Chapter 28
They finally stood before the portrait of Josseline Vérany. The salon was hushed, the emotion between them still high. Bleu was no longer studying the magnificent portrait but Brielle. Once again he fisted his hands behind his back to keep from reaching for her.
“Your mother was a beautiful woman …” he said. “But you are even moreso.”
Brielle seemed to hardly hear him, absorbed as she was in the painting. “Grandfather said this was commissioned on the eve of her first fête. Soon after that she met my father. Maman was happy here in France, but she was happiest with him.”
“Theirs was a love match, then.”
“Blessedly so.” She turned back to him. “I wish you could have met them. They would have been very fond of you.”
“For rescuing their daughter as you say.”
“For being the selfless, noble soul that you are.”
“I am far from perfect, mon cher.”
She touched the canvas, running a finger along the yellow of her mother’s gown that seemed more silk than oil paint. “Grandfather wants me to have my portrait painted so that it hangs opposite her.”
Bleu looked over his shoulder to the far end of the room and saw a bare damask wall.
“He’s already commissioned Maurice-Quentin de La Tour for the task.”
“Task?” He fisted his hands harder. “More privilege.”
She turned toward him, her hands clasped at her sashed waist. “Will you sit for a miniature, one I can keep in my bodice or pocket? To remember our time here?”
The request seemed bittersweet. “I’ll have no trouble remembering our time here. But I do have trouble sitting still.” His resistance died when she smiled at him again. “But for you …”
“Merci. Monsieur de La Tour will arrive after the fête.” She pulled a tiny, gold timepiece from her pocket, a gift from the comte.
Watching her, he thought of life before France. Of boundless, unfettered time. Freedom.
“The dancing master is coming soon.” She looked at him again, expectant. “Will you be there?”
“Only if we avoid the minuet.”
“We shall. I’m much more fond of the gavotte and allemande and cotillion.”
“Don’t forget the bourré we stepped along the Rivanna.”
“I shan’t.” Her gaze grew almost starry again. “Everything about that night seems gilded to me.”
“This is gilded.” He looked about the salon and wondered about the ballroom he’d not seen yet. Wondered, too, if he’d have a chance to partner with her again. An onslaught of suitors were about to descend. He felt it to his marrow.
She touched his sleeve. “Promise me a dance like last time.”
He focused on the portrait rather than her. “If one is open, oui.”
“It will be open, I promise.”
He looked at her again. Her rose cologne encircled him, making him want to remove the pearl comb that had nearly slipped free of her coiffure and bury his face in her unbound hair, every mahogany-gold strand.
A far cry from the braided maid he’d rescued.
He was having trouble reconciling the woman she’d been to the one she was becoming.
The Brielle of old felt within his reach, the other an impossibility. A dream.
He’d brought her here. Only now did he realize the plan had been more his than hers.
He believed she belonged in France, the place of her heritage.
Only his love for her hadn’t ebbed, only surged.
He not only loved her, he was willing to die for her.
He’d never cared for anyone so much nor had he reckoned with the cost of releasing her.
Non, imbécile. Fight!
The urge came unbidden and soul deep. Fight for what might be lost, for what was fleeting. For a home across the sea and a loving woman who kept him there. For their future, their children, their legacy. A knifelike anguish twisted inside him. His heart beat so hard surely she heard it.
As if sensing his inner struggle, she reached up and touched his cheek.
The scar that marred his brow to his jawline was no longer an angry crimson but faded by time.
Years had passed since he’d fought and lost Acadie.
In another decade would he recall this very moment with the same aching, irreversible wrench?
If he didn’t fight for her—for what they had—the scar to his heart would be far worse.
He took a deep breath and covered her fingers with his own. “Brielle …”
A sudden voice sounded from the salon’s open double doors and her feather-light fingers fell away. Their privacy fled.
“You look as though you’re about to dance.” The comte’s smile softened his features. “I would join you if my rheumatic legs would allow it.”
Brielle moved across the salon to kiss him on both cheeks. “We were admiring Maman and discussing the coming fête while awaiting the dance master.”
“Ah, the masquerade ball that will last all night and introduce you to much of society except those unfortunates frolicking with the king and queen at Versailles.”
“Is your ballroom big enough?” she asked as they moved toward Bleu.
