“What makes you think he wouldn’t?”
She had no idea how to answer, and she was starting to tire of the questions. Madeleine obviously noticed, for her expression grew serious once more, and she leaned forward to clarify.
“Natalie, most gentlemen of your class marry because it is expected of them. They need heirs, or property given them through a dowry, as well as the convenient sexual outlet marriage provides. Love is rarely a motivating factor for these men in choosing a wife, and they expect to keep a mistress or two while married. Wives usually know this as well, and if they, too, have no deep love for their husbands, they are many times relieved that their husbands look elsewhere for gratification, especially if they’ve carried several children and their bodies are tired.”
“I’m aware of this, Madeleine—”
“I’m sure that you are, but let me finish.” Her tone grew pensive as she carried on. “Jonathan does not need a wife—not, at least, for a dowry or an heir to inherit an estate. He has freedom now and wealth of his own, and can choose his companionship—or lack of it—at his discretion. If he would go so far as to marry you, he would be doing so because he chose to. I can’t think of a reason why he would marry you or anyone if he wanted to continue his libertine tendencies. That would only complicate his life.”
Natalie leaned back heavily, feeling the softness of the chair against her spine as her nerves prickled her skin. “Aside from one teasing moment, he’s never formally suggested marriage,” she mumbled, deflated.
The Frenchwoman silently eyed her in deliberate thought, her fingers rubbing absentmindedly along her seat cushion.
“Natalie, this is rather personal, of course, but consider very carefully what I am asking.” She briefly pressed her lips together. “You have been intimate with Jonathan. During this intimate time did he . . . do anything that would prevent you from carrying his child?”
She felt the sharp stab of a sudden, fearful shock. Never once had the thought of carrying his child crossed her mind. The idea was outrageous. Unthinkable. And very plausible. “I-I’m not sure of this.”
Madeleine nodded negligibly as if drawing conclusions of her own, her gaze never wavering as she continued to study her with assessment. “There are a number of things a man or a woman can do during these intimate moments that can very nearly prevent pregnancy. Since this was your first time with a man, it is unlikely you thought of this. Jonathan, however, probably did. If intimate moments occur without planning, the best thing for a man to do is withdraw himself when he reaches . . . a critical point. I’m sure you now understand when this is.” Very softly, and without a shade of embarrassment, she articulated, “If Jonathan did not do this, he most certainly knew he could be giving you his child. And I am also certain, if he did not intend to marry you, he would never have taken that chance.”
Natalie blinked rapidly, startled and blushing fully from the blunt explanation, ashamed at the thought, and if she considered her feelings honestly, warmed somewhere very deep within. She wiped a shaky palm over her forehead, closing her eyes.
“But he knows I won’t marry him. I told him so directly, before this . . . episode.”
“Maybe he thinks you’ll change your mind.”
She dropped her arm to her lap and raised her lashes again, mouth thinned, voice flat with impatience. “He knows how I feel about this, Madeleine. I cannot trust him to be faithful and I refuse to give my heart to someone I can’t trust. I told him this.”
“Men can sometimes be very arrogant.”
At last the Frenchwoman understood. Natalie rolled her eyes and spread her hands wide. “Exactly my thoughts.”
“They can also be rather insistent when they want something very desperately.”
“They—” She stopped short and stared. “I’m sure he didn’t want me that desperately.”
Madeleine smiled wryly and reached again for her plate of cake. “Are you? Why?”
The woman was maddening with her incessant questions. “He could have anyone.”
“And yet he wanted you.”
“I was simply there and available to him.”
Madeleine shifted her gaze to her plate. “Natalie, half the world is populated by women. They are all around him, and Jonathan is a very attractive man. As you just said, he could have any number of them at any time.” She meticulously cut away a bite of chocolate cake with her fork, her finely penciled brows furrowed in deep concentration. “I would suspect he’s been faithful to you since you left England, and consider this: he’s had no reason to be. He’s not married to you now. He owes you nothing and still he’s giving himself to you, and you are pushing him away.”
Lifting her fork halfway to her lips, Madeleine paused, glancing up to add incisively, “I wouldn’t begin to presume what his feelings are for you or how he views your relationship. I would suspect one of three things, however. He does not love you and is merely using your time together for nothing more than physical enjoyment and a summer of pleasure. He loves you but is confused by his feelings and does not yet realize this himself. Or he loves you and knows it but will not tell you because he’s afraid you won’t love him in return and he doesn’t want to witness your rejection of him.”
She placed the cake on her tongue, drew her lips across her fork, and chewed slowly, allowing her bold words to be absorbed.
Natalie watched her in silence, devoid of expression, listening in morbid fascination.
“In my experience,” Madeleine continued after swallowing, “men are deathly afraid of rejection by someone they love, much more so than women, and I think this is because their pride and egos are of such great importance to them. This is also why it is more difficult for men to be honest and express their feelings.” She placed her fork on her plate again and lowered her voice to a cool whisper. “Until you trust Jonathan enough to give him your heart you will likely never know what he feels for you beyond casual friendship. But let me ask you this.” She bit the side of her lip, tilting her head. “Regardless of who you marry, do you expect to be faithful to your husband?”
