by Karen Ranney
What, after all, did she need to do to prepare to meet with Douglas again? Comb her hair? She’d done that. Ready her attire? She’d smoothed as many wrinkles as she could from her dress. Her face was washed as well as her hands.
If her complexion was pale it could be blamed on the loss of sleep the night before. That, too, might be the reason her eyes sparkled entirely too much.
Tonight she wore her best dress, a deep blue with ecru lace at the neckline. If one looked closely it was possible to see that the lace had been mended in two places and the material showed wear at the cuff. But it was so much more ornate than anything she’d worn in the last decade that she prized it.
Now she adjusted her shawl and pretended that she was as poised as she had once been, while following the maid through the corridor and down the lovely soaring staircase.
Douglas had evidently built his home with comfort in mind, but he’d added decorative touches that surprised her as well. The walls had niches in them, small shell-like enclosures that framed a sculpture here and there. On the landing was another embrasure and inside it a strange-looking brass object.
“It’s an astrolabe,” the young maid said. “It’s very old and very rare.” She looked in both directions and then whispered to Jeanne, “And it’s the very devil to dust.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s a medieval instrument, used for navigating,” she said, frowning up at the ceiling as she obviously recited something she’d learned. “It’s been replaced by the sextant.”
Amused, Jeanne thanked her and didn’t mention the fact that she was no clearer as to its use.
Douglas came from a family of men dedicated to the sea, a fact she’d once questioned. “Do you not wish to sail?”
“I want to see everything,” he admitted. “I want to go to the Orient, and learn what I can there. And India, of course. There’s a big, wide, wonderful world out there, Jeanne, and I want my share of it.”
He’d been lying on his back, his arms folded beneath his head, staring up at the sky. She remembered the day as clearly as if it had occurred an hour ago. The spot was not conducive to lovemaking, being too public, but they had spent the afternoon talking.
Catching sight of a small cinnabar jar in yet another embrasure, she wondered if he’d been to the Orient after all.There was so much she knew about him, details that were personal and private. Yet there was so much still a mystery.
She and Douglas were intimate strangers.
At the bottom of the staircase the maid turned to her right, leading Jeanne through another series of corridors. The house was huge, the rooms they passed all luxurious and well appointed. She’d not seen them the previous evening, and her day had been spent in circumspect and self-imposed isolation. She hadn’t wanted to see Douglas, delaying that moment when they’d meet again. The encounter this morning had been confusing enough.
He’d looked as if he were angry with her, as if he wanted to punish her for what had happened between them. At the very least, he looked displeased that he’d offered her the position as his child’s governess and then oddly relieved when she formally accepted.
She’d wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t come to her bed again, that the post of governess should preclude the position of mistress. But she’d remained silent, surprising herself.
Perhaps because she was afraid that he might make a vow not to come to her room again, never to tap on her door demanding entrance. Not once would he cross the threshold, invade her bed, or place his hands on her or kiss her the way he had.
How could she bear that?
So she’d remained silent, the promise unsolicited, the vow unmade.
The young maid gestured to a doorway and then simply faded away. Lassiter appeared, as if she’d conjured him up to guide her the rest of the way. He bowed unctuously, his black uniform accessorized with a stiff white stock and spotless white linen gloves.
Jeanne, who’d been surrounded by hundreds of servants during her formative years, was suddenly uncomfortable in his presence.
“Good evening, Lassiter,” she said. Her voice sounded unused and strange.
He only bowed in response before turning and leading the way inside the dining room. Stepping aside, he bowed once again before nodding to a footman, who drew out a chair. Douglas stood, waiting for her to sit. She did so, and he regained his seat to her left at the head of the table.
The room was a cozy one, the table small and square, and matching the sideboard on either side of the room. A small door connected to a passageway that no doubt led to the kitchen.
As intimate as the dining room was, it was still impressive in its show of wealth. The walls were covered in gathered folds of patterned silk, and a crystal chandelier hung over the table, lit with dozens of candles. More candles, pale yellow columns of beeswax, were arranged in silver holders atop the sideboard.
If Douglas wished to impress her with his wealth, he’d already done so. His home was a showplace and the treasures he’d collected no doubt worth a fortune. But she’d learned that the content of a man’s character was more valuable than his wealth.
“I’m pleased you decided to join me,” he said, dismissing Lassiter with a nod. The majordomo hesitated in the doorway, looking back at both of them. She wanted to assure the elderly servant that she would do nothing to Douglas that warranted such a last, concerned gaze.
“I have to eat,” she said, a less-than-civil comment.
Once, she’d been adept at those social niceties required to make a guest feel comfortable at either Vallans or their Paris home. As her father’s hostess, she was skilled at making a shy person feel welcome, and steering a garrulous visitor to an audience.
The past nine years, however, had stripped the gift of conversation from her. Silence was a more comfortable companion.
“I think you’ll enjoy the meal,” he said, as if her surly response to him hadn’t been followed by silence. “My cook is quite renowned.”
