Amethyst had been stunned. Women did not go round purchasing failing businesses.
‘He’s claiming the workers are intractable,’ her aunt had continued. ‘Has suffered from riots and outbreaks of plague and God knows what else. We’ll probably find that he’s a drunken incompetent fool. Naturally we cannot let anyone know our true purpose in coming up here.’ Aunt Georgie had smiled at her, patted her hand and said, ‘Your breakdown has come at a most convenient time for me. Perfect excuse to be wandering about that part of the countryside in an apparently aimless manner. I can sound out people in the know and find out what is really going on.’
‘You can’t use me as some kind of a...smokescreen,’ Amethyst had protested. ‘I’m—’
‘Getting angry at last. That’s the ticket. Far healthier to get angry than mope yourself into a decline. That young man,’ she’d said, ‘isn’t worth a single one of the tears you’ve shed over him. And as for your father...’ She’d snorted in contempt. ‘What you ought to do, my girl, is think about getting even with them. If not the specific men who’ve conspired to crush you, then as many of the rest of their sex as you can.’
Get even. She’d never thought a chance would come for her to get even with Harcourt. Though she’d wondered if there wasn’t some divine justice at work on her behalf anyway. It didn’t seem to have done him much good, marrying that woman. In spite of all the connections she had, in spite of all the money her family spent on getting Harcourt elected, his career never went anywhere. His wife died childless. And then he’d created a scandal so serious that he’d had to disappear from public life altogether.
She’d crowed with triumph over every disaster that had befallen him, since it seemed to have served him right for toying with her affections so callously.
But now he’d admitted that he had been seriously thinking about marrying her. That he’d almost thrown caution to the winds.
Thrown caution to the winds? What on earth could he have meant by that?
Oh, only one of half-a-dozen things! There had been the disparity in their stations, for one thing. He was the son of an earl, after all, albeit the very youngest of them, while she was merely the daughter of an insignificant vicar. Nobility very rarely married into the gentry, unless it increased their wealth. And she’d had no dowry to speak of. Not then.
But that Miss Delacourt had. The one he’d become engaged to so swiftly after he’d given her the cut direct.
She shivered as she cast her mind back to the way he’d looked at her that night. As a rule, she tried not to think about it. It hurt too much. Even now, knowing that he hadn’t been simply playing some kind of a game with her, she recoiled from the memory of the coldness in eyes that had once seemed to burn with ardour.
She dragged herself out of the past with an effort to hear Monsieur Le Brun was now telling Sophie a gory tale of an uprising that had been quelled upon the very spot where they stood. He pointed at some marks in the wall, telling the fascinated little girl that they’d been made by bullets.
She shuddered. Not at the goriness of the tale, though she would claim it was that if anyone should question her. But, no—what really sickened her was the thought that Harcourt assumed she was having intimate relations with this stringy, sallow-faced Frenchman.
Why was everyone always ready to assume the worst of her? All she’d done was leave Stanton Bassett to take a little trip. She’d followed all the proprieties by hiring a female companion, yet just because she’d stepped outside the bounds of acceptable female behaviour, just the tiniest bit, suddenly Harcourt assumed she must be a...a woman of easy virtue!
Based on what evidence—that she was with a man to whom she was not married, dressed in clothing that indicated she was relatively poor? And from this he’d deduced Monsieur Le Brun must be her protector?
Didn’t he remember she was a vicar’s daughter? Didn’t he remember how he’d teased her about being so prim and proper when they’d first met?
Although he had soon loosened her moral stance, she reflected on a fresh wave of resentment. Quite considerably.
Perhaps he thought she’d carried on loosening after they’d parted.
Next time she came across Harcourt she would jolly well put him right. How dare he accuse her of having such poor taste as to take up with a man like Monsieur Le Brun?
If anyone had bad taste, it was he. He’d married a woman with a face like a horse, just because her family was wealthy and powerful.
Or so her parents had said. ‘The Delacourts wouldn’t let one of their daughters marry in haste. If they’ve got as far as announcing a betrothal, negotiations must have been going on for some time. His family might even have arranged the thing from the cradle. It is the way things are done, in such families. They leave nothing to chance.’
The certainty that they were right had made her curl up inside. It had seemed so obvious. He couldn’t have walked away from her, then proposed to someone else the next day. Miss Delacourt must always have been hovering in the background.
But now...now she wondered just how deliberate and calculating his behaviour had been after all. He’d talked about finding her so attractive he’d almost thrown caution to the winds.
As though...as though he hadn’t been able to help himself. As though he’d genuinely been drawn to her.
But in the end, it had made no difference. He’d married the girl of whom his family approved rather than proposing to the girl he’d only known a matter of weeks.
Though none of that explained why he seemed so angry with her now. Surely, if he had been toying with the idea of proposing to her back then, he should be glad they’d finally met up when both of them were free to do as they pleased?
Only—he didn’t think she was free, did he? He thought she was a kept woman.
Oh!
He was jealous. Of Monsieur Le Brun.
That was...well, it was...
