She made a valiant attempt to form sensible answers whenever Sophie spoke to her, but it was very hard to pretend to be interested in all the things Monsieur Le Brun was telling them about the park through which they were walking and the momentous historical events which had occurred on just about every corner.
When she felt as though her whole life had been flung up in the air and hadn’t quite settled into place yet. If she could only get past how angry he’d made her, by assuming she’d sunk low enough to...well, never mind what he thought she and Monsieur Le Brun got up to. It made her feel queasy. What about the other things he’d said? About finding her attractive?
Never mind irresistible. Almost irresistible enough to have lured him away from his sensible arranged match, to live in relative poverty and obscurity.
Had he been serious? Not one man, in the last ten years, had come anywhere near kissing her, yet Nathan claimed to find her so irresistibly attractive he immediately assumed she must be making her living as a woman of easy virtue. He had seethed at her and fumed at her, and only stormed off when he was satisfied he’d rattled her.
She stood stock still, her heart doing funny little skips inside her chest. She’d only ever been sought after seriously by gentlemen after they learned she was Aunt Georgie’s sole beneficiary.
But Harcourt assumed she was poor and desperate.
And he still claimed to want her.
‘Are you getting tired, Aunt Amy?’
Sophie had come running back to her and was taking her hand, and looking up into her face with concern.
‘No, sweet pea. I am just...admiring the gardens. Aren’t they beautiful?’
She hadn’t noticed, not until she’d worked out that Harcourt was suffering from jealousy, but the Tuileries Gardens were really rather pretty...in a stately, regulated kind of way, in spite of all the gruesome horrors which the citizens had perpetrated within it. The trees dappled the gravelled walks with shade, the sky she could see through the tracery of leaves was a blue that put her in mind of the haze of bluebells carpeting a forest floor in spring, and the air was so clear and pure it was like breathing in liquid crystal.
It was almost as magical a place as Hyde Park had been, when she’d been a débutante. She could remember feeling like this when she’d walked amongst the daffodils with Harcourt. Light-hearted and hopeful, but, above all, pretty. He’d made her feel so pretty, the way he’d looked at her back then, when she’d always assumed she was just ordinary, that there was nothing about her to warrant any sort of compliments.
That was because she’d always had to work so hard to please her exacting parents. She’d done her utmost to make them proud of her, with her unstinting work in the parish and her unquestioning support of her mother in bringing up the younger girls.
And what good had it done her? The minute she slipped, nothing she’d done before counted for anything. All they could say was that she was self-indulgent and ungrateful, and vain.
Though at least now she knew she hadn’t been vain. He must have liked more than just the way she looked, if he’d contemplated marrying her. He’d liked her. The person she’d become when she’d been with him. The girl who felt as though she was lit up from inside whenever she was near him. A very different girl from the earnest, constantly-striving-to-please girl she was in the orbit of her parents. He’d shown her that it was fun to dance and harmless to flirt. They’d laughed a lot, too, over silly jokes they’d made about some of the more ridiculous people they encountered. Or nothing much at all.
She’d slammed the door shut on that Amy when he’d abandoned her.
She’d tossed aside the former Amy, too, the one who was so intent on pleasing her parents.
It had been much easier to nurture the anger Aunt Georgie had stirred up. She’d become angry Amy. Bitter Amy. Amy who was going to survive no matter what life threw at her.
‘It is time I took you to another café,’ said Monsieur Le Brun. ‘It is a little walk, but worth it, for the pastries there are the best you will ever eat.’
‘Really?’ She pursed her lips, though she did not voice her doubt in front of Sophie. There wasn’t any point. The proof of the pudding, or in this case, pastry, would be in the eating. So she just followed the pair to the café, let the waiter lead them to a table and sank gratefully on to a chair, wondering all the while which, out of all the Amys she’d been in her life thus far, was the real one? And which one would come to the fore if he should come into this café, looking at her with all that masculine hunger?
She reached for the sticky pastry the waiter had just brought and took a large bite, wondering if it might be a new Amy altogether. An Amy who was so sick of people assuming the worst of her that she might just as well be bad.
She licked her lips, savouring the delicious confection. She sipped her drink with a feeling that before she left Paris, there was a distinct possibility she was going to find out.
‘How are you this morning?’ Amethyst asked Fenella, noting that she still looked rather wan and shamefaced.
‘Much better,’ she said, sliding into her place at the breakfast table and pouring herself a cup of chocolate with an unsteady hand. ‘Yes, much better.’
What Fenella needed was something to take her mind off herself, Amethyst decided. She could not possibly still be feeling the after-effects of drinking too much. She was just indulging in a fit of the dismals. Since offering her sympathy had done so little good, perhaps an appeal to her deeply ingrained sense of duty might do the trick. A reminder that she was supposed to be a paid companion.
‘I hope you do not think I am being strict with you, but I really must insist you get back to work today.’
Fenella sat up a little straighter and lifted her chin. Amethyst repressed a smile.
‘I need you to double-check any correspondence that Monsieur Le Brun may have written regarding the trade opportunities we’ve come over here to secure.’
At Fenella’s little gasp of dismay, she held up her hand. ‘My grasp of the French language is only very basic, so I need you to keep an eye on everything he does. It is bad enough having to rely on him to represent me at meetings,’ she grumbled. ‘Anyway, I have to spend some time reading the packet of mail which has caught up with me...’ she sighed ‘...before we can take Sophie out anywhere. It shouldn’t take me long, but I must just make sure there is nothing so pressing it cannot wait until my return. Jobbings already thinks I am flighty, because I have come jauntering off to foreign parts, as he put it. He fully expects me to fail in this venture,’ she said gloomily. ‘He doesn’t think I have a tithe of my aunt’s business acumen.’
‘You do not have a high opinion of him, either, do you?’
‘He is honest and diligent. Which is more than can be said for most men.’
Fenella cut a pastry into a series of tiny squares, her expression pensive. ‘What is your opinion of Monsieur Le Brun, now that you have got to know him better? Sophie said that you did not seem so cross with him yesterday as you usually are.’
‘Well, although he looks far too sour to have ever been a child, let alone remember what one would like, he did take us to a whole series of places which were exactly the kind of thing that a lively, inquisitive child like Sophie would really enjoy,’ Amethyst admitted.
‘Yes. Sophie told me all about it,’ said Fenella, lifting her cup and taking a dainty sip of tea.
‘I confess,’ Amethyst continued, ‘I had my doubts when he said