Page 79 of The Count’s Charade

Pushing hard upon the wooden arms of her chair, she thrust to her feet. Her knees felt a trifle weak, but her limp covered any new awkwardness as she crossed to take the glass he was holding out. Jemima had pulled out a chair at the table and Grace sank gratefully into it.

The maid gave her a look, brimful of significance. “I’ll be off to bed then, Miss Grace. Ain’t no need to go making up the bed in the spare chamber, I reckon, but I’ll do it if you wish for it.”

Warmth flushed uncomfortably into Grace’s bosom, and the blood rushed up into her cheeks. Reaction threw her tongue into unwise speech.

“Mister Henry is not staying!”

The silence became charged. Biting down on the words too late, Grace glanced from Jemima’s shocked expression to Henri’s face. The bewildered hurt in his eyes was unbearable. She looked quickly to the glass in her hand, staring at it as if she had forgotten what it was or how it had got there.

Movement caught her eye. Henri was setting down his glass, turning, walking away towards the door. Grace’s heart twisted.

“No, Henri, wait! Don’t go!”

Jemima was before her, running ahead of him to bar the door, both hands held out to grasp the jambs, her young face alive with excitement. “Don’t you heed her, Mister Henry! She don’t mean it. You ain’t seen her these last days, but I can tell you it’s dead miserable she’s been without you. I don’t know what’s got into her, sir, but I know she cares for you something terrible!”

“So I thought, Jemima,” began Henri heavily, “mais —”

Grace could utter no word as she watched Jemima grasp his arm, uttering what Grace would not have dreamed of saying, despite the promptings of her heart.

“I’m telling you, Mister Henry, you got to stay! I don’t know what argy-bargy Miss Grace has got in her head agin’ you, but it ain’t nowise nothing but a pack o’ nonsense, and you hadn’t ought to give it no heed.” Releasing him, Jemima leaned towards him, dropping her voice to a confidential murmur so that Grace had to strain to hear her. “If Miss Grace weren’t so worn down, aye, and in a good deal o’ pain already, if I know her, I’d say as you ought to shake some sense into her, Mister Henry, that I would!”

Henri laughed out, but this was too much for Grace. Setting down her glass, she got up hastily, swinging out into the room with her lumbering gait. “That will do, Jemima! Go to bed at once!”

But the maid threw her a saucy look, tapped Henri encouragingly on his good arm, and disappeared into the hall. Grace was left to confront Henri, who turned an amused countenance upon her.

“Do not look thus disturbed, ma chère. This is not advice which recommends itself to me.”

Grace wanted to burst into overwrought tears. But that would only force Henri to comfort her, an intimacy she needed to avoid. It had become imperative to speak, to try to make him understand.

“I am not disturbed by that, Henri. But I am disturbed. Thus far Jemima is in the right of it.” She drew a breath and faced the gathering perplexity in his features. “You mean to offer me marriage, don’t you? After — after what happened between us, I know you must. But —”

“What has happened between us, Grâce, has been more than that I have taken you in my bed. This is what you mean, no?”

His bluntness threw her into confusion. She turned from him, heading back to the table and sinking down into her chair again. Taking up the glass there, she sipped at it without realising, playing for time. He had not taken her up on the marriage question, but he would. She was certain of that.

Henri followed her, the puzzlement subsiding. There began to be a glimmer of light, and he was glad of Jemima’s intervention. To walk away had been the reaction of a moment, blinded by Grace’s rejection. He pulled out a chair and sat down, taking up his own unfinished wine.

For a moment or two, he endured her silence, searching her averted features, dim in the dusk against the darkness of her blue gown. He realised he was awaiting further enlightenment. When it did not come, he felt forced to demand it.

“Grâce, tell me what is it you find difficult? I have thought we are as one. What you have done for me, it has been not entirely from compassion, no? You have saved my life not once, which is perhaps understandable, but more times than you need. You have lied for me. You have walked this long mile to Rainham, when you are in pain. And this for me. Think you I am insensible of the reason?”

She looked up then, into the candlelight, and he saw the answer in her grey eyes. “You know the reason, Henri. It is not my motives that are in question.”

He stared at her, unable to fathom this at all. “Is it that you believe I have not a good reason for desiring to spend my life with you?”

The words spun in on Grace, and she could not help the note of yearning. “Is that what you desire, Henri?”

A laugh escaped him, not of amusement. “You think I wish instead to go to London, to be among émigrés as Sir James is suggesting? Ma chère, I have been there. Not to London, but in Paris in the days of old.”

“Then you must know it is where you belong.”

“Then, perhaps. No longer. I was young, and the family Rousselle is at court. It was for some months only, yet I have found it already a life without meaning.”

Grace dismissed this at once. “Easy to say so after the events of the last few years.”

“Exactly so, ma chère. I am changed by what I have seen, more by what I have done.”

The bitterness was back in his voice, and Grace could not help but respond to it. “You did it in a good cause, Henri.”