So in Love (23 page)

“This is neither the time nor the place, Jeanne,” he said softly, but even as he condemned her eagerness, he toed off his boots.

“No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “But your door has a lock on it, does it not?”

He nodded.

“Then lock it, Douglas. Let’s do something that isn’t wise or adult.” She stood and walked to where the sun made a brick-like pattern in the middle of the floor.

She held up her skirts and twirled in a circle, not feeling as lighthearted as she wished, but mimicking an action that she had performed as a girl. She wanted, for a few minutes
at least, to replicate that time. Or at least pretend that there were not secrets, hurtful and crushing, between them.

“Please,” she said, dropping her skirts and placing her hands flat against the material. A second later she held them out, palms up. “Come and join me.”

He strode past her and for a moment she thought he was going to leave the room, but then she heard the click of the lock and turned to find him standing there unwrapping his stock.

This time he didn’t speak, didn’t try to argue her out of lust, and neither did she. Because at this moment there was no one else in the world other than him, and there were no circumstances more important than the touch of his hands on her naked body.

The memory of him had kept her sane and being with him now made her want to live. He was simply necessary to her, just as air, water, and food were necessary. He was the blood that flowed through her body, the heart that beat in her chest, her lungs, and her limbs. He was her unfinished sentence, her half laugh, an unformed thought. He was life itself.

He returned to her, standing in front of her, a conjurer with sorcery in his hands. He moved them down her body and her clothes loosened, and stroked them over her skin and she began to tremble.

Douglas was as fevered as she. Her fingers flew over his clothing, burrowing past folds of cloth to touch his chest, pulling at the loosened stock, his shirt, until she could touch him.

Her dress was over her head, thrown a few feet away. His nimble fingers loosened her stays, let them fall heavily to the floor.

Suddenly she was on the floor, Douglas leaning over her. There were no questions this time, no teasing rejoinders, only a hunger on his face that was no doubt mirrored
on hers. Where before there had been patience, now they were wild for each other.

He lifted her, knelt between her naked thighs. Reaching up, she pulled on his arms.

“Now, Douglas,” she said, arching up beneath him. “Now, please.”

She had to have him inside her, had to feel complete and whole one last time.

He surged within her. The discomfort of his possession eased a moment later when he hesitated, allowing her to become accustomed to his size.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she clenched her eyes shut. The sun blazed behind her lids, the warmth flushing her face. But her world had narrowed to become only him.

The pleasure centered where they joined, spread outward, and harnessed her breath. Her heart raced, her blood rushed through her body hot and fast. When he rose up, she followed, holding on to him tightly. When he surged within her, she bowed beneath him.

In that sunlit room, they loved. Not with finesse as much as passion and an eagerness and desperation to forget for just a little while. When it was done, when she drew her breath again in a calm manner, and when her heart slowed its frenetic beat, Jeanne felt tears come to her eyes. Tears of joy and loss, so equally mixed that she couldn’t separate the emotions.

D
ouglas left her, standing and gathering up his clothing from where it was scattered over the floor. She lay there for a moment watching him. He was truly magnificent, with his muscled thighs and well-developed chest and arms.

He glanced at her but didn’t smile. Instead, his solemn look warned her that they’d only delayed the inevitable by their loving.

Sitting up, she began to dress. She had to leave. If she didn’t, there was every possibility she’d begin to weep, and crying would lead to confessions, and confessions would only lead to disaster. Tomorrow was time enough.

Her hair was askew, but instead of trying to tidy it up into a bun, she began to braid it. She’d tuck it up beneath her bonnet, a good enough style that would last until she reached her room.

Finally dressed, she grabbed her reticule and headed for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Douglas asked from behind her.

“I have to leave,” she said. “Now. Please don’t try to stop me. Don’t ask me any questions, Douglas. Just let me leave.”

“I’ll tell the coachman to take you home,” he said tightly.

Home, what a simple word, but that’s what it had become. Without her being aware of it, she’d become accustomed to his house, the shape of it, the feeling of belonging inside it. She knew the staff and liked them, even Lassiter. The rooms were familiar; she knew the floor plan. But mostly, the occupants of Number Twelve Queen’s Place—Douglas and Margaret—had made it feel like home. Family.

How would she bear leaving them?

