Page 80 of Ravishing Camille
She snorted and reached for her robe and his shirt.
Minutes later, he told her of his worries that he had made mistakes to negotiate a deal with the French steel makers for Lee Macfarlane and him. “I’ve priced the steel too low. To make it affordable for the Chinese, I priced it too low. I’m not sure Lee or Victor will approve. And Lee has gone to Berlin so when he returns to Paris, I must meet with him to remedy that.”
“And how is Papa involved in this?”
“He isn’t. That is a different problem. I promised him when I first returned home that I would help him with a laborers’ dispute in Liverpool. I am to be the negotiator. Those meetings are to be in two weeks.”
“I see.”
“I don’t want to leave you like this. And I feel as though I cannot offer for you in limbo as I am.”
She didn’t understand why he couldn’t make a decision about their future without settling his business issues. Would his business matters always come before his personal ones? Before her? Could she live like that?
He pressed his lips together, his expression stark. “And you have decisions to make, too. Will you accept Daumier’s offer? Do you want to stay here in France to live for a year? Or more? And what of your other ambitions to be influential in politics? Does one limit the other?”
“I haven’t made any decisions on those. I wanted only to be with you.”
“Then we are the same.”
She saw his point. But she didn’t have to be happy about it. The fact that they had no resolution at the end of their affair, tortured her. “We are.”
* * *
The next morning, his departure hung over her like a shroud. Still she would not utter the fears that consumed her. Instead, she threw herself into absorbing her last minutes with him.
As it was, they had to rush to the train station in Tours. They’d lingered much too long at breakfast and dressing and kissing goodbye at the house. Monsieur Barrère had obtained a carriage from the village that took them the twenty-odd miles to the small station. They arrived just as the train going south from Paris arrived.
They got to the quay and conscious of the crowds around them, they stood apart and waited for the southbound Paris passengers to disembark. But as it became clear that their minutes dwindled to nothing, Pierce looked into her eyes and snaked an arm around her waist to press her near. He was all warmth, all passion, all the love she’d ever wanted for herself alone. They shared one glorious last kiss, his lips tender and yet possessive.
“That will keep us both, I hope, until you arrive back in Paris,” he said, more jovial than his sad gaze told her. “Two days.”
“Not long at all,” she lied because she missed him already and he was but inches from her. She put a brave face on it just as from the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a finely dressed woman gaping at them.
Camille pulled away from him, her heart in her throat.
“Oh my! Lady Barnet!” Camille tried for light-heartedness.
“How good to see you,” the woman remarked. But the lift of her brows and the tip of her head declared she knew that the scene she’d just witnessed was not that of affection between step-siblings.
Pierce acted as polite and politic as ever. “Lovely to see you, my lady. And you sir,” he said to her husband.
The man grumbled the usual nonsense when one does not recall the other’s name.
Pierce turned to Camille and with tight lips said, “Smile at her with friendship in your eyes.”
She did as best she could but feared she failed.
The porter blew the whistle. Pierce turned for the steps up into his compartment, gave her one last loving look and was gone.
Others drifted to and fro around her.
She stayed only a moment. After all, one didn’t linger after saying goodbye to one’s brother.
But Lord and Lady Barnet had seen more in that half minute than mere affection.
Camille knew it and now far more than she had feared in London when Aldridge Connor had been so uncouth, she was shaken that here her actions had given far more proof to Connor’s accusations.
How could she live this down?
