Fairchild's Lady (Culper Ring Series) (5 page)

“Maman!”

The word was a plea, for what Fairchild could not be quite sure. For understanding, perhaps, or compassion.

Lady Poole’s face reflected back the same need. “I intended to, Julienne—at first. But things all looked so different once I was home again.
That life seemed so very far away. And Père, he refused to acknowledge that Edward was my husband and told everyone I had only just left Martinique. No one questioned it. And because you were a girl and Rouen’s estate had already gone to a male heir, I saw no harm…”

Julienne slid off her horse. She was silent, her face blank again, but Fairchild swore he felt her ache, felt her grasping at composure, at calmness for her mother’s sake. He dismounted too, though he made no other move when she walked only a few steps away and halted. At Lady Poole’s motion, he absently assisted her from her saddle.

The countess pressed a hand to her temple. “What is it Edward wants, monsieur?”

Fairchild looked from her to Julienne to the countryside. Somewhere out there, peasants could be rioting even now. Taking what their lords refused to give to keep their children from starving.

And were they not, would Lord Poole ever have made a move to regain the wife and child he had lost? Only God in heaven could know.

“He wants his wife and daughter back, my lady. A chance to prove to you that your love was not so fleeting, and to get to know Julienne. More, he wants you to be safe and fears, as I do, that France will not be able to keep you so much longer.”

Lady Poole was shaking her head long before he finished. “
Non
. I cannot just uproot us from our life. This is all Julienne has ever known. She is betrothed. We cannot—”

“Mère, stop.” Julienne turned to face them, her countenance as intent and beautiful as any granite statue in the grotto. She raised her chin and met Fairchild’s gaze. “I will go.”

M
ère’s mouth went slack as her eyes reflected disbelief, even alarm. But Julienne scarcely felt the sway of that. How could she, when this beautiful man stood before them and offered her everything for which she had been praying?

Escape. A new life. A chance to be someone other than the duc’s presumed mistress. And maybe, just maybe, to be something more besides. A daughter. A sister. And perhaps someday, if it was what the Lord willed, loved by a man who saw her heart.

“Julienne,
ma fille
, you cannot know what you say.” Mère reached out toward her, but she shook her head.

“I am not a child, Mère. I am five-and-twenty. I have been engaged, jilted—”

“You were
not
jilted.” Mère’s face went hard and pale. “Do not say such things.”

“I would have been, had François lived long enough.” Julienne looked up at the comte and found his gaze compassionate and a bit disbelieving. Her breath caught, her pulse sped. “I daresay we needn’t fear any gossip from the comte. He…wait. Who are you really? Not Charles Mercier, I suspect.”

He swept his hat off his head and bowed. “Isaac Fairchild at your service, Lady Julienne.”

Issac.
Oui
, it suited him better than Charles. She smiled and extended her hand. And tried to wrap her tongue around English words, though she hadn’t spoken them much since her days with her governess. “It is a pleasure to meet you. It seems I am Julienne Gates.”

His fingers closed around hers. “The pleasure is all mine, my lady.”

What was it about his hands that made her never want to let go of them? What was it about
him
that made her want to nestle into his side and hide her face in his broad chest? Surely if she did, nothing else would matter. The duc would cease to be. The rest of the world would fade away.

“Julienne,
non
.” The horror in her mother’s voice brought her gaze over—and she suspected it was no longer her declaration that she would go to England to which Mère objected. “You do not know this man. You—what exactly happened between you two at this masquerade at which you met?”

“Nothing, my lady,” Fairchild said with ease, a calming smile teasing those dimples out. “We shared one dance. Then a promenade through the garden.”

And fell in love. Julienne saw no point in denying it to herself any longer, not when he was by her side again. For the first time in far too long, the sunshine brightened her heart and the birdsong made her want to dance.

Mère hissed out a slow breath. “Julienne, what is the matter with you? You are affianced—”

“I am not.” Her fingers tightened around Isaac’s, and his returning squeeze lent her confidence. “How could I possibly be promised to a man not free to give one? I have never wanted to marry the duc, Mère, never. And I will not. Not now that I have a choice.”

Her mother shook her head with so much vigor that she had to reach up to anchor her hat. “Listen to yourself. You would cross the duc de Remi? You must not, or we will all pay.”

“Not if we are out of his reach. Maman, if we go to England—”

“I cannot!” The shout and wide eyes made her mother look more like a child than an esteemed matron of the court. More like a frightened bride than a widow.

Julienne released Isaac’s hand so she could wrap her arms around
her. “You can. You yourself said he is a good man. And he wants you back.”

“
Non
. He does not. I said things to him in my last letters he will not have forgiven. Made accusations…no. It has been too long. It is too late.”

“My lady.” Fairchild held out a hand, palm up in a gesture of pleading. “If all wrongs had not been forgiven, if it were too late, then he would not have begged me to risk a second trip into France to convince you to come home. He has regrets too—many, I would guess, though he did not share them all with me. But he did say his greatest one was not coming after you sooner and missing so many years of your lives.” His gaze locked on Julienne’s again. “And he expressed the deepest yearning to know his daughter.”

She gave her mother a squeeze. “I want to meet him. I want to know my father. This is an opportunity I never thought I would have.”

Mère pulled away and swiped at her eyes. “You speak as if it were so very simple. As if there were not a lifetime to be bridged, as if one of the most powerful men in France were not determined to marry you. As if we could leave with no consequences.”

Bitterness pounced and fought for control of Julienne’s tongue, making her want to point out that, no, leaving
always
had consequences, as her mother should have known twenty-five years ago, but she bit back the words and drew in a steadying breath. “I am willing to accept whatever comes from it.”

