Portrait of a Scandal

by Annie Burrows

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘Why, that he was wanted by the law for some crime or other...’

  ‘In a way, he is, or was. His parents went to the guillotine, you know. And he only narrowly escaped with his own life.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘At one time, I played a very minor role in an attempt to make sure that the very many French émigrés who cluttered up London were actually who they said they were and not spies.’

  ‘Goodness,’ she said, looking at him properly for the first time since he’d made that jest about doing her worst. ‘I knew you’d got into Parliament, but I never imagined you ever doing anything useful. I thought you’d been one of those who used their position to cut a dash in town and treated the House of Commons as nothing more than a highly select sort of gentlemen’s club.’

  ‘Oh, no, I wanted to use my position to make a difference,’ he said bleakly. ‘It just...didn’t work out that way.’

  She decided not to press for reasons why it hadn’t worked. It wouldn’t be very pleasant for him to talk about his total failure as a politician, even in such a junior role.

  ‘Did you find out much about my Monsieur Le Brun? It is just that he claims to have property in England and the means to look after Fenella, as well as having a string of unpronounceable titles and a claim on some land in France. If he is lying, it would be tremendously useful to know about it now.’

  ‘I cannot recall much about him, to be honest,’ he told her. ‘It took me some time to work out where I’d seen him before, because I met him at only one or two gatherings thrown for émigrés claiming to be friends of England.’ And he’d done his best to blot out as much of that portion of his life as possible. If he didn’t dwell on it, he’d hoped it would all fade into the mist, rather than remain fixed at the foreground in lurid detail.

  ‘He was only one of many that were under subtle investigation. What has he told you?’

  She pouted. ‘Well, he says that he is using his work as a courier as cover to enter France and see how the land lies. See whether it is possible to have some of what was confiscated from his family restored, now that the Bourbons are back in power. He claims he dare not move about openly under his true name, in case there are still enemies lurking in wait for him.’

  ‘It could all be true,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of people attempting to reclaim land and titles that were once theirs. And he was certainly introduced to me in London as the dispossessed Comte de...somewhere or other. It was what made me refer to him as the man who calls himself Monsieur Le Brun.’

  ‘It would certainly account for his excessive arrogance,’ she huffed. ‘There are times when I can quite understand why French peasants wanted to teach the aristocrats a lesson—though not, of course, quite such a brutal one—whereas Fenella finds his tale wildly romantic. Which was what made the rest of that outing almost unbearable.’ Her lips curled in disgust. ‘She would keep looking up at him as though he were a hero stepped straight out of the pages of some rubbishing novel. But,’ she concluded, ‘whether he really is a dispossessed French count, or just a mountebank, makes no difference, I suppose.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, if he is a mountebank, and has no real intention of marrying Fenella, it will break her heart. And if he is what he says he is and does marry her, it will break up our happy little household.’ For no man, particularly not a member of the aristocracy, could stomach the thought of his wife living anywhere but in his own home. ‘Neither of which outcome,’ she said glumly, ‘particularly appeal to me. I suppose that sounds selfish, doesn’t it? And it’s not that I don’t want Fenella to be happy. If anyone deserves to marry a title, even a French one—even a French one that might not actually exist any more—then it is Fenella. For she is a lady, you see. A lady born. She has been obliged to live with me only because her family cast her off when she married against their wishes. They really should have taken care of her,’ she added crossly, ‘once she was widowed. Yet they refused to have anything to do with her just because she’d married a man she loved, rather than one they approved of.’

  He went very quiet for some time, before clearing his throat and saying, ‘She sounds like a very courageous woman. I was wrong to say she was mousy just because I couldn’t tear my eyes off you.’

  She flushed and shifted, avoiding his gaze. She clearly wasn’t comfortable accepting compliments. Any more than he was to hear that a woman he’d dismissed as mousy had done what he’d not had the sense to do: defy his family and marry the woman he wanted.

  Not that he’d ever got to that point. His father had tricked him into withdrawing before he’d come up to scratch.

  The fiacre lurched to a halt.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, leaning over to open the door.

  She stepped out of the carriage, to see they were in front of a church that reminded her just a bit of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  ‘The Pantheon,’ he said, having paid off their driver. ‘After we’d talked about the way the very air of Paris seems full of revolutionary ideals, I thought you might like to come and see the tomb of the man responsible for so much of it.’

  ‘You’ve brought me to look at a tomb?’

  ‘Not just any tomb. The tomb of Voltaire. Besides, there’s much more to see in here than tombstones. Have you ever seen anywhere quite so awe-inspiring?’

  She had to admit the building was impressive, with its soaring pillars and multiple domes. They wandered about, admiring the place for some time before coming to a halt before the tomb Nathan had said he’d brought her here to see.

  ‘There was a girl,’ she said, ‘selling lemonade from a stall on the Boulevard, who had a copy of the Henriade in her pocket. I so wanted to ask her what she thought of it, but Monsieur Le Brun wouldn’t let me stop.’

  ‘Well, he probably doesn’t approve of peasants having any education. Or they wouldn’t have risen up and thrown his class out.’

