The Secret Lover Read online

  “Ach,” Honorine said with a dismissive flick of her wrist.

  “I cannot!”

  “Pourquoi?” Honorine demanded, as if she hadn’t the vaguest idea why, watching as Fabrice executed a perfect twist in the air, landing gracefully on one leg. “Ooh, très bien!” she called out to him.

  “Because,” Sophie said low, ignoring Fabrice and staring pointedly at Honorine. The woman knew her entire history, knew of the whole sordid scandal that had taken her from England in the first place. How could she suggest Sophie return?

  Honorine shrugged. “Because? This is all you say?”

  “Because? Because of the scandal!” Sophie whispered hotly, wanting very much at that moment to put her hands around Honorine’s neck and squeeze tightly.

  “Only that?” Honorine snorted at the same moment Monsieur LaForge suddenly went down behind her, one leg through the ice.

  “Only that?” Sophie fairly shrieked.

  Honorine bent once to touch her toes, then with arms akimbo, glided backward, oblivious as her guests rushed to where Monsieur LaForge was half submerged in the pond’s icy waters. “But the smell of le printemps is in this air, non? I do not want this Norway. It is too cold!”

  “The smell of spring is most certainly not in the air!” Sophie snapped, folding her arms across her middle, only vaguely aware that Fabrice, Roland, and Monsieur Fabre were using a tree limb to leverage Monsieur LaForge from his icy trap. “And what of Monsieur Kor—”

  “Phht,” Honorine spat with disgust, and threw up her hand as she turned away from Sophie toward the commotion. “How lovely is London now, I remember very well,” she continued, idly watching the rescue of Monsieur LaForge, who had now managed to get both his legs into the hole and was clinging to the limb for dear life. “We shall wear our new chapeaux, will we not?”

  “No, we will not.”

  “We shall of course! You must, Sofia, for we cannot here find a man for you.”

  Sophie would kill her. “I don’t want a man, Honorine.”

  “What is this? Of course you do, all les femmes want this! It is as God made us. We live better and longer with many lovemakings, and besides, you cannot allow this past to rule you always, chérie.”

  As if she had any choice. As if she hadn’t practically been banished from England for what she had done. But that was beside the point. “My brother will not allow it,” she insisted as they dragged Monsieur LaForge across the ice.

  “Nonsense. He has given his permission,” Honorine said, turning carefully to see the rescue. “Ah, poor Monsieur LaForge! This water it is very cold!” she said, and skated off before Sophie could find her tongue to speak, leaving her to stand speechless on the banks of the pond in horrified silence, unwilling, unable to accept this news. It could not be true. It could not be true!

  All right—she closed her eyes, pressed her fingers to her temples—she was panicking for naught. Even on the very remote possibility Honorine had somehow conjured up the discipline to actually write Julian, was Sophie to have no say in it? Lord God, how did they think she would ever face her old friends? How would she look at members of the haut ton knowing they all knew every sordid little detail of her past? She could not bear it. She could not bear to see the censure in their expressions again. She had lived through her own personal hell in London, and there was nothing in this world that could make her go back.

  She watched as Honorine grabbed onto Roland and peered into the hole Monsieur LaForge had created.

  She did not want to leave here. She loved the relative obscurity of this place, the fact that they were—all of them, really—a little band of outcasts from society, trapped by their own private scandals at the top of the world. It made them alike, made them less eager to judge one another. They belonged together here. She did not want to leave and she most certainly did not want to go to England.

  How ridiculous! Of course she wasn’t going back! After eight years, she was not going back! All this preposterous talk was probably something as simple as Honorine misinterpreting some correspondence from Eugenie.

  A thought struck her; Sophie blinked, smiled in relief. Yes, of course! That was the problem here—a simple misunderstanding. There could be no other explanation.

  Her sense of direction tentatively restored, she picked up her skirts and marched from the gathering, ignoring Arnaud’s call to come back and skate.

