The Lady’s Guide to Marrying a Viscount (The Lady’s Guide to Love #8)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Enfolded in her green velvet travelling cloak, Geneviève, Countess Rosseline, slept for most of the journey from Dover. She’d been on the train since late the night before and the prior crossing from Calais had made her thoroughly sick, preventing the slightest rest.

She’d considered taking a sojourn in London but had deemed it unnecessary after taking some days in Paris. What was there to see or do or purchase in London that could not be attained with infinite superiority in France’s capital?

Paris was an enchanting place—of restaurants, ateliers, and galleries. She’d even ascended La Tour Eiffel, to look out over the great city. Regrettable that she’d had only her maid, Lisette, for company.

Many times, she’d asked Maxim to bring her to Paris, but there had always been some excuse. He’d preferred to leave her at the chateau on his expeditions, which he’d professed were purely for business. Geneviève had known better than to pry .

As beautiful as Paris was, it was not her home. If any place deserved that name, it was Chateau Rosseline.

Geneviève’s earliest years had been a kaleidoscope of colorful commotion, of theatre dressing rooms and the vivid characters who inhabited them. Trailing the skirts of her mother, Antoinette Villiers, the darling of the Marseille stage, young Geneviève learnt not just to dance and sing and to speak the Italian and English tongues, but how to charm! There were flowers and chocolates and champagne, delivered by various hopeful men.

Then, there was just one—who sent jewels instead of trifles. Geneviève was but eight years old when her mother took her to stay with the nuns of Santa Clotilde Magdalena.

Gone were the gaudy delights and the soft, fragrant embraces of the lovely Antoinette. Geneviève shed nightly tears for her absent maman , until she realized that tears were wasted when there was no one to heed them. By the time she joined the household of the Comte Rosseline, at the age of fifteen, she’d long given up the act of weeping.

It was not the first time the chateau had embraced its civic duty in relieving the convent of one of its foundlings. With the nuns, Geneviève learnt the advantage of appearing meek to avoid the cane across her palms—a performance she refined during her years as companion to the Dowager Countess Rosseline. Geneviève’s manners were impeccable and, unlike so many young ladies, she did not gabble.

After some years of fulfilling her responsibilities to the aging comtesse, including a fitting display of grief at her graveside, Geneviève had resigned herself to satisfying a new set of duties in the service of the count. Following his mother’s death, there’d been no-one to curb his excesses. Only a worrisome chest infection had achieved that.

Maxim had seen her as a palatable diversion, with just the bedside manner he craved. Who else would read to him so exquisitely from the books he’d once hidden from his mother, and act out the scenes within?

Knowing that a man liked to conquer a virgin’s innocence, she’d presented herself as such when Maxim had finally taken her to his bed, though the handsome cellar-hand at the chateau could have told a different tale.

Had it been so wrong of her to tell the count he’d conceived an heir? A kindness, rather, for didn’t all men seek to face the Reaper believing their legacy ensured? Having no father to protect her nor mother to arrange the delicate matter of a husband, she’d been obliged to make her way as best she could. If deceit were the result of necessity, how could it be wicked?

Even if it were, Geneviève concluded, it could hardly be her fault, since all were slaves to baser instincts. From the fateful conjunction of the serpent and the apple, it had been so. In this case, to sin now and then was only natural.

Thus, had Geneviève become the comtesse and thought herself the luckiest of women. Chateau Rosseline had no match in grandeur. Its gardens were a lush paradise, its vineyards bountiful. Even with Maxim’s fondness for gambling, the coffers remained full.

As companion to the dowager, Geneviève had accepted her lowly position. As wife to the count, she’d imagined taking pastis and macarons with the nobility of Marseille and Avignon. Yes, her background was humble, but she was Comtesse! It had been a bitter realization that she was still viewed as a barefaced upstart. The men, at least, had shown some courtesy, though she was too often obliged to smack their hands from where they strayed.

The women were another matter entirely. While Maxim was alive, she’d found them inclined to turn their backs. In widowhood, even after a suitable period of mourning had passed, Geneviève’s soirées were politely declined, and those who’d tolerated her before, refused to receive her in their homes.

Becoming mistress of the chateau had been a dream. The reality had turned to ash in her mouth.

Geneviève had contemplated packing her bags and leaving it all behind, to begin a new life in glittering Paris. But why should she forfeit the place she loved best in all the world?

One way or another, I’ll marry Maxim’s heir, and return as the comtesse, twice-chosen! They think they’ve won, driving me from the home they believe I don’t deserve — the place that has been my one true haven — but I won’t cower before those condescending harpies. I shall return with my head held high, and they may choke on their tongues!

