by Karen Ranney
Edinburgh in spring was a truly marvelous place. A bustling city, it had its share of noise—street vendors, carriages, conversation all mingled together. The crisp breeze that blew around the corner was redolent with a perfumed scent, reminding Jeanne of the flower markets of Paris. Every time she’d seen the blooms appear she’d known that spring had come and the damp frigid winter was gone.
This area of King Street was filled with black-lacquered carriages, high-stepping horses, and well-to-do pedestrians engaging each other in conversation. She nodded at the men who tipped their hats to her, charmed with the illusion of being, for a few moments, someone other than she was. For the of time it took to walk the length of King Street, she could have been a prosperous matron of Edinburgh and Davis might have been her child.
And her husband? She pushed the thought of Douglas away, but he returned.
Why had Douglas chosen to live in Edinburgh? What had his life been like? Where had he gone after leaving Paris? Had he seen the rest of the world like he wanted when he was seventeen? All questions for which she had no answers.
She found the goldsmith’s shop without any difficulty, since it faced King Street and looked to be very prosperous. CHARLES TALBOT, GOLDSMITH, was etched on the window and on a wooden sign bearing two entwined rings above the door.
A small, tinny-sounding bell rang at their entrance, summoning a man from behind a curtained alcove. His brown hair was tousled, as if he’d threaded his fingers through it. As she watched, he hurriedly dressed in a form-fitting coat. His appearance was rather incongruous, since he was still wearing a red apron. At her look, he glanced down at himself and smiled.
“I apologize,” he said, “but my apprentice is out and he would otherwise have greeted you.”
“I’m here on an errand for the Hartleys,” she said, retrieving the silver from the bottom of the basket. “I’ve been told that these pieces need to be mended. Can you do the work?”
He took the silverware and examined them one by one with great care.
“I can,” he said, when he’d finished studying each piece. “When do you need them returned?”
“Three days? Is that enough time?”
He nodded and smiled, but she noted that his eyes didn’t change expression. They remained carefully watchful as if he were naturally distrustful, even of his patrons.
“I’ll deliver them to you myself,” he promised.
She gave him the Hartley address, and a moment later she and Davis were on their way.
“Where we going now, miss?” Davis asked after they left the shop, the tinny little bell singing them farewell.
She consulted her list, before glancing at his expectant face. “No doubt we’ll find someplace to purchase a sweetmeat or two,” she said, understanding his eagerness. She had a few coins left over from her first quarter’s wages and she’d reward the child’s patience with a treat before returning to the house.
“Are you very sure?” he asked breathlessly.
“I’m very sure.” She smiled down at him, wondering if he would be such a worrier for the rest of his life. With her free hand she tousled his hair fondly, and smiled at him reassuringly.
“A charming picture,” Douglas said.
She should have been warned, somehow. But her thoughts had been free of him for a quarter hour and no premonition had occurred to her. Had she the power to conjure him up from an unspoken wish? If so, she wanted him to vanish just as quickly. A confrontation was unwise and unwelcome.
But Douglas didn’t look as if he would vanish at any moment.
He was dressed in a formal suit of clothes, a cravat wound expertly around his throat. He wore no hat, but he carried a walking stick topped with a gold knob.
She’d known the boy who’d studied at the Sorbonne, a questioning mind behind bright and shining blue eyes. The man who faced her was almost a stranger, except that she couldn’t forget those months of loving him.
There was something about his half smile, something that made her want to reach out with tremulous fingers and touch the edge of it to see if it was real. Or was it only her imagination once again? Had she only dreamed him here? But the gritty feeling in her eyes proved she hadn’t slept well, and Davis’s hand in hers was enough to make her believe herself awake.
“Miss du Marchand,” he said, bowing slightly.
“Mr. MacRae,” she said, only nodding. A deliberate rudeness, but perhaps it would hasten his departure.
In her tiny cell in the convent, she’d often thought of him, the memory of the touch of his lips against her shoulder a nightly benediction. She’d heard his voice in her dreams, and felt his hand on hers in the morning light. No doubt her life would have been easier if she hadn’t awakened each day missing him again. But she couldn’t bear to banish the memory of him from her mind.
Sometimes it was all she had.
But now he was real, standing before her. Douglas, wearing his most fascinating smile, tender and evocative at once. His eyes tilted down at the corners, giving him an almost slumberous appearance. The skin of his face was pulled tight over his cheekbones, and even this early there was a shadow of beard on his squared chin.
She’d been passionate as a girl, fascinated with his body. “I adore how you look naked,” she’d said once, giggling.
He’d rolled with her until she was under him. Using both hands, he speared them into her hair and threaded his fingers through the length of it. She always spent more time after she left him fixing her hair than her clothes, because despite her hairstyle, Douglas would insist upon it being loosened.
“You do, do you? What is it, especially, that you find entrancing?”
“Your shoulders,” she said, knowing that the answer surprised him. She reached out one hand and traced a path from the well at the base of his throat along the edge of his shoulders. “They’re so broad, so powerful,” she said softly. “You don’t look as though you could be so tender and sweet.”
