From Courtesan to Convenient Wife

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘I take it she didn’t believe you? Hardly surprising, considering what you have more or less confessed to being known as a dedicated bachelor.’

  ‘Yes, but it was more than disbelief. She was—I don’t know, it is difficult to explain. At first she was quite distraught, but she very quickly recovered. That is when she produced the legal documents—her silver bullet—which she believed would substantiate her claim. And that is when I realised she was not, as I had assumed, simply a brazen and audacious opportunist who would be put off by the threat of an invisible wife. It wasn’t only that she didn’t believe I was married, you see, it was that she was extremely convincing in the strength of her own case. Of course, the chances were still high that she was an extremely convincing charlatan, but...’

  ‘It occurred to you that she might simply be, as you said, deluded.’

  ‘Yes, that is it. Either way, it was clear that she was not going to go away.’

  ‘And you were faced with the problem of admitting that you had lied when you said you were already married, or coming up with the evidence to back up your fiction.’

  ‘Precisely, though I did not immediately rush to The Procurer for help. My next step was to test her resolve by telling her that I wished my lawyer to examine the papers she had to support her claim. She handed them over willingly, informing me that she had expected no less. It was clear she had faith in their authenticity, and equally clear that it had not occurred to her that I might simply destroy them.’

  ‘Any more than it would have occurred to you, I assume?’

  ‘You assume correctly.’

  ‘That is reassuring,’ Sophia said, with an odd little smile. ‘So, Mademoiselle de Cressy’s seemingly innocent trust in you was, then, another point in her favour?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘And the documents, whatever they are?’

  Jean-Luc rolled his eyes. ‘Most likely genuine.’

  ‘So you hired me to prove to Mademoiselle de Cressy that regardless of these documents she has, she is, as we say in England, barking up the wrong tree? You cannot marry her, because you are already married?’ Sophia frowned down at her hands. ‘You have gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to call this woman’s bluff. Couldn’t you simply have paid her off?’

  ‘I offered to do just that, to make the problem go away, but she refused. She said she wanted what was rightfully hers, not blood money. As you will have realised by now,’ Jean-Luc continued, ‘the matter is complicated, and I am aware that you have only just arrived. You have not even seen your room.’

  He sat at an angle to her, his long legs tucked under the sofa, which had the effect of stretching his pantaloons tight over his muscled thighs. He might not look like an Adonis, but his build was reminiscent of one. His physical proximity made Sophia uncomfortable. Not unsafe, she was surprised to notice, but—odd. Her pulses were fluttering. It was because he was so close, a warning sign, she supposed, though she felt no inclination to move. ‘All in good time. I take it your plan is to introduce me to Mademoiselle de Cressy sooner rather than later?’

  ‘All in good time,’ he answered, smiling. ‘My plan for what remains of today is to allow you time to rest and recover from your journey. There is a good deal more to this tale, but it can wait.’

  Jean-Luc took her hands between his, a light clasp from which she could easily escape, which meant she had no need to. ‘I will have them bring you dinner in your room, and water for a hot bath, if you wish?’

  Sophia couldn’t imagine anything nicer. His thoughtfulness touched her. It had been so long since anyone had thought of her comfort, for in the end even Felicity...

  ‘That would be perfect,’ she said, desperately trying not to let fall the tears which suddenly stung her eyes. ‘I think I am a little fatigued after all. Merci, Jean-Luc.’

  ‘It is my pleasure, Sophia.’ He pressed her hands. Then he let her go.

  Chapter Two

  Jean-Luc was in his working in his office the next morning when his new wife appeared, looking much refreshed.

  ‘May I come in?’ Sophia asked. ‘The footman told me that you don’t like to be disturbed, but I thought...’

  He jumped to his feet to pull out a chair for her. ‘Remember that you are my wife, as far as the footman and every other servant is concerned. This is your household to command. In any event, you are not disturbing me. I am far too distracted to work, thanks to you. Are you rested?’

