LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Four

      The next morning Sophia joined Jean-Luc in the breakfast room, attended by Fournier the butler, who seemed to have taken a shine to her, and two footmen. Afterwards, Jean-Luc introduced his wife to the rest of the household, who were lined up in serried ranks in the entrance hall. She lost count of how many there were, but her determination to speak to everyone, down to the youngest scullery maid, met with Madame Lambert the housekeeper’s approval, as well as Jean-Luc’s.

      The remainder of the day was spent acquiring her trousseau. Clothes had never held much interest for Sophia—a happy circumstance since, for most of her life, there had been little money to spend on them. She had refused to spend any of their meagre allowance on her previous trousseau, telling Felicity afterwards, in an attempt to make light of the situation, that she’d shown remarkably foresight. As to the silks lavished on her by Hopkins, she never considered those anything but garish costumes for the performance she was required to put on.

      This latest, and hopefully last, part she would have to play required costumes too, but of a very different kind. Seated in the plush receiving room of one of Paris’s most exclusive modistes, aided and abetted with enthusiasm by Madeleine, her dresser, Sophia momentarily abandoned herself to the seductive delights of high fashion. Morning dresses, carriage dresses, promenade dresses, evening dresses and ball gowns were paraded in front of her, in a flutter of silk and satin and lace, crape and gauze, figured muslin, plain muslin, zephyr and sarcenet. There were under-dresses and over-dresses. There were nightgowns and peignoirs, chemises and petticoats of the finest cambric, silk stockings, corsets trimmed with satin and that latest fashion in undergarments, pantaloons. There were pelisses and coats and tippets and cloaks, boots and half-boots, sandals and shoes. There were pairs of gloves of every colour to suit every occasion, and so many bonnets that Sophia quite lost track of their various appellations and purposes.

      ‘No, I’ve seen a plethora,’ she said after several dizzying hours. ‘I require only a few dresses, perhaps one evening gown, certainly no ball gowns. There is no point—’ She broke off abruptly. Neither the modiste nor the dresser must suspect that her role as Jean-Luc’s wife was temporary. ‘What I mean is,’ she amended, ‘I would like time to consider my future needs, and will purchase today only what I require to see me through the next few weeks.’

      ‘But of course, a most sensible approach,’ the modiste said, smiling approvingly. ‘Might I suggest Madame Bauduin leaves it to her dresser and I to make the initial selection? Madame is very fortunate that she has the figure to carry off any garment.’

      ‘Yes. Thank you—though please, only the bare minimum for now,’ Sophia said, already wincing inwardly at the expense which Jean-Luc would be put to, despite the fact that he had insisted, before she set out this morning, that she considered only her requirements to dress as befitted his wife, and not the expense.

      Entrusting Madeleine with the task, Sophia returned in the carriage to the hôtel, a brief and uncomfortable journey through the narrow streets, the view from the mud-spattered window giving her frustratingly little sense of the city she longed to explore. This would be her only chance to see Paris. Under the terms of their contract, she had agreed to disappear from both Jean-Luc’s life and his country when her task was completed. How would he explain his short-lived marriage? It was not her problem, she told herself as the carriage halted outside the gates of the town house and the footman folded down the steps. But she was curious none the less, and finding her husband waiting for her on the terrace, took the opportunity to ask him.

      ‘I will say that you have returned to England to nurse your former companion. Is that not a plausible explanation?’

      ‘Very plausible.’

      ‘Good! Then, when time has passed, I will say that you had come to the conclusion that you could not settle in France and wished to remain in England. It would mean painting you in an unfavourable light, though.’

      ‘Tell people whatever you wish. It cannot be any worse than—’

      She broke off abruptly. What they say already. So obvious a conclusion to that sentence that there could be no possible alternative. But Jean-Luc did not finish it for her. Instead he pressed her hand, and there was something in those dark brown eyes, sympathy or pity or—whatever it was, it made her feel uncomfortable, so she looked away, fussing with the strings of her reticule.

      ‘Did you have successful shopping trip, ma mie?’

      A finger under her chin gently forced her to meet his gaze. ‘It depends how you define successful. I suspect I have spent a great deal of your money.’ Which, she thought sardonically, was the goal of every woman in her former situation, though it was one she had never shared. One of the things, she suspected, that had kept her under Hopkins’s protection for so long, and had made him most reluctant to give her up. She had a much more precious use for his largesse.