The French Affair (Endearing Young Charms Book 2)

by M C Beaton

  They had come by the stage, and Mrs. Bencastle had seen no reason why they should not leave that way, but Delphine had insisted that they take the carriage.

  “Oooof!” huffed Maria Bencastle. “Good riddance. Now I can be comfortable again.” And so by way of making herself comfortable, she went in search of Delphine to complain about the two old gentlemen and to treat that young lady to a harangue on the unscrupulous, un-English behavior of the French. Delphine listened to all this with her former stoic calm, and Mrs. Bencastle felt more than ever that life had returned to normal.

  A week passed, and Mrs. Bencastle found she could not keep such a delicious piece of gossip to herself. Harriet Bryce-Connell would gladly serve a delicious tea in return for such a fascinating piece of news.

  She dressed accordingly in her best black silk, seized her beloved umbrella, and informed Delphine that she wished the use of the landau to “make a few calls.”

  Delphine graciously inclined her head, suppressing a sigh of relief. For she had planned to leave for London that day and had already been thinking up various ruses to keep Maria away until she had effected her departure. Now no lies would be necessary.

  But Delphine could not resist calling sweetly after Mrs. Bencastle as she heaved her bulk into the landau, “Do not forget to tell dear Harriet all about my French visitors.”

  “As if I would,” said Mrs. Bencastle, turning puce.

  “As if you wouldn’t,” murmured Delphine as the landau bore Mrs. Bencastle away.

  Now to London … and her wedding day.

  Delphine had made her plans carefully. Her servants were to leave her at Madame Beauchair’s flat in Manchester Square and then return immediately with the carriage to Marsham Manor.

  They were to tell Mrs. Bencastle that she had decided to stay in London for a few days. Madame Beauchair had made all the arrangements. Her modest flat was to serve for Delphine’s wedding night.

  Delphine did not for a moment imagine any intimacy taking place between herself and her husband until perhaps they came to know each other very well. But she was reluctant to return with him immediately after the wedding to Marsham Manor.

  Reality began to gnaw at the edges of Delphine’s dream as soon as the carriage rolled away and she was left alone with Madame Beauchair.

  Madame Beauchair was a middle-aged lady of quite terrifying gentility. She spoke French in a low whisper, as if frightened of being overheard, until Delphine ended up practically shouting at her in the hope that her own raised voice would heighten the ghostly whisper of Madame Beauchair’s.

  Madame Beauchair was timid and faded. Her clothes were very elaborate and very grand and very worn. The lace at her neck and wrists was yellow with age, and her silk gown had once been cut to accommodate the large hooped panniers of the last century, and, without its hoops, it trailed along the ground at her feet in great folds of dusty material.

  Then the flat was rather like its occupant. It was sparsely furnished, with everything seeming dull and threadbare. There was one small servant who acted as housemaid, cook, parlor maid, and lady’s maid, a thin red-handed waif of a creature who started at shadows. Madame Beauchair ordered the girl here and there as if commanding a whole army of servants.

  But she stressed the joy of carrying out poor Félice’s wishes so much—Félice being Delphine’s late mother—that Delphine found she had not the courage to protest that the whole idea had been a terrible mistake.

  And yet, as they were ready to leave for the church, she was seized with a desire to escape. It was as if the fresh air and sunshine outside had restored her to normality. The whole thing was preposterous! She must have been mad. She was on her way to marry some man she had never set eyes on. Preposterous!

  She took a deep breath of spring air and turned to tell Madame Beauchair so, but she found that lady looking at her with tears in her eyes and whispering,

  “I am so happy. Dear Félice. Her sacrifice was not in vain.”

  “Sacrifice?” Delphine looked at Madame Beauchair with wide, haunted eyes.

  “Oh, yes. Dear Monsieur le Marquis said it was believed she could have escaped, but she and your father stood at the window, looking down at the mob, until the flames engulfed them. Monsieur le Marquis believes now that they did that so that Sir George could manage to carry you to safety while the crowd’s attention was fixed on themselves. But they did not die in vain! Delphine de Fleuris is to marry the Comte Saint-Pierre at last.”