Lisette woke her at Exeter, where they found the coachman waiting. Rain having clogged the road with mud, Geneviève was obliged to vault over a puddle to reach the step, swinging her valise into the carriage before her.

To start with, the horses kept a brisk pace, heading west past shorn fields between harvest and sowing. Now, they were ascending, laboring upward as the last portion of the afternoon faded. The lowering sun lent the barren landscape a softness, bringing out the deeper russet tones of the bracken. There was little birdsong as the hedgerows and trees grew sparser, rowan and hawthorn giving way to gorse and twisted hazels.

Lisette was drowsing, her head lolling to her shoulder with the rocking motion of the coach. How fortunate it had been that Geneviève had already sent her away, that evening on the train. Geneviève continued to gaze out of the window, but her thoughts were all of remembrance.

With his stubbled cheek and dark hair curling over his collar, the man who’d entered her carriage had looked more gypsy than gentleman. His accent had belied that, though he’d thought nothing of letting her hear his curses at finding the compartment already taken.

She’d noticed his boots before anything else, long and black, in expensive leather. Then, the buckskin of his breeches and the longer length of his jacket. Nothing of the current fashion. Yet, he was boldly attractive, with a straight nose and high cheekbones.

Her choice had been one of impulse, and she’d been able to think of little else since. Of how she’d sat astride him, brushing his cock with the soft fur of her sex, teasing him as he kissed the length of her throat.

Freeing her breasts, he’d taken each wholly into his mouth, with a force she’d felt in her womb. When he’d pulled her onto his thickness, she’d cried with the joy of it.

Soon after, he’d rolled her beneath him. His tongue, his hands, had found her places of pleasure, making her mindless with desire.

She’d returned the favor, savoring the feel of him in her mouth, thick and hard, knowing that she was stoking his desire to take her again.

When he did, it was somewhat awkward, with her skirts pushed up and her knees bent high, but he’d known how to position himself, grinding where she was most sensitive. A satisfying coupling, despite the necessity of him spilling on her belly.

Finally, they’d slept, he on one side of the banquette and she on the other. When she’d woken, to the whistle of the train arriving at Paris’s Gare de Lyon, he’d gone. In most ways, it had been a relief. The encounter had been spontaneous, and such liaisons were best suited to the mystery of the night.

Nevertheless, the memory of his lovemaking haunted her—or the memory of his fucking, she should say. Geneviève liked to call a thing by its proper name. She was not one for romanticism.

It had also been an act of defiance, her coupling with the stranger. Submission to dark eyes and hands large and purposeful, and to that craving, hungry mouth which had left her lips bruised. Skin raked by the fine stubble of his jaw. Him tasting her, piece by piece.

The coach jolted, obliging Geneviève to clutch at the window’s ledge.

They were making their way higher, the landscape changing as they climbed. The moon was riding a clear sky, deepest black and dotted with dazzling pinpricks. Beneath, the moor was stark—now an expanse of gray, its flatness punctuated by gentle hills and the outline of dark rocks.

They passed small clumps of buildings and then fewer, until there was barely a hut, and she wondered if the coachman could be taking them to the right place. Somewhere on the air was the rustle of falling leaves, though there seemed to be few trees to make such a sound possible.

The road twisted and dipped and the moonlight almost disappeared, for they were passing through a dense snarl of woodland—a strangled tangle of over-crowded branches, deformed and disfigured, like mangled, clutching fingers from one of the darker fairy tales.

The wind, somewhere above, was melancholy over the dark mass, making it creak and rub, the trees scratching at one another. There was a smell of decay, old leaves heaped deep, and rotting stumps protruding like blackened teeth.

Geneviève drew back from the window, wishing no longer to look, fearing suddenly what might be looking back, unseen.

It was a relief to emerge once more into the open, crossing a bridge before the track rose again.

Lisette jumped awake as they pitched through a series of particularly large potholes.

“ Sommes-nous bient?t arrivées, Comtesse?” Lisette smothered her yawn, asking if their destination were far off.

“ Nous arriverons bient?t, ” Geneviève replied, hoping it might be true that they would soon arrive.

At last, they slowed to pass through tall, iron gates, leading to a long avenue of yew trees silhouetted beneath a sky turned threatening. The wind had risen, sending clouds across the moon.

Wulverton Hall brooded beneath a veil of ivy. There were four turrets in all, forbidding towers looming upward. Light spilt out across the gravel from the narrow windows on either side of the grand entrance. A coat of arms had long ago been engraved into the archway, though the stone was too weathered for Geneviève to discern its emblem. A lion’s head? No, a wolf, of course, Wulverton Hall being the seat of the Devonshire de Wolfes.

