Page 39 of Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure
Giselle plunked downon the picnic blanket, winded from her run with Bella. Content, she watched Clive run the kite with his daughter. She grinned, more alive than she’d felt in years. The sun shone on her, Bella, Terese, Langley—and on her lover.
My lover.
She savored the words in her mind. The delicious man she’d discovered was worthy of a portrait by her friend Élisabeth. His light-brown hair streaked with blond, his shining gray eyes, his breadth, his depth of person, how she loved him.
Loved him.
The flames of her desire flared up, and she gazed at him with a yearning she knew not that she had ever possessed. Her mouth fell open at the admission to herself. She must not love him so much, so well, or she would endanger him. Bella, Terese. Who knew how many could fall to her enemies?
He looked over at her—and paused. As if he’d heard her thoughts, her fears. Perceptive man. He saw into her. Finishing her sentences. Understanding her before she had a chance to tell him all.
How was that?
In the village outside her papa’s chateau near Blois, a gypsy woman had lived. She lived alone, her family long gone to some purge. But she remained, an infamous and yet valued resident.
Her father called the woman One-Eyed Esmeralda. But she saw with more than that one orb. She predicted Giselle’s own marriage. “Aselfish man will take you,” Esmeralda had told her when she begged for a reading of her hand. “You will not like him, and he will take you for your flesh.”
All of that had been true. Too accurate.
Esmeralda had also predicted her father’s death by guillotine. “The razor,” she’d said with a swipe of her fingers across her throat and sadness in her craggy face. Those in the village loved Giselle’s father. “The Vicomte de Touraine,” Esmeralda had said, “his like will never be seen here again.”
“Have you been in England long?…Giselle?” Terese leaned across their blanket to touch her hand. “Giselle?”
“Je suis desole.” Giselle straightened in her chair. “I…as you say here, gather silk.”
Both Terese and Clive gave a laugh.
“That’s wool,” he said.
“Please repeat what you asked of me, Terese. I am enjoying the day.”
“I wondered how long you had been in England,” Terese said.
“Since last October.”
Clive frowned. “That must have been difficult, what with the blockade.”
“It was. Very.” Giselle rubbed her arms, recalling the freezing journey. “I sailed from Ostend on a merchant’s boat. He is a renegade from the French government and runs a business smuggling those like me out of France to Britain.”
Terese murmured an epithet, then said, “How brave of you.”
“It was necessary.” Giselle hated to tell the story of her family’s ruin, but these people before her were kind and loving. She had no reason to conceal who or what she had been.
“Mon père…my father, was the tenth Vicomte de Touraine. A supporter of the rights of man, he lived for a time in Versailles and advised the last king on reforms. They were, of course, too little, too late. Butthen it put him in Robespierre’s sights. He escaped to Verdun and took my brother, my sister, and me with him. But we were discovered by the localgendarmesand sent back to Paris. My father ensured that my brother and I escaped the guards. He did not.”
“Your sister escaped as well?” Terese asked.
“No. She was older than I. Lovely. Lively. Taken to the deputy of police, who put her in La Force when she would not consent to his affections. She died there.”
“I am so sorry.” Terese was rapt.
Clive was horrified. “And your mother?”
Giselle struggled to tell more. “Ma mèredied the first year of the insurrection. She was a princessdu sang, of the blood of the Valois, and feared for all of us. She had a weak heart. The fear killed her.”
Terese took her hand and squeezed in sympathy. “My dear. That is all so heartrending to hear.”
“And your brother?” Clive asked.
