Regency Innocents

by Annie Burrows

  Her jaw dropped open as she reeled back. ‘You wish to marry Heloise?’ she gasped.

  ‘Why not?’ he retorted. ‘I have already settled the matter with your papa,’ he turned to inform Heloise. ‘He thinks your family should make recompense to me for the insult your younger sister offered me. Since I have rather got used to the idea of returning to England with a bride, it might as well be you. And, before you raise any foolish objections, let me inform you that I expect your full cooperation.’ He bent a rather stern eye on her. ‘I have no wish to appear as an object for vulgar gossip. I do not want anyone to know your sister jilted me. You will explain, if you please,’ he said, turning once more to Madame Bergeron, ‘that naturally you are upset by Felice’s running off with a totally unsuitable man, but that it has no bearing on the relationship which already existed between me and her older, better-behaved sister.’

  The woman plumped down onto the sofa next to her husband.

  ‘People have grown used to seeing the three of us about together over the last few weeks. And while Felice was always the more flamboyant of the two, if we but stick to our story we can easily persuade people that it was Heloise all along who was the object of my interest. She is much better suited to becoming my countess, since her manner is modest and discreet. What man of breeding would want to take an outrageous flirt to wife?’

  ‘Heloise,’ her father now put in, rather sternly. ‘I hope you are paying attention to what his lordship is saying. As a dutiful daughter you must do all you can to protect the honour of this family. I expect you to submit to me in this, young woman! You will keep your mouth shut about how far things went between Felice and his lordship, and you will marry him.’

  Meekly bowing her head, Heloise replied, ‘Whatever you say, Papa.’

  Not wishing to linger any longer with that pair of opportunists, Charles ushered Heloise to the door.

  She stayed silent, her head bowed to conceal her jubilant expression from her parents, until they were outside. Her eyes ran over the smart two-wheeled carrick Charles had procured for the occasion with approval. She had recognised the vehicle the moment it had drawn up outside. He had borrowed it once before, from another English noble who had brought it over to Paris for the express purpose of cutting a dash in the Bois de Boulogne. When Charles had taken Felice out in it, he had hired two liveried and mounted servants to ride behind, ensuring that everyone knew he was someone, even if he had picked up his passenger from a modest little dwelling on the Quai Voltaire.

  Borrowing this conveyance, which he could drive himself, giving them the requisite privacy to plan their strategy whilst contriving to look as though they were merely being fashionable, was a stroke of genius.

  He tossed a coin to the street urchin who was holding the horses’ heads, and handed her up onto the narrow bench seat.

  ‘You were magnificent!’ she breathed, turning to him with unfeigned admiration as he urged the perfectly matched pair of bays out into the light traffic. ‘Oh, if only we were not driving down a public street I could kiss you. I really could!’

  ‘We are already attracting enough notice, mademoiselle, by driving about without a chaperon of any sort, without the necessity of giving way to vulgar displays of emotion.’

  ‘Oh!’ Heloise turned to face front, her back ramrod-straight, her face glowing red with chagrin. How could she have presumed to speak in such a familiar fashion? Never mind harbour such an inappropriate impulse?

  ‘You may place one hand upon my sleeve, if you must.’

  His clipped tones indicated that this was quite a concession on his part. Gingerly, she laid her hand upon his forearm.

  ‘I have decided upon the tale we shall tell,’ he said, ‘and it is this. Our alliance has withstood the scandal of Felice’s elopement with an unsuitable young man. I am not ashamed to continue my connection with your family. After all, your mother came from an ancient and noble house. That your sister has lamentably been infected by revolutionary tendencies and run off with a nobody has nothing to do with us.’

  The feeling of happiness which his put-down had momentarily quelled swelled up all over again. She had known that if anyone could rescue her it was the Earl of Walton! He had grasped the importance of acting swiftly, then taken her rather vague plan and furnished it with convincing detail. She had always suspected he was quite intelligent, even though he had been prone to utter the most specious drivel to Felice. What was more, he would never let her down by making a slip in a moment of carelessness, like some men might. He was always fully in control of himself, regarding men who got drunk and made an exhibition of themselves in public with disdain.

