Epilogue
Paris—three months later
An invitation to the soirée to be held later that evening to celebrate the nuptials of the Duc and Duchesse de Montendre was the most sought-after card in the social calendar. When Jean-Luc Bauduin had been officially declared as the long-lost heir to the Montendre duchy, the news had caused a sensation.
No one more befitting the title could have emerged, Paris raved, for not only did the former Monsieur Bauduin epitomise the looks, demeanour and stature of such a distinguished noble, he had the financial wherewithal required to restore the Montendre estates and châteaux to their former grandeur.
When it became clear that the new Duke was very much his own man, choosing to expand his business empire rather than retire from the trade for a life of leisure, tongues wagged, but the weight of opinion was very much in the new Duke’s favour. This was France, after all—unlike England, a country which had freed itself from the stifling conventions of the past. Could England boast such a fine example of a thoroughly modern duke? Certainement pas!
Unfortunately for the matchmakers, this perfect example of a duke was already married, but Paris agreed that no more perfect duchess could be found than the beautiful Madame Bauduin, and no couple could be more obviously in love than the Duke and his Duchess.
To be invited to attend the wedding ceremony taking place this morning would have been a coup, but it was understandable, since the Duke and Duchess had already been married in England, that they wished this second ceremony to be conducted in private.
As the much-anticipated day arrived, those fortunate enough to be in possession of the coveted invitations busied themselves with their preparations for the soirée. The Duc and Duchesse of Montendre were already renowned for their fabulous dinner parties. Madame la Duchesse’s menus were so incomparable one would think she had been born a Frenchwoman. As for Monsieur le Duc’s selection of wine to accompany tonight’s feast—rumour had it that he had somehow managed to source a select few cases of the very last burgundy produced at his father’s estate, secreted away from looters deep in the cellars of Château Montendre.
Much discussion and speculation was taking place over breakfast coffee and croissants in the various Paris hôtels particuliers as to whether or not the rumour was true that the happy couple would be quitting Paris for Bordeaux within the month. If so, the continued restoration of the Hôtel Montendre surely guaranteed their residence in the city for a portion of the year at least.
But all that was for the future, the ladies of Paris informed their husbands dismissively. For them, the subject of most interest right now was what the new Duchesse de Montendre’s wedding gown would look like.
* * *
Sophia and Jean-Luc were due at the Mairie for the civil ceremony in half an hour, with the church service scheduled to take place an hour later. Sophia stood in front of the mirror as Madeleine put the final touches to her toilette. She was not nervous as such, but she was in something of a daze. So much had happened these last three months, her life had been quite utterly transformed, and she still could not quite believe it. She had laid the ghosts of her past to rest. Jean-Luc had been right about that, they had resided in her head and not his. She was no longer ashamed, but accepted what she had done, and put it behind her, embracing every day of this bright new life, and the man who loved her.
‘Magnifique,’ her dresser declared, stepping back with justified pride, for she had played a key role in the design of the gown. ‘Never has there been a more beautiful duchess, madame.’
For once, Sophia was inclined to agree. A simple underdress of silver-grey silk which clung to her slim figure was transformed by the over-dress of silver gauze and lace. The sleeves were elaborately gathered at the shoulders, then tightly fitted to the wrist where a fall of lace covered her hands. The skirt of the overdress was made of the same gauze, the hem trimmed with the same lace, the material shimmering with a myriad of tiny diamonds, like stars in the twilight sky. The décolleté was an elaborate leaf design formed of silver lace, seed pearls and larger diamonds. The largest diamond of all, a wedding present from Jean-Luc, was suspended on a delicate chain around Sophia’s neck. He had urged her, when the date of the wedding was set, to dress like a duchess. His Duchess. Turning around to hug a tearful Madeleine, Sophia hoped she had done him justice, that he would be proud of her.
Jean-Luc was waiting for her in their private parlour. Dressed in his customary black, his cravat more elaborately tied, his silver waistcoat, embroidered with the Montendre coat of arms, adding a touch of ducal splendour. But he needed no badge to proclaim who he was, Sophia thought, making her curtsy. He was as he had always been, his own man, and in her view, the perfect man.
‘Well? Am I fit to be your Duchess?’
‘You are fit to be my Queen,’ Jean-Luc said. ‘How long is it since I told you that I love you?’
‘At least three hours.’
‘I have been remiss. That is two hours and fifty-nine minutes too long. I love you, Sophia.’
‘And I love you, Jean-Luc. Even more than I did when I told you this morning after we made love.’ She stood on her tiptoes to kiss his mouth. ‘What’s more, I think I can safely promise you that I will love you even more when we make love again tonight as man and wife.’
He groaned, pulling her carefully towards him for another, deeper kiss. ‘Our wedding night.’
‘Patience, or you will crush my gown. Besides, our witnesses, Juliette and Maxime will be here any minute.’