So preposterous she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. When Monsieur Le Brun shot her a puzzled glance, she realised that, in stifling it, she’d made a very undignified sound, approximating something like a snort.
She made a valiant attempt to form sensible answers whenever Sophie spoke to her, but it was very hard to pretend to be interested in all the things Monsieur Le Brun was telling them about the park through which they were walking and the momentous historical events which had occurred on just about every corner.
When she felt as though her whole life had been flung up in the air and hadn’t quite settled into place yet. If she could only get past how angry he’d made her, by assuming she’d sunk low enough to...well, never mind what he thought she and Monsieur Le Brun got up to. It made her feel queasy. What about the other things he’d said? About finding her attractive?
Never mind irresistible. Almost irresistible enough to have lured him away from his sensible arranged match, to live in relative poverty and obscurity.
Had he been serious? Not one man, in the last ten years, had come anywhere near kissing her, yet Nathan claimed to find her so irresistibly attractive he immediately assumed she must be making her living as a woman of easy virtue. He had seethed at her and fumed at her, and only stormed off when he was satisfied he’d rattled her.
She stood stock still, her heart doing funny little skips inside her chest. She’d only ever been sought after seriously by gentlemen after they learned she was Aunt Georgie’s sole beneficiary.
But Harcourt assumed she was poor and desperate.
And he still claimed to want her.
‘Are you getting tired, Aunt Amy?’
Sophie had come running back to her and was taking her hand, and looking up into her face with concern.
‘No, sweet pea. I am just...admiring the gardens. Aren’t they beautiful?’
She hadn’t noticed, not until she’d worked out that Harcou
rt was suffering from jealousy, but the Tuileries Gardens were really rather pretty...in a stately, regulated kind of way, in spite of all the gruesome horrors which the citizens had perpetrated within it. The trees dappled the gravelled walks with shade, the sky she could see through the tracery of leaves was a blue that put her in mind of the haze of bluebells carpeting a forest floor in spring, and the air was so clear and pure it was like breathing in liquid crystal.
It was almost as magical a place as Hyde Park had been, when she’d been a débutante. She could remember feeling like this when she’d walked amongst the daffodils with Harcourt. Light-hearted and hopeful, but, above all, pretty. He’d made her feel so pretty, the way he’d looked at her back then, when she’d always assumed she was just ordinary, that there was nothing about her to warrant any sort of compliments.
That was because she’d always had to work so hard to please her exacting parents. She’d done her utmost to make them proud of her, with her unstinting work in the parish and her unquestioning support of her mother in bringing up the younger girls.
And what good had it done her? The minute she slipped, nothing she’d done before counted for anything. All they could say was that she was self-indulgent and ungrateful, and vain.
Though at least now she knew she hadn’t been vain. He must have liked more than just the way she looked, if he’d contemplated marrying her. He’d liked her. The person she’d become when she’d been with him. The girl who felt as though she was lit up from inside whenever she was near him. A very different girl from the earnest, constantly-striving-to-please girl she was in the orbit of her parents. He’d shown her that it was fun to dance and harmless to flirt. They’d laughed a lot, too, over silly jokes they’d made about some of the more ridiculous people they encountered. Or nothing much at all.
She’d slammed the door shut on that Amy when he’d abandoned her.
She’d tossed aside the former Amy, too, the one who was so intent on pleasing her parents.
It had been much easier to nurture the anger Aunt Georgie had stirred up. She’d become angry Amy. Bitter Amy. Amy who was going to survive no matter what life threw at her.
‘It is time I took you to another café,’ said Monsieur Le Brun. ‘It is a little walk, but worth it, for the pastries there are the best you will ever eat.’
‘Really?’ She pursed her lips, though she did not voice her doubt in front of Sophie. There wasn’t any point. The proof of the pudding, or in this case, pastry, would be in the eating. So she just followed the pair to the café, let the waiter lead them to a table and sank gratefully on to a chair, wondering all the while which, out of all the Amys she’d been in her life thus far, was the real one? And which one would come to the fore if he should come into this café, looking at her with all that masculine hunger?
She reached for the sticky pastry the waiter had just brought and took a large bite, wondering if it might be a new Amy altogether. An Amy who was so sick of people assuming the worst of her that she might just as well be bad.
She licked her lips, savouring the delicious confection. She sipped her drink with a feeling that before she left Paris, there was a distinct possibility she was going to find out.
Chapter Five
‘How are you this morning?’ Amethyst asked Fenella, noting that she still looked rather wan and shamefaced.
‘Much better,’ she said, sliding into her place at the breakfast table and pouring herself a cup of chocolate with an unsteady hand. ‘Yes, much better.’
What Fenella needed was something to take her mind off herself, Amethyst decided. She could not possibly still be feeling the after-effects of drinking too much. She was just indulging in a fit of the dismals. Since offering her sympathy had done so little good, perhaps an appeal to her deeply ingrained sense of duty might do the trick. A reminder that she was supposed to be a paid companion.
‘I hope you do not think I am being strict with you, but I really must insist you get back to work today.’
Fenella sat up a little straighter and lifted her chin. Amethyst repressed a smile.
