Текст книги "I Married the Duke "
Автор книги: Katharine Ashe
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She was infatuated with the earl. Arabella needed no special powers of observation to see that.
“You are shy in company,” she only said.
“I am shy in company.” The princess’s cheeks were not pink, but sallow. Apparently she found more distress than pleasure in her infatuation. Arabella understood well.
“Please, Bella. I would very much like it.”
It was what she had dreamed for years: to be thrown into the intimate company of a marriageable prince. Now she hadn’t any interest in it, but she did as Jacqueline requested.
A SENNIGHT LATER the princess announced to Arabella her readiness for schooling. “I wish to be less . . . reticent.”
“You are not naturally reticent.” Only befuddled by a man. “You need only the smallest instruction to be able to make your way comfortably in London society.” Not all gentlemen in society were as handsome as the earl, she wanted to say. Nor as provoking. He had not spoken to her of his cousin, but occasionally he glanced at her assessingly. When she caught him out he would grin then say something outrageously flirtatious to one of the waiting ladies or invite the prince on a ride or make some other transparent excuse in order to avoid her. But she had no more wish to speak to him of Luc than he had to speak with her.
It was not until a fortnight had passed that he sought her out.
“Good heavens, my dear,” he said, coming toward her across the rose garden green, hat in hand and hair glimmering in the sunshine. “Are you still wearing your governess uniform? I thought you promised to purchase a new gown. And shoes, if I recall correctly.”
“I see that three weeks of mourning has not cured you of inappropriate raillery, my lord.” She turned away from him to the basket into which she was placing roses that she cut.
“As it has not cured your propensity for doing the work of servants. Hasn’t Reiner gardeners for this sort of thing?” He gestured to her basket.
“I enjoy it. And I am a servant.”
For a moment the silence was punctuated only by the merriment of birds in the hedgerow nearby and the snap of her clippers.
“I am here to make good on my promise to my cousin.” His voice did not tease now.
“To purchase for me a new gown and shoes? That is as ridiculous as any other part of it all.”
“Not to purchase a gown.” His face was quite sober.
“You bear no responsibility toward me, my lord.”
“Indeed I do.” His gaze slipped down to where she held her hands tightly together at her waist, and then she understood. He would remain with her until she knew whether she carried Luc’s child.
“I could lie to you,” she said, a strange, sorrowful desperation building in her. “I could bear another man’s child and claim it was your cousin’s in order to take advantage of my connection to you, a lord. How do you know I would not do that in the hopes of securing my future so that I will never again have to be a servant?”
“Because I know my cousin. A great deal better than you, it seems.”
Her lungs stung. “I came here to marry a prince,” she said nonsensically.
“My dear, in all things but title you already have.”
It could not be. She was not meant to have wed him. He had not been a prince and he had not recognized the ring. And he was gone.
He was gone. The finality of it swept down upon her.
The earl stepped forward and drew her into his arms. She pressed her face against the exquisite lapel of his coat and wept.
ARABELLA RETURNED TO the gardens the next day and the next, and for the sennight following. Grand yet tranquil, the labyrinthine pathways allowed her hours of solitude in which she was not obliged to suffer the earl’s scrutiny. She strolled between manicured flower beds then wandered a wooded path to a fountain fashioned of stone caryatids elevating a shell. As she walked she composed letters to her sisters which she never wrote.
When a carriage drawn by four matching gray horses rumbled up the drive, she paused and from a distance watched its passengers disembark. Four servants in the black and silver livery of the house came forth and flanked a gentleman, walking protectively around him up the stairs.
Arabella returned to the house and sought out Jacqueline.
“Has your mother’s retinue returned?”
“Oh, no, not yet, thank heaven.” Jacqueline dipped her pen into an ink pot. “The comte has come home at last.”
“Is he an elderly man?”
“He is Lord Bedwyr’s age, only a few years younger than Reiner, I believe. Why do you ask?”
“He walked slowly into the house, attended by hovering servants.” Arabella drew the curtain aside and looked at the opulent coach disappearing into the carriage house.
“He has been ill, apparently,” the princess said, “and is only now convalescing. We are unlikely to enjoy his company for several days. But how lovely when he is fully recovered it will be to augment our little party by a gentleman. It almost makes one wish my mother will never return with the rest of the court. Oh, but I wished that already, didn’t I?” Her hazel eyes twinkled.
