At Her Service

by Susan Johnson

  Darley smiled at the thought of Hamley offering Aurore compensation in lieu of a father for her child.

  “I see you think not,” his father said.

  Darley’s smile widened. “She would throw him out on his ear.”

  The duke and duchess exchanged a meaningful look.

  The Duke of Westerlands leaned back in his chair, pleased at his son’s good cheer. “It seems you prefer dealing with this yourself, then.”

  “Yes.” Darley stood. “Is your yacht still at Dover?”

  “Indeed it is.” The duke glanced at the clock on the mantle. “If you hurry, you should make the late afternoon train for Paris.”

  Twenty minutes later, the duke and duchess had seen their son off and were in the breakfast room having their morning coffee.

  “The family will need to be told something,” Annabelle said. “Not that Hugh hasn’t come and gone precipitously before, but he was planning to attend Emma’s dinner tonight.”

  “Why not the truth.” The duke shrugged faintly. “Or some version of it since we don’t actually know the whole truth. Hugh didn’t seem indifferent at least. A good sign perhaps. Although, I suppose it all depends on the lady’s motivation.”

  “Apparently, it’s not about money.” They both understood that angling for marriage in the ton was very much about money. Who had it, who didn’t, how to get it. “Hugh said this woman is not without fortune.”

  “That doesn’t rule out other machinations,” Duff murmured, the target of a goodly number of females in pursuit of a husband in his youth.

  His wife smiled. “And you would know, wouldn’t you, dear.”

  His smile was affectionate. “That was long before I met you.”

  She had never doubted her husband’s love; it was the great joy of her life. “You know, darling, of all our children, Hugh reminds me most of you. He has always been more questioning perhaps, or less ready to accept the life of ease to which he was born.”

  “And troubled since Lucia’s death. You needn’t be tactful. I understand. You saved me. I wish our son would be as fortunate.”

  “Do you think”—the duchess smiled wistfully—“May we hope at least that this woman may make a difference in Hugh’s life? I sent along that pink diamond ring. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Good idea. He can always bring it back if he wishes.” But the duke had taken a hand in the situation as well, not that he felt inclined to disclose his actions—for the moment at least. Annabelle wouldn’t approve.

  “Do you think this child is Hugh’s? I couldn’t quite read his response.”

  “It sounded as though he’d been acquainted with her for some time. Although, he also expressed some doubts.”

  “Should you have this family investigated, perhaps?”

  “I sent the ambassador a telegram with a few questions along those lines. I should hear something by afternoon.”

  “Thank you. It doesn’t hurt to be cautious. Although, if Hugh brings this woman into our family, she will be welcomed regardless what the ambassador says.”

  His wife’s tone was decided and firm. “We agree, darling. You needn’t look at me like that,” he added with a smile. “She could be a high-wire artist, and if Hugh wishes to marry her, our family will have a new talent in its midst and be much the better for it.”

  Annabelle reached over and patted her husband’s hand. “You are without pretensions, darling, and I adore you for it. If only Hugh could be happy, now…”

  “I have a good feeling about this,” Duff said, winking at his wife.

  Also, the British ambassador in Paris had been sent his orders.

  Chapter 31

  His mother had pressed a small jewelry box in his hand as he’d left, and exiting the hired carriage outside Aurore’s house, he felt the shape of it in his pocket for a transient moment. Stepping down onto the gravel drive, he stood motionless as the carriage drove off, not sure he should be here. Not sure he wanted to be here. Coerced in any number of ways, large and small.

  Henri, the captain of the guards, walked from the shadows and smiled in welcome. “Good evening, monsieur.” Not a word about his absence. “Miss Clement is home and all is safe.”

  “Thank you. A pleasant night, is it not,” Darley said as graciously. He had spoken to Henri before he’d left, suggesting the guard force be augmented at his expense. Extra insurance, as it were, he’d said, and he’d given Henri the name of his Paris banker.

