Portrait of a Scandal. ANNIE BURROWS
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wedding ring on her finger?
Was her father the kind of man who would wash his hands of his erring child, just because she’d brought disgrace to the family? The way his own father had done? Had her attempt to inveigle him into marriage been her last, desperate attempt to appease them? Had he, Nathan, been her last resort?
No wonder she’d wept when he’d become betrothed to Lucasta instead.
Strange how the years brought a new perspective to the tragedies of youth. There was always more than one side to any story. And before this moment—at least, before he’d watched the child enjoying her ice cream—the only side he’d ever considered had been his own.
‘Are you a friend of Monsieur Le Brun?’
He blinked, to find the little girl was smiling up at him, her wide blue eyes full of curiosity.
‘No, Sophie,’ Miss Dalby hastily put in, while her lover was taking an indignant breath to refute the allegation. ‘This is Monsieur Harcourt. He is an artist. He drew a picture of me last night, while we were out at dinner. I expect he is hoping for more custom from us.’
The little girl’s face lit up. ‘Oh, could he do a picture of me? You said we might buy a picture today. I thought from a shop. But this would be even better!’
‘Yes. It would.’ Miss Dalby gave him a smug little smile.
And all his sympathy towards her evaporated. She’d found a man who did not care that she’d already borne a child out of wedlock. And she was going to take great pleasure in obliging him to sit at her feet and draw the child. The child whose existence had driven them apart. The child whose existence she’d tried to conceal, so that she could entrap him into a marriage that would have been...
At that point, his imagination floundered into a wall of mist. He had no idea what marriage to her would have been like, with an illegitimate child hovering on the fringes of it. Could it possibly have been any worse than the one he’d actually had? With a wife he couldn’t even like, never mind desire, once he’d got to know her? A wife who’d broadcast her contempt for him with increasing virulence.
But one thing he knew. He wouldn’t have wanted to stop bedding her. Even now, ten years later, with a gut full of aversion for her lies and scheming, he wanted her. The reason he’d been so slow on the uptake that morning had been because of the sleepless night he’d spent on her account, either brooding on the past, or suffering dreams of the kind that bordered on nightmares, from which he had woken soaked in sweat and painfully aroused.
Just thinking about the things he’d done to her, and with her, during those feverish dreams had a predictable effect.
Hastily he pulled up a chair to her table, in spite of her French lover’s scowl, pulling his satchel on to his lap to cover his embarrassment.
With quick, angry strokes, he began a likeness of the girl he might have been forced into providing for, had Miss Dalby been successful in her attempts to snare him.
Chapter Four
Grimly determined not to reflect on how handsome her father must have been to have produced such a pretty child, he concentrated instead on capturing what he could see of her own nature. With deft sure fingers, he portrayed that eager curiosity and trusting friendliness which had so disarmed him.
‘Oh,’ the child said when he handed her the finished sketch. ‘Do I really look like that?’
‘Indeed you do, sweet pea,’ said Miss Dalby, shooting him a look of gratitude over the top of the sheet of paper.
She was many things, but she wasn’t stupid. She could see he’d restrained his anger with her so as not to hurt the child.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Frenchman reaching for his purse. He held up his hand to stall him.
‘You do not need to pay me for this picture,’ he said. Then turning to the little girl, because he was damned if he was going to let either of the adults know that he would rather starve than take another penny of the man’s money, he said, ‘It is my pleasure to have such a pretty subject to draw.’
The girl blushed and hung her head to study her portrait. Her mother gave him a tight smile, while the Frenchman openly smirked.
And all of a sudden, it was too much for him. He was burning with an unsavoury mix of frustration, anger and lust as he stowed his materials back in his satchel.
A waiter provided a very convenient diversion at that moment by arriving at the table to ask if they required anything else, or if they were ready to pay their bill. While the Frenchman was preoccupied, Nathan leaned towards Miss Dalby and muttered, ‘Is he really the best you can do? You are still young and attractive enough to acquire a protector who could at least dress you in something approaching last year’s fashions, couldn’t you?’
Her eyes snapped with anger as she opened her mouth to make a retort, but then something stopped her. She subsided back into her seat.
‘You think I am...attractive?’
‘You know you are,’ he growled. ‘You know very well that ten years ago I thought you so attractive I almost threw caution to the winds and made an honest woman of you. But now...now you’ve grown even more irresistible.’
From her gasp, he could tell he’d shocked her. But what was more telling was the flush that crept to her cheeks. The way her eyes darkened and her lips parted.
‘You should not say such things,’ she murmured with an expression that told him she meant the exact opposite.
‘Even though you enjoy hearing them?’ He smiled at her mockingly. She wanted him. With a little persuasion, a little finesse, he could take her from this mean-looking Frenchman and slake all the frustrations of the last ten years while he was at it.
And then, because if he carried on muttering to her with such urgency, people would start to notice, he said in a clear voice, ‘It will be my pleasure to do business with you again, at any time you choose. Any time,’ he said huskily, ‘at all.’
* * *
Amethyst blinked and looked around her. They were standing in some vast open space, though she could not for the life of her recall how she’d got there.
Did Nathan Harcourt really think she was in some kind of irregular relationship with Monsieur Le Brun?
And had he really been on the verge of proposing to her? All those years ago? No matter how much she argued that it could not be so, what else could he have meant by those angrily delivered, cryptic sentences?
The Tuileries Gardens. That was where she was. Where the three of them were.
‘On court days,’ she registered Monsieur Le Brun say, ‘crowds of people gather here to watch ministers and members of the nobility going to pay their respects to the King.’
‘Can we come and watch?’
While Monsieur Le Brun smiled down at Sophie and said he would see what he could arrange, Amethyst’s mind went back to the day she’d stood in her father’s study, trying to convince them that she’d believed Harcourt had really loved her.
‘If you got some foolish, presumptuous thoughts in your head regarding that young man,’ her father had bellowed, ‘you have nobody but yourself to blame. If he had been thinking of marriage, he would have come to me first and requested permission to pay his addresses to you.’
She wished she could stand next to the girl who’d cowered before her father’s wrath, bang her fist on his desk, and say ‘Listen to her! She’s right! Harcourt did want to marry her.’
But it was ten years too late. The girl she’d been had trusted her parents would understand. When they’d wanted to know why she’d been so upset on learning of Nathan’s betrothal, why she couldn’t face going to any more of the balls and routs they were trying to push her to attend, she’d blurted it