AS THE FOLLOWING afternoon was fine and warm, Arabella suggested that Jacqueline practice the English art of taking high tea. The servants set out the repast on the terrace that jutted out from the castle on the bank of the river overlooking the formal gardens.
Jacqueline accepted a cup from Arabella and turned her head to Prince Reiner sitting over a chessboard with Lord Bedwyr.
“Tell us about the comte, brother. Is he handsome?”
“How should I be able to say one way or the other, Jackie?” He leaned over the game. “I am not a lady.”
Two of Jacqueline’s waiting ladies giggled. They had taken the lesson in tea as cause for dressing in their smartest frocks, no doubt for the earl’s benefit.
Arabella poured a cup for herself and walked to the balustrade. The queen’s chosen companions for her daughter had not accepted her in their circle, and after three weeks still looked at her with mildly veiled suspicion. She did not begrudge them. After years on the edge of society, she was accustomed to it.
“Is the comte handsome, Lord Bedwyr?” Jacqueline had finally managed to leave off stammering and blushing in the earl’s presence. It seemed to have no effect whatsoever on him. He treated her and her waiting ladies with the same easy amusement.
Lord Bedwyr leaned back in his chair, awaiting his opponent’s next move. “I regret to report, your highness, that he is a great beast of a man. Not a’tall to ladies’ tastes.”
Jacqueline’s lips twisted. “He owns this chateau and the vineyards, and a house in England, I understand. He must at least be very rich.”
“What sort of a thing is that to say, Jackie?” her brother said. “Miss Caulfield, you are remiss. You must take your charge in hand and teach her manners.” He smiled.
“I beg your highness’s pardon.” Arabella’s fingers tapped on her teacup, paper thin porcelain with gold ribs. It was a cup fit for a princess, like her sumptuous bedchamber and the gardens she stared out at now without a scrap of feeling. “I shall endeavor to improve my methods of instruction.”
“I expect you to.” Prince Reiner grinned and returned his attention to the chessboard. He was a kind man, pleasant to all, and generous and affectionate with his sister. He stirred in Arabella no interest whatsoever.
“Well, is he rich, my lord?” Jacqueline said.
“If I had half of the comte’s funds, Princess,” Lord Bedwyr replied, “I should be swimming in horses, carriages, houses, and jewels.”
“You know, brother,” Jacqueline said, “you should not fault me for wondering about a gentleman’s worldly characteristics. It is what Maman has taught me to consider most important in all men since I was six.”
“How tragic that in ladies’ estimation a man’s courage, heart, and nobility of character should fall behind his fortune and appearance.” The earl sighed theatrically and moved his white knight.
“You needn’t worry over that, my lord,” the princess said, looking directly at him, her gaze perfectly clear.
He lifted a brow. “Ah, but my fortune is far from enviable, Princess.”
A smile tweaked the corner of her mouth. “Lord Bedwyr, you are outrageously conceited.”
“Jackie!”
“Princess!”
The earl cast the princess an oddly knowing sideways glance then returned his attention to the board. “Your sister is frightfully honest, Reiner. You ought not to have sent her to a convent for schooling. Girls learn all the worst sorts of morals from nuns, you know.”
Jacqueline’s cheeks were pink but her eyes were serene. Perhaps she had taken the earl’s measure after all.
The door onto the terrace opened and a footman announced, “His lordship, le comte de Rallis.”
A gentleman stepped into the sun—a tall, broad-shouldered man with impeccably tailored clothes, gleaming top boots, and a black slash of a kerchief about his brow that covered his right eye and part of a horrible scar.
The teacup slipped from Arabella’s fingers and shattered on the stones at her feet.
Chapter 11
La Comtesse
Luc watched the color flood back into her cheeks, which had gone pale as parchment, and he nearly marched over to his cousin and strangled him. When Cam last sent word to the Victory, he said that she now knew his true identity. Unwisely, Luc had believed him.
A girl with the tall, dark appearance of Reiner rushed to her. “Arabella!”
Arabella.
“Bella, are you ill?”
“No,” he barely heard her say. “No, I am well.” Her chin ticked up as she met his gaze, but the cornflowers swam with confusion.
“Ah, Luc!” Reiner clasped his hand. “Bedwyr promised you were to come, but I never believe a thing he says.”
“I would be well advised to follow your example.” He looked over Reiner’s shoulder to her.
“My friend,” Reiner said, turning to the others. “Allow me to make you acquainted with your guests, my sister and her ladies-in-waiting.”
