So in Love (11 page)

“Were you raised in France?” he asked finally.

So, it was to be that way? They were going to engage in pretense again. There was, however, a certain amount of relief in the game. A certain freedom in being someone else for a time, pretending to be a stranger he had just met and bedded. Very well, she would play and somehow convince herself that the pretense wasn’t almost as painful as the truth.

“Yes,” she answered. “I spent my early years at Vallans, our chateau some distance from Paris, before I was allowed to come to the city.”

“An interesting city, Paris.”

“Have you been there?” There, not too much interest expressed, just enough to give this silly game some reality.

“I spent some time there in my youth. All in all, I prefer other cities.”

She concentrated on the meal in front of her, deliberately ignoring the emotion his words provoked.

“That’s a pity,” she said. “There are those who consider Paris the most beautiful of all cities. Before the recent troubles, I mean.”

“How did you avoid the recent troubles? Were you at your family’s country home?”

“No,” she said. She rearranged her silverware, dabbed at her mouth with the napkin, and folded it into a small rectangle.

She didn’t furnish information to him easily but wanted him to ask for it, a game within a game. If he asked, she would tell him. But if he sat silent, she wouldn’t volunteer the information. This was not, she realized, a casual conversation. They learned of each other under the guise of politeness, hiding their interest beneath the structure of commonplace questions and answers.

“You were at the convent.”

There, the first admission that he remembered last night.

She nodded.

“It seems to me that it might be easier, or safer, to remain inside the walls of a convent,” he said. “Especially given the climate in France of late.”

She smiled. “Perhaps. My isolation quite possibly saved my life. I was hundreds of miles from Paris and not affected by the riots. When Vallans was razed, I wasn’t there. I knew nothing about what was transpiring in France.”

“When did you learn?”

She chuckled mirthlessly. “When I awoke one morning to find that the convent was deserted. The nuns had fled in the horror and the gates were left unlocked and wide open. It was the first indication that something was wrong.”

“You were left alone?” Disbelief flavored his voice, and she wanted to tell him that that had not been the worst of it.
But that journey through France would be her secret, one that she would keep.

“There was no one left but a few of the novitiates.” Girls like herself who had been virtual prisoners. But at least they were among the lucky ones. There were headstones among the graveyard that marked the last resting places of some of Sacré-Coeur’s inhabitants, women sent to the convent in disgrace for infractions similar to Jeanne’s.

She and two other girls had walked through the deserted convent not quite believing their sudden freedom. That afternoon they, too, left before anyone could return and reinstate their imprisonment.

For nine years the convent had been, if not her home, then the place her body had resided. As she stood on the hill that evening and looked back at the gray structure, it seemed to Jeanne that the mist obscuring the building was not unlike a blanket, hiding the past nine years.

Douglas didn’t say anything for several long minutes, leaving her with the impression that he formed his questions with great deliberation. Perhaps she should use as much care in her answers.

“Where did you go when you left the convent?”

“Home,” she said shortly, wondering if he knew that his questions had lost their subtlety. He was interrogating her. “To Vallans.”

That had been a difficult homecoming. She hadn’t known that Vallans had been torched until approaching the ruins. Only the foundations and chimneys of Vallans remained, a testament to the once-great house that had dominated the countryside. The ornamental lake had been blackened by soot, and even the air smelled of fire.

After she’d found her hidden cache, she’d risen, only to discover that a figure stood there surveying her. Tall and spare, with a crown of red hair, Justine seemed part of the
ruins, as if she commanded them with the insouciance of a queen. She didn’t move as Jeanne walked slowly around the mounds of debris to stand in front of her, but remained standing where she was, hands clasped together in front of her.

It was as if no time at all had elapsed since Jeanne had seen the woman, the last memory that of Justine taking her child. A decade disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving only moments between that deed and now.

“You look well, Justine,” she had said, surveying the former housekeeper. While it was true the gray dress she wore fitted her loosely, her hair was upswept in a style reminiscent of Paris, her nails clean, and through the soot Jeanne could smell the scent of roses.

