Coming to Paris, taking on this role, contract, commission, I’m not sure what to call it—this false marriage of ours, if I make a success of it, and I am determined to do just that, the money I will earn will allow me to quite literally change my life.’ She bit her lip, considering her words carefully. ‘I will be free. Free to make my own way in the world, on my own terms. For the first time in my twenty-six years I will be able to live only to suit myself, to finally discover what it is I like, what I want, what makes me happy. So you see, the stakes are too high for me to fail. You can have no idea how much that means to me. I won’t let you down.’
There was a sparkle in her eyes, a tinge of colour that was not embarrassment in her cheeks, giving him a tantalising glimpse of the woman she could be, or would be, if she achieved her goal. He had thought her beautiful before, but seeing her like this, she positively glowed. ‘I can see for myself how much it means,’ Jean-Luc said, quite beguiled. ‘Thank you. May I say that I can think of no one I would rather pretend to be married to than you.’
She laughed. ‘We have not even been married two days. I will be more flattered if you still think so in a week’s time.’
‘Actually, as far as the world is concerned, we have been married since March. But I get ahead of myself. Are you comfortable? Because the tale I’m about to relay is long and convoluted.’
* * *
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Sophia said some time later. ‘I am utterly confounded. Juliette de Cressy not only claims that you are contracted to marry her, but that you are a duke!’
‘Of all the preposterous things this woman alleges, the lunatic notion that I might be the long-lost son of an aristocrat who went to the guillotine—’ Jean-Luc broke off, shaking his head. ‘Me! It is simply ridiculous.’
‘You know, most men would be both delighted and flattered to be informed they were of noble birth.’
‘Even if it means disowning the parents who raised them, who loved them and who tried to give them the best life possible in difficult circumstances? No.’ His mouth firmed. ‘I know who I am. My father—yes there were times when we did not agree, when I thought that he did not care for me, that he—he somehow resented me, but that is normal, for a father and a son, as one grows older, and the other stronger.’
‘I can imagine it would have been normal for you. I expect you were very sure of yourself, even as a boy.’
Jean-Luc laughed. ‘What was your upbringing like? No, you need not answer,’ he added hurriedly, ‘I did not mean to pry.’
Sophia hesitated. She was under no obligation to tell him anything, but it seemed wrong to shut him out completely when he had just confided so much to her. ‘My relationship with my father was difficult. He wanted a son. As a female, I was of limited use to him.’
‘But you knew he cared for you?’
She knew he had not. ‘I never doubted he was my father,’ Sophia said, unwilling to lie.
‘You refer to him in the past tense.’
‘He died four years ago. My mother many years earlier. To return to the matter in hand,’ she said hurriedly, ‘are you saying that, thanks to Mademoiselle de Cressy, you are doubting your own parentage?’
‘Mon Dieu, no! The difficulties I spoke of were a long time ago. My father was very proud of my success. He told me not long before he died, ten years ago, just nine months after Maman, that he could not have asked for a better son.’ Jean-Luc’s hand tightened around the quill he had been fidgeting with. ‘For my father, that was quite an admission, believe me.’
‘More than I ever got,’ Sophia said with feeling. ‘My father never missed an opportunity to tell me that he had never wished for a daughter of any sort, never mind...’ Two. The pain took her by surprise, making her catch her breath. All too aware of Jean-Luc’s perceptive gaze on her, she took a firm grip of herself. ‘Never mind my father,’ she amended lamely. ‘We were talking of yours.’
He waited, just long enough to make it clear he knew she was changing the subject, then set down his quill. ‘My father, Robert Bauduin, you mean, and not the Duc de Montendre.’
‘Indeed. May I ask how you plan to prove your heritage? I’m assuming that you doubt a simple introduction to me will send Mademoiselle de Cressy running for the hills. That you require me to be by your side to maintain the façade, in order to buy yourself the time you need to gather the evidence to quash her claim completely?’
‘Ah, you do understand.’
‘But of course. If a wife does not understand her husband, then she is a poor spouse indeed,’ Sophia quipped.
Jean-Luc smiled, albeit faintly. ‘I must confess, I’m concerned as to how she will react when she does meet you. To date, she has quite simply refused to accept that I have a wife.’
‘Then we must hope that she does not try to eliminate me—an outcome not at all unlikely in the context of this tale, which is worthy of Shakespeare himself.’
‘Or perhaps more appropriately, Molière,’ Jean-Luc said drily, ‘for it has all the hallmarks of a farce. It is, to say the least, inconvenient that the agent which Maxime—Maxime Sainte-Juste, my lawyer, that is—sent to Cognac to retrieve documentary evidence of my birth, came back empty-handed.’
Sophia wrinkled her nose. ‘You don’t find it odd that he couldn’t locate the certificate of your baptism?’
Jean-Luc shrugged. ‘I was surprised, I had assumed that I was born in Cognac, and my parents had always lived there but they must have moved to that town when I was very young. I was born in 1788. It was a time when there was much unrest in the country, crops failing, the conditions which resulted in the Revolution. There could have been any number of reasons for my parents to have relocated.’
‘What about your grandparents then? You must know where they lived.’
‘I don’t. I never knew them, and have always assumed they died before I was born, or when I was too young to remember them.’
‘But there must have been other relatives, surely? Cousins, aunts, uncles?’
‘No one.’ Jean-Luc twisted his signet ring around his finger, looking deeply uncomfortable. ‘When you put it like that, it sounds odd that I never questioned my parents when they were alive, never even noticed my lack of any relatives at all when I was growing up.’
‘But why would you? Your parents are your parents, your family is your family.’
‘Yes, but most people have a family,’ he said ruefully. ‘It seems I did not, though of course I must have relatives somewhere. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I would even begin to look in order to locate them.’
‘What about family friends, then?’
But once more, Jean-Luc shook his head. ‘None who knew my parents before I was born. You’re thinking that is ridiculous, aren’t you? You are thinking, there must be someone!’
‘I am thinking that it is extremely awkward for you that there is no one.’
‘Extremely awkward, and a little embarrassing, and very frustrating,’ he confessed. ‘I cannot prove