She hurriedly walked through the door, down the steps, and into the perfumed wonder that was his warehouse. Twice she had to stop because she couldn’t see and she impatiently wiped the tears away.

Passing the little booth that housed Jim the watchman, she waved and lowered her head, intent on reaching the coach.

“Please take me home, Stephens,” she said in a choked voice, beating back her tears only through the greatest of wills.

He looked to the warehouse and then to her. “I can’t, miss. I have to wait for Mr. MacRae.”

“It’s all right, Stephens,” Douglas said from behind her. “Take Miss du Marchand home.”

She whirled, startled that she hadn’t heard him following her.

“You can come back for us.”

Stephens nodded.

Douglas reached beyond her to the carriage door, opening it and then standing aside. “We’ll talk when I return,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Tomorrow. Give me that at least.” One more day. Just one more day.

He didn’t respond, and she didn’t glance at him.

Blindly, she pushed past him, entering the carriage and pulling the door closed after her. A few moments later the carriage finally moved, heading back for the MacRae residence.

After the coachman left her in front of Douglas’s home, he turned around and returned to Leith. Jeanne looked at the steps in front of her as if they were insurmountable. Slowly, she took them one at a time, feeling as if she were climbing a mountain. Nodding to Lassiter, she made her way to her room, carefully closing the door and standing with her back to it.

Only then did she allow her tears to fall unchecked.

Toward evening, she took out her valise and opened it, putting it on the bed. She didn’t want to leave, but there was no other alternative. She knew that from Douglas’s face when he’d asked her that one question.

What happened to the child, Jeanne?

Betty knocked on the door. “Miss?” she called out when Jeanne didn’t answer.

She finally opened the door, and the maid glanced at her, but didn’t comment on Jeanne’s tear-stained face or her reddened eyes. Her lack of comment was, in itself, a form of compassion.

“Mr. Douglas would like you to join him and Miss Margaret for dinner, miss.”

A treat for Margaret. Since Margaret had returned to Edinburgh, Jeanne ate her meals in the nursery with Betty, who then returned to Margaret’s room, helped her undress, wash, and prepare for bed. Jeanne would hear them, Margaret chattering on and on about Gilmuir, and the other topics of conversation dear to her heart. With Margaret, one never knew what would interest her. Yesterday it had been the shape of a raindrop. The day before the sound a frog made deep in his throat.

“Not tonight,” she said, forcing a smile for Betty’s sake. “Please tell him that I’d prefer a tray in my room.”

Betty frowned, but her only comment was, “I’ll tell Cook.”

“Thank you,” she said and closed the door softly behind her.

She ate her solitary dinner a little while later, sitting at the table beside the window, staring out at the night dotted by street lamps and the glowing bobbing lights of carriage lanterns. A few houses in the square were illuminated, and she wondered at the silhouettes against the draperies. Did these people live lives of quiet joy, or were they silent and despairing? Did they love or were they lonely?

How odd to think that someone like her might be sitting just as she was and wondering at the world outside her window. Who had said that grief shared was grief divided? Whoever it was had been wrong. Nothing about this pain could be shared or mitigated. It simply existed and would, she suspected, until the day she died.

What would her life have been like if she’d never met Douglas? She would never have felt the peaks of joy, but she wouldn’t have been plunged into despair, either. She might have had a pleasant life, forever wondering about what she was missing. Occasionally, she might yearn for more adventure, more emotion, but she doubted that she’d feel as if her heart were breaking in two.

A knock on the door announced Margaret. She peered into the room from the connecting door. “May I come in, Miss du Marchand?”

Jeanne nodded.

She entered the room attired in a silvery pink gown that was a miniature version of the style a very fashionable woman might wear. A fichu of lace adorned with small pink rosettes reached to her neck, the lace duplicated at her wrists.

“I didn’t have a chance to show you what Henry brought me.”

She stretched out her hand to reveal a lovely miniature painting of Gilmuir.

“He had sketches of it from Aunt Iseabal, Miss du Marchand. Someone in London painted it for him. Isn’t it the loveliest thing?”

Jeanne peered at the miniature. Even with the elaborate gold frame it was no bigger than Margaret’s palm.

“It’s very nice,” she said. “Thank you for showing me.”

Margaret went to their connecting door, but hesitated before entering her room. “Miss du Marchand?”

“Yes, Margaret?”

“Have you been crying?”