Wealth was no longer judged by gold and silver, by heavily brocaded gowns or jeweled slippers. The truly fortunate had food to eat and water to drink. The blessed had the luxury of cleanliness. Justine had evidently managed not only to survive the difficult times but also to prosper in them.

Justine had smiled. “I wish I could say the same of you.” The other woman surveyed her up and down, and then surprised her by turning and walking away. After taking a few steps, she turned and glanced at Jeanne, an unspoken summons. Curious, Jeanne had followed.

“I saw your Vallans once,” Douglas said, a remark that summoned her to the present so quickly that Jeanne felt dizzy with it.

“When?” she asked, feeling her heart constrict. Had he come looking for her after all?

“A very long time ago,” he said. “I was seeking someone I knew.”

“Did you find him?”

“In a way,” he said, a cryptic answer that she waited for him to explain.

Instead, he remained silent, and she smoothed her napkin over her lap again and wondered when this interminable dinner would be finished.

“You’ve eaten very little.”

She nodded, agreeing. Determinately, she picked up her spoon, intent upon finishing the soup.

“It was not an order, Jeanne.”

Once again she nodded. “I know that. It’s better to eat when you can rather than when you wish.”

A remark Justine had made to her that day at Vallans when they’d reached the gatekeeper’s cottage. Justine had evidently made it her home, with small comfortable touches like the cloth on the square table and curtains on the lone window.

“You are looking at me as if I’d never done a kindness for you before,” Justine said as she placed an earthenware bowl in front of Jeanne and filled it with soup. Jeanne was so hungry that the smell of food had made her light-headed for a moment.

“You haven’t,” she said, beginning to eat.

Justine smiled. “Circumstances change. People change.”

“The last time I saw you, Justine, you were taking my child from me, and now you’re feeding me and claiming you’re kind. People do not change that much.”

Justine sat opposite her, a small smile playing around her mouth. How strange that age did not diminish her beauty, only added a luster to it like patina on silver.

“He wanted her killed, you know.”

Jeanne stopped eating, carefully placing the spoon on the side of the bowl. “He told me to take the baby and make sure she died.”

Nausea suddenly overwhelmed Jeanne and for a moment she thought she might be ill.

“‘Put a hand over her mouth, Justine,’ he said. ‘Smother her in a blanket.’” She shook her head. “I didn’t kill her,
you know,” Justine said. “I do not murder children, even for your father.”

“What happened to her?” The words came slowly, measured by her pendulous heartbeat. The air felt thick, every sound muted. Jeanne forced a breath into her chest and then out, striving for a composure she didn’t feel.

“I might have taken her to foster for myself. I’ve always wanted a child.” Justine shrugged. “What an irony if I had been able to raise the Comte du Marchand’s granddaughter as my own.”

“Instead?” Her chest hurt with the effort of restraining her words.

Joy was a tinny little sound, an unfamiliar bell. It began as a barely decipherable chime somewhere deep inside her, began to gain strength and cadence until it matched the clamoring sound of her heartbeat. Jeanne clasped her hands together tightly in front of her.

“Instead, I found an old couple who agreed to care for her.” She shrugged. “They were grateful for the money I gave them.”

“Why did you never tell me?” The training of the last nine years was in her favor. Jeanne didn’t reveal any emotion at all, neither hope nor despair and certainly not the boundless grief she always felt when thinking of her child.

Justine’s look was not kind as much as pitying. “Because your father was right about one thing. You were young and foolish, and had brought dishonor to the du Marchand name.”

“Where is she?” The question evidently startled the other woman. But surely Justine must have known that she would ask. For a moment her brown eyes were almost kind, her smile appearing absurdly benevolent. Jeanne could not fix this gentler, kinder woman with the terror of her youth.

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Jeanne,” the older woman said softly, almost pityingly.

