The Seducer (5 page)

“Your dreams did not lie. You are indeed English. Did you speak English at the school?”

“Madame was a great supporter of Napoleon and refused to hear it spoken even as a lesson.”

“Have you lost it, then? Except in your dreams?”

“I have a Bible that is English. I read it aloud every night.”

“Of course. The Bible.”

He seemed to withdraw, as if mention of the only thing that she had brought with her to France had opened a door that he wanted to keep closed.

She forged on. This was the only chance that she had gotten in two weeks to ask her questions. “How did it happen, m’sieur? How did you come to bring me to France? You say you are not a relative to me.”

She did not get her answer. Just as she finished speaking, Paul appeared with Jeanette in his arms, and Daniel deliberately turned his attention to his sister.

Paul settled Jeanette into a chair and prepared a plate for his mistress.

“You will be happy to know that soon we will get Diane out of those hideous sacks. Her final fitting is today,” Jeanette said.

Paul placed the plate in front of her. “Unfortunately, mademoiselle, we will have to delay this excursion. M’sieur has requested that I do an errand for him,” he explained.

Jeanette shot her brother a sharp glance. “Well, it can wait until another day.”

“That is not necessary,” Daniel said. “I have no plans for the afternoon. I will accompany you.”

No one seemed surprised by the suggestion. Evidently, Daniel carried his sister about the city on occasion.

Jeanette turned from her meal. “Your hair, Diane. Go and have it done so that we can see how the gowns will properly look.”

Diane had forgotten about her hair. She excused herself.

Daniel rose and joined her. They strolled along the corridor toward the grand staircase. “My sister is too strict. You hair looks charming like that.”

Her heart fluttered at the compliment, gallant lie though it was.

“We will speak English henceforth so that you grow accustomed to it again. You will need that when you go to London,” he said, slipping into the tongue of her dreams.

She was glad for evidence that the journey to London had not been forgotten. “When I said that I dreamed in English, you seemed to understand. Do you dream in French?”

“Not always. However, there are other times when my thoughts are only French.”

“Which ones?”

They had reached one of the doors off the corridor, and he stopped. “When I am in danger. Only French comes to me then.”

The calm mention of danger stunned her. He spoke as if it were a common occurrence.

He opened the door. She caught a glimpse of a man’s study.

An amused, reflective expression entered his eyes. “And when I make love. Now that I think of it, I always do that in French.”

“Too much lace, Jeanette. Have them remove the froth at the hem.”

“If you keep this up, Daniel, it will be another week before she can leave the house in the evening.”

Diane stood on display in the modiste’s sitting room in the Palais Royale, decked out in dark violet silk. She might have enjoyed the sibling warmth their bickering revealed, if she had not been the doll over which they fought.

That was what she felt like. A doll being dressed. Not a fine one with porcelain face and hands as befitted these gowns, but a simple cloth doll who would never look quite right in them.

Daniel seemed to understand that better than Jeanette. The sister’s own tastes tended toward the dramatic, and the designs had been commissioned accordingly. Now Daniel was demanding that they all be pared of half their embellishments.

He stood at the window of the upper level sitting room, his sculpted face looking very handsome in the diffused northern light. He contented himself most of the time with gazing out at the activity below in the gardens. Each time she emerged from the modiste’s back chamber in a new ensemble he would glance, take it in, take
her
in, and issue his order as he returned his attention to the passing city.

He looked again, since his sister had resisted. “I doubt that it will take the women long to remove it. It can be delivered in a day or so. Isn’t that correct, madame?”

The modiste quickly concurred. Daniel’s presence had turned the proud artist into a submissive servant.

No one had ever asked Diane’s own opinion of the garments.

She walked over to a long mirror and peered at herself. The dark violet set off her pale arms and neck. The square neckline’s low cut revealed more body than she had ever left uncovered. The cream lace made her skin even whiter, and the high waist emphasized the swell of her breasts.

Dark eyes looked out from a delicate, almost childish face. Those eyes appeared too large and a little frightened, and revealed that the stranger was hardly a worldly woman, despite the sophisticated finery.

The mirror faced the window. A reflected movement caught her eye. Daniel no longer looked out at the city, but at her. Since he stood off to one side, he did not realize that she could see him doing so.