“Yes,” Jeanne said, wondering if it was wise to be so truthful to the little girl. “I’m afraid I have.”

“Do you miss your home? And your family?”

“Yes,” she said, another truth.

“This can be your home, Miss du Marchand. And Father and I can be your new family.”

She almost started weeping at the child’s earnest look.

“Thank you very much, Margaret. That is very sweet and generous of you.”

“My mother might have been like you, Miss du Marchand,” the little girl said unexpectedly. “Father even said so at dinner.”

“Did he?”

Margaret nodded. “But he didn’t have that sad look in his eyes this time, Miss du Marchand. I think that’s because of you.”

Startled, she could only stare at the little girl and then at the connecting door as it slowly closed.

J
eanne heard Margaret whimper, the sound rousing her from an uneasy sleep. She donned her wrapper and slippers and pushed open the door to Margaret’s room. Placing her candle on the table next to the little girl’s bed, she sat on the edge. Gently, she shook Margaret’s shoulder. The child was crying in her sleep, a sight that caused her own heartache.

“Margaret,” she whispered, and the little girl’s eyelids fluttered. “Meggie,” she said, using Douglas’s endearment for his daughter. “It’s all right; it’s just a dream.”

The little girl sighed heavily in her sleep. A moment later she moved closer to Jeanne, grabbed her hand, and pulled it beneath the covers, cradling it against her cheek. Jeanne smiled and used her free hand to push back the damp tendrils of hair from Margaret’s face.

“Sometimes it helps to talk about a dream,” she said gently, knowing the child was awake. “Can you remember?”

“No,” Margaret said softly.

“Was it the wolf again?”

Margaret shook her head, took a deep shuddering
breath, and exhaled slowly. Jeanne smoothed the covers around her, tucking them beneath her chin.

“Would you like me to stay with you until you fall asleep again?”

“Yes, please.”

“Is there anything else I can do?”

“Please don’t bring me any of that Chinese tea like Betty does.” Margaret made a face, her eyes still closed. “I pretend to be asleep when she comes back from the kitchen,” she confessed. “Anything but drink that horrid tea.”

“I can promise you that I won’t give you any Chinese tea,” Jeanne said. “I was thinking of rubbing your back. Or finding a favorite doll.”

Margaret slitted open one eye. “I haven’t played with dolls in ages, Miss du Marchand,” she said loftily.

“My error,” Jeanne said, hiding her smile. “I forgot what an advanced age you were.”

“I’m going to be nine, Miss du Marchand,” she said.

Surprised, Jeanne glanced at her. “Nine? I thought you were turning ten.” Most children advanced their age, counting themselves another year older after reaching the half-year mark.

“When I can’t sleep, Papa makes me chocolate,” she hinted.

“Oh, does he?”

She’d never made chocolate in her life, a confession she made now to Margaret. The little girl’s eyes opened wide but then she smiled at Jeanne.

“I could show you how,” she offered.

“Could you?”

“We would have to be as quiet as mice.”

“We can make it an adventure,” Jeanne said. It would be the last night with Margaret, the last time the little girl would amuse her or delight her with her intriguing questions.

Margaret slid her feet out from beneath the covers and sat up, releasing Jeanne’s hand.

“Shall we go down to the kitchen, then, Miss du Marchand?” She looked excited, her eyes sparkling and the nightmare far from her mind.

Jeanne pulled back the covers, and then froze, her hand trembling as she clutched Margaret’s blanket. The little girl’s nightgown had ridden up and bared her leg. There, on her thigh, was a purplish birthmark in the shape of a crescent.

“You needn’t bother, Jeanne,” Douglas said.

She glanced toward the door to find him attired in his dark blue dressing gown holding a candle. “I’ll make the chocolate for Meggie.”

His features were blurry in the shadowed darkness, yet it wasn’t her vision that made him difficult to see but the sudden sheen of tears. Her mind realized the truth before her heart.

Reaching out one hand, she warded him off rather than beckoned him closer. Standing, she took a step away from Margaret and another from him, hearing a roaring in her ears as she looked from one to the other.

Margaret was looking at her curiously, but Douglas’s gaze was somber, his eyes flat. He walked to the side of the bed and pulled the bell rope for Betty.