‘The only couple in Paris almost as much in love as we are,’ Jean-Luc said, smiling. ‘Maxime told me that they are waiting only until our nuptials are formalised before they announce their own.’
‘I am so happy for them. How poor Maxime must have suffered, forced to stifle his feelings for Juliette in those weeks when your true identity was unclear. What an agony he must have been in that day when you told them both that you really were the Duke.’
‘Unbeknown to me, it was not only Maxime’s hopes I was shattering, but Juliette’s too,’ Jean-Luc said ruefully. ‘I’m not sure which revelation was the biggest shock to her. The fact that I was the Duke, or the fact that we were not married. My best friend thought that I was honour bound to marry the woman he was secretly in love with, and she thought she was going to have to honour the loveless contract she had come all the way to Paris to enforce, and forgo the man she had, most inconveniently, fallen in love with. When I confounded them both by announcing that, notwithstanding the two facts, I had no intention of marrying her under any circumstances, Juliette was quite unable to disguise her relief. And as for Maxime, he almost punched the air in delight. He did not fall on his knees before her, but he made his feelings clear enough. Which came as a very welcome surprise to Juliette, sparing me the need to persuade her my mind could not be changed.’
Sophia chuckled. ‘And now they are to be married, and I gather from Juliette, sooner rather than later.’
‘Maxime doesn’t like her being in any way beholden to me. He won’t accept the dowry I offered.’
‘No, but we will find a way to give them a wedding present he cannot refuse. Talking of which,’ Sophia said, producing a small leather box from the reticule she carried, ‘I have a wedding gift for you.’
‘You are the only gift I want or need.’
‘My love, you have showered me with gifts, including this latest,’ Sophia replied, touching the diamond at her throat. ‘I wanted to give you something to remember the day by. Open it.’
She watched as he did, his eyes widening as he took out the signet ring, in which a large, finely cut emerald had been set. ‘Of course it’s not the original stone,’ she said. ‘As you surmised, that was most likely sold by Monsieur Bauduin to keep the family solvent when the trust fund began to dry up, but we know from the various tenants you’ve spoken to since, that it was an emerald, for several of
them commented on the fact that your father was never without it, so I thought—do you like it?’
Jean-Luc turned the ring over, to find the engraving newly etched. ‘Ab Ordine Libertas. You told me you were having this cleaned, not restored. This must have cost a small fortune. I can guess where the money came from.’
‘From Order Comes Freedom. Our new world order, Jean-Luc, is what’s provided me with my freedom. I don’t need all that money you insisted on giving me. I don’t need an insurance policy or financial security. All I need is you.’
His throat worked with emotion. His eyes were alight with love as he crushed her to him and she wrapped her arms tightly around him, the pair of them quite heedless of her wedding gown. ‘I love you so much, Sophia. You too are everything I need.’ He kissed her softly, then let her go, holding out his arm for her. ‘My most perfect, beautiful, admirable Duchess. Our wedding party, and the rest of our life, awaits.’
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story
don’t miss the next instalment in the
MATCHES MADE IN SCANDAL quartet
coming soon!
And check out Marguerite Kaye’s
HOT ARABIAN NIGHTS quartet
THE WIDOW AND THE SHEIKH
SHEIKH’S MAIL-ORDER BRIDE
THE HARLOT AND THE SHEIKH
CLAIMING HIS DESERT PRINCESS
Historical Note
As you may have gathered from reading this book—if the dedication didn’t give it away—I have a long-standing love affair with Paris. I spent much of the time writing this story sighing nostalgically over maps and photographs and longing to jump on a plane and travel there. Again!
Of course the city in which Jean-Luc and Sophia fall in love bears little resemblance to Baron Haussmann’s radically transformed version of today, with its wide boulevards, parks and, perhaps most critically, modern sewage and water supplies. In 1818, Paris was, frankly, a very smelly place. But this is a romance, and when it comes to that city I’m a hopeless romantic, so I glossed over a few of the gritty realities.
If you would like to know more about Paris at the time, though, then I can recommend either Alistair Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris, or Andrew Hussey’s Paris, the Secret History—both of which are highly readable and guaranteed to make you want to go there to explore all the history for yourself.
Napoleon was the first to encourage those who fled France during the Revolution to return home, and they came flooding back after the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, when Louis XVIII, brother of guillotined Louis XVI, came to the throne. In case you’re wondering what happened to Louis XVII, he was the Dauphin, Louis XVI’s son, and uncrowned King during the two years between his father’s death and his own.
Claims by purported relatives to titles were not exactly common, but they did happen. My thanks to Dr Jonathon Spangler for drawing my attention to the case of the Prince of Lambesc, who tried to establish his post-Revolution claim to property using feudal documents. He failed. In an effort to make Jean-Luc’s claim less complex, I turned to two English causes célèbres instead. The Tichborne Claimant and the Douglas Cause. Thank you yet again to Alison Lyndsay for these. Both relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, identification of the claimant by servants, et cetera.