  Oh, yes, he was the perfect man to carry her scheme through successfully!

  ‘I was planning to announce my engagement officially at Lady Dalrymple Hamilton’s ball last evening.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied. It had been his decision to make that announcement which had finally driven Felice to take off so precipitously. She had hoped to keep him dangling for another week at the very least. Heloise worried at her lower lip. She hoped Felice had managed to reach Jean-Claude safely. Although he had gone ahead to Switzerland, and secured a job with a printing firm, he had planned to return and escort Felice across France personally.

  ‘No need to look so crestfallen. I do not expect you to shine in society as your sister did. I will steer you through the social shoals.’

  ‘It is not that!’ she replied indignantly. She might not ‘shine’, as he put it, but she had mingled freely with some of the highest in the land. Why, she had once even been introduced to Wellington! Though, she admitted to herself with chagrin, he had looked right through her.

  He glanced down at the rim of her bonnet, which was all he could see of her now that she had turned her head away.

  How shy she was. How hard she would find it to take her place in society! Well, he would do all he could to smooth her passage. It was her idea, after all, that was going to enable him to salvage his pride. He would never have thought of something so outrageous. He owed her for that. And to start with he was going to have to smarten her up. He was not going to expose her to ridicule for her lack of dress sense.

  ‘Deuce take it,’ he swore. ‘I’m going to have to buy you some more flattering headgear. That bonnet is the ugliest thing I think I’ve ever seen.’ He leant a little closer. ‘Is it the same unfortunate article you trampled so ruthlessly in my drawing room this morning?’

  She looked up at him then, suddenly cripplingly conscious of how far short of the Earl’s standard she fell. ‘It is practical,’ she protested. ‘It can withstand any amount of abuse and still look—’

  ‘Disreputable,’ he finished for her. ‘And that reminds me. While we are shopping, I shall have to get you a ring.’

  His eyes narrowed as a look of guilt flickered across her mobile little features. No wonder she did not attempt to tell lies, he reflected. Her face was so expressive every thought was written clearly there.

  ‘What is it?’ he sighed.

  ‘First, I have to tell you that I do not wish you at all to take me shopping!’ she declared defiantly.

  ‘You are unique amongst your sex, then,’ he replied dryly. And what is second?’

  And second,’ she gulped, the expression of guilt returning in force, ‘is that you do not need to buy me a ring.’ Holding up her hand to prevent his retort, she hastened to explain, ‘I already have a ring.’

  He stiffened. ‘Our engagement may not have been my idea, mademoiselle, but it is my place to provide the ring.’

  ‘But you already have. That is—’ She blushed. ‘The ring I have is the one you gave Felice. The very one that made her run away. She gave it to me.’

  ‘The ring … made her run away?’ He had chosen it with such care. The great emerald that gleamed in its cluster of diamonds was the exact shade of Felice’s bewitching eyes. He had thought he was past being hurt, but the thought that she found his taste so deficient she had run to another ma
n …

  ‘Yes, for until that moment it had not been at all real to her,’ he heard Heloise say. ‘She thought you were merely amusing yourself with a little flirtation. Though I warned her over and over again, she never believed that she could hurt you. She said that nobody could touch your heart—if you had one, which she did not believe—and so you made the perfect smokescreen.’

  ‘Is that estimation of my character supposed to be making me feel better?’ he growled.

  ‘Perhaps not. But at least it may help you to forgive her. It was not until you gave her that ring that she understood you really had feelings for her. So then of course she had to run away, before things progressed beyond hope.’

  ‘In short, she would have kept me dangling on a string indefinitely if I hadn’t proposed marriage?’

  ‘Well, no. For she always meant to go to Jean-Claude. But she did not mean to hurt you. Truly. She just thought—’

  ‘That I had no heart,’ he finished, in clipped tones.

