The Vagabond Duchess. Claire Thornton

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СКАЧАТЬ In an effort to distract herself she focussed on a crack in the plaster of the chimney breast, allowing her eyes to follow it all the way up to the ceiling. The amusement in his voice grew more pronounced; even the lute seemed to be laughing at her as he plucked a lively, teasing melody from its strings.

      She realised too late it must have looked as if she’d stuck her chin in the air in response to his initial amusement. Very slowly, by casual degrees, she allowed her gaze to drop until she was once more looking at the mantelpiece. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead and hoped the song would soon come to an end. How many verses did it have? Was he even singing the same song he’d started with? Or had he slid seamlessly into another one so he could deliberately prolong her discomfort? She stopped looking at the mantelpiece and stared at him suspiciously.

      The fellow had the gall to grin at her! His fingers didn’t fluff a single note and his voice remained perfectly in tune—but he grinned at her!

      How dare he! The urge to box his over-confident ears was almost too strong to resist. She imagined a discordant jangle and the pleasing sight of the dark-eyed vagabond wearing a necklace of lute strings and small fragments of wood around his cocksure neck.

      A man beside her chuckled.

      ‘Jack Bow is singing for more than his supper now,’ he murmured. ‘Does he take your fancy, lass? You’ve surely taken his.’

      ‘No!’ Temperance’s denial emerged more forcefully than she’d intended. She saw several heads turn to look at her, and some men began to smile in an obnoxiously knowing way.

      Her skin burned. She forgot her reason for coming to the tavern. All she wanted to do was remove herself from the mortifying situation at once. She was about to push through the crowd to the door when the musician ended the song with a flourish.

      He was rewarded with applause and whistles. Several men called out to him, offering to buy him a drink. For a moment Temperance lost sight of him as the tavern patrons moved into new positions. She belatedly realised she wasn’t the only woman in the room—though at this hour of the night she was most likely the only respectable woman present. And she was only here because the plague that had devastated London the previous year had been so bad for business. The City was almost back to normal now, but if Temperance was to restore her shop to a sound footing she needed every sale she could make.

      Where was the gentleman whose servant had roused her to wait on his master? She resisted the urge to glance in the direction of the singer and instead tried to locate the tavern keeper.

      A door on the far side of the taproom crashed open. Temperance couldn’t see who came out, but then an irritable voice shouted, ‘Where the hell’s the draper I sent for?’

      Temperance pushed her way towards her still-unseen customer. When she got closer she saw he’d just emerged from a private room that led off from the main taproom. He was a fashionably dressed young man, but his clothes were the worse for wear. He was also at least two inches shorter than Temperance.

      He scowled at her when she stopped in front of him.

      ‘I want a draper, not an overgrown doxy,’ he said.

      Temperance swallowed an angry response. His appearance was at least as unappealing as hers. Worse, in fact. She might be unusually tall and no great beauty, but at least she was sober and well groomed and didn’t wantonly insult strangers.

      ‘I am the draper,’ she said coldly. ‘Your man said you want a length of linen and a length of muslin.’

      ‘You have them?’ His red-rimmed eyes focussed on the bundle in her arms. ‘Show me.’ He stepped back into his private room and she had no choice but to follow.

      She didn’t particularly want to do business in public, nor did she relish the thought of being alone with this well-born lout—but when she entered the smaller chamber she saw he had a friend with him.

      ‘Has that damned caterwauling finally stopped, Tredgold?’ the other man demanded.

      Temperance bristled with indignation at the insult to the musician. Caterwauling? The dark-eyed vagabond might be as arrogant as the devil, but he had the finest voice she’d ever heard, and his musicianship was remarkable.

      ‘Give me the linen.’ Tredgold grabbed the bundle of goods from her arms and tore it open.

      ‘Be careful!’ Temperance protested, as the piece of muslin fell into a puddle of liquid on the floor.

      Her customer ignored both her and the muslin. He shook out the length of linen and tossed it over his head. Temperance watched in disbelief as he stuck his arms out and swayed from side to side. Then he started to moan and groan.

      ‘OoooOOOOooooOOOOoooo…Arghhhh…. OOOooooooOOO!’

      His friend stared at him with an open mouth for several seconds, then clutched his head and cowered in his seat.

      ‘Oh! Oh, I’m so scared. Oh, my poor heart! Oh, I’m dead!’ At his last dramatic exclamation, he collapsed sideways, disappearing from view beneath the edge of the table.

      Temperance’s own heart thudded with alarm and confusion. For an instant she almost thought he really was dead, then she realised he had been sitting on a high-backed bench. He’d just fallen sideways on it. Now he was lying there, laughing like a lunatic.

      ‘Do you think it will work?’ Tredgold demanded.

      ‘The old goat might die of laughter—but not fear,’ his friend replied, sitting up again. ‘Whoever heard of a ghost with brown velvet arms? If you take off all your clothes and wrap the linen around you, you could pretend you’ve risen from the grave. That might work.’

      ‘Hmm.’ Tredgold threw the length of linen across the table—where it soaked up some spilled wine—and took off his coat. For a horrified moment Temperance thought he was going to disrobe further but, to her relief, he seemed content to experiment in his shirt sleeves and breeches. He wrapped the linen around himself in untidy folds.

      ‘Give me the muslin, wench,’ he ordered, pointing at where it still lay on the floor.

      Temperance handed it to him and hastily stepped back. He twisted it round his upper body and head and turned back to his companion.

      ‘Now what do you think?’

      ‘I’ve never seen a corpse wrapped in pink,’ said his friend, looking at the spreading wine stains on both the muslin and the linen.

      ‘It’s blood, of course!’ Tredgold said impatiently.

      ‘Not that colour. You’ll never frighten the old man to death in pink muslin.’

      ‘What are you trying to do?’ Temperance asked.

      ‘Scare his grandfather into his grave,’ the friend said.

      ‘What?’

      ‘He’s nearly ninety. Until he dies I can’t claim my inheritance,’ Tredgold said as if he had a genuine grievance.

      ‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’ Temperance exploded. ‘I won’t be party to such an evil scheme. Take off the linen at once!’

      ‘I am СКАЧАТЬ