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the chance, because your so kind butler permitted me to enter the hall the moment he saw how things were, and even if you would not see me, he said there was a door to the back through the kitchens from which I could return home, after I had drunk a little something to restore my nerves …’
The Earl found he had no defence against the torrent of words that washed over him. She didn’t even seem to pause for breath until Giddings returned, bearing a tray upon which was a bottle of Madeira and two glasses.
She’d risen to her feet, removed her bonnet and gloves, and perched on the edge of the chair facing him, twittering all the while like some little brown bird, hopping about and fluffing its plumage before finally roosting for the night.
She smiled and thanked Giddings as she took the proffered drink, but her hand shook so much that she spilled several drops down the front of her coat.
‘I am sorry that you have been offered insults,’ he heard himself saying as she dabbed ineffectually at the droplets soaking into the cloth. ‘But you should have known better than to come to my house alone.’ Far from being the haven for tourists that he had been led to believe, many Parisians were showing a marked hostility to the English. It had started, so he had been reliably informed, when trade embargoes had been lifted and cheap English goods had come on sale again. But tensions were rising between die-hard Bonapartists and supporters of the new Bourbon regime as well. If factions were now brawling in the Tuileries gardens, then Mademoiselle Bergeron might well not be safe to venture out alone. ‘I will have you escorted home …’
‘Oh, not yet!’ she exclaimed, a look of dismay on her face. ‘For you have not heard what I came to say!’
‘I am waiting to hear it,’ he replied dryly. ‘I have been waiting since you walked through the door.’
Heloise drained the contents of her glass and set it down smartly upon the table that Giddings had placed thoughtfully at her elbow.
‘Forgive me. I am so nervous, you see. I tend to babble when I am nervous. Well, I was only nervous when I set out. But then, after the incident in the Tuileries, I became quite scared, and then—’
‘Mademoiselle Bergeron!’ He slapped the arm of his chair with decided irritation. ‘Will you please come to the point?’
‘Oh.’ She gulped, her face growing hot. It was not at all easy to come to the point with a man as icily furious as the Earl of Walton. In fact, if she wasn’t quite so desperate, she would wish she hadn’t come here at all. Looking into those chips of ice that he had for eyes, and feeling their contempt for her chilling her to the marrow, Heloise felt what little courage she had left ebb away. Sitting on a chair instead of staying prostrate at his feet had not redressed their positions at all. She still had to look up to meet his forbidding features, for the Earl was quite a tall man. And she had nothing with which to combat his hostility but strength of will. Not beauty, or grace, or cleverness. She had the misfortune to have taken after her mother in looks. While Felice had inherited her father’s even features and long-limbed grace, she had got the Corbiere nose, diminutive size, and nondescript colouring. Her only weapon was an idea. But what an idea! If he would only hear her out, it would solve all their difficulties at a stroke!
‘It is quite simple, after all,’ she declared. ‘It is that I think you should marry me instead of Felice.’
She cocked her head to one side as she waited for his response, reminding him of a street sparrow begging for crumbs. Before he could gather his wits, she had taken another breath and set off again.
‘I know you must think that this is preposterous just at first. But only think of the advantages!’
‘Advantages for whom?’ he sneered. He had never thought of little Heloise as a scheming gold-digger before. But then nor had he thought her capable of such fluent speech. Whenever she had played chaperon for himself and her sister she had been so quiet he had tended to forget she was there at all. He had been quite unguarded, he now recalled with mounting irritation, assuming, after a few half-hearted attempts to draw her out, that she could not speak English very well.
Though the look he sent her was one that had frozen the blood in the veins of full-grown men, Heloise was determined to have her say.
‘Why, for you, of course! Unless … Your engagement to Felice has not been announced in England yet, has it? She told me you had not sent any notice to the London papers. And of course in Paris, though everyone thinks they know that you wished to marry Felice, you have only to say, when they see me on your arm instead of my sister, “You will find you are mistaken,” in that tone you use for giving an encroaching person a set-down, if anyone should dare to question you, and that will be that!’
‘But why, pray, should I wish to say any such thing?’
‘So that nobody will know she broke your heart, of course!’ Her words, coupled with her look of genuine sympathy, touched a place buried so deep inside him that for years he had been denying its very existence.
‘I know how her actions must have bruised your pride, too,’ she ploughed on, astonishing him with the accuracy of her observations. Even Conningsby claimed he had not guessed how deep his feelings ran until the night before, when, in his cups, he’d poured out the whole sorry tale. But this girl, of whom he had never taken much notice, had read him like an open book.
‘But this way nobody will ever guess! You are so good at keeping your face frozen, so that nobody can tell what you are truly feeling. You can easily convince everyone that it was my family that wished for the match, and that they put Felice forward, but all the time it was me in whom you were interested, for I am the eldest, or—oh, I am sure you can come up with some convincing reason. For of course they would not believe that you could truly be attracted to me. I know that well! And if any rumours about a Mademoiselle Bergeron have reached as far as London—well, I have already shown you how one Mademoiselle Bergeron may enter a room as another. Nobody else need know it was quite another Mademoiselle Bergeron you had set your sights on. If you marry me, you may walk round Paris with your head held high, and return home with your pride intact!’
‘You are talking nonsense. Arrant nonsense!’ He sprang from his chair, and paced moodily towards the sideboard. He had ridden out malicious gossip before. He could do so again. ‘The connection with your family is severed,’ he snapped, grasping the decanter, then slamming it back onto the tray on discovering it was still empty. He was not going to be driven from Paris because a few tattle-mongers had nothing better to talk about than a failed love affair. Nor would anything induce him to betray his hurt by so much as a flicker of an eyelid. ‘I see no need to restore it!’
He turned to see her little face crumple. Her shoulders sagged. He braced himself for a further outpouring as he saw her eyes fill with tears. But she surprised him yet again. Rising to her feet with shaky dignity, she said, ‘Then I apologise for intruding on you this morning. I will go now.’
She had reached the door and was fumbling her hands into her gloves when he cried out, ‘Wait!’ His quarrel was not with her. She had never given him a moment’s trouble during the entire time he had been courting Felice. She had never voiced any protest, no matter where they had dragged her, though at times he had been able to tell she had been uncomfortable. All she had done on those occasions was withdraw into the shadows, as though she wished to efface herself from the scene completely. That was more her nature, he realised with a flash of insight. To have come here this morning and voiced that ridiculous proposition must have been the hardest thing for her to do. It had not been only the brush with the National Guard that had made her shake with fright.
He had no right to vent his anger on her. Besides, to let her out alone and unprotected onto the streets was not the act of a gentleman.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he said stiffly, ‘I told you I would ensure you returned to your house safely. Please, won’t you sit down again, while I get Giddings to summon a cabriolet?’
‘Thank you,’ she sighed, leaning back against the door. ‘It was not at all pleasant getting here. I had no idea! To think I was glad Maman had turned off Joanne, so that it was