Night of a Thousand Stars. Deanna Raybourn

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СКАЧАТЬ ticked his attributes off on my fingers. He was cool in a crisis. Most men wouldn’t have had the steely nerve to help me escape from my own wedding, much less to do it with a smile. He’d been terribly understanding when I had prattled on about the troubles I’d had with Gerald in the bedroom. He must have been dreadfully shocked, but he hadn’t made me feel the least bit awful about any of it. And he’d been a perfect sport about letting Gerald punch him without hitting him back and complicating everything. He had been an absolute brick, a thorough hero when I needed him, and I hadn’t even thanked him properly.

      It was only to thank him that I wanted to see him, I decided. It was just good manners, after all, and I had been brought up to know what was right even if I didn’t always do it.

      None of which explained why I didn’t tell Masterman where we were going. I just knew I was in no mood for questions, and Masterman’s were invariably uncomfortable ones. I only wanted to see Sebastian and thank him once and for all and that was it, I told myself firmly.

      As we walked to the door of the church where I was to have been married, I turned, giving Masterman a pious look.

      “Masterman, I’d like you to wait in the park just opposite. I wish to step into the church for a bit of private reflection.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “Unless you plan to reflect aloud, miss, I would hardly be in your way.”

      “Private,” I repeated gently. She huffed a little but took herself off in the direction of the park.

      I went into the church and crept quietly into a back pew. It was one of the great churches of London, stately and ancient, the stone smelling of incense and time. There was something comforting about the old stone walls, and I felt the strain of the past months ease a little as I sat. The choir was in the stalls, practising something restful, and before I knew it, my chin was bobbing on my chest, my breathing soft and slow.

      “Pardon me, miss.” There was a gentle hand on my shoulder and I awoke with a horrified start to find a clergyman with a kindly face standing over me

      “Oh, I am sorry! I don’t know what came over me.”

      The kindly face smiled. “Don’t tell the vicar, but it happens to me more than you’d think.”

      “That’s very gracious of you,” I said, smothering a yawn. “I say, I don’t suppose you could help me find someone? I actually came to speak with the curate.”

      The smile deepened. “Then you’re in luck. You have found him. I’m the curate, Mr. Hobbs.”

      I blinked. “I’m sorry, I mean the other curate, Mr. Cantrip.”

      “There is no other curate, miss. I am the only curate for this parish.”

      I shook my head. “No, I’m sorry, but there was a Mr. Cantrip here. He said he was—” I broke off, thinking furiously. Had Sebastian said he was the curate? Or had I simply inferred it from the dog collar?

      Mr. Hobbs’ gentle expression turned thoughtful. “I say, aren’t you Miss Hammond? The young lady—”

      “Who ran out on her wedding to the heir to Viscount Madderley? Yes,” I said automatically.

      “I was going to phrase it a little more delicately than that,” he told me with only the mildest hint of reproach.

      “Oh, it’s all right, I understand it’s what everyone is saying.” I was still thinking hard. Perhaps I had misunderstood. Sebastian might not be curate of this parish, but he must be associated with another.

      “Mr. Hobbs, do vicars ever lend their curates?”

      The smile was back, this time a shade rueful. “Well, we are men of the cloth, you know, not books in a lending library, but I regret to say some vicars do indeed treat us as such.”

      “You mean a vicar who had an important service to perform might request help from another parish?”

      “Yes, these things do happen.”

      I brightened. “That must be it. Sebastian Cantrip is another parish’s curate and he was simply borrowed for the wedding.”

      “I beg your pardon, Miss Hammond, but if you are referring to your—er, wedding,” he said with a cough, “there was no borrowed curate. It was my job to assist the vicar at your nuptials.”

      I resisted the urge to light a cigarette. “Do you mean no one from outside your parish was expected?”

      “No indeed,” he said proudly. “We took great pride in our ability to execute everything to the viscountess’s specifications.”

      His last remark proved his involvement, I thought grimly. Mother had planned everything to the smallest detail, but Gerald’s mother had come from a family populated with bishops and her pet hobby was all matters ecclesiastical. The viscountess had expressed no interest in the wedding whatsoever except when it came to texts and hymns and vestments.

      “And you don’t know a Mr. Cantrip?” I persisted.

      “Indeed not, although if I did, I should think it a very great joke,” he said, the smile once more in evidence.

      “Oh, why?”

      “Well, as it happens, I am a fancier of unusual names. I collect them, as it were, and Cantrip is most singular.”

      “In what way?”

      He shrugged. “I should presume it was a pseudonym. Have you never heard the word before? A cantrip is an old Scots word. It means a witch’s trick, a spell. The very word means deception.”

      I rose slowly from the pew and fished in my bag for a note. “For the collection plate, Mr. Hobbs. Thank you for your time.”

      I went out into the street, blinking at the weak sunlight. The church had been a haven of cool security, but now I felt oddly off balance, as if someone had just proven the sky was green. I walked slowly across to the park and sat on a bench, thinking hard.

      “Private reflection my eye,” said Masterman as she slid onto the bench next to me.

      “I beg your pardon?”

      “If you wanted a nap, there’s many a place better than that,” she told me.

      I shrugged. “I nodded off. It’s been a very trying time,” I replied to her, but my mind was elsewhere.

      I had been overwrought that day, but it wasn’t as if I had imagined him. In the first place, too many other people had seen him. And in the second, how had I got myself down to Devonshire without him driving me?

      “Of course he drove you,” Masterman was saying.

      I blinked. “Was I talking aloud?”

      “Muttering more like. Something about that Mr. Cantrip and imagining. What’s this all about?” she demanded.

      I took a deep breath and plunged in. “I came to London today to thank Mr. Cantrip for the spot of rescuing he did when he drove me down to Devon. But I cannot find him. In fact, the curate in СКАЧАТЬ