Nina Beaumont - Surrender The Heart

“I’m sorry, papa.” She turned to him and put a soothing hand on his arm. “What were you saying?”

“I don’t want you dancing with him again,” he repeated petulantly. “We didn’t bring you to Paris to fall into the hands of some—some adventurer,” Valmont continued. “I want you to have a good, French husband.”

“Papa—“

“I want your promise, Ariane, that you will do as I say.” Because he had drunk enough champagne to make him feel expansive, but not enough to sour his temper, his tone wheedled rather than commanded.

“I am here in Paris, papa, because you wished it.” She gave her father a direct look and felt a little spurt of guilty satisfaction when he lowered his eyes. “The least you can do is let me enjoy myself.”

She turned away, refraining from adding that she planned to leave Paris as unencumbered by a husband as she had arrived.

“Ariane—”

The Comtesse de Valmont tucked her hand into her husband’s arm and screwed up the courage to speak. “Leave her be, Pierre,” she whispered. “The more you storm against him, the more attractive he will seem to her.” She remembered quite well how her own father had stormed against the feckless, volatile Comte de Valmont.

Ariane stared after Christopher Blanchard’s retreating figure, a plan forming in her mind.

And she was not the only one who stared after him.

It was too much to be borne. The Marquise de Blan-chard closed her eyes. The moment she had seen him she had known with an absolute certainty that this man was Charles’s son. Oh, he was taller and broader, but the handsome features were too similar to her husband’s to be anyone else. The man whom she had loved. The man who had left her for another woman. She had never forgiven him for being either.

Hatred, old and new, was bitter on her tongue as she approached him.

“You are Charles de Blanchard’s son. Do not bother to deny it.”

The voice behind him was soft, but it dripped ice and venom in equal parts. Instinctively knowing whom the voice belonged to, Chris turned around to face the woman whose stubbornness and pride had condemned him to being a bastard. Reminding himself that he was a grown man and that his existence had, after all, condemned her to being an abandoned wife, he bowed.

“I would not think of denying the truth, madame la marquise.”

“You know who I am?” Her small, round black eyes, which gave her the aspect of a plump bird, narrowed. “How?”

“My father had a miniature.”

“He kept my portrait?” Her thin mouth, the only thin feature she possessed, curved in a triumphant smile.

“He kept a portrait of his children.” Chris kept his voice carefully neutral. “I suspect your presence there was incidental.”

The smile froze briefly to a grimace before it disappeared.

“What are you doing here in Paris?” The marquise heard the ebony slats of her fan groan under the pressure of her fingers and forced her hands to relax. “If you have come here to embarrass me, embarrass my children, I shall—”

“I advise you not to threaten me, madame la marquise. It is not something I take kindly to.”

“I will do as I please,” she said, choosing to ignore the steel beneath the mild tone. “I do not take kindly to the presence of my husband’s bastard son, fathered on a woman of easy virtue.”

His pale green eyes iced over so quickly that it took all her control not to step back before the cold, dangerous fury she saw there.

“Be grateful, madame la marquise —” although his tone was almost without inflection, he managed to make the title sound like an insult “—that we are in public and that I do not choose to make a scene.” He paused for a moment to make certain that he had been understood. “I will not be that lenient again.”

Slowly Chris turned away and went in search of brandy to wash away the memory of his mother’s tears and all the old childhood hurts that were suddenly clogging his throat.

With an outraged gasp Odile de Blanchard watched Charles’s bastard turn his back on her. Catching sight of her country cousin, Pierre, across the room, she hurried toward him to tell him just who his daughter had been dancing with.

Ariane had always prided herself on her ability to give her attention to more than one activity at a time. So while she whirled around in a succession of waltzes and polkas and quadrilles, while she carried on one conversation after another empty of everything but a little light flirtation, her mind clicked away efficiently.

Deciding that she did not have the patience to wait for the last waltz, she took advantage of the intermission between sets to look for Roger de Monnier. He was talking to his sister, she saw. Well, it could not be helped, she thought, and it really did not matter. Justine would know soon enough that she had no intention of taking her advice.

“May I interrupt?”

“You’re not interrupting, Ariane.” Justine hooked her arm around Ariane’s. “In fact, we were just talking about you.”

Ariane raised her eyes heavenward. “I can imagine.”

“I apologize for what I said, but you have no idea how people talk here in Paris.”

“Well,” Ariane said, “they’re going to have to talk some more.” Giving Justine’s arm a pat, she turned to Roger. “Would you give Monsieur Blanchard a message for me, Roger?”

“Of course.” Roger smiled brightly. Perhaps he would have a chance with the young countess after all.

“Please tell him that I would like to speak to him during the next intermission.”

“But—” He threw a helpless look at his sister.

“Please, Roger.”

With a bow Roger left the two young women.

“But Ariane, don’t you understand—”

“I understand perfectly.” Ariane smiled. “But let me explain so that you do.” Seeing yet another eligible young man bearing down on them, she deliberately turned away, pulling Justine along with her.

“I am here in Paris because my parents decided I could no longer do without a husband. But I have no intention of saddling myself with one. Thus it is of no import whether people gossip about me or not. Do you understand now?”

“You don’t want a husband?” Justine stared at Ariane with something resembling horror. “Ever?”

“Ever.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Justine,” she said with a touch of impatience. “I am twenty-five. I’ve lived as I please for a long time and I have no intention of changing that.”

“Oh, pooh.” Justine wiggled her fingers as if she were chasing a pesky fly. “The empress was twenty-six when she married, and from what one hears, she lived as she pleased and she still does.”

Ariane shook her head. “I want my life to stay just as it is. I love my home, my land.” Her eyes softened as she thought of the endless fields. “You have no idea how beautiful it is.” For a moment she considered explaining how she had made a moderately prosperous estate into very wealthy one, by running it behind her father’s back, but she rejected the notion. It was not something Justine would understand.

“And I have no desire to have a husband who will only want to mold me into an obedient wife.” Never, she thought, never did she want to be like her mother, who had no life but what her husband chose to give her.

“But what does Christopher Blanchard have to do with all this?”

“I need a smoke screen, Justine.”

The girl sighed dramatically. “I don’t understand a word.”

“Don’t worry.” Ariane patted Justine’s arm. “The main thing is that Christopher Blanchard understands.” It occurred to her that she was playing with fire, but, intent on her purpose, she pushed the thought away.