  Numbly, Delphine bowed her head, an odd little bow of assent. She could never voice her doubts now.

  As the hired hack bore them towards the church, Delphine wondered if her gown was not too severe. She was wearing a gray silk, high-waisted gown with triple flounces at the hem and a gauzy pereline of sky blue muslin about her shoulders. Her bonnet was a tiny confection of ribbons and artificial flowers, and her glossy brown curls had been dressed in a simple style.

  Perhaps her husband would expect her to appear in a bride’s gown.

  The church was in a quiet alley near Soho Square, a small soot-blackened church which looked as if it were slowly sinking into the ground.

  The Marquis de Graux was to give her away, with Madame Beauchair acting as maid of honor. Monsieur Renaud was to perform the duties of bride’s man.

  Delphine’s arm trembled in that of the Marquis de Graux as he led her into the gloom of the small, empty church.

  Two figures stood before the priest at the altar. Monsieur Renaud and her future husband.

  Delphine received only a vague impression that he was very tall and very fair.

  There were no organ, no flowers, and no choir.

  In a dream, she mechanically made her responses, not once looking up at the tall figure next to her. At one moment during the service, a fit of hysteria seized her mind.

  Naturally they had not thought she would need any rehearsal. After all, she had been married before!

  She emerged as if from a dream when she held out her hand for the ring as she heard herself pronounced the wife of the Comte Saint-Pierre.

  Delphine looked full into the face of her new husband for the first time.

  And drew in her breath on a sharp gasp of disbelief.

  She had seen those lazy blue eyes before, had seen that handsome aquiline face.

  The last time she had seen him, he had been juggling silver balls in the middle of Cavendish Square.

  It was the performer!

  Here was no dark and virile Frenchman, but a tall man who looked as English as the countryside around Marsham Manor. An English-looking gentleman who was a juggler—and a clown.

  Chapter Three

  Delphine’s first frantic thought was how to make the best of this bad bargain. She no longer felt French. She felt like an outraged English matron. Why on earth had she not insisted on meeting the man first! But she had wanted her dream, and the two old gentlemen had also seemed very anxious to keep the couple apart until the day of the wedding. Looking back, Delphine felt she had been subjected to a bout of madness. For the first time in her life, she would have welcomed the blunt speech and squat, reassuring figure of Maria Bencastle.

  They tricked me! was her predominant thought. No gentleman, French or English, who was worth his salt would perform before the common crowd.

  The wedding party walked a short way to a coffee house where a private room had been hired for the wedding breakfast.

  Delphine sat silently, hardly tasting her food, never looking at her husband, while her French guests ate and ate.

  At first they tried to draw her into the conversation, but after a while they gave up and talked among themselves of friends and acquaintances that Delphine did not know.

  Her husband spoke in French, his light, amused voice rattling away. It seemed odd that such an English-looking man should be French.

  At times, towards the end of the meal, he turned to her and spoke to her in English, pressing her to take more food and wine, which Delphine rudely and mulishly refu
sed.

  At last it was time for them to leave. Madame Beauchair was accompanying the two French gentlemen. Delphine and her new husband were to return to Manchester Square.

  As they stood outside the coffee house, the Marquis de Graux drew Delphine a little aside. “You appear upset, Madame la Comtesse,” he said.

  “This man,” said Delphine in a fierce whisper, “I have seen before. He was performing like any common mountebank at a fair. I believed you when you told me he was of sterling character.”

  “Ma foi! You are hard,” cried the Marquis de Graux. “We must eat and make what money we can. We cannot eat dignity!”

  “But there are other ways to make money,” said Delphine savagely. “I have been tricked.”

  “No,” said the Marquis de Graux sadly. “I swear you have not …”

  He broke off as the Comte Saint-Pierre joined them, having commandeered a hack.