  Chapter Two

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  CHTEAU LA CLAIRE, NORMANDY, FRANCE

  NOT ONLY WOULD Julian give his permission for her to return home, he had already done so, just as Honorine had claimed. In fact, he had personally come to France just to see them home—another little surprise that had Sophie almost apoplectic.

  It was bad enough to have to leave Norway and the ancient corridors of the old Lillehallen estate where they had lived; it was the one place she had enjoyed above all others in her seven years with Honorine. Arnaud had wailed like a child with only Madame Riveau to comfort him the morning she and Honorine, along with Fabrice and Roland—who accompanied them everywhere—had climbed into the traveling chaise that would take them to a ship bound for the coast of Belgium. Sophie felt like wailing, too. She felt the chaos of her emotion boiling beneath the surface—it seemed that in going back, she was returning to the fires that surrounded the damned.

  When they had at last set sail, Sophie had stood bundled in fur watching the rugged coastline of Norway grow smaller and smaller until she could no longer see it through her tears.

  But even leaving the relative sanctuary of the walls of Lillehallen was not as great a trauma as the realization Honorine had actually written Julian. Not only that, he had agreed to her ridiculous scheme and had hied himself across the Channel so that they could all skip merrily back to London. It was as if the whole world had gone suddenly and completely mad. Had they all forgotten what had happened eight years ago? Did they think she could just waltz into the drawing rooms of the haut ton without a care?

  Sophie became completely unhinged at the prospect after Eugenie calmly explained it all to her during a game of croquet one day.

  “You’ve all quite lost your minds,” she said flatly to Eugenie, and placing her foot on Eugenie’s blue ball, nestled against her bright red one, whacked the thing across the lawn.

  “We’ve given the matter much thought,” Eugenie responded calmly.

  “It’s impossible—”

  “Claudia was very persuasive.” Eugenie sipped her wine, then exchanged the glass for a mallet the footman held out to her. “I think she is right, really,” she continued. “It has been eight years since…well, since…” She paused to hit her blue ball smoothly through the next two wickets.

  Not that there was really any need to repeat what everyone knew. It had been eight years since Sophie had fled the man with whom she had eloped, then sought a parliamentary divorce and caused the worst of all Mayfair scandals.

  “Really, darling, you cannot avoid it forever; none of us can. This is an opportune time. It’s just before the Season begins—there won’t be so many people about—and really, the prospects for engagements are rather limited, what with Madame Fortier and all.”

  With Madame Fortier and all, her prospects of engagements would be broadened beyond the family’s wildest imaginations! Speaking of whom…Sophie glanced up at the sound of very heated French being spoken, to where Honorine and Louis Renault, Eugenie’s husband, argued over the croquet game. As she watched, Honorine whacked her ball so hard that it flew into the hedgerow. Louis’s grumbling could be heard across the entire river valley as he stomped off to retrieve it while Honorine casually studied a cuticle.

  “Your turn, dear,” Eugenie reminded her. “She does seem quite devoted to you,” she added, looking at Honorine. “I am sure she will keep a watchful eye.”

  Eugenie had no idea what she was saying. Sophie aimed her mallet and swung with a little too much gusto. The red ball made it through one wicket, but was thwarted by Eugen
ie’s ball before making the next.

  “Ooh, what fun!” Eugenie laughed, and moved languidly to her ball, which she once again tapped through the wickets.

  What a ridiculous game! Sophie sighed irritably. “Genie, please listen to me. I don’t want to go to London. I am perfectly happy in France.”

  “Of course you want to go to London!” Eugenie said, as if that were the most patently ridiculous thing she had ever heard in all her life. “You are English. You can hardly gallivant across the world all your life, can you? There is no better way for you to return home. If you were to reside with Julian and Claudia, or even Ann, it would be remarked. But with Madame Fortier, why, your presence may not be generally remarked a’tall! Of course you will go! You can’t hide yourself away from your homeland or your family forever, Sophie. You could not ask for a better circumstance, not really, not after your misstep.”

