Page 46 of Miss Desirable
The walled garden was peaceful, awash in red and white tulips punctuated by a few presuming purple irises. Water trickled softly over the edges of a three-tiered fountain, and benches at intervals along the crushed-shell walkway invited a guest to tarry.
The day was lovely, almost but not quite warm, as Kettering was being almost but not quite friendly. Fournier would be almost honest, in the spirit of the occasion.
“If the point of this cozy chat is to ascertain my intentions, Kettering, you may be assured they are both honorable and doomed. Miss Fairchild likes me well enough, but she does not seek to be courted.”
Kettering made a face. “I hate it when that happens. Then a fellow is left all at sea, smitten and not exactly dismissed. I can assure you the finest brandy, a fortune in coin, and pretty acres are no consolation at all under those circumstances.”
“One hears that you and Lady Jacaranda are devoted.” Kettering had his own minor title, and thus the lady was no longer strictly Lady Jacaranda. In a characteristic display of contrariness, Kettering rarely used his honorific.
“We are devoted. Another Dorning trait. They marry for love.”
“And why do Ketterings marry?”
Kettering gestured to a bench. “I am to be interrogatingyou, if you please, not the other way ’round. Ketterings marry for love. Why do Fourniers marry?”
Fournier took the bench, the wood warm against his backside. Spring had arrived. Winter might get off a few parting shots, but they would be only that.
“I am the sole Fournier extant from my line,” he said. “I married once out of what I mistook for love, but I was merely infatuated and suffering the excess of animal spirits that makes fools of most young men. I did not see my intended clearly, while she was very certain of the bargain she struck with me. She cared for me, in her way. I could not endure another such union.”
That marriage had been careful, polite, increasingly distant, and so terribly lonely, at least for Fournier. He had ceased pondering Gabriella’s half of the union.
“Then you are wooing Miss Fairchild with an eye toward a love match? She’s rich, Fournier. Marrying her will earn you resentment from the very people who sustain your business.”
Fournier understood why Kettering was prying. The family needed to know his intentions—quaint of them, given how long they’d ignored Catherine—but Kettering also needed to solve the riddle of Catherine Fairchild and Xavier Fournier. Kettering was drawn to puzzles, as Xavier was drawn to exploring different blends of claret.
“Miss Fairchild will not have me, Kettering. We are friends. An émigré learns to thrive at the margins of London Society, and Miss Fairchild has studied in the same school. We have that in common. She can choose to expand her social circle now, though I doubt she will.”
Kettering stretched out long legs and crossed them at the ankle, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
“Why not? Why not swan about Almack’s, forcing all the hostesses and fortune hunters to lick her dancing slippers? Every wallflower, bachelor uncle, and dowager would applaud her for it.”
“As would you, but Catherine is not so petty.”
Kettering opened his eyes and speared Fournier with a look. “Pettiness has nothing to do with it. You fence. Quite well, I’m told.”
“I enjoy an occasional match.” Those matches had kept Fournier sane when he’d first returned to London.
“You could put Angelo out of business, and yet, you don’t. That would be petty. For Miss Fairchild to exert her influence would be in the nature of administering discipline where needed. Society was unkind to her. If she does not assign them a punishment, they will think they can be unkind again.”
“Does that not puzzle you, Kettering? Catherine was merely a minor diplomat’s only child, neither a great beauty, according to the fools who judge such matters, nor an heiress as far as anybody knew. She should never have merited so much notice. Why was Catherine, of all the young ladies in all their imperfections, made to suffer so inordinately?”
“Her eyes made her an easy target.”
“Easy targets abound. There’s Lord Palmerston, panting after Emily Cowper, though he’s panted after Lady Jersey and Princess von Lieven with similar ardor. He is nicknamed Cupid, and always, this is mentioned with a smile. Castlereagh and Canning dueled over politics, and their stupidity merits more knowing smiles. Why focus on a relatively obscure young lady who was no threat to anybody?”
“You have brooded on this.”
Catherine’s choice of the Cahors was never far from Fournier’s mind. Why would a fine lady order such a wine if not to drug some disobliging fellow? Why come to the shop without any escort or coach? Why live under the tyranny of a martinet of a butler?
“I am concerned for a young woman whose path has been difficult,” he said. “She has had no useful allies, save her mother, and that good lady has gone to her reward.”
Kettering rose. “She has us now, and you. In my experience, if one cannot win a lady’s hand, he can still strive to win her respect—and her trust.”
Fournier got to his feet as well. “No small treasures.”
When Kettering ought by rights to have loped off to report to his wife, he instead remained in the garden, ostensibly studying the fountain.
“Have you earned Miss Fairchild’s trust?” he asked.
