The Earl's Untouched Bride. Annie Burrows

stumbled to the door. She had offended him somehow, by being so open about her feelings of revulsion for the man her father had decided she should marry. She had staked everything on being honest with the Earl of Walton.

      But she had lost.

      Chapter Two

      It came as something of a shock, once the door had closed on Heloise’s dejected little figure, when Conningsby stepped in over the windowsill.

      ‘My God,’ the man blustered. ‘If I had known this room overlooked the street, and I was to have spent the entire interview wedged onto a balcony when I fully expected to be able to escape through your gardens…’

      ‘And the curtains were no impediment to your hearing every single word, I shouldn’t wonder?’ The Earl sighed. ‘Dare I hope you will respect the confidentiality of that conversation?’

      ‘I work for the diplomatic service!’ Conningsby bristled. ‘Besides which, no man of sense would wish to repeat one word of that absurd woman’s proposition!’

      Although Charles himself thought Heloise absurd, for some reason he did not like hearing anyone else voice that opinion. ‘I think it was remarkably brave of her to come here to try to save her family from ruin.’

      ‘Yes, my lord. If you say so,’ the other man conceded dubiously.

      ‘I do say so,’ said the Earl. ‘I will not have any man disparage my fiancée.’

      ‘You aren’t really going to accept that outrageous proposal?’ Conningsby gasped.

      Charles studied the tips of his fingers intently.

      ‘You cannot deny that her solution to my…uh…predicament, will certainly afford me a great deal of solace.’

      ‘Well,’ said Conningsby hesitantly, loath to offend a man of Lord Walton’s reputation, ‘I suppose she is quite a captivating little thing, in her way. Jolly amusing. She certainly has a gift for mimicry that almost had me giving myself away! Had to stuff a handkerchief in my mouth to choke down the laughter when she aped your voice!’

      The Earl stared at him. Captivating? Until this morning he had barely looked at her. Like a little wren, she hid in the background as much as she could. And when he had looked he had seen nothing to recommend her. She had a beak of a nose, set above lips that were too thin for their width, and a sharp little chin. Her hair was a mid-brown, without a hint of a curl to render it interesting. Her eyes, though…

      Before this morning she had kept them demurely lowered whenever he glanced in her direction. But today he had seen a vibrancy burning in their dark depths that had tugged a grudging response from him.

      ‘What she may or may not be is largely irrelevant,’ he said coldly. ‘What just might prompt me to take her to wife is that in so doing I shall put Du Mauriac’s nose out of joint.’

      Conningsby laughed nervously. ‘Surely you can’t wish to marry a woman just so that some other fellow cannot have her?’

      The Earl returned his look with a coldness of purpose that chilled him. ‘She does not expect me to like her very much. You heard what she said. She will not even be surprised if I come to detest her so heartily that I beat her. All she wants is the opportunity to escape from an intolerable position. Don’t you think I should oblige her?’

      ‘Well, I…’ Conningsby ran his finger round his collar, his face growing red.

      ‘Come, now, you cannot expect me to stand by and permit her father to marry her off to that butcher, can you? She does not deserve such a fate.’

      No, Conningsby thought, she does not. But then, would marriage to a man who only wanted revenge on her former suitor, a man without an ounce of fondness for her, be any less painful to her in the long run?

      Heloise gripped her charcoal and bent her head over her sketchpad, blotting out the noise of her mother’s sobs as she focussed on her drawing. She had achieved nothing. Nothing. She had braved the streets, and the insults of those soldiers, then endured the Earl’s mockery, for nothing. Oh, why, she thought resentfully, had she ever thought she might be able to influence the intractable Earl one way or another? And how could she ever have felt sorry for him? Her fingers worked furiously, making angry slashes across the page. He had coaxed her most secret thoughts from her, let her hope he was feeling some shred of sympathy, and then spurned her. The only good thing about this morning’s excursion was that nobody had noticed she had taken it, she reflected, finding some satisfaction in creating a most unflattering caricature of the Earl of Walton in the guise of a sleekly cruel tabby cat. She could not have borne it if anyone had found out where she had been. It had been bad enough when her maman had laid the blame for Felice’s elopement at her door—as though she had ever had the least influence with her headstrong and pampered little sister!

      With a few deft strokes Heloise added a timorous little mouse below the grinning mouth of the tabby cat, then set to work fashioning a pair of large paws. Folly—sheer folly! To walk into that man’s lair and prostrate herself as she had!

      There was a knock on the front door.

      Madame Bergeron blew her nose before wailing, ‘We are not receiving visitors today. I cannot endure any more. They will all come, you mark my words, to mock at us…’

      Heloise rose to her feet to relay the information to their manservant before he had a chance to open the door. Since her seat was by the window, where she could get the most light for her sketching, she had a clear view of their front step.

      ‘It is the Earl!’ she gasped, her charcoal slipping from her suddenly nerveless fingers.

      ‘It cannot be!’ Her papa sprang from the chair in which he had been slumped, his head in his hands. ‘What can he want with us, now?’ he muttered darkly, peering through the window. ‘I might have known a man of his station would not sit back and take an insult such as Felice has dealt him. He will sue us for breach of promise at the very least,’ he prophesied, as Heloise sank to the floor to retrieve her pencil. ‘Well, I will shoot myself first, and that will show him!’ he cried wildly, while she regained her seat, bending her head over her sketchbook as much to counteract a sudden wave of faintness as to hide the hopeful expression she was sure must be showing on her face.

      ‘Noo!’ From the sofa, her maman began to weep again. ‘You cannot abandon me now! How can you threaten to leave me after all we have been through?’

      Instantly contrite, Monsieur Bergeron flung himself to his knees beside the sofa, seizing his wife’s hand and pressing it to his lips. ‘Forgive me, my precious.’

      Heloise admired her parents for being so devoted to each other, but sometimes she wished they were not quite so demonstrative. Or that they didn’t assume, because she had her sketchpad open, that they could behave as though she was not there.

      ‘You know I will always worship you, my angel.’ He slobbered over her hand, before clasping her briefly to his bosom. ‘You are much too good for me.’

      Now, that was something Heloise had long disputed. It was true that her mother should have been far beyond her father’s matrimonial aspirations, since she was a younger daughter of the seigneur in whose district he had been a lowly but ambitious clerk. And that it might have been reprehensible of him to induce an aristocrat to elope with him. But it turned out to have been the most sensible thing her mother had ever done. Marriage to him had saved her from the fate many others of her class had suffered.

      The affecting scene was cut short when the manservant announced the Earl of Walton. Raising himself tragically to his full height, Monsieur Bergeron declared, ‘To spare you pain, my angel, I will receive him in my study alone.’

      But before he had even reached the door Charles himself strolled in, his gloves clasped negligently in one hand. Bowing punctiliously to Madame Bergeron, who was struggling to rise from a mound of crushed cushions, he drawled, ‘Good morning, madame, monsieur.’

      Blocking his pathway further