by Mary Balogh
“Uneasy?”
“He really has taken to Christina, hasn’t he?” he had said. “I spoke to him briefly after you returned from the park this afternoon. He seems almost obsessed with her.”
“I suppose it is natural,” she had said. “I think I was wrong to agree to have her existence kept from him, Martin. I blame myself. I should have insisted on doing what I knew to be right. He really loves her, I think.”
“I just hope,” he had said, “that he does not—” But he shook his head and got to his feet. “Nothing. I had better be going or Blakeney will think I have forgotten him.”
“That he does not what?” Elizabeth had asked.
Martin had laughed. “No, he would not,” he had said. “Sometimes one gets stupidly fanciful at close to midnight. He would not try to take her for himself for six years to make up for the six she has been with you. That is a nonsensical idea. Trevelyan is quite incapable of kidnapping, isn’t he?” He had winced then and turned away from her. “Forget I said that, Lizzie. Is everything going well with Poole?”
Of course she would forget what he had said. It really was nonsense. Christopher did not want Christina alone. He wanted both of them. She opened her mouth to tell Martin that Christopher had asked her to marry him, but shut it again. Something had happened. She could not seem to share her deepest self with him any longer. Perhaps she had taken the final step to growing up, she thought a little sadly.
“Well enough,” she had said.
“It is with him you really belong, you know, Lizzie,” Martin had said, looking at her again, his head to one side. “He can keep the turmoil from your life. And you can be very important to him, especially during the next few weeks.”
Yes, she could, Elizabeth thought, returning her attention to Astley’s and the horse show going on in front of her. Christina was screaming at her to watch the lady turning a hoop over her head and jumping through it at each revolution, while standing on a moving horse. Christopher was laughing.
Yes, she could. And must. She owed Manley that. She owed him a few weeks even though she could not now marry him, of course. But it would be cruel to break off the engagement now and leave him to face the gossip and the humiliation just at a time when his respectability should be obvious to the public eye.
Yes. Elizabeth sighed. Circumstances were going to force her to play the hypocrite for a while longer. Poor Manley. He did not deserve such shabby treatment. She felt very guilty.
“Ahhh!” Christina’s comment on the show’s finale mingled regret and contentment, “But we just got here.”
“Two hours ago.” Her father chuckled. “How about ices? Would it be terribly wicked to have them twice in one week, I wonder?”
Christina turned to look solemnly at him. She shook her head.
“No,” she said.
“No ices?” His eyes widened.
Christina giggled. “Not wicked, silly,” she said.
He turned to look at Elizabeth, his eyes still laughing, and her heart turned over. Stupidly. Ah, foolishly.
Would she marry him, then? she asked herself. He wanted her to.
She could marry no one else, and Christina needed a father. So would this new child. Why not their natural father? She could live at Penhallow for the rest of her life. Her children could grow up there.
The thought was treacherously sweet. But could she ever forgive him?
Or trust him again? How long did one withhold forgiveness before doing so became mere stubbornness? How much did one harm only oneself if one was unable to trust?
But he had wrecked their marriage. He had married her only for her dowry. More recently he had taken away her freedom and had thought nothing of seducing her when even her freedom of mind was gone. How could she trust him with what remained of her life and with her children’s lives?
Children! She had his child in her.
“Are you all right?” He was looking searchingly at her after lifting Christina into his carriage and turning to hand her in.
She nodded. “I am just hoping that she will not get sick from too many ices,” she said.
“I think there is more chance of you and me getting fat,” he said.
“We could just watch her eat, I suppose, but that would involve an almost superhuman self-denial, wouldn’t it?”
“More than almost,” she said. “Thank you, Christopher. You have made her very happy this afternoon.”
She would have to go back to Kingston, she supposed. The thought was depressing. She loved Kingston, but it was her childhood home. The adult in her wanted her own home now. And of course Martin would come there with her. She loved Martin dearly and was ever grateful for the time he had spent with her during those years when she had desperately needed him. But Martin too was the companion of her childhood. She was an adult now. She needed—oh, she needed a mate, a husband.