  ‘Fully.’ She took the seat he indicated, opposite him, but moved it forward, so that she could rest her hands on the desk which separated them. ‘Before you relate the rest of your story, I think it only fair that I reassure you, since you were so patient in reassuring me yesterday.’

  ‘Reassure me about what?’

  She smiled at him faintly. ‘You said that your reasons for bringing me here were life-changing. I should tell you that my reasons for agreeing to come are also life-changing. Coming to Paris, taking on this role, contract, commission, I’m not sure what to call it—this false marriage of ours, if I make a success of it, and I am determined to do just that, the money I will earn will allow me to quite literally change my life.’ She bit her lip, considering her words carefully. ‘I will be free. Free to make my own way in the world, on my own terms. For the first time in my twenty-six years I will be able to live only to suit myself, to finally discover what it is I like, what I want, what makes me happy. So you see, the stakes are too high for me to fail. You can have no idea how much that means to me. I won’t let you down.’

  There was a sparkle in her eyes, a tinge of colour that was not embarrassment in her cheeks, giving him a tantalising glimpse of the woman she could be, or would be, if she achieved her goal. He had thought her beautiful before, but seeing her like this, she positively glowed. ‘I can see for myself how much it means,’ Jean-Luc said, quite beguiled. ‘Thank you. May I say that I can think of no one I would rather pretend to be married to than you.’

  She laughed. ‘We have not even been married two days. I will be more flattered if you still think so in a week’s time.’

  ‘Actually, as far as the world is concerned, we have been married since March. But I get ahead of myself. Are you comfortable? Because the tale I’m about to relay is long and convoluted.’

  * * *

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Sophia said some time later. ‘I am utterly confounded. Juliette de Cressy not only claims that you are contracted to marry her, but that you are a duke!’

  ‘Of all the preposterous things this woman alleges, the lunatic notion that I might be the long-lost son of an aristocrat who went to the guillotine—’ Jean-Luc broke off, shaking his head. ‘Me! It is simply ridiculous.’

  ‘You know, most men would be both delighted and flattered to be informed they were of noble birth.’

  ‘Even if it means disowning the parents who raised them, who loved them and who tried to give them the best life possible in difficult circumstances? No.’ His mouth firmed. ‘I know who I am. My father—yes there were times when we did not agree, when I thought that he did not care for me, that he—he somehow resented me, but that is normal, for a father and a son, as one grows older, and the other stronger.’

  ‘I can imagine it would have been normal for you. I expect you were very sure of yourself, even as a boy.’

  Jean-Luc laughed. ‘What was your upbringing like? No, you need not answer,’ he added hurriedly, ‘I did not mean to pry.’

  Sophia hesitated. She was under no obligation to tell him anything, but it seemed wrong to shut him out completely when he had just confided so much to her. ‘My relationship with my father was difficult. He wanted a son. As a female, I was of limited use to him.’

  ‘But you knew he cared for you?’

  She knew he had not. ‘I never doubted he was my father,’ Sophia said, unwilling to lie.

 
‘You refer to him in the past tense.’

  ‘He died four years ago. My mother many years earlier. To return to the matter in hand,’ she said hurriedly, ‘are you saying that, thanks to Mademoiselle de Cressy, you are doubting your own parentage?’

  ‘Mon Dieu, no! The difficulties I spoke of were a long time ago. My father was very proud of my success. He told me not long before he died, ten years ago, just nine months after Maman, that he could not have asked for a better son.’ Jean-Luc’s hand tightened around the quill he had been fidgeting with. ‘For my father, that was quite an admission, believe me.’

  ‘More than I ever got,’ Sophia said with feeling. ‘My father never missed an opportunity to tell me that he had never wished for a daughter of any sort, never mind...’ Two. The pain took her by surprise, making her catch her breath. All too aware of Jean-Luc’s perceptive gaze on her, she took a firm grip of herself. ‘Never mind my father,’ she amended lamely. ‘We were talking of yours.’

