Catherine needed a whole week of rainy days to find her balance after yesterday’s developments—and last night’s developments—but the weather refused to oblige her. She woke to a gloriously sunny spring morning, complete with tulips blooming along the garden wall and birdsong accompanying the morning chores in the stable.
“Fournier, you are prompt.”
He looped Bertold’s reins through a hitching ring on the ladies’ mounting block. “On this beautiful morning, I had good reason to rise early. You are looking well rested.” He bowed over Catherine’s hand with mere politeness, probably for the benefit of the groom. Nevin not only had the horses ready, but also had his own cob saddled.
“I am well rested, thank you,” Catherine replied, a glaring falsehood to the man who’d asked her to be honest with him. “Shall we be off?” Her voice held a damnable note of forced good cheer, one Fournier would detect easily.
He nonetheless boosted her onto Franny without comment and swung onto Bertold’s back. They kept to a walk most of the way to the park, and when Catherine should have manufactured some friendly conversational gambit—a discussion of the rosé he’d brought over for her to try yesterday evening—her mind produced only worries.
And anger.
“Thurlow,” Fournier said when they turned onto Park Lane, “I believe Miss Fairchild left her whip behind. Perhaps you’d retrieve it for her?”
“Good heavens,” Catherine said. “I’d not even noticed. Please do fetch the whip, Nevin. Franny is regaining her former condition, but a fashionable lady ought not to be seen on the bridle paths without the proper accoutrements.”
Nevin tugged his cap and steered his mount back the way they’d come.
“I did not forget my whip on purpose,” Catherine said.
“Of course not.” Fournier directed Bertold through the open gates. “The sight of me in all my equestrian finery turned your head. Bertold and I do cut a dash. One must acknowledge the obvious.”
Catherine had not missed Fortescue Armbruster. She’d cursed the day she’d met him, cursed the evening she’d let him kiss her. Invoked foul imprecations in several languages upon the night she’d allowed him under her skirts.
If she parted from Xavier Fournier—and part from him she must—she would miss him for the rest of her life.
Last night had proven that, if there’d been any doubt. “You cut a dash wearing nothing at all, Fournier.”
“The sunshine is more golden, the birdsong sweeter because you think it so. I have news to convey to you that is not in the least sunny or sweet.”
Catherine steeled herself to remain composed. She was good at remaining composed. Could make small talk while her heart was breaking, could smile politely when she wanted to be sick. Fournier had not used a single endearment with her on this outing. The news must be quite dire—or perhaps, in a backhanded way, fortuitous.
“Say on, Fournier. Nevin will come trotting along eventually, or we will run into some Dorning or other out to prove they’ve finally recalled the meaning of family loyalty.”
He turned Bertold down a leafy bridle path. “Would you miss me if business required that I return to France for a time?”
“Yes.” The horses clip-clopped along, and a rabbit loped across the path. “I missed you last night. I fell asleep in your arms and woke wondering if I’d dreamed you in my bed.”
“Last night was lovelier than any dream, Catherine.”
Last night was how it should be with a woman and her lover, all except for the part about Catherine being desperately upset and Fournier stealing away when she’d drifted off. Fournier deserved to know about the note, deserved to know that Catherine’s enemy—or enemies, plural—were preparing to tarnish her good name in earnest.
Or blackmail her, which amounted to the same thing.
“Share your news, Fournier, because I have some news for you too.”
“You will tell me that our idyll has come to an end,” he said. “Tell me that the time has arrived to put our pleasures in the past.”
How could he know that? “Why would I make such an announcement?”
“Because some fine London gentleman is spying on you. Nevin is in his employ, and Deems might be as well. Your house is watched by Deems, at least, and this fine gentleman has been noting the addresses from which you receive regular mail.”
Without Catherine willing it so, Franny stopped in the middle of the path. “I beg your pardon?”
“Bad news, but we are honest with one another, non? Colonel Goddard provides room and board to a host of children who would otherwise be at large on London’s streets. Among their number is the crossing sweeper working the intersection nearest your home. I teach him the occasional word of French.”
