Page 70 of Miss Desirable
And making passionate, desperate love with the man she intended to banish from her life.
“I have.”
“And when not castigating yourself for an accident of birth beyond your control and not devising excuses to abandon me, what conclusions have you come to?”
“That Lord Fortescue Armbruster has decided to have my fortune, now that he has all but wrecked my good name. I have no proof that he started all the talk about me when I returned to London, but the circumstantial evidence is considerable.”
“Armbruster is an ass. When the best wineshops will no longer extend him credit, he will buy cheap brandy and cheaper claret and then have his valet pour them into expensive-looking decanters. You know that Goddard and I no longer do business with him, and we have alerted our colleagues to his ways as well.” Some additional fact about Armbruster tried to push through Fournier’s disgust, a wisp of memory, but it refused to march into full awareness.
“You call them colleagues, not competitors.”
“The London marketplace is huge and connected to much of the known world. I am most fortunate to have my piece of it, and I see no need to be greedy.”
Catherine sniffled, and Fournier’s heart broke.
“I love so much about you,” Catherine said. “Armbruster will destroy you with a word. He’ll destroy me, too, unless I marry him. He’s working up his nerve, probably trying to talk his mother around, but his scheme isn’t complicated.”
“And you intend to comply with it, because the only reputation he will protect as zealously as his own is that of his wife.” Logical. Damnably logical. Ruthless even, and entirely unacceptable. “You expect him to accept that the child is his own?”
“The dates do not lie, Fournier, and he can pass Marie off as a by-blow with nobody the wiser as to my role. To get his hands on my money, he’ll agree to that. Marie had the good sense to have blue eyes, so she won’t be associated with me.”
“You have been brooding on this.” Brooding alone, keeping her own counsel, not being a burden to anybody. Fournier wanted to weep and uproot trees and kill Fortescue Armbruster.
Catherine sat up very straight. “I celebrated Marie’s first birthday not simply because she thrived, but because the nurse reported that my daughter’s eyes remained blue.”
What a thing for a loving mother to have to fret about. All over, Fournier longed to wipe the blight that was Fortescue Armbruster from the earth.
“You told me Armbruster knows nothing about Marie.”
“He knows that for more than a year I was unaccounted for when I left Rome, Fournier. He knows I allowed him the sort of liberties that presage conception. If he has that address near Cahors, he knows exactly where Marie has lived since the day of her birth. He’ll send some runner or inquiry agent to snoop about, and sooner or later, a shopkeeper or laundress will recall that the so-called Italian widow had such peculiar eyes.”
“Beautiful eyes.” And this was a beautiful spot in a beautiful park. All stately maples, lush grass, and benevolent sunshine, but Fournier could not recall heartache of a greater magnitude since he’d learned of the demise of his wife and her child.
“I am so tired,” Catherine said quietly, “of being the butt of whispers, of being gracious to the Dornings now that they’ve decided to be gracious to me. Where were they when Mama and I were whiling away one evening after another among the companions and dowagers? Where were they when I became Miss Dubious?”
From what Fournier could piece together, most of them had been trying to minimize expenses by kicking around Dorsetshire the whole year-round. Casriel came up to Town from time to time, but the average ruralizing peer was not socially adept, and his lordship’s marriage was of fairly recent vintage.
“Their neglect works to your advantage,” Fournier said. “You shall call upon them now to put Armbruster in his place.”
Catherine rested her forehead against Fournier’s shoulder, the posture of a defeated woman. “Armbruster isMarie’s father. Married to me, he will assume that place openly. Rather than spread rumors about me, he will guard my good name.”
“The estimable Lord Fart will make you miserable, neglect his daughter, and hold over your head that you kept her from him.”
Catherine’s glower was magnificent. “I would have sent her to second cousins in Canada had I known matters would come to this pass, and if you have another plan, I am all ears, Fournier. If I marry Armbruster, he will doubtless decimate my fortune and give me unmentionable diseases when he isn’t conscientiouslyseeing to the succession. Marie must nonetheless be my first concern. If her grandpapa is a marquess, she will fare better than if she’s simply Miss Dubious’s dirty little secret.”
That was despair talking, and mother-love. “Don’t call her that, Catherine. Don’t think of her like that, and never again refer to yourself as Miss Dubious.” He’d lapsed into French, though the words translated easily enough.
“You are more fierce than MacKay when you speak French, and so tender.”
He laced his fingers more tightly with hers. “I speak French in bed?”
“You do. Beautiful words, and they are mine to keep.”
So am I. Fournier could not say that, but he could know it. “Gabriella kept me at arm’s length, or off peddling my wine in London, to prevent me from interfering with her wishes and plans. Lady of the manor was not good enough for her. She had to be lord of the manor as well. She wanted power, I wanted love. We neither of us got exactly what we sought.”
“I love you,” Catherine said. “I am glad about that, Fournier. Had I not known you… But I have known you, and I have known joy. I will never regret being your friend and lover.”
What fool in love had asked Catherine to be honest with him? “This is a puzzle,” Fournier said, watching as Bertold bowed the maple branch to crop a few bites of grass. “Because I love you too. You protect me, Marie, the Dornings, and even Armbruster himself in a sense, but who protects you?”