What shall we discover inside? Not love, for what good is that? A man of position and wealth? Now, that I can find use for. A husband so besotted that he’ll bend to my every whim? Even better.

The coachman deposited their baggage and, stamping her feet against the cold, Geneviève waited for the door to open.

The butler, who introduced himself as Withers, was tall and thin and stooped, and as sombre in appearance as the house itself. The family had evidently retired, leaving the aged retainer to wait up for her arrival.

Good, thought Geneviève, for she felt wrinkled and rumpled from travelling.

He closed the door with a doom-filled thud, turning the great key in the lock. All was silent, save for the creaking tick of a grandfather clock and the butler’s labored wheeze.

“This way, Madam.” The frail light of his lamp flickered upon the walls of the cavernous hall, from which long-dead de Wolfes looked down, dim and disapproving. However magnificent the plaster ceilings had once been, the damp had gotten to them. Wulverton Hall’s glory was peeling at the edges and flaking onto the carpets—an impression only consolidated as Geneviève followed the butler’s shuffle up the stairs and along the upper passage, paneled in dark oak beneath time-blackened rafters.

A dusty tapestry, its threads coming loose along the lower edge, hung the length of the corridor—a maritime scene, as far as Geneviève could tell, though it was hard to say, reliant upon the limited illumination of Withers’ lamp. A strange choice, since they were far from the sea here, on the high plateau of this remote moor.

There were definitely ships, majestic in full sail, and each bearing a name: Uriel, Raphael, Ramiel… Most of the embroidered lettering was too faded for her to read properly, but those were names of angels, weren’t they ?

At the top, there was more wording, sewn in silver thread and green: de Winter, St. Hèver, de Russe, du Bois. Further names stretched on. Names of la noblesse . The Marquis de Winter’s son had won ten thousand Francs from Maxim at the card table one night. And Geneviève had seen pictures of the Duchesse St. Hèver in the pages of La Nouvelle Mode . Her hats, so elegantly styled, were beyond compare.

What strangeness! For wasn’t this the residence of an English family? To have some ancient connection in French lineage was common enough, but it seemed bizarre to display the names of other dynasties in one’s home.

There would be some story, she supposed, and she would be obliged to listen, then to exclaim on how marvellous it was that the de Wolfe family was so well connected. Marguerite, Maxim’s sister, would make the most of it. Perhaps it had been she who’d found this tattered piece of cloth and placed it along the wall.

As they reached the end of the passage, Withers stopped to turn the handle of a door. “Your room, Madam.”

Fortunately, her sleeping chamber was far more charming. The curtains at each corner of the bed matched those at the window and the upholstery on the little sofa by the hearth—ivory patterned with pink roses. She was relieved to see kindling had been set, with logs beside.

Geneviève gave him her sweetest smile and a guinea from her purse. Decrepit he might be, but keeping on his good side was sure to prove useful. A comfortable stay relied upon the favor of such servants; the alternative was lukewarm water for washing and an age to wait if she ordered tea.

Withers waited beyond the door some moments, until Lisette had helped her mistress out of her travelling clothes. The maid was obviously relieved to be dismissed promptly and led away to her own quarters.

The coachman had dragged their trunks as far as the entry hall, but Withers was clearly unable to manage them alone.

Geneviève was too tired to care about eating, or about sleeping in her undershift. Her valise held the essentials of her toilette, and she’d be in no rush to rise come morning.

Drawing back the embroidered coverlet, she climbed the steps to enter her bed. It complained noisily and sagged toward the middle, but she’d slept in worse, and someone had warmed the sheets, at least.

At the convent of Santa Clotilde Magdalena, Geneviève’s bed had been a simple, slatted affair and her mattress stuffed with horsehair.

How far she’d come!

And how far she intended still to rise.

She would surely entice Maxim’s heir to propose marriage before the Twelfth Night of the festive season. Charming men had never presented her with difficulty. She doubted this one would be any different.

With that thought, she lay her head upon her pillow and indulged the fantasy which had grown stronger with each passing day.

With Hugo, the new Comte Rosseline at her side, those who had shunned her would surely change their tune.

The Baroness de Boulainville may once have encouraged the ladies of her circle to make me feel unwelcome in the Society that is part of my home, but I shall show her that I’m not beaten. I shall take my place among them, and they shall beg for my invitations! I shall host the grandest of balls, and I shall welcome all but her!

To the rising howl of the wind, Geneviève closed her eyes and dreamt of sour matrons curtsying as she passed.