The women came forward. He was trapped, acting the gallant host to the party while the single person who most deserved his attention stole away down the terrace steps to the garden. No one seemed to notice. She still wore the plain governess’s gown. It seemed that neither Cam nor she had told Reiner or anybody else of the events at Saint-Nazaire.
He would remedy that swiftly. But not before he spoke with her alone.
“Your lordship,” one of the ladies said, “will you take tea?”
“I should think he might wish something a bit stronger. Don’t you, Rallis?” Cam said with a lifted brow.
“Wine it is, then,” Reiner said.
Luc bowed to the ladies, sent his cousin a silent command, and followed the prince inside. With a wave he dismissed the footman and turned to his cousin.
“Damn you, Cam.”
Bedwyr leaned against the sideboard negligently. “I don’t suppose you recall damning me when you were shedding your life’s force in the sand. Really, Lucien, you are repeating yourself tiresomely.”
“You deserve every moment of damnation you are wished.”
“Probably, but that is hardly to the point. When did it become my responsibility to negotiate your tortured love affairs for you?”
“Goddammit, Cam. Have you no conscience?”
Reiner poured a glass of burgundy. “The two of you still argue like you did when you were eighteen.”
“Then, he was merely a careless hedonist. Now he is a liar and a manipulator. Why did you lead me to believe you had told her?”
“Tell me, Lucien,” Cam said as though Luc had not spoken, “during your convalescence did you by chance flirt with trading in the old blindness for the new? Or are you simply doubly blind now?” Cam gestured with his glass to the terrace doors. “But I think I have my answer already.”
Reiner pushed a glass of wine into Luc’s hand. “Drink this, my friend. It seems you need it.”
Luc set down the glass. “Did he tell you?”
“That I was to ensure the safety of the stunning governess but not step within ten yards of her? Yes. He failed to mention it had anything to do with you, though.”
“It was not my news to share, of course.” Cam flicked an imaginary speck of lint off his coat sleeve. Finally he met Luc’s gaze squarely. “From the beginning. As you wished.”
Cam was right. Luc knew he should have told her the truth the moment she first asked his name. He could have told her at any moment since then. He hadn’t because in hiding his identity he imagined he would be able to remain aloof from her.
But Cam had known. Somehow the rakehell swiftly understood what he had indeed been too blind to see.
He started toward the door.
“Now, wait here a moment, Luc,” Reiner said to his back. “Have you installed your mistress in this house as my sister’s governess?”
“She is not my mistress.” He yanked open the door. “She is my comtesse.”
ARABELLA WENT BLINDLY through the garden, no tears in her eyes but a cyclone of relief and joy and pure, titanic anger crowding her senses as she hurried along the hedgerow toward the wooded paths.
He was alive.
She needed a moment alone to think, to collect her thoughts, to understand.
To revel.
He was alive. Alive and well and able to smile and bow handsomely to the princess’s silly waiting ladies.
Alive.
Alive enough to have told her that he had not in fact died before she discovered it in this manner.
For weeks she had shed tears for him. Weeks. While he had lied to her. For what reason, she could not fathom. Had he thought that if she knew the truth she would try to entrap him into marriage? But she had held him off more than once. She had objected until the very last moment. He had entrapped her.
The hedgerow ended in a long stone wall that stretched alongside a field of rows of pruned grape vines. She halted. Her steps had not taken her to the woods. She was lost. But certainly she had not walked so far to stray from the estate. His estate. The comte’s estate.
He was alive. And he was a titled nobleman. The heir to a dukedom.
She should have known. Men had lied to her before.
Never like this. Of course.
Her breaths came shallow. She reached out a hand, grabbed the wall and held tight to a rock while incomprehensible reality settled upon her. Then she continued walking until she came to a building. Low-roofed, long, and dark, she recognized it at once as a wine press. No one was about. The harvest was over, the sun low, and the building and naked vines cast long shadows across the grass.
She leaned up against the stone wall and closed her eyes. She would return and confront him and try not to hurl herself into his arms and breathe him in while she told him exactly what she thought of how he had treated her.
Perhaps it had all been a game to him. And his cousin. Lord Bedwyr, must have been part of it. But the men who attacked him, and his wound, had not been make-believe.
Why had he done it?
She pushed away from the wall and turned in the direction she had come.
She heard the dogs barking first, then hoofbeats. Rounding a corner of the high stone wall that bordered the nearest field, four of them scampered around her, tongues lolling, bearing friendly welcome.
