Chapter 2
Mouette Raveneau Brandreth sat at a small writing desk in the window of her morning room, facing Bedford Square. Holding a quill pen poised above an inkpot, she waited for inspiration.
She was making a list of ideas for possible employment.
Governess, wrote Mouette. Seconds later, she crossed it out.
How could she become a governess, living in someone else’s home, when she had two sons?
It might be slightly feasible if they were either adorably young or nearly adult, but Charles and Anthony were at the rather horrid ages of thirteen and nine.
Teacher, Mouette wrote more tentatively. Hadn’t she been tutoring her own boys? Was it possible that anyone might actually employ her to educate their daughters? It seemed unlikely, for such positions were usually filled by men.
Mouette put down the pen and looked around the room.
Although very sparsely furnished, it was not as empty as the rest of the townhouse.
Piece by piece, she’d sold off the stylish furnishings chosen with painstaking care during her decade-long marriage to Sir Harry Brandreth.
She’d been comfortably ensconced in the ton during those years, but it had all come crashing down when Harry betrayed the trust of Mouette’s father, André Raveneau, and even tried to kill him.
Only a few months later, he had hanged himself in prison.
It seemed a lifetime ago rather than four years. Her parents had lovingly rescued her and the boys and taken them away to their other home in Connecticut, where they’d remained as the wars between England, France, and America raged on. But Mouette couldn’t be satisfied hiding from life forever.
Although her entire adult life had been spent in England, now that she had returned, she found herself struggling to craft a future.
Harry had left her debts rather than a fortune.
All that remained were the lavish possessions accumulated during her years of striving to become a society hostess.
She’d returned from America to find trunks of exquisite, if rather dated, gowns.
Storerooms were filled with furnishings in the most recent Empire style, sets of china, paintings, and other treasured valuables.
Mouette had taken this perfectly respectable home in Bedford Square, hired a
staff, and waited for something to happen, for surely something must happen.
And yet, her circumstances had taken a turn for the worse.
Why had she imagined her old friends would welcome her back into their midst?
Instead, Mouette felt tainted by events she’d been powerless to control.
Her former friends held routs but did not invite her, or they pretended to not see her in a crowd.
When Mouette did attend a social gathering, she began to notice the subtle cues sent her way: the angling of shoulders to shut her out, the glances that were exchanged when she approached.
Was she to be ostracized for the rest of her life because her handsome, ambitious, charming husband had turned out to be the worst sort of villain?
Apparently so.
Staring down at the sheet of foolscap, Mouette picked up her pen and forced herself to write, Seek out a protector.
It was the one option that had a real chance of success.
However not only did her spirit rebel against such a notion, but the thought of giving her body to another man was abhorrent.
Even with Harry, her own husband, she had had to force herself to submit to his desires.
Just then, the bell jangled inside her front door. She’d dismissed her servants one by one over the last year, and now only one kind-hearted housemaid came to assist her when she had guests. Mouette had learned to always plan well in advance for those occasions.
Gracefully, she rose from her satin-upholstered side chair and smoothed her skirts.
Her heart raced as she glanced in the gilded mirror above the mantel.
She’d hung the looking-glass here just last week, to replace a family treasure she had been forced to sell, a portrait of Mouette herself.
Painted by élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, it had been made to celebrate her engagement to Harry in 1804.
Now, instead of viewing her likeness in the portrait, made at a moment when she had been young and filled with hope, she saw her older reflection in the mirror.
True, she was thirty-six years of age, but was she not still lovely?
If one didn’t look too closely, her gleaming ebony curls, azure-blue eyes, creamy skin, and fine figure, remained relatively unchanged.
The knock came again at the door and Mouette continued on toward the entryhall. Who could possibly be calling unannounced? If it was another bill collector, she would pretend to be her own servant and say that Lady Brandreth was away for the afternoon.
Opening the door, Mouette was utterly shocked to see her younger sister, Lindsay, standing on the front step next to her childhood friend, Isabella. Could they hear the pounding of her heart?
