CHAPTER TWELVE #3
His bluntness threw her into confusion. She turned from him, heading back to the table and sinking down into her chair again. Taking up the glass there, she sipped at it without realising, playing for time. He had not taken her up on the marriage question, but he would. She was certain of that.
Henri followed her, the puzzlement subsiding. There began to be a glimmer of light, and he was glad of Jemima’s intervention. To walk away had been the reaction of a moment, blinded by Grace’s rejection. He pulled out a chair and sat down, taking up his own unfinished wine.
For a moment or two, he endured her silence, searching her averted features, dim in the dusk against the darkness of her blue gown. He realised he was awaiting further enlightenment. When it did not come, he felt forced to demand it.
“Grace, tell me what is it you find difficult? I have thought we are as one. What you have done for me, it has been not entirely from compassion, no? You have saved my life not once, which is perhaps understandable, but more times than you need. You have lied for me. You have walked this long mile to Rainham, when you are in pain. And this for me. Think you I am insensible of the reason?”
She looked up then, into the candlelight, and he saw the answer in her grey eyes. “You know the reason, Henri. It is not my motives that are in question.”
He stared at her, unable to fathom this at all. “Is it that you believe I have not a good reason for desiring to spend my life with you?”
The words spun in on Grace, and she could not help the note of yearning. “Is that what you desire, Henri?”
A laugh escaped him, not of amusement. “You think I wish instead to go to London, to be among émigrés as Sir James is suggesting? Ma chère, I have been there. Not to London, but in Paris in the days of old.”
“Then you must know it is where you belong.”
“Then, perhaps. No longer. I was young, and the family Rousselle is at court. It was for some months only, yet I have found it already a life without meaning.”
Grace dismissed this at once. “Easy to say so after the events of the last few years.”
“Exactly so, ma chère. I am changed by what I have seen, more by what I have done.”
The bitterness was back in his voice, and Grace could not help but respond to it. “You did it in a good cause, Henri.”
“It is only the thought of this that has made it possible.” His fingers dragged tiredly down his face.
“I do not know, Grace, how I live with myself, even that the things I have done, these terrible things, have been necessary if I am to save some few lives. It is like a betrayal that one cannot choose to avoid, enfin. To have no power, but to be forced to use the power of another — in cruelty, in death. It is not a thing easily forgotten.” His gaze came up and there was fierceness in the green eyes.
“Do you think these émigrés can forgive that which I cannot forgive myself? I do not know if even they will believe.”
“Why shouldn’t they? Surely there are people in Brussels who can speak for you?”
“Assuredly. But what is to be said of me when they learn that Jean-Marc Loriot has turned his coat? Only that I have fled France because Robespierre is executed. It will be always suspected, and me, I do not blame them.”
A faint light of hope had entered Grace’s chest, but she tried to suppress it.
Scarcely flattering to know Henri preferred to remain here only because he did not anticipate a welcome among his own kind.
She searched for excuses. “They are your people, Henri. Whatever they think of you, it is the circle in which you belong.”
Henri’s eyes flashed. “No longer! Do you not know me, Grace? I have lived among those of less distinction, perhaps, but of no less courage. Their pain I have shared. It is not possible to go back to a life fit for the Comte de Rousselle, even that there is such a life here in England.”
It was a dichotomy Grace could appreciate. But not a reason she could bear. “It does not change the fact that you are a count.”
“From accident only.” Henri took up his wine and sipped at it.
“I have been one of many cousins, and thus I was raised to a profession. I have studied the law in Paris, which has been the chance that aided me when I came back there to work under disguise in the revolution. When young, I have come to England to learn the ways of the English as also the language.”
It would have been all too easy to be distracted by these details of his life.
She yearned to know more, to become privy to those feelings that had driven him to the hazards he had faced.
Were the circumstances right, Grace might have eased the burden on his conscience, taking into her bosom the secrets of his heart.
But the more she longed for these intimacies, the more she felt the barriers against her. She did not know how the strain of suppressing her desires showed in her face.
