How to Court Your Wife (Matchmakers of Bath #3)

Chapter One

Don’t stare, Sandrine. Do not stare!

Sandrine Jaubert was very stern with herself, turning over the strict admonition in her mind as if she was her old governess, Mademoiselle Verdy.

Mademoiselle had been wonderful in teaching Sandrine the joys of drawing and painting, the beauty of fashion and art and needlework.

But she’d never had much luck turning her dreaming, distracted charge, who would just rather be sketching or following her father around his fabric warehouses taking in all the colour and texture, into a proper, sophisticated French lady.

Much to her exasperation. And her remembered scoldings didn’t help Sandrine now.

She just had to stare. She could not help herself.

Tucked away on a quiet corner of the Comtesse de Fleurieu’s ballroom, she had a better view through the swirling crowd, the sea of bright silks, pastel muslins, feathers and jewels, than those in the thick of the crush could hope for.

She usually found such nooks and hidey-holes at parties, spots behind potted palms and in window seats with draperies, where she could watch the parade of fashions and dream up her own designs to sketch later.

Where she could let the twirl of colours and shine flow over her without drawing talk and laughter, and the knowledge that she could never be quite good enough in this world.

Could never be what her parents so longed for.

Sandrine sighed sadly to think of that look in her mother’s eyes when she examined her only child, of that shake of her father’s head when Sandrine stumbled in a dance or laughed too loudly or not enough. It was always Too Much or Not Enough.

The Jauberts had come from respectable but certainly not gratin families back in their native France, fleeing to England after the Great Terror.

It was only through the disaster and tragedy of what was happening in their homeland that they built great wealth in London.

They’d fled the revolution with toddler Sandrine and a few trunks of coins, jewels, and blueprints for their secret manufacture of a particular kind of silk, along with the accumulated knowledge of their business from generations past. Sandrine’s mother, Marie-Claude Jaubert, was known as a great beauty, and as someone who had longed to be received at Versailles and have a grand title in her youth, she had quickly set about finding paths into higher society in their new homeland.

She’d succeeded beyond most other’s dreams, and her husband made an even greater fortune as a result.

Now she wanted to be accepted in more ballrooms like the Fleurieus’, great, ancient titled French families keeping their standards in this strange new world.

A daughter of the ‘right sort’—beautiful, witty—would have helped immensely. Instead, they only had Sandrine.

Sandrine glanced in a gilt-framed mirror hanging on a nearby wall.

Not tall, not short, with chestnut hair rather than a fashionable gold, and a few freckles on her nose that were the bane of her life.

And she was not witty, at least not aloud.

Her thoughts of the world around her, of human foibles and eccentricities, often made her giggle, but only to herself.

Mostly she wanted to hide away in her little studio room, painting and drawing, imagining new, beautiful worlds.

She loved her mother’s tales of the beautiful fashions of her French youth, how it made the women look like goddesses, and Sandrine longed to capture such things for herself.

Then she could forget everything else, and be only what she wanted to be.

A lady in a pale green and silver gown floated past Sandrine’s hiding place, shimmering in the candlelight, the glow catching on the tiny gold beads in the skirt’s tulle trim.

Sandrine adored the colour of the lustrous satin, how the changeable shade made the wearer’s complexion glow like the evening sea.

But she didn’t quite approve of the cross-over bodice, which did not suit the lady’s willowiness.

It would be better in a simple scoop, a bit of that tulle draped over the shoulder, perhaps.

She slid over a couple of steps to more closely examine the beadwork, nearly toppling over the brass pot of a towering flower arrangement.

As she grabbed at the wobbling arch of white roses and lilies, she glimpsed her mother in the crowd. Marie-Claude was clearly looking for her disappearing daughter, her lace fan impatiently flapping, a little frown between her sky-blue eyes.

Sandrine quickly ducked back into her hiding hole—and that was when she saw him. And she really could not stop staring that time.

She shivered, even though she felt flushed with heat—the terrible curse of her milky-pale skin was the inevitable rush of red-sun warmth that poured down over her whenever she was embarrassed or anxious or shy or scared, as she was far too often.

