Buch lesen: «Miss Fortescue's Protector In Paris»

Prologue
Miss Grantley’s School for Young Ladies—1888

It seemed like an ordinary day. Not completely ordinary, of course—it was the day families came to visit at Miss Grantley’s School for Young Ladies. Lessons were suspended and games of tennis and croquet were played on the wide green lawns, tea served in shady groves, while teachers were dispatched to answer parents’ anxious questions about their daughters’ progress.

The red-brick Georgian mansion that housed the school gleamed in the bright spring sunshine, as if the weather was specially ordered for the day, and girls streamed in and out in their fluttering white dresses. Laughter was light and musical on the warm breeze.

Emily Fortescue twirled her tennis racket as she took in the whole pretty scene. It was her last spring at Miss Grantley’s. In only a few weeks, she and her friends would graduate and scatter out into the world to find their destinies. She knew what surely awaited her best chums, Lady Alexandra Mannerly and Diana Martin—marriage to a suitable gentleman, a place in society. For Alex, the daughter of a duke and the goddaughter of the Princess of Wales herself, a high place indeed was expected, despite her shy reservations. She was beautiful and connected. Diana, too, came from a respectable family, with her father retired from the India station, and could be expected to find someone of similar stature, a life helping her husband in his career, even though she truly wanted to be a writer.

But what lay ahead for Emily?

She held up her hand to shade her eyes from the sun. She studied the families who were gathered around the tea tables, who strolled the garden paths, mothers arm in arm with daughters, fathers peppering the teachers with questions. But her own father, her only family, was not there. He seldom was.

Not that she blamed him, she thought with a sigh. Albert Fortescue had a business to run, a business that grew larger and more complex every year. Ever since Emily’s mother died when Emily was only a toddler, her father had been determined to give his only daughter a good life. He had expanded a small wine distribution and import-export company into a very lucrative concern, with many different departments and accounts all over Europe.

His hard work had given them a large house on Cadogan Square, Emily’s education at Miss Grantley’s, travels abroad and lovely clothes. And she had far more freedom than most of her friends. She was not hemmed in by chaperons, except for those dictated by the school, and had few expectations heaped upon her beyond doing well in her studies. Her father talked of her helping him in the company and that would surely suit her well. Being a delicate, retiring fine lady would be suffocating.

But, just once in a while, she wished her father could just—be with her. Come to a families’ day at Miss Grantley’s, look at her schoolwork, sit with her in the shade. Or, even more achingly, she wished her mother could be there, elegant in a fashionable feathered hat and pearls, comfortingly rose-scented like the other mothers, taking Emily’s arm as they strolled through the gardens. Smiling, giving her advice, listening to Emily’s doubts about the future.

But then again—her mother might not have been like the sweet, understanding, light-hearted being Emily held in her imagination. She might have been more like the Duchess of Waverton.

Emily watched as Alex’s mother gave her one more lecture before climbing into the glossy black carriage with its ducal crest on the door and finally leaving Miss Grantley’s. Alex looked pale against her sky-blue dress, her hands twisting in her skirt as she nodded at whatever the Duchess was saying. It was no doubt a stern list of proper behaviour for a duke’s daughter.

Yes, Emily thought. Maybe she was lucky after all. Her future was an open question, whatever she wanted to make of it. Alex’s was set.

‘Poor Alex,’ she heard a voice say behind her, low and slightly rough, a hint of suppressed laughter hidden in its depths. ‘I always thank my lucky stars the Duchess is my aunt, and not my mother.’

Emily smiled. Christopher Blakely. Alex’s cousin always livened up the school when he came to visit. Handsome, funny, light-hearted, always up for a game of tennis or a quick quarrel about whatever issues of the day happened to strike like a match between them. Yes, they always argued, but Emily had to admit it was fun.

She turned to look at him and was almost knocked over by her dazzlement. He really was ridiculously good looking; it was no wonder all the girls at the school were in love with him. Tall, slim, golden-haired like an Apollo, with vivid blue eyes and a perfect blade of a nose, sharp cheekbones, always moving with a quick, loose grace that matched the careless, yet somehow always elegant, way he dressed. She had heard such gossip about the trouble he got into in town and she quite believed it all.

‘Do you escape the famous Waverton lectures, then?’ she asked.

