Chapter 2
“Iwill show you the art of sabrage, Laurence. Only but watch my technique.”
A shiver passed through her, followed by heat that turned her hands and cheeks clammy. The voice, the cocky intonation… She paused, gathered her composure, and then turned the knob.
The door opened on silent hinges, cigar smoke wafting to meet her. Silver flashed. An object shot out and bounced against the fireplace shovel with a loud bang, and the air bubbled with the scent of fermented grapes.
A well-dressed gentleman sat behind a heavy desk, cigar in hand. The other, his curly dark locks in disarray, coatless, and with very fine legs encased in tight buckskins, stood before the desk, his back to the door.
“Dans la victoire,’’ the man in buckskins proclaimed, “tu mérites du champagne, et dans la défaite tu en as besoin.’’
In victory you deserve champagne, and in defeat you need it?
Her stomach twisted, thoughts stirring in her muddled mind. It had sounded like him, but it couldn’t be, could it? Nor was it Thaddeus—he’d fallen at Waterloo.
Had he lived?
If it wasn’t him…would Sherington be hosting a blasted Frenchman?
Laurence—surely the weak-chinned blond fellow behind the desk was Laurence—noticed her. Thaddeus had been the handsomer of the two boys. Poor Thaddeus.
Laurence’s smile fell away as he stood and set aside his cigar. The man with him, the man clutching a foaming bottle in one hand and a saber in the other, turned his head. His lips widened and softened, and his eyes darkened with what she recognized as a man’s carnal interest.
And then they widened with shock. A smile dawned, flooding his face with something that looked like relief.
Her own heart thundered. Gareth. This was Gareth, grown into a man, with thighs that would send Dulcinea into embarrassing public ecstasies.
“Petal,” he cried. “It’s you.”
“Flora?” Laurence stepped closer, his gaze traveling over her like an annoying insect buzzing around. “I haven’t seen you in years. Is it really you? All grown up?”
The tone was lascivious and didn’t deserve a reply.
Laurence rounded the desk and scoffed. “Don’t tell me you still don’t speak, Flora.”
That again. The fool.
“My name,” she said, “is Fleur. Not Flora. Nor is it Petal.”
Gareth’s eyes twinkled, flecks of gold sparking among the brown, and his whole face lit from within as if he was holding in one of his hearty laughs, like the one that exploded out of him the last time she saw him.
Did he still have the handkerchief she’d labored over? He’d probably thrown it into the fire the same day he’d received it.
And that was fine. Gareth had no place in her plans.
“Welcome back from the wars, Ardleigh.” Broad shouldered and narrow waisted, his only visible scar traced one jawline. Were there others? She’d never know. “I see you’re in blessedly good health. But Mr. Sherington, may I offer my condolences to you on your brother’s death? I’m sorry for your loss.”
Laurence dipped his head, and a cloud passed over Gareth’s face, ever so briefly.
He hadn’t changed. Nothing could shake him out of his native good humor for long. “You may both address me as Miss Hardouin,” she said. “Do please come along to the drawing room, Mr. Sherington and be introduced to Lady Dulcinea Ixworth. She is most anxious to meet you, and to renew her acquaintance with your father. Might you persuade him to join us?”
* * *
Gareth allowedhimself a smile at her boldness, Laurence’s gaping mouth, and the fact that she hadn’t included Gareth in the commanding invitation. Fleur was as much a pert little baggage as ever, more so now that she was a gabby one, and she’d grown in all the best ways, from the golden curls peeking from under her bonnet to the trim ankles under her too-short skirts. And all the curves in between.
Especially those.
If Thad were here to see how the skinny little chit had grown…
But he wasn’t, dammit. Gareth had been the lucky one, in battle, in his rescue, even in his case of the precious Vin de Comête.
And now this: Fleur Hardouin was right here. His search was over. He could send a letter to Etienne Marceau telling the Frenchman he’d found him his bride, and then be free to be on his own way.
“Beg pardon, Miss, er Hardouin,” Laurence said, interrupting his thoughts, “but Ardleigh and I are?—”
“Oh, why don’t we join the ladies, Laurence?” Gad, she was lovely, and he wanted to know more about her. He had to make sure she was the right Mademoiselle Hardouin, didn’t he? Not that there was any doubt—she looked astonishingly like the miniature of her mother. “That is, if I’m included in the invitation.”
Fleur waved a regal hand. “Do bring the champagne,” she said. “It is a particular favorite of my lady when she can get it.”
