Portrait of a Scandal

by Annie Burrows

  And because of the time she’d spent in Nathan’s bed, she could actually see why Fenella had succumbed to temptation, when only the day before, she would have been horrified. Sickened.

  ‘Suddenly, a lot of things made sense. Such as the way neither of them could quite look me in the eye any more. And the way he’d gone from being as sarcastic as he dared to being positively ingratiating.’ And the way Fenella blushed when she’d made what were, on the face of it, perfectly innocuous remarks.

  ‘And all the while he kept trying to shush her. But when he groaned and covered his face and sort of collapsed on to the sofa, Fenella finally realised we hadn’t been arguing about that at all. But it was too late. The cat, as they say, was well and truly out of the bag.’

  ‘I wish I had been there,’ he said, his lips twitching with mirth.

  ‘It wasn’t funny.’ Could he take nothing seriously?

  ‘I beg your pardon, but it sounds highly entertaining. When you have a middle-aged couple behaving like some latter-day Romeo and Juliet, with you cast as both sets of disapproving guardians. It’s preposterous.’

  ‘To be fair, they were both afraid I would try to part them.’

  ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’

  ‘Because,’ she said, grasping the banister rail with such force it looked as though she was considering wringing someone’s neck, ‘he’d taken advantage of her. If I’d found out the morning after, when she was so upset about it, you may be sure I would have turned him out!’

  ‘But you said Fenella was as keen as he was.’

  ‘I know you don’t think there’s anything wrong with jumping into bed with people on the slightest pretext,’ she said coldly, ‘but Fenella was racked with guilt. So much that she couldn’t bring herself to confide in me. And he worked on those fears. And seems to have convinced her that they’re experiencing some grand passion that will end in marriage.’

  She didn’t see him flinch when she assumed he had no morals. That he would, as she put it, jump into bed with any woman, on the slightest pretext. It took an effort, but he managed to carry on with the conversation after only the slightest hesitation.

  ‘And you don’t think it will?’

  ‘I...’

  He watched the fire go from her. Her shoulders slumped.

  ‘This morning, I would have said not. But having been obliged to watch them...’

  ‘Billing and cooing,’ he supplied helpfully.

  She shot him a brief, narrow-eyed glare.

  ‘Precisely,’ she said bitterly. ‘He is certainly very convincing in his role.’ Once they’d gone out and Fenella and Gaston no longer felt the need to conceal their relationship, they’d become remarkably demonstrative. Smiling at each other and laughing at silly little jokes that made no sense to her whatsoever. And looking at each other as though, given half a chance, they would dive into the nearest bushes and rip each other’s clothes off.

  And yet somehow they’d managed to include Sophie in their happy little love bubble. They were bonding into a family unit, right before her eyes.

  Leaving her trailing along behind them. Excluded, as usual. She’d felt almost as lonely as when her family had closed ranks against her.

  She’d grown increasingly resentful of the fact that she’d stuck to the arrangement she’d made with this pair, thinking it would be bad form to abandon them in order to spend time with her new lover, when they could think of nothing but each other.

  As soon as she got home she had sent word that she was ready to accompany Nathan to the party he’d mentioned, to be thrown by some minor politician of whom she’d never heard. If Fenella was going to be wrapped up in Gaston for the duration of their stay in Paris, then she might as well spend every moment she could with her own lover.

  ‘I can see why Fenella believes him to be in earnest,’ she admitted. ‘But what still worries me is the fact that Fenella really has fallen for him. She was almost weeping when she told me she never thought she’d find love at her time of life, but that Gaston had made her feel like a young bride again.’

  And because she’d just spent the earlier part of the day feeling exactly the same, in relation to Nathan, she hadn’t been able to utter one single word of rebuke.

  ‘He got to his feet at that point, put his arm round her and claimed that the only reason he did not wish Fenella to tell me of their so-called plans until we returned safely to England was because he was afraid I would turn—’ She bit back what she had been about to say, unwilling to let Nathan know that Fenella was also in her employ, rather than just travelling with her as a friend, which was what she’d led him to believe.

  ‘Turn against her, for having loose morals,’ she finished lamely.

  Monsieur le Prune—and she might as well call him that now, since Le Brun wasn’t his real name either—had pointed out that since she’d employed Fenella to give her an air of respectability, now that her own morality was in question, poor Fenella was terrified she would lose her job.

  And then had come the only bright spot in her otherwise disastrous day. Fenella had looked up at him with reproach and declared that Amethyst would never abandon her in a foreign country, let alone Sophie. Even when he’d muttered that perhaps she did not know her employer as well as she thought, Fenella had been unshakeable. Fenella had stayed true to their friendship.

  No matter what happened next, whether the romance blossomed into marriage, or whether Monsieur Le Brun turned out to be some kind of ageing Lothario, Amethyst was not going to lose her friend.

  ‘I think he had been trying to turn her against me for some time. He’s worked on the guilt she felt for actually doing what all the ladies of Stanton Bassett accused her of doing—’

  ‘Hold on. Now you have lost me. What, exactly, have the ladies of Stanley Basset accused her of doing?’