“I’ll burst not telling Uncle John,” Christina was saying in a voice that was at the level of a shriek. “But I won’t tell. It will be such fun when he brings me back here and I can tell him what the horses and the people are going to do.”
As soon as Christopher had sat down in the carriage next to Elizabeth, Christina had crossed from the seat opposite and climbed onto his lap, seemingly without conscious thought, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
As if she were out for an afternoon’s treat with her mama and papa.
Winnie was excited to be going to Vauxhall. It was an evening entertainment and people from all classes of society went there to dance and eat and stroll along the many walks and beneath the swaying lanterns in the trees. Often there were fireworks. To Winnie it sounded as if it must be one of the seven wonders of the world.
She and Antoine had seen London by day during their time off.
They had exclaimed with astonishment over the wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s and found the courage to climb to the Whispering Gallery in St. Paul’s and marveled at all the statues in Westminster Abbey. They had wandered among the stalls of a street market, and Antoine had bought a length of bright red ribbon for Winnie’s hair. Winnie had felt some of the terror and tension of those last weeks at Penhallow begin to drain from her.
There was a special thrill to knowing that they were going to Vauxhall, she and Antoine. She was as excited as Lady Nancy and Lord Trevelyan must be feeling to be going to a ball at Lord Clemens’. They had given her and Antoine the night off since they had been invited out to dinner before the ball and never worried about having assistance when they returned home late.
A whole evening free to spend at Vauxhall!
“Ah, ma petite,” Antoine said, looking at her appreciatively when they were ready to leave, “ ‘ow pretty you look. You wear the red ribbon.”
She had threaded it through her hair, not sure that it was the right thing to wear with her best blue dress. But it was beautiful satin ribbon. She could not bear not to wear it.
“Mr. Bouchard?” she said anxiously. “It will be all right for us to go to Vauxhall? I mean us being servants and all that?”
“Everyone will look at you and think you are a duchess,” he said.
“And once they ‘ave looked at you, Winnie, they will not even see Antoine.”
Winnie giggled. Sometimes she surprised herself when she did so.
She had not thought that she would ever laugh again.
She was enormously happy when they arrived at Vauxhall, because no one turned them away at the gate and no one looked askance at them when they were inside. And the gardens were magical. The trees and the lanterns made a fairyland of them and the music wafting from the pavilion made one forget about the ordinary world beyond.
The wealthier people seated in the boxes were eating and drinking, but Winnie was not hungry. There was too much splendor to be devoured and drunk in from her surroundings for physical hunger to intrude.
“Oh, Mr. Bouchard,” she said, clinging to his arm lest they be separated in the crowds that milled before
the pavilion and boxes, “isn’t this the most wonderful place in the world? Isn’t it?”
“I think it is, little one,” he said, patting her hand.
They did not want to sit or eat or dance. They strolled the paths instead, their arms linked, not saying much. There was too much to see.
And yet despite herself Winnie found her exuberance slipping from her as the evening wore on. She forced herself to smile and to feel the wonder of it all. It would be a terrible sin to feel dissatisfied. She was not sure about the people in the boxes and on the dance floor. Maybe they were at Vauxhall merely to enjoy themselves. But that was not true of the people who strolled the walks. They were almost invariably couples and almost all unmistakably lovers. There was a way couples had of walking, their shoulders touching, sometimes even with their arms about each other’s waists, talking quietly together, their eyes tangled up with each other, oblivious of their surroundings or other people that proclaimed them lovers.
Winnie, walking with-her arm linked through Antoine’s, wearing her best dress and her red satin ribbon, knew that she was on the outside looking in. And that it would always be that way.
Antoine touched her fingers. “What is it, ma petite?” he asked.
She smiled quickly up at him and shook her head. But there was no point in saying “Nothing” as she had been about to do. Antoine had grown very sensitive to her moods. She felt a tickle in the back of her throat and hoped she was not about to cry.