‘I need you to double-check any correspondence that Monsieur Le Brun may have written regarding the trade opportunities we’ve come over here to secure.’
At Fenella’s little gasp of dismay, she held up her hand. ‘My grasp of the French language is only very basic, so I need you to keep an eye on everything he does. It is bad enough having to rely on him to represent me at meetings,’ she grumbled. ‘Anyway, I have to spend some time reading the packet of mail which has caught up with me...’ she sighed ‘...before we can take Sophie out anywhere. It shouldn’t take me long, but I must just make sure there is nothing so pressing it cannot wait until my return. Jobbings already thinks I am flighty, because I have come jauntering off to foreign parts, as he put it. He fully expects me to fail in this venture,’ she said gloomily. ‘He doesn’t think I have a tithe of my aunt’s business acumen.’
‘You do not have a high opinion of him, either, do you?’
‘He is honest and diligent. Which is more than can be said for most men.’
Fenella cut a pastry into a series of tiny squares, her expression pensive. ‘What is your opinion of Monsieur Le Brun, now that you have got to know him better? Sophie said that you did not seem so cross with him yesterday as you usually are.’
‘Well, although he looks far too sour to have ever been a child, let alone remember what one would like, he did take us to a whole series of places which were exactly the kind of thing that a lively, inquisitive child like Sophie would really enjoy,’ Amethyst admitted.
‘Yes. Sophie told me all about it,’ said Fenella, lifting her cup and taking a dainty sip of tea.
‘I confess,’ Amethyst continued, ‘I had my doubts when he said that he did not mind having a child form part of our party. I got the distinct impression,’ she said with a wry twist to her lips, ‘that he would have said anything to get the post, so desperate was he for work. Even the testimonials he provided were so fulsome they made me a bit suspicious.’
‘So why, then, did you take him on?’
‘Because he was desperate for the job, of course. I thought if he would say anything to land the job, then he was likely to work harder to ensure he kept it. And so far, my instincts have not failed me. He has worked hard.’
‘Then you do not...’ Fenella placed her cup carefully back on to its saucer ‘...dislike him as much as you did to start with?’
‘I do not need to like the man to appreciate he is good at his job. So far he has proved to be an efficient and capable courier. And though his manners put my back up they have a remarkable effect on waiters on both sides of the Channel. He always manages to secure a good table and prompt service. I attribute that,’ she said, digging into her own plate of eggs and toast, ‘to that sneer of his.’
‘Oh, dear, is that all you can say? Is that really...fair?’
Amethyst raised her brows, but that was not enough to deter Fenella. ‘You did make a good choice when you employed him,’ she said stoutly. ‘He is...’ She floundered.
‘Arrogant, opinionated and overbearing,’ said Amethyst. ‘But then he is a man, so I suppose he cannot help that. However,’ she added more gently, noting from the way Fenella was turning her cup round and round in its saucer that her companion was getting upset, ‘I am sure you need have no worries that he may take his dislike of me out on you. What man could possibly object to the way you ask for his advice? For that is what you do, isn’t it? You don’t challenge his dominance by giving him direct orders, the way I do, so he has no need to try to put you in your place. You just flutter your eyelashes at him and he does whatever you want, believing the whole time that it was all entirely his own idea.’
To her astonishment, Fenella flushed bright pink.
‘I am sorry if that unsettles you. I meant it as a complime
nt. You handle him with such aplomb...’
Fenella got to her feet so quickly her chair rocked back and almost toppled over. ‘Please, I...’ She held up her hand, went an even hotter shade of pink and fled the room.
Amethyst was left with a forkful of eggs poised halfway to her mouth, wondering what on earth she had said to put such a guilty look on Fenella’s face.
* * *
It took Amethyst less than an hour to run her eyes over the latest figures and tally them in her mind with the projected profits. At home, in Stanton Basset, she had always started her day by doing exactly this, and before she’d set out she had seen no reason why she shouldn’t keep up with the latest developments as assiduously as ever.
But she’d never felt so relieved to have got through the columns of figures and the dry reports that went with them. She couldn’t wait to put on her hat and coat, and get outside and start exploring Paris again.
She’d never enjoyed being in business for its own sake, the way Aunt Georgie had. It had always been more about repaying her aunt’s faith in her by making her proud. And as for coming to France to expand the business...
The truth was that the end of the war had come at just the right time for her. Everyone with means was flocking to Paris. It was the perfect time to break away from Stanton Basset and all its petty restrictions. To do something different. Something that was nothing to do with anyone’s expectations.
So why had she justified her decision to travel, by telling Jobbings her motive for coming here was to expand the business she’d inherited? Why was she still making excuses for doing what she wanted? Whose approval did she need to win now her aunt had gone? Not Jobbings’. He worked for her.
Was she somehow trying to appease the ghost of her aunt? She’d thought that coming somewhere different would jolt her out of the rigid routine into which she’d fallen and stuck after her aunt had died. But it wasn’t proving as easy to cast off the chains of habit as she’d thought it would be. She was still looking over her shoulder to see if her aunt would approve.
Portrait of a Scandal Page 6