Page 54 of Miss Desirable
“Go on.”
“I thought, I had hoped, that the child might bring Gabriella and me together. My wife apologized to me—a first in our marriage—and said she could not regret Mignon, but neither was Gabriella pleased to have slighted my pride. What matters pride when an innocent child needs two parents? I had hoped a daughter might mean a fresh start, that Gabriella might at least join me in London for a time.”
“She refused.”
“We compromised. By then, Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and traveling anywhere had become more perilous than ever. Gabriella agreed to take Mignon to her cousins’ farther inland for safety. I agreed to return to London with another shipment of brandy and claret, knowing I could fetch exorbitant prices for it. All of France was in an uproar, and our own Grand Armée was pillaging the countryside as viciously as any invading enemy could ever hope to.”
“I recall the devastation.” The British forces, so eager to plunder their fallen enemy, had found nothing left to steal or destroy. Napoleon’s soldiers had kindly seen to the destruction of the French countryside for them. Nine months after the fall of Paris, the exiled Napoleon had returned. The army had rallied to his side as he’d marched from the Mediterranean coast north to Paris.
“Exactement,” Fournier said. “Devastation and more devastation. Gabriella should have taken a humble cart and attired herself as a farm wife, but she took the carriage, and of course the coach was held up. The bandits stole everything—the horses, the pistols, even Gabriella’s cloak and boots. They shot the coachman and groom, but spared the females. The weather turned foul, and Gabriella walked for miles before she came upon a coaching inn. By then, she was already on the way to a lung fever, but she lasted long enough to bury the child. Mignon fell ill even more quickly than did her mother. They are buried together, though the innkeeper could not recall the exact location of the grave.”
Fournier’s elegant coach rolled on as before, swaying gently on its springs. Outside, another morning advanced in sunny spring glory, and yet, all the joy Catherine had arisen with, all the wonder, had subsided in the face of Fournier’s tale.
“Do you blame yourself?”
“Not anymore. I will even confess to some relief that I am free of Gabriella. She tolerated marriage to me because I offered her a way to realize her ambitions. She was neither loyal nor faithful nor honest, in the end, but all of that is bearable. What breaks my heart is the child’s fate. Her mother loved her, though not as a little girl deserved to be loved. I had the legal right to take Mignon with me to London, to safety, but I did not. I blame myself for that. Her death is a sorrow I will never put entirely behind me.”
What comfort could Catherine possibly offer in the face of such a loss? What comfort had anybody offered her?
“You loved that child, Fournier. You welcomed her into your heart and treated her as if she were your own. I can tell, as one who was not related to my legal father, how much that meant to Mignon. Her mother is responsible for making reckless decisions, but as skilled as you are with your sword, you could not have fended off murderously desperate men.”
“I could have died trying. I could have argued for my wife to be allowed to keep her damned boots.”
“And starving bandits would have taken her boots anyway, stripped you naked, and shot you too. Would that have been a better outcome? Three deaths instead of two?”
“I might have been naked and dead, but my honor would have survived the encounter.”
Men.Honorablemen. “While your honor is no small trifle, Fournier, half the émigrés in London would be in worse straits without your generosity. More to the point, I could not have fallen in love with you had you wasted your life arguing with villains over your idiot wife’s boots.”
The next silence was more fraught, until Catherine felt Fournier’s posture ease.
“The formidable Miss Fairchild does not approve of such a death for me,” Fournier said. “I will not argue with a lady.”
“But you will have your regrets. We all do, Fournier.” Catherine certainly had hers, and Fournier’s disclosure gave her much to think about, though she did not at all regret declaring her regard for him.
No wonder he wasn’t interested in casual dalliances. No wonder he was so generous with other émigrés. The loss of his wife and child also explained his ferocious devotion to sword practice and his mixed feelings about a permanent return to France.
Catherine laced her fingers with her lover’s and wrapped an arm around his waist. She could not sleep, but she could close her eyes and ponder what had just happened in Fournier’s comfortable coach.
He had trusted her with the truth, with his most devastating sorrow, and with his greatest disappointment. The lovemaking had been a revelation, greeting the day as a couple had been astonishingly comfortable, but the true surprise was the degree to which Xavier Fournier had decided to trust her.
How was she ever to reciprocate such a display of courage?
* * *
“Fournier is rich,” Worth Kettering said as he swung into the saddle and prepared to accompany Grey Dorning, Earl of Casriel, back to Town. “We need not worry over his means.”
“Catherine might well be richer,” Casriel replied. “The settlements would require setting up trusts, protecting her wealth from his creditors, and so forth.”
“Child’s play.” Boring child’s play for Worth Kettering, though he did like to keep his legal drafting skills honed. “Catherine’s fortune is significant, but Fournier has the greater wealth. He took terrible risks during the war, and his risks paid off. He inherited from all sides, being an only surviving son, and he has diversified. Even a bad harvest won’t substantially reduce his coin, and now Goddard has taught him the new method for making clear champagne.”
“Why would Goddard do a thing like that?”
“You should ask him.” Kettering knew Colonel Orion Goddard only in passing, but the colonel managed both Sycamore Dorning and The Coventry Club with apparent ease.
“One does not pry, Kettering. One asks one’s wife about her recent correspondence and muses aloud regarding passing questions. I gather Fournier took up for Goddard when half the military was ready to hang him for treason he did not commit.”
Kettering was well connected. He had the ear of the influential dowagers in Mayfair and most of the younger sons. No less person than the Regent himself sought Kettering’s financial advice, and that same august personage occasionally passed along excellent insights about the market for art.