Jeanne wanted to scream at him, but the words wouldn’t come. She looked at Margaret again and it was as if she saw her for the first time. The little girl’s vision problems, the gestures that were so similar, the feeling of déjà vu whenever the child smiled. Of course—it all made sense now.

Jeanne clasped both hands over her mouth tightly and an instant later held them together at her waist so that she wouldn’t make fists of them and strike him.

“I saw her grave,” she said helplessly. Sound was oddly muffled and she felt as if she had to shout in order to be
heard. Her heart seemed to beat in her ears, and her throat was constricted. “I saw where she was buried.”

He took a step toward her, and she backed up hurriedly, placing both hands flat against the wall on either side so that she wouldn’t fall. She curved her fingers into the wallpaper, felt her nails gouging the pattern, but still nothing felt real about this moment.

She must be dreaming.

“I saw her grave.”

Douglas frowned, as if he hadn’t expected her comment. “Somehow, you missed the evidence in front of your eyes.”

“You knew,” she said. “All this time, you knew.”

There was too much emotion. None of it could be encapsulated into a word, a sentence. English didn’t make sense, but even French could not adequately communicate what she was feeling.

“Betty, take Margaret to your room,” he said, addressing the nurse who had entered the room without Jeanne noticing her.

Jeanne turned toward the wall, concentrating on the pattern of beige silk on which multicolored nosegays had been embroidered. A very expensive wall covering, but nothing was too costly for Margaret. Meggie.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe.

“You wanted to know who Margaret’s mother was.” Douglas said, his voice oddly flat. “You are.”

“I would have known,” she said, speaking to the wallpaper in perfectly lucid tones, in carefully enunciated words. “I would have known my own child. You must be wrong.”

“I found her not far from Vallans,” he said, coming closer. “She’d been given to an old couple who almost let her starve to death. For days I thought she had died with each breath she took.”

“I saw her grave,” she said, tasting her own tears. She didn’t know she was weeping until she placed both hands
on her cheeks. Opening her eyes, she blinked at him to clear her vision.

“The old woman led me to her grave. No one had even made a marker for her.” Her heart was being torn out telling him these things. She waited for him to condemn her, to hate her for not being strong enough to keep them from killing their child. “She died,” she said, anticipating the grief that bowed her body each time she thought of that moment. But it didn’t come. Instead, there was a curious lull in her mind, as if her thoughts had simply stopped.

“All this time, you knew,” she said, leaning her forehead against the wall. She took a deep, shuddering breath. She felt as if her bones were breaking, and every muscle in her body contracted in an effort to hold herself together. If she didn’t guard herself closely, she’d begin to scream.

“You knew,” she said, and this time the words emerged as a whisper. “You knew, and never told me.”

She turned and looked at him.

He frowned at her as if not expecting her accusation.

“Why should I? All this time you never mentioned her. Even today. When I questioned you, you refused to answer.”

Placing her hands over her eyes, she willed him away. If she were lucky, if she were fortunate, she’d find herself back at the Convent of Sacré-Coeur. Let Marie-Thérèse punish her for these lascivious dreams. Perhaps she was dead, and this was hell, an endless circling torment like the one she’d been promised for her multitudinous sins.

“She’d been left to die.” Douglas’s voice was too loud, the tone one God might use.

All she had in her own defense was the truth. But she wouldn’t tell him of that terrible morning of Margaret’s birth, how she’d seen her daughter taken from her and screamed until her voice cracked. She wouldn’t tell him how she’d been determined to survive the convent, if only to find her child. She wouldn’t speak of that hideous day
at the woodcutter’s cottage when she’d seen the grave on the edge of the forest and known her daughter had been dead all these long years. She’d knelt there, wanting to die herself.

But she hadn’t died, had she?

Jeanne held herself tightly, wrapping her arms around her midriff to still her shaking. She had been given her heart’s desire and yet it felt as if God had slapped her in that instant.
Here, you wanted your child alive, but I give you Douglas’s hatred and loathing as payment for all your sins.

She had vowed on the day she had walked out of the convent that no one would ever make her beg again. Nor did she now, but Douglas would never know how close she came. As he turned at the door, she stretched out her hand. It trembled in the air. As he stared at her, she made a fist and drew it back to hold it tightly against her chest.

In that instant, she wanted the power of magic or sorcery. If she closed her eyes for a span of seconds and opened them again, perhaps the world would change. There would be no death or destruction or cruelty. Douglas would be a man who adored her and she would be the woman she’d always wanted to be. And the past would simply vanish. But there was no such thing as magic, and even prayers were specious things.

