to dream about her all night. But he was wrong if he thought it was a waste of an evening. His dreams took him back to the first time he had ever seen her, a time of perfection, a time when he was young and still full of his father’s ideals of love and women.
* * *
He’d been to Parisian salons before but this one was different. There was an energy that emanated from the room. It didn’t come from the excellent décor, although the large drawing room was well appointed in blues and creams. It didn’t come from the exquisite collection of art hung on the walls representing significant schools of painting, although the collection certainly spoke well of the patron who had acquired it. Nor was it the comfort with which the room was designed. There were plenty of chairs grouped together for easy, intimate conversations, and more seating around the centre point of the room where the main event of the salon, a reading from a playwright’s latest work, he’d forgotten whose, would take place later.
Then he saw it, or rather her, the source of the energy, sitting slightly to the right of the room’s centre and surrounded by guests. She laughed and fluttered a fan at something a guest had said. In doing so, she turned his direction and he was stunned. She had white-gold hair, a platinum really, such a unique and unmistakable colour. That would have been enough to make her remarkable, but there was more: the sharp blue of her eyes, the pertness of her nose, the curve of her cheek and, perhaps most of all, the wide generous mouth invitingly painted in the palest of pinks to match the gown she wore, a frothy chiffon confection that contrived to be sophisticated, avoiding the immaturity that often accompanied such frills. She wore pearls at her neck to complete the picture of freshness and innocence.
‘It is the coup de foudre for you.’ His friend, Henri, who had brought him, nudged him as the woman made a gesture with her fan to approach. ‘I will introduce you, but you have to remember to speak,’ he joked. ‘Many men are tongue tied in the presence of la comtesse.’
Up close, he could see that she was young, perhaps not older than his own age of three and twenty, and when she spoke he could hear the accent beneath the words. She was not French, but English, even though her French was flawless. When she smiled at them, declaring she was glad Henri could come and doubly glad he had brought a friend, someone new to enliven their little circle, Channing was struck again by the quality of her freshness, the vibrancy in every expression. He was struck, too, by the realisation that she was married to Monsieur le comte and he knew something akin to devastation. She belonged to another. She could never be his. It was a ridiculous sentiment upon a first meeting.
Then she singled him out and all else ceased to matter. ‘Has Henri shown you the garden? No? Ah, Henri, it is remiss of you when you know the gardens are the best feature of the house.’ She tapped Henri on the arm with her fan. ‘Come, Mr Deveril, I will give you a tour. We have a little time before the reading begins.’
He supposed the gardens were lovely. He supposed he made the right obligatory comments about plants and the pond. He just wanted to stare at her, just wanted to listen to her. She could talk about anything and he’d listen. ‘The garden seems almost English,’ he offered as her tour wound down. He didn’t want to go in, he wanted to stay out here with her.
She smiled softly, her eyes meeting his fleetingly and then flying away. ‘I hope so. I wanted to create a little piece of England for myself so I’d have some place to remind me of home.’
‘Do you miss England?’ It had not occurred to him that the comtesse was not happy here in Paris.
‘I don’t know that I miss England, but I do miss my home and my family. My sister and I were close, she is dear to me. Still, this is a good marriage for a girl like me. I could not have expected to do better and Monsieur le comte lets me do as I please most days.’
Channing shook his head ‘A girl like you? What is that?’
‘My family is gentry. We are neither low born nor high. We’re not part of the peerage and we’re not wealthy enough to attract their attentions. In England, I could not have hoped for a great match. But here in France, the system of nobility is different. I could expect a great deal here. My parents want me to be financially secure and not need to worry for anything. They are older, you see, and there is my younger sister to consider.’
Channing did not like the way she said it, as if she were trying to justify the choice to herself.
‘It appears they have succeeded.’ Channing smiled. ‘Have you been married long?’
‘Nearly a year.’
He’d missed her by a year. It was illogical to think of it in those terms but the thought came anyway. ‘Is the marriage all you hoped it would be?’ Channing asked quietly. It was an intensely personal question to ask on short acquaintance.
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