A whistle cut the air and the beasts leaped away from her and back across the field.
He cantered toward her upon a great black horse like a man out of her dreams. He wore a dark green coat of superb cut and a black duster, buckskins that stretched over his thighs to extraordinary advantage, and a tall-crowned hat. Even with the kerchief and scar, he looked like a lord.
She did not wish to hide. That her hands shook and her throat closed should not matter. But as he came down from the horse, with the dogs cavorting about his boots, she drank in the sight of him.
“Good day, madam.” He came toward her.
She backed up. “Should you be riding?”
“Probably not. But according to the footman, who had it from the gardener, you set off in this direction at quite a pace and I could not imagine how I was to find you before dusk if I made the attempt on foot. The grounds are extensive.” He smiled ever so slightly. “So if my wound should open from the ride and I die from it, rest assured it will be your fault.”
“How could you—” Her voice failed. He stood there so tall and handsome, yet lighter of flesh than before and somewhat taut about the mouth. She wished he was in vile pain and prayed that he was not. “You are cruel.”
“Ah. We come directly to the point. No fond reunion kisses first.” He sighed. “I should have expected it after the shattered teacup, yet I held out hope.”
“How could you not tell me?”
“I thought Bedwyr did. He said that he had.”
“He had not.” Her voice wavered. She forced it to steadiness. “I was obliged to learn it abruptly when you walked through that door.”
Luc reveled in the luxury of seeing her face. Her cheeks were touched with pink, her cornflower eyes were wide, and her lips were perfect, as always, soft and pink as raspberries and ample. He wanted his on them. He wanted a reunion kiss that would end up with them in the grass and half dressed, as they’d been on that beach too many miserable weeks earlier for him to contemplate.
But she looked sick to her stomach.
He halted at a distance from her. “I am sorry I failed to tell you the entire truth about myself.” He bowed deeply. The cutting pain in his side had not been so acute in a sennight, but this was worth it. “I beg your forgiveness.”
The cornflowers opened wide. “You are sorry you did not tell me the entire truth? What sort of partial truth could you have told, I wonder?”
“Partial truth?” Luc’s impatience got the best of him. “Are my title and position so abhorrent to you?”
“Your title and position?”
He shook his head, befuddled. Then the reason for her astonishment struck him in his sore gut like another cold knife.
“Bedwyr did not tell you that I was alive.” Not possible. “Did he?”
“He did not.” Her throat worked against emotion.
“Dear God.” He stepped forward. “I never imagined he would not. He did it to punish me rather than you, undoubtedly. But I should kill him for it. I was unable to travel until yesterday, but if I had known, I would have written to you.”
With a squaring of her shoulders, she seemed to make a decision. “Why didn’t you tell me before who you really were?”
“I would have.” He rubbed his jaw. “I intended to.”
She looked away. “Men deceive as a rule.”
“I intended less to deceive than to—”
“It matters nothing to me. You are nothing to me.”
“Yet your eyes were bright with relief when you saw me at the house. You deceive yourself, duchess.”
“Do not call me that.”
“That you care at all what I call you is instructive.” He moved closer. Her shoulders seemed to flatten against the wall behind her. He traced her lovely profile, and his fingers itched to play in the coppery strands that dangled from the heavy knot of hair at her neck. “You care for me,” he said.
“I cared for you when I believed you dead.” Her voice quivered. “You were more interesting then.”
A constriction in his chest loosened. “If it will hold your attention, I shall gladly die again. Name the date and time.”
“You are outrageously amusing, my lord. You ought to gather a theater troupe and put on a traveling show.” Still she would not look at him. “Perhaps invite Lord Bedwyr to join you. The two of you would make money hand over fist.”
“I have enough money already. And I simply cannot hear you call me ‘my lord’ in that disgusted tone. It makes me want to write the king and tell him I won’t have the title after all.”
Finally her lips twitched. Then she seemed to lose the battle within her entirely; her brow softened and she turned her face to him. Luc thought he could die now indeed. To have her gaze upon him with such grace and charity was the blessing of heaven.
“I am . . .” She seemed to struggle for words. “I am glad you are well.”
“Glad? Is that all I am to have from you?” He reached for her and curved his hand around her cheek. Arabella jerked away.
Anger flashed in his eye. “You will not let me touch you? You let Bedwyr touch you.”
“I did not.”
“He said you embraced him. Did he lie about that too?”
