Regency Innocents by Annie Burrows Read Free Book Online Page A

did you suddenly change your mind about me? When you made me leave, you seemed so set against it!’
    â€˜Well, your proposal was so sudden,’ he teased her. ‘It took me by surprise. Naturally I had to consider …’
    She shook her head. ‘No, I may have surprised you, but you had made up your mind it was an absurd idea.’
    â€˜So absurd, in fact,’ he countered, ‘that nobody would credit it. Nobody would believe I would take one Mademoiselle Bergeron merely to save face at being embarrassed by the other Mademoiselle Bergeron. And therefore they will have to believe that you were the object of my interest all along.’
    When she continued to look less than convinced by his complete about-face, he decided it was high time he regained control of the conversation.
    â€˜Now, getting back to the ring. May I enquire, although I somehow feel I am about to regret doing so, why your sister left it with you? The normal practice, I should remind you, when an engagement is terminated, is for the lady to return the ring to the man who gave it to her.’
    â€˜I had it with me when I came to visit you this morning,’ she declared. ‘I was going to return it to you for her if you should not agree to my suggestion.’
    â€˜Indeed?’ His voice was laced with scepticism. ‘And yet somehow it remains in your possession. How did that come about, I wonder?’
    â€˜Well, because you were so beastly to me, if you must know! I told you the deepest secret of my heart and you laughed at me. For the moment I quite lost my temper, and decided I should do with it exactly as Felice said I ought to do! For you are so wealthy it is not as if you
needed
to have it back, whereas for me …’
    She let go of his arm again, folding her own across her chest with a mutinous little pout which, for the first time in their acquaintance, made Charles wonder what it would be like to silence one of her tirades with a kiss. It would probably be the only way to stop her once she had built up a head of steam. Something in the pit of his stomach stirred at the thought of mastering her militant spirit in such a manner. He shook his head. It was not like him to regard sexual encounters as contests of will. But then, he frowned, when had he ever had to do more than crook his finger for a woman to fall obediently in line with his every whim?
    â€˜I take it you meant to sell it, then?’
    Heloise eyed his lowered brows contritely.
    â€˜Yes,’ she confessed. ‘Because I needed the money to get to Dieppe.’
    â€˜Dieppe?’ He shook himself out of his reverie. ‘What is at Dieppe?’
    â€˜Not what, but who. And that is Jeannine!’
    â€˜Jeannine?’ he echoed, becoming fascinated in spite of himself. ‘What part does she play in this farce, I wonder?’
    â€˜She was Maman’s nurse, until she eloped with Papa.’
    â€˜There seems to have been a great deal of eloping going on in your family.’
    â€˜But in my parents’ case it was a good thing, don’t you think? Because even if they were terribly poor for the first few years they were married, since my grandpapa cut her off entirely, she was the only one to survive the Terror because her family were all so abominably cruel to the
menu peuple
—the common people, that is. Jeannine was cast out, but she married a
fermier
, and I know she would take me in. I would have to learn how to milk a cow, to be sure, and make butter and cheese, but how hard could that be?’
    â€˜I thought it was hens,’ he reflected.
    â€˜Hens?’
    â€˜Yes, you said when you married me you would live in a cottage so that you could keep hens. Now I find that in reality you would rather milk cows and make cheese.’ He sighed. ‘I do wish you would make up your mind.’
    Heloise blinked. Though the abstracted frown remained between his brows, she was almost sure he was teasing her.