His expression stunned her. Something had entered his eyes and veiled his features. Something vaguely dangerous and utterly mesmerizing. It both hardened him and softened him at the same time.

Her heart rose to her throat. She could not look away, even though something inside her warned her to run as fast as she could.

She smoothed at the silk, to hide her reaction. In the reflection, his gaze slowly drifted down to the forbidden lace at the hem, then up again. It reached her hair, piled artfully in an evening style appropriate to this silk. Her hand instinctively reached for it.

Jeanette must have seen her gesture. “There is too much of it. While attractive like that, the fashion now is closer to the head. We will have it cut.”

“No.” The command, and it was definitely a command, came from the only man in the chamber.

Diane turned. “I think that I prefer the lace on the hem. I would like to keep it.”

Jeanette cocked an eyebrow in the direction of her brother. The modiste began explaining how the lace had been a mistake.

Those devil eyes flashed awareness that he had just been challenged. “If it is what you prefer, of course it can stay. It is your gown, after all. You can have anything you want.”

Diane returned to the back chamber to don the next extravagance. She really did not care about the lace. Nor would this garment truly be hers. This fitting was making that clear in ways that she could not define very clearly.

She thought of the various items that would start pouring into her wardrobe. Outfits for morning and afternoon, for calling on friends that she did not have, and for attending dinners for which she did not receive invitations.

She suspected that the friends and invitations would be arranged and chosen as carefully as the gowns themselves. Soon she would be wearing this wonderful wardrobe. From morning until night, she would be the stranger in the looking glass.

Someone’s doll.

She remembered Daniel’s expression in the looking glass, and how magnetic it had made him. If he had lifted his hand and beckoned her, she might have been incapable of not obeying whatever he requested. She had no evidence that he required anything at all from her, but still . . .

He will seduce you with luxury. . . .

She gazed at the pile of gowns. She should march out there and refuse them all. She should leave that house. She should . . .

The modiste’s assistants held out a yellow muslin walking dress. The buttery fabric was more lovely than silk. They began to slide its narrow length onto her body.

Daniel would like this one. Its simplicity would please him.

Those thoughts popped into her head, evoking a smile.

Her reaction dismayed her.

chapter
5

T
he day after the visit to the dress shop, Jeanette took to her bed with a headache and Diane found herself with nothing to do. It was a fair, brisk day, but not very cold, so she borrowed a book from the library and went out to the garden to read.

She had only turned two pages when she sensed an intrusion in the garden’s peace. Looking up, she found Daniel watching her. He stood in front of a row of dormant rose bushes, their bare branches creating a frame of angled, thorny lines around his dark form.

He strolled over. “Are you reading for pleasure or because you are bored?”

“A little of both.”

“Then the pleasure can wait while we relieve the boredom. I have decided the day is too fine to spend on business and have called for the carriage. We will visit the Tuileries.”

She looked down on her old cloak. “I must decline. My new things have not arrived.”

He took the book from her hands. “It is only a carriage ride. You do not need to look like a duchess.”

She accompanied him through the house, thinking she would rather not ride alone in a carriage with him again. She had never entirely recovered from the long journey from Rouen.

The carriage waited in all its splendor. Daniel settled across from her and the wheels rolled.

That sense of familiarity, of intimacy, instantly rushed over her with the closing of the door.

She would not let their closeness unsettle her this time. She would demand some information, and he could not get away. It had been convenient of Jeanette to get a headache on a day Daniel was not occupied with his affairs, and Diane did not intend to waste the opportunity.

He glanced at her, barely, to assure himself of her comfort, and then turned his gaze out the window to the passing city.

Not this time, Monsieur St. John.

“How did you find me?”

“I was passing the landing and looked out the windows and saw you in the garden.”

“I am not speaking of finding me in the garden. I refer to years ago. How did you come to be my guardian?”

He turned his attention on her. “I am not your guardian, at least not legally.”

“That only makes me more curious.”

“I expect it does. I knew your father through business. One day I received a letter from him, written hastily. He said that he was called out of the country suddenly and asked me to see to your care until he returned.”

“It was kind of you to agree.”

“I could not refuse, since he had already left by the time I received the note.”

“You must have been a good friend, if he made such a request.”

“Not really. I always suspected that he turned to me because I was in London and available.”