“I know Victor. He has permission to sleep in the mews, and he’s done the occasional errand for Harry. We used to feed him regularly, but he seems to have come into room and board elsewhere.”
“The colonel has taken an interest in him, as have I. Victor has seen Nevin meeting at The Boar’s Bride with a fine gentleman, the same gentleman who bribed the appropriate parties to share with him the address on your regular epistles from Cahors.”
Catherine felt a constriction of the lungs, as if her riding corset had been laced too tightly, but that wasn’t the case.
“Tell me the rest of it, Fournier.”
He regarded her with such patience, such gentle reproof that Catherine nearly started bawling. “I believe the rest of it is for you to tell me.”
He was angry. In his calm, reserved, gentlemanly way, he was angry. Well, so was Catherine. “Please get me off this horse.”
He complied—no hands lingering at her waist—and tied the reins of both mounts to a low branch of a maple sapling. “We will walk and be assured of privacy.”
“Until I start screaming. Deems is spying on me?”
“I know only that he is keeping watch. Nevin is most definitely bearing tales in exchange for coin.” Fournier offered his arm, as if they were strolling along at a garden party rather than discussing the mess that was brewing in Catherine’s life.
The new mess. “Servants gossip,” Catherine said. “Nevin knows only of my recent comings and goings. I’m more concerned about my letters.”
“As am I.”
They came to a bench in a small clearing, an oasis of peace and greenery. “Let’s sit, shall we?”
“I am yours to command.”
The words were gallant, but the tone was nearly perfunctory. Catherine took a seat and sorted through conflicting loyalties and unflattering truths.
“I trust you,” she said, “but I don’t want to involve you.”
“Let’s make an agreement, shall we? You trust me a little bit more, and then we will decide together to what further degree to involve me.”
Such sangfroid, and such a subtle rebuke. “I received a note yesterday. Four words: ‘I know your secrets.’ If the person who wrote that note does know my secrets, I am ruined, Marie is ruined, and your choices are to cut your losses now, or be ruined with us. I don’t want you to be ruined, Xavier. I know how hard you’ve worked to establish your business, how careful you’ve been, how many people rely on you. I don’t want to be the reason you are ruined.”
Catherine wiped at her cheek with her glove and tried to recall the last time she’d cried, other than recent occasions with Fournier. Papa’s funeral service, probably. She had not cried for Mama, but she dearly, dearly missed her mother at that moment.
“I was the reason,” Catherine went on, “that my parents took one diplomatic posting after another, the reason they had to be separated as Mama was falling ill. I was the reason we lived quietly once we did return to London. They loved me, but they did not account for how much more stuffy and ridiculous Society would grow as I came of age. I hate that I caused them so much grief, and I refuse to allow you to suffer to the same degree.”
Then there was Marie, an innocent child, as Catherine had once been innocent. Fournier would grasp that particular without Catherine having to spell it out for him.
He paced to the edge of the clearing and then pivoted. “Somebody knows your secrets and seeks to prey upon you because of your past?”
Catherine nodded tiredly. “I expect a blackmail demand to follow shortly, or a marriage proposal. I would rather pay a king’s ransom than contemplate wedlock with the person threatening me, but love for my daughter leaves me little choice.”
Fournier strode back to the bench, and had Catherine not dealt with ranting ambassadors, hysterical attachés, and childbirth, she would have scooted back.
“You know who is doing this,” Fournier said, his calm unnerving. “You know the fine gentleman who is disrespecting your privacy, bribing your servants, and scheming against you. Tell me who he is, and I will kill him.”
“You mean that.”
“I most assuredly do.”
That feeling came again, of being unable to catch her breath, of being slowly suffocated by sadness, rage, and love.
“You cannot kill him, Fournier. I cannot kill him. He is the father of my child.”
Fournier strode away again. Catherine was holding back an ocean of tears, or she—who was intent on sending him out of her life—would have begged him not to leave her.
Catherine sat alone, to all appearances fairly composed, while she prosed on about being a blight on her parents’ life, expecting blackmail from the father of her child, and hatching some mad scheme to marry the bastard.