  ‘Your class, too,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Ah, but not in Paris. Didn’t I tell you, now I’m in Paris I can be whoever I want to be?’

  ‘Do you think...no, never mind.’

  ‘What? You can ask me anything, Amy.’

  ‘You won’t like it.’

  ‘How do you know, unless you try me?’

  ‘Because you’re a man,’ she said with disgust. ‘Men don’t like women to have their own ideas.’

  ‘Ouch.’ He pretended to flinch. ‘That is a little unfair, even for you.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ she said, flinging up her chin. ‘I will tell you what I wanted to ask that lemonade seller, shall I? I wanted to know if women here in France really do have more freedom than the English. Because everywhere I look, there are women presiding over the cash desks of bars and businesses. Clearly the ones in charge. And it isn’t just because they’ve had to, because the men have all gone off fighting. The men are coming back. And instead of taking over their old jobs, they’re hanging around in packs, in their uniforms, letting the women carry right on running everything.’

  He stroked his chin with one hand. ‘I hadn’t really noticed it. But you are right.’

  She blinked. ‘I am?’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised. You are clearly an intelligent woman. And you are looking at this city with a woman’s eyes. You are bound to see things I’ve missed.’ When she continued to gape at him, he chuckled. ‘Has nobody ever paid you a compliment before?’

  ‘Not about my intelligence,’ she said. ‘Not men, anyway. Most men want a woman to stay quiet, or agree with everything they say.’

  ‘No chance of that with you, is there?’

  ‘Not any longer, no. Not after the way—’ She bit back what she had been going to say.

  ‘The way I let you down?’

  She shook h
er head, frowning. ‘It wasn’t so much what you did, Nathan. It was how my family treated me. I was...well, there’s no point in trying to deny it, since you claim you knew how badly you hurt me. I was devastated. I needed them to comfort me, but instead they...they turned against me.’

  He took her arm and started strolling towards the door. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t treated you so badly. It was inexcusable. Did I put you off men for life? Is that why you never married?’

  ‘What makes you think I had a choice?’ She didn’t want to make it sound as if she’d been wearing the willow for him all these years. She had her pride.

  ‘Because you are so beautiful,’ he said bluntly. ‘Men must have been queuing up to pay their addresses to you.’

  She snorted in derision. ‘Far from it. The only men who have ever shown an interest in me were...’ She’d been about to say tempted by her aunt’s money. But she didn’t want to go into that. ‘Let’s say they were put off by the claws I’ve developed over the years.’ She wasn’t the dewy-eyed débutante she’d been when she’d gone up to London for her Season. She was as far removed from that open, trusting girl as a domestic cat was from a caged lion. She trusted nobody these days, particularly not if they wore breeches. ‘When I see right through their empty compliments, they accuse me of being a harridan.’

  ‘Perhaps not all their compliments are empty, have you ever considered that? Just because I let you down, that doesn’t mean all men would.’

  There were bound to be men out there, somewhere, who could match her. Who wouldn’t be put off by her defensiveness.

  He rubbed at his stomach, wondering at the queasy feeling that came from picturing some other man courting her, marrying her and making her happy. Instinctively he made for the open air, where he would be able to breathe more easily.

  ‘It is nothing to do with you, whether I’ve married or not, you arrogant... Ooh, you make me so angry!’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he said, stopping under the great portico and pulling her into his arms. ‘Just a little bit, anyway. Admit it. I ruined you for all other men.’

  ‘You conceited—’ But he cut her words off with a kiss. A kiss that started out fiery with her rage and quickly turned heated with passion.

  ‘Nobody else will ever kiss you like that,’ he husked, drawing back just far enough that he could speak. But his lips were still so close to hers she could feel their echo. ‘No other lover will ever make you feel the way I do.’

  When she opened her mouth to make a pithy retort he silenced her with another kiss. A kiss that she felt right down to the core of her being. By the time he finished it, she’d forgotten what they’d been arguing about.

  ‘I think we’ve done enough sightseeing for one day, don’t you? Let’s go back to my studio and work on your portrait.’

  ‘In broad daylight?’ He wasn’t talking about painting her portrait at all.

  ‘The light in my studio will be perfect, about now,’ he said, glancing up at the sky, ‘to capture...’ he cupped her face with his hand, caressing her jaw as his words caressed her other senses ‘...all those subtle flesh tones.’

  * * *

  For the next few days they didn’t bother with the pretence they were going to explore Paris together. Amy went to his studio at first light and let him capture her subtle flesh tones. With his hands, his mouth, and then, later, when she was too sated to bother protesting, she let him arrange her on his couch so he could paint her.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ He’d stopped working, and was looking at her steadily from round the edge of the canvas he refused to let her so much as catch a glimpse of.

  ‘Nothing much. Nothing that would interest you, anyway.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘Amy, how many times do I have to tell you that every single little thing about you fascinates me?’

  When she snorted in derision, he shook his head at her. ‘It is true. Why would you think I’d bother to lie about it? I can still get you into bed any time I want. I only have to look at you like this...’ and he waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively ‘...and you turn wild.’