“Goodness! Whatever are you two doing here in London?” Surely they were wondering why she was answering her own door instead of a butler. Since she had been forced to let Steele go months ago, Mouette couldn’t invite anyone to come to her home. “I – I’m quite unprepared for guests!”
“Unprepared?” echoed Lindsay Coleraine with a laugh. “We have come to surprise you, darling sister! Aren’t you pleased?”
With a rising tide of panic, Mouette watched them enter uninvited. “Perhaps you were surprised that I opened the door to you myself!” She wanted to press her hands to her flushed cheeks. “Steele, you see, has gone to – to visit his aunt, who is very ill!”
“Surprised? It never entered my mind,” Lindsay replied with a quizzical glance. Removing her bonnet to reveal upswept strawberry-blonde curls, she added, “Whatever is the matter? You’re very flushed. Do you have a fever?”
Mouette quickly recovered her composure. “Of course not. I simply was not expecting guests. Do come into the sitting room and I will order refreshments.”
With a flourish, she threw open the doors leading into her sitting room.
This one room remained a vision of sheer perfection, the place where Mouette had fully exercised her talent for creating an artistic living space.
She’d had the walls painted the warm, inviting color of beeswax and discovered just the right Axminster carpet.
Its muted shades of blue and gold perfectly accentuated the upholstery.
Every candlestick, every piece of art, every small ornament that graced the polished tabletops, had been carefully chosen and placed by Mouette.
“Oh my dear, what a beautiful room!” exclaimed Isabella St. Briac, her eyes shining behind her spectacles as she turned in a circle, staring. “Where is the portrait of you by Madame Le Brun? I have dreamed of seeing it again.”
A wave of shame washed over Mouette. Her friend Izzie was an artist and Madame Le Brun had been her mentor.
While the Frenchwoman executed the portrait, Izzie had practiced at her own easel, while Mouette’s mother, Devon, poured tea.
The memory of that long-ago, convivial day in Madame’s light-filled London home, when the future held only promise, made her heart ache.
And she couldn’t possibly tell her friend the truth, that she had sold the portrait to pay a particularly nasty bill collector.
“I – I - ” Wildly, Mouette searched her mind for a plausible explanation for the portrait’s absence.
“I loaned it to an artist friend who wanted to study Madame Le Brun’s technique. ”
“Oh!” Isabella nodded, looking rather perplexed. “Well, your home is simply lovely. Clearly, your situation must be more agreeable than I had imagined.”
“Izzie, don’t you know that it’s very bad taste to allude to one’s financial resources?” Mouette scolded. They had been close friends for so long that she could speak to Isabella like a sister. “Is that why you are here? Because you two thought I might I need rescuing from dire circumstances?”
Having taken seats in a lovely pair of Adam chairs, Lindsay and Isabella exchanged guilty looks.
“As it happens,” Lindsay said, “I have been wanting to visit again, ever since our brief reunion when you and the boys first returned from America. However, one can’t simply pop in from Oxford – and I’ve been very occupied with baby Bridget. ”
Mouette knew a moment’s shame that she hadn’t made a real effort to meet her new niece. “I understand completely. I’ve been longing to see Bridget for myself – and of course, you and Ryan. The year has flown by since I returned to London.”
“You will adore Bridget! She has my hair and Ryan’s blue eyes and she is already a flirt.”
“It sounds like Bridget is the image of our mother. I’m rather surprised that you didn’t bring her with you today.
” As she spoke, Mouette watched her younger sister.
It wasn’t easy to be with Lindsay again, remembering the way their lives had been entangled during the weeks of Harry’s descent into ruin.
Once, Mouette had enjoyed a feeling of superiority.
She had been a member of London society, with a grand home, two beautiful children, and a handsome husband.
Now, her flush deepened as she remembered how she had held herself up as a role model for Lindsay, assuming that her sister would covet her status and apparent wealth.
It was humiliating to consider how their situations had become reversed, with Lindsay enjoying a rewarding life, married to her great love who was now a professor of astronomy at Oxford University.
Mouette was alone and penniless, her pride in tatters.
Lindsay spoke, bringing Mouette back to the present. “You are right, Bridget does have Mama’s coloring, even more than I do.”