“You are intent on protecting me?” Fournier asked, staring down at her.
“You protect many, Fournier. You took unconscionable risks in wartime to keep your vineyards producing, and that doubtless was all that saved dozens of families from starvation. You look after street urchins. You are the honorary godfather to half the émigrés in London, and when Colonel Goddard was held in such low esteem, you—his competitor—took his part. Jeanette was very clear on that.”
The feelings trying to rob him of speech refused simple labels, though they made him want to both curse and laugh—and to hold Catherine Fairchild close to his heart for all the rest of his days.
“Without honor, a man is nothing. This is an eternal verity whether he is French, English, or even American. I hope I behave as a gentleman at all times.”
“You do,” Catherine said, bowing her head, “and that makes you vulnerable, as I have been vulnerable all of my life. You think you know what it is to be relegated to the margins, Fournier, but you don’t. They will take your business, your good name, your friendships, and all it needs is a few rumors and one cut direct on a fashionable street.”
Catherine wore a veiled toque, so Fournier could not see her expression, though he could hear the Toledo steel in her words.
He sank to the bench beside her and resisted the compulsion to take her hand for fear he would never let it go. “You have given this matter thought.” All the while laughing at Alasdhair MacKay’s jokes and pretending to enjoy an uncomplicated rosé.
And making passionate, desperate love with the man she intended to banish from her life.
“I have.”
“And when not castigating yourself for an accident of birth beyond your control and not devising excuses to abandon me, what conclusions have you come to?”
“That Lord Fortescue Armbruster has decided to have my fortune, now that he has all but wrecked my good name. I have no proof that he started all the talk about me when I returned to London, but the circumstantial evidence is considerable.”
“Armbruster is an ass. When the best wineshops will no longer extend him credit, he will buy cheap brandy and cheaper claret and then have his valet pour them into expensive-looking decanters. You know that Goddard and I no longer do business with him, and we have alerted our colleagues to his ways as well.” Some additional fact about Armbruster tried to push through Fournier’s disgust, a wisp of memory, but it refused to march into full awareness.
“You call them colleagues, not competitors.”
“The London marketplace is huge and connected to much of the known world. I am most fortunate to have my piece of it, and I see no need to be greedy.”
Catherine sniffled, and Fournier’s heart broke.
“I love so much about you,” Catherine said. “Armbruster will destroy you with a word. He’ll destroy me, too, unless I marry him. He’s working up his nerve, probably trying to talk his mother around, but his scheme isn’t complicated.”
“And you intend to comply with it, because the only reputation he will protect as zealously as his own is that of his wife.” Logical. Damnably logical. Ruthless even, and entirely unacceptable. “You expect him to accept that the child is his own?”
“The dates do not lie, Fournier, and he can pass Marie off as a by-blow with nobody the wiser as to my role. To get his hands on my money, he’ll agree to that. Marie had the good sense to have blue eyes, so she won’t be associated with me.”
“You have been brooding on this.” Brooding alone, keeping her own counsel, not being a burden to anybody. Fournier wanted to weep and uproot trees and kill Fortescue Armbruster.
Catherine sat up very straight. “I celebrated Marie’s first birthday not simply because she thrived, but because the nurse reported that my daughter’s eyes remained blue.”
What a thing for a loving mother to have to fret about. All over, Fournier longed to wipe the blight that was Fortescue Armbruster from the earth.
“You told me Armbruster knows nothing about Marie.”
“He knows that for more than a year I was unaccounted for when I left Rome, Fournier. He knows I allowed him the sort of liberties that presage conception. If he has that address near Cahors, he knows exactly where Marie has lived since the day of her birth. He’ll send some runner or inquiry agent to snoop about, and sooner or later, a shopkeeper or laundress will recall that the so-called Italian widow had such peculiar eyes.”
“Beautiful eyes.” And this was a beautiful spot in a beautiful park. All stately maples, lush grass, and benevolent sunshine, but Fournier could not recall heartache of a greater magnitude since he’d learned of the demise of his wife and her child.