Natalie could hardly breathe. “Yes,” she managed through a clenched throat.
Madeleine smiled again satisfactorily. “So, since this is something you cannot prove, the intent on your part is all anyone can ask for. Including Jonathan. I’m sure you’d ask neither more nor less of him.” Her pale-blue eyes sparkling, she concluded, “Life and love are full of risks, and think how very dull our world would be if nobody took them. Such risks are really what make daily experiences so enjoyable.”
Natalie sat very still, weighted to the chair, unable to suck in an ounce of air, and she wasn’t sure if that was because of the heat, her constricting corset, or the difficult turn of events changing her relationship with a man she didn’t logically want but couldn’t passionately deny. Pulling her eyes from Madeleine’s, she reached for one of the lemonade glasses with a trembling hand, raised it to her lips, and took three full swallows to moisten her dry mouth.
The circumstances were all wrong, indecent, but Madeleine’s conclusions were fair, even perhaps correct. Everything the woman had said made sense. And it scared her.
Natalie set her lemonade and fan on the tea table, stood awkwardly, and walked on unsteady legs to the windows. She gazed out to the green grass and flowers in the park, the sway of oak trees, watched the scramble of pedestrians on the street below, smelled city dust and traffic drifting in with the breeze, felt late-afternoon sunshine on her face.
“How can I place my trust in someone who might grow bored with me and one day regret the past he gave up?” she whispered. “What if I’m just a . . . diversion for him now?”
“You cannot read his mind, Natalie, nor gaze into the future,” Madeleine returned just as quietly. “Nobody knows what will happen in twenty years. Maybe you’ll be so bored with each other you’ll both have separate homes and many lovers.”
Natalie turned to the woman once more, unable to disguise her expressio
n of indecision and worry.
Madeleine softened. “But it is probably more likely you’ll be content and find yourselves more deeply in love than you can imagine you could be. Frankly, I think the two of you are well suited. As for being Jonathan’s diversion, I sincerely doubt this. I cannot fathom why, with a world of women to discover and seduce, he would choose a beautiful virgin for a summer of play. It’s too much effort and not worth his time. It is, however, worth everything if he can romance you into becoming his willing wife, his friend, and his love. That is his risk.”
Natalie groaned and placed her face in her palm. Her life was never supposed to be this complicated. It had been planned for her the moment she was born—the proper raising, the good marriage to a respectable gentleman, the life of tedious social outings, and night after night of submission to a boring, uncaring husband so she could give him sons. Nothing else was expected of her. But instead, she alone had presumptuously decided she would have something different, something more, something extraordinary with an unusual and wonderful man of her choosing. It dawned on her now, in vivid clarity, that marriage to a man who loved her, who took risks with her, who played with her and teased her as his friend, would probably be the force that would keep them happy and together through the years. Marriage to a stuffy gentleman of quality, as she was brought up to expect and endure, who cared nothing for her beyond her usefulness as a household manager and mother to his heir, would be the initial turn toward unfaithfulness—perhaps for both of them.
For the first time in her life, she felt a pang of sadness and compassion for her mother. She had married a man she didn’t love because she was raised to expect nothing else. The only excitement in her life had come from her short, passionate love affair with a Frenchman she could never claim as hers. That her father had fallen in love with her mother over time Natalie now had to admit was unusual, although the path of love rarely seemed to be usual or logical. Marriage for love was a dream, not a reality, in her world. She’d known this all along. That was the hope she’d carried for the Black Knight for years.
But the Black Knight wasn’t her dream; he was her fantasy—an unreal and childish expectation of a blissful happiness that had never existed and could never be. If Madeleine’s words were to be taken as truth, Natalie knew her dream was a tangible, beating heart full of hope now sitting in the palm of her hand, waiting to be grasped and cherished. The only way for her to live this dream, though, would be to expose her deepest thoughts and feelings to Jonathan, and with a gut-tearing sorrow, she just didn’t know if she could ever come to terms with them and do that.
Natalie raised her head and clasped her arms around herself in a protective hug. “I don’t know what to do. I said some very cruel things to him this morning. He may never forgive me.”
“Nonsense.” Madeleine placed her now-empty plate on the tea table, stood, and fairly glided across the carpet to stand beside her at the window. “He will recover from it easily enough. Men do with the right persuasion, which is nearly always sexual in nature. I suggest you put your naked form in front of him, make love to him again, treat him as if he were the only man alive, and he’ll never remember you said anything at all except what a perfect lover he is.”
Natalie suppressed a giggle at the thought, both scandalous and delightful. Her mother would swoon to hear such audacious talk between ladies in a pink parlor during tea.
Madeleine stood next to her for a moment before draping an arm around her in a gentle embrace. “We will discuss what to do next,” she soothed, “and the decision, of course, is yours. If your trunks are at the hotel, we will have them brought up, and you may stay here tonight. That will give you time to think.”
Natalie shook her head and momentarily closed her eyes. “I didn’t leave a note for him, Madeleine. He’ll think I left him for England—with his emeralds.”