He chuckled. “Is it indeed? Then I shall look forward to hearing her opinion on the vintage.” This particular bottle was not the Vin de Comête. He’d smuggled in a case of the coveted 1811 vintage champagne, a hedge against poverty in the unknowable future. Putting aside his saber, he grasped the bottle in one hand and set his other lightly to her elbow, inhaling the delicate scent of floral perfume. Not lavender—his old nurse had reeked of the stuff. Not roses either.
He dipped his head her way and sniffed. “Mmm. Lilac?”
Her eyes turned a steely gray, and the slight wash of color creeping up her pale neck cheered him beyond reason. Fleur was a flower, but not a fragile one, and not one to blush easily at an importuning man’s flattery.
Or… he suspected that the cynical young girl had not grown into that sort of woman. What did he really know of her in the years since he’d last seen her?
She was still a Miss Hardouin, so she hadn’t married.
“Come along.” True to form, she quick-marched out of the library with him tagging along attached to her arm.
“Who is this Lady Dulcinea Ixworth?” he asked.
She sent him a side-wise condescending look, the sort you’d bestow on a child who’d asked a stupid question.
Another grin tugged at his lips, and he swallowed a laugh. He’d always enjoyed young Petal’s silent testiness, but in Fleur the woman? The challenge was as intoxicating as champagne.
A new thought nagged: would Etienne Marceau appreciate her?
“She’s a distant cousin to the Bicton-Morledges.” Fleur’s frosty tone pull him out of his reverie. “I’ve been serving as her hired companion.”
“Does she live at Bicton Grange?”
“No. Well, that is, we only just arrived from Staffordshire.”
“Staffordshire.”
“Yes.”
“How did you come to…” He thought of the sulking little girl Fleur used to be. “Do you mean that Bicton-Morledge sent you away?”
Fleur tugged her arm free and turned on him. “Think you that Mr. Bicton-Morledge and his lady would cast off an orphan?”
He passed by the ravaged drive and unkempt park at Bicton Grange. Perhaps clothing and feeding Fleur had been too much of a burden. But surely Fleur had some money from her parents.
He’d learned some of her history from his time spent in France. If she was, in fact, the right Miss Hardouin—and how could she not be?—her father had been a son of a crafty textile and wine merchant. While Fleur’s grandfather changed sides as needed during the revolution, Fleur’s father opposed the sans culottes, and then, perforce, was disowned by his family. He’d joined the counterrevolution and been executed in Lyon when Fleur was no more than an infant.
Gareth had seen a miniature of Fleur’s mother, a blond and strikingly beautiful daughter of a minor seigneur. All of that family had been lost to the ravaging peasants. Perhaps there truly had been no money following young Fleur to Switzerland when she and her mother escaped.
Unless the late Bicton-Morledge had squandered his young ward’s inheritance. Always a possibility.
Fleur still watched him, a glint in her eyes that was not humor.
He touched her elbow again. “Perhaps they were tired of your long silences.”
Her shoulders rose and fell in a huff, and she continued down the corridor.
He ought to apologize, but this was Fleur, and she’d never been a child to appreciate insincere coddling. As a woman—well, time would tell, but he doubted she’d developed a taste for polite lies.
“How long have you served the lady?” he asked.
“Ten years.”
“Ten years? You couldn’t have been more than?—”
“I was twelve when I came to her.”
Sent off as a child to serve as a companion? Why?What had his Petal done to deserve that fate?
Their arrival at the drawing room door silenced his questions, and he stepped aside to let Fleur enter first, watching the sway of her hips and the delicate slope of her shoulders under her gown.
Serving as drudge to an older lady hadn’t dampened her pride or her spirits. Yet what an awful life, fetching shawls, brewing possets, and who knew what other more disagreeable tasks were required.
The marriage to Marceau planned by her grandmother, the Veuve Hardouin would save her from that life. She’d have her own home, wouldn’t she? Or would she and Marceau be required to live under the thumb of the Veuve?
Mrs. Smythe sat near the fire, an elegant older lady nearby. Curls as white as his neck cloth burst from under the visitor’s bonnet. The lady wore lavender, as did Fleur. Half-mourning? For Bicton-Morledge or someone else?
“Good day to you, ladies.” Gareth bestowed his most charming smile.
He watched as Fleur’s back stiffened, suppressing a chuckle. Her hair had darkened over the years, and the coil of regal gold sparkled under the back of her tiny bonnet. By God, Fleur ought to be a royal princess instead of a princess of the champagne world.
Sherington’s Cousin Esther looked up, relief easing her tense mouth. A timid, compliant widow who’d needed a home, she’d been happy to take on hostess duties when Sherington lost his wife a year earlier.
The older guest raised a quizzing glass to her eyes, and he felt that bright, magnified eyeball creeping from the top of his head to the tip of his boots. And then up again pausing over-long at his unmentionables.