She feared she was quite crimson now as she stared in frozen silence at the man who now stood in the ballroom entrance, directly in her line of sight as if the crowd had magically parted for him, the chandelier light falling directly onto him making him appear to glow.

She felt as if she’d been plopped down right in front of her favourite place for sketching, the classical galleries at the British Museum, before the most gloriously sculpted figure of an ancient god.

Tall and powerful, he quietly commanded the room without even a movement or word, without even raising one elegant hand.

His gaze, some pale colour so luminous it was piercing even at a distance, swept over the crowd almost as if coolly indifferent, completely serene, and Sandrine imagined he was just gracing mere mortals with his blindingly beautiful presence for a moment before flying onward.

Yet somehow she sensed he did look for something among that sparkling kaleidoscope, his study lighting on one object then another, until a tiny frown of something like disappointment took its place.

If only he looked for her in that way. What a dream that would be! But then again, whatever would she say if he did talk to her? It would be as if that museum god-statue had suddenly come to life and said something to her. She would freeze utterly.

The Comtesse de Fleurieu, their hostess, hurried to him with a brilliant smile, and he moved at last, half-turning to greet her.

Some of the light Sandrine had imagined surrounding him shifted into shadow, and a bit of the dizzying magic shifted and transformed.

She studied the details of him. Unlike a Greek god, he wore fashionable garb of a beautifully tailored dark blue and shimmering ivory waistcoat, a simply tied but impeccable cravat fastened with a small cameo.

His glossy, dark, curling hair was a bit too long, and tumbled over his brow to be flicked impatiently from those astonishing eyes.

A smile, just a very small one, touched the austere line of his lips, but it was utterly transforming.

It looked like mischief, humour, conjured out of indifference.

A burst of giggles from beyond her hiding place pierced a bit of that sunlit, hazy dream that had come over her.

She glanced over to see two young ladies, clearly of that confident, popular sort Sandrine could never be, fashionably dressed in pink muslin and blue silk, blonde curls bouncing, fans waving as they whispered behind them.

‘…really is him!’ one of the Giggling Girls said. ‘They did say he would attend this evening, but I didn’t dare believe it. Oh, don’t stare so, Rosemary! What if he sees us? I shall faint away.’

‘If only he would see us,’ Rosemary moaned. ‘My cousin said he’s been gone from London for ever so long, travelling, but she saw him riding at the park yesterday. Riding with a lady, in most close conversation.’

‘Are you sure it was a lady?’ the first Giggling Girl said with a—yes, with a giggle. ‘He had the most scandalous reputation before his parents sent him away from Town. Gambling, racing, and—and fast women.’

‘No! Shocking. And his family so very grand. Much older than our own Royal Family,’ Rosemary whispered.

‘But my cousin did say this particular lady was dressed most respectably. Even rather unfashionably. Perhaps he has mended his ways. Perhaps he is looking for real romance now. There is nothing so splendid as a reformed rake.’

‘Oh, Rosemary, you were always such a swoony goose! He is French. They are not romantic in that way at all.’ GG number one tilted her golden head as she watched the ancient god nod and smile at their hostess. ‘But it’s true I’ve never seen anyone quite so handsome in real life…’

Neither had Sandrine. And now she so longed to know who he really was.

A Frenchman of a grand family! A rakish Frenchman, freshly arrived from some mysterious absence.

Who could he be? A prince? A lost royal?

She thought of some French princes whose portraits she’d seen—pasty, long-nosed, balding monsieurs—and she rather thought not.

Surely her parents must know of him. Her mother was an expert on the aristocracy of their homeland. But Sandrine did not, for she was quite sure she’d remember him well.

‘The d’Alencys might be ancient,’ Rosemary said, rather wistfully, ‘but they say their fortune was quite lost in France, and they must struggle so sadly. And his mother was a niece of the Noailles! How tragic.’

‘I doubt my father would even approve of such a suitor for me, then,’ the first Giggling Girl said with a sniff.

‘As if he would ever look at you twice, anyway.’

They moved away in an outpouring of quarrelsome words, and Sandrine lost their flow of gossip.