“I—” She sought in her memory. In the garden the earl had held her. “I did—”
“You allowed that raking libertine cad of a—”
“It was an embrace of comfort only, the briefest—” She cut off her justification. “I needn’t defend myself to you.”
“You jolly well do.”
“I wept! Don’t you see? I wept for you, for your death that I caused, and he comforted me. That is all. Mere momentary comfort. Now here you are, having lied to me and made me grieve, and you expect me to fall into your arms?”
“Yes.”
She gaped. “Your arrogance seems to have survived along with your body.”
He flattened his palm to the wall behind her head and leaned in. “My body survived, indeed, and it remembers the touch of yours. Quite well.”
Now her body betrayed her. His teasing she could withstand. His closeness she could not.
“My cousin says that you intend to marry Reiner,” he said.
“He told you that, but he neglected to tell me you were alive?”
“He is a contrary fellow,” he said a bit grimly. “Too much untrammeled adulation, I think.” He leaned in to the side of her face and seemed to breathe in deeply. “But by God, what seeing you does to me. All else fades away.” His lips brushed her earlobe, stirring soft pleasure deep in her. “What are your intentions toward Reiner?”
He was alive, well, and he was touching her. She had dreamed of this. She had wept through entire nights dreaming of this.
She must make herself form sensible words. “I haven’t any intentions toward him. I hadn’t any since the moment I allowed you to touch me on that beach.” Days before that.
“Good,” he murmured. The tip of his tongue traveled the tender dip beneath her ear, then his mouth found her neck. “Because I would have to call him out for marrying my wife. As I am the better shot, he would perish, then his country would be left leaderless and there would be a whole international incident. It wouldn’t be pretty. It is far better this way.”
She dragged herself from pleasure and sidestepped out from under him. “I am not truly your wife.”
His arm fell to his side. “The priest said, ‘You have declared your consent to be man and wife.’ I believe you are.”
“I did not hear him say that.”
“The moment must have overcome you. I understand that is common with brides.”
“It was not a legal wedding.”
“You signed a marriage contract.”
“I signed a blank page.”
“It is no longer blank. Friendly elves that I encountered whilst convalescing in the woods revealed the invisible ink on that page that now makes it quite clear you are wed to me. Isn’t magic remarkable?”
“How can you jest about this?” she cried.
He came forward, took her face gently between his hands and brought his mouth an inch from hers.
“I jest not. We are wed. Truly and validly.” His breath feathered over her lips, and all the life in her seemed to heat up.
She had trusted him, believed in his honor, given him her body, and all along he had been lying to her.
“If I tell you to release me,” she said, his scent and warmth all around her, tangling her thoughts as he always did, “you will do so.”
“Are you certain?” His voice was deeply husky. His lips brushed hers like a whisper. She closed her eyes against the sensations of her weakness.
“Yes. I am certain. Release me now.”
For a taut moment he did not move. Then with a snarl he released her and backed away.
“What do you want of me?” he demanded. “Another apology? A dozen apologies? Then you have them.” He threw forth his hand. “I was wrong. I made a mistake. I was accustomed to playing that part and saw no reason to inform you otherwise.”
“I don’t care why you lied to me, only that you did. Don’t you see?”
“I see that given the outcome, you are making a mountain of a mole hill.”
“You forced me to marry you under false pretenses!”
“I have never forced you to do anything.” He advanced on her again, coming as close as he could without touching her. “But I will now, little governess. I will force you to care. I will make you care more than you can bear.”
“Now you threaten me?”
“How you can consider that a threat, I have no notion.”
He was a lord. She finally understood his arrogance and authoritarianism and persistence. He could have any woman he wanted. He could not truly want her, poor, a servant with a sharp tongue. He was like other men after all. When she would not allow them to have her, they had sought to ruin her. Like those men, he simply wanted to win.
Now she was entirely in his power, his wife, his to command not for the duration of a brief journey but for a lifetime. The panic that she had felt so many times with him threaded through her afresh.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I cannot be married to a lord.”
“You cannot be married to a lord,” he repeated without inflection. “You are the most difficult woman I have ever known.”
“Given that, I wonder that you could want me.”
“You wonder,” he said, his gaze shadowed again with that bewildered need she did not understand. “You wonder, do you?” He kissed her, at first the softest caress, taking her lips and making her feel him. Then it became possession. She welcomed it, leaned into him, pressed her palm to his chest, felt his life beneath her hand, and parted her lips for him.
It was too brief. He released her.