“Sweet?” He pressed a kiss to the end of her nose. “Is that something you should call a man?”
“Only if he brings me a flower if he hasn’t seen me for a day,” she said, regarding him seriously. “Or wishes to know the contents of my dreams. Only if he writes me poetry.”
His cheeks had darkened, and she knew he was embarrassed at her words.
“What else about me do you love?” he asked, so obviously changing the subject that she smiled.
“Your chest,” she said, teasing him. She pressed her hand flat against his chest. Sometimes she forgot how much larger he was than she and that was because of the care he took with her. Never in their loving had he been coarse or rough. She’d believed, fool that she was, that coupling was always done with tenderness.
“A fine day, is it not, Miss du Marchand?” he asked now.
He was going to pretend that they didn’t know each other, that they hadn’t spent months as lovers, that she hadn’t been willing to give up everything she was or had been for him. Or that she hadn’t been destroyed when he’d abandoned her.
“Indeed it is,” she said, as accomplished at duplicity as he. Or perhaps she was more proficient, since she’d honed her skills at pretense for nine years.
“It doesn’t look like it will rain.”
“Indeed, it does not,” she answered, wishing he would leave.
They had told each other their deepest secrets. She had held him as he shuddered in passion. She had wept on his shoulder and he had wrapped his arms around her, allowing her to express the grief for her mother that no one else had ever wished to hear. They had laughed together, her arms linked around his neck, each of them becoming so weak with amusement that they’d needed the other’s support to stand.
“Have you a moment?”
“Regrettably, no.” There, her voice sounded as calm as his. But not as forceful. She pressed her fingers against the base of her throat, surprised to find that she felt cold. It was fatigue, no doubt, and not fear.
He took anoth
er step forward until he stood entirely too close. To a casual observer they might appear as friends who’d met unexpectedly and were speaking of everyday matters—anything but this pulsing silence that stretched between them, interrupted only by her thoughts.
And memories.
In Paris, when she was young, he greeted her after a separation by tilting her chin up and bending down to kiss her gently on the mouth. She always stood on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his neck, gloriously happy for the first time that day. For long minutes they would simply stand there, looking at each other, holding each other in the shaded beauty of the garden, the hours and minutes of separation finally ended as they relished being together once again.
Resolutely, she pushed those thoughts away, fingering the locket at her throat with one hand while Davis held the other.
“I must leave,” she said softly, hoping that her voice did not sound as choked to him as it did to her. “We have errands to perform.”
He glanced down at Davis, smiling easily. She did not feel as capable of such amusement, or absent fondness. Here she was, standing in front of him for the first time in years, and he acted as if he didn’t know her.
Four months escaped from France, three months a servant. Ten years since she’d seen him. Dear God, a lifetime had passed, but it still wasn’t long enough.
Bending down, he addressed Davis. “Go and tell my coachman to open the secret door inside my carriage. You’ll find some Edinburgh Rock there,” Douglas said, referring to the stiff white candy made by kneading syrup by hand while it was cooling. He pointed to where his carriage stood at the corner.
Davis turned and looked at her for permission. She nodded, then watched him race to the vehicle. Abruptly, she wanted to call him back.
“Do you always keep candy in your carriage?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, surprisingly. “My daughter enjoys it.”
The sudden pain she felt was as unexpected as his words.
“You have a daughter?”
She held herself so tightly that she thought the breeze might break her in two. So he had married. Life had continued for him, it seemed. She thanked Providence for the startling anger, since it was better than indulging in self-pity.
“I do.”
She adjusted the basket on her arm and smiled brilliantly, and falsely, at him.
“Thank you for your kindness to Davis,” she said, “but we must finish our errands.”
She would have stepped aside had he not reached out and touched her arm. Not on the sleeve, but below the cuff and above the wrist of her glove, exactly where her skin was exposed. The touch of flesh to flesh was so shocking that she halted, staring down at the place where his hand rested.
“Don’t touch me, please,” she said, feeling as if she might choke on the words. “Please remove your hand.”
Please, dear God, please step away. Turn away, leave. Get in your smart carriage and return to your wife. Your child. Leave me before I allow pity to take hold and weep in your arms. Or beg you to love me as you once did.
She lifted her gaze to his. “I must insist,” she said, and the miracle was not that she was able to speak the words but that they sounded so distant, so unaffected by his touch.
“Forgive me,” he said, removing his hand. “I’ve been intrusive. But then I’m not Hartley, am I?”
“What do you mean?”
She placed her own hand on the place he’d touched. Her arm still felt warm. She rubbed at the spot, a gesture that did not go unnoticed. His smile turned sardonic.
“Forgive me,” he said again. “I only thought to offer you a solution to your dilemma.”
“What dilemma might that be, Mr. MacRae?” she asked and then cursed her curiosity.
“Your employer has plans for you that do not include caring for his children.”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated for a moment and then spoke. “If you aren’t his mistress now, Miss du Marchand, you soon will be.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, startled not only that he was privy to Hartley’s intentions but that he would speak them aloud. Evidently, the rash and reckless young man had not disappeared completely.