‘Of course not. Anyone in my aunt’s orbit is fair game for lectures on the proper way to live and I have much to correct,’ he said with a grin, a flash of white teeth and sunshine that made her smile, too. ‘She and my mother are like two peas in a pod. Organising lives is their reason for being.’

‘And what do they tell you that you should do?’ She thought of the whispered tales, of his trouble at Oxford, how he was almost sent down; the gambling and late nights in London.

‘The usual things. Find useful work, get married. But not too soon. And only to the most suitable girl. Cease my rackety ways and finish my degree.’

Emily laughed. It was hard to picture Chris married to a ‘suitable’ pale, aristocratic girl, going to an office every day in a grey suit. He seemed to have been born too late. He should have been an Elizabethan explorer, not a Victorian aristocrat. ‘And do they tell your brother that, too?’

Chris glanced at his brother William who was talking to Emily’s friend Diana near the house. Will looked so different from Chris, dark and solemn, always so perfect. ‘Of course not. Will is always serious and responsible. It’s hard to live up to his good name at Oxford, I can tell you. He knows what he wants out of life. He does what he should do.’

Emily was suddenly caught by something in Chris’s tone, something strangely wistful and sad. She had never heard that from him before. ‘And you don’t know what you want to do?’

‘Certainly not. What normal young man of my age does? Will is unnaturally solemn. It will get him into trouble some day. I intend to take my time deciding on things. Exploring the world.’

Emily sighed. ‘At least you have the time. I feel like mine is running out.’

Chris tilted his head back, his eyes narrowed as he studied her. He looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean? You’re still in school.’

‘But ladies can’t try things, can’t take their time to decide who they are. We have to find someone to marry immediately and then our lives are set. No more exploring. No more—deciding.’

‘Oh, Emily. You’re so pretty, you’ll have no worries there. You’ll find a very good husband and have a very good sort of life.’

He thought her pretty? Emily studied him carefully, feeling a little flustered, a little pleased and a little exasperated that he had missed her point. She almost laughed. She saw he was trying to help, to be kind, but he didn’t understand. Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps no man could. ‘What if being married isn’t what I want to do? Not the only thing, anyway.’

He frowned. ‘What else would you want?’

Emily felt a jolt of exasperation flash through her. ‘Oh—I don’t know!’ she cried, frustrated. She thought of Diana and how she wanted to write; Alex, and her sweetness and kindness to others. They all had so much to offer the world and no one seemed to want it. They only seemed to want women to set up nurseries and go over menus.

She remembered when she was younger and her father would take her to the office with him. When he worked, she would sit at a desk in the corner and look at the ledgers. She liked seeing how the accounts lined up, liked seeing the list of imported goods and imagining where they would go. She liked the way it all made sense.

‘Maybe I want to run a business, like my father,’ she said. ‘Or travel the world! Or invent things or raise terrier puppies. The point is, I don’t know yet. And I don’t have time to find out, as you do. Men are still young blades at twenty-five, while women are growing old and useless.’

He still looked adorably, maddeningly, puzzled. ‘But you’re a lady. Good at running a household, surely. Where would society be without that? Good at raising children, helping charities...’

Emily threw up her hands, the tennis racket she still held tumbling to the ground. ‘You just don’t understand, Christopher! It’s like speaking a different language—men and women will never decipher each other.’ She stalked away, down the pathway that led through quiet, shady stands of trees to the ornamental pond. It was usually a walk that soothed her, made her feel peaceful in nature, but today its beauty only made her feel more unsettled.

She dropped on to a wrought-iron bench near the edge of the pond and stared out at the rowboats that dotted the water. It looked like a French painting, all dappled light and hazy figures in white lazing in the warm afternoon.

She heard the rustle of footsteps and Chris sat down carefully beside her. She glanced up at him and he gave her a sweet, placating smile that surely melted hearts all the way from Oxford to the Scottish border.

‘Do you really think that is all a lady can do?’ she asked, feeling so sad. ‘Marry and do charity work?’

He glanced out at the pond for a quiet moment, as if thinking over her words. ‘It seems to be what most of the ladies I know want to do,’ he said. His smile turned mischievous. ‘Except for ladies who aren’t really ladies, of course.’

Emily had to laugh. ‘Actresses and chorus girls? Women who work in cafés?’

‘And what do you know about that?’

‘Not nearly as much as you do, I’m sure. But maybe I should be an actress.’

