“Maman, no,” Olivia whispered.
Every gaze accused Lady Nora of coldness, and she hastened to smooth the ruffled feathers. “Of course I’m concerned about Bronwyn. She’s my beloved daughter. But I’m also concerned that this alliance between our houses not be jeopardized.”
“Just what she planned,” Adam muttered. Every gaze turned on him, and he realized it was the truth. Bronwyn had planned this. What had she said? That fiancées were easily replaced. Her defection lashed at his pride, at his newly discovered emotions. Emotions he would now relegate to their proper place in his life. Emotions he could starve for lack of nutrition. “Do I understand you correctly? You are suggesting a betrothal between Olivia and me?”
Lady Nora shrank back from the fire of his demand. “Well, I…yes.”
Seeking to slacken her discomfort, he smiled, but it didn’t seem to ease the tension in the room. “An excellent idea. Have my new secretary write up the contract. I will sign it today. I do not understand how I ever imagined an impetuous young woman like Bronwyn would be a suitable mate for a man as cold as I.”
“My dear, from the first moment I saw you, my fingers have itched to redesign you.” Rachelle stepped from in front of the mirror and pushed Bronwyn forward. “Look.”
Bronwyn looked but saw no one she knew.
Then, with a start, she did. It was Bronwyn in the mirror, but no Bronwyn she’d ever seen before. Her hair hung loose, a tangle of unsubdued curls, tied in a ribbon at the back of her head. Its pale blond color accented the tan on her face and made her appear foreign. Rachelle’s charcoal wand had darkened her lashes, and they swept around eyes that sparkled with the flavor of the exotic. Her cheeks flushed peach. Her mouth was colored, vivid, showing off the lips her mother complained were too wide. A borrowed emerald-green dress, devoid of decoration, brought length to her body, slimming it until she suspected she would sway like a reed in the wind. In a dream, she reached out a hand to herself. “Rachelle, I’m beautiful.”
“So you are.”
“I’ve never seen myself like this.” Bronwyn pursed her lips, wiggled her brows. Convinced that woman in the mirror was really Bronwyn Edana, she asked, “Didn’t my mother know?”
“How could she?” Rachelle produced a Gallic shrug. “She is English.”
“Do you think I’m as pretty as my sisters?”
Perceiving the deep insecurity underlying the question, Rachelle replied patiently, “Your sisters are all women cut from the same stamp. If a man cannot have one of them, he will be satisfied with another. You are unique.”
Bronwyn turned with a laughing face. “Is that a tactful way to tell me no?”
Brushing a lock of hair away from Bronwyn’s face, Rachelle said, “It is the only way I can think to tell you that there is no comparison.”
“My hair.” Bronwyn touched it with shy fingers, afraid it would somehow disappear. “Can I wear it loose like this? Won’t the matrons whisper I look ready to bed?”
“And the gentlemen, too, I vow.” Rachelle pulled one lock over Bronwyn’s shoulder. “All will be mad with envy, and you will start a new fashion. We will call you ‘Cherie,’ and you will be the toast of London.”
“I can’t wait to be seen.” Lifting her arms, Bronwyn twirled in a circle.
“You are in for a shock.”
Bronwyn halted. “Why?”
“All your life, you have been recognized as an intelligent woman. Perhaps the men were not enticed by it, but they respected it.” Rachelle took her charcoal pencil and touched Bronwyn’s brows. “The more attractive a woman is, the less a man thinks of her intellect.”
“You mean they’ll think I’m stupid?”
“Oui.” Rachelle studied the results and turned Bronwyn back to the mirror. As Bronwyn preened, Rachelle said, “When in truth, it is quite the opposite. An attractive woman makes a man stupid.”
Bronwyn paid no attention to Rachelle. “When Adam comes, I’ll demonstrate my independence to him. I’ll make him sorry he thought I was ugly. I’ll make him squirm.”
Rachelle interrupted her gloating. “Why do you care what he thinks?”
Meeting Rachelle’s eyes in the mirror, Bronwyn flushed miserably and looked away.