  Delphine climbed in, shrugging off her husband’s hand as he would have assisted her. He took his place beside her, hauling down the glass and shouting cheerfully to the Marquis de Graux, Monsieur Renaud, and Madame Beauchair. Then he sank back in the carriage seat and turned a bewitching smile on Delphine’s stormy face.

  “We will talk soon,” he said gently. “Not now.”

  Delphine maintained a grim silence until they were back in the shabby flat in Manchester Square.

  She became burningly conscious of the double bed in the next room. Matters must be sorted out as soon as possible.

  She sat down and surveyed her new husband.

  Jules Saint-Pierre was, just as she had remembered him, very tall and very rakish. His eyes were blue and fringed with long, curling lashes. He had a proud nose, a mobile mouth, which curled easily into a mocking smile, and thick, guinea-gold fair hair confined at the nape of the neck with a black ribbon.

  He was wearing a blue morning coat with a striped waistcoat, canary yellow breeches, and Hessian boots. The clothes were new.

  He leaned back in an armchair, rested his head on the back, and looked under sleepy lids at his fulminating bride.

  “Out with it, ma cherie,” he said. “I confess I should like to go to bed and sleep and sleep and sleep. But I cannot rest with such a prickly rose as yourself obviously waiting to tell me what a dreadful mistake you have made. Now, what is there about me that is so shocking, I wonder? I am not a hunchback, I am not a drunkard, I have no money—but that you knew already … Come, choke it out.”

  Delphine removed her bonnet and set it very carefully on a table next to her.

  “You, sir, are a mountebank!” she said. Maria Bencastle would have been proud of her.

  “Go on.”

  “I have seen you before …”

  “Could I ever forget,” he interrupted.

  “… at a street fair juggling balls.”

  “Like this?” He dug into the pocket in the tails of his coat and produced six colored balls, which he proceeded to juggle in the air. “Stop!” cried Delphine.

  “Very well,” he said, recapturing the balls and putting them back in his pocket. “I must make a living, you know. We have all not been as fortunate as Delphine de Fleuris.”

  “Could you please try for a little dignity,” demanded Delphine, her color rising.

  “I can’t afford it, my sweeting. I am a good conjurer, and a good juggler. In between giving fencing lessons, French classes, and boxing lessons, I perform at street fairs. I am very successful. But the winters are hard.”

  “And how do you plan to gain money now?”

  He leaned his head back on the chair again and crossed his long fingers over his waistcoat.

  “By being married to you,” he said simply.

  “Does it not affect your pride that a woman should keep you?”

  He stifled a yawn. “Not in the slightest. I have worked and worked and worked ever since I escaped Madame Guillotine. Tell me, Delphine, do you never long to play?”

  “No,” lied Delphine, stubbornly forcing down all her recent longings for amusement and frivolity. “I work very hard managing the estates at Marsham Manor.”

  “Do you not entertain?”

  “I have no time for such things!”

  “Oh, my dear,” he said, sighing, “state your terms and let’s have an end to it. I confess when Madame Beauchair told me afterwards that the dazzling brunette who had given me a whole guinea at the fair was none other than Delphine de Fleuris, I thought the sun was shining on my foggy English world for the first time. But, mark you, I am not of a mind to be nagged come sunup and sundown. The marriage can be annulled.

  Why should we be martyrs to our dead parents’ wishes?”

  Delphine suddenly felt ashamed of herself. But the shadow of the large bed in the next room loomed large in her mind and she said hurriedly, “Well … well, we shall see how we rub along. But I must make one thing clear. This is to be a marriage of convenience in every respect. I shall provide you with a home and the … the elegances of life, and you, in return, must engage to keep to your part of the bargain. I loved Sir George Charteris, my late husband, dearly, and can never love anyone again. Nor do I wish to try.”

  “Tut-tut!” he said lazily. “There is but one bed, Delphine, in the middle of a wilderness of curst uncomfortable furniture, but since I agree to your terms, I see no reason why we cannot share it. You are not going to be precisely driven mad with wild passion, are you? No. And only consider, my love, how little the ladies wear in the streets and how very much they wear in bed.”