  “The young master is out—with bodyguards, of course,” Henri explained. “Although, fortunately, we have had no incidents of any kind. Not so much as a stranger walking past.”

  “Good. Perhaps we are forgotten with the war taking everyone’s attention.”

  “I suspect as much. For which we can be grateful, monsieur.” Henri had commanded a troop of Algerian irregulars and seen his share of bloodshed before a leg wound had ended his career.

  “Indeed,” Darley murmured. He glanced at the house facade. “It doesn’t look as though Miss Clement is entertaining tonight.”

  “No, sir. Miss Clement has been something of a recluse of late. She will enjoy a visitor. Now, if you’ll excuse me, our rounds are at timed intervals.”

  Darley watched the guard leader disappear into the dark garden surrounding the house and, drawing in a small breath, surveyed the night sky as though an answer to his uncertainty lay in the stars. The moon was a sliver of gold above the trees, the stars faint, not sharp and brilliant like they were in the Caucasus.

  But then this was Paris, not the mountains of Circassia.

  Although he felt as though he were standing on a mountain precipice and the ground were sliding out from under his feet.

  Merde.

  Taking an about-to-mount-the-scaffold breath, he gazed up at the house facade, the main floor windows ablaze, the drapes open. Not a sign of life. Thank God she was alone.

  This was not a conversation to have with guests in the house.

  Or anytime, he bitterly thought.

  While he’d had considerable time on his journey to contemplate the complexities and limited options—what she might say, what he would—he really would have preferred avoiding this confrontation.

  The question of whether the child was his or not would be awkward no matter how diplomatically approached. Add to that the challenge of whether he could believe Aurore if she said the child was his—something he seriously doubted. She obviously thought differently however, since he was the recipient of Etienne’s telegram. He swore again, something he’d been doing with great regularity since reading the telegram. Although, in truth, the question of paternity probably wouldn’t be answered with any certainty until the child’s birth.

  And perhaps not even then.

  So no matter how the issues were discussed—tactfully or otherwise—this encounter would likely be unpleasant.

  Unlike the pivotal occasion in which the seeds had been sowed for this fruitful result.

  Whoever may have been involved.

  Although, apparently, he had been cited as the whoever. And during the hours of his journey from London, after much chafing, thorny contemplation, he’d come to a decision best characterized as an if worse comes to worst solution.

  If necessary he would marry her.

  If absolutely necessary.

  A chivalrous, admirable conclusion, he decided, an unselfish decision arrived at for the sake of Aurore and her child.

  Naturally, then, consider his surprise when he was announced by Bizot, Aurore shot up from her chair in the small sitting room and rather than welcome her knight-errant, she said, coolly, “What do you want?”

  Darley’s shaky grasp on chivalry and honor instantly evaporated.

  “A pleasant good evening to you as well,” he drawled, his French exquisite and mannered, his insolent gaze less so as it traveled slowly down her figure then up again, coming to rest at last on the faint rise of her stomach.

  “Have you seen your fill?” Her brother had told
her what he’d done. And she’d explained to him that she had no interest in a man who made an appearance out of necessity.

  “With you, darling, as always, I’m not averse to seeing more,” he murmured.

  “Not likely that,” she said in her same chill tone. “Now go.”

  He didn’t. He sat down instead, very near where she was standing, and looking up met her gaze. “Your brother sent me a telegram,” he said, soft as silk.

  “I heard about it too late. He shouldn’t have done it.” Suddenly overcome by dizziness, she quickly sat down.

  “Are you all right?” Shifting forward, Darley put out his hand in a gesture of sympathy.

  Her head came up. “Don’t touch me!” She had had a month to build the ramparts.

  Leaning back in his chair, he flippantly observed, “It seems I may have touched you one too many times already. Or someone else did,” he added, deliberately rude.

  She looked at him, her gaze direct and unabashed. “I didn’t ask you here and I have no intention of trying to convince you of anything.”

