The Adventurous Bride
Miranda Jarrett
A proper lady…and an improper lord!Lady Mary Farren is a sensible, practical country girl. But on her long-awaited Grand Tour, she's determined to find adventure. She's thrilled when the chance purchase of an unusual painting draws her into a mystery…and brings her to the attention of a handsome stranger!Lord Fitzgerald thought she was just another pampered British miss–until he was confronted by her keen intelligence. Knowing full well that an impoverished Irish peer was no match for a duke's daughter, John still couldn't tear himself away from the ravishing Lady Mary…or the painting, said to hold clues to a fortune in gold.Grand Passion on the Grand Tour!
“How do you know I won’t simply take the painting from you?” he asked softly.
“Because I trust you, my lord,” she said without hesitation. “You understood the merit of the picture the instant you saw it—not just its value, but its power. Which means that by trusting you I am either very brave, my lord, or very foolish.”
He chuckled as he let his hands drop away from the painting. “Tell me which you are.”
“I am sorry, my lord,” she said, “but you must decide for yourself.”
He cupped her jaw with his palm, turning her face up to his. “Then I should say you’re brave, Mary.” His mouth was just over her lips. “Very, very brave.”
How many favors would she grant him? How adventurous did she really mean to be, here beneath the willows?
Author Note
I’m delighted to be launching a new trilogy of books with The Adventurous Bride. Join Lady Mary Farren and her sister Lady Diana, daughters of the Duke of Aston, as they begin a rollicking journey with their governess Miss Wood across England, France and Italy, a trip filled with excitement, danger, laughter and, of course, with love.
In eighteenth-century England, aristocratic young gentlemen were expected to sow their wild oats on the Continent, and the wealthier and more blue-blooded the gentlemen, the wilder and more far-flung the oats. But what of the well-bred young ladies like Mary and Diana with a similar desire for adventure and experience before their proper, arranged marriages? What intrigues await them on the other side of the English Channel, traveling gloriously far from homes, consciences and anxious mothers and fathers?
For the beautiful daughters of the Duke of Aston, the adventure is about to begin….
The Adventurous Bride
Miranda Jarrett
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Afterword
Chapter One
Aston Hall, Kent
June, 1784
W ith a little twitch of her gauzy muslin skirts, Lady Mary Farren took her place among the dancers in her father’s ballroom. The evening was warm, the tall windows thrown up to catch any possible breeze from the gardens outside. Beneath the dozens of flickering candles in the chandeliers, the flushed gentlemen around her were trying their best to be handsome and gallant, the ladies striving to be beautiful and flirtatious, and all of them were confident they represented the very cream of their little county society.
This had been the only life Mary had known in her eighteen years—the only life she’d been permitted to know as the eldest daughter of the Duke of Aston. But in three days, that would finally, blissfully change forever, and Mary—ah, Mary couldn’t wait.
Even as the musicians finished the last notes of the dance and her partner bowed across from her, Mary was eagerly ticking off the last details for the journey in her head: the bespoke traveling clothes packed in the new brass-studded trunks, the passages booked and the letters of introduction held safely in readiness, the maps and guides and—
“Lady Mary, if you please.” Miss Wood, Mary’s longtime governess and soon-to-be companion on her journey, stood beside her, her small, plump hands clasped across the front of her plain gray gown. “A word alone, my lady, if you please?”
At once Mary nodded, leading the way to one of the window alcoves where their conversation would be lost in the music and chatter around them. Though at twenty-eight Miss Wood was still a young woman herself, the governess was always the very soul of discretion and propriety, and only a genuine emergency would bring her into the ballroom, where she was as out of place as a mourning dove among gaudy parrots. But since the duchess’s long illness and death four years before, Mary had capably assumed many of her mother’s duties for her father, and it was quite appropriate for the governess to seek her out now.
But oh, please, let this be nothing that would delay her departure! God forgive her this once for being selfish, and wanting nothing to stop her first chance at a life beyond Aston Hall!
“What is it, Miss Wood?” Mary asked now, keeping her voice low. Possible disasters raced through her head: an accident among the staff, a mishap to a guest, grievous news from afar. Anything could be possible. “What has happened?”
“It’s your sister, my lady,” Miss Wood said. “Your father His Grace has asked for her to join him, and I cannot find her anywhere.”
“Diana’s gone?” Mary’s anxiety took a sharp new twist. It wasn’t that she feared some dire mishap had befallen her younger sister. Diana was always the cause of mischief, never the victim, beautiful and blithe and as irresistible to men as they were to her.
It simply didn’t seem to be in Diana’s blood to be otherwise. Where Mary was responsible and considerate, Diana was neither. How many times had Mary been left to soothe their father’s wrath after Diana had been traipsing gaily about the countryside with yet another smitten young gentleman, always skipping just on the edge of real scandal and ruin without a thought for how it would affect her chances for a respectable marriage? How many promises had Diana made to reform, only to beg Mary to make things right again with Father when the next gallant appeared beneath her window?
“You have looked everywhere, Miss Wood?” Mary asked, praying that for once the governess might be mistaken. “I’m sure I saw Diana dancing not a half hour ago.”
Miss Wood’s round face lit with hope. “Do you recall her partner? Perhaps she’s with him, my lady, and we—”
“She was dancing with Dr. Canning, as a favor to Father.” Mary sighed. Dr. Canning was at least seventy, with thick spectacles and scattered wits, and little ability left for wooing any female. “He’s a most kindly old gentleman, but I’d scarcely think Diana would vanish to the garden folly with him.”
“I’ve already looked in the folly, my lady.” Miss Wood glanced over her shoulder, to where Mary’s father stood with several friends. Despite the gaiety swirling around him, he was not happy, that was clear enough. He had summoned Diana, and as both a duke and a father, he expected instant obedience. But Diana hadn’t appeared, and now Father was glaring across the room at them with his arms folded—no, battened—over his silk-covered chest.
“I’ve checked her bedchamber, my lady,” continued Miss Wood more hurriedly, “as well as the schoolroom, the library, the withdrawing room, even the creamery.”
“Do not even mention the creamery!” Mary sighed again, this time with exasperation. Whatever had occurred in the creamery last summer between Diana and a certain young tutor down from Oxford still made Diana giggle into her napkin whenever the butter was passed at table. Mary didn’t want to know, truly she didn’t. “Perhaps Diana’s only gone to the privy.”
Miss Wood shook her head. “The waiting-maid there hadn’t seen her all evening, my lady, and—”
“The stables.” To her dismay, Mary suddenly recalled Diana smiling down at the brawny new groom as he’d helped her mount her mare this morning. When he’d returned Diana’s smile more warmly than was proper, Mary had thought it only because he was new to the staff, and hadn’t yet realized his place. Now she thought otherwise.
And oh, what Father would say if he ever learned of it!
“The stables, my lady?” Miss Wood asked. “Do you believe that—”
“It’s only a guess,” Mary said quickly. “I’ll hunt for Diana, while you tell Father that—”
“I am sorry, my lady, but I cannot permit that,” Miss Wood answered firmly. “Not to the stables, not alone at night.”
“But if I can find Diana before—”
“Your place is here at the ball, my lady,” Miss Wood insisted. “You remain here with His Grace’s guests, and I’ll go look for Lady Diana.”
“She’s my sister,” Mary said, looking over the governess’s head to her irate father, “and I’ll go find her myself.”
Miss Wood frowned. “But His Grace—”
“Tell Father Diana will be there directly. He won’t even realize I’m gone.” Mary turned away to slip through the nearest door to the garden before Miss Wood could protest again.
She ran down the slate steps and along the path of crushed stones, bunching her skirts at her sides so she wouldn’t trip. Here away from the heat of the candles, the evening was cooler, and Mary breathed deeply, steeling herself for whatever might lie ahead. There was no telling where or how or even if Mary was going to find Diana.
To be honest, she hoped she didn’t. Just as she and Miss Wood were set to leave for the Continent, Diana and Father would be setting out this week for London, where Diana would be introduced at court and, with her beauty and a little luck, attract a suitable husband of a suitable rank and fortune. It was exactly what Diana claimed to want most from life, and why she would risk it now for the sake of a flirtation with a groom was beyond Mary’s comprehension.
Purposefully she kept to the shadows, taking care not to be noticed. The yard before the stables was filled with the guests’ carriages tonight, and the waiting drivers and footmen sat on the carriage-steps or on the lawn, talking and laughing and making bawdy-talk with the housemaids who’d somehow slipped free of the party inside. There was no sign of Diana, nor of the new groom, either, though likely by now they’d retreated to some more intimate place.
Confound her sister for putting her in this position again! Doubtless Diana had convinced herself that she wasn’t breaking any promises to behave at all, that dallying with a servant somehow didn’t count. Mary hated having to play watchdog again, almost as much as she’d hate having to face Father one more time.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love Diana, because she did, with all the love and devotion that two motherless sisters could have for one another. That would never change. But standing in Diana’s beautiful, irresponsible shadow, always ready to catch her if she tumbled or protect her if she erred, had become an exhausting place to be. Wistfully, and guiltily, too, Mary longed to be known not as His Grace’s daughter or Lady Diana’s sister, but simply as herself. On the Continent, far from Aston Hall, she prayed she would.
Now she hurried around the curving brick wall and through the stable house’s side door. Except for the snuffling and whinnying of the sleepy horses in their stalls, the stable seemed empty and dark.
“Diana?” she called. “Diana, are you here?”
No answer came, not that Mary really expected Diana to come popping out from the loft like they had when they’d been little girls playing in the hay. This was different—far, far different.
She cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Diana, Father’s asking for you. If you’re—if you’re hiding in here, you must come back to the house and the dancing at once. Do you hear me?”
No answer again, but this time Mary was certain she heard a rustling that wasn’t a horse, a muffled giggle from one of the farther box stalls. For Mary, that was more than enough. She seized one of the lanterns that hung by the door and marched back to the stall, holding the light high before her.
“I am serious, Diana,” she announced crossly, the flickering light bouncing and bobbing over the planked walls. “Come now, or I’ll flush you out like Father’s hounds do with a fox, see if I don’t.”
At the last box, she shoved the gate open and raised the lantern over her head like a beacon.
And gasped.
It was hard for Mary to tell which were her sister’s body and arms and legs and which the groom’s, they were that wrapped around one another. Diana’s yellow gown was hiked high over her legs with shameless abandon, the man’s tanned hand spread possessively over her pale thigh above her bright pink ribbon garter. She’d pulled his shirt free of his breeches, her own hands twisting along his broad bare back. Her blond hair was half-unpinned and loose, her cheeks flushed, every inch a wanton rather than a peer’s daughter.
“Mary!” Diana squeaked, clinging more closely to the groom and slipping around him as if to hide. “Whatever are you doing here, spying on Will and me?”
“I’m not spying, Diana,” Mary said, her own face hot with embarrassment. “Father wants to see you at once, and you know you must go. Can’t you see that I’m trying to save you from yourself?”
“Ah, now, my lady, where’s th’ sport in that?” The groom twisted about to leer at her, keeping one arm curled around Diana’s waist while he beckoned to Mary with the other. “Better t’spend than t’save, I say. Come along, sweetheart, there’s plenty o’ me t’ share with both of you sisters.”
Before Mary realized it, he’d reached out and taken her hand to pull her closer. Too shocked to speak, she struggled to jerk free, the lantern swinging wildly in her other hand.
“Stop, Will, don’t!” Diana cried. “Mary, hush, it’s not—oh, dear God in heaven, Father! Oh, no, Father!”
Her heart pounding with dread, Mary slowly turned. It wasn’t a tease; it wasn’t a jest. There by the gate stood Father, as furious and grim as she’d ever seen him, with Miss Wood and Robinson, the stable master, hovering behind him.
She gave a tiny, desperate dip of a curtsey, the best she could manage under the circumstances. If only Miss Wood had let her handle this herself, instead of bringing her father into it!
“Father, please,” Diana began breathlessly. “This isn’t what it must seem.”
“No, Father,” Mary agreed with desparate haste. “It’s not, not at all.”