‘You wouldn’t be the fun sort.’ He studied her closely, until she wanted to squirm. ‘You would be some terribly serious Shakespearean tragedienne, or maybe you would sing grand Italian opera. The sort that makes me fall asleep.’

Emily shook her head. ‘I can’t carry a tune at all, I’m afraid. I got tossed out of music class. And I can’t memorise a poem to save my life. I am the despair of our literature teachers.’ She felt a pang that there was something she could not, after all, excel at, when other classes came so easily. ‘I guess it must be marriage for me after all.’

She felt a gentle touch on her hand, and, startled, she glanced down to see Chris’s fingers over hers. His touch was warm, tingling, delightful. She looked up at him to see his cut-glass handsome face was serious, watchful, even more beautiful than ever. For just that one instant, she thought he might actually see her.

‘Some bloke will be so lucky, Em,’ he said softly. ‘And he had better work bloody hard to make you happy.’

Emily didn’t even notice the cursing, she was too lost in his eyes. Like drowning in endless blue. She felt like someone in one of the novels Diana loved so much, caught in moments that felt out of time, sparkling, delicate, perfect. His expression changed as he looked at her, darkened.

She was drawn closer to him, unable to turn away, as if invisible, unbreakable bonds tied them together. As if in a hazy, warm dream, she felt Chris’s arms come around her, drawing her so close nothing could come between them. Emily found herself longing to seize the moment, to make it her own and never forget it.

She looped her arms around his neck and closed her eyes, inhaling the warm scent of him, of fresh air, clean linen, faint lemony cologne, of Chris himself. It made her feel dizzy, giddy, like too much champagne.

She gently touched his cheek. He moaned a low, hoarse sound, and his lips claimed hers at last. She met his kiss with everything she had, all the emotion locked away inside her. It wasn’t a gentle kiss, as surely first kisses usually were, but one filled with heat, desperation, need. She wanted it to go on and on for ever.

A burst of laughter nearby broke into Emily’s dream and she pulled back from Chris’s embrace, hot and cold all at the same time. Flustered and panicked, and full of a strange, bursting—joy. Had she just kissed Chris Blakely? Where had such a fantastical thing come from?

She stared up at him in astonishment. He looked just as shocked as she did, a dull red flush over his sharp cheekbones. His eyes closed and he shook his head, an appalled expression spreading over his face.

Appalled? At the thought of kissing her? Had she been that bad at it? Emily suddenly felt so disgusted with herself.

‘Em,’ he said, his voice tight and strangled, so unlike his usual joking self. ‘I’m so very sorry. What a rotten thing...’

Emily wanted to hear no more. She couldn’t stand that something which had been, only a moment before, strange and wondrous and almost beautiful, had become something rotten to him. She jumped to her feet and backed away, trying not to scrub at her lips with her hand, to erase the memory of his touch. To try to erase those awful feelings.

Surely those London chorus girls he knew would never be such ninnies over a mere kiss. ‘Don’t think anything of it,’ she said, trying to laugh. To her own ears, she sounded high-pitched and frantic, like an ingénue on the melodrama stage. ‘How silly we are today! I must be getting back to the school.’

He stood up beside her, his hair tousled, his eyes wide. He held out his hand. ‘Emily, please...’

Her own eyes were starting to film over, making the sparkling water of the pond hazy, and she would rather throw herself into its depths before she let him see her cry. Before she would let anyone see her cry.

She whirled around and ran back down the path, ignoring the sound of her name as Chris called after her. She scrubbed furiously at her eyes and pasted a fierce smile on her lips. No one could suspect what a fool she had been.

Diana and Alex ran towards her as she came closer to the house. They both looked a little worried and Emily knew she couldn’t fool them entirely as to her emotional turmoil. They were her best friends and a smiling façade couldn’t quite conceal her thoughts from them.

But neither would they ever pry. All three of them would wait patiently until one had a confidence to share.

Emily knew this was one confidence she would never share, even with her friends.

‘Are you quite well, Em?’ Diana asked. ‘Your cheeks are very pink.’

‘Perfectly well,’ Emily answered, giving her hand a careless wave. ‘I’ve just been sitting in the sun too long.’

Alex held out a straw boater hat. ‘You did forget your hat again.’

‘Oh, drat it. I certainly don’t need another lecture from Miss Grantley about freckles.’ Emily took the hat and pinned it on her dishevelled hair, glad the wide brim could hide part of her face. Her expression.

