Page 33 of Miss Desirable
When Colonel Goddard professed a need to at least look in on The Coventry Club before the hour grew too late, Mrs. Goddard and Mrs. MacKay decided that for Fournier to take Catherine home would bethe only sensible thing. The distance was short, and Fournier had brought his coach, after all.
Goddard and MacKay did not so much as glance at Fournier when he assented to this arguably dodgy arrangement, though Catherine spared him a small smile.
After five minutes of farewells that included having his hand shaken by the gentlemen and his cheek kissed by both wives, Fournier handed Catherine up, exchanged a few words with his coachman, and climbed in after her.
He took the place next to her and set his hat beside her bonnet on the opposite bench with a sense of relief. “We were managed,” he said. “I confess I hoped we would be.”
“As did I. They were very kind, and the evening was enjoyable.”
Fournier wanted to remove his gloves, remove Catherine’s gloves, and take her hand. “Something preoccupies you.” He purposely did not use the English wordworry, because Catherine would bristle at such presumption.
“I’m adjusting to a resumption of socializing. I was my mother’s companion after Papa died. What few invitations we accepted, Mama and I faced as a team. She had friends, from her embassy days, even from her time in Canada, but those friends had families, while Mama had only me.”
Catherine leaned her head back against the cushions, and the coach lamps cast the planes and hollows of her face in shadows.
“Sorrow is keenly skilled at the art of the ambush,” Fournier said. “Watching a family in the park, watching a damned cat with her kittens, your heart breaks without warning. Then you want to smash something fragile, because the whole day must be reconstructed to fortify you against a single bad moment.”
“Another bad moment, but tonight was pleasant nonetheless. These people are not my family, but they are connected to my family, and that will be noted.”
Fournier had noted that connection withoutnoticingit. “Do you hate your father?”
“Papa? He was nothing but kind. Whyever…” Catherine fell silent, and her posture shifted, becoming less proper, more weary. “You mean the late Earl of Casriel. Mama had a miniature of him made for me. The current earl looks very like him. He stood up with me once—Grey did, when we were newly returned to London.”
Had the present earl done that on purpose? To avoid rudeness before a crowd? To be decent to his half-sister? Why had he done it only the once? Had Catherine ever met her true father?
“You never danced with any of your other brothers?”
“Ash, at a house party. He was newly married, and we were both somewhat at sea, but there was trouble afoot, and I was a potential ally. I quite like his wife. Lady Della is fiercely devoted to him, and he to her, though more quietly.”
Such longing imbued that observation. Such wistfulness.
“You never made your bow at court?” Odd for a diplomat’s daughter. Very odd.
Fournier again had the urge to take her hand, and he again ignored it.
CHAPTEREIGHT
“We were in Italy when I was seventeen,” Catherine said, and the careful detachment in her voice told Fournier her seventeenth year had been difficult.
“You did not want to be there.”
Her smile was brittle. “I resented not having a London Season as only the young and self-absorbed can aspire to bitterness. No daughter had ever withstood such inconsideration from her parents, no injustice could compare to the wrong I suffered. For years, I’d been dragged about wherever my father’s work took him, and I had consoled myself with the thought that someday I would have the elegant dances, the latest London fashions, the afternoons driving in Hyde Park. I wrote whole novels in my head about what a sensation I would create upon my come out.”
How he would love to read those novels. “Were your parents trying to protect you?”
“Because I am a bastard? Perhaps, but even I know that Lady Emily Cowper’s paternity is considered more dubious than my own. She’s also said to have borne children by one if not two men other than her husband. If her ladyship can be the most popular patroness at Almack’s, why couldn’t I at least lurk among Mayfair’s ferns and companions?”
The question had the ring of an old conundrum. “The young have a nose for hypocrisy, and proper English Society thrives on hypocrisy. Do you aspire to dance at Almack’s?”
“Of course not. Most of the Mayfair Season is a genteel version of the Covent Garden street corners after the theater lets out.”
Fournier laughed. “Touché, mademoiselle. You would have terrified polite society at a younger age. Perhaps you will terrify the hostesses now.”
She shook her head. “I have no ambition to behave like a slighted seventeen-year-old. That way lies nothing but regret.”
Fournier could be only so strong for so long. He took off his gloves and held out a hand to Catherine. To his great delight, she pulled off her gloves as well and not only clasped hands with him, but turned to rest against his side.
“I’ve missed you, Fournier. I do not want to miss you. Missing you is a problem. No more coach rides for us.”