  ‘Stanton. It’s Stanton Basset. Well, when she arrived with a baby, but no husband in evidence, rumours started to fly. You can imagine the sort of thing that provincial, narrow-minded women with too much time on their hands can invent. They’re always ready to believe the worst of people, without a shred of evidence to support it. Particularly if that person has nobody to vouch for her,’ she said indignantly. ‘And it was all the more unfair because Fenella is really a very moral person. Well, until she started misbehaving with Monsieur le Prune, I would have said she had never put a foot wrong in her life. Apart from marrying a plausible rogue the first time round. Honestly,’ she huffed, as they moved up yet another place in the receiving line, ‘you would have thought she’d have learned her lesson where men are concerned.’

  Although had she learned anything from her experience with Nathan? Here she was, seeking him out and confiding everything to him as though he was her closest, most trustworthy friend. Just as she’d done before.

  What right had she to question Fenella’s judgement when it came to men? At least Fenella had gone for a man she swore was completely different from the feckless charmer she’d eloped with as a girl. Gaston was clever, she declared, and hard working and capable, and he never, ever lost his temper.

  After that description of his merits, she saw that he was exactly the kind of man Fenella would fall for. She’d confessed she wanted a man to lean on. Someone dependable and patient. His looks were irrelevant.

  She might find the thought of getting amorous with him totally repellent, but he’d managed to put a bloom on Fenella’s cheeks. He was making her feel like a desirable, vibrant woman. Just as Nathan—

  Nathan, she suddenly realised, had gone awfully quiet. When she darted a glance up at him he was staring fixedly at the back of the stout man in front of them in the receiving line, a forced tightness about his lips.

  He was probably getting bored with her stupid prattle. Desperately, she strove to find some other topic of conversation.

 
‘You never did tell me,’ she said with determined brightness. ‘What is your connection to these people and why they have invited you tonight?’

  He turned to her then, his face twisting into a mask of harsh cynicism.

  ‘I know Wilson from my days as a Member of Parliament. We both, at that time, had very ambitious wives. They got on well together.’

  He didn’t look as though that fact pleased him. And when she frowned her confusion at him, he continued, ‘You seem to think that if she is so ambitious for her husband to succeed, they would have done better to stay in England, don’t you? Open your eyes, Amy, and look at the people they have attracted to their home.’

  As they were almost at the head of the stairs, by peering round the stout man in front of them, and his partner’s flounces, she could easily have caught glimpses of the glittering crowd thronging a large salon beyond.

  ‘Not that I am likely to recognise any of them,’ she retorted, stung by his patronising attitude.

  ‘Much better you don’t,’ he said harshly, tucking her arm firmly into his as they reached the landing. ‘But I will tell you the kind of people she is gathering about her in Paris. Influential people. She is using this trip to cement friendships she could never have forged in London. When Wilson returns to England, she will continue to use the connections she has made here to push him up the greasy pole.’

  ‘That’s not strictly true, though, is it? She invited you, even though...’ She trailed off.

  ‘Even though she was my wife’s friend, rather than mine, and my career is currently at such a low ebb it would be nothing short of miraculous for me to resurrect it?’ He raised one eyebrow, his tone challenging.

  ‘I was going to say,’ she replied, ‘that you cannot be of use to her any more, since you are no longer involved in politics.’

  He looked at her steadily for a few moments, then appeared to relent towards her.

  ‘It isn’t easy to understand this world until you’ve been a part of it. I certainly didn’t look beneath the glittering surface to the lethal undercurrents before I plunged in. I was even foolish enough, when I first got elected, to think I needed to go to the House upon occasion and listen to debates.’ His mouth twisted into a harsh sneer. ‘And that was even though I knew that Lucasta’s father had bought the votes of the potwallopers in my borough. But I soon learned that isn’t how a man succeeds in politics. He needs to ingratiate himself with the right people. Do deals in secret. Be prepared to perjure his soul in return for promotion.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘You cannot see how I can be of use to these people, is that what you were going to say? Oh, Amy...’ he laughed, bitterly ‘...have you forgotten? My father is, and always will be, the Earl of Finchingfield, and he wields enormous political influence. Who knows but that one day he might forgive me? If I find favour in his sight again, those who have supported me at this...low tide...might find him grateful. And prepared to be generous.’

  ‘That’s a horribly cynical way to look at life.’

  ‘I prefer to say realistic. Amy, I spent years amongst these people. I know how they operate. Believe me, the more cynical you are about them, the less likely you are to be hurt by them.’

  She frowned. ‘I wonder you bothered to come tonight, then. They all sound perfectly horrid.’

  ‘They have their uses,’ he said darkly. The most urgent being to send a message to his father. Somebody, from this gathering, was bound to return to England with the news that his reprobate youngest son had taken up with the very woman he’d done his utmost to separate him from. And, for once, he would taste defeat. Know that all his machinations had been in vain. Amethyst had found her way back to him.

  ‘Uses? What do you mean?’

  Nathan rubbed his nose with his thumb. He couldn’t admit that he wanted to flaunt her in his father’s face. That he was using her.

