Surrender The Heart

“Weren’t you?”

“No.” His eyes turned suddenly serious. “I know how much mockery can hurt. Firsthand.”

“You?” Ariane was so surprised at his words and at the way the amusement had drained out of his eyes so quickly that she missed a step. “I cannot believe that”

“Well, it’s true,” he said brusquely, a little appalled that he had shared that long-ago hurt with her.

“I can’t quite imagine anyone daring to mock you.”

Annoyed at himself, he shrugged. “It was a long time ago.

Ariane understood childhood hurts—after all, she lived with some of her own. Feeling his discomfort at the confession he had made, she said nothing. Instead, she shifted the hand that lay lightly in his palm and gave his hand a squeeze, accompanying it with a smile.

The touch she gave him was so brief that Chris wondered if he had imagined it. But he knew that he had not imagined the smile of extraordinary sweetness that curved her mouth and was reflected in her violet eyes.

When the dance ended, they found themselves near Justine and her partner.

“Just a word, Ariane,” Justine called out. Then, leaving her dance partner with an apologetic gesture, she moved over to her new friend and, under the guise of adjusting the tiny bunch of silk violets that was fastened above Ariane’s ear, she pulled her a step away from Chris and whispered, “Be careful. He’s gorgeous, but get rid of him quickly and don’t dance with him again. People are staring.”

“What was that all about?” Chris asked, when Ariane turned back to him and placed her hand on his proffered arm.

“Apparently we have made a spectacle of ourselves.” Her shrug was more exasperated than rueful. “She told me to get rid of you and warned me not to dance with you again.”

Had someone asked him, he would have denied that his nerves had tightened. “And are you?”

“Going to get rid of you or going to dance with you again?” Her mouth was serious, but her eyes were smiling.

“Both, either.”

They began to walk toward the part of the ballroom where her parents were seated.

“I don’t take direction very well. Especially from children.” Ariane shrugged. “Justine thinks she knows everything, but she is only a child.”

Chris smiled. “While you are veritably ancient,” he teased.

“You have no idea how true your words are.” His smile was so charming, so infectious that Ariane smiled back, forgetting her earlier irritation. “That’s why I’m here, after all. In Paris, I mean.” She made a face.

“You see, I’ve reached the age of twenty-five and my father is appalled that he does not yet have a son-in-law and a horde of grandchildren.”

Chris felt a tightening in his belly at the thought of her with another man. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if she was planning to provide her father with what he wanted when he realized that they had reached the far end of the ballroom. He bowed politely toward the elder Valmonts before he turned toward Ariane.

“Thank you for the waltz, comtesse.” This time he did not reach for her hand, but waited politely for her to offer it to him. “May I look forward to dancing with you again?” he asked when she did.

Ariane felt the pressure of his fingers on hers. As he lifted his head and met her gaze, she read the challenge in his eyes that told her that the touch had not been accidental. She could feel her father’s displeased gaze on her, but the temptation of the dare this man offered was stronger.

“You may.”

He retained her hand a moment longer than convention allowed, but she had no desire to pull her hand away from the warmth she could feel despite her gloves. Again there was that brief pressure and she suppressed a shiver of excitement just as he finally released her.

She should not want to dance with him again so badly, she thought, as he walked away, but she did. It was only because his amusing, impudent conversation was such a pleasant change from the inanities she had been hearing, she assured herself. And at the moment she believed it.

Several moments passed before she realized that her father was speaking to her.

“I’m sorry, papa.” She turned to him and put a soothing hand on his arm. “What were you saying?”

“I don’t want you dancing with him again,” he repeated petulantly. “We didn’t bring you to Paris to fall into the hands of some—some adventurer,” Valmont continued. “I want you to have a good, French husband.”

“Papa—“

“I want your promise, Ariane, that you will do as I say.” Because he had drunk enough champagne to make him feel expansive, but not enough to sour his temper, his tone wheedled rather than commanded.

“I am here in Paris, papa, because you wished it.” She gave her father a direct look and felt a little spurt of guilty satisfaction when he lowered his eyes. “The least you can do is let me enjoy myself.”

She turned away, refraining from adding that she planned to leave Paris as unencumbered by a husband as she had arrived.

“Ariane—”

The Comtesse de Valmont tucked her hand into her husband’s arm and screwed up the courage to speak. “Leave her be, Pierre,” she whispered. “The more you storm against him, the more attractive he will seem to her.” She remembered quite well how her own father had stormed against the feckless, volatile Comte de Valmont.

Ariane stared after Christopher Blanchard’s retreating figure, a plan forming in her mind.

And she was not the only one who stared after him.

It was too much to be borne. The Marquise de Blan-chard closed her eyes. The moment she had seen him she had known with an absolute certainty that this man was Charles’s son. Oh, he was taller and broader, but the handsome features were too similar to her husband’s to be anyone else. The man whom she had loved. The man who had left her for another woman. She had never forgiven him for being either.

Hatred, old and new, was bitter on her tongue as she approached him.

“You are Charles de Blanchard’s son. Do not bother to deny it.”

The voice behind him was soft, but it dripped ice and venom in equal parts. Instinctively knowing whom the voice belonged to, Chris turned around to face the woman whose stubbornness and pride had condemned him to being a bastard. Reminding himself that he was a grown man and that his existence had, after all, condemned her to being an abandoned wife, he bowed.

“I would not think of denying the truth, madame la marquise.”

“You know who I am?” Her small, round black eyes, which gave her the aspect of a plump bird, narrowed. “How?”

“My father had a miniature.”

“He kept my portrait?” Her thin mouth, the only thin feature she possessed, curved in a triumphant smile.

“He kept a portrait of his children.” Chris kept his voice carefully neutral. “I suspect your presence there was incidental.”

The smile froze briefly to a grimace before it disappeared.

“What are you doing here in Paris?” The marquise heard the ebony slats of her fan groan under the pressure of her fingers and forced her hands to relax. “If you have come here to embarrass me, embarrass my children, I shall—”

“I advise you not to threaten me, madame la marquise. It is not something I take kindly to.”

“I will do as I please,” she said, choosing to ignore the steel beneath the mild tone. “I do not take kindly to the presence of my husband’s bastard son, fathered on a woman of easy virtue.”