Regency Surrender: Passion And Rebellion. Louise Allen

got to his feet, his eyes suddenly blazing with contempt. ‘It’s not just being rich that is the problem though, is it? You run businesses. You own factories and mills and mines and God knows what else. And you sit here, in this stuffy little town, hidden away like some...spider, spinning a web. Aye, an invisible web, at that. For nobody is supposed to know that it is a woman at the heart of all this enterprise. I never saw it before, but the whole purpose is to make fools of men, isn’t it? You delight in making fools of us all. Well, you’ve certainly made a fool of me.’

      ‘No, I haven’t. Truly I haven’t. I’ve explained why I didn’t want you to know about it, at first.’

      ‘Not just at first. Even after we’d become lovers. Even when you spurned me, you never admitted the true reason. And it is what you thought, isn’t it? That I’m some contemptible fortune hunter. Little things you said to me, your attitude whenever I touched on making our relationship permanent, they should have warned me.’

      ‘Yes, but—’

      ‘Do you think I could want to marry a woman for her money, again? After what I went through last time? Do you know what it does to a man’s pride to be labelled a fortune hunter?’

      She hadn’t. But she was beginning to get an idea.

      ‘The last thing I want is to get leg-shackled to another woman who sees nothing wrong with telling lies to get what she wants. Who has so little integrity she has to buy friends and can only keep them with promise of advancement.’

      What?

      ‘Nathan, you don’t mean that,’ she managed to gasp through the fingers of dread that were squeezing her throat. ‘I wasn’t lying to you...’ His face shuttered.

      ‘Not exactly...’

      With a muttered oath he turned and strode for the door.

      ‘You were right all along,’ he said coldly, as he set his hand to the door latch. ‘We can’t go back. We aren’t the same people we were when we first met. I...’ His face twisted. ‘I thought I’d fallen in love with you, all over again, in Paris. I thought you’d got over the pain I put you through and had grown into a strong, admirable woman. A woman I would have been proud to call my wife, and bear my children. I thought...’

      He closed his eyes, and shook his head.

      ‘I might have known it was too good to be true. It wasn’t real, was it? None of it was real. I’ve been chasing after a dream. Like some...’

      He straightened up and opened his eyes. Eyes which had gone dead and hard.

      ‘Forgive me for taking up your valuable time. I will leave you now. And will not bother you again.’

      ‘Nathan...’ She tried to tell him to stop, but her words got tangled up in a sob. She slumped down on to her chair, all strength gone from her legs, as she heard the front door slam behind him.

      Oh, why hadn’t she said yes, when she had the chance? If she’d said yes to him in Paris, and then explained about her money, he wouldn’t have flown into a rage like this, would he?

      Would he?

       Chapter Fifteen

      Shock had taken her legs out from under her. She could no more have run after Nathan and begged him not to go than she could have flown to the moon.

      One minute she’d thought all her dreams had come true. Next moment she’d descended into a hellish nightmare. She’d thought Nathan loved her just as she was, but then he’d said he’d never really known her. That he couldn’t marry her. That they weren’t the same people who’d fallen in love with each other in their youth.

      Was he right? Was it too late?

      She shut her eyes and bowed her head.

      Had they only imagined they’d fallen in love again, in Paris, because they’d both been pretending to be something they were not?

      No...no! It was real. She’d had all these long, lonely weeks to ponder it all and she knew it was real. Nathan hadn’t had time to think it through, that was all. She dashed a tear from her eye. He’d lashed out—the way she’d done when he’d shocked her with that confession about why they’d broken up the first time.

      She leapt to her feet. He’d come after her when she’d lost her temper with him. When her habit of being suspicious had made her afraid to believe in their love. Now it was her turn to go after him and talk some sense into him.

      She was halfway across the room to ring for a maid to fetch her coat and bonnet, when she decided she hadn’t the patience to wait that long. Far quicker to run upstairs and plunge her arms into her coat herself. Stuff her bonnet on her head as she hurried down the stairs and tie the ribbons as she trotted down the garden path.

      She was in such a hurry to catch Nathan and tell him that he was wrong that she didn’t see Mrs Podmore coming up the front path until she almost barrelled into her.

      ‘Oh, good. I have just caught you,’ said Mrs Podmore, tilting her umbrella to one side to make room for Amethyst. ‘I can see you are in a hurry, but this won’t take a moment—’

      ‘I’m so sorry, but I haven’t time to stop and talk today.’

      She tried to step round Mrs Podmore, but the path was narrow, and her visitor determined.

      ‘Wherever you are going, it cannot be so urgent that you have forgotten your umbrella.’

      ‘It is that urgent,’ she countered. ‘And I hadn’t even noticed it was snowing.’ Only tiny specks of it, but the first real snow of the winter, nevertheless.

      As she looked up in wonder, she had a brilliant idea. She stopped trying to sidestep Mrs Podmore’s substantial bulk and looked her straight in the face with what she hoped was a confiding air.

      ‘You see, everything you have ever warned me about has come to pass.’

      ‘Oh?’ For once Mrs Podmore didn’t seen to know what to say.

      ‘You have been right to warn me, so many times, just how dangerous it is to be without adequate chaperonage.’

      ‘Was I? I mean, of course I was. But—’

      ‘Yes. You see, while Fenella was preoccupied with her own courtship, and there was nobody to make me behave...’ she lowered her voice ‘...I did something quite scandalous.’

      Mrs Podmore instinctively leaned closer to hear the whispered confidence, her eyes wide with curiosity.

      ‘I went to Mr Brown’s studio, the one he had in Paris, quite alone, to have my portrait painted.’

      ‘No!’ Her eyebrows shot up and disappeared into the ruffles under her bonnet.

      ‘Oh, yes. We were alone in his studio for hours at a time. And worse, he persuaded me to pose for him...naked.’

      ‘Naked?’ Mrs Podmore screeched the word, her shock temporarily robbing her of discretion. The baker’s boy, who’d been walking past, jumped and dropped his tray of rolls, which went tumbling all over the street.

      ‘And, of course, you must know what inevitably followed.’

      Mrs Podmore’s eyes grew rounder still. Amethyst could see her mind racing.

      ‘I cannot bring myself to say what I fear you are alluding to.’

      ‘Well, I can,’ said Amethyst cheerfully. ‘We embarked upon a wildly passionate affair.’

      ‘A what?’

      The baker’s boy’s head popped up over the hedge, his eyes wide with glee.

      ‘And now he’s pursued me all the way to England. Don’t you think that’s romantic?’