The mother would be the right age. Though her hair was more gray than brown, what color he saw matched the auburn Lord Poole had instructed him to look for. He edged closer, though careful to remain behind the shield of a flowering bush. Yes, her eyes were green. She was seated, so he couldn’t be sure of her height, but his guess was that her stature matched the description as well.
And the daughter—her profile was all he could see, but that was encouraging. The same nose that both the Gates brothers had, with its gentle slope. The same set to the eyes, hair with the same golden glint as the elder son, though this young lady’s seemed to borrow a bit of her mother’s red-brown as well. Lovely, to be sure, also as he expected, given the well-acclaimed looks of the rest of her family.
A bird flitted overhead warbling a tune, and the young lady turned her eyes to follow it.
Eyes of an icy, glacier blue.
Two
Julienne watched the golden plover wing its way out of sight. Far better that distraction than the conversation she wished she could keep from having. Again.
“Julienne, heed my words. It is crucial you follow my direction, or the duc may yet lose interest.”
Would that he would. Julienne tried to summon a smile—a difficult task, with the memory of last night’s encounter with the duc still so fresh in her mind. “Mère, please…I cannot. It is disrespectful and…and wrong to be making such plans. He is yet married.”
Her mother waved that away. “His wife will pass away within the month. It is a sad reality, ma fille, but reality nonetheless. And a duc must be looking toward the future of his line. When this terrible disease takes his wife, he must move quickly for a new one, one who can give him heirs.”
Julienne turned her face toward the grotto’s grass-edged pond. The trees gave them a semblance of privacy, but solitude was never complete at Versailles. And so her face must always be free of any emotion she didn’t want to hear as the next topic of gossip.
Free of the yearning. Free of the guilt. Free of the fear.
But inside, her thoughts raged. Three years now she had put her life on hold to await the duc’s proposal—a proposal that couldn’t come until his sickly wife succumbed to the disease eating her away.
Three years to bear the guilt of claiming a connection to a man not free to seek one.
Three years to feel his gaze slide over her, to parry his advances, to refuse his ever-increasing whispers that no one would expect anything else but that they taste now what they would enjoy fully once wed.
Three years to come to hate him. And hate herself for being the means by which a man abandoned his wife, and in the time when the duchesse needed him most.
“Mère, I…” She drew in a long breath and lowered her voice to a bare murmur. “He does not love me. It is only an attraction, and I am hardly in my first blush of youth anymore. He will not want me once my looks fade. When my waist thickens with that heir he so needs. He will seek another then, a young mistress, and I cannot…I cannot bear it. I will not bear it.”
Mère’s soft touch bade her look at her again, and Julienne found her eyes to be, as always, full of love. “My darling girl, you know I want only the best for you. And I would not urge you this direction did I not believe it to be best. The duc is unmatched in all of France. He can offer you security, happiness, and affection. You underestimate his feelings for you, ma chérie. He loves you.”
Did he? No, Julienne thought not. She had acquaintance with enough men to know the difference between lust and love. To know when interest was only in the facade so carefully crafted and when it went deeper.
She had learned through pain and tears how to tell. Though until three months ago, she had thought them all interested only in the facade.
Mais non, she couldn’t think about that night, the stranger. He was more dangerous than any aristocrat with an eye for seduction. Still, she could hardly sit in the grotto and escape thought of him.
Her eyes slid closed. And with the darkness came the image of stars twinkling above that midnight stroll. The sensation of a large, strong form beside her, leading her onward with a gentle surety she had never experienced before. The feel of her fingers caught in his. The sound of his laughter.
But memories of his laughter always led to his voice.
“Pardonnez-moi, mesdames.”
Her heart seized. Julienne’s eyes flew open, though she focused her gaze on her hands. Why look up, after all? It wouldn’t be him. It never was. How many times had she let herself imagine over the last months that he had sought her out, had found her? Mais non. She always looked up to find someone too short, too round, too thin, too broad, too narrow, too something. And then she would realize the voice wasn’t quite so deep a baritone, didn’t have quite the right timbre.
Didn’t have that accent that had made dread snap her lips shut when he asked for her name.
Yet she had dreamed of him all these months. Ah, what a fool she was.