“Money makes everything easier,” he agreed, his brow furrowed. “I’m fortunate that my mother came from a successful English merchant family and her fortune remained on this side of the Channel.”
“Very prudent of your mother and her family.” She cocked her head to one side. “Are you here only to look up a distant family connection? Perhaps you are bored now that you’ve sold out of the army?”
“Not bored, though I am rather at loose ends,” he admitted. “But as soon as Hawkins mentioned you, I wanted to see if you were the right Suzanne Duval, and if so, to learn how you are faring.”
Mr. Potter returned, a tea tray in hand. The tray was dented pewter and there was a chip in the spout of the teapot, but her landlord presented the refreshments with the air of a duke’s butler. There was also a dish of shortbread.
“Thank you, Mr. Potter!” Suzanne said warmly. “You and your wife have outdone yourselves.”
“The pleasure is ours, my lady.” He inclined his head and withdrew from the room.
“My lady?” Simon asked as she poured tea for them. “He knows that you’re an aristocrat?”
“He was just being polite, though you might have changed that.” She sipped her tea, then offered him the shortbread. “Have a piece. Mrs. Potter is a wonderful baker.”
He followed her advice and murmured appreciatively after he bit into it. “She is, and she doesn’t stint on the butter.” He finished his tea in a long swallow and set the cup down with a clink. “I wonder if I might find old friends or relations in the émigré community. Have you found your compatriots welcoming even though your relatives have returned to France?”
Her mouth twisted. “The grand émigrés in Soho will have nothing to do with a woman who was a whore in Turkey.”
He winced. “Surely no one said such an appalling thing!”
“The aristocratic ladies did. Their husbands tried to corner me in empty rooms,” she said tartly. “I decided I would be safer among my more humble countrymen here in St. Pancras.”
He bit off a curse. “You deserve so much better than this, Suzanne!”
She sighed. “If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that no one ‘deserves’ anything more than the right to struggle for survival. I’d rather be here altering gowns in a cold room than living in luxury in a Turkish harem and wondering which night might be my last, so I think I am doing well.” She raised her teacup in a mock toast. “Will you drink to my survival, Simon?”
“I can do more than that,” he said, his gaze intense. “Marry me, Suzanne.”
Chapter 2
Suzanne set down her teacup so quickly that the tea sloshed out. “Good heavens, Simon! You look so sane, but clearly I misjudged.”
He smiled, enjoying the musical lilt of her French accent, the grace of her petite, perfectly proportioned figure, the shine of her rich, tobacco brown hair. “I am as astonished by my proposal as you are. Yet it feels right.”
“Why?” She tilted her head, her startling green eyes curious and amused. “Why ask, and why does it feel right?”
This was a question he needed to answer for himself as well as her. “I have spent years of my life working for the demise of Napoleon,” he said slowly. “He and his regime cost me much of my family and the girl I loved. Now he is gone, for good, I hope. What does a soldier do when the wars are over?”
“What do any of us who survived do?” she asked softly.
It was the question that had haunted him for months, and gradually he was finding answers. “Cultivate the ways of peace. I’ll open my long-neglected house. Put away my uniform. Plant a garden. Take a wife.” He studied Suzanne’s lovely face. In many ways she was a stranger, but on some deep level, familiar. “You have survived great losses and tumult in your life, so perhaps you want the same things?”
She set her teacup down and rose to drift across the room. Ending at the window, she gazed absently at the street outside. “You and I met a dozen years ago during the Peace of Amiens. The naive and optimistic girl that I was then thought the wars were over and we could look forward to bright futures. Then the world dissolved once more into violence and chaos. Perhaps your proposal stems from a desire to recapture those days of peace and optimism? But they are gone forever.”
“That time has passed,” he admitted, “but weren’t we friends even though we didn’t know each other for long? I enjoyed your intelligence and warmth and envied my cousin his choice of bride. You seemed to enjoy my company as well. Isn’t that worth building on?”
“That is a frail, distant connection,” she said as she turned from the window to look at him. “We are strangers to each other now.”
“Are we?” He caught her gaze. “Much has happened to us both, but do you feel as if you are a different person from that young bride? I may be battered and weary, but I feel that at heart, I’m the same man I was when we met.”
“I suppose I am also the same deep down.” Her expression tightened and he saw pain in her eyes. “But I don’t know if I’ll ever be suited to marriage again.”
When she fell silent, he asked tentatively, “Are you willing to say why?”
At first he thought she’d refuse, but then she sighed. “Years in a harem where my survival depended on being a whore and pretending to enjoy it have damaged me, perhaps beyond repair. I’m not sure if I’ll ever know desire again. The way I feel now, the answer is probably no.”
He winced internally as he recognized how much pain lay under her flat, honest words. Yet he felt a surprising kinship with her. “My circumstances were nothing like yours, but I do understand the death of desire.” For a brief, piercing moment he remembered the intoxicating mutual madness he’d known with his fiancée, Alette. “For me, desire is not much more than a memory, buried with all the other bright memories. Yet I can imagine a satisfactory marriage without physical intimacy. Can you?”