“I am so tired,” Catherine said quietly, “of being the butt of whispers, of being gracious to the Dornings now that they’ve decided to be gracious to me. Where were they when Mama and I were whiling away one evening after another among the companions and dowagers? Where were they when I became Miss Dubious?”
From what Fournier could piece together, most of them had been trying to minimize expenses by kicking around Dorsetshire the whole year-round. Casriel came up to Town from time to time, but the average ruralizing peer was not socially adept, and his lordship’s marriage was of fairly recent vintage.
“Their neglect works to your advantage,” Fournier said. “You shall call upon them now to put Armbruster in his place.”
Catherine rested her forehead against Fournier’s shoulder, the posture of a defeated woman. “Armbruster is Marie’s father. Married to me, he will assume that place openly. Rather than spread rumors about me, he will guard my good name.”
“The estimable Lord Fart will make you miserable, neglect his daughter, and hold over your head that you kept her from him.”
Catherine’s glower was magnificent. “I would have sent her to second cousins in Canada had I known matters would come to this pass, and if you have another plan, I am all ears, Fournier. If I marry Armbruster, he will doubtless decimate my fortune and give me unmentionable diseases when he isn’t conscientiously seeing to the succession. Marie must nonetheless be my first concern. If her grandpapa is a marquess, she will fare better than if she’s simply Miss Dubious’s dirty little secret.”
That was despair talking, and mother-love. “Don’t call her that, Catherine. Don’t think of her like that, and never again refer to yourself as Miss Dubious.” He’d lapsed into French, though the words translated easily enough.
“You are more fierce than MacKay when you speak French, and so tender.”
He laced his fingers more tightly with hers. “I speak French in bed?”
“You do. Beautiful words, and they are mine to keep.”
So am I. Fournier could not say that, but he could know it. “Gabriella kept me at arm’s length, or off peddling my wine in London, to prevent me from interfering with her wishes and plans. Lady of the manor was not good enough for her. She had to be lord of the manor as well. She wanted power, I wanted love. We neither of us got exactly what we sought.”
“I love you,” Catherine said. “I am glad about that, Fournier. Had I not known you… But I have known you, and I have known joy. I will never regret being your friend and lover.”
What fool in love had asked Catherine to be honest with him? “This is a puzzle,” Fournier said, watching as Bertold bowed the maple branch to crop a few bites of grass. “Because I love you too. You protect me, Marie, the Dornings, and even Armbruster himself in a sense, but who protects you?”
“The first time I overheard my governess disparaging my eye color to the head footman, I knew I’d be looking after myself, though I didn’t understand the why of it then. Not even Mama could shield me from whispers, stares, and rumors. I’m used to it, though I will do anything to spare Marie the same slings and arrows.”
“Even marry her disgrace of a father.”
“Even marry her father.”
“You will not allow me to kill him?”
“You and I are lovers, Fournier, not murderers.”
He kissed her gloved knuckles. “I would dearly love to be both.”
Catherine rose, and Fournier stood as well. “We have some time,” she said as they returned to the horses. “Armbruster hasn’t quite steeled himself to propose to me. He might make a few inquiries first, and the settlements will have to be negotiated. Kettering will take up that challenge if I ask it of him. For some of my money to go to my daughters will be expected.”
“I cannot tolerate the resignation I hear in your voice.” The hopelessness he saw in her eyes.
“But you cannot argue with my reasoning.”
“I do argue with it. A solution which gives Armbruster exactly what he wants, while condemning you and your daughter to misery is no solution at all.”
Bertold left off grazing to peer at Fournier.
“I spoke too sharply,” Fournier said, untying Franny’s reins. “I apologize.” He boosted Catherine into the saddle and arranged her skirts when he wanted to howl with rage and frustration.
“You spoke honestly, but how do you conclude that Marie will be worse off as Armbruster’s acknowledged by-blow than as my daughter rusticating away in France?”
