Escape. A new life. A chance to be someone other than the duc’s presumed mistress. And maybe, just maybe, to be something more besides. A daughter. A sister. And perhaps someday, if it was what the Lord willed, loved by a man who saw her heart.
“Julienne, ma fille, you cannot know what you say.” Mère reached out toward her, but she shook her head.
“I am not a child, Mère. I am five-and-twenty. I have been engaged, jilted—”
“You were not jilted.” Mère’s face went hard and pale. “Do not say such things.”
“I would have been, had Fran?ois lived long enough.” Julienne looked up at the comte and found his gaze compassionate and a bit disbelieving. Her breath caught, her pulse sped. “I daresay we needn’t fear any gossip from the comte. He…wait. Who are you really? Not Charles Mercier, I suspect.”
He swept his hat off his head and bowed. “Isaac Fairchild at your service, Lady Julienne.”
Issac. Oui, it suited him better than Charles. She smiled and extended her hand. And tried to wrap her tongue around English words, though she hadn’t spoken them much since her days with her governess. “It is a pleasure to meet you. It seems I am Julienne Gates.”
His fingers closed around hers. “The pleasure is all mine, my lady.”
What was it about his hands that made her never want to let go of them? What was it about him that made her want to nestle into his side and hide her face in his broad chest? Surely if she did, nothing else would matter. The duc would cease to be. The rest of the world would fade away.
“Julienne, non.” The horror in her mother’s voice brought her gaze over—and she suspected it was no longer her declaration that she would go to England to which Mère objected. “You do not know this man. You—what exactly happened between you two at this masquerade at which you met?”
“Nothing, my lady,” Fairchild said with ease, a calming smile teasing those dimples out. “We shared one dance. Then a promenade through the garden.”
And fell in love. Julienne saw no point in denying it to herself any longer, not when he was by her side again. For the first time in far too long, the sunshine brightened her heart and the birdsong made her want to dance.
Mère hissed out a slow breath. “Julienne, what is the matter with you? You are affianced—”
“I am not.” Her fingers tightened around Isaac’s, and his returning squeeze lent her confidence. “How could I possibly be promised to a man not free to give one? I have never wanted to marry the duc, Mère, never. And I will not. Not now that I have a choice.”
Her mother shook her head with so much vigor that she had to reach up to anchor her hat. “Listen to yourself. You would cross the duc de Remi? You must not, or we will all pay.”
“Not if we are out of his reach. Maman, if we go to England—”
“I cannot!” The shout and wide eyes made her mother look more like a child than an esteemed matron of the court. More like a frightened bride than a widow.
Julienne released Isaac’s hand so she could wrap her arms around her. “You can. You yourself said he is a good man. And he wants you back.”
“Non. He does not. I said things to him in my last letters he will not have forgiven. Made accusations…no. It has been too long. It is too late.”
“My lady.” Fairchild held out a hand, palm up in a gesture of pleading. “If all wrongs had not been forgiven, if it were too late, then he would not have begged me to risk a second trip into France to convince you to come home. He has regrets too—many, I would guess, though he did not share them all with me. But he did say his greatest one was not coming after you sooner and missing so many years of your lives.” His gaze locked on Julienne’s again. “And he expressed the deepest yearning to know his daughter.”
She gave her mother a squeeze. “I want to meet him. I want to know my father. This is an opportunity I never thought I would have.”
Mère pulled away and swiped at her eyes. “You speak as if it were so very simple. As if there were not a lifetime to be bridged, as if one of the most powerful men in France were not determined to marry you. As if we could leave with no consequences.”
Bitterness pounced and fought for control of Julienne’s tongue, making her want to point out that, no, leaving always had consequences, as her mother should have known twenty-five years ago, but she bit back the words and drew in a steadying breath. “I am willing to accept whatever comes from it.”
“Julienne.”
She shook her head again at the surprise in her mother’s tone. “All my life I have done exactly what you instructed, but I intend to do this with or without you. Know that as you consider your decision.”
“You baffle me.” Indeed, Mère frowned as she studied her and then Fairchild. “I never thought you prone to rash decisions. You cannot say within minutes of hearing a story that you will leave with no thought, no prayer. Not when it could well mean your life—socially, if not literally.”