“Hartley bragged of it.”
A shocking answer, and one for which she had no quick rejoinder. But then, she’d been cured of that habit in the convent. Speech was not only restricted, it was forbidden her for many years. She’d grown accustomed to her own thoughts but had lost the skill of conversation.
He did not seem to notice her lack as he waited patiently for her to answer him. She glanced to her right, to see Davis talking with the coachman, one cheek stuffed like a squirrel before winter.
“I escaped France on my own, Mr. MacRae,” she finally said, the words evoking too much recall. “I am capable of rebuffing such offers.”
“And if that isn’t enough?”
“Then I shall endure the situation.”
His face abruptly shuttered, the expression in his blue eyes flattened. There was nothing in his look that revealed his thoughts. How adept he’d become at hiding himself, almost as talented at the task as she. “You would consent to be Hartley’s mistress?”
“If I must.” Would he please leave? She was beginning to tremble, and if they remained there much longer he was certain to notice.
“I have a position,” he said, surprising her. “Although not carnal in nature. You’re a governess, and I have need of one.”
She glanced up at him, studying his face. “Do you?” she asked, feigning disinterest.
“Will you not consider it?”
“Caring for your child?” Was this hell, and she had somehow died in the escape from France? Was this the Almighty’s idea of a jest? Or was it, perhaps, one of her innumerable nightmares? No, she could feel her stomach clench and her knees weaken. That never happened in a dream.
Davis was suddenly there, tugging on her hand, pulling her back to her duties. Irritated at herself for so easily falling under the spell of the past, she turned away with no further word.
But he was not done with her, it seemed. He followed her and tapped her on the shoulder peremptorily.
She glanced at him and then away, realizing that she had never seen him angry before. He had only been a lover to her or a friend.
“You haven’t answered me, Miss du Marchand.”
“I have a position, Mr. MacRae. Thank you, but I believe I’ll keep it.”
“Even if you must become Hartley’s mistress?”
Davis looked at her curiously.
She turned and faced Douglas. “There are worse things than becoming a rich man’s mistress,” Jeanne said in a low voice. Her gaze was suddenly intent on the cobbled street below her feet. You never cared what happened to me ten years ago, the girl she’d been shouted at him. Why do you now? The woman, however, wisely restrained her words.
She left him before he could reach out and touch her again. Hearing his footsteps behind her, she gripped Davis’s hand tightly and nearly ran down the street.
Douglas MacRae, like France and all its memories, belonged in the past.
Chapter 8
D ouglas watched Jeanne walk rapidly away, thinking that he was three times a fool.
What had he done?
He was right: She’d changed. She’d become as arrogant as any French aristocrat. Then I shall endure the situation.
What the hell did that mean?
It was foolish to tell himself that she no longer had the power to elicit any emotion from him, because in the space of a quarter hour he’d felt irritation, anger, and curiosity. Without seeming to try, she’d pierced his self-restraint and proven that his indifference was only a façade.
She disappeared from sight and he found himself wanting to follow her and demand to know why she had stared at him as if she didn’t understand his suggestion, foolish as it was.
Despite her arrogance, however, her eyes had looked tired. And her fingers had trembled on
the child’s shoulder. How old was the little boy? Six? Seven? The age of Hartley’s son was none of his concern. Nor should he have resented the child for her casual affection toward him.
Had he lost his mind? Evidently so.
One way she hadn’t changed—she was still one of those women who effortlessly attracts attention. Something about her, her stance, her poise, the look in her eyes, some indefinable essence of Jeanne made him want to study her. Her clothing wasn’t outlandish; her behavior wasn’t overt or brazen. If anything, she looked as if she had tried to minimize herself in her sober green dress and modest touches of lace. The bun at the nape of her neck was a hairstyle an older matron might wear.
Yet she still had an odd effect on him, something he would have to guard against.
Why, however, had he offered her a position caring for the very child she’d abandoned? Had he lost all sense he possessed? He didn’t want her in his home. He didn’t want her in his life at all.
Why, then, this insidious curiosity? Why did he want to know what had happened to her in the ten years since they’d parted?
Halting in the middle of the road, he stared down at his feet, not seeing the cobbles but instead Jeanne du Marchand as she’d appeared only a few moments ago. She was only a pale shadow of the girl she’d been. He didn’t see the wagon barreling down on him until the driver shouted, and only then moved swiftly to the other side of the street.
He made his way to his carriage, suspecting that the enigma of Jeanne du Marchand wasn’t going to be an easy puzzle to solve. He’d thought himself done with the past. But at the sight of her he was the boy he’d been, innocent, hopeful, viewing the world in a way he never had since.
There was nothing about that time he’d resurrect. The innocence and the hope had been transformed to a disillusionment so deep that it had colored the rest of his life. He should forget she was in Edinburgh, forget he’d ever seen her, forget about ten years ago, and expunge all those memories he evidently still carried with him.
