The Adventurous Bride. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