Page 29 of Liaison with the Champagne Count
‘Yes, I know,’ Emma said tersely, but it occurred to her that she just barely knew. The news was not even twenty-four hours old. Was this what Julien feared about tea with Madame Clicquot? That the old woman would unpack his family history without his permission?
‘You’d best watch yourself. Julien is a persuasive man. I’m surprised he hasn’t married you already. That’s one sure way to put the chateau back into Archambeau hands.’
The old woman, legend or not, was outside the pale with that comment. ‘I lost my husband only a couple months ago. I am not looking to remarry.’
‘Well, one doesn’t need to marry to enjoy the pleasures of Julien Archambeau,’ the widow said sagely. ‘But it does put one on the path towards marriage, just thinking of having him all to oneself for a lifetime.’ Emma hoped her face didn’t give her away. Did the widow guess that she’d already succumbed to Julien’s charms? What an embarrassingly easy conquest she’d been.
‘All I’m saying,ma cherie, is to watch yourself, if you don’t mean to marry again. He was willing to marry for the chateau once before. There’s no reason to think he wouldn’t try to marry for it again, especially if there’s no other way to get it.’
‘Marry for it?’ She stopped the widow in mid-story. ‘He said he had his heart broken once.’
‘Oh, indeed he did.’ The widow shifted in her seat, settling her plump form in for a good telling. ‘Seven years ago, before the government suspended titles yet again, he was the son of the Comte in those days. He was engaged to Clarisse Anouilh. Her dowry was the chateau and its vineyards. But her father broke the engagement off. He found someone better for his ambitions. Hers, too, truth be told. She never would have satisfied Julien. She was pretty enough, but she was a girl. Julien was a man and he needed, still needs, a partner, not a pretty doll.’
Emma barely heard the last of the widow’s opinion on Clarisse Anouilh. What a stupid fool she’d been. Now she had her answers, her real answers. What hadn’t made sense last night became clear. She rose. ‘I must take my leave, Madame. Thank you again for your time and your...insights.’
‘It was nothing. I wish you all the success over there.’
Emma nodded and departed, thankful for the footman who saw her back through the warren of rooms to her carriage. Her mind was too full of other things to spend any energy on how to find her way back through the house.
By the time she reached home, she was furious. Furious with herself for having been duped and furious with Julien. How dare he sit there last night playing the wounded victim against her accusations while he’d been using her all along, manipulating her into getting what he wanted, which wasn’t her after all—a thought that was a bit lowering—but the chateau. He’d offered himself in marriage once before in order to get his land. She could no longer pretend he wasn’t above doing so again. Last night she’d not been willing to believe it of him, but Madame’s revelation about Clarisse Anouilh was incontrovertible proof.
‘Where is he?’ she ground out, breezing past a stunned Richet.
‘In the cellars,madame. Madame, there’s been a delivery for you—’
‘Not now.’ She shook her head and was off down the long stairs to the wine caves. Good. The cellars were soundproof. That suited her. There were things she needed to say to Julien she didn’t want anyone else to hear.
He heard her coming before he saw her. There was the loud thud of a heavy oak door shutting, as if it had been heaved to with considerable, rapid force. Then there’d been the sound of her feet on the flagstones, staccato clips. If anger had a stride, that would be it. That damn tea was today. Something had apparently gone wrong. That worried him. One did not upset Widow Clicquot without reaping consequences. He should have gone. He could have at least smoothed things over. He did not need a boycott of his wines.
She stormed into his little nook of an office, eyes bright, face flushed, hair coming down from beneath the little hat she wore. She’d be magnificent if she wasn’t aiming all her ire at him. She slammed her reticule down on his desk with a solid crack. ‘You used sex to seduce the chateau out from under me. You rotten bastard!’
‘Slow down, Emma. What are you talking about?’ Julien said carefully, easing back from the desk lest he become a casualty of her anger. He scanned the desktop, thankful to note he’d put away the letter opener. He didn’t fancy a stabbing.
