side, his rude glance not faltering. “Unless you are not going to be a customer, sir?”

Nicholas tapped his cane on the floor, irritated with this
new democracy of thought and action. But restraint, for now, was a wiser course. He managed a smile, one that he knew seemed friendly enough. The trick was to hide one’s thoughts, and to simply act upon them when the time was right.

“I believe that she is a relative of mine,” he said holding out his calling card. It was only one of ten that he had left, but the man opposite him did not need to know the degree of his penury. By the terms of the new constitution approved by the king, Nicholas had found himself stripped of his title, his home, his land, and his fortune. “I am late of Paris,” he added. “You must be aware of the troubles there. Families have been separated.” He waved his hand in the air, unwilling to continue further with his charade of grieving kin.

The man’s eyes didn’t soften. If anything, his gaze grew more calculated. A born tradesman, he evidently sniffed out a profit. Very well, Nicholas would allow him to believe that there was something in this situation for him.

“And what would the troubles in France have to do with me?” Talbot asked, glancing down at the card. “Count?”

The tone in which he referred to his ancestral title grated on Nicholas’s nerves. He knew himself that there were hundreds of minor nobility living in England and Scotland. Men whose familial titles were not as ancient as the du Marchand name. But the dull-witted man evidently didn’t know the difference.

“Did she come to sell some jewelry? A stone, perhaps?”

The man’s smile widened. “I couldn’t tell you that one way or the other.”

Nicholas strode confidently toward the workbench, his hand clenched around the top of his cane. Once, it had boasted a gold-encrusted crest of his family. But he had sold the gold a few months ago, and it was safer, at least in Paris, to pretend that he was not an aristocrat.

“I am prepared to make the knowledge worth your while,” he said softly. Those who had attended him in the past would have warned the fool that he was at his most dangerous when he was softly spoken. Any idiot could yell or shout, but managing to convey displeasure while never raising his voice took some skill.

“I am looking for a certain stone,” he said. “Something that may have been offered you by a French émigré.”

The laughter his comment received was another irritant, but Nicholas cut off any response and put an amiable smile on his face. When the fool stopped laughing, he waited a few moments and then spoke again.

“Is my request so amusing, then?”

The goldsmith turned and opened a drawer in his workbench. Scooping up a handful of stones, he turned and tossed them onto the top of the glass case. Sapphires, rubies, diamonds all tumbled in a glittering array to rest against the wooden rail.

“Here, take your pick. I’ve been offered all of these.”

Nicholas fingered the gems, pushing them into a line with the tip of his index finger. “They’re paste.”

“Indeed they are, and not even good representations of the originals, if I might add. Your countrymen tried to pass them off as real. I keep them to amuse myself.”

“Or sell them to unsuspecting customers?” Nicholas did not doubt the goldsmith’s greed. It was there in his eyes, in the way he slid his fingers over the fake jewels. When the goldsmith didn’t answer his taunt, he continued, “I’m looking for a ruby. A ruby roughly in the shape of a heart,” Nicholas said, maintaining his affable tone. “The Somerville Ruby.”

The goldsmith looked interested, but he didn’t volunteer any information.

Nicholas drew himself up, fixed one of his most imperious looks at the other man. “My wife was the daughter
of the Duke of Somerville,” he said. “The gem was part of her inheritance.”

“I haven’t seen it, Count.”

Patiently, Nicholas continued. “It was taken from our possession. I believe it to be in Edinburgh.”

“And the woman you asked about? Do you also believe her to have some connection with the gem?” Talbot asked casually.

“I do,” Nicholas said, giving him the information grudgingly. However, there was no need for the goldsmith to know that he’d followed his daughter from France, that he would have been ignorant of her escape from the convent had it not been for his former housekeeper. Justine was as loyal to him now as she had always been, and as talented in bed. The only change the passing years had made in her had been a touch of gray in her striking red hair.

And, perhaps, a surprising reluctance for pain. In addition, she’d acquired an unhealthy obsession for religion. He’d found her at prayers one day, the image of his mistress petitioning God for forgiveness of her multitudinous sins almost amusing if it hadn’t been so tedious.

“The woman I asked about is an opportunistic thief. She stole the gem.”

The goldsmith regarded him for several moments, as if attempting to ascertain the truth of his statement. Nicholas managed to curtail his irritation and waited.

“The woman is employed by the Hartley family,” Talbot finally offered, which only tallied with Nicholas’s suspicions that his daughter had become a servant.

“And what did she want with you?”

“Why should I tell you?” There was that smirk again, that thin smile that was beginning to be a decided irritant.

“Because she is a thief,” Nicholas said. Hélène had left the gem to her daughter, a legacy that had been agreed
upon at their marriage. However, neither of them had anticipated that France would change or that he would be living a whisper thin distance from true penury. The ruby would keep him in some luxury until France returned to normal and he would once more be restored to his rightful place. Not scrabbling for survival in his tiny room in Paris while the magnificent house that had once been his was bequeathed to some peasant who had, no doubt, been a fishmonger a month earlier.

“Then the law will restore the gem to the rightful owner,” Talbot said.

The two men regarded each other for five swings of the pendulum of the clock mounted on the wall.