For a long wordless instant they stared at each other and it seemed to her that the past shimmered between them as deep as an ocean.

Not an ocean, she realized as he left the room, but tears.

Margaret waited until Betty fell asleep and then made her way to the stables. Jeremy, one of the stableboys, had whispered to her that he was going home for his half day off, which meant that the horses would be unguarded.

She debated using a saddle and then realized that even if she could manage to open the tack room lock, she wouldn’t be able to sling it over the horse’s back. Instead, she opened the door of one of the stalls and spoke softly to Nolly, the gentlest of the carriage horses. A quarter hour later, she’d finally accomplished the most difficult feat of all—getting the bridle and bit on the large horse.

She led Nolly out of her stall, stepped onto the mounting block, and climbed on her back. As odd as it felt being without a saddle, it was comforting, too. There was nothing between the animal and her but Nolly’s surprisingly scratchy hair.

Slowly, she led Nolly out of the stable, grateful for the full moon and the kitchen lantern. Still, it was dark and too quiet, almost frighteningly so. She bent low over Nolly’s back, grabbed the reins, and gave her a little slap on the neck. The horse obediently began a bone-jarring trot.

As a precaution, she’d taken a few coins from the strongbox in her father’s library. She would be considered a thief, of course, for taking the coins and the horse, but she reasoned that at least she’d be punished all at once instead of stretching it out over an extended period of time.

She knew the way to Leith well, having made the journey often with her father. But it had never seemed quite so far, nor had she ever made the trip in the dark.

But as lonely as it seemed, and as frightening, the dark was still not as scary as her father could be when he was angry. She knew very well that he was going to be very angry at her for leaving. But what she learned tonight was so disturbing that she had to talk to someone about it.

Not her father, however.

She loved him very much, but he sometimes treated her as if she were an infant. She could put together things well enough in her mind, and what she had divined tonight was
either the most improbable tale or the truth. She needed to talk to someone about what she suspected; someone who hadn’t lied to her all these years by telling her a story that she now knew was false.

Nor could she talk to Miss du Marchand, especially since Miss du Marchand was the source of the problem. Was her governess really her mother?

Aunt Mary, therefore, was the logical answer. Except, of course, that Aunt Mary was aboard a ship at Gilmuir.

Just then, she saw the shadow of the warehouses, and hoped that Henry would be working late. She’d heard him complain often enough about all the paperwork necessary when a MacRae ship came into port. Suddenly someone grabbed the reins of the horse and Margaret almost fell off Nolly’s back.

A man moved, holding up a lantern, and revealing a face that anyone might consider frightening.

Margaret told herself to be brave as the man reached for her.

Twice Douglas almost went to her, and twice stopped himself. He couldn’t forget the look on Jeanne’s face, and it haunted him.

She hadn’t confessed as he’d expected. Nor had she pleaded with him to understand her actions. Instead, she seemed genuinely shocked, as if Meggie had truly been resurrected from the dead. Nor had she said one word in her own defense. Shouldn’t a guilty woman have tried to convince him of her innocence?

For years he’d wanted something horrible and hideous to happen to Jeanne in order to repay her for her abandonment of her own child. Only to suspect, now, that he had been wrong all this time.

Why had she been sent to the convent? Only one of the
questions he needed to have answered. Yet Jeanne had never sought his compassion or elicited his pity.

Do you know that I was once punished for not being a virgin?
A comment he suspected she’d not meant to make.
I confessed, you see. Perhaps I was feeling rash, but I once told one of the nuns that I had dreamed of you.

His thoughts were beginning to be acutely uncomfortable.

She’d been genuinely caring of Margaret, wanting her to have spectacles, laughing at her comments. She’d been gentle and understanding, amused and tolerant. Even protective. Not the actions of a cruel woman.

Douglas felt as if his world were tumbling around him. He had the distinct and disturbing feeling that everything upon which he based his life in the past ten years was wrong. But if she wasn’t guilty of sending their daughter to her death, why had she never told him what had happened?

I saw her grave.

The third time he made the journey down the hall and stood in front of her room. Placing his hand flat on the surface of the door, he willed her awake. Then, as if he were a conjurer, he heard her muffled sob.