So her father had left her to the care of a casual acquaintance, a very young man who had probably resented the obligation.

“You must have been very young for such a charge.”

“In some ways. In others, not young at all.”

She had not expected the story to be this embarrassing. “Why didn’t he send me to his family?”

“I believe that he was estranged from his family. As to your mother’s family, I do not think that was convenient either. She was dead, and your father never spoke of her.”

That made sense. Diane had vague memories of her father, of his dark hair and blue eyes. Mostly she remembered the anticipation of his occasional visits and the joy of his attention. She had no such recollections of a mother. There had been an old woman, however, whom her mind’s eye saw a bit more vividly than it did her father. Apparently that was not her grandmother.

“Why didn’t you return me to my father?”

“I could not. I arranged for an older couple to care for you, but when no word came, and no one had news of him, I realized that I would have to make other arrangements. What with the war . . .”

His quiet tone told her the truth that his words avoided.

Stark reality hit her in a series of shocks, as though someone kept punching her chest.

Her father was dead.

So was her mother.

She tried to block the onslaught, but the blows kept coming.

She had no family.

There was no reason to search for her life, because there would be nothing to find.

The blankness that existed inside her would never be filled the way she had dreamed. Now that void quaked, as if a mournful cry had shouted and just kept echoing.

Admitting the truth left her horribly bleak. She dropped her gaze so Daniel would not see her reaction.

“His name. What was my father’s name?”

“Jonathan.”

“Was he a farmer?”

“He was in shipping.”

“I remember the country.”

“He owned a home in the country, where you lived.”

She glanced up. Her brimming tears blurred his face. “Owned? The home is no longer there?”

He clearly hesitated. “He suffered some reversals right before this happened.”

The blurring got worse. She saw mostly water. Even the home was gone. Nothing at all waited for her in England.

Her throat grew terribly thick and hot, and her chest dreadfully heavy. She wished that she were back at school in her narrow, familiar chamber. She wished that she was anywhere else except riding in this grand carriage with Daniel St. John.

The silent cry kept echoing. She had never realized before how vast the void was, how vacant. Childish dreams had kept it small, but she would never be able to ignore it again.

That notion defeated her. She gritted her teeth against the tears, but they flowed anyway. The cry got louder and louder.

A movement broke the rhythm of the rocking carriage. A body sat next to her and strong arms eased her close.

She huddled against him and cried out her heart into a wool coat.

He should have lied to her.

He should have told her the elaborate fantasy that he had concocted. It would have kept her looking in all the wrong places, but she would have still had hope.

Facing her earnest, soulful eyes, he had been unable to do it. There had been glaring omissions in his telling, but only one part had been untrue, and he had told that lie to spare her the worst of it.

He held her while she cried, offering the small comfort that a stranger’s sympathy provides. Her weeping touched him more than he wanted. He knew the cold isolation that comes from realizing one is totally alone in the world. The difference was that he had been a boy when he faced it, and time hides these things. It never goes away, however. If not for Jeanette, he would have lived with that emptiness his whole life.

He should have lied and let her search for a loving family, lost by some quirk of fate. He should have let her believe a little longer.

Her tears subdued to sniffles. She straightened as one last tear meandered down her cheek. He watched its path on her lovely skin and something besides sympathy branched through him.

The image of her yesterday in the modiste’s mirror entered and possessed his mind. So did his reaction, and the little fantasy of that violet silk slowly sliding down her body.

He brushed his lips against that tear.

She turned glistening eyes to him. Cautious, curious eyes. The kiss had confused her, as if she sensed that more than sympathy had provoked it.

Her lower lip still trembled from her efforts to contain her emotion. He came very close to kissing it too.

The carriage stopped with a jolt that brought him to his senses.

Silently cursing himself, leashing both the empathy and the desire, he slid his arm away and opened the door. He stepped out and handed her his handkerchief. “Wipe your eyes. We will walk, and you will feel better.”

The familiarity seemed less dangerous suddenly. That little kiss had not frightened her as much as it should have. There had been kindness in it, just as there had been kindness in his embrace.

There had also been something else, however. In him, and in her. Something of what she had seen in the mirror, and of how she had reacted. Like a thin watercolor wash, it blurred the edges of their relationship and changed its tone.

