The Adventurous Bride. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