  Her misstep.

  The ton did not forget. Yet her family had nonetheless convinced themselves it was safe for her to return, just as long as she did not think to enter society in any “remarkable” way. Even worse, not one of them had thought to inquire as to her desires.

  Ah, but that had been the way of her life, had it not? The youngest and plainest of them all, the one who needed constant governing. Well, she was a grown woman now, one who had traveled the world over as Honorine Fortier’s companion, and her family would do well to stop treating her like a child. And Sophie might very well have taken issue with Eugenie on that important point, right then and there in the middle of that insufferable game of croquet, but for one small problem—she had not the vaguest idea what she desired.

  She swung her mallet; the ball scudded across the grass before splashing loudly into the fishpond.

  How she despised this insipid game.

  “Perhaps if you didn’t try so hard. You always try too hard,” Eugenie offered, and politely exchanged her mallet for her wineglass as Sophie stalked off to retrieve her ball. Another string of colorful French prompted her to look over her shoulder just as Eugenie handed her wine to the footman and picked up her skirts. “Louis, darling, not with the mallet, if you please,” she called, and glided to where Louis was threatening to smash the croquet wickets as Honorine stood by, watching his tantrum with a look of pure tedium.

  It was the perfect opportunity for escape.

  Sophie continued walking right past her ball and the fishpond, headed in no particular direction except away from all those who claimed to know what was best for her. Her mind was consumed with the indecision and confusion that had come over her the moment Honorine had mentioned London.

  She desperately wanted to see England again, but she just as desperately dreaded the prospect. It hadn’t been so long that she couldn’t recall, rather vividly, thank you, how people had looked at her those last few weeks in London, morbid curiosity and censure so plainly evident in their expressions. The ton fed like wolves on scandals such as hers, devouring it until there was nothing left but a few details to pick over. How well the scandal had held up to the test of time? Did they truly remember? Could she go to London and risk bringing dishonor to her family once again?

  But she missed her home! In spite of her attempts to convince herself otherwise over the years, deep down she yearned for her home like a child for an absent mother. There were days she longed to walk on English soil, to smell the salt air of the sea, to see the tall, stately trees surrounding Kettering House, the splendor of St. James Square, the endless green lawns of Hyde Park.

  There was so much she missed! Simple things, really, such as speaking her native tongue, or the roses that bloomed beneath the sitting room window at Kettering House, or the way her Aunt Violet snored when she napped after luncheon. And Tinley, the family butler, who had died last fall after more than forty years in their service. She had never even bid him farewell.

  So much she missed, yet so much she feared, she thought morosely as she reached the old fountain on the east lawn, that she did not know quite what to do with herself.

  Sophie paused, looked behind her. Louis and Honorine were still arguing. As she watched them, she was suddenly struck with the monumental realization that she had never really known what to do with herself. For eight and twenty years now, it seemed as if she had been searching for her place in this world, and instead of growing stronger, she was less certain of who she was or where she belonged each passing year. Sir William, the scandal, her exile…all of it had created the chaos deep within her, until she no longer knew who Sophie Dane was. Or wanted to be.

  Certainly nothing pointed to that more painfully than her infatuation with William Stanwood.

  How long ago that seemed now.

  She had been searching then, too. She had never really fit in with the ton, and Sir William had paid her kind attention at a point in time it was clear she would have no true suitors. Her infatuation had been instant, her relief that someone had noticed her overpowering. She had been naively blind to his motives, blind to her own wealth, which he had so blatantly coveted. Blind to it all—she, Sophie Elise Dane, the youngest sister of the powerful and influential Earl of Kettering, had eloped with the bastard, had run away when he beat her, and then had sought the unmentionable, positively shameful, parliamentary divorce.

  Oh yes, the most scandalous of scandals, a slap to the face of the ton and everything it stood for. She had eloped with a known blackguard, had endured his beatings, had risked the consequences of her escape, then had allowed her brother to drag her name through the high-profile mud of the ton in pursuit of a parliamentary divorce. It was the only way in which she could be completely free of Stanwood and protect what little of her inheritance he had not squandered.