“I’m certain I shall.” There, she sounded almost civil.
“Did you have a good day?”
“A restful one,” she admitted. She’d done nothing but remain in her room, waiting for him, if the truth be told. Yet truth wasn’t a necessary component between them, was it? They’d shared many things, but nothing as brutal as honesty.
“I trust my staff has seen to your comfort.” He inclined his head, ever the genial host.
She forced a smile to her face. “They’ve been exceedingly polite.”
As the two of them were being polite. Yet anyone walking into the room could easily feel the undercurrents between them.
She raised her glass of wine and sipped from it.
“A good vintage,” he said, “with a back note of oak.”
She smiled politely, wondering if he remembered some of their earlier conversations. Vallans had had its own vineyards and she’d grown up appreciating the labor and skill necessary to transform the grapes into wine. Once, she’d even ventured the subject with her father with an idea of initiating some changes into the process. She’d been roundly reproached for even thinking of such a thing. The daughter of the Comte du Marchand did not indulge in wine-making, however old and venerated the tradition.
If Douglas remembered, he didn’t mention it. Nor did he give any inclination that they were anything more than acquaintances. But she knew the shape of his shoulders beneath his fine shirt and exquisitely tailored jacket. She could measure the width of his chest with three hand spans, fingers splayed. He shuddered when she touched him and stroked his erection between her hands, and breathed an oath against her cheek when pleasure grew too much to hold silent.
She was a fool to be sitting here with Douglas. There were too many things left unsaid, too many conversations that lingered in the air between them, all memories of better times.
A sensual interlude was no substitute for honesty.
She smiled into her glass, thinking that, in addition to being a fool, she had als
o learned the skill of self-deception.
Very well, the truth. Those months in Paris had been the most joyous and the most beautiful of her life. She’d spent nine years paying for the sin of them. Was it so terrible to want to re-create them for a little while? Possibly. Last night had proven to her that she could revisit the past, if only for a fleeting moment. A span of hours, silent and hushed and replete with recollection.
Yet even last night there had been an edge to their lovemaking. She’d been afraid. She could not allow herself to be vulnerable again, and he was the one person who had the power to hurt her. Above all, she’d been frightened that she might confide the horror of those months at Vallans to him, and the tragedy of their child’s death.
The word wasn’t right. Tragedy was such a barren word, imparting a certain detachment. A carriage loses a wheel and the occupants are injured. An epidemic of influenza decimates a town. Both occurrences, tragedies, happen without the victims’ foreknowledge or premonition.
What, then, did she call what had happened to her child? A horror, or perhaps even worse—an abomination. Even though she’d wished and hoped for her father to change his mind, she should have been prepared for his rage and for his cruelty.
Last night she’d not told Douglas the truth, leaving it sitting between them like one of the evil gargoyles of Notre Dame. Today, she was too cautious to reveal her most painful secret. They had not, in fact, admitted to each other a shared past. For that matter, they had not yet acknowledged the night before.
She studied him over the rim of the glass.
He’d shaved and changed his clothes. She’d bathed and had brushed her hair until it shone, had used a rag to polish her shoes. Both of them were intent upon presenting themselves at their best.
Should she also confess that she’d stared at herself in the mirror, seeking confirmation that ten years had passed? Her skin had aged, it was true, and was too heavily tanned. But that was from her escape from France and not the result of nine years within the convent walls.
There were several lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there a decade ago, and one tiny comma like indentation near her mouth.
Her eyes looked the most changed, the expression in them no longer excited or enthusiastic. She looked sad, an expression she could not banish despite her grimaces and silly faces into the mirror. Sorrow was a part of her, like the odd gray shade of her eyes and the tone of her voice, personal markers to identify her as Jeanne.
If they could not discuss their youth and they dared not discuss the future, that left only the present, these moments softly lit by candlelight and interrupted by the sounds of crystal being set down on the table linen, a napkin being unfolded, the fluttering of a candle flame. Words were rare between them, as precious and cherished as pearls strung on a silken thread.
She had dined at Versailles, and her own home, Vallans, had been a showplace of excess. She was not impressed with surroundings, but she found this cozy room to be the most pleasant place she’d been for quite a while. What would Douglas think, to learn that she was content as long as she was warm and dry, with the knife-edge of hunger satiated? A far cry from the spoiled girl of her youth.
That Jeanne had been enchanted with this man. The woman was equally so, and there in lay the danger. She wasn’t the same person she had been, and neither was he. There was an aura to Douglas that hadn’t been there before, a slightly dangerous impression about him, some dark thread to his personality that intrigued her as it cautioned her.
“You’ve a beautiful home,” she said.
“Thank you. I’ve been moderately successful.”
“May I ask the nature of your business?”
How strange that she didn’t know.
“I trade,” he said, smiling. “I have a fleet of ships that bring goods from the Orient to England and Scotland.”
“It sounds like quite a venture.”