“My invitation to stay with me remains open,” Rachelle said gently, “but it grieves me it is being used as a refuge against love.”
“I don’t want rest,” Adam roared. “I just want my walking stick.”
Suffering as only a servant caught between the mill and the stone could suffer, the footman said, “Lady Mab says I must help you to the couch. She says you’ve been working too much and are in pain. She says—”
“My mother is a—”
From the doorway of his study, Mab said, “Your mother knows where Bronwyn is, and if you’ll stop acting like an ass, she’ll tell you.”
Adam halted in midroar, his hand frozen in an uplifted position, his head thrown back. Slowly he pivoted to face his mother. “Mab?”
She settled onto a chair beside the couch, her needlework in her hands, ignoring his most charming smile.
Waving the servant out of the room, he interrogated, “Where is she? Is she in a convent? Is she taking her vows?” Mab unrolled her canvas and separated her threads, and Adam cursed aloud.
For four weeks he had sought the missing girl. Not because it concerned him, of course, but because her parents were worried. Now, he would indulge his mother by resting this wretched leg that so persistently pained him. Leaving his desk, he limped over to ease himself onto the couch.
She observed him as he placed his foot up. “If you hadn’t tried to chase after her the day you fell, you wouldn’t still be suffering.”
“To say ‘I told you so’ is most unattractive.” Her gentle smile graced him, and he whispered, “Where is she?”
“Why should I tell you? So you can go shout at her until she knows she did the right thing by fleeing this accursed prearranged marriage?” He opened his mouth to object, but she waggled that motherly finger, and he subsided. “You never wanted to hear what I thought of your grand plan to return respectability to our family, but you’ll hear it now.”
Subsiding onto the pillows, he rested on his spine, tucked his chin down on his chest, and thrust his hands into his pockets.
“How sulky you look,” she observed. “Like a child about to be scolded.”
He wiggled his shiny boots and stared at them. “Aren’t I?”
She ignored his pique as she ignored his impatience. “Adam, this honor you hold so dear is of a lesser importance. It’s the family that matters. You are my son, the only person in this world who has ever loved me. Like any mother, I cherish a dream for your future. I want you to be happy. For you, I dream of a wife who treasures you for yourself, not for your money. I dream of a wife picked not for her breeding ability or her fine lineage.”
He’d been too impatient to allow his valet to shave him this last week, and he rubbed his fingers across his chin. “What are you saying? You want me to marry her, don’t you?”
“I want you to marry Bronwyn. I don’t want you to marry Olivia.”
Under her gaze, so similar to his own, he complained, “Bronwyn left me. Doesn’t she realize the favor I’d done by agreeing to marry her?”
Mab rubbed her eyes, looked at her son, rubbed her eyes again. To no one in particular, she said, “It doesn’t appear to be the prince of dreams sitting on that bed. It appears to be Adam, but perhaps my vision is at fault.”
He sighed.
“You’ve become conceited,” she admonished.
“I have not. It’s just Bronwyn is so—” He was going to say homely, but he’d imagined her stripped of her clothing, and he knew she would be fatally alluring.
“Olivia is no woman for you,” Mab said. “She’ll melt like slush beneath a carriage wheel the first time you scowl at her. Already she scurries into a corner every time you approach.”
“I know. Olivia will never do.”
“Bronwyn fulfills your requirements, and she fulfills my requirements, also. She’s a fine girl, with a swift mind and a generous heart. Even you, for all your smug blindness, have realized that.”
Adam rubbed his hand through his hair, torturing the black swirls. “Yes, I’ve realized it. But my father—”
“Your father has nothing to do with this.” Mab leaned toward him in earnest appeal. “He wasted a plentiful fortune, abandoned us to the wolves, brought us from an estate to a cottage, but what difference does that make? You and I were happy in that cottage, boy, and he was never happy for all his spendthrift ways.”
“He brought you to the workhouse,” he said, savage in his bitterness.
“You found me.”
“Barely in time.” He swung his legs down and braced himself against the floor. “I have got the money. Now I want the respect.”
Placing her veined hand across her forehead, Mab snorted in disbelief. “And you care?”