  The whole, sordid scandal had cost her family standing and had made her a pariah among the English aristocracy.

  She had been sent to France, effectively banished from the ton’s sight. She could still remember the awful coach ride along the rutted path to Château la Claire, the axle groaning beneath the weight of all her worldly belongings. The weight of her life. It was unspoken but nonetheless understood between her and her family that she would not return to England and her disgrace, but would remain in France, where she hoped the scandal would not taint her.

  With a restless sigh, Sophie trailed her fingers along the edge of the fountain pool, her mind returning to a time in her life that she had managed to bury in the dark recesses of her heart. But now a shiver crept up her spine as the memories edged into light.

  She turned her face upward, to the sun, and let its delicious warmth seep into her skin.

  Those first wretched days of her arrival were thankfully a blur now. She could recall little more than her incessant crying, the inability to eat anything, and the fitful, recurring dreams in which William threatened her and chased her until she lay breathless in her bed.

  In those first weeks she had wanted to escape forever the enormity of what she had done, to sleep for all eternity so that she might forget his betrayal and the sickening feeling each time he raised his fist against her. She had wanted to die, a thousand times over she had wanted to die for being duped so egregiously and having caused her family such grief and irreparable notoriety.

  But Eugenie had been frightened by her lethargy, and after weeks of watching her drift from one nightmare to another, she had finally dragged her from her bed, admonishing her to raise herself up and learn from her mistakes, not drown in her despair of them. Eugenie had pushed Sophie to Dieppe, had forced her to find a charitable cause on which to focus her thoughts and actions. Anything was better than the misery she was putting them both through.

  It was no accident that Eugenie had pushed her to work with the ladies of the Eglise St. Jacques, who twice weekly carried food and medicine to Dieppe’s poor. She had resisted at first, but in the course of those calls, Sophie met women and children who suffered from poverty and despair far greater than anything she had ever endured. Gradually, she began to understand that these women and chi
ldren could not escape the poverty or the surroundings poverty bound them to, and that it was only by virtue of her aristocratic birth that she had managed to escape her despair.

  By the following spring, Sophie was collecting used clothing and sundries for the poor.

  That was when she met Honorine.

  Oh, she remembered her first encounter with Honorine, all right. It wasn’t something a body could easily forget.

  She smiled, recalling the day that she had been shown into the drawing room of one benefactress in Dieppe. The woman’s guest stood as Sophie entered, wearing a gown of bright orange and yellow and the most outrageous hat Sophie had ever seen. It was covered with feathers and lace and was a most atrocious shade of blue. Startled beyond her senses, Sophie was nonetheless instantly struck by Honorine’s good looks and even more so by her winsome smile.

  Honorine had listened politely as her friend explained who Sophie was, but she had seemed almost bored with the woman’s charitable proclivities. Sophie had left with a pair of faded silk slippers, curiously amused by Madame Fortier.

  Over the next several days, she forgot about Honorine, but one bright morning as she and the sisters of Eglise St. Jacques prepared their daily packages, Honorine swept into the small narthex carrying a hatbox in each hand. Behind her were two men—who Sophie later learned were the ever-present Roland and Fabrice—each carrying several precariously balanced hatboxes. She had brought, she explained half in English, half in French, bonnets from her Parisian milliner for the women Sophie served. Her smile impossibly broad, Honorine had eagerly removed the lid from one hatbox…and withdrew another god-awful bonnet in an appalling shade of purple, adorned with yellow silk flowers under the brim and edged along the bottom with what looked to be pink hydrangeas. Pink hydrangeas. The men removed the lids of all the hatboxes, displaying bonnets that were identical, with the exception of the many wild combinations of atrocious colors.

  It was Madame Fortier’s intent, Sophie understood, to offer the bonnets to Dieppe’s poor women.