The groom pulled free of Diana and touched his knuckle to his forehead. “Beg pardon, Your Grace, but her ladyship’s speaking true. This don’t be what it seems, not by—”
“Hold your tongue, you wretched fool!” Father’s expression darkened, black thunderclouds by the lantern’s light. “No excuses from any of you. I know what I see, and I know what this is.”
“Don’t fault Mary, Father, I beg you.” Diana shoved down her skirts and tried to smooth her hair. “She was only—”
“I’ll tell you the same as I told your sister, Diana,” Father said sharply. “No more excuses from either of you.”
“We’re not making excuses, Father,” Mary pleaded. “I was only—that is, we were—”
“No more.” His hand sliced through the air, a sharp gesture to match the cutting edge of his voice. “Make yourselves decent, and come to me in the library. Now.”
He turned on his heel and left them, his back ramrod-straight with his anger, and Miss Wood scurrying after him into the dark. The stable master grabbed the groom by the shoulder and half-shoved, half-dragged him from the stall.
Mary looked at her sister. Diana bowed her head. It was too late for explanations now, too late for remorse or contrition.
All they could do was obey.
An hour later, Mary sat on the edge of the bench in the hall outside the library, her feet flat on the floor and her hands clasped in her lap. Diana had gone in first to Father, and though Mary could not make out their words through the closed door, she could hear enough to know that Father’s anger hadn’t cooled a bit, and that Diana’s wailing tears and shrill protests had done nothing to help her cause.
Mary bent her head, closing her eyes and pressing her hands over her ears to try to shut out her quarrelling family. Soon enough she’d be called in to stand between them. She’d have to soothe Father’s temper, and coax fresh promises of reformation from Diana. One more time, she’d make some manner of a shaky peace, the oil poured on the constantly roiling waters of Aston Hall.
From behind the closed door came the crash of hurled porcelain, and Mary hunched her shoulders like a turtle retreating into its shell. In three days, she’d sail for France, and be free of it all.
Only three more days….
The door flew open. “He is cruel, Mary, unspeakably cruel to me and to you—to us both!” Diana sank down on the floor before the bench, her wrinkled yellow skirts spreading out around her, and clutched Mary’s hands in her own. “Oh, Mary, I am so vastly sorry!”
“Don’t fuss over me, Di,” Mary whispered urgently, knowing they’d little time before it was her turn. “What made him most cross? Quick, quick, tell me! What must I say to coax him back to good cheer?”
But Diana only shook her head, her face still flushed with weeping. “Oh, Mary, how can you forgive me? I only meant to amuse myself for a moment or two, and now look what has happened! For Father to make us both suffer so, when—”
“Mary, come,” called Father sharply from inside the library. “I know you’re waiting out there, for you always were the obedient one.”
“Don’t worry, Diana, I’ll set things to rights.” Mary smiled, and gave Diana’s hands one final squeeze to reassure her. Then she smoothed her skirts, raised her head high, and joined Father in the library.
“Here you are at last, Mary.” He was sitting in his leather-covered armchair, pushed back from his desk. Though a widower, Father was still in his prime, his belly flat beneath his Chinese-silk waistcoat and besotted ladies tittering about him wherever he went. Unlike most gentlemen of his generation, he’d chosen to follow the newer fashion, and had abandoned wigs in favor of his own dark hair cropped short and feathered with gray.
Yet as Mary came to stand before him, what she noticed first was how the large vein in his forehead pulsed, a bad sign that she recognized all too well. His temper seemed to simmer around him like a swarm of hornets, anger and disappointment and general irritation vibrating together in the warm night air.
“Your sister has shamed me again, Mary,” he began, his voice an irate growl. “Not even you can defend her this time.”
“I would not defend Diana, no,” Mary countered with care, searching for the best way to soothe him. “Thus I ask not for forgiveness for her, but for mercy.”
“Oh, mercy you.” He snorted with disgust. “Come along, Mary, I’d expect more wit from you than that.”
“Mercy doesn’t require wit, Father.”
“No, but I do.” With his guests now departed, he’d shed his coat and rolled back the ruffled cuffs of his shirt to his elbows, his thick fingers drumming irritably on the carved mahogany arm of his chair. “Why do you defend Diana, anyway? She was acting like a common slattern with that rascal, as if her good name and mine weren’t worth a brass farthing.”
“She didn’t mean to upset you, Father, I’m sure of it,” Mary said. “I’ll grant she was irresponsible—”
“Oh, aye, letting some base-born groom ruck up her skirts,” he growled, and struck his open palm on the arm of the chair with frustration. “I’ve no right to be upset about that?”
“Yes, Father,” Mary said, knowing from experience that this was always the safest reply, and often the only acceptable one. “Of course you have.”
“Then why does your sister keep shaming me like this?” Unable to sit still any longer, he shoved back his chair and rose, turning his back to Mary to stare out the window. “It’s high time she weds. I’m too old for her willfulness. She needs a strong, young husband to thrash her into obedience, some young lion who’ll break her spirit and fill her belly. That’s what she needs—an honest husband and a brood of children. What better way to make a wild filly into a mare?”
“Yes, Father,” Mary said again. “If Diana can only find a gentleman she can love with all her heart—”
“Don’t speak to me of drivel like that, Mary,” Father snapped. “Love! The last thing your sister needs is a dose of that foolishness.”
“No, Father,” Mary said softly. She remembered her parents as being devoted to one another, as much in love as any sweethearts. Since her mother’s death, Father spoke of love with only bitterness and scorn, and no tenderness for Mama’s memory, as if her last, wasting illness were some personal affront to him. “But if she is able to make a favorable match in London, one that pleases you, then—”
“No London.” His hands were clasped so tightly behind his back that they looked more like clenched fists. “How can I possibly introduce Diana to Her Majesty after such scandalous behavior?”
“But none of the guests learned of it,” Mary protested. “The only one who might talk would be that wretched groom, and I’m sure Mr. Robinson will speak to him so he won’t—”
“That ‘wretched groom’ will have the next three years of his life to repent,” Father said curtly. “I’ve ordered Robinson to give him over to the press gang, so that he might serve His Majesty’s navy instead of my daughter.”
“The press gang!” she exclaimed, appalled by so severe a punishment. “Oh, Father, you would not send Diana away, too!”
“If it were my choice, I’d lock her away in the darkest convent I could find,” he said grimly. “But you’ve asked me to be merciful, Mary, and so I shall.”
“Then you will forgive her?” Mary asked with fresh hope. “You’ll take her to London, and to court?”
“I said I’d be merciful, not a fool.” At last he swung around to face her. “I’m sending her abroad with you.”
Chapter Two
Calais, France
W ith the small brass bell jangling overhead, Lord John Fitzgerald stepped into the musty shop that housed Dumont’s Antiquities, and paused to let his eyes grow accustomed to the gray twilight. John had been here many times before; he knew what to expect, even the murkiness and mildew, and none of it fooled him. Though Dumont himself was French to his bent old bones, the signboard that hung outside the shop was painted in English, a beckoning convenience for Dumont’s mostly British customers.
It was a credit to the Frenchman’s shrewdness that he acknowledged the importance of those British visitors to his trade, just as he recognized how they’d reverently interpret every speck of ancient dust as proof of authenticity. Since the last peace had been signed between Britain and France and travel to the Continent had once again become fashionable, scores of English gentlemen and ladies trooped through Dumont’s shop with their eyes wide and their purses open, ready to lap up whatever tales he told about his dubious wares, and to pay whatever he asked for the privilege.
John, however, knew otherwise. He’d a gift for discerning the false from the true, and he wasn’t afraid to say so, either. In a shop that prospered from deceptions, his eye and his knowledge made him the least-welcome of Dumont’s customers: an English gentleman too knowledgeable to be properly fleeced.
“Ah, bonjour, my lord.” Dumont groaned sourly, and rolled his eyes toward the dusty heavens. “So you’ve returned to plague me again, eh?”
“And a good day to you, too, Dumont,” John said, his gaze swiftly scanning the cluttered shop for anything new of value. Because Calais was so often either the first or the last stop on his journeys, he was a frequent visitor. “I’ve returned because I’ve heard you’ve new stock from Florence.”
“Like a highwayman you are, my lord, come to steal from a poor old man.” With a great effort, Dumont dislodged himself from the high-backed chair behind the counter. “Why won’t you leave me in peace, eh?”
“Because once in a great while, Dumont, I find a treasure here in your rubbish heap,” John said, unperturbed by the old man’s comments. He had been away from London for over a year now, and was at last planning to return to London later this week. He needed a small gift to take to the opulent Duchess of Cumberland, a most loyal friend. His dalliance with Her Grace had begun last winter in Rome, and ended there, too, quite amicably for both parties. But still John believed a little token, something for her new house in Grosvenor Square, would make a pretty gesture. Her Grace had already promised him her support when he finally returned to London; God only knew that he’d need such powerful allies after last year’s disastrous scandal on the beach at Brighton. Besides, he liked to leave ladies sighing fondly after him; such thoughtfulness had always served him well.
“‘My rubbish heap’. Oh, you’re cruel, my lord, too cruel.” With another groan, Dumont shuffled forward, his arms cocked at the elbows and his hands folded loosely over his leather apron like an elderly squirrel. “But I’ve serveral new pieces, yes. One collector’s misfortune is another’s bounty, my lord, and so it shall always be.”
“I trust it’s no gentleman of my acquaintance,” he said, purposefully bland and disinterested. Paintings and other art were often the first things to be sold when a gentleman suffered a financial reversal. Depending on the circumstances, John might well be able to turn this to his own advantage, and resell the art in London for a profit.
He’d offer no excuses for it, either. Younger sons didn’t have to, particularly youngest sons who’d had the misfortune to be born sixth in line to an Irish peerage with a bankrupt estate. Oh, he’d a miniscule income from a distant uncle and tolerable luck at the gaming tables, and by necessity and inclination he’d mastered the arts of friendship and favors from his wealthier fellows—and from ladies, too, on occasion. But if John’s life had given him a rocky path to climb, so be it. He’d simply seen the rough diamonds scattered among the stones and gathered them up, and where, really, was the sin in that?
“I’ve many sources of supply, many sources,” Dumont was saying vaguely. “You can scarce expect a man of my age to recall them all. Are you here today with a specific purchase in mind, my lord? Might I guide you to your selection?”
“I’ll keep my own eyes open for what pleases me.” John could be vague, too; it was another of his talents. He let his gaze wander the shelves crowded with bits of ornamental glass and porcelain, statues and carvings, paintings and sketches. The Duchess of Cumberland wasn’t choosy about quality, but she did demand that her possessions—and her gifts—reflect the grandeur of both her person and her station. Anything gilded would do, or a Venus, or even a fat little Cupid might—
“Here you are, my lord.” Dumont was proudly displaying a small bronze statue of Mercury. “From the very hands of that great master Benvenuto Cellini himself. You can tell by the delicacy of the work, the exuberance of the line, each the mark of true sixteenth-century genius!”
The shopkeeper handed the bronze to John, then pressed his plump, white palms together as if in prayer, his voice hushed with reverence as he hovered at John’s side.
John carried the little statue to the shop’s bow window and tipped it toward the weak sunlight. It was a respectable forgery, the patina nicely burnished to mimic age. But the Mercury’s expression was simpering and cross-eyed, and if he ever straightened the leg that was bent in flight, one winged foot would likely dangle down a good two inches below its mate.
Dumont inched closer, misreading John’s silence. “You are in awe, my lord, as is proper, yes? To be able to cradle such genius in your hands is a gift, a blessing, an honor, a—”
“A cheat,” John said mildly. “You know as well as I that this sorry little rascal’s lucky if he’s three years old, let alone three hundred.”
Dumont’s eyes popped wide with wounded indignation, his white brows bristling upward. “No, my lord, no! I had it on the very best advice that this bronze is authentique! That you would accuse me of such delusion, such—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Dumont,” John said. “Nor am I telling you anything that you don’t already know.”
“But my lord, I cannot see how—”
The brass bell over the door jingled. Instantly Dumont turned toward it, grateful for the interruption. John looked, too.
And smiled.