“It is,” he said. “The MacRaes were once sea captains, but we’ve branched out in the last decade. Now we have interests in a variety of concerns. My oldest brother, Alisdair, continues to build ships at our family home of Gilmuir. James trades in the linen produced in Ayleshire, where he’s settled. Brendan is the head of a distillery in Inverness, and Hamish still sails.”
“And you are the merchant of the family.”
“I am,” he said, studying her over the rim of his glass. “Do you find that distasteful, Miss du Marchand?” he asked, as if they’d never loved in the darkness. As if she hadn’t begged him to finish the torment and let her feel him climax in her arms.
“Trade?” She smiled. “No, I do not. A man is known by his character, Mr. MacRae, more than his occupation.”
“Then how do you judge my character?”
She looked directly at him and spoke the truth. “I don’t know you well enough to come to that judgment.”
He waited until the footman finished carrying the tureen to the table. After they were served, he nodded, a curiously imperious gesture that sent the young man from the room. Instead of challenging her remark, he asked a disconcerting question. “Why did you leave France?”
Because she’d been imprisoned for nine years, because she could not bear what they’d done to Vallans, because she wanted a new life, because there were too many agonizing memories there.
“I found that it was no longer safe,” she said instead. Revelation might be good for the soul but it had a way of leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.
However, he seemed dissatisfied with her answer. He leaned back in his chair and surveyed her.
Twice she nearly spoke, to say something inconsequential, anything but allow the silence to stretch between them. She picked up her spoon and tasted the soup.
“Were you raised in France?” he asked finally.
So, it was to be that way? They were going to engage in pretense again. There was, however, a certain amount of relief in the game. A certain freedom in being someone else for a time, pretending to be a stranger he had just met and bedded. Very well, she would play and somehow convince herself that the pretense wasn’t almost as painful as the truth.
“Yes,” she answered. “I spent my early years at Vallans, our chateau some distance from Paris, before I was allowed to come to the city.”
“An interesting city, Paris.”
“Have you been there?” There, not too much interest expressed, just enough to give this silly game some reality.
“I spent some time there in my youth. All in all, I prefer other cities.”
She concentrated on the meal in front of her, deliberately ignoring the emotion his words provoked.
“That’s a pity,” she said. “There are those who consider Paris the most beautiful of all cities. Before the recent troubles, I mean.”
“How did you avoid the recent troubles? Were you at your family’s country home?”
“No,” she said. She rearranged her silverware, dabbed at her mouth with the napkin, and folded it into a small rectangle.
She didn’t furnish information to him easily but wanted him to ask for it, a game within a game. If he asked, she would tell him. But if he sat silent, she wouldn’t volunteer the information. This was not, she realized, a casual conversation. They learned of each other under the guise of politeness, hiding their interest beneath the structure of commonplace questions and answers.
“You were at the convent.”
There, the first admission that he remembered last night.
She nodded.
“It seems to me that it might be easier, or safer, to remain inside the walls of a convent,” he said. “Especially given the climate in France of late.”
She smiled. “Perhaps. My isolation quite possibly saved my life. I was hundreds of miles from Paris and not affected by the riots. When Vallans was razed, I wasn’t there. I knew nothing about what was transpiring in France.”
“When did you learn?”
She chuckled mirthlessly. “When I awoke one morning to find that the
convent was deserted. The nuns had fled in the horror and the gates were left unlocked and wide open. It was the first indication that something was wrong.”
“You were left alone?” Disbelief flavored his voice, and she wanted to tell him that that had not been the worst of it. But that journey through France would be her secret, one that she would keep.
“There was no one left but a few of the novitiates.” Girls like herself who had been virtual prisoners. But at least they were among the lucky ones. There were headstones among the graveyard that marked the last resting places of some of Sacré-Coeur’s inhabitants, women sent to the convent in disgrace for infractions similar to Jeanne’s.
She and two other girls had walked through the deserted convent not quite believing their sudden freedom. That afternoon they, too, left before anyone could return and reinstate their imprisonment.
For nine years the convent had been, if not her home, then the place her body had resided. As she stood on the hill that evening and looked back at the gray structure, it seemed to Jeanne that the mist obscuring the building was not unlike a blanket, hiding the past nine years.
Douglas didn’t say anything for several long minutes, leaving her with the impression that he formed his questions with great deliberation. Perhaps she should use as much care in her answers.
“Where did you go when you left the convent?”
“Home,” she said shortly, wondering if he knew that his questions had lost their subtlety. He was interrogating her. “To Vallans.”
That had been a difficult homecoming. She hadn’t known that Vallans had been torched until approaching the ruins. Only the foundations and chimneys of Vallans remained, a testament to the once-great house that had dominated the countryside. The ornamental lake had been blackened by soot, and even the air smelled of fire.
After she’d found her hidden cache, she’d risen, only to discover that a figure stood there surveying her. Tall and spare, with a crown of red hair, Justine seemed part of the ruins, as if she commanded them with the insouciance of a queen. She didn’t move as Jeanne walked slowly around the mounds of debris to stand in front of her, but remained standing where she was, hands clasped together in front of her.