“Henri, whatever your early expectations, you cannot now escape the responsibilities thrust upon you. You are and always will be the Comte de Rousselle.”
There was silence for the space of several moments. Grace dropped her gaze from that speculative appraisal she could read in the green eyes, silently watching her over the rim of the wine glass. When Henri spoke, his tone was dry.
“Is it perhaps that Mademoiselle Grace Dovercourt is too proud for the title of Comtesse?”
“Proud?” Grace let out a humourless laugh. “The opposite, if anything.”
He set down his glass with a snap. “Now it is clear to me. Grace, have you no brain to see how little important is the matter of a leg that is short? You think a countess must not limp when she is walking? This is reasonable, no? Ma belle, you are extremely foolish if you think like this.”
Grace grimaced, taking refuge in her wine before responding. “It is scarcely suitable, when all is said and done.”
Henri threw up his hands. “I talk with the walls! Grace, it is not a body that makes a person. You are a woman brave, intelligent — if not at this moment! — and one who has a smile charming beyond all. Is this not enough?”
“No,” said Grace helplessly, setting down her glass and pushing it away. She looked at him, and could no longer pretend. “No, Henri, it is far from enough. I may be as worthy as you please, but I will not marry you for the sake of convention.”
He shook his head, beset by fresh puzzlement. “What is now in your mind?”
“What has been in my mind from the start. You think you owe me reparation. You think you have ruined my reputation. But it was I, Henri, who came to your bed in the early hours. I did not intend it in my conscious mind, but deep down I wanted it. It was my fault, and I will not have you entrapped into marriage only for a slip neither of us meant to happen.”
“You think it is only for this? You think this is why I have come?”
“I know it.” Grace gripped her fingers together on the table so that they whitened. “It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. And I won’t do it!”
But Henri saw the pain in her eyes and knew it was an empty determination. He nodded, as if he understood, and spoke in a tone of regret.
“I am thus compelled to leave you, even that this future of an émigré is not to my taste.” He paused, but she said nothing.
“You will not save me again, ma chère? You know that I have no money to live, no house? Even that I am a count, it is necessary that I become a beggar. Will you make me beg at strangers? Will you force me to go among the rich, to hope against their feeling they will provide for me?”
A thumping began in Grace’s chest, a protest wreathing her brain. “Why do you play upon my heartstrings? You know if it was to be that, I cannot choose but open my home to you.”
Henri reached across the corner of the table and his fingers closed over her clenched hands. “You did so from the first, chérie. Why now do you close the door?”
It was no longer possible to be silent. “Because you cannot love me!”
There. It was out. The truth at last. Let him know it. Let him see that he asked of her the impossible.
His hand left hers and Grace could not raise her head to look at him. She heard the scrape of his chair, and in a moment he was beside her, his arms reaching, drawing her reluctant head against his chest.
Her breath came in great gulps, holding back the sobs.
His fingers were on her hair, stroking. It was infinitely tender, a touch of total kindness in the gesture.
And it wholly destroyed her. Had she hoped, underneath it all, that he did love her?
Had she dreamed, deep down, that he would say it?
Well for her she had prepared herself for the truth.
For it came at her now like a deadly enemy.
“It d-doesn’t m-matter,” she got out, turning her head under his hands. “Don’t mind it, Henri. One cannot h-help one’s f-feelings. I cannot help l-loving you. And you — you cannot manufacture what is — is not there.”
Abruptly violent, Henri shifted back, seizing her by the arms in a grip stunning in its strength, and yanked her out of the chair. She had time only to glimpse the blaze in his green eyes before he pulled her close and fastened his lips to hers.
The kiss was explosive, bruising in its intensity. Grace’s pulse raced madly, and her legs turned to jelly. Henri was holding her so tightly her ribs felt as if they would crack, and when he forced her lips apart, she was obliged to pull her head back and suck hungrily for air, gasping for mercy.
“I can’t breathe!”
His hold slackened instantly, concern in his face as he anxiously searched hers. “I do not desire to hurt you.”