How could he not? The girl was young and lovely, her beauty radiant enough to glow with its own light in the dismal shop. She was undeniably English, and likely wealthy, too. There were good-sized pearls hanging from her ears, and gold beads around her throat and over the wrists of her kidskin gloves. Her petticoat and jacket were costly but outdated, printed with oversized tulips that would make a fashionable Parisian shudder, tulips that contrasted garishly with the girl’s creamy English complexion and dark chestnut hair. No more than twenty: a small, neat waist, high, rounded breasts, trim ankles and a pretty foot.
He appraised her quickly, efficiently, as he had the bronze Mercury. But what made him smile was how briskly she snapped her beribboned parasol shut, how she sailed into the little shop with her back straight and her head high and a guardian footman trailing after in her wake, as ready to conquer this foreign place as any admiral.
Dumont coughed delicately, and patted the sides of his grizzled wig. “If you pray excuse me, my lord, I must greet the lady.”
“Of course you must, you old rogue.” John slipped the bronze Mercury more comfortably into the crook of his arm, content to watch this little scene unfold from the curving recess of the bow window. “Go on, go on. How could you resist such a pretty pigeon waiting to be plucked?”
But Dumont was already with the girl, bowing and scraping as if she were the queen.
“Good day, mademoiselle,” he said in English, as quick as John had been to recognize her nationality. “Allow me to welcome you to my humble little shop. I place myself and my establishment at your complete disposal.”
She nodded with her stern small chin, already looking away from Dumont to the crowded shelves and walls behind him. “I should like to see whatever quality paintings you have in your stock.”
“Be assured that every painting I have is of quality, mademoiselle.” Dumont puffed out his narrow chest with unfounded pride. “I would not have it otherwise.”
“Show your respect,” the footman ordered sternly. “Her ladyship’s not one o’ your common mam’selles. She’s Lady Mary Farren, daughter of His Grace the Duke o’ Aston.”
The girl wrinkled her nose. “Oh, please, Winters, that’s not necessary. The man doesn’t care who I am.”
But Dumont cared very much, and John could practically see the newly raised prices bobbing over the Frenchman’s head. The daughter of an English duke was indeed a rare little pigeon to find in a grimy old port like Calais.
And though the daughter of a duke, the wife of no husband. Interesting, thought John idly. Why wasn’t she in London, pursuing a suitable mate the way every other girl of her age and bloodlines would be? She was certainly fair enough, and there was undoubtedly money for a dower. Was there some sort of fascinating scandal that had washed her up on these shores?
Very interesting. Perhaps she could be persuaded to help amuse him until he sailed….
“Oh, my lady, forgive my ignorance of your great station!” the shopkeeper cried. “To be honored by your presence, your custom! How dare you believe I wouldn’t care!”
“Well, yes, thank you,” Lady Mary said, obviously unimpressed. “Now, if I might see your paintings.”
John smiled again. He liked a direct woman, one who didn’t need a lot of long-winded flattery.
“Mais oui, my lady.” With another bow, Dumont ushered her along the wall, passing several grim-faced portraits to stop before a pastoral landscape with a pair of pipe-playing satyrs, prancing through the flowers on their goatish legs. “Now this is a picture of the first order, my lady. The school of Claude, if not by the master himself.”
The girl didn’t answer, bending down to study the painting’s surface more closely, her brows drawn into a skeptical frown.
Undaunted, Dumont plunged ahead. “The brushwork is superb, is it not, my lady? I sold a picture much like this—though not half so fine—to an English gentleman last week, and delighted he was to procure it for his estate.”
“I should not,” she said, stepping back. “Be delighted to possess such a picture, that is. Who would wish to look at those dreadful satyrs every day over tea?”
“Ahh, so her ladyship has a certain taste,” Dumont murmured, wincing. “A refined taste, that is.”
“What I have a taste for is quality, sir,” the girl said with thumping conviction. “It’s not the satyrs themselves that I dislike, but how clumsily they’re painted. You slander Claude, sir, by claiming this daub’s by him.”
“The school of Claude, my lady, the school,” Dumont said hastily, moving to a morose still life painting of wilted flowers and rotting fruit. “Perhaps you would prefer a more edifying picture, my lady, a reminder of our own mortality and a caution against the consequences of a worldly life.”
“A lady should have no need of such reminders, sir,” she said. “But this picture here—this one I quite like.”
Gracefully the girl stepped around Dumont and crouched down before a small painting propped against the wall. She tipped the heavy gold frame back with her gloved fingers and smiled with triumph.
Dumont frowned. “That one, my lady? Oh, I fear not, I fear not!”
John’s curiosity rose. From his place by the window, he couldn’t see the little painting behind the sweep of the girl’s pale linen skirts. What kind of eye did the girl have? Was she taken by a simpering shepherdess or droop-eared puppy the way most young English ladies would be, or had she discovered something with true merit?
Still crouching with her hand on the frame, Lady Mary looked up at Dumont, her face full of disbelief. “However could you fear a painting such as this one? It’s fine, most wonderfully fine, and not at all fearsome. Why didn’t you show it to me first?”
To John’s surprise, Dumont scowled, his wizened hands now folded defensively over his chest. “It’s new to the shop, my lady, and since I believe in honesty with my customers, I must confess that I know nothing of its painter nor its history. Without that knowledge, I cannot in good faith sell such a picture to you.”
“You cannot sell it to me, sir?” She narrowed her eyes, shrewdly calculating the challenge by tipping her head to one side so the pearl earring bobbed against her cheek. “Cannot, or will not?”
“Whichever pleases you to believe, my lady.” Dumont grabbed the painting from Lady Mary, and shoved it behind the counter, out of her reach. “But I regret that I must remain firm. The picture is not for sale.”
And that, at last, was enough for John.
“Dumont, Dumont, what’s come over you?” he said, stepping forward from the window’s curve. “You know better than to deny a lady’s request like that. I assure you, my lady, his manners are generally more agreeable than that.”
She straightened at once, clasping her hands tightly together around the handle of her parasol. “Forgive me, sir, but I do not believe I know you.”
Dumont sighed, and made a testy wave of his hand. “My Lady Mary, my Lord John Fitzgerald.”
“My lady, I am honored.” With the Mercury still cradled in one arm like an unappealling infant, John made a graceful bow. “And I am at your service, willing to be your champion against this dragon.”
Dumont the dragon snorted, with disgust, not fire.
Nor was Lady Mary amused.
“My lord.” Her expression was frosty, with no smile to spare for John. “I do not recall asking for a champion.”
“You didn’t need to,” he said as winningly as he could, doing his best to disarm her. He was unaccustomed to women rebuffing him like this. He knew he was a well-made man, only twenty-nine, and handsome enough to make most females smile back when he smiled first. He wasn’t exactly vain about his appearance, but he had come to expect a certain response to his charm, and it felt odd now not to receive it from Lady Mary. Perhaps she was more trouble than she was worth, a challenge he’d be wiser to turn away from now.
But not quite yet. “Come, come, Dumont. Let me see this picture, and—”
“I’m perfectly capable of conducting this transaction myself, Lord John,” she interrupted, her cheeks flushing. “I would not have ventured into this shop myself if I couldn’t.”
“It’s hardly a question of incapability, my lady.” John set the Mercury down on the counter beside him with a thump. “I only thought you might need a bit of assistance in your negotiations with Monsieur Dumont.”
“I need nothing of the sort,” she said tartly. “If I can manage the affairs of my father’s household and estates, then surely I have the ability to choose a picture to my liking.”
How the devil had he ruffled her feathers so badly? He let his smile fade, and tried a different tactic. “Then it’s no wonder your father has showed his confidence in you by letting you come to the shops by yourself.”
She gave a small, restless twist to her shoulders. “My father trusts me so much that he has sent me abroad while he remains in England. He has no doubts about my capability.”
“You are traveling alone?” John asked, so surprised he was almost stunned. Usually young English ladies on the Continent were so burdened with parents and chaperones and elderly maiden aunts that it was a marvel they managed to see any sights at all. “You are here by yourself in Calais?”
“Here now, m’ lord, none o’ those questions,” the footman warned, moving between John and Lady Mary. He was formidable, a large country specimen, and John was disinclined to quarrel with him. “Her ladyship don’t have to answer them.”
But with an impatient quick sigh, the girl ducked around the footman to confront John once again.
“I am traveling with my sister and our companion, and several servants,” she said, her dark eyes wide and earnest. “So you see that ‘by alone’ I meant without Father.”
John knew otherwise. Without her father or any other male relative, she was as good—and as vulnerable—as travelling alone. The only difference lay in the words, and what she chose to believe, the pretty, parsing creature.
Perhaps she was not so great a challenge after all.
“And as you travel, you’re collecting art,” he said. “With your father’s trust, of course. But do you consider yourself a connoisseur, Lady Mary, or merely a dilettante?”
Doubt flooded her face, exactly as he’d intended. “I’m not certain I’m either.”
John smiled, his suspicions confirmed. Of course the foreign words would be unfamiliar to her; likely she was as willfully ignorant as every other English lady, and couldn’t tell a bonjour from a buongiorno.
“Ah, well, no matter,” he said expansively. “It was unfair of me to ask.”
“I’m perfectly aware of my own ignorance, Lord Fitzgerald,” she said, bristling at the condescension that he hadn’t quite bothered to keep from his voice. “My father has always been afraid I’d become too educated and unattractive to gentlemen, so what I do know has been slipped to me on the sly by Miss Wood, like sweets stolen from the kitchen.”
“Forgive me, Lady Mary,” he began, thankful that she wouldn’t realize how easy it was for his wicked old mind to jump from stolen sweets to lost innocence. “I didn’t intend—”
“I rather think you did,” she insisted. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”
“I’m not pretending,” he protested, though even he knew he was. “I’m being perfectly honest.”
“Oh, yes, as honest as Monsieur Dumont.” She tapped her gloved fingers on the counter, a muted little thump of vindication. “So you see, Lord Fitzgerald, that while I do possess the interest to become a dilettante, I’ve too imperfect a store of knowledge to reinforce that interest, and as for being a connoisseur—why, until I’ve visited the galleries in Paris and Rome and seen the works of the great masters with my own eyes, I could scarce pretend to be a connoisseur.”
“No,” admitted John. She’d just beaten him at his own game, but he liked her for it—liked her far more, in fact, than when she’d been merely another pretty young lady with skin like sweet country cream. “Not under the circumstances.”
“Indeed not,” she said, and at last she smiled. “All I am at present is a humble small collector, buying pictures that please me, rather than those of value or significance. Which is why I want this one so vastly much.”
“You’ll have it.” He wanted to make her smile at him again. Her teeth were small and white, with the front two overlapping a fraction with intriguing imperfection. “Dumont, the picture.”
But the Frenchman only shook his head as doggedly as before, his jowls trembling. “I regret to tell you the same, too, my lord. I cannot sell that painting, not to the lady nor to you.”
“At least you can let me see what you’re hiding.” In one swift motion, John leaned over the counter and seized the painting by the frame.
“No, no, my lord, I beg you, please!” cried Dumont frantically as John held the picture high out of his reach. “It is not for you!”
“Mind you, my lord, I saw it first!” The girl hurried to John’s side, hovering as if she feared he’d try to escape with the picture. “I’m willing to pay whatever he wants!”
“Of course you are.” John turned the frame toward the window’s light. For the first time he could see the painted image, and the sight was enough to make him whistle low with appreciation. This was no common forgery, no piecework daub made up to sell to some ignoramus on his Grand Tour, nor was it the sentimental tripe John had expected the girl to choose.
The picture was undeniably old, at least three hundred years, and painted on a wood panel instead of framed canvas. Italian, most likely Florentine; no Northern artists painted like this. The angel was kneeling, the feathers of his multicolored wings fanned over his back and a sword of orange flames in his hands. His halo was thick with gold leaf, his rainment the particular brilliant blue that came only from ground lapis. But the angel’s face was the real jewel, his expression fiercely intense—a militant guardian angel.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Lady Mary said, leaning closer to see the picture over John’s arm. “It’s been cut down quite shamefully from something bigger, of course, perhaps an altarpiece, and the frame may be newer.”
John raised one brow with surprise. “Would you venture its provenance?”