  Inadvertently he jerked on the reins, giving the horses the impression that he wished them to break into a trot. Since they were approaching a corner, there were a few moments where it took all his concentration to ensure they were not involved in an accident.

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Heloise was gripping onto his sleeve with both hands now, her face puckered with concern. ‘Now I have made you angry again, which is precisely what I wished not to do. For I have to inform you that when we are married, if you forbid me to contact her, knowing that I must obey I will do so—but until then I fully intend to write to her. Even if she has wronged you, she is still my sister!’

  The moment of danger being past, the horses having been successfully brought back to a brisk walk, she folded her arms, and turned away from him, as though she had suddenly become interested in the pair of dogs with frills round their necks which were dancing for the amusement of those strolling along the boulevard.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he replied, reaching over to take her hand and place it back upon his own arm. ‘You fully intend to bow to my every whim, don’t you, once we are married?’

  ‘Of course! For you had no thought of marrying me until I put the notion in your head, so the least I can do is be the best wife you would wish for. I will do everything I can,’ she declared earnestly. ‘Whatever you ask, I will do with alacrity!’ Pulling herself up short, she suddenly frowned at him suspiciously. ‘And, by the way, why did you suddenly change your mind about me? When you made me leave, you seemed so set against it!’

  ‘Well, your proposal was so sudden,’ he teased her. ‘It took me by surprise. Naturally I had to consider …’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I may have surprised you, but you had made up your mind it was an absurd idea.’

  ‘So absurd, in fact,’ he countered, ‘that nobody would credit it. Nobody would believe I would take one Mademoiselle Bergeron merely to save face at being embarrassed by the other Mademoiselle Bergeron. And therefore they will have to believe that you were the object of my interest all along.’

  When she continued to look less than convinced by his complete about-face, he decided it was high time he regained control of the conversation.

  ‘Now, getting back to the ring. May I enquire, although I somehow feel I am about to regret doing so, why your sister left it with you? The normal practice, I should remind you, when an engagement is terminated, is for the lady to return the ring to the man who gave it to her.’

  ‘I had it with me when I came to visit you this morning,’ she declared. ‘I was going to return it to you for her if you should not agree to my suggestion.’

  ‘Indeed?’ His voice was laced with scepticism. ‘And yet somehow it remains in your possession. How did that come about, I wonder?’

  ‘Well, because you were so beastly to me, if you must know! I told you the deepest secret of my heart and you laughed at me. For the moment I quite lost my temper, and decided I should do with it exactly as Felice said I ought to do! For you are so wealthy it is not as if you needed to have it back, whereas for me …’

  She let go of his arm again, folding her own across her chest with a mutinous little pout which, for the first time in their acquaintance, made Charles wonder what it would be like to silence one of her tirades with a kiss. It would probably be the only way to stop her once she had built up a head of steam. Something in the pit of his stomach stirred at the thought of mastering her militant spirit in such a manner. He shook his head. It was not like him to regard sexual encounters as contests of will. But then, he frowned, when had he ever had to do more than crook his finger for a woman to fall obediently in line with his every whim?

  ‘I take it you meant to sell it, then?’

  Heloise eyed his lowered brows contritely.

  ‘Yes,’ she confessed. ‘Because I needed the money to get to Dieppe.’

  ‘Dieppe?’ He shook himself out of his reverie. ‘What is at Dieppe?’

  ‘Not what, but who. And that is Jeannine!’

  ‘Jeannine?’ he echoed, becoming fascinated in spite of himself. ‘What part does she play in this farce, I wonder?’

  ‘She was Maman’s nurse, until she eloped with Papa.’

  ‘There seems to have been a great deal of eloping going on in your family.’

  ‘But in my parents’ case it was a good thing, don’t you think? Because even if they were terribly poor for the first few years they were married, since my grandpapa cut her off entirely, she was the only one to survive the Terror because her family were all so abominably cruel to the menu peuple—the common people, that is. Jeannine was cast out, but she married a fermier, and I know she would take me in. I would have to learn how to milk a cow, to be sure, and make butter and cheese, but how hard could that be?’

