Page 69 of Ravishing Camille
“Really? What are you going to do? I am concerned about you. Pierce has told me you’ll travel with Lee.”
“I will. I am. We go to Berlin Monday.”
“Is that wise? Have you thought it through?” She took Brianna’s hands in her own.
“I have. Most thoroughly. In fact, I’ve news for you. On Monday morning in the Paris City Hall, I will marry Mister Lee Warren Macfarlane of Shanghai.”
“Marry!” Camille squeezed her hand, delighted and full of fear for her friend. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Wonderful. I am so very happy for you.”
Brianna’s eyes rested on the man who would become her husband. “I love him. He is everything I need. Adventurous. Kind. Ethical. And totally mine.”
“Oh, Brianna. And have you told your family?”
“I wrote just this morning. My father will read my letter first thing tomorrow. Thereafter, you will hear this ghastly explosion from across the Channel.”
“He’ll not approve, will he?” Camille knew the answer to this, having heard Brianna speak of her narrow-minded family for many years.
“Of course not. He’s interested only in his own self-defined sterling connections. At the news, my father—God deliver me from him—will suffer a stroke. My mother will put a finger in the air and forbid the match. A Chinaman as her son-in-law. Disgusting! And as for my brother, he will embrace any creature who has deeper pockets than he has. Insurance, you see, against his debts, his spendthrift wife and his own failures to make the estate earn profit.”
Brianna inhaled and caught the gaze of her intended across the crowded room. What passed between them was love and comfort for she reflected that to him in her own smile. “Lee has come to me at a perfect time. A moment when I am my whole self, assured of that, and old enough that they cannot destroy the marriage nor take my inheritance from me. Not that I need the money. It is, quite pitiful compared to the sums that Lee has earned. No. I do not need my family’s approval. Nor their money. In fact, the day may come when they need mine. I love Lee Macfarlane and he loves me. We will be wed Monday morning. Then I am his, and he is mine for every day thereafter.”
“I applaud your courage.”
Brianna gazed at her squarely. “You can claim your own.”
* * *
“I feel like a school mistress herding all these children into the carriages.” Camille plunked her hands on her hips as Liam boarded and took a seat beside Rand in the black lacquered coach.
Pierce shot her a look that told of his own frustration. Whose idea was this that we take them all?”
“Mine? Marianne’s? I forget,” she said with a wince, fanning herself with her straw hat.
“Their parents will owe us for decades to come. Ah! Ah!!” He spun to catch Dylan by the collar and turn him back toward one of the two landaus.
“I cried off for any expeditions tomorrow. We won’t go anywhere,” she said as she handed Lily’s youngest, Beth, the doll that Liam had taken from her.
“Good. Because I have to go talk with my French staff again tomorrow.”
“You can’t help me with this menagerie?”
“For an hour or so. But I’ll return afterward.”
“I might not be alive,” she said, closing one eye and glaring at him.
“I promise to bring macarons.”
“If you bring two dozen from Ladurée, I will forgive you your absence!”
He grinned and flourished a hand. “Your favorite flavor,Mademoiselle?”
“Strawberry. With French vanilla cream.”
* * *
The journey from Rue de Rivoli to the Champs de Mars along the Seine took only ten minutes. Traffic was sparse mid-day as most Parisians chose the shade of linden trees or the comfort of cafes for luncheon.
As the two carriages—one with Camille in charge, the other with Pierce—pulled to the grassy expanse where the iron tower by Eiffel rose, the children went silent. Their mouths open, each boy and girl gazed upward to the bulging iron girders that had reached now the height equal to a building of two or three stories.