‘Maybe we should go inside, find some cool lemonade?’ Diana said.

‘Or maybe we should take you to the nurse?’ Alex asked, her tone full of her usual quiet worry. Alex always wanted to take care of everyone. ‘Too much sun can be dangerous.’

‘Of course I don’t need to see the nurse, I’m perfectly all right,’ Emily answered. She scooped up her tennis racket from where she had dropped it in the grass. ‘Let’s just have a game before we have to go in to tea!’

Alex and Diana exchanged another long glance, before they nodded. ‘Maybe Millie or Elizabeth could join us,’ Diana said.

Emily took a deep breath and made a couple of fierce practice swings with her racket. She imagined they were landing right on Chris Blakely’s golden, handsome head...

* * *

Chris was very much afraid that, when he looked back on this one instant years later, he would see his life divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’. Before Emily Fortescue and after.

He stood in the shadows of a grove of trees at the edge of the sun-splashed green tennis lawn and watched her play with her friends. She leaped into the air, her white skirts billowing around her, her racket wielded like a young Athena charging into battle. Her chestnut hair, red and gold and amber in the sunlight, was tumbling from its pins and she was laughing.

Her face, sharp-chiselled and angular as a cat, was usually so serious, so deep in thought and watchful, as if she saw deep into people’s thoughts and read their deepest secrets—and didn’t quite approve. But when she laughed, she was utterly transformed. The rich, merry, uninhibited sound of it would draw anyone closer. Like a siren.

But sirens drove men to their deaths with unfulfilled longings. They pulled men in even as they shoved them away. Chris feared that was definitely the case with Emily.

He raked his hands through his hair, leaving the over-long blonde strands he was always meant to trim properly standing on end—another disappointment to his parents. But he couldn’t dislodge the memory of that kiss.

That kiss.

What had he been thinking? Had he gone sun-mad in that moment? But he knew the truth. He had not been thinking. Just as his father always shouted at him, Chris never thought about what he was doing. Yet kissing Emily was hardly like missing his tutor’s lecture to go for a lark on the river or drinking at the Dog and Hare. Kissing Emily was...

Was the stupidest thing he had ever done. And the most wonderful. For just that one moment, when their lips touched and he tasted the tart sweetness of lemonade, felt the lithe grace of her under his touch, it was like breaking free and soaring. Like the drunken, sparkling magic of a Bonfire Night. Like he was just where he should be.

Only for a moment. Then it all crashed down again. This wasn’t a chorus girl, no matter what wild ambitions she proclaimed. Not a tart at the Dog and Hare. It was Emily. Emily Fortescue. His cousin’s friend. A young lady of education and wealth. Being involved with her would mean promises, expectations. Serious promises. And he was no good at serious.

Not that she would have him even if he was. She was far too good for him and everyone knew it.

He watched her now, laughing in the sunlight. She had picked up the ball from where it fell by the net and was casually tossing it high and catching it again as she chatted with her friends. Graceful, easy, her mobile, sensual mouth smiling. Her hair like autumn leaves, shimmering, heavy, enticing a man to pull it free from its pins and see how long and luxurious it was. Feeling it under his touch. She was so enticing, beautiful and smart and serious...

And he was someone in danger of being sent down from Oxford unless he mended his careless ways and started behaving like a Blakely, according to his parents. He was someone who excelled at making parties merrier and not much else. Emily was clever, beautiful, smart enough to run her father’s business one day, if she wanted. Smart enough to marry anyone she liked. His cousin Alex said Emily was sure to even expand her father’s already lucrative business and become an even more wealthy heiress one day.

He could certainly believe it, after how angry she became when he suggested marriage was her best option, a lady’s only choice.

Yet if she didn’t marry, he thought ruefully, it would be quite a waste. What a kisser she was. It made him wonder what else she would be brilliant at, in the privacy of a bedchamber...

Chris shook his head hard to dislodge a sudden image of Emily Fortescue dressed only in a thin silk chemise, laughing amid a billow of white pillows, her glorious chestnut hair spread mermaid-like around her. He had no business thinking about her that way.

And when they were together, they always seemed to argue. She was definitely not for the likes of him and he was not for her. Maybe they would have fun in the bedroom, if that wild kiss was any indication, but they would quarrel each other to death everywhere else. She was too strong-minded, too gloriously goddess-like, for everyday use.