Fournier swung onto Bertold’s back and considered the question. “You assume Armbruster will allow you to live in the same household with your daughter. He might well keep you separated and use you and Marie to control each other. You love that girl, and she clearly holds you in affection as well, sight unseen.
“But let’s assume,” he went on, “as you do assume, that Armbruster will raise his daughter under his own roof. Think back, Catherine, to how he treated you when he was supposedly smitten with you. Was he prompt for every assignation? Did he keep every assignation? Did he ever apologize for having been a cad and a bounder? Did he make any effort to learn what became of you when you left Rome? Did he write you doting little notes or leave you anonymous flowers?”
Catherine made an elegant picture on her mare, but she was listening, so Fournier treated her to more of his much-vaunted honesty.
“When you returned to London, did he call on you privately to assure himself of your wellbeing or willingness to be civil to him? No, he did not. According to you, he slandered you in the churchyard and at the men’s punchbowl. Now that you are wealthy and orphaned, he slinks forward, once again offering nothing but threats while he eyes your fortune and pretends to be your champion.”
Fournier was making himself even angrier with this recitation, though he nudged Bertold forward at a placid walk.
“What makes you think,” he said quietly as Franny fell in step beside the gelding, “that such a man will treat an illegitimate daughter well? He has treated you abominably, and you are that girl’s mother. He has seduced, lied, exploited, threatened, and spied on you. I cannot accept that his reward for these trespasses will be your fortune, your hand in marriage, and an opportunity to daily shame and insult the daughter you love more than your own life.”
Catherine said nothing in response, and she remained silent when they met Nevin Thurlow—sidesaddle whip in hand—at the park gates. Fournier accompanied the lady back to her stable and assisted her to dismount.
Thurlow—the traitor—led the horses away.
“Is this our farewell?” Fournier waited until he and Catherine were behind the garden walls to pose the question.
“I don’t want it to be, but you must do as you see fit, Fournier. I want you to be free of whatever misfortune is about to befall me, but I can hardly appropriate the right to choose for myself while denying it to you.”
He took her hand and stood too close to her, and bedamned to the various spies who doubtless took note of his boldness.
“I gradually became aware that my marriage had been a mistake. I was slow to accept the reality of my error, and when I did, I was profoundly disappointed. That grief pales in comparison to the utter fury you force upon me if you again go willingly into Armbruster’s arms. The first time you fell in with his schemes, you were an innocent, but you do not have that excuse now.”
“Plain speaking,” Catherine said, “and not precisely fair, but what would you have me do, Fournier? My daughter’s happiness seems damned no matter what path I choose.”
Fournier leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Trust me, mon coeur. Please, for the love of God, trust me, or I will walk out of this garden and take passage on the first ship bound for Bordeaux.”
Fear was not always bad, though it was always a painful experience. Catherine was full of fears, some of them for herself—she abhorred the thought of a lifetime yoked to Fortescue Armbruster. Fournier was right that when his lordship took it into his head to be arrogant, sneering, and condescending, his words could cut as effectively as any rapier.
Armbruster might, on the one hand, take any further slurs against Catherine seriously, but he’d deliver plenty of his own when in a petulant mood and private with his wife.
She feared for Marie, though until this discussion with Fournier, those fears had been predictable. Childhood illnesses, a girl’s heartaches, and no mother on hand to comfort and soothe. She feared for Marie’s reception in Society. Feared that a very great deal.
She feared the awkwardness of explaining to her Dorning relatives why, having acquired substantial wealth, she’d settle for a fribbling younger son as a husband.
Though in all her brooding and pondering, she’d never admitted that Armbruster’s notions of parenting might be worse for Marie than having no father at all. Fournier was right about that too—adding a worse fear yet to Catherine’s pile of woes.
And now he was threatening to leave—leave her and leave England—and she could not blame him and could not ask him to stay.
But could she trust him?
Fournier had been a father of sorts, had held a child’s happiness in his hands. He knew how easily a bitter word or cold stare could bruise a little girl’s heart. Fournier was thinking clearly, consulting hard-won experience, while Catherine was flailing about much as she had as a younger woman.
