The fire in the green salon was far more welcoming than threatening. He sat on the sofa, still holding her in his arms, cradling her as though she were much loved, his own treasure, one he had come close to losing.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, it was as though I were a child and in France again. He so reminded me of that horror.” She raised her head and looked up at him. The tears locked in her throat made her voice a hoarse whisper. “The marquis became the man I found in our own library when I crept out of the hiding place Papa had put me in. When the marquis raised that cane it was that man with a torch, as though the fire had lit his eyes and burned away his soul.”
She tried to hold back the sobs but they would not be restrained. Burying her face in his chest she let the tears come, too upset to be embarrassed, to want anything save the security of his embrace.
He began to rock her as one would a child and the movement awakened her to his heartache.
She looked at him again, more angry than tearful. “How could he treat you that way?” Fury edged her clogged throat and cleared her voice. “How could he speak to you that way? He would have killed you if he could.”
He kissed her forehead. “Calm yourself, sweetheart. He is an old man who has built his world on hatred and now must live in it.”
“You are his son. His child. His flesh.” She began crying again and had difficulty in getting the words out. “How can you stay so calm?”
“One of us must.” He even laughed a little. “I promise that when you are yourself again, I will come to you crying and begging for comfort.”
She shook her head. She tried for control and was pleased that when she spoke again it was with quiet conviction and not hysteria. “You are all that is the best of him. How can he not love you? How can he not know how hard you have tried to please him?”
“Oh my darling girl, I have seen how much you have longed for a family. But they are not all sunshine and love.”
“I wanted it for you, James. I wanted you to know a father who can love and give life, not hatred and death.”
“Thank you, Marguerite. That comes direct from your generous heart. But some families are so dark that it is better to be alone.”
She straightened and looked at him, her heart full of dismay. “No one can live without love. It has been the marquis’ ruin. I know I cannot live without it. For this last year after the Osgoods died and before I came here, I was so lonely that I thought I would die of it. James, you cannot live without it. How will you manage?”
He looked at her with such tenderness that she felt foolish for even asking. “I will find love with someone else.”
The kiss was gentle, a consolation that tasted of tears and heartbreak. That soon changed, as her heart was made whole by the promise of passion. She gave herself to him and he did not refuse what she offered, and he gave with a generosity that made her hope.
The kiss would end, must end, but the echo of it stayed with them. He stroked her hair and she reveled in the sweet contentment of that simple contact.
“Marguerite, I want only you. I can say I love you, but I must trust you to teach me what that means.”
She leaned away from him and could not help grinning. “Having your love is wonderful. I was only waiting for you to realize it as I did. But trust. You said trust? Do you mean that?”
He nodded and she accepted it as though it were an oath. “It was the one thing that Gwyneth longed for that my father would never give her.” He lifted the book from the table nearby. “It ruined his life. He would have had it ruin mine.”
“You have read them! You read the journals!”
He gave a slight nod, as though embarrassed to admit it.
She kissed him, she kissed him for the first time. She gave him reward and gratitude and the beginning of a love that she had kept inside for far too long. “Oh, I love you for that, I truly do.” She pressed kisses to his cheek and neck, found his mouth again and teased his lips. He began to laugh in the middle of this sensual assault and she pulled back.
“If I had known this would be the reward I would have read them much sooner.”
She shook her head and turned serious. No you would not have, she thought. For even now I wonder how ready you are for love? It was too fine a moment to test so she merely snuggled closer and waited for him to say more. When he remained quiet, she asked, “You read of William?”
“Yes. Annabelle’s son and, if you would believe her, my brother.” He said the words with a kind of doubtful wonder that made him seem so vulnerable.
“Your father spoke of him tonight. He was angry and hardly in a sound mind, but James, he said that William is dead.”
“Ahhh.” He said no more for a moment. “It does not surprise me.” He was quiet so long that she wished she had not told him. When he spoke again it was with a resigned kind of grief. “Someday I will make inquiries, but not until I am sure the marquis will not interfere.”
There was a scratch on the door and Marguerite scrambled from his lap. She moved to the drinks table and was doing her best to look like a housekeeper when James called “Enter.”
It was Prentice. He came into the room, came over to Marguerite and presented a tray on which sat her much abused cap.
She looked at Prentice who seemed both distracted and distressed. She took the cap. In a minute she had twisted her hair into a knot and had the cap affixed with the pin that still dangled from it.
When she turned back to James he was staring into the fire, not looking at her. She bent her head and considered him for a long moment and turned back to Prentice. “Thank you.” She whispered. “Would you leave us?”
He did not want to, she could tell. He opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it. He left the room with a doleful expression and an empty tray.
Marguerite whirled around and waited for James to look at her. They had shared enough heartache for one night. There was so much more to be discussed, not the least of which was what would happen to the marquis, but right now they would escape all that.
Happiness bubbled through her as though it had been hidden in her cap and was hers again. She gave James a conspiratorial wink when he finally looked her way. “Please, my lord, there are ears everywhere here and the smell of smoke I can notice even in here. Can we go out, for a walk, to the rise, to your favorite spot? I have not been there in weeks.”
“As if there is no one outside to spy on us?” He shook his head, but stood up readily enough.
They slipped out the front door. Prentice had disappeared. They could hear voices at the back of the house. Good, Marguerite thought, Prentice was supervising the clean up of the marquis’ rooms. By rights it was her responsibility and she considered briefly, very briefly, going back to help.
Any such idea disappeared the moment James took her hand. He did not tuck it into his arm, but held it with his, running his thumb over her knuckles as they walked. The moon rose through a mass of low clouds. The faint light was all that they needed since the path was so familiar to both of them.