She was too intent upon the painting itself to realize she was being tested. “Florentine for certain, from the 1400s. The paint’s that odd eggy stuff, tempera, not oils—you can tell by how smooth it is, without any brushstrokes. Perhaps a Giotto, or a work from the studio of Fra Angelico, if not by the master’s very brush.”
“Most Englishmen would prefer the later work of Guido, or Titian. They’d find earlier paintings like this one too crude.”
She raised her chin: determined, not stubborn. “Then most Englishmen are fools who cannot see the merits of what’s set before them.”
An admirable answer, thought John. “How do you know it’s not a fake?”
Her gaze slid from the painting to John. “I don’t,” she admitted reluctantly. “It could have been made last week by some artful criminal, and I’d be none the wiser. All I know is what I’ve read, and the engravings I’ve seen in books, and a handful of old Italian paintings that a neighbor of ours had brought back from his Grand Tour. That’s how I know the difference between tempera paints and oil.”
“That’s all?” he asked, surprised again. If that truly was the sum of her scholarship, then she’d guessed very well indeed. “Only what you’ve learned from books and your neighbor’s souvenirs?”
She nodded, and smiled wistfully, a small smile that didn’t show her teeth. “Likely you’ll laugh at me for admitting this, but I know what the painting itself tells me, too. The colors, and the angel’s expression, even the patterning along the hem of his raiment and across his wings—it all seemed so magical that I feel certain it’s real. How could anyone make a forgery of that?”
John didn’t laugh. How could he, when she looked up at him with such honesty and conviction from beneath those thick, sooty black lashes?
“So much for pleading beginner’s ignorance, my lady,” he said softly. “A painting only speaks to a connoisseur’s ear, and despite your inexperience, you already had the wisdom to listen.”
“There now, my lord, you see why I cannot sell this picture!” Dumont made another futile grab at the painting, still well beyond his reach. “Even this young lady recognizes its value, its significance!”
“What this lady recognizes, sir, is that the picture is mine,” she said with fresh determination. “Or it will be, as soon as we settle on a price.”
“Name it, Dumont,” John said. “I’ll pay whatever you ask and make a gift of the picture to the lady.”
She gasped, her eyes indignantly round. “I’ve no intention of accepting such a gift from you, Lord John! I mean to buy the picture myself, honorably and respectably!”
“We can quarrel over that once Dumont’s set the price.” Purposefully John frowned down at the Frenchman, hoping to intimidate him into compliance. He was sure that Dumont had mentally ticked the asking price higher and higher with each attribute that Lady Mary had described, and it was up to John to tick it back down again. “Be as honest as you claim, Dumont. You know you’d have the devil of a time selling this painting. Most of your customers will think it’s ugly as sin.”
“It’s not ugly!” protested the girl. “It’s—”
“It’s unfashionable, Dumont, and you know it,” John said firmly, ignoring the girl for now. “Her ladyship is simply being an enthusiastic amateur, and you know that, too. I’ll give you ten livres for it.”
Dumont scowled back. “Why won’t you believe me, my lord? The picture’s not for sale.”
John sighed wearily. He was already offering more than the picture was worth, yet for some incomprehensible reason it had become very important to him to buy it for the girl. “Very well, then, Dumont. Eleven livres, and that’s being deuced generous.”
Still Dumont scowled. “I am very sorry, my lord, but I fear I cannot accept.”
“You’re a stubborn old wretch, Dumont.” John glanced back down at the painting. The girl was right; the angel was magical. “I’ll give you twelve livres and not a sou more.”
Dumont groaned and bowed his head. “My lord, my lord, I regret it to the bottom of my heart, but I cannot—”
“I’ll give you twenty louis d’or for the picture, monsieur.” The girl had already pulled a fat little purse from the pocket in her skirts and was beginning to count out the heavy gold coins in a row upon the counter. “That should be more than sufficient. Winters, take the picture from his lordship. We’ll take it with us back to the inn to make sure it’s safe.”
The footman reached for the painting as he’d been ordered, but John pulled it away. “Here now, Dumont! What’s become of all your reasons not to sell to me?”
“The lady’s overcome my scruples, my lord,” he said sadly, as if there’d ever been a doubt that his greed would triumph. He took the coins as fast as Lady Mary offered them, sliding them into the inside of his black serge waistcoat. “I’m honored and delighted to concede that the picture is now hers.”
“If you please, m’lord.” Lady Mary’s footman reached out for the picture, and this time John had no choice but to relinquish it. The girl had already hidden the purse back in her pocket, while Dumont had produced a grubby old coverlet, which he and the footman began tying around the painting.
Soon she’d step outside that door and into the French bustle of Calais, and be gone to John forever, the way the women he met on his travels always were, leaving a pleasant memory and little else.
But this time, with this girl, John didn’t want that to happen. He’d never liked mysteries; he’d always preferred answers, and the facts to give those answers meat and bones. He wanted to know why the daughter of an English duke was wandering about Calais without a train of attendants. He wanted to discover exactly how so young a lady had come to possess such expertise about painting from the little training she’d claimed to have. He wanted to know why this particular unfashionable little painting meant so much to her that she’d overpay for it by such an unconscionable sum.
And, most of all, he wanted to learn what he’d have to do to make her smile at him again.
Dover could wait. Now Calais seemed worthy of a longer visit—as long as was necessary.
He cocked his elbow and offered her his arm. “Let me accompany you back to your lodgings, Lady Mary,” he said. “Calais can be a wickedly unwelcoming place for British travelers.”
She looked at his arm as if it were a large and venomous snake to be avoided at all costs. Needless to say, she did not take it.
“But you are British yourself, Lord John, aren’t you?” she asked. “You are not French?”
He sighed, wishing he didn’t have to answer so complicated a question this soon in their acquaintance. “I was born not far from Kerry, in Ireland. So yes, I suppose I am more British than French, or Spanish, or Italian. But I left that place so long ago that I scarce can consider it my home.”
She tipped her head to one side. “Everyone has a home, some place that calls them back.”
“Then call me a citizen of the world,” he said, sweeping his arm grandly through the air, as if to encompass the whole scope of his life. “I’m a wanderer, Lady Mary. Wherever I find myself, then that is my home.”
Most women found this a wildly romantic notion. Alas, Lady Mary was not one of them.
She frowned. “How can you claim to be at home nowhere, yet everywhere? That makes very little sense, Lord John, very little indeed.”
“But it’s true,” he said confidently, willing to persist. “I can tell you the most hospitable taverns in the American states, or the least agreeable ones to avoid in the East Indies, and everywhere else in between. Calais here is like a nearby village to me, I’ve visited so many times.”
“Then you surely you must know a score of different amusements for yourself in Calais that do not require my presence.” She nodded to the footman, who tucked the swaddled painting beneath his arm to open the door for his mistress. “Good day, Lord John.”
She unfurled her parasol and raised it over her head in a single graceful sweep, and without so much as a glance for John, she was gone.
“Forgive me, my lord,” Dumont said behind him. “But you played that hand poorly enough.”
“The game’s hardly over, Dumont.” John could see her still through the grimy window, her back straight and her step quick and purposeful, white skirts flicking back and forth around her legs. He’d find her again, of course. It wouldn’t be difficult. Daughters of English dukes were rare enough in Calais that it would only take an inquiry or two in the right places to find where she was lodging. And then—well, then he’d decide what he’d do next.
But before he did that, he had a few questions to ask here, questions that, with the proper answers, could make Lady Mary wonderfully grateful to him. “In fact, I’d say the game’s only begun.”
“Not with that one, my lord.” Dumont sniffed, wiping a gray cloth over the bronze Mercury that John had left on the counter earlier. “A beautiful English lady, yes, a lovely young lady, but also one who is accustomed to having what she wants, and nothing less.”
The girl and the footman and the painting with them disappeared around the corner, and John turned away from the window. “Then the answer’s a simple one, Dumont. All I must do is make sure I’m what she wants.”
Dumont pursed his lips into a tight, skeptical oval.
“You doubt me, Dumont?”
The Frenchman shrugged, signifying everything and nothing.
“Please recall that I, too, am accustomed to getting what I wish.” John rested his arms on the counter, lowering his face level with Dumont’s. “And what I wish this moment, Dumont, is to know exactly what is wrong with that painting you just sold.”
“Wrong, my lord?” Dumont drew back and sputtered with too-nervous indignation. “What—whatever could be wrong with it? You heard the lady herself, vouching for its veracity, my lord, and I would never—”
“It’s stolen, isn’t it?” John asked. “Isn’t that why you didn’t want to sell it to her?”
“What you say, my lord! Such an accusation, a defamation, a—”
“Yes or no, Dumont,” John said, more firmly this time. “The lady might know her antique painters, but at her age she can hardly be expected to recognize the signs of thievery. Was your first reluctance to sell the final kick of your moribund conscience, done in at last by greed?”
Fear replaced indignation in the old Frenchman’s eyes. “My lord, I cannot say how—”
“Yes or no, Dumont,” John said, convinced now that he’d guessed right. “It’s one thing to offer new-minted kickshaws as the Caesar’s own to some fat mercer’s wife from Birmingham, but it’s quite another to sell stolen goods to a peer’s daughter. I’m quite certain those sharp-tempered fellows in the governor’s offices down the road would agree.”
“By all that’s holy, my lord, I swear that I know nothing of thievery, nothing of stolen goods!” cried Dumont, his voice trembling. “If you report me, they’ll close down my shop and take away my goods and I’ll be left with nothing, my lord—nothing! Oh, have pity on an old man in the last years of his life!”
“I will if you tell me the truth,” John said, too familiar with Dumont’s histrionics to take them seriously. “How did you come by that painting of the angel?”
Dumont nodded eagerly. “It was brought to me last week, my lord, by a foreign man, perhaps a Dutchman. He told me it grieved him to be forced to sell so fine a picture, but a bank draft he’d been expecting had not come, and his affairs were desparate. It’s a common story, my lord.”
“I imagine it is,” John said dryly. “How much did you give him?”
“Three livres,” he answered, so promptly that John was certain the unfortunate Dutchman had received only half that sum. “As you noted yourself, my lord, it is an unfashionable painting, and on most days would be difficult to sell.”
“Then why in blazes did you refuse to sell it to me?” John asked. “The truth, now.”
Contritely Dumont bowed his head. “The truth, my lord, is that I knew her ladyship would give me more for the painting than you would, and she did.”
“The truth, the truth.” John sighed, and stood upright. He’d no doubt that that was the truth, or at least as much as he’d get today from Dumont. He’d get no special gratitude from Lady Mary for that scrap of truth, either. But half a truth was better than none, and that single smile from Lady Mary—ah, that was worth all the truth in Calais.
Chapter Three
“W herever have you been, Mary?” Wanly Diana pressed her hand against her temple, as if the effort of greeting her sister was simply too much. Their Channel crossing yesterday had been grim, rough and stormy and far longer than they’d been told. While Mary had proved a model sailor with a stomach of iron, her sister, Miss Wood and their lady’s maid, Deborah, had suffered so severely from the effect of the waves that they’d had to be half carried from the boat to the dock last night. Then before they could retreat to their inn to rest or even change into dry clothes, they’d had to present their names to the governor, as was required by French law, and then they’d gone to the Customs House to wait while their belongings were searched, cataloged and taxed. The officials brazenly expected their garnish at every step, holding their hands out for the customary bribes before any of the English were permitted to pass into the town. After such an ordeal, it was really no wonder that the three women had required at least this entire day to recover.
Now Diana lay against the mounded pillows in the bed, the curtains of the room still drawn against the sun even though it was now late afternoon. A tray with a teapot and a few slices of cold toast, delicately nibbled on the corners, showed she’d tried to take sustenance, and failed.
Diana groaned, and flung her arm dramatically across the sheets. “Oh, Mary, how much I’ve missed you!”
“And I missed you, too, lamb.” Mary leaned forward and kissed her sister’s forehead. “At least your coloring’s better. You must be on the mend.”
“Thank you.” Diana smiled, happy to have her back. “Though it hasn’t been easy, you know. Miss Wood and Deborah have been ill, too, and the servants refuse to speak anything but wretched, wretched French!”
“Of course they speak French, Diana. This is France. If you’d paid more heed to our French lessons with Miss Wood, you would have had no difficulties now at all.” Mary crossed the room to the window, and pulled the curtains open, letting the sunlight spill across the floor. “I’ve been away for only an hour at most, and when I left you were deep asleep.”