“It can accommodate a few hundred,” Grandfather replied. “Mercifully, there are many doors that open onto the terrace so guests can be outside in the fresh air should it become too crowded.”
“Will you be my first dance, then, grand-père?” she asked, a smile in her voice. “My last is already taken.”
The masked ball began beneath a full moon that turned the Loire into silver ribbon.
The incessant sound of carriages on cobblestones reached Brielle in her suite.
Stifling a yawn, she waited for the ordeal of dressing to be over as it seemed she’d been preparing since breakfast. Now evening and swathed in apricot silk and Chantilly lace, she turned before a looking glass to admire the garment that rivaled Parisian gowns, the seamstress said.
Half a dozen maids encircled her, ready to adjust, snip, and pin every part of her ensemble.
Brielle lost track of who said what with their effusive chatter.
“Is it true American ladies prefer coiffures like yours?”
“Others may be powdered and puffed but you make the artificial unnecessary.”
“You belong at the court of Versailles, Mademoiselle.”
Cosette brought her half-mask, its edges adorned with the same Chantilly lace as her gown and embellished with faux gemstones and feathers.
No one knew who she was … including she herself.
She left her boudoir, the odd thought circling round her head as she caught her reflection in a hall mirror by the light of a hundred candles. Such extravagance. Such a charade. She still felt she was playing dress up, pretending to be someone she was not.
Grand-père was waiting, escorting her down the chateau’s staircase to the ballroom now teeming with guests, the hubbub already so great she could hardly hear his remarks. Four hundred guests?
Where was Bleu?
All was a fascinating if bewildering blur of costumes—Venus in a rose-wreathed frock, Cupid with powdered pink hair, monks and friars and knights, harlequins and sailors, sultans and shepherdesses, kings and queens and clowns.
Her own mask was itchy against her already heated skin, and she resisted the urge to tear it free. “I suppose I have the extra advantage of being unknown to all.”
“All they know is that a surprise is in store,” Grandfather said, seemingly amused at the ruse. “At midnight when all unmask I shall introduce you.”
And once her mask came off, the imposter she was—the orphaned, indentured tavern maid with callused hands—would be revealed. Or so she felt. These guests had nothing to hide, all aristocrats to the core.
Musicians tuned their instruments as the ballroom filled.
Brielle stood by open double doors as the opening minuet ensued and then, despite the challenge of new shoes and being half-masked, partnered with Grandfather for a gavotte.
A performance—for that is what it was—every eye on them, especially her, the mysterious stranger.
The crowd’s swelling merriment gladdened and drained her all at once, but the press of guests seemed incomplete as she searched and discarded the costumed men in the immense room.
None compared to Bleu.
Frustration sparked. Had he decided not to attend? Was he unwell? Or was it simply the fact he was disguised and somehow she overlooked him?
The air grew sullied by spirits and sweat, the laughter almost maniacal in places, the stares of so many unsettling.
She drank a cup of punch, joined three other couples for a cotillion, her fully masked partner dressed as a Venetian, or so he told her.
More dancing ensued, other partners trying to guess her identity and provoke her into removing her mask too soon.
In time they adjourned to the buffet—no less than six supper rooms—overflowing with a dizzying number of dishes. Rago?t de veau? Gateau mille-feuille? Meringues and blancmange baskets of fruit she recognized but the rest? Overwhelmed as she was, she had little appetite.
Again, her eyes roved the rooms she walked through, drawing attention wherever she went. Was it her gown? The intrigue of her presence? Before she could ponder it further she was blocked by a gentleman in a black half-mask dressed as a buccaneer, cutlass and all.
“Mademoiselle …” He bowed low, sweeping his wide-brimmed hat to one side, its ostrich feather plumes brushing the polished floor.
Onlookers encircled them as if he was more prince than pirate. When he straightened, he took her gloved hand and kissed it to the titters of more than a few fan-fluttering ladies. Next she knew they were dancing, he having returned her to the ballroom.
At midnight the music quieted for the unmasking.
Though the mysterious buccaneer was still by her side, Brielle hadn’t stopped looking for Bleu.
Finally the ma?tre des cérémonies brought the room to a standstill and then, at the trill of a violin, every mask came off, laughter and talk punctuating the dramatic moment.
Brielle’s masque dangled from her hand as she looked to Grandfather who had removed his though surely all knew the identity of their host.