is true. There is something about you that proclaims you a woman of breeding. Your grandfather would have been an aristocrat if he had to flee the Terror, and that accounts for it.’
She smiled. Her mother had taught her well and Marianne Doubleday had completed her education. She could play the lady to perfection. But playing the lady was not what she wanted. What did she want? Seven years before she could have given the answer to that promptly enough, but now she was not so sure. Her life was good as it was. She was adored from across the footlights, should she not be satisfied with that?
She could command a good wage, could afford to dress well, was the recipient of countless fripperies she could sell or wear, whichever she chose, and she had many friends among her fellow thespians who, contrary to popular belief, were not always at each other’s throats. She could flirt with the young men who besieged the stage door after each performance, go to supper with them and gently send them on their way without hurting their pride. So what had she been waiting for? This moment? This man?
‘Can you tell breeding on so short an acquaintance?’ she asked.
‘Of course. How did someone like you come to be an actress?’
‘My mother was run down by a speeding carriage when I was nine years old,’ she said. ‘I had no other relatives…’
‘What about your grandparents?’
‘My father’s parents both died some time before. They never got over the loss of their son, so my mother told me. I think my mother’s parents must have died too, for she never spoke of them. I was alone in the world.’
‘Oh, you poor, dear girl.’ His sympathy seemed truly genuine and she began to have the first feeling of unease for deceiving him.
‘What happened then?’
The rest was easy. The rest was the truth, or very nearly. She told him she had been sent to an orphanage for the children of army officers, (she had long ago upgraded the orphanage to one specifically for officers’ orphans) where she stayed until she was old enough to work, but nothing at all about the Bulfords. That did not bear speaking about. ‘There you have my history in a nutshell,’ she said, laughing. ‘Now you must tell me yours.’
‘Oh, I have nothing at all interesting to report. I was born, I went to school, I became a man…’
‘And married?’ She was surprised that question had not crossed her mind until now.
‘No, not yet, but undoubtedly my father will have me shackled before much longer. I am his heir, you see. I have a half-brother, a bantling by the name of Freddie, who will, no doubt, carry on the family name if I do not have a son, but he is very young still. That is all there is to tell.’
It was all he wanted to tell, she decided. ‘So you do not have to earn a living?’
He laughed. He had an infectious laugh and she found herself smiling back at him. ‘If you mean I live a life of idleness, that is far from the truth,’ he said. ‘My father would not allow it. I have to work on our estate, see that it is running smoothly, look after the tenants…’ He stopped, on the verge of telling her that he did have another mission in life, but decided it would introduce a sombre note to the proceedings and stopped short.
‘And that is work?’
‘It is harder work than you might think. But I come to London for the Season, as you see.’
‘To look for a bride?’
‘That is the accepted way of doing it, though I am not so sure it will work in my case. My father despairs of me, says I am too particular.’
‘And are you?’ She was slightly breathless, as if his answer was important to her. His name was Stanmore, he had said. Lord Stanmore, she supposed, but she could not remember any of the girls in the troupe mentioning a Lord Stanmore and they knew the names of everyone who was anyone in town; gossip was meat and drink to them.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I am.’ This conversation was not going at all the way he had expected it to. It was not the light, teasing banter he usually employed when talking to the little bits of muslin he chose to dally with. She had more about her than they did, much more. He had not been joking when he said she had the bearing of an aristocrat. It showed itself in the proud way she held her head, the way she used her cutlery, the way she sipped her wine, the way she spoke, without that silly simpering voice young women of the lower orders used when trying to impress him. Madeleine Charron saw no need to impress him; she considered herself his equal.
‘How in particular?’ she asked.
‘That’s just it, I do not know,’ he said. ‘I have never troubled to analyse it. I suppose what I mean, is that I shall recognise her when I meet her.’
She laughed. ‘So you have not yet met her?’
‘I think I might have.’ Even as he spoke, he knew the idea was preposterous, outlandish, laughable. But it would not go away.
‘When did you meet her?’
‘About an hour ago.’
She stared at him for a moment, then sat back in her chair and burst out laughing. ‘I have heard many a proposition, but that is a new one, it really is.’
He frowned. ‘You laugh.’
‘Am I meant to take you seriously?’
His mind suddenly produced an image of his illustrious father, of his stepmother and his sister, Lavinia, as he presented Madeleine Charron to them as his intended wife and knew she had been right to laugh. ‘We could pretend, just for one night,’ he said lightly. ‘It might be fun.’
‘It depends what you expect of me,’ she said, and she was not laughing now. ‘I am an actress, pretending is second nature to me, but if you mean what I think you mean, I am afraid you have quite misunderstood my role.’
He sat back and rocked with laughter. ‘Oh, the lady is the aristocrat and no doubt about it. What rank was that grandfather of yours, a comte, a marquis or a duke, perhaps?’
‘A comte,’ she said. Marquises and dukes would be too easy to trace.
She was not naturally a liar and suddenly she found it all very hard going. He was too nice to deceive, too much the gentleman. She knew he would not coerce her or force himself upon her as Henry Bulford had done, but if she were determined enough, she could make him fall in love with her, make him defy his stiff-necked father to marry her. The ball was in her court. Why, then, was she so reluctant to pass it back? Why, when she had the opportunity to further her long-term goal, had she lost her courage? Only the memory of her humiliation at the hands of another aristocrat kept her from confessing her perfidy.
‘And one does not lightly roast a comte’s daughter,’ he said, unaware of her tumultuous thoughts.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, suddenly serious.
‘Sorry? Sorry for what?’
‘If you have deluded yourself that I would easily succumb…’
‘If I had, you have soon put me in my place,’ he said with a smile. ‘Let us begin again,
