Page 61 of Miss Desirable
“And now?”
“Being Marie’s mother cured me of that stupidity. These people live to judge and find fault. They politely snipe at the Regent, Wellington, the French, the Americans, one another… They didn’t want me when I was Lady Fairchild’s by-blow, and they don’t want me now that I’m an heiress with a title stashed in my trousseau. Their approval would gain me nothing of merit.”
“And yet, you worry for your daughter. Her birthright is here, your wealth is here.”
Catherine was enraptured with Fournier’s lovemaking, but the quality that drew her the most was his talent for listening. She could tell him anything and know that his response would be thoughtful and kindly. He knew instinctively that her concern was for her daughter, so small and innocent.
And so scandalous.
Fournier was a gentleman, in other words, not a petulant lordling. He looked upon human foibles with compassion, rather than with an eye toward his own advantage.
“In France,” Catherine said, “legitimacy is much less of an issue, and in France, as far as anybody outside the household was concerned, I was a tragically young Italian widow, not a headstrong English idiot.”
“You are saying that Marie has a greater hope of happiness in France.”
“Sheishappy. I have letters every month from her governess, and I know Marie is happy. My daughter begs me for a pony in her notes, but that is the extent of her discontent.”
“She must earn her pony,mon amour. By reading a number of books, by keeping a journal every day for some months in her best handwriting, by tending a patch in the garden for the whole summer. By learning to ride when no pony has been promised to her.”
Fournier matched his steps to Catherine’s as they made their way toward her home. He tipped his hat to passing dowagers, and he bent nearer when Catherine spoke. His smallest gesture announced to the world that nothing pleased him more than being Catherine’s escort.
He understood London Society in a way Catherine didn’t, something else for her to ponder.
“I wrote back to Marie that she may begin taking lessons, and I sent her a list of pieces to learn on the pianoforte. She has a natural talent for music, but the garden is also a good idea. Children thrive on fresh air, and she is a Dorning by blood. They seem to thrive on botany.”
“Do you thrive on botany?”
“I have always been drawn to the garden, for its peace, for its beauty. I have no particular botanical education, but I enjoy your discourses about grape varieties, soil, and altitude.”
“I have discourses now, like a man of great learning. How you flatter me. What will you do with the rest of your day?”
“Dream of you while trying to tend to a mountain of neglected correspondence. What of you?”
“One hopes your dreams will be pleasant. I will be dreaming as well, of wine cellars and the rustle of your skirts when you raise them above your knees for our mutual pleasure.” He said this as casually as if remarking the weather.
“I adore your ability to be naughty in your mind and polite in your manners.”
“I am not naughty. I am a properly respectable wine merchant, though I am also besotted.”
They turned the corner onto Catherine’s street. “That worries you.”
“Not as much as it should. We could live in France for much of the year. I don’t miss my homeland, with all of its upheavals and sorrow, but I miss my home.” He tipped his hat to another pair of dowagers, both of whom smiled back at him.
Customers, perhaps.
The import of Fournier’s words took half the length of the street to settle in Catherine’s mind. “We could live in France?”
“With Marie, if you wish. A parent and her child should not be avoidably separated.”
“Are you proposing marriage, Fournier?”
He paused at the foot of her front steps. “I am, though I bungle the matter badly. Call it thinking out loud, or making a fool of myself out loud. I see us together, Catherine, but the details are lost in a fog of passion and hope.”
A younger woman would have been offended at this bumbling offer of marriage, but Catherine was no longer a girl, and she was a mother, and Fournier was not bumbling.
He wastrustingher. “C’est compliqué, non?” she said, continuing in French. “You have a business which ideally requires you to be in two countries at once. I have a child in France whom I cannot acknowledge and a fortune in England I did not expect. We both have reason to be cautious, and yet, I, too, see us together, Fournier. I don’t know where or how, and Marie’s situation will always have first claim on my loyalty, but I do see us together.”
“That is good, then. Our objectives are in accord.”
