The Earl's Untouched Bride. Annie Burrows

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      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 into the room, Monsieur Bergeron replied, with a somewhat martyred air, ‘I suppose you wish to speak with me, my lord? Shall we retire to my study and leave the ladies in peace?’

      Charles raised one eyebrow, as though astonished by this suggestion. ‘Why, if you wish, of course I will wait with you while mademoiselle makes herself ready. Or had you forgot that I had arranged to take your daughter out driving this morning? Mademoiselle—’ he addressed Heloise directly, his expression bland ‘—I hope it will not take you long to dress appropriately? I do not like to keep my horses standing.’

      Until their eyes met she had hardly dared to let herself hope. But now she was sure. He was going to go through with it!

      ‘B…but it was Felice,’ Monsieur Bergeron blustered. ‘You had arranged to take Felice out driving. M…my lord, she is not here! I was sure you were aware that last night she…’

      ‘I am engaged to take your daughter out driving this morning,’ he continued implacably, ‘and take your daughter I shall. I see no reason to alter my schedule for the day. In the absence of Felice, Heloise must bear me company.’

      For a moment the room pulsed with silence, while everyone seemed to be holding their breath.

      Then Madame Bergeron sprang from the sofa, darted across the room, and seized Heloise by the wrist. ‘She will not keep you waiting above ten minutes, my lord.’ Then, to her husband, ‘What are you thinking of, not offering his lordship a seat? And wine—he must have a glass of wine while he is waiting!’ She pushed Heloise through the door, then paused to specify, ‘The Chambertin!’

      While Monsieur Bergeron stood gaping at him, Charles strolled over to the table at which Heloise had been sitting and began to idly flick through her sketchbook. It seemed to contain nothing but pictures of animals. Quite strange-looking animals, some of them, in most unrealistic poses. Though one, of a bird in a cage, caught his attention. The bedraggled specimen was chained to its perch. He could feel its misery flowing off the page. He was just wondering what species of bird it was supposed to represent, when something about the tilt of its head, the anguish burning in its black eyes, put him forcibly in mind of Heloise, as she had appeared earlier that day. His eyes followed the chain that bound the miserable-looking creature to its perch, and saw that it culminated in what looked like a golden wedding ring.

      His blood running cold, he flicked back a page, to a scene he had first supposed represented a fanciful scene from a circus. He could now perceive that the creature that was just recognisable as a lion, lying on its back with a besotted grin on its face, was meant to represent himself. The woman who was standing with her foot upon his chest, smiling with smug cruelty, was definitely Felice. He snapped the book shut and turned on Monsieur Bergeron.

      ‘I trust you have not made the nature of my interest in your elder daughter public?’

      ‘Alas, my lord,’ he shrugged, spreading his hands wide, ‘but I did give assurances in certain quarters that a match was imminent.’

      ‘To your creditors, no doubt?’

      ‘Debt? Pah—it is nothing!’ Monsieur Bergeron spat. ‘A man may recover from debt!’

      When Charles raised one disbelieving eyebrow, he explained, ‘You English, you do not understand how one must live in France. When power changes hands, those who support the fallen regime must always suffer from the next. To survive, a man must court friends in all camps. He must be sensitive to what is in the wind, and know the precise moment to jump…’

      In short the man was, like Talleyrand, ‘un homme girouette’, who was prepared, like a weather vane, to swing in whichever direction the wind blew.

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