  She didn’t deserve to become a pawn in his ongoing battle with his father. Pawns got hurt. His father certainly hadn’t hesitated to blacken her name ten years ago. To him, she was nothing. A mere inconvenience to be swatted aside like a pesky fly.

  ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here,’ he said, a cold knot forming in his stomach. He could have taken her anywhere. Why had he exposed her to the possibility of getting hurt all over again?

  ‘You are no match for these sort of people. It is like throwing a lamb to the wolves.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she snapped. ‘Do you think I am a country bumpkin with straw for brains?’

  ‘No! That is not what I meant at all. You are just too...straightforward to know how to survive in this kind of environment. You have no idea how to smile while uttering a threat, or make someone believe you are their friend whilst plotting how to stab them in the back.’

  Simple. He thought she was simple. Not up to cutting it in his world.

  Well, why should she be surprised? It was what he’d thought ten years ago, too. Well, she’d show him.

  But before she had the chance to work out exactly how she was going to prove that she was not the simpering, weak-willed kind of ninny that needed a man to protect her from all the big bad wolves in the world of politics, the stout couple in front moved away and she and Nathan were finally standing face to face with their host and hostess.

  ‘Oh, Mr Harcourt, what an unexpected pleasure to see you here,’ gushed the bejewelled woman, flashing a lot of teeth and bosom in his direction. Though how it could be unexpected, since she must have sent him an invitation, Amethyst couldn’t imagine.

  ‘I would have thought our sort of gathering would be much too tame for you,’ she said archly, before going off into a peal of shrill laughter.

  So why invite him, then? Because my father is, and always will be, the Earl of Finchingfield and he wields enormous political influence.

  ‘And who is this delightful young lady you have brought with you? I don’t believe I have seen her about anywhere, have I?’

  Nathan paused, only very slightly, but the woman promptly leapt to her own conclusion.

  ‘Oh, how very naughty of you,’ she said, flattening one hand to her impressive bosom. ‘To bring your latest chère amie into such a gathering. Oh, but isn’t that just like you!’ She rapped his arm with her fan. ‘Always courting scandal one way or another. But I shall not be cross with you. This is Paris, after all, so what does it really matter? Algernon, dearest,’ she rattled on, while Nathan seemed to have turned to stone at her side, ‘look who it is. Mr Harcourt and his lovely young...French friend.’

  ‘Harcourt, you dog.’ He grinned. ‘Still the rake, I see! But do you have a name, you lovely young thing?’ Mr Wilson, who looked exactly as she’d imagined a minor politician with delusions of grandeur would look, seized her hand and pressed a wet kiss on the back of it.

  She flashed Nathan a swift, challenging glance from under her eyelashes, dropped Mr Wilson a curtsy and, summoning up what little French she knew, said, in a little, breathy, voice, ‘Moi, je suis Mademoiselle D’Aulbie.’

  Nathan let out a choking sound and turned to her with a look of complete shock.

  ‘It is such the honour to meet the very important man of whom I hear so much,’ Amy simpered, batting her eyelashes up at her host, the way she imagined a woman of pleasure, who did not know when she was being insulted to her face, would do. ‘And Monsieur ’Arcour, he does not want to attend at all, but I did so want zis treat.’

  ‘Did you, my dear?’ Mr Wilson puffed up to almost twice his not-inconsiderable size. ‘Don’t suppose young Harcourt could resist, eh? Don’t say I blame him.’ He winked at Nathan over the top of her head.

  ‘But what is zis rayk you say of eem?’ she said, her execrable accent getting thicker by the second. ‘He is the artist, n’est-ce pas? Not some kind of gardener.’

  At that point, Nathan abruptly came back to lif
e, grabbing her elbow and tugging her into the room, whilst muttering something to their hosts about making room for the next couple in line.

  ‘What the hell,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘has come over you? Putting on that ludicrous accent and letting them think...’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said airily, beckoning a waiter who was circulating with a tray of champagne. ‘Perhaps I just couldn’t resist showing you that I could very easily disguise not only what I am thinking, but also my very nationality, if I put my mind to it.’

  He snagged a glass of champagne himself and knocked it all back in one go.

  ‘But why would you want to do any such thing?’

  She sipped her champagne whilst considering how to answer him. And then decided to plump for the truth.

  ‘Do you know, I’m not entirely sure. But I’ve felt on the verge of...revolution ever since I arrived in Paris. I have the strangest feeling that I can be anyone I want to be here. And just for a moment, I rather fancied the idea of letting that stupid woman think I was your chère amie. You have to admit it was rather amusing to see the judgemental, pompous, narrow-minded bladders of wind both run to the lengths of their boorishness, wasn’t it? Far better than having to explain that actually I am—’

  ‘No. You don’t need to say another word.’ He’d frozen in horror when Mrs Wilson had expressed curiosity about her. He’d hesitated to give her real name, knowing it could signal the eruption of another battle between him and his father, with Amy at risk of getting caught in the cross-fire.

  He’d been relieved, if a little stunned, when Amy had started to poke fun at their hosts. And now that they’d escaped the danger that people who still had connections to his father’s world might find out who she was, he had to admit that he would have found her performance amusing if he hadn’t been frozen solid with horror at the danger he’d so foolishly exposed her to.