“I am being very ungrateful to you and the kind chance that brought me here,” she said. “I am feeling sad, Mr. Bouchard. Isn’t that silly?”
“Non,” he said. “You wish you really were a duchess, Winnie, and sitting in one of the grand boxes?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t want to be a duchess or a grand lady, Mr. Bouchard. I just wish—I just wish I could be like other people.”
“And you cannot?” he asked her. “Because of what ‘appened to you? You are as clean and as pure as a newborn lamb, ma chère. But Antoine cannot quite understand, eh? ‘E is just a stupid man.”
She shook her head. “No, you are not,” she said. “But sometimes I wake up and think of the old dream of having a husband and a little home and maybe a few children and living happily ever after. And then I remember. And everything seems spoiled, Mr. Bouchard. The whole world seems spoiled.”
“It is not impossible, ma petite,” he said gently. “The dream.”
“Yes, it is.” She spoke passionately. “Even if someone was willing to have me, I cannot bear to be touched, Mr. Bouchard. I am afraid that every man is going to be like him. I know it isn’t true, but I keep thinking it.”
“But you let me touch you, Winnie,” he said.
“That’s different.” She looked earnestly into his eyes. “You are my friend and you are wonderful. I would trust you with my life, Mr. Bouchard. You fancied me, didn’t you, before—I know you did. But you never showed disgust after you knew. And you never tried to take advantage of me, neither, even though I was a whore.” She began to sob and hid her face against his arm, ashamed both of her tears and of what a man had made her into against her will.
“Mon Dieu!” Antoine said. “Is that what you think you are, my little Winnie? Non, non, non, that is the great foolishness. An ‘ore sells ‘er body for money. You ‘ave never done that.”
“But he gave me money,” she wailed.
Antoine set an arm about her shoulders and drew her off the public path on which they had come to a halt and a little way down a darker, narrower path.
“’What you need, Winnie,” he said, “is another man to love you and make you feel good again. You ‘ave always been good, my little one, but you think you are bad. And you are afraid. You must meet someone else, someone good, and try to like ‘im and trust ‘im.”
“You are the only good man I know, Mr. Bouchard,” she said. “I like you and trust you.”
Antoine held her shoulders with firm hands. “I am not right for you, Winnie,” he said. “Antoine is not right for you. ‘E cannot settle in England. ‘E feel the craving for Canada again and freedom. For that little farm where everyone speak French and worship in the Catholic church and ‘ave big, big families.”
Winnie sniffed and drew a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress. “You have been so kind to me, Mr. Bouchard,” she said. “I don’t want you to think that I am trying to trap you. You deserve far better than what I have become. But please, because it is Vauxhall and I am wearing my best dress and my new ribbon—”
She stopped and set her forehead against his chest.
“Yes, ma petite,” he said, his fingers light against the back of her neck. “Antoine show you that you are pretty and desirable because you are Winnie and not just because of the pretty dress and ribbon. And you tell Antoine if you are frightened and ‘e will stop.”
She lifted her face and he set his lips to hers, lightly, closed, and slid his arms about her to draw her against him. After a few seconds she could feel her lips tremble out of control. She had sought comfort in his arms before, but this was different. The mere touching of their mouths indicated that this was sexual contact between them. He parted his lips slightly so that he could control her trembling.
And she remembered. She remembered being bent forward over the tree branch and her skirt and petticoat being flung over her head and her legs forced apart. She remembered the stabbing of pain and humiliation and violation. The loss of her world. The loss of everything that had made life worth living.
“Ma petite, ma petite.” Antoine was holding her hands in a warm clasp, and she realized she must have panicked. “You do not ‘ave to fight Antoine. ‘E will not force anything from you, you see. Come. We go back where there are people and you will feel safe again.”
She stared at him blankly. “He didn’t kiss me,” she said. “He just did that other thing. I don’t think there can be anything uglier in this world.”