She dabbed at her eyes and wondered if Daniel St. John knew how to make things crisp again.

He handed her out of the carriage and they strolled together. The gardens had enough boxwood and ivies so that all was not barren. Others had taken advantage of the day and a line of carriages waited for the many visitors who dotted the landscape. Despite the air’s briskness, an earthy scent announced the arrival of spring.

“Jeanette does not have a headache, does she?” The truth came to her quietly, as if the intimacy in the carriage had opened new insights into this man. “Nor did you see me in the garden by accident. You arranged this, so I could ask my questions.”

“I have known that you are curious. Anyone in your place would be. If I have avoided telling you before, now you know why. I fear that I have ruined your dream of visiting England.”

“It is not your fault. Even without the dream, I will still go there. It is the place of my birth.”

With the ensuing steps and silence, he managed to indeed make things crisp again. He put them back where they had been. She was sorry to feel the mood pass. It had made the blankness a bit smaller for a while.

The new king, restored to the throne by France’s conquerors, was in the gardens today, surrounded by an entourage of nobles and ladies. So was the Duke of Wellington, also surrounded by ladies. Daniel identified them for her and pointed out other notables, both famous and infamous.

Daniel included some of those among his friends. He might make his main home in England, but he was well-known in Paris. Aristocratic men in tall hats and hard collars and young dandies decked out in patterned silk waistcoats paused to chat. He introduced her as his cousin from the country. With one glance at her poor appearance, his friends accepted her insignificance.

Elegant, beautiful ladies favored him with warm smiles and appreciative gazes. Twice, women with more worldly expressions engaged him in conversation. Their female companions occupied Diane while Daniel was eased away for some private words.

Something in the way he looked at the second one, and in the way she looked back, made Diane think about that book of engravings. A shocking image entered her head of Daniel doing those things with this woman.

And then, in a flash, she saw him doing them with
her.

She banished the image, but it made it very hard to continue strolling beside him. She sneaked a glance at his profile. The sensation of that little kiss returned, making her cheek tingle. She felt the rough warmth of his hands on hers that first day in her chamber, and time began stretching into a little eternity again. . . .

“Diane!”

The call pulled her out of the shameful reverie. A young woman, gorgeous in rose wool and golden hair, bore down on her with arms outstretched. A solid, fair-haired man trailed behind her.

“Diane, it is me! Margot!”

Margot had left Madame Leblanc’s school the previous year.

Diane accepted the embrace and held Margot back for inspection. The rose wool was very fine, and the brimmed bonnet expertly made. Expensive jewelry finished the effect. Margot appeared beautiful and sophisticated, the equal of any lady in the Tuileries.

This time it was Diane who got eased aside as the companion occupied Daniel.

Margot bent her head close. “Holy Mother, Diane, that is the Devil Man. Have you left the school to live with his family now?”

Diane grimaced. She had always referred to Daniel that way, and the girls at school had taken it up. “For a short while. I will be seeking a position as a governess once we go to England.”

Margot rolled her eyes. “What a hellish life. Wait until you see what it means.”

“You left to be a governess and it seems your life is not at all hellish. It appears that you have done very well.”

Margot’s hand went to her necklace and then her hat. “M’sieur Johnson is very generous. You say that you journey to England? M’sieur lives in London, although he has bought me a small residence for when we visit here.”

“Then perhaps we will see each other in England.”

“Oh, it must not wait for that, especially if you will be jailed as a governess when you are there. You must visit for an afternoon and tell me about all of the other girls.”

“If M’sieur Johnson is English, do you have many English friends here?”

“But of course. Paris is full of Englishmen these days. Would you like to meet some? Should I invite you to one of my
petits salons
?”

“I think that I would like that.” Daniel had said that her father had been in shipping. Presumably some of the Englishmen in Paris now had moved in the same circles. One of them might know more about Jonathan Albret’s family than Daniel seemed to.

There would never be the dramatic reunion she had dreamed of, but finding a family, even if the relatives were distant ones, would be something at least. There would be a few roots tying her to someone, somewhere.

Their escorts strolled over. Margot dipped her head to Diane’s ear again. “The Devil Man was frightening when we were girls, but he is very exciting after one grows up. My heart is racing. It is a wonder you do not faint away when he looks at you.”