  ‘I thought it was hens,’ he reflected.

  ‘Hens?’

  ‘Yes, you said when you married me you would live in a cottage so that you could keep hens. Now I find that in reality you would rather milk cows and make cheese.’ He sighed. ‘I do wish you would make up your mind.’

  Heloise blinked. Though the abstracted frown remained between his brows, she was almost sure he was teasing her. ‘I do not wish to milk cows at all,’ she finally admitted.

  ‘Good. Because I warn you right now that no wife of mine will ever do anything so plebeian. You must abandon all these fantasies about living on a farm and tending to livestock of any sort. When we return to England you will move in the first circles and behave with the decorum commensurate with your station in life. You are not to go anywhere near any livestock of any description. Is that clear?’

  For a moment Heloise regarded the mock sternness of his features with her head tilted to one side. She had never been on the receiving end of one of these teasing scolds before. Whenever he had been playful like this, she had never been able to understand how Felice could remain impervious to his charm.

  ‘Not even a horse?’ she asked, taking her courage in both hands and deciding to play along, just once. ‘I am quite near a horse already, sitting up here in your carriage.’

  ‘Horses, yes,’ he conceded. ‘You may ride with me, or a suitable companion in the park. A horse is not a farm animal.’

  ‘Some horses are,’ she persisted.

  ‘Not my carriage horses,’ he growled, though she could tell he was not really the least bit cross.

  The ride in the fresh air seemed to be doing him good. He was far less tense than he had been when they set out. Oh, it was not to be expected that he would get over Felice all at once, but if she could make him laugh now and again, or even put that twinkle in his eye that she could see when he bent his head in her direction to give her this mock scold, she would be happy.

  ‘What about dogs, then? What if I should go into some drawing room and a lady should have a little dog. Must I not go into the room? Or should I just stay away from it? By, say, five feet? Or six?’

  ‘Pets, yes—of course you will come across pets from time to time. That is not what I me
ant at all, you little minx!’

  Pretending exasperation he did not feel, to disguise the fact he was on the verge of laughter, he said, ‘No wonder your brother said I should end up beating you. You would drive a saint to distraction!’

  ‘I was only,’ she declared with an impish grin, ‘trying to establish exactly what you expected of me. I promised to behave exactly as you would wish, so I need to know exactly what you want!’

  He laughed aloud then. ‘You, mademoiselle, were doing nothing of the kind.’ Why had he never noticed her mischievous sense of humour before now? Why had he never noticed what an entertaining companion she could be when she put her mind to it? The truth was, he decided with a sinking feeling, that whenever Felice had been in the room he’d had eyes for nobody else. With her sultry beauty and her vivacious nature she had utterly bewitched him.

  Flicking the reins in renewed irritation, he turned the curricle for home.

  Chapter Three

  His eyes, which a moment ago had been twinkling with amusement, had gone dull and lifeless. It was as though he had retreated into a dark and lonely room, slamming the shutters against her.

  She was positively relieved to get home, where her maman greeted her with enthusiasm.

  ‘I never thought to have secured such a brilliant match for my plain daughter!’ she beamed. ‘But we must do something about your attire,’ she said as Heloise untied the ribbons of the one bonnet she possessed. ‘He cannot want people thinking he is marrying a dowd.’

  Hustling her up the newly carpeted stairs to the room she had shared with Felice, her mother grumbled, ‘We do not have time to cut down one of Felice’s gowns before tonight. If only I had known,’ she complained, flinging open the doors to the armoire, ‘that you would be the one to marry into the nobility, we could have laid out a little capital on your wardrobe.’

  Nearly all the dresses hanging there belonged to Felice. From the day the allies had marched into Paris the previous summer, what money her parents had been able to spare had been spent on dressing her sister. She had, after all, been the Bergeron family’s secret weapon. She had flirted and charmed her way through the ranks of the occupying forces, playing the coquette to the hilt, whilst adroitly managing to hang onto her virtue, catapulting the family to the very heart of the new society which had rapidly formed to replace Napoleon’s court.