He cupped her face with gentle hands. “Ah, you are right, my little one,” he said. “Rape is an ugly, ugly thing. But love can be beautiful, Winnie. I ‘ope that one day there will be a man who will teach you that. You should ‘ave that ‘ome and those children.”
“Kiss me again,” she whispered. “Please? I won’t fight you again.”
He kissed her, holding her face with light hands, moving his lips warmly and gently over hers, up to her eyelids, down to her chin. She was gripping the lapels of his coat when he lifted his head. Winnie smiled at him.
“When you first came to the house with Lord Trevel-yan,” she said, “I used to look at you and I used to try to imagine you doing that.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling back. “Was it as good as in the imagination, eh?”
“Yes,” she said. “No. It was better. It made me feel good down to my toes.”
“We go back to the main path now, non?” he said. “Antoine is a man, you know, and you are a beautiful woman, ma petite, and this path is too lonely.”
Her eyes widened. “You want me, Mr. Bouchard?” she said. “That was not just kindness?”
“Sacré coeur!” Antoine said.
She set a trembling hand against his cheek, which was still smooth from the careful shave he had given himself before coming out. “It would be beautiful with you, Mr. Bouchard,” she said. “I know it would be beautiful. You would make me forget the ugliness, and when I remembered I would remember only that it can be beautiful.”
“Winnie, ma chère,” he said, “I can’t ‘urt you. I ‘ave nothing to offer you. No future. I cannot live as an English servant even if I ‘ave the best master in the world. I will be leaving before the last ship sails before winter. I will not come back.”
“I don’t want to keep you here,” she said. “I don’t want to burden you. I want one good memory. Just one, Mr. Bouchard. If you want me. Not if you don’t. Not just out of kindness. But if you want me. I don’t want to be afraid all my life. I don’t want to think life is ugly for the rest of my days. I
want to remember my wonderful friend and how he made life beautiful again.”
She could hear him inhaling as he held her to him. She shut her eyes very tightly, not at all sure whether she hoped for acceptance or rejection. Either prospect held terror for her.
“Not ‘ere, Winnie,” he said. “Not on the cold, ‘ard ground for your beautiful loving. I would want to put you under me, and you would need a soft mattress at your back.”
Winnie could feel her cheeks grow hot. “Then back in my room or yours,” she said.
“No, my little one,” he said. “We might get caught and it would look all wrong. It would look like something dirty. We find an ‘otel, oui?”
It was suddenly all startlingly real. She had not really expected that he would agree. Had she? But then she had not planned to ask him until a moment before she had spoken.
“Yes, Mr. Bouchard,” she said.
They missed the fireworks after all. At the time they were lighting up the sky over Vauxhall and delighting dozens of revelers, Winnie and Antoine were lying, relaxed and sleepy, in a cheap, shabby inn room that was nevertheless surprisingly clean and comfortable. Winnie was smiling against the broad chest of her lover.
“I didn’t ‘urt you, Winnie?” One hand was lightly massaging her scalp through her hair. Her precious ribbon had been laid carefully along the top of a chest of drawers.
“It was lovely,” she said. “You know it was lovely. I’m sorry I cried at first.”
His hand continued its lullaby. Winnie sighed with deep contentment but held herself back from sleep a few moments longer. She wanted to enjoy the feeling of beauty he had left behind with a slight soreness when he had withdrawn from her body after loving her. And she had something to say.
“Mr. Bouchard,” she whispered against his chest, “I want to tell you something. It is just to say thank you. A free gift, not a snare. I love you. I think you must be the most wonderful man in the world, and if you wanted it I would have all those children for you and I would learn French too and I would turn Catholic, even though my mum says the Pope is the Antichrist. I would leave England forever if you wanted me to. But when it comes time for you to go, I won’t cry over you or try to persuade you to stay or to take me with you. I’ll smile and wish you a safe voyage and a happy life. I will. Because I love you.”