  Only a few days ago she would have been furious at the suggestion he had any influence on her, but she’d got used to his teasing ways now. Besides, he might joke that he only had to give her a heated look for her to go up in flames, but nine times out of ten she’d done something to provoke the heated look in the first place. Such as lick her lips in a certain manner, or merely twine one of her curls round and round her finger meditatively.

  He came across to the couch, knelt beside it and dropped a kiss on her exposed shoulder.

  ‘I will be able to paint a much better portrait if I know your innermost thoughts. I will be able to capture your essence. What makes you uniquely you.’

  ‘Oh, I see, it is for your art.’

  ‘If you like.’ He buried his face in her neck to kiss her throat. And breathe her in. And commit her fragrance to memory. The more time he spent with her, the more he regretted letting her go so easily when they’d been young enough to have forged a life together. He couldn’t help thinking that if he’d even had the courage of the mousy Fenella, they would have been together for ten years by now. Not that he wanted to get married again. It was just...if he had married Amy, it wouldn’t have been hell, that was all. From the things she’d said, he could tell that if he’d gone into politics from choice, rather than drifting into it because he’d stopped fighting his father, and if Amy had been his wife, she would have supported his wish to make a difference. She wouldn’t have sneered at every opinion he expressed that didn’t align exactly with her own. He might even have become a halfway-decent politician. Oh, nothing to compare with a Wilberforce, or a Hunt, but a man who would have been able to look at his own reflection in the mirror without despising what he saw.

  But these few days she was in Paris would be all he’d ever have of her, now. He had to make them count. He had such a short time to create a lifetime of memories.

  ‘Well, I was thinking...’

  ‘Yes?’ He nuzzled the sheet she’d been using to preserve her modesty to one side.

  ‘About how unfair it is.’

  ‘What is unfair?’

  She speared her fingers into his hair as he sucked one nipple into his mouth.

  ‘That the same rules don’t apply to men that so restrict women. A single man can take a lover and nobody much cares. But if a woman does so, she runs the risk of becoming a social pariah.’

  He looked up at her sharply. ‘Are you afraid that there will be repercussions because of our affair, Amy? We’ve been discreet. I’ve deliberately kept you out of the public eye as much as possible. Well, after the Wilsons’, anyway.’

  ‘Have you?’ It hadn’t occurred to her that his reluctance to leave the studio for much more than the occasional glass of beer in the nearest café, which was frequented by locals, was anything more than a wish to keep her as near to a convenient bed as possible.

  ‘Of course I have. I have the devil of a reputation. And the last thing I want is for you to be subject to salacious gossip because you’ve been seen being a bit too...intimate with me.’

  ‘You seem to forget, I am a nobody. I don’t move in the kind of circles where a little gossip could ruin my reputation.’

  ‘That’s just where you’re wrong,’ he said fiercely. ‘I mean,’ he amended, reining himself back with what looked like a struggle, ‘just think what it would do if tales about you having a wild affair with the scurrilous Nathan Harcourt got back to Stanton Basset. They would drum you out of the...the sewing circle.’

  They could try, she thought. If she’d ever been a member of such an insipid group. But there wasn’t all that much they could do. If anyone did try to make her life in Stanton Basset uncomfortable, she would just move away.

  In fact, that might not be a bad i
dea anyway. Nothing would be the same if Fenella really did marry her middle-aged French Romeo. And it was looking increasingly likely. And she did not have any sentimental attachment to the modest house her aunt had bequeathed her, nor the quiet and rather stuffy little town itself. She could buy a much more commodious property elsewhere. Somewhere by the sea, perhaps.

  Nathan startled her by getting up and stalking moodily back to his easel. Well, he’d already startled her by sounding so protective of her reputation, when he’d never given a fig for his own. From the things she’d read about him, particularly in the last weeks before his spectacular expulsion from his party, it was almost as if he’d courted scandal for its own sake.

  She would have to be careful she didn’t start thinking he cared for her. Just because he hadn’t seduced her when she’d been a girl, and had proposed to her when he discovered she’d been a virgin, that did not mean she was anything special to him. It only meant he had a conscience. That he wasn’t the hardened rake the newspapers made him out to be.

  Not that he might be falling in love with her.

  She had to remember that he was a master of this game. He’d had plenty of other lovers. He was probably as charming and apparently tender with all of them. She mustn’t lower her guard with him, not even for an instant. Or he would wound her. Oh, he wouldn’t mean to. He clearly regretted having hurt her before. It was part of what made him so irresistible.

  ‘You said,’ came his disembodied voice from the other side of the easel, ‘that your family turned against you after I...married Lucasta. Can you tell me about it?’

  ‘Why do you want to hear about that?’

  ‘Maybe I want absolution. You said that your reasons for not marrying were not my fault and implied other things were far more important than just my abandonment. Besides, I have this insatiable curiosity about you. I want to know every little detail of your life.’

  ‘So you can paint a better portrait of me,’ she sighed. ‘Yes, you said that before.’

  ‘You don’t sound as though you believe me,’ he complained. ‘If it isn’t for that, then what other reason could I possibly have for wanting you to divulge your innermost thoughts?’