  He waited, just long enough to make it clear he knew she was changing the subject, then set down his quill. ‘My father, Robert Bauduin, you mean, and not the Duc de Montendre.’

  ‘Indeed. May I ask how you plan to prove your heritage? I’m assuming that you doubt a simple introduction to me will send Mademoiselle de Cressy running for the hills. That you require me to be by your side to maintain the façade, in order to buy yourself the time you need to gather the evidence to quash her claim completely?’

  ‘Ah, you do understand.’

  ‘But of course. If a wife does not understand her husband, then she is a poor spouse indeed,’ Sophia quipped.

  Jean-Luc smiled, albeit faintly. ‘I must confess, I’m concerned as to how she will react when she does meet you. To date, she has quite simply refused to accept that I have a wife.’

  ‘Then we must hope that she does not try to eliminate me—an outcome not at all unlikely in the context of this tale, which is worthy of Shakespeare himself.’

  ‘Or perhaps more appropriately, Molière,’ Jean-Luc said drily, ‘for it has all the hallmarks of a farce. It is, to say the least, inconvenient that the agent which Maxime—Maxime Sainte-Juste, my lawyer, that is—sent to Cognac to retrieve documentary evidence of my birth, came back empty-handed.’

  Sophia wrinkled her nose. ‘You don’t find it odd that he couldn’t locate the certificate of your baptism?’

  Jean-Luc shrugged. ‘I was surprised, I had assumed that I was born in Cognac, and my parents had always lived there but they must have moved to that town when I was very young. I was born in 1788. It was a time when there was much unrest in the country, crops failing, the conditions which resulted in the Revolution. There could have been any number of reasons for my parents to have relocated.’

  ‘What about your grandparents then? You must know where they lived.’

  ‘I don’t. I never knew them, and have always assumed they died before I was born, or when I was too young to remember them.’

  ‘But there must have been other relatives, surely? Cousins, aunts, uncles?’

  ‘No one.’ Jean-Luc twisted his signet ring around his finger, looking deeply uncomfortable. ‘When you put it like that, it sounds odd that I never questioned my parents when they were alive, never even noticed my lack of any relatives at all when I was growing up.’

  ‘But why would you? Your parents are your parents, your family is your family.’

  ‘Yes, but most people have a family,’ he said ruefully. ‘It seems I did not, though of course I must have relatives somewhere. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I would even begin to look in order to locate them.’

  ‘What about family friends, then?’

  But once more, Jean-Luc shook his head. ‘None who knew my parents before I was born. You’re thinking that is ridiculous, aren’t you? You are thinking, there must be someone!’

  ‘I am thinking that it is extremely awkward for you that there is no one.’

  ‘Extremely awkward, and a little embarrassing, and very frustrating,’ he confessed. ‘I cannot prove who I am. More to the point,’ he added, his expression hardening, ‘I cannot prove to Mademoiselle de Cressy who I am, which means that...’

  ‘You must prove that you are not who she says you are, the long-lost son of the fourth Duc de Montendre.’

  ‘Exactement.’ Jean-Luc grimaced. ‘Unfortunately, not as straightforward a task as you might imagine. I have, however, made a start on testing the veracity of Mademoiselle de Cressy’s documents. Unlike me, she does have a baptism certificate. Maxime’s agent has been despatched to Switzerland to check it against the relevant parish records. If it proves to be legitimate, then his next task will be to attempt to obtain a description of Juliette de Cressy. As the only child of the recently deceased Comte de Cressy, there must be someone in the neighbourhood where she says she lived for all her twenty-two years who can shed some light on her.’

  ‘So she was born after her parents left Paris?’

  ‘If her parents were the Comte and Comtesse de Cressy—who were, incidentally, real people, that too I have established—then she was born six years after they arrived in Switzerland, fleeing Paris in the days when it was still possible to do so, before The Terror.’

  ‘And the marriage contract, it was written when?’

