Rolling the fabric between two fingers, he made a noise of disgust. “This will not do at all. Are your other dresses any better?”
With a cry of outrage, she pulled her skirts away. “How dare you! I make do with what I can—”
“You make do with what your stepmother sees fit to give you, which isn’t much.” He shook his head. “Your father should have…”
“Should have what?” she prompted angrily when he let his admonishment die on his lips. “You did not have to do this, but you chose to. There is little point in complaining now, when you could not find it in yourself to simply decline a thoroughly unreasonable request!”
Julien leaned back as much as the coach walls would allow, and pulled one ankle to rest on the opposite knee. For the first time, Joséphine noticed how finely his clothes were made. A row of silver buckles shone on his soft leather boots. His breeches were well-cut, and his coat was so deep a blue that he must have paid the dyers enough to keep their families for a year. No wonder he complained about her thinning muslin dress with its faded pattern. If he saw the patched condition of her stockings, or the worn-through soles of her shoes-- but why on earth would he have occasion to see her stockings? She decided very quickly that her earlier carnal curiosity was entirely unwarranted. Julien Auvrey was a terribly vain man, too concerned with riches and fashion and not at all the kind of man she would ever want to—
“He should have provided for you better than he did,” Julien replied, and for a moment, Joséphine forgot that she’d asked a question at all.
Still, it was a slight against her father, and she could not let that stand. “My father loves me. He calls me his pearl.”
Julien scoffed at that, and Joséphine scowled. “Do you know what people do with pearls?” he asked, clearly not expecting a reply, as he continued immediately, “They keep them in boxes, taking them out to wear them when the occasion calls for it, but they are hardly seen out often. They are not coveted for their beauty or their elegance. Not for what they truly are. Their value lies in what someone else will pay for them.”
She pursed her lips and tried to hold back her tears.
“Your father cares only what someone else will pay for you, which is why he has given you over to me. He has invested next to nothing in you, personally. If I were a woman, I would not wish to be a pearl.”
Joséphine choked back her sobs and turned her face to the window so that he would not see how deeply his words had wounded her.
Chapter Three
After a long night confined to the coach with the most sullen girl he’d ever encountered, Julien was glad to see the spires of Chateau Perrault illuminated against the dawn sky.
He stretched his legs as much as the space in the coach would allow and grimaced. Across from him, Joséphine slumped against the window, snuggled under his coat, which he’d draped over her as she slept. It had been a long ride, made longer by her disposition, but he did not expect that would improve if she froze nearly to death.
They rolled to a stop before the front doors, and the cessation of motion woke her. “Where are we?” she mumbled, shielding her eyes from the light.
“Our destination, my lady,” he replied, and heard the relief in his own words. He’d been too long at court. While Prince Philipe was a gracious host, throwing lavish parties and orgies for the delight of his guests, Julien feared he might be growing too old for that lifestyle. A month ago, he would not have admitted so. A year ago, he would have recoiled from the very thought. He would have protested vehemently the idea that a man with silver in his hair and a few handsome lines on his face was of an age to give up a life of pleasure. Then, he’d met Sybil. Young, firm and comely, she’d nearly exhausted Julien with her carnal demands, and nearly bankrupted him with others. She’d been looking to snag herself a rich, old husband, or so the gossips said, and when Julien had heard the rumor he’d wondered who the old fool was. When it had occurred to him that they’d been speaking of him, he’d been mortified. Some men his age were old—Henrí, for example—but he’d filled his fifty-two years with decadence and indulgence, and that life had suited him. Physically, he appeared as youthful as men ten years younger. In spirit, well, he’d never grown up, and found he had more in common with himself at twenty than he did with men of his own age.
Still, the incident with Sybil had made him more cautious. He’d been aware for years that his wealth and his station at court attracted women who were hunting for a groom. He’d deftly avoided them. The trouble lay in the way women now perceived him. Thirty years ago, if a young woman caught his eye he knew her passion was genuine. It had never crossed his mind that she might be viewing him as a short, convenient marriage that would end with him in the grave and his money in her pockets.
Joséphine scrubbed at her eyes and blinked as she peered through the glass. “This is your country house?”
“It is.” When he’d formulated his plan, he had forgotten one very important detail. He had never, in all of his years of debauchery, brought a woman to the chateau. How unsettling it was now to invite the fairer sex into his sanctuary.
His housekeeper, Madame Brujon, stood in the doorway, her thin lips set in their customary grimace. Though female, she hardly counted as the fairer anything. Above her gargoyle’s face, her black hair scraped back into a bun that pulled her wrinkled skin tight at her temples. A flesh-colored mole decorated her prominent nose, the nostrils of which flared with in-drawn breath the moment he set foot outside the carriage.
“A bit of warning would have been nice,” Madame Brujon snapped by way of greeting.
It would do no good to remind the old woman who the master of the house was. She simply did not care. Julien offered his hand to Joséphine, who eyed him warily before taking it. As she alighted from the carriage, his coat slipped from her lap, and she followed its path as it drifted toward the ground.
He caught it up and folded it over his arm. “I thought you might be cold.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled, her cheeks going red.