“Julienne.”

She shook her head again at the surprise in her mother’s tone. “All my life I have done exactly what you instructed, but I intend to do this with or without you. Know that as you consider your decision.”

“You baffle me.” Indeed, Mère frowned as she studied her and then Fairchild. “I never thought you prone to rash decisions. You cannot say within minutes of hearing a story that you will leave with no thought, no prayer. Not when it could well mean your life—socially, if not literally.”

How could Julienne explain that she
knew
this was the answer to her prayers without making her mother think her as impulsive as
she
had been in marrying Julienne’s father?

She opened her mouth to try, but Isaac spoke before she could. “I
am the first to grant the need for thought and prayer,” he said quietly, “but I beg you to think and pray quickly. France is ripe for uprising, and getting you to England will be difficult enough without that added to the mix.”

Mère’s hands raised in exasperation. “And so we should simply trust you? You, a total stranger? You could be a pretender claiming a false association with my husband, a pirate wanting to ransom us, a murderer interested only in luring us out here alone so you might—”

“Mère!” Julienne settled her hand on Isaac’s arm to comfort him, to assure him she believed no such nonsense. Though when she glanced at his face, he seemed more amused by the suggestions than offended.

He tilted his head and smiled. “I have faults aplenty, madame, but I must say this is the first anyone has thought to wonder if I am a pirate or his like.”

Her mother gave him a glare that had shriveled many a man in the court. Fairchild, however, did not so much as flinch, even when she added that low hum that sounded as though she were finding every imaginable flaw. “Then what are you, monsieur? Other than a spy.”

“I am
not
—” He came to an abrupt halt and drew in a quick breath. The muscle under Julienne’s hand tensed. “I am not a spy by profession. I am the grandson of a duke, the son of an earl.”

Her mother arched a single, deadly brow. “
First
son?”

Isaac parried the arch with one of his own. “Third.”

“So you have blood but no rank.” The wave of Mère’s hand made it seem as though that alone were reason to distrust him.

Yet he smiled again. “I have a rank, my lady. Though I doubt it will endear me to you. ’Tis brigadier general.”

Army? That ought to strike fear into Julienne’s heart, the realization that he had no doubt felled some of her countrymen, that he wore the uniform of her nation’s arch enemy.

But how could it, when she looked up into his face?
Non
. It would take a man of honor to rise to any rank of general, even a lesser one. Not to mention that his nation was also half hers, even if she had never realized it. He knew her brothers—
brothers
! And her father. He had risked his life to come here for them.

Her mother seemed none too impressed. “Why would you be
playing the spy then, monsieur? Surely it is beneath you, if you are what you say.”

Fairchild shrugged. “The request that sent me here some months ago was such that I could not refuse it.”

“Why?”

“For reasons I cannot disclose.”

Mère huffed. “Who made it of you?”

His smile faded. “I am not at liberty to say.”

“Tight-lipped, are you?”

Now sobriety took over his features, making him look wiser than his years. “I have learned the hard way to be so. Please, Lady Poole, I know you have no reason to trust me. But do pray, consider it. And take this.” He reached into his overcoat, withdrew a thick envelope, and held it out. “From your husband.”

Oh, the look on her mother’s face. Wonder joining with incredulity, caution swirling with hope. She traced a fingertip over the front as if it contained the secret to happiness.

Perhaps it did.

Julienne linked her hands over Isaac’s arm and watched the parade of feelings flit over Mère’s face for a long moment. A smile tickled her own lips. Many times over the years, the topic of remarriage had come up for her mother, a handsome woman still quite young. But always she had refused. Now Julienne understood why. She had a husband, one time had not obliterated from her heart despite the distance she had chosen.

Clearing both her throat and countenance, her mother tucked the letter into the pocket of her skirt and straightened her shoulders. “I shall indeed think and pray. But for now, we had best return.”

Had there been any logic to it, Julienne would have suggested they instead keep riding, through the countryside and the towns until Versailles was far behind them, until she could see freedom lapping along the shore.

But that wouldn’t do. So she merely exchanged a smile with Isaac and released him so he could help Mère onto her horse and then Julienne onto hers. His hands lingered a moment on her waist, and he looked about to speak.

“Let us hurry back,” Mère mother said, her voice once again controlled and even.

Fairchild only gave her a fleeting smile and moved to mount his horse. The ride back was far too quick, the crowds around them again far too soon.

Julienne ought to be used to the droves of people after so many years among them. In the last seven years she had scarcely left Versailles, lest her reputation get trampled beyond repair by the gossip that would spring up if she indulged in the privacy of Grandpère’s château. Often the lack of solitude grated, but never had it made her want to flee the way it did now when they trotted back to the stables.

She wanted life again. Her own, not this shadow she had been living. Not this mask she had been forced behind. Her gaze swept over the too-familiar palace grounds. So much it had to offer—apartments and gardens, tennis courts and stables, ballrooms and libraries. But would she miss it, if she went to England?

Non
. She might miss the château and the days of childhood long since put behind her. She might miss a few of the friends that remained steady and true. But not Versailles. Not the court.

Certainly not the duc.

Isaac’s hands slid around her waist before she was even aware of the horses having stopped. But his touch brought her back to the present, and she smiled into his eyes as he helped her down.

“I will convince her,” she swore in a low murmur when her feet touched the dirt. “Though it may take a few days.”

One corner of his mouth pulled up, and one hand lifted from her waist and moved as if to smooth back a curl that had come loose, though he halted before actually touching the lock. “I expected you would be the more difficult one to convince.”