  ‘It is dated 1789, the year of the Revolution, and one year after I was born—not that that has anything to do with it.’ With an exclamation of impatience, Jean-Luc got to his feet, prowling restlessly over to the window to perch on the narrow seat in the embrasure, his long legs stretched in front of him. ‘The marriage contract appears to be signed by the sixth Comte de Cressy and the fourth Duc de Montendre. It stipulates a match between the Duc de Montendre’s eldest son, whose long list of names does not include mine, and any future first-born daughter of the Comte de Cressy.’

  ‘And this fourth Duc de Montendre was killed during the Terror?’

  ‘As was the Duchess, some time in 1794. This much Maxime has been able to discover, though the circumstances—there are so few records remaining, so much has been destroyed. It may be that the witnesses to the contract also—if they were loyal servants...’

  ‘They too may have gone to the guillotine?’

  ‘Like so many others. The final months of the Terror following the Revolution saw mass slaughter, so many heads lost for no reason. Maxime thinks that trying to prove Mademoiselle de Cressy wrong could turn into a wild goose chase.’

  ‘A whole flock of geese, by the sound of it. It sounds daunting in the extreme.’

  Jean-Luc grinned. ‘There is no finer lawyer than Maxime, and no better friend, but the reason he is so successful in his chosen profession is because he is a cautious man, and the reason I am so successful in my chosen profession—or one of them—is that I recognise when it is necessary to cast caution to the wind.’

  He returned to his seat behind the desk, picking up his quill again. ‘Maxime is right, though, it will not be a simple matter to prove I am not this Duke’s son. There have been many cases in France over the last few years, of returning émigrés or their apparent heirs, claiming long-lost titles and estates. With so many of the nobility and their dependents dead, so many papers lost, estates ransacked, it is very difficult to prove—or to disprove—such claims. And even if they prove to be true, in most cases, the reward is nothing, or less than nothing, you know? What money existed has long gone, along with anything of value which could be sold or stolen. No one really cares, you see, if Monsieur le Brun turns out to be the Comte de Whatever, if only the name is at stake.’

  ‘So it would be, ironically, easier for you to accept the title than to reject it?’

  ‘Equally ironically, acquiring a title, especially such a prestigious one, would, in the eyes of some, be of value to my business. It would,’ Jean-Luc said with a mocking smile, ‘be more prestigious to buy wine from the Duc de Montendre
that from Monsieur Bauduin.’

  ‘But it is not a mere title which mademoiselle would have you claim, but a wife. And another family. Another history.’

  ‘None of which I desire.’

  ‘No, but Mademoiselle de Cressy does. Which begs the question, if she is the real Juliette de Cressy, and the contract is valid, if her father really was the Comte, then why didn’t he pursue it when he was alive?’

  Jean-Luc nodded approvingly. ‘A good question, and one which you can be assured I asked her. She told me that her parents vowed never to return to France. For them, the country was tainted for ever by the Revolution, which is perfectly understandable—Paris must for them have been a city redolent with terrible memories. Her betrothal to the son of the Duke who was the Comte’s best friend, was a sort of family myth, she said, a story that she was told, and that she believed to be just that—a story. It was only when her father died, and she discovered the marriage contract in his papers, that she realised it was true. His death, she openly admits, left her penniless, for his pension died with him.’

  ‘So she came here, to Paris, to claim her only inheritance, which is you.’

  He shook his head. ‘According to her family tale, as Mademoiselle de Cressy tells it, the Duke sent his son to Cognac in the very early days of the Revolution, to keep him safe, to be raised in secret by a couple named Bauduin, until such a time as he could safely reclaim him. Only his best friend, the Comte de Cressy, was aware of the ruse, and the Comte and his wife fled France around about the same time as their daughter now claims I was sent to live in Cognac. And so it was to Cognac Mademoiselle de Cressy went first, when her father died. And from there, she claims, traced me to Paris—not a difficult thing to do, since my business originated in that town and the office which I keep there today bears my name. This element of her story is, obviously, the most dubious, and equally obviously, impossible to either prove or disprove.’