  “Try me anyway. I want to know.” He stretched out his legs and leisurely crossed his ankles. “And you might as well speak your piece because I’m not going anywhere until I do know.”

  “I have—as you so quaintly put it—no piece to speak,” she said, her voice tight with restraint, thinking how dare he condescend to her.

  A taut, uncomfortable hush settled over the room.

  The gaslights seemed to flicker in the restive air.

  Darley studied Aurore, his dark gaze probing, slowly sweeping her body, always coming back to her fecund center. This hadn’t just happened, he decided. If it was the result of his night in Paris a month ago, the child would not yet be visible. And it was. “You knew before I left Paris, didn’t you,” he said at last. “The train station—the smells…it was this instead, wasn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer at first, and then as though having come to some decision, she spoke, her voice tempered and constrained. “I wasn’t certain.”

  “Why didn’t you say something anyway?”

  “Because I wasn’t certain.” Her voice was stronger now, her gaze direct.

  “Do you know when it happened?” A hint of truculence beneath his agreeable tone.

  She didn’t care. She knew what she knew. “I haven’t had my menses since that first night in Sevastopol.”

  “You’re sure?” He thought he’d been careful; he always was.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you.” He didn’t say I don’t believe you. He was not that discourteous at least.

  “It was a rather lengthy interval of sex that night in Sevastopol—not that our successive encounters weren’t as well. Under those circumstances, no matter how cautious you were—and I realize you specialize in caution in that regard—there are vestiges of fluids that can remain. I have no other explanation for this lamentable event.”

  Curiously, her use of the word lamentable irked him.

  Not that it altered the situation in any way. He could accept her word or argue the point.

  “You needn’t look at me like that,” she said, sitting up very straight as if defying his presumptive gaze. “I am not obliged to meet some standard or measure of your making. In fact, I told Etienne in no uncertain terms that I didn’t wish you to know.”

  “He apparently thought otherwise. He said in his telegram that I should do something about this.”

  Her nostrils flared. “So I’m supposed to be grateful you responded? You needn’t have. I don’t wish to be caught in the middle of some masculine posturing that has nothing to do with me,” she said with a sniff of displeasure. “Consider yourself free of any responsibility, Darley. I mean it most sincerely. I am capable of taking care of this child myself.” He was obviously here under duress. She wasn’t surprised. She’d known what he was from the first.

  “What if I wish to know”—he hesitated, not yet capable of taking ownership—“this child,” he said, instead of my child.

  She smiled tightly at his significant pause. “I’m sorry. It’s not possible,” she coolly replied.

  He opened his mouth to speak and shut it again.

  “Wise choice,” she murmured. “If you’d dared ask me that,” she added, heated and low, “I would have had my grooms horsewhip you within an inch of your life.” She would not explain again that the child was his.

  “I could have been asking something else.” There was something about the fire in her eyes that was captivating—as always, he thought. Like she was willing to take on the world.

  “Were you?”

  He smiled for the first time since he’d walked in. “No.”

  “Exactly. You see, we are at quite opposite poles.”

  “But not on everything,” he said, his voice velvet soft. “There are times when we are in complete harmony.”

  She finally smiled. “Everything isn’t about sex, Darley.”

  “With you, somehow it seems to take priority,” he said with a practiced charm and a smile that offered sexual pleasure and endless delight, that guaranteed it with a disarming certitude.

  “I am not in the mood to be seduced,” she said, even as her traitorous senses trembled in remembrance. “Run back to wherever you were and return to your little playmates. I doubt you’ve been monkish since last I saw you.”

  His skin was too dark to blush, but the poniard struck home. “And you have been?” Defensive or jealous, he wasn’t sure which.

  “It’s no concern of yours whether I have been or not. Go now, before I have you thrown out.” A small matter of self-preservation prompted her command.

  “That won’t be easy.”

  “It will be done, nevertheless.” She would not allow herself to succumb to his allure. He was what he was—prodigal and licentious, neither a suitable husband nor father.