“But then I woke, and you weren’t here.” Diana covered her eyes with her forearm against the window’s light. “It seemed as if you were gone much longer than an hour.”
“I wasn’t.” An hour, Mary marveled. Why had it seemed like so much more to her, too? Only an hour, the hands on her little gold watch moving neither faster nor slower than usual, and yet in that short time, so much had happened.
Diana pushed herself up higher on the pillows. “You weren’t supposed to go out at all, not alone. You know what Father said.”
“He meant that for you, not me,” Mary said. “And besides, I wasn’t alone. I took Winters with me.”
“Oh, now that changes everything,” Diana said. “Winters the half-daft footman, protector of our maidenly virtue!”
“He was quite sufficient for accompanying me,” Mary said, thankful that the half-light of the room hid her blush.
All she’d intended was a short stroll to give herself a break from the sickroom. But then she’d seen the intriguing little shop, and had promised herself only a minute or two to explore inside. Before she’d realized it, she’d discovered and bought a beautiful old painting of an angel for a frighteningly high sum. She’d ignored all the cautions and warnings she’d been given before she’d sailed, and let herself be drawn into a conversation with a stranger. “I’m not you, you know.”
“A pity for you that you aren’t,” Diana said sagely. “A little bit of me wouldn’t hurt. You’d enjoy yourself more.”
“I enjoyed myself well enough.” Mary took the painting from the table where she’d left it, guiltily trying not to think of the stranger who’d bid against her in the shop. She could only imagine how gleeful Diana would be if she learned of him; Mary would never, ever hear the end of it. “I bought a picture of an angel.”
Proudly Mary held the painting up for her sister to see. She should have known better.
“How ghastly,” Diana said, wrinkling her nose. “Angels should be beatific, but that one looks as if he’d bite your leg off as soon as sing a psalm. What a pity Winters didn’t stop you from spending Father’s money on that.”
Mary turned the painting back to her, balancing the heavy gold frame against her hip. If anything, the picture seemed even more special than when she’d first seen it. She liked the stern-faced angel, ready to defend his faith or whatever else had been cut away with the rest of the painting.
“You’re only showing your own ignorance, Diana,” she said, more to the painting than to her sister. “To anyone with an eye, this is a very rare and beautiful picture.”
The stranger hadn’t teased her when she’d babbled about the painting’s mystical attraction to her. He’d even seemed to understand, which had been more than enough for her to like him instantly. He’d said his name was Lord John Fitzgerald, that he’d been born in Ireland, and that he was a citizen of the world, whatever that might mean. But there’d been no question that his eyes had been very blue and full of laughter, even when his mouth had been properly severe, and that his jaw was firm and manly and his black hair cropped and curling. From his speech and clothes, he’d seemed the gentleman he’d claimed to be, but then he’d tried to buy the painting for her as a gift, something no true gentleman would ever do.
But maybe this was only one more thing that was different between England and France. Maybe here it was perfectly proper for strange gentlemen to offer expensive gifts to ladies. Maybe in France such conversations and such generosity happened every day, without a breath of impropriety.
And maybe such an exchange, with such a charming gentleman, was exactly the reason she’d wanted to come abroad in the first place—except that she’d been too self-conscious to enjoy it, exactly as Diana had said. She’d meant to be cautious, reserved, her usual sensible self. Instead he’d doubtless considered her to be a hopeless prig, too timid to take a gentleman’s arm. Not that she’d have another chance, either, not with Lord John. They would be leaving Calais for Paris as soon as it could be arranged, and because her life was never like a novel or play, her path would never again cross with his.
“Ahh, Mary, you’ve returned from your walk.” Miss Wood joined them, as pale as Diana, but neatly dressed in her usual gray gown and jacket and white linen cap, as if to defy any mere seasickness to steal another day from her. “No doubt the fresh air off the water would have done Lady Diana and me some good as well.”
Diana groaned at the suggestion, flopping back against her pillows. “She didn’t just walk, Miss Wood. She went into a shop, and bought an ugly picture.”
“It’s not ugly, Diana,” protested Mary. “It’s simply not to your taste. Miss Wood shall be the judge.”
She turned the painting toward the governess, but Miss Wood’s startled expression told Mary more than Miss Wood would ever dare speak.
“What matters is that the picture pleases you, my lady,” the governess said, ever tactful. “Each time you glimpse it, you’ll remember this day, the first of our adventure abroad.”
Mary looked back at the picture. It would, indeed, remind her of Calais, just as that fierce angel would forever remind her of Lord John. But of an adventure—no. Foolish, foolish she’d been, and far too cowardly to seize the adventure that had presented itself.
“Perhaps in the morning you can show us what you’ve discovered about this town, Lady Mary,” Miss Wood was saying. “I should like to see the gate to the city properly before we leave. It’s regarded as the centerpiece of Calais, you know, with a great deal of history behind it. We can even return to the shop where you bought this picture, if you wish.”
“No, no!” Mary exclaimed, stunned by such a suggestion. What if Lord John were there again, and thought she’d come hunting for him? Or worse, a fear that was more selfish and unworthy: what if she did meet him again, but this time he saw only Diana, the way that always seemed to happen? “That is, since I already bought the choicest piece in the shop, there’s no reason for returning to it.”
Diana made a disparaging sniff. “If that picture was the choicest, then I’ve no wish at all to visit such a place. Surely there must be some public parade, or park where people of fashion gather. Why, I’ve heard Calais has more officers of every service than even Portsmouth.”
“No officers for us, my lady, and no parade grounds,” Miss Wood said, clasping her hands at the front of her waist. “I needn’t remind you of the warning your father His Grace gave to you before we sailed. You are traveling to improve your mind and edify your soul, and to learn to modify your behavior regarding every classification and rank of men.”
Diana clapped her hands to her breast as if she’d just sustained a mortal wound. “Ugly paintings and stupid old gates for months and months and months. How shall I ever survive?”
“With grace and dignity as befits your station, my lady.” Miss Wood swung open the window, letting in a breeze redolent of the ocean, mingled with the tavern’s stables on the other side of the yard. “Besides, I expect us to be leaving Calais the day after tomorrow. That’s scarce time for any intriguing, no matter how determined.”
“You are too cruel, Miss Wood!” cried Diana, hurling one of her pillows across the room at the governess. “Too, too cruel!”
“So you’ve often said, my lady.” Unperturbed, Miss Wood plucked the pillow from the floor beside her, smoothed the linen with her palms, and returned it to the end of the bed. “But you’ll have to tolerate my decisions, especially now. There was a letter waiting here at the inn for me from Monsieur Leclair, the gentleman His Grace your father engaged as our bearleader.”
“‘Bearleader,’” Mary repeated, unable to resist the silliness of the expression. “It sounds as if we’re his pack of she-bears in some vagabond circus. Why aren’t they just called guides?”
“Because they’re not, my lady,” Miss Wood said patiently. “In any event, Monsieur Leclair’s mother has been taken grievously ill, and he begs our understanding and forgiveness while he makes arrangements for her. Instead of attending us here in Calais, with our leave he shall join us in Paris instead.”
“Of course he’ll have our leave,” Mary said. “Poor Madame Leclair! She should have her son with her. We can manage perfectly well on our own from here to Paris.”
Diana smiled mischievously at Mary. “You are so independent, Mary.”
“It’s an admirable trait to possess, Diana,” Mary said, praying that Diana would offer nothing more incriminating. “Especially whilst traveling.”
Miss Wood nodded with approval. “That is true, my lady. We’ll have our two days here in Calais, and then on to Paris. That was the itinerary approved by His Grace your father, and we shall follow it even without Monsieur Leclair to lead us.”
Two days, thought Mary with regret, and one of those days was nearly done. Miss Wood and Father had been wise to leave no time at all for intriguing in Calais. Their only miscalculation had been which daughter had longed for the intrigue.
“Oh, monsieur, I do not believe I could allow that,” said Madame Gris, the innkeeper’s wife, guarding the doorway to the private dining room as conscientiously as any royal sentry. The Coq d’Or had its reputation to maintain as a respectable house, especially among the English gentry. “The young lady is dining alone, and wishes not to be disturbed. Her governess and her sister—the mal-de-mer, you see.”
“Then all the more reason, madame, that the lady’s in need of company and cheer.” John glanced down at the bouquet he’d brought for Lady Mary, a confection of pinks and roses gathered in a paper frill and red ribbon, the way that the French did so well. Other times, he would have simply sent the flowers, but given this was bound to be a hasty flirtation at best, he’d decided to bring his offering himself.
But Madame Gris still shook her head, her plump chin shaking gently above her checkered kerchief. “This is no scandalous house of assignation, monsieur.”
“Keep the door open, madame, and listen to every word that passes between us,” John said, placing his hand over his heart. “I swear to you that not even a whisper of scandal will pass my lips.”
The innkeeper’s wife stared at him with disbelief. Then she tipped back her head and laughed aloud.
“You’d laugh at me, madame?” John asked, striving to sound wounded, yet unable to keep from joining her laughter. He never had been able to feign earnestness, and he hadn’t succeeded this morning, either. “You’d laugh at my humble suit?”
“‘Humble,’ hah,” she said, giving his arm a poke with her finger. “I’d wager you’ve never been humble about anything in your life, monsieur, a fox like you! Go, go, take your posey to the lady, and plead your heart to her. But mind you, the door stays open, and if I hear one peep from her—”
“No peeps, madame,” John said, winking wickedly as he slipped past her. “Only the greatest gratitude for your kind understanding.”
Madame Gris laughed and jabbed at John again, her good humor following him as he headed down the hallway to the small private parlor at the end. The inn had welcomed its respectable guests for the last two hundred years, and the wide old floorboards creaked beneath John’s feet, and he had to duck his head beneath the age-blackened beams overhead. Yet the whitewashed room before him seemed to glow, the windows with their diamond-leaded frames open to the bright summer morning and sunlight falling over the girl.
Lady Mary was sitting in a spindled armchair with her back to the half-open door. Her hair was loosely pinned in a knot on top of her head, the sunshine turning the escaped tendrils dark red. She was dressed in a simply cut white linen gown with a wide green sash around her slender waist, the style that the French queen had first made so famous, yet now was associated almost entirely with English ladies. Lady Mary wore it well, the simplicity suiting her creamy skin and dark hair and the full, layered skirts, falling softly around her chair, made translucent by the sun.
Yet what caught John’s attention first, and held it, was the delicate curve of her neck, the pearl earrings gently bobbing on either side of her throat. With her head slightly bent over her dish of tea, her nape was exquisite, the vulnerability of it almost heartbreaking.
His weight shifted, just enough for his foot to make the floorboard beneath it squeak. She twisted around in her chair and caught her breath, a slice of bread with jam forgotten in her fingers.
“You!” she cried, her cheeks flushing a furious pink. “How did you come here? How did you find me?”
“Calm yourself, Lady Mary, please, I beg you!” he exclaimed, holding one hand palm up to signal for quiet, and the other brandishing the flowers. He’d told Madame Gris that she could interrupt if she heard the girl object, and he had no doubt that the innkeeper’s wife would enjoy doing exactly that. “I don’t mean you the least bit of harm!”
“Oh, no, no, I didn’t intend that.” Hastily she rose to her feet in a swirl of white linen, the bread still in her hand. “That is, you have surprised me, but I—I am not upset. Not in the least, not when—oh, blast!”
A forgotten, glistening blot of red jam dropped from the bread in her hand and splattered on her arm, barely missing her white sleeve. She dropped the bread, grabbed the napkin from the table, and slapped it over the jam, pressing the cloth there as if she feared the errant jam would somehow escape to shame her again.
John smiled: not only because he knew he was the cause of her being so discomfited, but because that extra blush and fluster was a side of her he hadn’t seen at Dumont’s. There she’d been so much in control of herself that she’d been able to steal the painting away from him. But now—now she was as rattled as a cracked teacup, and all because of a blot of jam.
“I’ll have you know I’m not like this, my lord,” she confessed. “Not generally. Not at all.”
