The Silver Lord. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ glared. “Miss Winslow is neither old, nor is she a gorgon, though she was dressed in black.”

      Brant waved his hand in airy dismissal. “Black can be an elegant affectation on the right woman.”

      “Not if it’s mourning,” said George sharply. “You heard Potipher, Brant. The poor woman’s just lost her father.”

      But Brant would not be discouraged. “Is she sweetly melancholy, then? A delicate beauty, shown off by that black like a diamond against midnight velvet?”

      “You would not find her so,” said George, his discomfort growing by the second. He’d never cared for Brant’s manner with women. True, his brother’s attitude was shared by fashionable gentlemen from the Prince of Wales downward, but the way Brant combined a connoisseur’s fastidious consideration with a predator’s single-mindedness seemed to George to include almost no regard or respect for the lady herself.

      Which, of course, was not how he’d felt about Miss Winslow. “She is tall,” he said, choosing his words with care, “and handsome rather than beautiful. Dark hair, fair skin, and eyes the color of smoke.”

      “Ah,” said Brant with great satisfaction as he settled back in his chair, making a little tent over his chest by pressing his fingertips together. “You sound smitten, George.”

      “She is not that kind of woman, Brant,” said George defensively. “Put a broadsword in her hand, and she’d become St. Joan and smite her villains left and right, but as for leaving a trail of swooning beaux in her wake, the way you’re saying—no, not at all. She’s prickly as a dish of nettles.”

      “But you are intrigued,” insisted Brant. “I know you well enough to see the signs. You’ve had the sweetest cream of fair London wafting before you this last month, and not one of them has inspired this sort of paeans from you as does this housekeeper.”

      “Paeans?” repeated George incredulously. “To say she is prickly as a dish of nettles is a paean?”

      Brant smiled. “From you it is, my unpoetic Neptune of a brother. I say you should take both the house and the housekeeper. Regardless of her housewifery skills, she shall, I think, offer you other amusements.”

      “Amusements, hell,” said George crossly. “That’s not why I’m taking the blasted house.”

      “Oh, why not?” said Brant with his usual breezy nonchalance. “Our dear brother Rev has gone and married a governess, and now you fancy a housekeeper. I’ll have to look about me for a pretty little cook to become my duchess, and make our whole wedded staff complete.”

      “Just stow it, Brant,” growled George. “Just stow it at once. Potipher!”

      The agent reappeared so quickly that George suspected he’d been poised on the other side door, listening.

      “You have reached a decision, Captain My Lord?” he asked, hovering with cheerful expectation.

      “I have not,” growled George. “What if Miss Winslow wishes to leave my employment, eh? Is she a slave to the wishes of these blasted Trelawneys as well?”

      Potipher blinked warily behind his spectacles. “Oh, no, Captain My Lord, not at all. Miss Winslow will be under no obligation to remain whatsoever.”

      George sighed with a grim fatalism, drumming his fingers impatiently on the arm of his chair. At least that was some small solace. He would not wish any lady, especially not one as fine as Miss Winslow, to be obligated to stay with him. Yet if he wanted Feversham—which, of course, he did, now more than ever—then he was trapped into keeping Miss Winslow with it. George did not like feeling trapped, but least Potipher was also offering him a way out: what respectable woman, young or old, would wish to remain long beneath the same roof with the crew of the Nimble?

      But then George thought again of the way Miss Winslow had smiled at him, bright and determined, as if she’d enjoyed their skirmishing as much as he had himself. Although he’d nobly scorned Brant’s suggestion that he “amuse” himself with the housekeeper, he couldn’t keep from considering all the wicked possibilities and justifications the circumstances would offer, and he nearly groaned aloud at the willfulness of his wayward thoughts and willing body.

      Blast, he didn’t even know her given name….

      Abruptly he rose to his feet. “Then it is decided, Mr. Potipher,” he said. “I shall take Feversham, and Miss Winslow with it.”

      And trust the rest to fate.

      “Ooh, miss, those look most wonderful fine on you!” exclaimed the girl behind the counter of the little shop as she held the looking-glass for Fan. “They say all the noble ladies be wearin’ such in London and Bath.”

      Fan turned her head before the glass, making the gold earrings with the garnet drops swing gently back and forth against her cheeks. While her Company specialized in bringing in tea, there were others along the coast that carried more jewels and lace from France than in most of the shops in the Palais Royale, and even here in the tiny harbor village of Tunford, not three miles from Feversham itself, Fan could let herself be tempted by earrings that likely were the same as the noble ladies in London were wearing.

      “You’ll fetch yourself a handsome sweetheart with those a-glittering in your ears, miss,” promised the girl, nodding with mercantile wisdom. “Less’n you already have a good man, and you want me to set these aside for him to come buy for you.”

      Wistfully Fan touched one earring, catching the sunlight in the faceted stone like a tiny ruby prism in the golden filigree. She’d never had a sweetheart, old or new, let alone one to give her anything like these earrings. Father hadn’t permitted it, claiming that all the Tunford boys were beneath her. Fleetingly, foolishly, she now let herself imagine what kind of roses and jewels Captain Claremont would lavish on his lady, just like the heroes in ballads.

      For that matter, Fan couldn’t recall the last time she’d bought something so frivolous for herself. Instead she’d always dutifully put her share of the company’s profits into the double-locked strongbox inside the wall of her bedchamber against hard times, the way Father had instructed. She was always conscious of that, of how she wasn’t like other women with a husband to look after her. She’d no one now but herself to rely upon for the future. She’d no one to blame, either, if she died in the poorhouse, or if some cowardly fool like Bob Forbert finally decided to turn evidence against her to the magistrates.

      Yet the earrings were lovely things, and Fan let herself smile at her reflection as the red-tinged sparkles danced over her cheeks.

      “Them garnets are as right as can be for you, miss,” coaxed the girl. “You won’t find any finer on this coast, not in Lydd nor Hythe, neither, and I vow—la, what be that ruckus?”

      The girl hurried to the shop’s doorway, the looking-glass still in her hands, and curiously Fan followed. Tunford was a small village with only a handful of narrow lanes, sleepy and quiet the way country villages always were.

      But it wasn’t quiet now. Two large wagons piled high with barrels, trunks, and boxes were coming to a noisy stop before the Tarry Man, Tunford’s favorite public house, their four-horse dray teams snorting and pawing the rutted soil while their drivers bawled for the hostler. Dogs raced forward, barking and yelping with excitement, and children soon came running along, too.

      Even before the СКАЧАТЬ