Would Jean-Luc have been forced to renounce Sophia in favour of Juliette had they really been married? The jury is out on that one, but it is likely either that Jean-Luc would have bought his way out of the problem, or that Juliette’s counter-case would have been conveniently ‘lost’ in the system if Jean-Luc was prepared to cough up the bribe money! Thanks to Dr Spengler again for this information.
As ever, there’s a ton of other reading and history in this book—and, as ever, I’m running out of space to cover it all. If you want to know more about the Revolution and The Terror, Christopher Hibbert’s The French Revolution is an excellent place to start. If you want to see more of the fabulous Flying Vengarovs in action, then you can read my story The Officer’s Temptation in the fun duet I wrote with Bronwyn Scott: Scandal at the Midsummer Ball.
And if you want to talk books or history or, for that matter, food or sewing, or any number of other things, then please do join me on Twitter or Facebook.
Keep reading for an excerpt from IN THE SHERIFF’S PROTECTION by Lauri Robinson.
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In the Sheriff’s Protection
by Lauri Robinson
Chapter One
“Ma, a rider’s comin’ up the road!” Billy exclaimed, his legs going the same speed they always were. At a run. “A man on horseback! Maybe it’s Pa, Ma! Maybe he’s come home!”
Clara Wilson squeezed the edge of the table, willing the fire-hot pain in her leg to ease while trying to find the wherewithal to respond to her son. “Shut. The. Door. Billy,” she forced out.
“No, Ma! It’s Pa! It has to be.”
“Shut the door. Now!” A moan followed her command. One she’d tried to keep down but couldn’t stop. The pain was too strong. So was the excitement in Billy’s voice, hoping the rider was his father. Hugh had let her down too many times to show up now, exactly when she needed him.
Billy did as instructed, and rushed to the table where she sat with her left leg propped up on another chair. “Is it your leg, Ma? Is it hurting again? Pa will be able to help you. I know he will. That’s him coming up the road. I just know it.”
And she knew it wasn’t. It would be nice if she could believe differently, if things could be different, but they weren’t and never would be. Her instincts were too strong, her life too true to form for anything to be different. “Yes, it’s my leg. Bolt the door.”
“Why? If it’s Pa—”
“That’s not your father riding in,” she said between clenched teeth.
“You don’t know that. You ain’t even seen the rider.”
She wiped at the sweat rolling down her temples and covering her forehead. Why now of all times did someone have to ride in? She could hope it was Donald Ryan, their closest neighbor, but he’d stopped by last week, along with his wife, Karen, on their way back from Hendersonville, a long journey that they wouldn’t be making again anytime soon.
Pulling up enough fortitude to talk while fighting the pain was hard, but she had to. “Do as I say and bolt the door.” Drawing another shaky breath, she said, “Then bring me the gun out of the drawer.”
“But I ain’t allowed to touch that gun.”
“You can this time.” T
alking was stealing her strength, making her dizzy, and the flashes of light and dark spots forming before her eyes made it hard to concentrate.
Billy bolted the door and then ran to the cupboard where she kept the good napkins, folded neatly atop the pistol. “Can I get my gun, too?” he asked while closing the drawer.
“Yes.” She wanted to say more. Tell him to be careful, but needed to reserve enough strength to address whoever was riding in.
Billy laid the gun on the table. She grasped the handle, pulled it across the table and then dropped it onto her lap, covering it with the corner of her apron. Billy had run into his bedroom and was already returning with the old squirrel gun he’d found last year. It was covered with rust and the trigger was broken off, but he carried it like it could take down an elk if need be.
“Look out the window, but stay back,” she instructed.
He did so, peering over the back of the chair. The way his shoulders dropped told her exactly what she’d already known. It wasn’t Hugh.
“It’s not Pa,” Billy said. “This man’s got black hair. He’s giving his horse a drink out of the trough, and he’s taking one, too.” A moment later, he said, “He’s walking toward the house.”
Clara wrapped her hand around the gun handle. “When he knocks, you say your pa’s out checking cattle.” She pressed her hand to her head, fighting the dizziness and the nausea that had her hands trembling. Her entire body trembling.
The knock sounded. Billy spoke. And the world went black.
* * *
Ready for action, for he’d expected some, Tom Baniff had his gun drawn before he heard the familiar sound of a pistol hitting the floor. The young boy, whose thick crop of blond hair looked as if it hadn’t been combed in a month, shot a startled look around the edge of the door that was only opened wide enough for the little guy to fit in the opening.
When the boy had opened the door, he’d instantly claimed his pa was out checking cattle and now, at the sound behind him, boasted he knew how to use the old squirrel gun in his hand.
From Courtesan to Convenient Wife Page 22