“I’m not like this, either,” he said. “Rising at this unholy hour, begging Madame Gris for entrance, startling ladies at their breakfast. Not like me at all.”
“Of course it’s not.” She rubbed the napkin over her arm one last time to make sure the jam was gone, crushed the napkin into a lumpy knot, and stuffed it under the edge of her plate. “I wouldn’t give you permission to walk with me yesterday, but if you ask to take breakfast with me now—even though it’s a meager sort of French breakfast, without eggs or meats—why, I shall agree.”
“You will?” No matter how confident he’d been before, he hadn’t expected this invitation. Not that he meant to accept it. Because he half expected her sister or governess to join her at any moment, he’d rather coax her out-of-doors, away from the inn, where he’d be sure to keep her company to himself. He already had an image of the seasick sister: plain and peevish and nothing like Lady Mary, and as for the governess—well, she was a governess. “You’ll walk with me after all?”
“I will.” At last she smiled, only a moment. “It’s not often one has the chance to set mistakes to rights. Those flowers are quite lovely. Are they for me?”
He handed the bouquet to her with the same bow that yesterday had earned him only disdain. Now she took the flowers with a happy little chuckle, cradling them in her arms.
“So you will accept flowers,” he teased, bemused, “but not a picture.”
She looked down at the flowers, then back at him. “I suppose that’s a contradiction, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Only a small one. Life is full of contradictions. None of them really signify.”
“But this does,” she insisted, once again the serious girl from yesterday. “That painting has already existed for hundreds of years, and with luck and care will exist for hundreds more. Yet these flowers, however lovely, will not last more than a day or two. Which makes them far more appropriate as a token from you to me.”
“Lady Mary,” he teased, striving to seem wounded. “Are you implying that my admiration for you will only last a day or two?”
“Admiration, fah,” she scoffed. “You must know me to admire me, and you’ll scarce have time for either one. Come to the window. Do you see those men in the yard with the blue carriage?”
He came to stand beside her, exactly as he’d been told, and exactly as he’d wished. The window was small, and to look through it with her as she’d ordered, he had to stand so close beside her that he could smell the scent of lavender soap on her skin.
“I see it,” he said evenly, as if standing beside her without touching her wasn’t a refined kind of torture.
“That’s our coach,” she said, “or rather, my father’s coach, though how bitterly he complained over the French taxes he had to pay for the privilege of the convenience! It was sent in pieces on the boat from England, and once the men have put it back together, we’ll be ready to leave for Paris. We’ve already sent a wagon ahead two weeks ago, filled with more trunks to the apartments we’ve let in Paris.”
“He could have hired a cabriolet here for less than the taxes.” John had heard of the richer and more cowardly English who’d import their own carriages to the Continent, but he’d never seen one for himself until now. “Your driver will have the devil of a time maneuvering that great beast on French roads. Monsieur Dessin has tidy cabriolets for a louis a week.”
She sighed. “Father didn’t trust hired carriages. He won’t even use a post chaise. He says they’re unsafe, and that the cushions harbor fleas and bedbugs.”
“So instead he would rather import a carriage just for you,” John said, almost—almost—feeling sympathy for her insulated plight. “What better way to spare you from having any actual contact with the people, let alone their bedbugs, whose country you are crossing?”
“That was Father’s decision,” she said, and John liked the way she made it clear she didn’t agree with her father. “You cannot imagine how difficult it was to persuade him to allow me to leave Kent, let alone come to France.”
He smiled, thinking of how different it was for well-bred boys and girls, especially when the difference was widened by wealth, or the lack of it. “My father was so eager for me to leave home that he shipped me off to Calcutta when I was fourteen, with the sum of my belongings in a single trunk.”
“Calcutta!” she said, her dark eyes widening with wonder. “Oh, what adventures you must have had there!”
“Oh, by the score,” he said lightly, for most of his adventures in the service of the East Indian Company were not the sort he’d wish to share with her. “Likely more than you’ll find if you stay locked in Papa’s coach.”
“But I’ve already had two adventures, my lord.” Her chin rose with the same challenge that she’d shown the day before, and he could see the swift rise and fall of her pulse at the side of her throat. “I cannot believe you haven’t guessed them.”
“Only because you haven’t asked me to.”
She laughed, her eyes sparkling with her secret. “I bought my first painting yesterday.”
“Ahh, the picture.” He needed to talk to her about that painting, and his suspicions about it, and about Dumont—all of which would certainly qualify as an adventure by anyone’s lights. That had been the main reason he’d permitted himself to come call on her here in the first place. But now that he was here, with her telling secrets, he didn’t want to be…distracted by the painting. Not yet. “I suppose in Kent, that would be considered an adventure. Though I’m almost afraid to ask after the second.”
“You shouldn’t,” she said, her voice once again dropping to a breathless whisper. “My second adventure was meeting you.”
“You flatter me, my lady.” He chuckled, delighted with her answer. For whatever reason, she’d clearly thought better of running away from him yesterday. Now it seemed as if she were practically willing to leap into his arms—yet still, somehow, on her own terms. He took the flowers from her arms and tossed them back onto the table, his gaze never leaving hers. “I wouldn’t say we’ve had an adventure, not yet.”
“Miss Wood believes we’ll be leaving tomorrow.” Wistfully she glanced back at the men assembling the coach in the yard. “That’s not much time for—for a true adventure, is it?”
Idly John brushed a loose lock of her hair back from her forehead, letting his fingertips stray down along her temple to her cheek. “That depends, my dear lady, upon how adventurous you are.”
“I will be adventurous, my lord,” she said fervently. “If you ask me again to walk with you. I told you that before. I will go, and I will enjoy myself, and your company.”
A walk: a walk. So that was her idea of adventure. How did the English aristocracy manage to reproduce itself if it continued to keep its women so idiotically innocent?
“Be adventurous, pet,” he said softly, his finger gently caressing the soft skin beneath her chin. “Come with me, and I can guarantee that you will enjoy—what in blazes is that?”
With a startled gasp, Lady Mary jerked away from him and rushed back toward the window. Dogs were barking, men were shouting and women shrieking, horses were snorting and pawing the dirt, and she heard the groaning, creaking rumble of an enormous wagon or carriage laboring to stop before the inn.
“I can’t see!” cried Lady Mary with frustration, her head already leaning through the open casement. “What do you think it is, my lord? What can it be?”
“The diligence from Paris,” Jack said, frustrated as well. “It’s a kind of oversized public coach made of wicker, usually packed with at least a dozen travelers from every station of French life.”
“Oh, I must see that!” She pulled her head back in from the window. “If I’m to be adventurous, I must go out front to the road!”
Eager to see the arrival of the diligence, she grabbed his arm and pulled him along down the hall with her, out the front door and to the road. A servant from the inn stood on a stubby stool beside the door, solemnly ringing a large brass bell by way of announcement, as if the rest of the racket weren’t announcement enough. A small crowd had already gathered, some with small trunks and bundles of belongings who were waiting to climb on board, others there to welcome disembarking passengers, and still more in tattered rags, waiting with hands outstretched to beg. Surrounded by clouds of dust from the road, the lumbering diligence finally ground to a stop before the inn, the four weary horses in the harness flecked with foam and coated with dirt, and the men riding postilion on their backs, not much better, their whips drooping listlessly from their hands.
“What a curious coach!” exclaimed Mary, standing beside John. “I never would have seen such a thing if I’d stayed in Kent!”
It was, she decided, as good as any play. With its thick wooden wheels and double-horse team, the diligence did resemble its English cousins. But the body of the coach was long and flat, and made not of panels, but of tightly woven splints, with a small, covered compartment with an arched roof in the front to protect the driver. The passengers packed inside and on top looked like so many eggs gathered in a basket for market.
And a diverse assortment of passengers it was, too. There were the usual half-drunk sailors with long queues down their backs and soldiers in ragged uniforms to be found on any English coach. But there were also two fat monks in brown robes, their tonsured heads gleaming in the sun, a grumpy-faced woman dressed in a red-striped jacket who carried a cage full of chirping canaries, an old man with an extravagantly tall white wig and a rabbit-fur muff so large it hung to his knees, and a pair of young women with gowns cut low enough to display their rosy nipples through their neckerchiefs, much to the delight of the sailors and soldiers. Around her bubbled a rush of French words and exclamations and likely curses, too, all in dialects that bore scant resemblance to what she’d learned in the schoolroom.
“So does the Paris diligence qualify as another adventure, my lady?” John asked. He was smiling so indulgently at her that she felt foolish, more like a child hopping up and down before a shop window full of sweets than the touring lady of the world she was trying to be.
Purposefully she drew herself up straighter. “It would be an adventure if I took my passage to Paris in it. Hah, imagine what Father would say to that!”
His smile widened, daring her. “Then do it. The driver and postilions will change the horses, turn about, and leave for Paris again. I’ll come with you for—for companionship. You’ll have a score of chaperones to keep your honor intact, you’ll improve your French mightily, and I’ll give my word that you’ll have a true adventure.”
She stared up at him, more tempted than she’d wish to admit. “But we’ve no provisions, no food, no—”
“Dinner and supper are included in the fare,” he said. “And I guarantee that those meals, too, won’t be like anything you find in Kent.”
“None of this is like Kent,” she said, but she was laughing, pushing her breeze-tossed hair back from her face. She’d never even considered doing anything as scandalous as riding in a public coach for days and nights at a time with a man she scarcely knew, and yet somehow now it seemed less scandalous than, well, adventurous.
“Then come with me,” he said, cocking his head toward the unwieldy diligence. “Be brave. This is Calais, not your blessed Kent. No one knows you here, nor cares what you do. When else will you have such an opportunity?”
She shook her head, laughing still. What was it about him that made the most ridiculous proposal she’d ever received seem so wickedly intriguing? If it had been Diana with one of her swains, she would have been horrified.
“Do you like strawberries, my lady?” he asked, out of the blue. He raised his dark brows, and held out his hands, slightly curved, as if offering the largest imaginary strawberry for her edification. “Juicy and sweet upon the tongue, fresh as the morning dew in the mouth?”
“Excuse me?” she said, and laughed again. She’d never met another gentleman who could make her laugh so often, or so richly. She’d always prided herself on being practical, responsible, capable. Who would have known that she’d have such a store of laughter inside her, as well? “Why ever ask me of strawberries now?”
He shifted behind her, resting his palms on her shoulders, and gently turned her toward the diligence. “Because there, climbing down from the top, is a sturdy French farmwife with a basket in each hand, the sort of deep, narrow basket that is used only for strawberries in this region.”
He’d kept his hands on her shoulders after the reason for having them there was done, and his palms were warm, the weight of them oddly pleasant, as if in some strange way they belonged there.
She twisted her head around to face him. “I do like strawberries, Lord John,” she said, delighted by how his eyes were the same blue as the June sky overhead. “In fact I am monstrously fond of them.”
“Then I shall fetch some for you directly,” he said. “Perhaps they’ll persuade you to make an adventurous journey with me.”
He winked—winked!—and gave her shoulders a fond, familiar pat before he went striding toward the farmer’s wife with the berries. The tails of his coat swung with a jaunty rhythm, his square shoulders broad and easy, his dark hair tossing in the light breeze.
If he’d tried to kiss her, she would have kissed him back. It was a staggering realization for her to make. He might still kiss her once he’d returned with the berries, and she knew she’d kiss him them, too, and that was more staggering still.
“Lady Mary!”
She frowned and glanced around her, not knowing who was calling her name. Hadn’t Lord John just reminded her that in Calais she was a stranger?
“Lady Mary, here!” The shopkeeper Dumont was standing in the shadow of an alley beside the inn, half-hidden by a pyramid of stacked barrels. He wore an old slouch hat pulled low over his face, a grimy scarf wrapped many times around his throat, and the same leather apron she remembered from his shop. Agitated, he looked from side to side to make certain he’d not been noticed, then beckoned to her.
“If you please, my lady, if you please!” he called in a anxious quaver. “I must speak to you at once!”
“On what subject, monsieur?” She hesitated, unwilling to be drawn so far from the bustle of the inn’s front door, even on this sunny day. “Why do you wish to speak to me?”
“The picture, my lady!” His claw of a hand beckoned again. “The angel! Do you have it still?”
