Portrait of a Scandal. Annie BurrowsЧитать онлайн книгу.
gruff manners, and...and eccentric ways. But deep down, there is nobody kinder than my Miss Dalby. Why, if you only knew how she came to my rescue—’
Amethyst held up her hand to silence her. ‘Fenella. Stop right there. I hired you in a fit of temper with the ladies of Stanton Basset, you know I did. Mrs Podmore came round, not five minutes after Aunt Georgie’s funeral, telling me that I would have to employ some female to live with me so long as I remained single or I would no longer be considered respectable. So I marched straight round to your house and offered you the post just to spite them.’
‘What she hasn’t told you,’ said Fenella, turning to Monsieur Le Brun who was regarding his employer with raised eyebrows, ‘was that she’d never been able to abide the way everyone gossiped about me. But she’d never been able to do much about it apart from offer her friendship until after her aunt died.’
‘Well, it was dreadful, the way they treated you. It must have been hard enough, coming to live in a place where you knew nobody, with a small baby to care for, without people starting those malicious rumours about you having invented a husband.’
‘For all you knew, I might have done.’
‘Well, what difference would it have made? If you had been seduced and abandoned, surely you were due some sympathy and support? What would you have been guilty of, after all? Being young and foolish, and taken in by some glib promises made by a smooth-talking scoundrel.’
Was she still talking about Fenella? Amethyst wondered as she shakily reached for her glass, and downed the last of its contents. Or had it been seeing Nathan Harcourt that had stirred up such a martial spirit? And bother it, but Monsieur Le Brun was leaning back in his chair, his eyes flicking from one to another with keen interest.
They were both revealing far more about themselves and their past than he had any right to know.
‘I think we have said enough upon this subject,’ she said, setting her glass down with quiet deliberation.
‘She always gets embarrassed when anyone sings her praises,’ Fenella informed Monsieur Le Brun. ‘But I cannot help myself. For she didn’t just give me work to support myself and Sophie, she made sure my little girl finally had all that a gentleman’s daughter should have had. All the things,’ she said with a quivering lip, ‘that my own family denied her, because they never approved of Frederick. A nurse, beautiful clothes, a pony and, best of all, an education...’
‘Well, she’s such a bright little thing.’ And it wasn’t as if Amethyst was ever going to have any children of her own. At seven and twenty she was firmly on the shelf. No man would look twice at her if it weren’t for the fortune her aunt had left her. As she knew only too well.
‘So don’t you go thinking,’ she said, hauling herself up by the scruff of the neck, ‘that I’m...a pigeon for the plucking. Put one foot wrong and I will give you your marching orders,’ she finished.
‘Miss Dalby!’ Fenella turned a puzzled, disappointed face towards her. ‘There is no need to keep on treating Monsieur Le Brun as if he is working out ways to rob you. Hasn’t he proved over and over again on this trip how very honest, hard working and...ingenious he is?’
And he was sitting right there, listening.
‘If you must discuss Monsieur Le Brun’s many and various skills, please have the goodness to do so when we return to the privacy of our own rooms.’
‘I expect it was the shock of seeing Nathan Harcourt that has made her so out of reason cross,’ Fenella explained to Monsieur Le Brun, who was by now starting to look rather amused. ‘They used to know one another quite well, you see. He led poor Miss Dalby to believe they might make a match of it—’
‘Fenella! Monsieur Le Brun does not need to know any of this.’
Fenella smiled at her, before carrying on in the same confidential tone. ‘He was the youngest son of an earl, you know. Well, I suppose he still is.’ She giggled.
And that was when it hit Amethyst.
‘Fenella, I think you have had rather too much to drink.’
Fenella blinked. Her eyes widened. ‘Do you really think so?’ She peered down at her glass. ‘Surely not. I have only been sipping at my wine, and, look—the glass is still half-full...’
What she clearly hadn’t noticed was the way the waiters kept topping up the glass. And taking away the empty bottles and bringing fresh ones.
‘Nevertheless, it is time to go home, Monsieur Le Brun, wouldn’t you say?’
It said a great deal for the amount of wine Fenella had inadvertently consumed that it took both her and Monsieur Le Brun to get her into her coat and through the door. Then, when the fresh air hit her, she swayed on her feet. Monsieur Le Brun proved to have remarkably swift reflexes, because he caught her arm, tactfully supporting her before she could embarrass herself. Just to be on the safe side, Amethyst took her other arm, and between them they steered her through the crowds milling about the central courtyard of the Palais Royale.
But she was almost certain she heard him chuckle.
‘This is not funny,’ she snapped as they ushered her through the archway that led into the street that would take them home.
‘She isn’t used to dining out like this. Or having waiters going round topping up her glass. And as for that wine...well, it was downright deceitful. It tasted so fruity and pleasant...more like cordial than anything with alcohol in it.’
‘It was not the wine. It is Paris,’ said Monsieur Le Brun with an insouciant shrug. ‘It has the effect most surprising on many people. So we must make sure, as her friends, that we take especially good care of her from now on.’
Her friends? Monsieur Le Brun considered himself Fenella’s friend? And what was worse, he was putting himself on a level with her, as though they were...a team, or something.
Well, that would not do. It would not do at all.
And just as soon as she could think of the right words to do so, she was going to put Monsieur Le Brun firmly in his place.
But not until they’d got Fenella safely home.
Chapter Three
‘I have let you down,’ moaned Fenella.
‘Nonsense,’ Amethyst murmured soothingly. It had actually been rather cheering to see her friend was not a complete paragon of all the virtues.
‘It is just...foreign travel,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps, as Monsieur Le Brun says, the excitement of being in Paris...’
Fenella rolled on to her side and buried her face in the pillow.
‘There is no excuse for what I did...’
‘You just had a little too much to drink and became rather more talkative than usual, that is all.’
‘But my judgement...’ Fenella protested, albeit in a very quiet voice.
‘Well, it is not a mistake you will make again,’ said Amethyst bracingly, ‘if this is how ill you become after partaking too freely. You wince whenever you try to open your eyes. Let me make you more comfortable.’
‘I shall never feel comfortable again,’ she whimpered as Amethyst crossed the room and drew the curtains, plunging the room into darkness.
‘How am I ever going to face Sophie? Oh, my little girl. When she finds out...’
‘Why should she find out? I am certainly not going to tell her anything more than that her mama needs to stay in bed this morning, because she is a little unwell. Heavens, she has had to have enough days in bed while we’ve been travelling to assume that the rigours of the journey have just caught up with you.’
‘But to lie to my own child...’
‘You won’t