“Not for myself. But my children will have only the best. The name of Keane will have no blot on it. That’s my plan, and it’s never wavered.”
“Never wavered, but one small woman may destroy it.” She smiled slyly. “You could marry Olivia.”
Coldly, he denied the beautiful Edana daughter. “No, I can see now she will not do. I want Bronwyn back. Will you help me?”
Mab shook her head before he finished speaking. “Absolutely not.”
She wouldn’t compromise, he knew. Mab sought his cooperation, his sworn word, and he would give it. He would give it because he could never deny his mother and because he had no desire to court Olivia as he had Bronwyn. After all, he reasoned, he’d already made the effort for Bronwyn; why waste his time with Olivia? He sat forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. “Where is she, Mab? I’ll do as you wish. I’ll be a true husband, not treat her as a woman bought with worldly goods. I’ll stay in her bed at night and keep her company by day.”
“You should be weaving your spells around Bronwyn.”
She reproved him, but he knew she’d heard what she wanted. He coaxed, “I will, as soon as you tell me where she is.”
“She’s living at Madame Rachelle’s salon.”
He didn’t move, didn’t blink.
“I was afraid you’d react in such a manner.” She lifted her canvas and stabbed her needle into the midst of the flowers, showing too clearly her disgust with her son.
“Madame Rachelle’s.” He ran his fingers over his lips. “I’m relieved, I suppose. That’s better than a convent. How did she find Madame Rachelle’s?”
“You’ll have to ask her that.”
Speaking more to himself than to her, he said, “I should have thought of it myself. Where else would an intelligent, gently bred woman go?”
“Not to you, prince of dreams.” She put down her sewing to watch his face. “This is a difficult, awkward situation, but I know you, Adam. You’ll treasure Bronwyn all the more for the effort you’ll put forth.”
He shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t contain his curiosity. “Why would you say such a thing to me?”
“The passionate boy you were could not be destroyed. He was only hiding, and I think Bronwyn found him. I think that mask you wear so well crumbles when Bronwyn assaults it, and I think”—she chuckled—“I think Bronwyn doesn’t even know what she does.”
Adam could no longer refrain from asking the question haunting him. “Has it ever occurred to you, Mab, that perhaps I’m not the man you believe I am?”
“What man is that?”
“You seem to believe that beneath this hard exterior beats a heart filled with compassion. Have you never thought you might be wrong?”
Her lips trembled as if he’d hurt her, and she set a few stitches before she answered. “I only know there’s a heart, Adam. I know nothing has killed the passions that drove you as a child. Those passions are redirected, yes, but your eyes still burn with fervor when you discuss a profitable stock transaction, or our family honor”—she looked up and caught him staring—“or Bronwyn. That’s why I honor her above all other women. She has shaken you from that arrogance, that coldness you wear so well.”
“Mab, if Bronwyn had actually assaulted this mask you say I wear—I’m not saying she did—” His mother appeared unconvinced, and he hastened to finish. “Surely you understand her betrayal has strengthened my determination to be untouched?”
He had admitted to his mother his childish passions still endured. That his soul wasn’t frozen. He knew it, she knew it, but she kindly refrained from pointing it out to him. “The question is, will you be able to tamp down these newly discovered affections?” She posed the question, then competently changed the subject. “I’m interested in seeing how you deal with this complication. How will you fetch Bronwyn back?”
“I’ll take her from Madame Rachelle’s quickly.”
She held her needle poised above her canvas. “Is this salon not a respectable place?”
“It is…and it isn’t. The best minds in Europe can be found there, expounding on science, literature, music. Yet Madame Rachelle herself…”
“Is a mystery, I hear.” Mab selected another silk and threaded it through her needle. “Is she a courtesan?”
He should never be surprised at his mother’s far-reaching connections, he supposed. She knew of the salon, she knew of Bronwyn’s lodging there, why wouldn’t she know of the mystery surrounding Rachelle? “Not at all. The French nobility seem fond of presenting their daughters to English society through her.”
“Their legitimate daughters?”