Had she learned nothing from her misadventures? Was she supposed to be Marie’s sole champion as well as her own? When had she made that choice, and was it a good choice?
Fournier stood silent and patient, while Catherine tried to envision a life without him.
“I love my daughter,” she said slowly. “More than anything, I want to be a mother to her, but that has been denied me. I was willing to settle for being her distant benefactress for a time, because I thought that was best for her. You are right, though, that Armbruster can add to her misery. I had not considered that.” Admitting that oversight was painful, but Fournier was the one person who had never expected Catherine to dissemble.
He watched her closely, his expression giving away nothing. “I cannot make this choice for you, Catherine, but what would your own mother tell you to do?”
The question was unexpected, and worth pondering. “I wanted her to be proud of me.”
“I am sure she was.”
He could not know that, but the words comforted. “I want Marie to be proud of me, and that…”
“Yes?”
Behind that patience Fournier adopted like an ermine robe lay a banked passion that Catherine had seen only on intimate occasions. That same passion had fueled the growth of his business, the unthinkable wartime risks, the unshakable sense of honor that defined Xavier Fournier in all circumstances.
“If I marry Armbruster, Marie might someday ask me why I chose such an arrogant buffoon for my husband, despite my having the means to live anywhere. She might ask me why being Lord Fortescue’s by-blow was such a great privilege, when she’d been happy and loved in Cahors amid a far more tolerant society.”
Weariness of heart threatened to steal the rest of Catherine’s admissions, but mother-love was a force of nature and more determined than even Catherine had known.
She was not the girl she’d been in Rome, neither was she Miss Dubious. She was Marie’s mother, and Fournier’s beloved.
“If I marry Armbruster,” Catherine went on, “I will tell Marie that my choice was made out of love, but in truth, if I become Armbruster’s wife, my choice will have been made out of fear. I am afraid of Fortescue Armbruster, and for that, I hate him. He and I need not be enemies, but he has comported himself as precisely that. He has enjoyed my ruination and doubtless thinks himself quite clever for scheming against me yet again. I might deserve him for a husband, but Marie does not deserve him for a father.”
“One is compelled to agree with only that last bit.”
A smile tugged at Catherine’s heart. “So self-possessed. I wish I had one-tenth of your savoir faire, Fournier, because it’s one thing for me to say I cannot marry Armbruster and quite another for me to know what to do about him. He has power, and not a kind of power I can fight.”
“You have power too,” Fournier said, “and you have me. I daresay you have a regiment of Dornings at your disposal and more than a few diplomatic wives. Will you allow me to fight this battle at your side or will you go meekly to the fate Armbruster has in store for you, your daughter, and your fortune?”
Catherine thought of endless evenings chatting meekly among the wallflowers, more evenings meekly sitting out dance after dance. That fate was the best Marie would look forward to, if Catherine married Fortescue Armbruster. Slighted, ignored, overlooked, or—worse—insulted and helpless to defend herself.
“We fight,” Catherine said. “I don’t know how, where, or with what weapons, but we fight.” That choice felt right—also terrifying.
Fournier’s gaze lit with unholy determination. “The very first thing we must do when planning this campaign is gather every available scrap of information we can about the foe and only then develop our strategy.”
Catherine wandered to the bench beneath the lime tree and patted the place beside her. “You have the energy for this fight. That’s good, because I’m not sure I do.”
“You have carried the standard on your own for far too long, chérie. Time to call up the reserves and put the enemy to rout. We French excel at strategy, and this cause is dear to my heart.”
Catherine remained talking quietly in the garden with Fournier as the sun rose. The discussion required her to focus on matters she’d rather ignore. She was terrified for her daughter and not a little worried for Fournier.
What sustained her, though, was the simple comfort of Fournier’s presence. He put his nimble mind and shrewd intelligence at her disposal and listened intently. He was a tender and passionate lover, also inventive and tireless, but this… this taking Catherine’s fears and happiness to heart, posing hard questions and listening to her replies, this was utterly precious and a balm to her soul.
Fournier’s friendship was worth fighting for.