They stopped near the tree and looked out over the old house. No guards paraded the grounds. It looked abandoned and no friendlier that it had months ago. James let go of her hand, taking her arm instead and turning them so they faced the site of the new Braemoor.
“Marguerite?”
He did not look at her and a frisson of fear clouded her joy.
“Marguerite, who is Monsieur Voisson?”
She was so relieved that he’d asked such a simple question she blurted out the answer without forethought. “Monsieur Voisson was our cat.”
“Your husband is a cat.” He said it so matter of factly that she thought he might actually believe it.
“He was the cat that Mr. Osgood kept in the kitchen.”
“Ah Marguerite,” He bent down and kissed her very quickly, very lightly. “If it please heaven, may you never run out of stories. And how did you come to marry the cat?”
“When I went for my first employment, I mentioned that the only worry in moving to York was what I would do with Monsieur Voisson.” She laughed and he did too.
“My new employer was delighted to find that I was married, as though that promised a more steady employee and she said that he must come with me, of course. Thus Monsieur Voisson went from cat to husband. I said my husband was too unwell to travel and, I am sorry to say, he died before he could come to York with me. A widow was even more appealing to my employer and it was then that I decided that it had advantages for me as well.”
“And what became of the cat, Monsieur Voisson?”
“Ah, the local apothecary adopted him and renamed him Tom.”
He pulled her into his arms and held her a little away, shaking his head in awe. “Now I see that you have a long and practiced career as a liar. It is one your most endearing traits.”
“Perhaps so, my lord.” She did not even try to hide the huff of irritation. “Do you think we could use the word storyteller? It is so much kinder and much closer to the truth, truly it is.”
A chuckle rumbled between them but no more agreement than that.
James pressed his forehead to hers. “Prentice was your chance, Marguerite.”
“Yes, he was.”
He leaned back. “Prentice wanted very much to rescue you from your impulse.”
“Hardly an impulse, my lord.” She was feeling slightly testy. He could hear it in her voice.
She pushed out of his arms and held on to his hands for a long moment. “I love you.” She paused, let go of his hands but still held his eyes. “Some part of me has always loved you. And you love me.”
He nodded.
“Once they know that, they will understand everything.” She turned from him, laughing aloud and twirling around, so delighted that she could not contain her pleasure.
She walked up to him and stood before him. She made herself look into his eyes and the smile that was there, if not on his lips, gave her courage. “It will be so easy.”
“Too easy.” He nodded.
“And such an adventure.”
“Marguerite, I suspect that loving you will always be an adventure.”
“Oh, I do hope so.” She moved closer. “And I do believe that there is a way we can contrive to keep our passion a secret. Why we can be lovers for years and I wager that no one need ever know.”
He did not reply. Despite his silence, she knew his curiosity was at its highest.
“You see, all day long I will be your housekeeper.” She leaned closer to him and explained. “Your very good, very competent housekeeper. A true model. We will almost never see each other. Why should we? But at night, ahh at night, I will slip from my cottage to the ruins of Braemoor. There I will put on the white gossamer shroud and hood that will surely make me look like a ghost. I will come to you in the dower house late in the evening and if anyone ever does see me they will think that I am the ghost of Braemoor always wandering and looking for a new home.”
“Brilliant, my dear.” He took a step back as trying to visualize her as a ghost. “And so like you. And, yes, you are much more a storyteller than a liar. How could I have ever thought otherwise?”
“You agree?” She could barely contain her excitement.
“I would agree with almost anything that will bring you more fully into my life, my heart and oh yes, my bed. But I cannot agree to this plan of yours, for I have my own fantasy and only you can make it happen.”
“Yes?” She did not want to go to London. So much needed doing here.
“You must marry me.”
She was stunned into silence. The night sounds grew louder and she could even hear voices drift up from the path nearby. In a less than a moment all was quiet again. Nothing had changed.
She shook her head, slowly, sorrowfully and his teasing smile faded. “I am your housekeeper, James. It is impossible.”
“You are Braemoor’s housekeeper for the moment.” He waved that complication aside as though it were a bit of dust. “You are a housekeeper only by the force of circumstance. There is not a body here at Braemoor who does not know instinctively, if not in fact, that you are better born than I am.”
“That may be, but my life changed forever when I left France. I accepted the truth of that long ago.”
“I have wondered for weeks now, Marguerite, why Miss Morton did not try to place you with one of the noble émigré families once you were in England.”
“I refused to leave her. By then, she was as much a mother to me as my own Maman had been. She arranged it somehow. I was too young to care about how she managed it, only that I did not have to leave her.”
Once again he felt immense sympathy for her Miss Morton and a flashing disappointment that he would never meet her. “We must name one of our children for her, ma chere.”
“That would be lovely, James.” Marguerite’s smile was tinged with sadness. How she wished Miss Morton could know. “Her name was Caroline.”
“Did you not tell me once that the difficulties of your life were sent to prepare you for your future? They brought you here, Marguerite. Yes you came here as a housekeeper. But that was nothing more than fate’s way of bringing you to me.”
She smiled. The smile grew to a grin, and then she sobered again. “Your brothers will think you caught in a spell.”
“Morgan is caught in the same spell and Rhys couldn’t care less what I do as long as it does not impede his plans.”
“Your friends will laugh.”
“Not once they have met you.” He took her hands. “Marguerite, if I have learned nothing else from watching the Marfields it is that love comes in strange disguises and we are fools to let the surface distract us. I tested their commitment when I first met Jenneth and came away disgusted with myself. The only good that can come from that embarrassment is to learn from it.”
“But we share so little.”
“Ah, my darling girl, we share so much. I want to spend a lifetime showing you.”
He pulled her into his arms, but did not kiss her.
“I want to be your lover. I want to be your only lover Marguerite. I want to be your last lover.” He kissed her. “As I want you to be mine.”