From Courtesan To Convenient Wife

‘These are not just any old snails, these are escargot Dijonnaise.’ Sophia inhaled the delicate aroma with her eyes closed. ‘A red-wine reduction, with shallots and bone marrow, garlic and truffles. You are very fortunate to have such an accomplished chef.’

Jean-Luc helped himself to the remainder of the snails, popping one into his mouth. ‘We are fortunate,’ he corrected.

‘We are. Please pass on our compliments to...?’

‘Monsieur le Blanc,’ the butler informed her graciously. ‘I will indeed, madame.’

‘So it seems I have married a gourmand,’ Jean-Luc said. ‘Would you like to sample some of this veal?’

‘I’d prefer the rabbit, please. I would not describe myself as a gourmand, but I am very fond of cooking. Though of late I have not—not had the opportunity to indulge my passion.’ The truth was, she had more or less lived on air since her return to England. She looked up to find Jean-Luc studying her once more. She wished he wouldn’t do that. She returned her attention to her plate, absentmindedly sipping on the dry white wine which had seamlessly replaced her champagne.

‘Paris has some excellent restaurants these days. We will sample some of them, if you wish?’ Jean-Luc smiled at her eager expression. ‘In my view, the best places to eat are the cafes, but the type of women who frequent them are not the sort I would wish my wife to mingle with. There is a place near Les Halles, where the oysters...’

Sophia continued to smile, but she no longer heard what he was saying. What would he think if he knew his faux wife was, in her previous life, exactly the sort of woman he would not wish her to mingle with? A cruel paradox. She cursed under her breath. Hadn’t she decided to leave that other life behind!

‘...a great many new restaurants opened in the last ten years,’ Jean-Luc was saying. ‘Run by chefs who once ruled the kitchens of the grandest houses, and who lost their livelihoods when their former employers lost their heads. Chez Noudet in the Palais Royal, for example.’

‘I had not thought—but I suppose many people depended for their livelihoods on the aristocrats who went to the guillotine.’

‘Absolument. My own—our own chef, Monsieur le Blanc, is one such case I am afraid. And this town house too is a victime of the Revolution, in a way. I purchased it four years ago, from the heirs of the noble owners. It had, like most of the abandoned hôtels particuliers here in St Germain and more especially across the river in Le Marais, been looted. Tomorrow, when I show you round properly, you will see there are still bullet marks in the walls of the courtyard. It may have been almost thirty years since the Bastille fell, but the scars of the Revolution are still there, if you know where to look.’

‘But now King Louis is back on the throne, surely things have changed?’

Jean-Luc shrugged. ‘Superficially, perhaps, but it is plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, I think. Some of us, like me, roll our sleeves up and get on with the business of trading, in an effort to restore our country’s finances—and in the process, the fine buildings of our city such as this one. And others, many of our so-called nobility, sit complacently on their rears and expect others to spoon feed them.’

Sophia was somewhat taken aback by this. Would her own heritage place her in the opposite camp to him? Or would her determination to make her own way in life on her own merits be her saving grace? It didn’t matter, she told herself, what Jean-Luc thought of her, provided she fulfilled her contract. But the assertion didn’t ring true. Despite herself, she found him intriguing, his opinions interesting, his determination to be only himself admirable. ‘Are they all so idle, these returning exiles?’ she asked. ‘Can none redeem themselves in your eyes?’

‘Oh, they do. A large part of my business depends upon their custom and patronage. The heirs of the ancien régime are some of my best customers and a valuable source of contacts and new clients throughout Europe. Unlike them, I do not distinguish between old money and new. I can be very charmant when I wish to be. As you know, mon amour.’

This last was said with a smouldering look, and accompanied by another kiss pressed to her palm. Sophia wanted to laugh, only she felt that she couldn’t breathe. Though she still wore her evening gloves, though his lips did not touch her skin, his kiss sent a frisson up her arm. The alarmingly visceral attraction made her feel all tangled up inside. It made her forget that she was playing a part. She looked down at her empty plate, at her full wine glass, with dismay. Lost in their conversation, she didn’t recall what she had eaten, after the rabbit. She didn’t recall the wine changing from white to red. She didn’t recall the footmen clearing the table, bringing in a second course of fruit and ices and mousse.

‘Will you be so very charmant, as to serve me some of that lemon sorbet?’ Sophia asked, extricating her hand. ‘And perhaps you should have some too?’

‘But yes, you are right, something cooling is what is required. In your presence...’ Jean-Luc placed his hand over his heart. ‘I burn like a moth drawn inexorably to the flame.’

Sophia bit back her laughter. ‘Then perhaps you should not come any nearer. I have no desire to cause you pain.’

‘Indeed, that I do believe. For when you agreed to marry me, ma chère, did you not prevent my heart from breaking?’

The soulful look he gave her was too much. Sophia chuckled. ‘Enough,’ she exclaimed in English. ‘I am not sure whether you are aping Lord Byron or one of his creations, but...’