She took one reluctant step closer, and no more. She glanced swiftly over her shoulder, wishing now that Lord John had returned. “Of course I’ve kept the picture. I only bought it from you yesterday.”
“Has anyone asked you for it, my lady?” he asked urgently. “Does anyone know it’s in your possession?”
“Only those in my traveling party,” she said, her heart racing with fear of what she didn’t understand. “Monsieur, I do not believe that any of this is your—”
“You must tell no one, my lady,” Dumont interrupted, his voice shaking with emotion. “Tell no one that the picture is your property now, or that you bought it from me, or even that you have seen it!”
“You can’t threaten me like that!” she exclaimed, trying to be brave. “I paid you dearly for that painting, and if it’s your game to try to intimidate me into selling it back to you, why, I’ve no intention of doing so!”
The old man shook his head. “I would not take it back, my lady,” he said vehemently. “It is yours now, and the peril with it, and I—”
“Lady Mary!”
That voice Mary recognized at once.
“Miss Wood!” Quickly she turned to her governess, glad for an excuse to leave Dumont and his unsettling questions. “Oh, Miss Wood, how glad I am to see you feeling better!”
“What I am feeling, my lady, is inestimable relief at finding you unharmed.” She bustled forward and took Mary firmly by the upper arm. “But look at you, my lady! Out in the street by yourself, without a hat or parasol or gloves to keep you safe from the sun! Now come inside and gather yourself, my lady, so that we can go.”
“Go?” Mary asked, confused. Her governess was dressed not for walking, but for traveling, in her quilted skirt and jacket. “Where are we going, Miss Wood? Do you wish to visit the Calais gate?”
“We’re leaving Calais directly, my lady,” Miss Wood said. “I have had enough of this wretched inn and the insufferable people that own it. I’m told our coach is ready, and now that we don’t have to wait for Monsieur Leclair to join us, we’ll depart as soon as you are dressed properly. Hurry now, please, we need to make as much progress as we can before dark.”
“Now?” Mary said faintly, looking past Miss Wood to scan the street for Lord John. The diligence was empty, with only a few people still gathered around it. But where was the farmer’s wife with the basket of strawberries, and where was Lord John?
“What is it, Lady Mary?” asked the governess, concern in her voice. “Are you unwell? You look as if you’ve taken too much of the sun, out here without your hat. Your cheeks are pink.”
“I was expecting a—a friend, Miss Wood,” she said. Perhaps he’d had to follow the woman for the strawberries. Perhaps she wouldn’t sell them to him at all, and he’d gone elsewhere. He wouldn’t abandon her the first time she turned away, not after offering to take her clear to Paris. “A friend.”
“A friend, my lady?” Miss Wood frowned. “Forgive me, my lady, but what friend could you possibly have here in Calais?”
What friend, indeed? Mary shook her head, unwilling to believe the empty proof of her own eyes. Perhaps it was for the best that Lord John had disappeared like this. She could hardly have introduced him to Miss Wood, or worse, to her sister. This way she’d still had an adventure, only just a smaller one than he’d proposed. She would dutifully leave Calais now with the rest of her party, and disappear, and treat him the same as he’d treated her. Her reputation was spared a journey with him in a crowded diligence. There’d be no farewell, no regrets for what had never happened. Only the slight sting of disappointment, and she already knew how to cope with that.
Her smile was wistful, her feelings bittersweet. No more laughter, and no promised strawberries, sweet and juicy on the tongue. No more adventures today.
She glanced back to the end of the wall, where Monsieur Dumont had warned her about her painting. Now he, too, had vanished. She couldn’t have imagined all of it, could she?
“Come, Lady Mary,” said Miss Wood, leading her back into the inn. “Deborah will have your trunk packed by now, and Lady Diana should be ready, too.”
But as she began up the stairs with Miss Wood, Madame Gris hurried toward her, the beautiful ruffled bouquet of roses and pinks in her arms.
“My lady, a moment, please!” she called. “You forgot these in the parlor, my lady. The flowers the gentleman brought for you, my lady, and such pretty ones they are, too.”
Miss Wood looked sharply at Mary, her expression full of silent questions.
“I am sorry, Madame,” Mary said slowly, “but I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Those flowers weren’t for me.”
Madame Gris’s brows rose with surprise. “But my lady, I am sure that—”
“No, Madame,” Mary said. “The bouquet was not meant for me, and neither was the gentleman.”
Chapter Four
J ohn stood in the street with the basket of strawberries in one hand and a tiny tin pail of cream, covered with a checkered cloth, in the other. He did not quite feel like a fool—it would take more than this to do that—but he wasn’t happy, either.
Where in blazes had Lady Mary gone, anyway?
He looked back once again to the Coq d’Or, hoping to find her standing where he’d left her. This time Madame Gris herself was standing in the open front door, ordering a servant with a trunk to carry it to the back of the inn. Madame’s manner was brusque, the blunt side that her guests seldom saw. But taking the edge from this particular order were the incongruous pink-and-white flowers in her arms—the same bouquet that John had brought earlier to Lady Mary.
“Madame Gris!” He hurried forward, the basket of strawberries swinging from his hand. “Have you seen Lady Mary?”
Madame’s expression seemed faintly pitying, not a good omen. “I’ve see her, yes, my lord,” she said. “I’ve seen her, and she said she didn’t want the flowers, and she didn’t want you, either.”
He couldn’t believe that, not after she’d so obviously been enjoying herself, and his company. She couldn’t have feigned that. She was too young, and too inexperienced for such dissembling; it was much of her charm for him. But what could have changed her mind so fast?
“Are you certain, madame?” he asked. “She left no message for me?”
“No, my lord.” Madame shifted the flowers from one plump arm to another. “But she was with her chaperone, the small, plain woman. She could have ordered her ladyship to come away. They’re to leave at once, in that grand private coach of theirs.”
“Oh, yes, the coach.” She’d go to Paris as her father had intended, sealed up tight in a lacquered cocoon of English money and privilege. “Of course.”
Madame Gris nodded sagely. “A high-born English lady like that—she has no choice, does she? She must marry where her father says, yes?”
Now the strawberries in his hand did feel foolish, and so did the cream. The girl might laugh with him, and rhapsodize about old pictures, and pretend she was considering running off to Paris with him in a public conveyance, and smile so softly that he’d let himself believe she’d never smiled that way at any other man—she might do all that, but in the end, she’d go back to where she knew she belonged.
And not dawdle with the rootless sixth son of an impoverished, obscure Irish marquess.
“Forgive me for asking, my lord, but what should I do with these flowers?”
“Whatever pleases you, madame, for they didn’t please her.” He dropped the strawberry basket and the pail of cream on the bench beside the door. “Do the same with that rubbish as well. If she didn’t want me, odds are she’ll have no use for that blasted fruit, either.”
And without another word, he turned away, determined to leave behind her memory as surely as she’d forgotten him.
With an ivory-bladed fan in her hand, Mary sat in one corner of the coach and Diana sat in the other, with Miss Wood riding backward on the seat across from them. The leather squabs had been newly plumped with fresh sheep’s wool for the journey, and the heavy leather straps beneath them that served as the springs to cushion their way had been refurbished as well. The coach’s glass windows were folded down, letting in the fresh, tangy breezes from the sea on one side, and the summer-sweet scent of the fields of low grain on the other.
The post road from Calais to Paris was an easy one, along the coast to Boulogne-sur-Mer and past the lime-washed houses of the hilltop town of Montreuil. The road turned inland at Abbeville, to Amiens and Chantilly and finally Paris. Mary had marked the names on the map she’d brought with her to trace their journey, and the road was scattered with inns and post stops well equipped to cater to foreign travelers.
At the last stop, they’d opened the hamper filled with cold chicken, wedges of ripe cheese, and biscuits that Miss Wood had had prepared, and Diana still sipped lemon-water from the crystal glass that had been carefully packed for them, too. They’d every comfort imaginable for their journey, and yet as Mary stared out the window, she was far from happy.
The diligence would have been hot, crowded and uncomfortable, but it would have been different, and it would have been exciting, too. Lord John would have made it that way, and she would have relished every noisy, dusty minute on the road.
But this coach could very well have been carrying her from Aston Hall to church, it felt so much like home. Safe and comfortable and secure and very, very boring.
With a sigh that soon lapsed into gentle, wheezing snoring, Miss Wood’s head tipped to one side, her small-brimmed gray bonnet slipping over her closed eyes.
Diana chuckled, swirling the lemon-water in her glass. “So, sister dear,” she said softly. “Tell me all.”
Mary glanced pointedly at their governess. “Hush, Diana, you’ll wake Miss Wood.”
“You won’t wriggle free that easily, Mary,” Diana whispered, her blue eyes wide with anticipation. “The servants were all atwitter about it at the Coq d’Or. Who was the handsome gentleman you met for breakfast?”
One by one, Mary clicked the blades of her fan together, then patted it lightly into the palm of her hand. The sooner she told Diana the truth, the sooner it could be forgotten, and besides, it had never been in her nature to keep secrets.
“I don’t truly know who he was,” she confessed ruefully. “It was all in passing, you know. He said he was an Irish lord, but I never learned much else of him beyond that.”
“A lord is a good thing,” Diana said eagerly. “A very good thing. Unless he was lying, of course. Gentlemen lie about titles all the time, just to impress ladies.”
“He could have been, and I wouldn’t know.” Mary sighed, feeling foolish for having been so trusting. Her habit was to believe what people told her of themselves, which was, apparently, not the best advice when dealing with strange gentlemen. “He wouldn’t even admit to having a home. He claimed he was a citizen of the world, at ease everywhere he traveled.”
“Everywhere there’s not a magistrate out to find him,” Diana said wryly. “But now I’m being unfair, aren’t I? Was he handsome? Young? Virile to a fault? Full of charm and honey-words?”
“Oh, yes,” Mary said, remembering how his eyes danced and sparkled when he teased her. “And he made me laugh.”
Diana raised her glass of lemon-water toward Mary. “Proving you have most excellent taste. Being my sister, I always thought you must. Oh, Mary, I’m so excited for you!”
Pointedly Mary glanced at the sleeping governess. “Miss Wood knew nothing of this.”
“Likely Miss Wood already does. She knows everything,” Diana whispered fiercely. “There’s never keeping any secrets from her. She’s a very hawk for secrets. Why else do you think we were rushed so from Calais?”
Mary frowned. She thought she’d been most circumspect regarding Lord John, but the haste with which Miss Wood had forced them to leave Calais argued otherwise. Maybe, for once, Diana was right.
Diana leaned closer. “So tell me, Mary, tell me! How did you find this paragon-lord at breakfast? Did he bring you shirred eggs and bacon, or beckon you with a pot of fresh tea?”
“He found me yesterday.” Mary smiled, remembering. “He tried to buy the painting of the angel for me, but I wouldn’t let him, and outbid him instead.”
Diana wrinkled her nose. “You bought that awful picture because of him? Oh, Mary, that’s more blame than any man can bear!”
“Wait, Diana, I must speak to you about that painting,” Mary said, leaning closer. “I think there might be something—something peculiar about it.”
“Oh, yes, rare ugliness such as that is—”
“Be quiet for once, and mark what I say,” Mary said, lowering her voice further. “This morning, before we left Calais, the old Frenchman who sold me the picture came to the inn, and warned me about telling anyone I’d bought it. He begged me to keep everything about it a secret.”
“Why?” Excitedly Diana bent forward, the coral beads of her earrings swaying against her cheeks with the carriage’s motion. “What could be dangerous about a painting, especially a painting as ugly as that?”
Mary shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve hidden it away in my baggage, just to be sure. But all I can guess is that it’s a forgery, and Monsieur Dumont wished me to help preserve his reputation by keeping it a secret.”
“Then I’ll gladly keep the old rascal’s secret, for it’s of no account to me,” Diana said. “I’ll swear I’ve never laid eyes upon the wretched thing. And I’ll keep your secret, too, Mary.”
“That I bought the picture?”
Diana winked slyly. “No, silly, about your gentleman.”
Mary’s smile tightened. “There’s scarce anything to keep secret, Diana. Besides, you’re traveling with Miss Wood and me to become more seemly in your behavior, not to corrupt mine.”