“No”—a smile hovered—“but they’re charming women nevertheless. Several have made brilliant marriages with Madame Rachelle’s help.”
“Then what is your objection?”
“There are rumors about Madame Rachelle. Unsavory rumors from her past. It is said she’s a member of the nobility, was popular at Versailles, yet she left France suddenly. No one knows why.” Mab seemed unimpressed, and he continued, “When young women come to her for help, she gives it. She’s supported several well-bred English girls who were in desperate straits. Madame Rachelle is kind to a fault. You’d like her, Mab.”
“Then why are you worried that Bronwyn is living with her?”
“Because Rachelle is a salonière, a free thinker.” He turned to look out the window. “If Bronwyn becomes painted with that brush, she loses much of her value to me as an opener of society’s doors. Also, Rachelle doesn’t live under a man’s protection, and regardless of my respect for her, her morals are suspect. So, therefore, would Bronwyn’s be.”
Mab tucked her lips together in annoyance. “I am not a snob, but it would seem my son is.”
“A snob?” Adam considered her. “No, I’m not a snob. But I would prefer to know the first child to bear my name is my own.”
“Are you questioning Bronwyn’s virtue?” In the space between each word, Mab inserted disbelief. She tossed down her needlework and rose, fire in her eye. “I tell you, Adam, I have never been ashamed of you before, but I am now. You want this girl. God willing, you will marry her, if you can get Olivia to end this betrothal, and you whine about Bronwyn’s virginity! Stop worrying about your precious reputation and start planning how to capture your Bronwyn.”
With dignity, she turned, gathered her handiwork, and went to the door. There she fired her final salvo. “I doubt your own virginity bears looking into too closely!”
With that, Mab snapped the door closed, leaving Adam stunned at her vehemence and wondering about the truth.
Was he fooling himself about his feelings toward Bronwyn? It seemed unlikely. On the day his father had taken him, bought him his naval commission, and put him on a ship at the age of twelve, he’d sworn to face life without sentiment or tenderness. Through the years that followed, he’d grown to accept the flawlessness of such a course. True, as the scion of a disgraced English family, he shouldn’t marry the black sheep of the Edanas family. But
she was an Edana, and infinitely better suited to his nature than the fragile Olivia. He believed he could curb Bronwyn’s propensity to impetuous action, if in no other manner than with the lessons of the bedchamber.
In fact, Bronwyn Edana stirred him. Even now, he visualized that finely structured face and slender body beneath him in his bed. His fingertips tingled as he recalled the texture of the rosy nipple he had caressed. Suddenly, he came to a decision. Rubbing his chin, he limped to the door and called, “Send my valet up to my room. I need to be shaved.”
Chapter 9
The charming, fascinating, exotic Cherie entered the large salon. Her silver hair was threaded with ribbons and tiny flowers, her vivid pink silk dress hugged her tiny waist and billowed around her feet, she carried her signature fan—and the men crowded around her. Cherie was the toast of Madame Rachelle’s. Here she was in her element.
A student of the Royal Academy of Music knew of her fondness for opera, and the notes of Handel’s newest, Radamisto, drifted from the harpsichord. Waving like a princess on parade, she indicated her pleasure, and he beamed. She smiled an enigmatic smile as she heard her name called in tones of reverence and desire.
“Mademoiselle Cherie! Please, I have composed an ode to the goddess of my heart.”
She turned to the fledgling poet who thrust his way forward. “We’ll be enchanted to hear it when Madame Rachelle arrives.”
The poet stammered under the spell of her sherry-colored eyes, but young Humphrey Webster elbowed him aside. “Mademoiselle Cherie isn’t interested in the babblings of a word pusher. Everyone knows she shows a superior interest in scientific experiments. Mademoiselle Cherie, I have brought the one we discussed.”
Cherie tapped the pompous youth with her fan. “Mr. Webster, you’re being rude. A true scholar is interested in every branch of education.”
Webster flushed. “Are you saying you’re a scholar?”
“Not at all,” she said seriously. “I’m saying you are.”
Glancing at the slight poet beside him, Webster chewed his lip. “Of course. But I read only the classics.”