Page 81 of Ravishing Camille
She strode away, angry at herself. Climbing up into the rented carriage to take her back to Amboise, she threw herself into the squabs and clenched her teeth. She cared not about critics of her novels. People loved them or they didn’t. Her moral reputation she did care about. Immensely. Used to holding her head up in social circles, used to pride in her mother, pride in the Hanniford clan, pride in her own simple accomplishments, she had known she could never wear well the mark of a fallen woman. Nor would she bear up well under scrutiny of one who had seduced her step-brother. For that blame, like so much else in this world, would go to the woman, not the man. Men were entitled to tarry and roam. Encouraged to it, for their own education, poor excuse that it was. Women could not afford the chance they would pay dire consequences for their indulgences. Pregnancy was a hard load to bear without a concerned partner, a husband, a father. Raising a child was doubly as difficult.
The driver flicked the reins and the horses left the station.
There in the seclusion of that carriage, she was aware that the sun had hidden behind a few clouds, that the day grew darker. But as she looked out upon the passing trees and saw the rushing Loire drift past, she decided that she would never give up her support for women’s equality. She might love a man to fierce distraction but she would never allow that to deter her from the effort she’d always believed was her higher calling. She could love Pierce, could support him in all his endeavors, negotiations, building projects, here or to the ends of the earth, but so too she deserved the same from him.
And if he truly loved her, then he would acknowledge her right to pursue those goals.
Her challenge would be to find a way to do that, wherever they lived.
And only as his wife.
Chapter 19
As his train headed north toward Paris, Pierce sat alone in his first-class compartment. The verdant French forests whizzing past his windows in a spectrum of greens and browns inspired contemplation of a thriving future with a woman he enjoyed and admired. This was the quietude he always sought to sort his life.
Devoted to ordering his options, listing positive and negative probabilities, he had promised himself this time. He’d concentrate on the same reasoning about his personal life that he’d given every business he’d ever made. His days and nights with Camille had not been conducive to that. He’d been too randy, too taken with her, too enthralled to demand reason of himself. Charmed by her and his irrepressible drive to make love to her, he now needed to be alone. Alone with his mind on logic, his body cool and composed.
He always thought he’d make a terrible husband. Too obsessed with work. Too devoted to every small detail to make a business blossom. What woman wanted a man who was never there? His father served as the fine example. From his childhood, he recalled that his father would order his days so that he was home for breakfast and home for supper. Then after Pierce’s mother died, his father hired a manager for the shipyards and for the factories in the port of Baltimore and made the same commitments to his three small children and his niece. Pierce as an adult with his own commitments had never perceived how his father had regimented himself to order that. But Pierce grasped its importance now. After days with Camille, he understood love as he had not before. Proper nurturing required time and attention, nothing taken for granted. His gratitude to his father grew even as his love for Camille did.
The rendezvous with Camille in one way had not been his finest hour. He winced at the admission. But it was true and he never shrank from truth. Guilt however was not an emotion with which he had much acquaintance. His affairs, few as they had been, had been nigh unto business agreements themselves. Grounded in sex, they were strictly regulated, formally agreed to and then officially dissolved when the attractions withered. His fixation on Elanna, the ill-fated Countess of Carbury, had been his irrational obsession with a woman who knew no order or discipline. How a woman lived like that— how anyone could—bewildered and appalled him. He fixated on her, he had concluded lately, more to learn how to avoid that than to think he could ever survive loving her.
Finally, there was May Macfarlane. His love for May had been more admiration than desire. He smiled to himself, remembering her selflessness, her quiet dignity in life and death. Perhaps May’s fortuneteller had been right. He would go on to become more whole with another woman. For surely, what he felt now when he looked into Camille Bereston’s eyes resembled nothing he’d ever experienced before.
Oh, yes, he’d noticed a different Camille the minute he walked down the gangplank of theManchu Empressweeks ago. He’d met her when she was a girl. Coltish and buoyant, she’d been irreverent and a challenge, even an irritant. As she’d grown, she’d matured into the stunning creature she was today. All ebullience and dedication, yet careful of her reputation and devoted to her family. His family. Her family. No shallow girl bent on capturing some lust-dazed fellow and hying off to the countryside for the rest of her days, Camille had built a career for herself. Done well at it. If indeed she wished for more, even a career in politics, he applauded that.
What he had done all his life was strive for more, better, finer. What he could do, so could a woman. May had wanted that for herself in her own culture, in her own way. Now before him was Camille who climbed different barriers, fought other restrictions.
He could help her. If she wished it. He could ease her way. If she let him.
But if she didn’t, if she barred him, that was fine with him too.
Because he loved her.
He would treasure her. Admire her. Encourage her.
Marry her.
And adore her.
For the rest of his life.
But now in Paris, he’d settle his own affairs. He would write to Victor and describe the change of administration he had decided was imperative for them both for their Shanghai company. He would argue for his own assessment and hope Victor could agree and soon. Much had to do with Lee Macfarlane. To that end, Pierce would also wire Lee Macfarlane to alert him to the necessity of a meeting in Paris before he and his new wife boarded a steamer for New York. If Pierce’s plans for the future of his Shanghai business were to succeed, he’d need Lee’s agreement and insights.
First in Paris however, Pierce had to visit with his father. Mark the changes there that meant a different dynamic in the family when his father’s step-daughter also became his daughter in-law. And Pierce’s own step-mother, became his mother-in-law. Both would welcome the news of his marriage to Camille. Of that he was certain. For both of them had big hearts and open minds.
He caught his reflection in the window glass and frowned.
Camille would have him, wouldn’t she?
He hadn’t asked. Hadn’t declared himself. He needed to be grounded in his own matters first. Or he had thought it to be so. What if he’d been wrong?
A stabbing pain shot through him. To have had Camille as he did for days in lavish rapture and then to think she might not want him, might refuse him, eviscerated him.
She hadn’t said she loved him.
But she did.
He loved her.