He smiled and raised the bottle of champagne in a salute.
“Dulcinea? Is it really you?”
The gravelly voice behind him caught him by surprise. He’d missed the creaking of Laurence’s father’s Bath chair rolling behind him.
“Indeed, Sherington.” The lady’s mellifluous voice had none of the raspiness of aging. “What’s the meaning of you gadding about in a chair with wheels? Are there no good chairmen in Cheshire to carry you about the house?”
George Sherington laughed long and heartily.
“Father?” Laurence sent Gareth a curious glance at this rare display of good spirits. Sherington’s illness had taken him down, Laurence said, but even before that he’d been grieving dreadfully since his wife’s death. The losses that followed, of his friend, Bicton-Morledge, and worst of all, Thaddeus, had been heavy blows.
Sherington’s man wheeled him closer to the ladies and helped him transfer to the settee where the visiting lady sat.
Laurence sent a servant to fetch champagne glasses, and then introductions were made. Lady Ixworth extended a slim regal hand while her gaze skipped over Laurence and settled on Gareth again with a glittery interest that would have put a Covent Garden dove to shame. He swallowed the urge to laugh.
Fleur surely noticed the older lady’s interest. Her lips and eyes squeezed shut for the briefest of moments. Was she embarrassed?
When she cleared her throat and spoke, she told Laurence’s father how wonderful it was to see him after so many years.
Fleur, transformed, as genteel as a Mayfair maiden or her mother.
He chuckled. What was she up to?
Mr. Sherington looked just as perplexed, but he was quickly distracted by Lady Ixworth, who peppered him with the sort of teasing that signaled more than a mere acquaintance. Gad, as if they’d once been much, much more than mere acquaintances.
What an entertaining visit this was proving to be.
When the glasses had been filled and passed around, Fleur pulled a chair next to old Sherington, listening as if captivated.
Perhaps Lady Ixworth’s health was failing, and Fleur was fishing for a position as Sherington’s nurse.
Unless she thought being kind to the father might hook her Laurence’s hand?
No. She couldn’t marry Laurence. She was to marry Marceau, though she didn’t know it, and Marceau didn’t deserve her, and wouldn’t know how to handle a girl like her.
Fleur carried the mercenary blood of the Veuve Hardouin, a woman who had wriggled her way through the revolutionary madness and charmed Bonaparte with sparkling wine. Marceau was a mere watered-down distant cousin. No proper match for Fleur.
And yet… he needed to tell Fleur he’d discovered her family. Not here, though, and not now in front of an audience.
* * *
The next day
Fleur settleda breakfast tray on the table in Mrs. Bicton-Morledge’s bedchamber while sixteen-year-old Cora helped her mother from the bed.
“So kind of you to help, Fleur,” the lady called, struggling to sit up. Her white linen nightgown flowed like stout canvas tenting a heavy boulder. Cora knelt before her mama and helped her into her slippers. “If only I could see my feet. Thank you, my darling girl.”
A pretty, petite lass, Cora was the image of what her mother must have looked like at that age, with dark curling hair and deep blue eyes. She was the eldest of the three Bicton-Morledge girls; that is, the eldest at home. Phyllis, who must now be nineteen, had run off with a soldier three years prior. The son of the family had died tragically in a fall from a horse. The two younger girls, Jemimah, aged eight and Suze, aged four, were in the nursery with one of the few remaining servants, a devoted nursery maid.
Cora helped her mother through her ablutions while a maid popped in to carry out the night waste, and they soon had the lady settled more or less comfortably into a chair.
Fleur drew the table closer and lifted the covers revealing shirred eggs, ham, and buttered toast.
“Heavens, how am I to eat so much?”
“Try, ma’am,” Fleur said.
Cora tucked a napkin over her mother’s expansive lap and dove for it when it slid to the floor. “Tuck this into your bodice, Mama, and eat. Cook says you must keep up your strength.”
The lady grasped her daughter’s hand and smiled. “Are you gossiping about me with the servants?”
Fleur’s heart twisted. Mrs. Bicton-Morledge had been a distant, almost cold guardian to her younger self, and perhaps it had been in part her own fault. The lady had just lost one child and had another on the way when the family took in Fleur. Having a surly young girl thrust into her care must have bewildered her.
Cora dropped a kiss on her mother’s cheek. “It’s only that we care about you. All of us.”
Fleur turned away from the tender scene and took a step toward the door.
“Wait, Fleur,” the lady said. “Thank you, Cora. Now, will you run along and see to your sisters? I want to speak with Fleur a moment.”