  “My dear sir, this is no joking matter!”

  “I was not joking,” he said plaintively.

  “And I accept your terms,” he continued. “Just so long as you don’t keep yammering at me and pouting in that way that quite ruins the shape of your delicious mouth. The shadow of the bulldog lies heavy upon you. When I look at you, I seem to see that stern guardian-lady who scowled so much over your shoulder at the fair.”

  “You will meet her when we return to Marsham,” said Delphine. “She is Mrs. Bencastle, Sir George’s sister.”

  “Ah, yes. Every pretty maiden should have a dragon.”

  “You will not find me ungenerous,” said Delphine, determined to be fair. “We will call on my lawyers tomorrow. I informed them of my forthcoming marriage by letter.”

  “My sweet, were I the mountebank and wastrel you think me,” he said gently, “I could take every penny from you. By this act of marriage, all you have becomes mine.”

  “I will kill you,” said Delphine, her eyes flashing, “if you ruin my estates or make one of my tenants suffer.”

  “Such noble rage,” he murmured. “No, my dear, my wants are simple. I have a desire to rusticate and sit in the country like a well-tended plant. You may go on as you have always gone on. You may handle the purse strings. According to the Marquis de Graux, you have been doing admirably since your husband’s death. Why should I wish to kill the fat goose? I shall lie around your mansion like a comfortable old dog, content to be fed and petted from time to time.”

  His eyes began to close.

  “Are you going to sleep at such a time?” demanded Delphine irritably.

  His eyes flew open. “No. I must repair to my lodgings and collect my traps. Come with me. It is a sunny day, and we cannot sit here forever, circling around each other like two stray cats.”

  Delphine hesitated, and then nodded her head. She would need to spend the rest of her life with him. Better to get accustomed to him now. Once back at Marsham Manor, she would arrange a separate suite of rooms for him and retire into her old ways, and then she need not see him much.

  And she had to admit reluctantly, although she still felt cheated, that he was infinitely pleasanter company than Mrs. Bencastle.

  “We shall walk,” said the comte, arranging his curly-brimmed beaver to a nicety on his fair hair.

  He waited until Delphine had put on her bonnet again. Madame Beauchair’s flat was on the first floor. It appeared she was lucky in
having the whole floor to herself. The other French tenants in the building seemed to have only a room apiece.

  The very warmth of the day felt foreign to Delphine as she walked through Manchester Square, listening to the sounds of French all about her. Previous springs had been hard and blustery, not warm and smiling like this one.

  Arm in arm, they turned down Duke Street and onto Oxford Street. At the corner of Oxford Street, two ladies whose layers of paint were thicker than the muslin of their dresses turned at the approach of the newly married couple.

  “Why, Monsoor Jules!” cried one. “Mr. Baxter was wondering where you had gone. You did not give him his French lesson.”

  “I am leaving for the country, Mrs. Baxter.” The comte smiled. “I shall not be returning to London for some time.”

  “But you mustn’t go away,” wailed the one called Mrs. Baxter. “Whatever shall we do without you? We could raise your fees.”

  Delphine turned her head away and tried to look as if she were invisible.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Jules Saint-Pierre. “Good day to you.”

  Mrs. Baxter flashed Delphine a venomous, jealous glance.

  This was to be the first of many such encounters on the couple’s way to Soho. Fathers demanded to know why he had not called to give their children French lessons, two noisy bloods who leered at Delphine asked when he would be resuming his boxing lessons, and so it went on.

  “I’ faith,” said the comte, tucking Delphine’s hand more securely under his arm, “I should have pretended to resign before! Only see how they are prepared to raise their fees! Yet I charged little, fearing if I charged more that they would find someone else among the hundreds of French Londoners.”

  “You did not introduce me to any of these people,” said Delphine severely.

  “No, of course not,” he replied equably. “It would be as good as saying ‘See, I have married a rich wife so I no longer need your fees.’ We have nearly arrived.”

  They walked through Soho Square and turned down a narrow cul-de-sac called Ramshorn’s Court.