The Frenchwoman softly laughed. “I have the grave suspicion he’ll be more concerned about you and your thoughts and whereabouts than a silly necklace. And good for him. Let him worry.”
Natalie wanted to argue that assumption, but Madeleine turned her toward the tea table and spoke again before she could comment.
“Now please, eat something before you wither away to nothing. Then we will dress in finery and spend an enjoyable evening on the town—without the nagging presence of any member of the male sex.” She shook her head in feigned disgust. “Such disconcerting creatures they are.”
Natalie hinted at a smile, then moved back to her chair without remark, strangely comforted by the sudden closeness she felt to the colorful, sophisticated Frenchwoman who had become her friend.
Chapter 17
Jonathan stood alone at the end of the buffet table, thoroughly miserable. The banquet had only just begun, and few people as yet graced the hall of the comte d’Arles’s private Parisian home. It was the same home, in fact, that the man was attempting to sell and in which Jonathan had pretended to take an interest. His false identity was still believed, which was probably the only reason he’d been able to work his way in to observe the festivities tonight. He had arrived early, partly because he had nothing else to do, but mostly because he wanted to get this dreary evening finished so he could at last return to his own country, his home, his dog, and Natalie—the stubborn, idiotic, calculating enchantress who held him captive and shredded his reason.
It had been only a day and a half since he’d last seen her, and yet it felt like ten years. He was furious with her, crazy for her, and worried out of his mind. Logically he realized she could get home without him, that she spoke the language and carried sufficient funds for the trip. But the people of France were restless; it wasn’t entirely safe for her to be traveling alone, and he sure as hell didn’t want her locking herself away from him in her bedroom in England, either. He wanted her in his, wherever that might be, even if the only way to convince her she belonged there was to pound it into that scheming little head of hers. But of course that wouldn’t happen unless she saw him, spoke to him again.
God, it was just an argument. They’d said some hurtful things to each other, but he never thought she’d leave him. If he’d had the slightest idea of her intentions he wouldn’t have left her alone; he would have dragged her with him across town. He would never forget the panic that had flared through him when he’d stepped inside their room at the inn only six hours later, ready to face her wrath, only to face instead an empty wardrobe and an unmade bed with crumpled sheets to remind him of the night before.
She had trouble accepting his past. He knew that, understood why, and was willing to give her time. But what frightened him now was that she’d decided to give up on them without trying, without accepting how much she cared for him, and that’s why she had left. She was giving up on them, and it was ripping him apart inside. What made him want to laugh, though, instead of tear the room to shreds was the simple acknowledgment that he’d never once, in all of his nearly thirty years, thought a woman could do this to him.
Jonathan looked down at the full glass of whisky in his hand. He’d been holding it for ten minutes and had yet to take a drink. It was probably outstanding, smooth, and would no doubt go straight to his head to make him at first carefree then later more despondent than he felt already. He didn’t need that. He needed to keep his mind clear for the events to ensue this night.
Placing the glass on the table to his left, he leaned his head back against the tapestry-covered wall behind him, watching those around him with only mild interest. This home was smaller than the count’s home in Marseilles, but just as extravagantly decorated in dark oaks and plush auburn, teal, and gold. Rich food lined three buffet tables, the drink flowed, the smoke of expensive tobacco filled the air, and yet this wasn’t a party—not, at least, like the ball two weeks before. Few women were in this hall tonight, and although everyone dressed in finery, it was silently understood that the reason for this commingling was to raise money to pay Louis Philippe’s assassin. And that would have to be a
great deal of money. Only a professional would risk such a calculated attempt to murder the king of France.
Jonathan had wanted to go to the authorities, but he had no proof of anything, and what would he tell them? That several nobles wanted to change the course of history? Natalie had been right about that being boastful talk, which was why he couldn’t fault her for not immediately confiding this to him. Deposing the king was a common thought among the French and no doubt wouldn’t surprise or concern anyone of authority. But if the assassination attempt was planned for tomorrow, and tonight’s banquet was the front for Legitimists to strengthen their political ties, boost their egos, and collect their needed funds, he might learn something he could forward. He had to take the chance. Tomorrow he would leave the country.
Jonathan scanned the crowd. The count had yet to appear for the evening, but the room was quickly filling with people, mostly men, starting some rather boisterous exchanges at tables and in corners. Eventually it would get crass, and the women would leave. At least now he had something appealing to look at, although he was actually starting to bore of doing even that.
Jonathan closed his eyes with a light groan and folded his arms across his clean, pressed frock coat, uncaring whether he wrinkled it.
The world was filled with beautiful women, and he would admire them until he died. But he couldn’t have them all. Of course he’d been with many before Natalie, and apparently everyone alive today was aware of this fact. Curiously, though, he now found himself unable to recall the specifics of even one episode with any of those women. They were all enjoyable romps that extinguished his desire and gave him a short time of companionship at his will. It wasn’t that these women meant nothing to him, but that they only meant something sexual, and they, for their part, were perfectly aware of this. Nobody, including him, had ever been truly disappointed or hurt, and physical pleasure had generally been the only reason for coupling in the first place.
Adele Ashworth Page 28