And he was sure he would never quite measure up to her.

Yet, oh, she was so beautiful. He watched as she gracefully drew her arm back to serve, the long, lean line of her body. How had he never realised that before? Oh, he had always known she was pretty, that was impossible to miss. But she was actually incomparable.

‘What are you doing lurking out here, Chris?’ he heard his brother William say.

He glanced back to see Will walking towards him along the pathway between the trees, his brother’s dark suit and dark hair blending into the shadows. He looked impeccable, responsible, the always-serious one. ‘Just hiding for a moment before I plunge into all that Miss Grantley’s schoolness, I suppose. I have a newfound allergy to academia, even if this isn’t quite Oxford.’

Will gave a wry chuckle. ‘I’m rather surprised you showed up at all. It doesn’t seem like your sort of scene.’

Chris glanced at Emily again, her white skirts a blur as she dashed along the net. Her laughter floated back to him on the breeze. ‘Lemonade and deportment lessons? No, thank you. But I thought Alex might appreciate someone here besides the Duchess.’

Will smiled. ‘Yes. Poor, sweet Alex.’ He, too, studied the tennis game and for one awful instant Chris wondered if he, too, admired Emily. But then he realised Will watched Diana Martin, her hair a bright red in the light, waving her racket in mock-threat at Emily. Will’s smile seemed uncharacteristically—soft in that moment.

Interesting.

Will turned away from the sun-dappled scene and aimed his piercing blue gaze at Chris. Much like Emily, Will had an uncanny ability to see too much. Even when they were children, Chris could never pull off pranks on Will. And now Will had left university with a First in the Classics and worked for the Foreign Office, respectable and perfect.

‘Are you sure nothing is amiss, Chris?’ Will asked.

Chris shook his head, making himself give his trademark careless grin. It always seemed to throw everyone off. ‘Amiss? Whatever could be amiss on such a bright, sunny day, far away from any work at all?’

‘Yes,’ Will said quietly. Quiet with him was always a dangerous sign. When Will got quiet, it meant he was thinking even more than usual. ‘You want everyone to think all your days are bright and sunny, don’t you, Brother?’

Chris turned away. ‘Why should they not be? We are young, the world is open to us. Pretty girls, a drink at the pub tonight, maybe a horse race tomorrow...’

‘And that’s all there is?’

‘Of course it’s not,’ Chris said, feeling a strange anger rise up in him. Life should be more, should have some purpose. That was easy for someone like Will to say, or Emily. They seemed brimming with purpose, with serious minds that led them towards something greater. Chris searched for it, but where was it? So, he played the pleasure-seeker, the clown, the trickster.

He looked towards the tennis lawn. The game was over and Emily had put on her hat and was hurrying towards the house, arm in arm with Alex and Diana, the three of them giggling together as if they hadn’t a care in the world. As if the world hadn’t been rocked with a kiss.

‘But that’s what life is for now,’ Chris concluded. ‘As to the future, who can say? Father declares I’m fitted for nothing. Maybe he’s right.’

Will frowned. ‘When has Father been right about anything?’ he said. ‘Listen, Chris, you’ll be done at Oxford soon. Why don’t you come talk to them at the Foreign Office? I can arrange an appointment time.’

‘And work with you?’ Chris thought of how he would come off next to Will and shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t take me. And I’d die of boredom there after a day at a desk, thinking about infinitely boring people at infinitely boring foreign courts.’

Will laughed, a rare, rich sound. ‘Not every job there is as tedious as formal diplomacy, Chris. There is a lot there that would suit you very well indeed. And I’ll be leaving for India soon; they need more men at the London office. You should think about it, anyway. Father will start making noises again about the church and Mother will find you an heiress to marry if you don’t head them off with a different plan.’

Chris grinned. Both of those were tacks their parents had taken with him many times. Both sounded like the depths of wretchedness. Maybe Will had a point. If he had a different job in mind, there could be no vicarages in his future. ‘We’ll see.’

‘Good, do think about it. Now, should we go in? Surely it’s time for tea and no one could ever fault Miss Grantley’s for their excellent cook.’

‘True. I’ve been thinking about those raspberry tarts all day.’ Chris followed Will towards the arbour where maids were setting up the tea service and he was glad the day was almost done. But he could swear he heard the echo of Emily’s laughter following him at every step.