“Who’s this?” Madame Brujon eyed Joséphine with suspicion. It wasn’t due to any cause for suspicion on the girl’s part. Madame Brujon was naturally wary of anyone who was not herself.
“This is Joséphine. My goddaughter.” He watched Joséphine make a clumsy curtsey to his housekeeper and thought that perhaps etiquette would be the first lesson they should undertake. “You don’t have to bow, she’s a servant.”
“I can hear you,” sniffed Madame Brujon.
Julien ignored her. “Joséphine will be staying with us for a few weeks, until I return to court. She needs to learn proper manners before I present her to the prince.”
“And you’re to teach her?” Madame Brujon cackled, the horrible sound she made when some rare thing struck her mean-spirited sense of humor. “Blind leading the lame.”
“As soon as he’s up, send Bastien to town. We’ll need Marie to start on some dresses.” Julien shrugged into his coat. “An entire wardrobe, actually.”
“Is that all she’s brought with her?” Madame Brujon thrust a bony finger at Joséphine, who clung to her little satchel like a shield. “And are we going to just keep her standing out here until she catches something?”
Ignoring his surly housekeeper, Julien strode through the door, into his front hall. He stood just inside, enjoying a deep breath. The scent of the fire burning in the hearth and all the fires before them, of clean country air and manly pursuits, filled him with a peace he could never experience at court.
“It stinks in here,” Joséphine said baldly, holding a finger to her nose. For a moment, Julien had forgotten her presence, caught up in the relief he felt every time he walked through the doors of his home.
“I suppose I’ll just open the shutters and let the ague in then,” the housekeeper grumbled, sweeping past them like a shadow of death in her dark, heavy dress.
“You shouldn’t let your servants talk to you that way,” Joséphine whispered, clearly unwilling to take on the job of taming Madame Brujon herself.
“If you wish to scold her, by all means.” He reached for her satchel. “Let me carry that to your room.”
She relinquished her possessions reluctantly, as though she carried a cache of gold and jewels. Apparently realizing how ridiculous she appeared, she smiled and said, “It was my mother’s.”
While he did not consider himself a sentimental man, he could not help but feel sympathy for the girl. No wonder she did not dress properly or have the gentle manners of a lady. Her mother had died only days after her birth, leaving no suitable female influence upon her. “Let me show you to your room.”
Perhaps he should have sent word ahead, he considered as he lead Jospehine up the stairs. He had no idea if the second floor had been aired and made ready for their arrival. His own room, a comfortable solar in the eastern turret, was constantly kept ready, but his guest chambers were not. He took Joséphine to a pleasant little room that had, according to family lore, once been an armory. Now, it stood furnished with items inherited from his mother, and so it was the most feminine room in the chateau. Therefore, it was rarely used. When he pushed open the door, the expected cloud of dust and moths did not emerge, but the room was dark and musty.
“Oh dear,” Joséphine said quietly.
“Oh dear, indeed,” he echoed her, feeling his way through the darkness. He flung open the drapes and blinked against the morning light that flooded in. A thin film of dust lay over everything, including the bed and coverlet. Unbelievably, a frisson of embarrassment assailed him. He’d never had to worry about the slightly lower standards of housekeeping at Chateau Perrault. Usually, only he and his servants saw the disarray. Perhaps a few friends come for a hunting party. Women were a different animal altogether.
“Oh!” Joséphine gave a little noise of surprise. “This is much better than I expected.”
Grinding his back teeth for no reason he could discern, Julien ground out, “I will, of course, send Madame Brujon to take care of the dust.”
“Oh no, please. It will be no trouble to do it myself.” Joséphine ran a finger across the mantel and frowned. “Though I will need some rags.”
He smiled. “Don’t wish to have her near you?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that at all.” She covered her face and giggled. “I merely thought to be helpful to you. I always dusted the furnishings at home.”
Julien paused. He was not sure what he found more disturbing, that a young lady with at least a drop of noble blood did such menial chores for her stepmother, or that this particular young lady had done so. A strangely protective anger, the same that had gripped him upon seeing her carry her little satchel into her father’s parlor, flared to life in him. The urge to grip her by her shoulders and shake her, to demand she realize how poorly she had been treated by her stepmother and, yes, even her father, was nearly uncontrollable. It contrasted sharply with the desire to sweep her into his arms, to kiss her and reassure her that those days were long gone. But that was for another man, as were all the sensuous charms he was certain would awaken in her at Philipe’s court.
“So, what shall I call you?” Joséphine studied him, unaware that his thoughts had turned toward the prurient. “Uncle?”
“No!” he barked, a cold, guilty sweat popping out on his brow. Perhaps he had caught a fever on the journey. It would explain his crazed behavior. “Julien, please.”
“Julien.” She smiled a tremulous smile. “You must forgive me, but I am so nervous. I have never been away from my family.”
“You care for them,” he said, hoping it did not sound like a question.
She shrugged one shoulder, a thoroughly inelegant and endearing gesture. “They are my family. I do not always enjoy their company, but you understand.”
He did not. Any contact he’d had with his family had ended with his parents’ deaths and his monumental inheritance. He’d mourned his parents appropriately, but their passing had lifted such a weight of expectation from him that he could scarcely be sorry they were gone. “I should hope that you are as comfortable here as in your own home.”