But Diana only smiled wickedly, and uncorked the decanter that held the sweetened lemon-water. “I think we’d both fare better on this journey, Mary, if we reached a sort of compromise between us. I’ll vow to behave with more decorum, and you must promise to strive for less.”
“I’ll do no such thing, you ninny!” exclaimed Mary indignantly. She’d already pledged to herself to be more adventurous. She didn’t need to do the same with her sister, or even share her resolution. “Why should I make a ridiculous promise such as that?”
“Because mine would be equally ridiculous for me.” Diana took Mary’s glass from the hook built for the purpose into the coach’s side. She refilled it, pressed it into Mary’s hand, and then tapped her own glass to the rim of Mary’s. “To forgetting whatever needs to be forgotten.”
Mary pulled back her glass. “I won’t drink such a preposterous toast. ’Tis far better to learn from past mistakes, than simply to forget them.”
“Hush your squawking, Mary, else you’ll wake Miss Wood.” Diana glanced one more time at the sleeping governess. “Would you rather come all this way from home only to perish of tedium, smothered by the dust of old pictures and places?”
Mary thought again of the resolution she’d made. Even though she’d never see Lord John Fitzgerald again, he had immeasurably brightened her first days abroad. Shouldn’t her adventures with him be a beginning for her, and not the end?
Diana touched her glass gently against Mary’s. “Very well, then,” she whispered. “We’ll drink to the future. To Paris, Florence and Rome.”
“To Paris, Florence and Rome,” Mary repeated, then grinned. “And to—to adventure!”
It was nearly midnight by the time that John decided to return to his lodgings at Dessin’s. He had done his best to put the day behind him. He’d drunk more than he should have, and he’d wagered more than he should have over cards. Yet the wine hadn’t made him drunk enough, and the other gamesters had proved less skilled, depriving him of the punishment of losing. Nothing, it seemed, was going the way he’d wanted today, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to change his luck.
He decided to walk rather than hire a chaise, his hat pulled low and his hands in the pockets of his coat. Calais was not Paris, and at this hour there were few others on the street with him, the sound of the waves on the nearby shore clear throughout the city. Only a girl as sheltered as Lady Mary Farren could find Calais a city full of excitement and diversion, and despite his resolve not to think of her again, he couldn’t help smiling as he remembered how she’d practically hopped up and down with delight at the sight of the basket weave diligence.
He’d known from the beginning that she’d never be more than a diverting amusement for a day or two, an idle flirtation not meant to last. So why, then, did he feel so sorry for himself that it had ended before it had truly begun?
His life was his own, to arrange as he pleased. He had women enough in it, beautiful, clever, willing women, with rank and money of their own. He didn’t need to bend to the demands of some high-nosed duke for the privilege of courting his daughter.
And yet, there’d been something about the girl, something as indefinable as the painting of the angel, that made his regret over her loss sting. He kicked at a stone in the street, muttering halfhearted curses at his life and fate in general, and turned down the last street.
He smelled the smoke before he saw the flames, heard the shouts of the men running to the burning store with fire-buckets heavy with sloshing water. Then John was running, too, joining the growing crowd before the burning shop. Blown by the breeze from the water, the bright orange flames licked through the curving bow window, the panes of glass shattering with the heat within. Like customers trapped within, statues stood silhouetted against the fire, their somber expressions lit one final time by the bright light. The flames themselves shifted colors, burning blue, green, orange, with each different treasure they consumed.
Another quarter hour, and Dumont’s Antiquities would be gone.
“I’d wager the old miser set it himself,” one man in the crowd said to no one in particular. “They say the magistrates were sniffing about him as it was, for selling forgeries.”
“Burn the evidence, eh?” another man said, his face almost jovial by the firelight. “Save the gold first, then burn the lot!”
John pushed his way to the front of the crowd, squinting against the flames and smoke. “Has anyone seen Dumont?” he demanded. “He lived behind the store. He could still be inside.”
“Eh, let Dumont go to the devil,” someone called. “That’s where he belongs!”
Drunk with excitement, the crowd laughed raucously and whooped like savages before the flames, doing nothing to help the few men with the fire-buckets.
But John refused to stand by and do nothing. Swiftly he tore off his coat, tied his handkerchief around his nose and mouth, and ran down the narrow alley to the back door of the shop. The heat gathered between the brick buildings felt as hot as the flames themselves, pushing against John like an invisible hand. Yet still he kept going, his eyes stinging from the smoke, squinting as he tried to make out the back door. To his surprise, it was half open, and with his shoe he kicked at it, and pushed his way inside the billowing smoke.
“Dumont!” he called, bending low to try to stay below the worst of the smoke. “Dumont, here!”
No answer came, nor did he expect one, not now. If the old man were still within, the flames would surely have caught him, if the smoke hadn’t. Coughing himself, John turned, crouching along the floor, and felt something soft and heavy, clad in rough wool. A leg, Dumont’s leg, and without pausing John grabbed it and began to pull, dragging the old man from the fire and into the yard behind the shop.
Clear of the fire, John dropped to his knees, coughing and wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. His lungs burned as if they were full of fire, too, and he gasped for breath, tears streaming down his cheeks. He felt a hand on his shoulder, but he was struggling too hard to breathe to be able to turn.
“Are you harmed, monsieur? Monsieur?”
At last John forced himself to look through his tears to the man beside him: an officer of the local police, in the blue and white uniform of the garrison near the water. In case of a fire such as this, the police would naturally take the place of a brigade, protecting the town and its people however was necessary.
He sat back on his heels, still struggling to breathe. Behind him he could feel the heat and the crackling of the flames, but at least now with the soldiers here, the fire would soon be controlled.
“I—I am fine,” he croaked. “Dumont—where—”
“I am sorry, monsieur, but Monsieur Dumont is dead,” the officer said. “He was already dead when you pulled him from the door. So much risk to you for nothing, eh?”
“The—smoke?” John asked. “Or the—the fire?” His eyes still smarting, he wearily turned toward the old man’s body, stretched out on the dirt beside him. He wiped his eyes again, trying to make sense of what he saw.
Dumont’s face was smudged with soot, his coat singed and his white hair on one side scorched high against his blistered temple. His hands were bound with a cord behind his back, a rag tied tight around his head to gag him into silence. The front of his shirt was black with soot, and crimson with a garish blossom of blood from the gunshot wound on his chest, soaking through his coat and the waist of his breeches, even splattered across his once-white thread stockings.
“Murder, monsieur,” the officer said, giving the body a disrespectful poke with the toe of his boot. “Murder, and nothing less.”
With a muttered oath against ineptitude, the Comte de Archambault read the letter one last time, crumpled it in his weakened fist, then tossed it into the flames in the fireplace before him. The task he’d ordered had seemed simple enough, yet once again the men he’d hired had not been able to rise to the challenge.
Of course the old man in Calais would claim no knowledge of the painted angel. If this Dumont had possessed any sense of his trade, he would have recognized the value of the picture at once, perhaps even its significance. He must also have suspected it was stolen, from the nameless thief’s nervousness as well as his willingness to sell it for so little.
Surely Dumont would then have held the painting for a favored customer, or at least one willing to pay mightily for it. He wouldn’t have offered it to the pair of bullies who’d broken into his shop and threatened him. No wonder the old man had suffered an apoplexy before he could give any real information, leaving those impotent, incompetent hired fools to shoot an already dead man and set fire to his shop in their moronic frustration.
Archambault groaned, and tapped his cane against the grate with frustration of his own. Did those fools really believe he’d accept their pitiful explanations? Did they truly think he’d excuse their failure as he’d excused no other?
With another groan, he slid the red porcelain parrot an infinitesimal fraction to the left along the marble mantelpiece. There, now it was centered again, symmetrical as all life should be. It was beyond understanding why the maidservants could not dust his belongings without disordering them this way.
He grimaced, and rubbed his hand across his silk-covered belly, hoping to ease the pain twisting within. One more servant to be dismissed for incompetence with a feather duster, two more agents to give over anonymously to the authorities in Calais for the old man’s murder. He would not have their guilt taint his conscience, not so soon before his soul must stand in judgment. Others would soon appear to fill their spots, anyway, and take his money. Obedience and loyalty should be so simple. Why was it this difficult for him to find?
He turned away from the fire, and smiled as his gaze lit upon the painting of the Blessed Mother that hung beside his bed. The painting had been left to him by his grandmother, and the legends of their family with it.
Serenity, he thought. Serenity. The Blessed Virgin stood with her blue cloak outstretched like wings to shelter the miserable world gathered around her skirts, mendicants of every kind finally receiving respite and succor from Her, the Mother of the world.
Why couldn’t he find peace, too, he wondered bleakly? Why was there no comfort for him?
The pain in his stomach was worsening each day, the disease eating away at him from within. None of the surgeons’ bleeding, or purges, or fasts, or enemas, or noxious potions had helped. He was going to die, likely before his fortieth birthday this winter. Some nights when he lay alone in his bed, the sheets soaked with sweat and his body wracked with agony, he would pray for the sweet release of death, even if it came at the peril of his mortal soul.
As slow and bent as a crab, he made his way across the room to the painting. He had no wife, no children. He’d always thought there’d be time before him to marry and sire an heir. Now there wasn’t. He’d squandered the life he’d been given, and ruined so many others for the sake of—of what? For pleasure, amusement, a demonstration of power, or simply to stave off boredom?
He gazed up at the painting. This was what he had left, for the days he had left. This was all that mattered now, and his only hope for redemption. The picture’s power was not in its size—it was small enough to fit into the bottom of a traveling trunk—but in the perfection of every tiny brushstroke, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.
He could not look enough at the perfect oval face, full of compassion and understanding. He wanted that serenity. He wanted that peace, that grace, yet he knew he’d never have it until he fulfilled his promise. Two centuries of war and the cruel hand of man’s greed had separated the pieces of the triptych, but Archambault had vowed to make the Blessed Mother’s altar whole again before he died, for Her glory and his salvation.
Last spring his agents had found the panel that had originally hung to Her right, with Archambault’s own ancestors kneeling in worship beneath a chorus of cherubim. The panels had been cleaned, the gilded gesso frames restored.
Yet still the left panel remained lost, a lopsided disgrace to the Blessed Mother’s perfection. He’d dared to believe it had been discovered in Calais this week. He’d believed, and been disappointed again. All his money, all his power and connections, yet once again he’d been left empty-handed.
“Forgive me, my lady,” he murmured hoarsely, bowing as low as he could over his cane. “By my honor, I will find it. I will not give up the quest. If you will only grant me the time, my lady, then it will be done.”
With her head against Diana’s shoulder, Mary drowsed in the coach. While yesterday they’d made effortless progress, stopping for dinner and then at a tolerable inn for the night, this day had been one tedious delay after another. One of the four post horses slated for their team had turned up lame before he’d even been put in the traces, and they’d been forced to wait until another could be brought.
Lord John had predicted that the large English coach would be too unwieldy on more narrow roads, and he’d unfortunately proved an accurate prophet. Over and over again they’d come up behind a farmer’s wagon, and it had taken considerable quarreling between their driver and the farmer, and then even more considerable wrangling of the wagon with the coach before they could pass. There’d even been one time where they’d been stopped for a herd of cattle to be driven from one pasture to the next.
The day had been very warm, too, the sun hot on the coach’s lacquered roof, and the leather cushions had soon grown sticky to the touch. The sweat had collected beneath Mary’s hat and down her neck, sliding down to dampen her shift and stays, and trickled down the back of her legs above her garters, until all she could think of was reaching the next inn and shedding every stitch of her hot, confining clothing, no matter how indecorous or untoward.
Now with their lanterns lit, the driver was striving to make up the lost time with his weary team, driving them as fast as he dared through the dark so they could reach their inn for supper, and the night.
The coach bumped over a rut in the road, waking Mary enough that she pushed herself upright and stretched her arms before her. As sleepy as she was, she sensed that something was different with the coach. She could hear the a new tension in the driver’s voice as he shouted to the postilions, and the way the men riding on top of the coach were moving around, talking sharply to one another. Shaking off her sleep, she slid along the seat to the window, pushing aside the curtain to peer out into the night.
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