Mary Brendan - The Silver Squire

She glanced up demurely, politely, from beneath the shielding brim of her bonnet. Her face swayed back at once and she felt as though ice had frozen her solid to the chair. Her ivory lids drooped slowly in horrified, disbelieving recognition. French count! Her fingers spasmed as she sensed a hysterical laugh bubbling. No wonder he had seemed familiar! No wonder she had thought she knew him! She did!

But he had changed. It wasn’t surprising she had not immediately been able to place him. His hair was no longer fair and stylishly short but long and white-blond, his complexion no longer city-pale but a deep golden-bronze.

An ostler at a rustic tavern had described him as Quality with a queer name…well, it had been perfectly correct. It was her whimsical romantic imagination that had concluded he must be a French nobleman instead of an English one.

On a misty September morning four days ago she had sensed meeting him somewhere before and fancied it to be in fiction rather than fact. Oh, how she wished that were so! For she had indeed seen him before. And on each occasion she had made it her business to insult him. Now she found herself sitting meekly in his house, hoping to be taken on. The sheer farce of it had the back of a hand pressing to her mouth to stifle a horrified choke.

She was aware of impeccably styled black hessian boots drawing into her line of vision. Please don’t let him recognise me, she silently prayed, casually swivelling sideways on her seat, away from him.

He changed direction, veering off to the console table she had recently admired. From beneath the brim of her bonnet she watched long buff-coloured legs turn, the toes of his boots point towards her again and knew he was studying her.

It’s been three years! she exhorted herself while an unsteady hand shielded her face by tidying stray tendrils of light tan hair into her dark tan bonnet. He’ll never recognise you. Or if he does…he’ll pretend he doesn’t. They weren’t married! This jolted into her consciousness at the same time. The woman’s name was French-sounding, too, but not the same as his! God in heaven, she was auditioning as a companion to one of his…his women! Perhaps also as tutor to one of his bastards!

She sensed a writhing, seething indignation mounting. Three years ago when they had come together in London as social equals he had managed to instil in her just the same angry emotion. The fact that he had always been perfectly civil whilst with her, never meriting her hostility and sarcasm, had always flustered and shamed her. She could neither justify her aggression to him, when he’d casually enquired why she liked to insult him, nor to herself, nor to her best friend, Victoria.

She explained it away easily to herself now: it had been simple disgust at his hypocrisy and his condescension. Suavely charming he might have been to such homely spinsters as she, who he no doubt believed secretly swooned at the memory of his smile, but she knew him for a lecherous degenerate and had not been too coy to hint as much. She would have told him outright, in no uncertain terms, had the opportunity ever arisen.

Much to her mother’s delight, he had seemed to show a friendly interest in her, but Emma knew it was all designing and insincere. For at that time his friend, Viscount Courtenay, had been laying siege to her own dear friend, Victoria Hart, and David had wanted Emma occupied so he could trap Victoria alone.

Despite the two men having infamously shocking reputations, they had been polite society’s most popular bachelors, keeping the ton in a constant state of fascinated curiosity as to their philandering and drunken brawling. No scandal had seemed base enough to deter top society hostesses from fawning over them and sniping at each other to secure their coveted presence at balls and soirées. Once they were lured across the threshold, no freshly circulating gossip regarding that week’s carousing had deterred ambitious mamas or their debutante daughters from beelining towards them with seriously immodest intent.

Emma felt her face stinging with heat on recalling how, at her twenty-fourth-birthday ball, her own mother had gladly foisted her upon this man as though she had been so much unsaleable baggage. Yet even now, despite that mortifying memory…or perhaps because of it…she could feel again the aggravating need to throw back her head and antagonise him. Perhaps acidly comment that it was obvious his morals hadn’t improved along with his looks since last they’d met. What? What concern or consequence were his looks?

Her lids pressed closed again as the still silence throbbed with more intensity than the cased clock in the corner. Why won’t he go? Why won’t he say something? I know he’s staring, she fretted.

‘Are you waiting for Madame Dubois?’

His low, level tone was exactly the same; still it resulted in a jump and fluttering stomach. Her bonnet nodded at him. ‘Yes, sir,’ was stiltedly muttered in a voice even she didn’t recognise. He remained quiet on learning that. Relief sang through her. Had he remembered her he would surely have mentioned the fact or swiftly removed himself.

Dainty footsteps tripped along the corridor and Emma managed to face the woman approaching without once revealing her face to the man standing opposite.

‘So sorry to ‘ave kept you waiting, mademoiselle…Are you still ‘ere, chéri?’ The woman interrupted her address to Emma on noticing the man, her voice taking on a completely different, husky inflection. The hem of a rose-pink gown was immediately sweeping away again as, ignoring Emma’s presence, Yvette Du-bois diverted her attention to him.

Involuntarily, Emma’s head raised a little to watch them. She stared at the blonde woman’s pretty profile, a delicate, pleased flush on a softly rounded cheek as she talked in a quiet, pouty way to her lover. An arch smile, then Yvette was onto tiptoe to whisper in his ear while a small finger trailed his dark sleeve.

Richard Du Quesne frowned at his mistress as though this untimely display of intimacy irritated him, then an icy grey glance shifted sideways. Emma was too late to avert her face and their eyes met and held.

He didn’t know her! There was nothing at all in his expression that showed the least interest or recognition. The release was enervating, as was the desperation to be away from this house, these people. She glanced at her nervous hands on her lap, wondering how on earth she could extricate herself.

Yvette realised straight away that she had failed to lure Richard’s eyes from the mouse-like creature seated on the hall chair. She was incessantly alert to a possible rival deposing her. Within a second a very female assessment had raked her prospective employee from head to toe. With intense satisfaction she concluded that the woman was as drab as she could possibly have wished, and no threat whatsoever.

A tilted blonde head draped ringlets over a pretty pink shoulder and a tight, malicious smile formed a rosebud of pink lips. Richard was unused to being in the company of such dowdy women and probably feeling some curiosity and sympathy for the thin little thing. La pauvre looked as though a nourishing meal would go down well, Yvette spitefully noted as her blue eyes narrowed on those fragile white wrists resting neatly on the girl’s duncoloured lap. It made her happily examine her own plump, bejewelled hands as she said sweetly, ‘I must apologise for the delay, ma’mselle, and for ‘aving forgotten your name. A moment ago I ‘ad it and yet now…it is gone.’ She gave a careless, continental shrug. ‘Miss Woodman, is it, per’aps?’ she guessed a trifle impatiently when Emma didn’t immediately offer up her identity.

‘Yes,’ Emma confirmed after a further silent second. ‘Miss Eleanor Woodman,’ she quietly, firmly lied, and raised her face to them both.