Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(56)

“Not consciously. Not willingly,” Rosalie insisted, and then bit her lip as she cast a perturbed glance at the door. “Let’s talk about this later when you have rested and I am not pressed for time. For now I amsimply glad that you’re here. Here is Mary with the tea—I’ll be back soon.” With a rustle of silk skirts Rosalie left, the soft scent of her perfume lingering in the air.

Mira sat down in a brocaded chair and picked up a cup of tea, her eyes lingering on the well-tended landscaping visible through the spotless windows. Though the sunlight would eventually fade the rich colors of the carpet and furniture, Rosalie insisted on letting the sun into every room she frequented. It was a habit of hers that Mira remembered from their days in the chateau in France. Most people preferred the restful dimness of heavily draped windows, yet Rosalie was not one who would allow her tastes to be dictated by others.

So Alec had designed Berkeley Hall, Mira mused, intensely curious to see the rest of it. Knowing him, she was not surprised at the touches of whimsy that graced the little that she had seen of the house… like the griffins in the main hall, and the concealed closets in this room, decorated with Chinese birds, and the bits of mirror glass lining the edges of the windows. She smiled slightly at the irony of the situation. In trying to escape him, she had managed to find refuge in a place that he had created.

She knew exactly why Alec made Rosalie uneasy, even if Rosalie herself could not explain it. Rosalie was used to straightforward men like Rand Berkeley, not ones who were adept at saying one thing while meaning another. Alec would be too much a man of extremes to make Rosalie feel at ease in his company… he was too handsome, too unpredictable, too perceptive. Any woman who loved him would be an absolute idiot, Mira thought. As she berated herself silently, a tear rolled down her cheek and dropped into her tea, and as another followed, she set the cup down and hunted for a handkerchief. “No more tears allowed after today,” a voice camefrom the door, and Mira looked up to see Rosalie’s eyes warm with sympathy.

“You’re finished so soon?” she asked huskily, leaving off her search for a handkerchief.

“I managed to postpone the minor problems for later. I explained to the servants that we have a very special guest who will be staying here indefinitely—and that she must be treated like royalty.”

“I am the last person in England who should be treated like royalty,” Mira said bitterly, spooning more sugar into her tea and stirring nervously even after it was dissolved. “You don’t know who I am, or what—”

“I do know,” Rosalie said gently. Their eyes met and the agitated movement of Mira’s spoon stopped abruptly. “Guillaume told Rand many things five years ago in France before… before we were separated. I know about your mother. I know about your upbringing, and your background.”

“You do?” Mira froze in astonishment. “You know and yet you’ve asked me to stay with you?”

“Oh, Mireille…” Rosalie sat down in the chair close by, arranging her skirts automatically and folding her hands in her lap. Her expression was pitying and affectionate, and vaguely amused. “From the day I was born, I thought I was the daughter of a confectioner and a governess… I was a housemaid. Although I was educated, I had to work with my hands sometimes… I polished and scrubbed… I knew what it was like to have to pick up after someone else… I knew what it was like to want things that I thought I could never have. But when I was your age, I found out that I was the product of a secret love affair between a noblewoman and the most notorious dandy in the world—”

“Beau Brummell?”

“Yes, Brummell.” Rosalie’s smile became wistful. “He is my father. But I discovered that the dandy’s daughter was no different, no better, than the confec-tioner’s daughter. It made no difference who my parents were—I was still the same woman. Now people think of me as Lady Berkeley, and some of them scrape and bow, and some whisper about my shadowed past, but most of them would never believe that I had once run up and down the stairs lugging buckets of coal for the fire, afraid I would get my ears boxed for being slow. And if things could change so drastically for me, they can for you.”

“But a confectioner’s daughter is one thing… I am something else entirely. “I am”—Mira’s face whitened as she forced out the words—”the daughter of a prostitute.” She had never said the word out loud before. “That makes me lower than—”

“Don’t.” Rosalie’s blue eyes flashed, and suddenly her face seemed chiseled out of brittle ivory. She spoke with a meaningful slowness. “I don’t want you to say that ever again. Not to me, not to Rand, not to anyone. Your future depends on it, do you understand?” Mira shook her head, transfixed by the sternness that had transformed Rosalie’s expression. “No, I’m afraid I don’t understand. I don’t have the kind of future that—”

“You have a wonderful future,” Rosalie corrected determinedly. “I intend to make it so.” She continued in a softer tone as she witnessed Mira’s increasing bewilderment. “I will take care of everything. We’ll be very clever… we’ll be very discreet. Believe me, I am England’s foremost authority on how to survive a scandal. For the first two years that Rand and I were married… well, that’s a story in itself. The next several months you will rest here quietly while the gossip about you and Sackville recedes—” “It won’t.”