  Aurore’s pronouncement was firm, determined. Like the woman who had risked her life for the Allied cause, he thought. The same fearless, fascinating woman who had persistently filled his dreams since Paris, no matter whom he was fucking, no matter where he was or what he was doing. And if epiphanies did, in fact, exist, he suddenly felt as though such a transforming event may have taken place. Or was taking place…or maybe it was just that he was finally willing to acknowledge that he had been unable to walk away from Aurore and get on with his life. “Let me explain something,” he abruptly said, pushing himself upward from his lazy sprawl, his former nonchalance gone, a gravity in his tone. “I want you to know why I left, why I didn’t come back—or tried not to.” He put up his hands, palm out, to deter her protest. “Listen at least.”

  Guarded. “Very well.” She’d thought herself immune to him after so long. Not so.

  With the urge to lay bare his thoughts, he realized that at a stroke, a door had closed on his past—without reason or motive, without explanation. At last. Or maybe not. He didn’t know. “I want to tell you about Lucia,” he said, knowing that at least.

  Was there a woman alive who would have been incurious? Particularly in this case when Darley had cried out Lucia’s name in the throes of passion? “I’m listening,” Aurore said.

  “We were both young,” he began. “We were very much in love, we married, and when she became pregnant, we were elated.” He took a deep breath, leaned forward, rested his forearms on his legs and stared at the floor.

  It was a man’s explanation of love—without detail or texture. She wanted to say, what did Lucia look like? What did she do? How much did you love her?

  “Lucia didn’t die of cholera,” Darley went on, each word measured and deliberate. “She died in childbirth. My son died five days later.” He paused, swallowed, then continued in the same low monotone. “I was tortured with thoughts of what I might have done to prevent my wife’s pain and torment, or help in my child’s pitiful struggle to live. We had doctors everywhere and they were helpless—useless. Lucia bled to death, my son’s breathing—” His voice fade
d away for a second before he gathered himself. “Something was wrong.” He exhaled softly. “And it never got better. When it was finally over, I buried them together in a little cemetery near a convent were Lucia had played as a child.” He could feel all the anguish and pain as though it had been yesterday. Why did he think he could do this? “The pregnancy killed Lucia,” he murmured, looking up from under his dark brows, his voice no more than a whisper. “I vowed to never do that to anyone again.” And I haven’t.

  A kind of hell-on-earth desolation shown in his eyes, and something more as well—an unspoken challenge.

  “I’m sorry for your loss—truly I am.” Aurore’s eyes were bright with tears. “And I wish I had an indisputable answer for you. I don’t, other than to say, there’s been no one but you since Sevastopol.” He looked so miserable she wanted to take him in her arms and comfort him. But she would be lost if she did.

  Darley was here out of some misguided sense of duty, not because he loved her.

  And to dare to love him was too painful to contemplate.

  Unrequited love. An insupportable phrase.

  “No one since Sevastopol,” he softly said, his voice slow and considering, as though he were reviewing a conversation from long ago. Then he sat upright once again, beautiful as a god, his traveling clothes impeccable, authentic bachelor and libertine in a black frock coat tailored to perfection. “In that case, the child must be mine.” A grudging assessment.

  Aurore’s temper flared for an instant, but it was impossible to fault a man who feared fatherhood for reasons quite beyond the ordinary. “Yes. Undoubtedly, the child is yours,” she replied with the disciplined restraint that had sustained her throughout this interview. “But you needn’t involve yourself in what would only be a painful reawakening of your past.”

  “The thought of a child frightens me.”

  She saw his fingers tighten on the chair arms.

  He smiled ruefully. “It’s not logical, of course. I understand the differences.” Yet, at times, Aurore reminded him of Lucia if she turned her head a certain way or smiled just so. Struggling to suppress the images from Parma flooding his brain, he added, his voice raw with pain, “It was just so fucking unbearable…”