‘You think this is a performance! Madame, you stab me to the heart.’

‘I will, with this cake slice, if you do not stop. It is the most lamentable—oh!’ Sophia covered her mouth, casting a horrified glance over her shoulder, where the butler was making a show of arranging several decanters on a tray. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she mouthed, ‘I quite forgot.’

He smiled at her warmly, his voice too low for any of the servants to hear. ‘And so made your performance all the more believable. You have a most infectious laugh, though you do not have call to use it very often, hein? And now I have made you sad, by saying so. I’m sorry.’

Sophia tried to shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ With years of practice of shielding her emotions, both from those she loathed and the person she loved most, she found it unsettling that this man, almost a stranger, seemed able to read her thoughts. She ate a spoonful of lemon sorbet. ‘This is delicious.’

‘And so the performance resumes,’ Jean-Luc said under his breath, before turning to dismiss the servants, telling the butler to leave the clearing up until the morning. ‘Now,’ he said, as the door closed behind the last footman, ‘you may relax. If that is possible, in my company. I merely made a comment, based on a supposition. I was not attempting to pry into your affairs.’

Sophia pushed her sorbet aside. ‘I am perfectly relaxed. It is better that you know nothing of me or my past. Then you will not confuse me with the creature you have brought me here to play.’

‘Sophistry, Sophia?’

Which it was. ‘Talking of which,’ she said, ignoring him, ‘we said we would agree our cover story. How we came to meet, I mean, and fall headlong in love.’

* * *

‘Our whirlwind romance.’ A cursory glance at her, Jean-Luc thought, getting up to pour himself a brandy, would be sufficient for any man to understand perfectly why he would wish to marry her. In her travelling dress, he had thought her slender, but her figure, revealed by the flimsy fabric of the evening gown, was certainly not lacking in curves. She was the kind of enigma that unwittingly brought out the most primal instincts in men: innocent yet sensual; fragile yet resilient; a woman who yearned to be protected, and one who desired nothing but to be left entirely alone. Was it unwitting? Impossible, surely, for any woman to be so accomplished an actress.

‘Would you care to join me?’ he asked, holding the decanter aloft, unsurprised when she shook her head. A woman who liked to keep a clear head. And who was, he told himself, simply doing the job she had been brought here to do. It was not her fault that he was distracted by her. Though one would have to be made of stone not to be.

Jean-Luc set his brandy impatiently aside and resumed his seat. He had his faults, but woolly thinking was not one of them. ‘Let us plot the arc of our romance. Obviously, we met in England,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, I was there on business in February for a few weeks. It was not long after I returned, at the beginning of April, that Juliette de Cressy found her way to my doorstep.’

‘So we met and married in the space of a few weeks,’ Sophia said.

‘We met and fell deeply in love and married,’ Jean-Luc corrected her. ‘It was a coup de foudre, for both of us. One look was enough.’

‘You don’t really believe that can happen? That one would decide to bind oneself for ever to a complete stranger, on the basis of a—a heated glance, without knowing anything of them, or of their intentions?’

It was, in fact, a notion he had always derided, but the scorn in her voice made Jean-Luc contrary. ‘Doesn’t love triumph over all?’

‘Love does not put food on the table, any more than it puts a roof over one’s head. In fact, in my opinion, love is the flimsiest possible reason for anyone to marry.’

‘What would you consider more sound reasons?’

‘It is a matter of quid pro quo, isn’t it?’ Sophia answered, as if this was perfectly obvious. ‘Pedigree, wealth, position, influence, these are the bulwarks of marriage contracts. Where there is a fair exchange, then affection may flourish, but there are so very few fair exchanges, aren’t there, and in most cases, it is the women who has least to offer, and so must sacrifice the most.’

She was staring off into the distance, having almost forgotten that he was there. ‘And even then,’ she continued coldly, ‘it is often not enough. Lies are offered in exchange for promises. Could any such marriage flourish? No,’ she concluded firmly. ‘No. It is best that it does not even begin. No matter what the consequences.’

Could she be referring to herself? Fascinated, Jean-Luc had a hundred questions he was burning to ask and frustratingly, he could not ask any of them. ‘Fortunately, we do not have to concern ourselves with that, since our marriage is entirely fictitious,’ he pointed out instead.

Sophia blinked. ‘You’re right. It is just that, a figment of our imagination. They say everyone loves a romance, don’t they? Why should they question ours?’ She pursed her lips. ‘So, we met in England. I expect you bumped into me when you were shopping for some shirts, and I was looking to match some ribbons for a new hat. I dropped my packages. You picked them up. Our eyes met, and we knew, yes?’

Her smile was as brittle as the spun sugar which decorated the honey cake. Jean-Luc returned it, like for like. ‘I took you to tea,’ he said, ‘and then the next day for a carriage ride in Hyde Park, and we met every day after that. A week before I was due to return to Paris, I realised that I could not return without you, and so I proposed on the spot.’