She covered her lips with her fingertips and turned her face away, seeking control. He reached up as though to pull her hand away, then halted and instead backed up.
“God damn it.” With a swirl of his coattails, he pivoted about and strode to his horse.
She watched him mount from the ground despite the wound that must still pain him. He circled the horse about and, with the dogs barking and leaping, spurred away. She watched him go.
He always left her. Only once had she walked away from him, but each time he made her need him, she watched him go. He expected to win and it was entirely possible that he would.
SHE RETURNED TO the chateau in the gathering dusk to find a parade of carriages lining the drive and servants laden with traveling trunks and bandboxes hurrying about. The butler stood in the center of the commotion, directing the flurry of activity.
“Monsieur Brissot, who has arrived?”
“The queen has returned, mademoiselle. I advise you to attend the princess tout de suite.”
Arabella passed through the busy servants and swiftly to the princess’s chambers.
“Oh dear, Bella. I thought we might be spared Maman a bit longer. Alas, it is not to be.” Jacqueline shrugged her square shoulders, then she grinned. “So I have asked the comte to throw a party.”
It seemed he had told no one of his marriage. She understood nothing of him, only that he was unpredictable and authoritarian and he made her positively weak with longing.
“I thought you disliked society,” she managed to say.
“I do mostly. Only, Maman must always have something upon which to direct her thoughts. Since lately that direction has been my marital prospects, I thought to give her something else upon which to turn her attention. At least for a few days.”
“Is the party to be soon?”
“The day after tomorrow. The comte was excessively keen on the idea. Everybody around is to be invited.” She grinned. “Before the ball gowns and waltzing commence, however, you must teach me something utterly practical so that Maman will be immensely impressed with your instruction and double your wages.”
THE QUEEN WAS not impressed. When she entered her daughter’s chambers before dinner, she gave Arabella one sweeping glance and said that now that the court had returned her services would no longer be needed in the evenings, distant cousin to an earl or not. Jacqueline protested but the queen went to the chamber door and opened it herself. Arabella left happily.
The prince’s objections overruled his mother’s directive. A minute before the dinner bell rang, Jacqueline flew through the door of Arabella’s bedchamber.
“Hurry. You must dress for dinner.” She went to the clothes press. “Reiner has insisted that you join us. The comte seconded. He is quite the gentleman.” She gaped at the empty drawers. “Arabella, have you no other gown but the gray one you wear everyday?”
“I am—was—am in mourning,” she stammered.
“Then you might at least have two gray gowns,” the princess said with the practical sense of a girl that had not gone a day in her life with fewer than three dozen gowns. “I’m afraid I have nothing so drab, but all white and pastel, as Maman insists. So you must wear color tonight.” She went to the door. “Now make haste. The longer we make everybody wait for dinner, the more they will stare at us when we appear, and I should dislike that excessively. It is one thing to be stared at when one is the most beautiful woman in the county like you, but another altogether when one is me.”
THEY MADE HASTE, but everybody stared anyway. Arabella only felt the gaze of one person.
Then he ignored her entirely—not only throughout dinner, but for the next three days. Gracious and welcoming to the queen and her courtiers, including her ladies-in-waiting, whom he treated with utter charm and deference and without any particular show of arrogance or authoritarianism, to her he said nothing at all. As the household whirled into a frenzy of preparations for the party, he did not seek her out or even come within speaking distance of her. No one else spoke to her as anything but the princess’s governess, Miss Caulfield. Even the earl had ceased to send her studying glances; he had largely disappeared from company.
No one knew the comte’s wife resided beneath the roof of Saint-Reveé-des-Beaux, and Arabella began to believe that she had imagined their interview in the vineyard.
WHEN A MAIDSERVANT came to her chamber bearing the gown Jacqueline promised to lend her for the party, she shook her head.
“This cannot be intended for me.”
Draped on her bed, it was a confection of pink gauze and the finest, thinnest silk, with tiny cap sleeves and stars picked out in silver beads across the bodice and overskirt. It was a gown fit for a princess, certainly, but not for the hired governess, no matter how much her charge liked her.
“Mais oui, mademoiselle,” the maid said earnestly. “The princess, she chose it from her gowns and had it tailored especially for you for ce soir.”
“But I cannot accept another gift—”
“You can.” Jacqueline poked her head in the door, a box in her gloved hands. “This one.” She came forward, removed the lid, and drew forth a glittering crescent of diamonds.