‘I am talking about Clarisse Anouilh. You were going to marry her for the chateau! Save yourself a pile of money. Why buy the place outright when you can just marry for it? It was only when that didn’t work out that you tried to buy the place.’
Julien held up his hands. ‘It was arranged by my father and her father. It was meant to be an alliance. Our ancient name in exchange for the return of our lands.’ He paused. ‘If it’s any consolation, I did care for her and it broke my heart when her father called off the engagement. Does that make you feel better, to know I didn’t come out on top?’
‘It does not change the fact that you were going to try that ploy again with me when it became clear I was not going to sell.’ There was the tiniest of cracks to her voice, that’s when he heard it. She wasn’t just angry. She was hurt and he had hurt her. The sheen in her eyes was tears and he did not want a single tear to fall, did not want to be the reason Emma Luce cried.
She faced him across his desk, her features stark with loathing. ‘The two questions I asked myself all the way home were how could I have been so stupid to let myself fall for a man I barely knew, and how could you be so cruel? Julien, I trusted you with my grief, my stories, my hopes, my wants, my passion, I gave myself over to you entirely in ways I’d not given myself to anyone, not even Garrett. You exploited every last piece of me.’
Could someonefeelashen? Julien felt as though if he looked in a mirror in that moment he would look pale, entirely drained of life. ‘Such a man would be a despicable creature indeed. But that creature is not me, Emma.’ Against his better wisdom, he came around the desk and knelt before her, reaching for her hands, desperate to touch her, to comfort her. He wanted nothing so much as to take her in his arms and kiss away her doubts. But she snatched her hands from his.
‘Don’t you dare touch me again. That’s what started this trouble.’
That was unfair. ‘You started it, in the vineyard,’ he shot back and immediately regretted it. He rose and went back to his seat. ‘That is not why I made love to you, Emma,’ he said in slow, patient tones. ‘I did not make love to you out of pity or to manipulate your grief or to lead you down the path of a whirlwind marriage.’
‘Those are the only reasons that make sense.’ Emma glared at him, anger the only thing keeping those shiny tears of hers at bay. ‘You hardly knew me and it all happened so fast. I should have seen the signs, should have known better.’
Julien interrupted, overriding her with his words. ‘I made love to you because you are the most intelligent, irritating, beautiful, capable, interesting, and stubborn woman I’ve ever met. And if given the chance, I would make love to you again and again and again because you challenge me, you’ve brought me back to life. And I don’t want to go back. I need you, Emma. You’ve turned my life upside down, but it will never be right side up again without you.’
Her face registered shock and disbelief. ‘That is conveniently the perfect fallback position. You can deny the “strategy” while still advancing your cause. That is rich. You’ve lied about who you were, you’ve hidden information from me about the chateau and your history with it, you tried to distract me from meeting people in the area and announcing my presence. At this point, why should I believe anything you have to say?’
‘Because I love you. Because I didn’t want you to be hurt, to feel that somehow what happened between us was no different than what you’d experienced with Redmond. All of this was to protectyou.’ He made the confession with a new confidence. He did love her. It was entirely true even if he had not named it to himself until this moment. And in this moment, he felt powerful and yet vulnerable. What would she do with his confession? Would she throw it back in his face or would she embrace it and open a path for them? He hoped for the latter but braced for the former. His Emma was a fighter.
She rose. ‘No, you don’t get to say that.’ Ah, so she was going to fight. ‘I’ve been in love before, with agoodman, andthisis not what love feels like. Love does not hurt; love does not tie one’s stomach into knots. Love does not make a person decide between two things they care about deeply.’ Her quicksilver eyes flashed with deep emotion and her jaw clenched, her words tight and terse as if she could barely restrain herself long enough to civilly grind them out before she left the room. So, it was to be a two-fronted battle, Julien thought. She was fighting him and a past she couldn’t quite let go of.
Chapter Nineteen
