Read Online The Countess by Claire Delacroix - Free Book Online Page B

you!”
    â€œMe?” Her mother seemed surprised. “Just the sight of you makes men’s teeth ache with desire, child. You have curves and a lovely dimple and a sweetly generous nature.” Eglantine kissed Jacqueline’s temple. “This confusion will pass and you will see. Your grandfather, after all, was smitten at the sight of you, his first grandchild, and he fancied himself to have excellent regard for women. Do you remember him?”
    â€œNay.” A vague recollection stirred within Jacqueline but she could not have identified any element of that grandfatherly haze. ’Twas mingled with her newer memories of Crevy, both old and new recollections of her grandmother’s laughter.
    â€œHe had a stern eye and a robust laugh.” Jacqueline thought she spied a tear in her mother’s eye, but ’twas gone if it ever had been. “’Twas he who insisted I had named you wrongly and your name be changed.”
    This was news! “But what was my name?”
    â€œI had called you Marie first and Jacqueline second. Jacqueline is your grandmother’s given name, and seemed fitting as your grandfather said you were the image of her in youth.” Eglantine paused to ponder. “How did he state it? Ah! That if you also possess his wife’s disposition, ’twould be more fitting that you were named for her first and the Madonna second.”
    Jacqueline laughed along with her mother. “ Grandmère does have a rare passion.”
    â€œAye, that she does.” Eglantine cast her daughter a sidelong glance. “Do you know how old I was when you were born?”
    Jacqueline shook her head.
    â€œI was fourteen summers of age.”
    Jacqueline caught her breath, unable to imagine having a child in this moment of her own life. She half-doubted her mother, but that woman smiled and nodded.
    â€œAye, ’tis true. ’Twas confusing to me, though perfectly predictable to all. I had been wed, after all, but ten months before.”
    Here was the tale of her parents’ great love that Jacqueline had long desired to hear. “And you loved my father with all your heart and soul, just like a chanson !”
    Her mother swallowed a laugh, her words wry. “I met him at the altar, Jacqueline, and ’twas not like a chanson . I was Robert’s second wife. His first had died, though he had two children from that match.”
    â€œAlienor was one.”
    â€œAye, as was Robert’s son and heir. He was almost of an age with me, while Alienor was only four.”
    â€œWas she as spoiled and impossible then as she is now?” Jacqueline demanded, then caught her breath at her own lack of charity.
    But Eglantine chuckled. “Aye, I believe she was.”
    Jacqueline looked at her mother with new eyes, struggling to think of Eglantine at her own age and that with a husband and babe. And another woman’s two children to raise, as well! A new wave of admiration swept through Jacqueline, buttressed by her own uncertainty that she could have managed as much.
    They walked for a moment, then Jacqueline mustered her courage. “Why did you bring us here, Maman ?”
    Eglantine sighed. “Let me continue from the beginning. When my father commented on your beauty, your father saw fit to arrange your betrothal immediately.”
    â€œTo Reynaud de Charmonte.” Jacqueline could scarcely utter the man’s name without bitterness falling from her tongue.
    â€œAye, he was Robert’s friend.”
    Eglantine’s mild manner, her apparent acceptance of this arrangement, was more than Jacqueline could bear. “But, Maman , how could you betroth me to such an old man? Even if you liked being wed to one, how could you do this to me?” Jacqueline clapped one hand over her mouth, certain she had said too much, but Eglantine eyed her steadily.
    â€œHave I ever spoken poorly of your father to