‘And I accepted with alacrity, and we were married by special licence—that is something one can easily accomplish, if you have sufficient funds,’ Sophia added, her smile turning bitter. ‘But I could not travel with you immediately, because I had...’ She faltered. ‘Why could I not come with you?’

‘Perhaps you had family, loose ends to tie up?’

‘No, none. Recently I have lived alone.’ She blushed. ‘Oh, you meant did the Sophia who married you live alone. No, she wouldn’t have, would she, a genteel unmarried woman like that? She would have had a companion of some sort.’

Which made him wonder what sort of woman that made Sophia, if not a woman like that? She had been completely confident with his servants, and quite at home taking this long, elaborate dinner. Her manners, her general air of refinement, were completely natural, the product of good breeding and habit. His butler had taken to her at once, and like his chef, Fournier was another of the aristocracy’s old retainers. Who was she? He itched to ask, but it would be futile. Subtlety was the key to extracting any information from the real Sophia. For now, he must concentrate on the fictional one. ‘So, this companion of yours, she has to be settled elsewhere, then?’

‘In the country,’ Sophia said, nodding. ‘In a cottage of her own, in the village where she grew up. I could do that for her. As the wife of a wealthy man, it would be the least I could do. And I’d want to make sure she was comfortable too, wouldn’t I, since she had been my companion for so long? So I remained in England, counting the days until we were reunited.’

‘And I waited here in Paris, counting the days until you came.’

Sophia frowned. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone though?’

‘I did, I told Maxime, my oldest friend. It would have been he who drew up the settlements. I wanted to keep you a secret, to unveil you in person, knowing that when they saw you, everyone would understand in a moment why I fell so madly in love with you.’

‘And your servants?’

‘Our servants,’ he reminded her. ‘Have known of your arrival from the day after I received confirmation of your appointment, from The Procurer, but they won’t have talked.’

‘You are very confident of that.’

‘I have every reason to be. I pay very well, and I do not suffer insubordination.’

‘So your intention then, is to present me to Mademoiselle de Cressy...’

‘As soon as possible, now that we have our story straight.’

She smiled tentatively. ‘Do you ever shop for your own shirts?’

He laughed, as much with relief that their story had lifted her mood, as at her acumen. ‘Never, if I can avoid it. What if I had business with Berry Brothers, the wine merchants in St James’s Street—a company I do have dealings with, as it happens. Walking back to my town house, I’d go along Bond Street, wouldn’t I, and that was when I bumped into you. There, does that work?’

‘I think so. Will you relate it?’

‘We shall tell it together, just as we did there.’ Jean-Luc grinned. ‘Although we’ll have to add in a few loving glances.’

She clasped her hands together at her breast and fluttered her lashes at him. ‘Cornflower blue, the ribbons I was trying to match. You said they were the colour of my eyes.’

He smiled. ‘Ah no, I would not have said that, for your eyes are no such colour. I was wondering to myself only this morning, what colour are they, those beautiful eyes of my beautiful wife, for I would not call it turquoise or cornflower or even azure.’

‘What then would you call it, my love?’

She was not laughing, but there was laughter in her eyes, just as there had been before, when she had forgotten to act. Heat prickled down his back and his belly contracted as desire caught him in its grip. ‘I have no name for the colour, but it is the blue of the Mediterranean in the south on one of those perfect days, when the sun is almost white in the sky, and the sea glitters, and the heat makes your skin tingle.’

Sophia nodded. ‘I know,’ she said softly.

He leaned closer. She smelled of flowers, like an English springtime after the rain, but at the same time he could swear there was an intoxicating heat emanating from her. ‘You want to dive in,’ he said, ‘to feel the cool lap of the waves soothe your burning skin.’

‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘Like gossamer, that is how I always imagined it would be.’

Their knees were touching. He could sense the rise and fall of her breasts, only inches away from him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth. ‘Gossamer,’ Jean-Luc repeated. ‘No, it is like silk. Like your hair,’ he said, his fingers brushing one long strand which had escaped her coiffure, then trailing down her cheek, her neck, to rest on her shoulder.

He heard her sharp intake of breath and waited, but she did not move. ‘Jean-Luc, is this still—are we acting?’

He could lie, but that would be a big mistake. No matter how beguiled he was by her, her scent, her curves, the allure of her mouth, he could not pretend in order to take advantage. ‘I am not,’ he said, releasing her. ‘Not any more. I forgot myself. Forgive me.’

‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Sophia said, shaking out her skirts as she rose. ‘We immersed ourselves in our roles rather too enthusiastically, that is all.’

He chose not to contradict her. ‘You play yours to perfection. No one will doubt you. But it is very late, and we have a very full day tomorrow. Come, I will escort you to your chamber.’

He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, with her so tantalisingly close on the other side of the locked door. But at least tonight, it would be this astonishing creature who was to play his wife who would keep him awake, and not that other, deluded creature, the reason Sophia was here in the first place.

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