Four simple words. That’s all. And the chime suddenly stopped. The dawn of her soul turned to midnight again.

What a strange tableau they must have made, two women struggling in life, facing each other across a small square table. As odd as this one, she thought, glancing up to see Douglas looking at her with suddenly intent eyes.

“What happened when you reached Vallans?”

“Nothing,” she said. “There was nothing left of it.” The sight of Vallans scorched and ruined was one of her greatest nightmares. For the longest time, standing there, she’d felt as if she were part of the scene, as destroyed as the magnificent chateau. She was only a ghost on the landscape, as ethereal as the hint of soot in the air.

“Why did you go back?”

She shrugged. “There was nowhere else for me to go.”

“So after Vallans, you left France.”

She nodded.

“Have you any family in Scotland?” he asked, the tone of his voice dispassionate and almost bored, as if he were disinterested in the answer. It was as if he quoted from an invisible text in his mind. How to entertain a guest at dinner: Discuss the weather, inquire after absent relatives.

“I have no relatives at all,” she said, equally as distant.

His glance flicked in her direction and then away again as if afraid of giving away too much interest.

How easily they pretended that they hadn’t discussed their lives intimately, including their dreams for the future. How arrogant they’d been in their youth, how easily convinced that the days stretched out empty and waiting to be filled with precious memories. But men fared better at futures then women, didn’t they? Her life in the last ten years had been a simple exercise of enduring the present. Living
in the past was too painful and it was foolish to project herself into a future that looked too much like the eternal sameness of her days.

As the meal wore on, she realized he was studying her intently. She pretended not to notice, but he was not so easily ignored. He was simply there, like a thunderstorm, a force of nature so strong that the very air in the room seemed charged.

The last quarter hour they hadn’t spoken to each other. Two courses were brought in and taken away but she couldn’t remember eating. The food was unmemorable, and that had nothing to do with the cook and everything to do with the man at her side.

“Why Scotland?” he asked, as if there had been no lull in the conversation.

“I came to find my aunt. But I learned that she died a year earlier. I found myself needing shelter and food. The most commonplace way to do that is to be employed.”

“You could have married,” he said.

“Marry?” She was genuinely amused.

“Why not? It’s been the answer to a woman’s dilemma for thousands of years, has it not?”

“In my case, I do not believe it would suit.”

“Why is that?”

The conversation had taken a turn that was uncomfortable. She wished, suddenly, for the silence they had shared during most of the meal.

“I have never met anyone who would inspire the emotion necessary for marriage,” she said. An answer as good as any. Better the lie than the truth.
You were in my heart and marked your place there forever.

“Is love necessary for marriage? I thought other things were more important. Income, connections, legacy.”

“I had been reared to believe that all true. But I have no
legacy anymore, no connections, and my only income now comes from you.” She smiled at him, wondering where she’d found her courage. “What else is left but love?”

“Should I feel guilty about last night?” he asked abruptly, surprising her.

She reached for her napkin below the table, twisting it between her hands. Several silent moments passed between them before she looked at him again.

“You mustn’t,” she said composedly. “You didn’t, after all, force me.”

She held his look, determined not to be the first to glance away. When he finally broke their gaze, she felt released, and looked down at her plate once more.

“Does that mean that you would care to repeat the experience?”

Where had he learned such control?

The Douglas she had known had been an impulsive, almost rash young man. He wanted to see the world just like his older brothers, and conquer it in a way that the other MacRaes had not. He’d had so many plans and it looked to her now as if he had accomplished all of them.

Only to become a man who was intimidating and slightly dangerous.

But she resented his attempt to control the conversation. She resented the fact that he sat here whole and healthy and hale opposite her, seemingly untouched by life itself.

“If you wish,” she said, mimicking his offhanded manner.

To the casual observer, her response had no effect on him. But she knew him too well. There was a patch of color high on his cheekbones and the rim of his ears suddenly deepened in color, signs that Douglas MacRae was angry.