The Adventurous Bride

She looked at his arm as if it were a large and venomous snake to be avoided at all costs. Needless to say, she did not take it.

“But you are British yourself, Lord John, aren’t you?” she asked. “You are not French?”

He sighed, wishing he didn’t have to answer so complicated a question this soon in their acquaintance. “I was born not far from Kerry, in Ireland. So yes, I suppose I am more British than French, or Spanish, or Italian. But I left that place so long ago that I scarce can consider it my home.”

She tipped her head to one side. “Everyone has a home, some place that calls them back.”

“Then call me a citizen of the world,” he said, sweeping his arm grandly through the air, as if to encompass the whole scope of his life. “I’m a wanderer, Lady Mary. Wherever I find myself, then that is my home.”

Most women found this a wildly romantic notion. Alas, Lady Mary was not one of them.

She frowned. “How can you claim to be at home nowhere, yet everywhere? 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 open, letting the sunlight spill across the floor. “I’ve been away for only an hour at most, and when I left you were deep asleep.”

“But then I woke, and you weren’t here.” Diana covered her eyes with her forearm against the window’s light. “It seemed as if you were gone much longer than an hour.”

“I wasn’t.” An hour, Mary marveled. Why had it seemed like so much more to her, too? Only an hour, the hands on her little gold watch moving neither faster nor slower than usual, and yet in that short time, so much had happened.

Diana pushed herself up higher on the pillows. “You weren’t supposed to go out at all, not alone. You know what Father said.”

“He meant that for you, not me,” Mary said. “And besides, I wasn’t alone. I took Winters with me.”

“Oh, now that changes everything,” Diana said. “Winters the half-daft footman, protector of our maidenly virtue!”

“He was quite sufficient for accompanying me,” Mary said, thankful that the half-light of the room hid her blush.

All she’d intended was a short stroll to give herself a break from the sickroom. But then she’d seen the intriguing little shop, and had promised herself only a minute or two to explore inside. Before she’d realized it, she’d discovered and bought a beautiful old painting of an angel for a frighteningly high sum. She’d ignored all the cautions and warnings she’d been given before she’d sailed, and let herself be drawn into a conversation with a stranger. “I’m not you, you know.”

“A pity for you that you aren’t,” Diana said sagely. “A little bit of me wouldn’t hurt. You’d enjoy yourself more.”

“I enjoyed myself well enough.” Mary took the painting from the table where she’d left it, guiltily trying not to think of the stranger who’d bid against her in the shop. She could only imagine how gleeful Diana would be if she learned of him; Mary would never, ever hear the end of it. “I bought a picture of an angel.”

Proudly Mary held the painting up for her sister to see. She should have known better.

“How ghastly,” Diana said, wrinkling her nose. “Angels should be beatific, but that one looks as if he’d bite your leg off as soon as sing a psalm. What a pity Winters didn’t stop you from spending Father’s money on that.”

Mary turned the painting back to her, balancing the heavy gold frame against her hip. If anything, the picture seemed even more special than when she’d first seen it. She liked the stern-faced angel, ready to defend his faith or whatever else had been cut away with the rest of the painting.

“You’re only showing your own ignorance, Diana,” she said, more to the painting than to her sister. “To anyone with an eye, this is a very rare and beautiful picture.”

The stranger hadn’t teased her when she’d babbled about the painting’s mystical attraction to her. He’d even seemed to understand, which had been more than enough for her to like him instantly. He’d said his name was Lord John Fitzgerald, that he’d been born in Ireland, and that he was a citizen of the world, whatever that might mean. But there’d been no question that his eyes had been very blue and full of laughter, even when his mouth had been properly severe, and that his jaw was firm and manly and his black hair cropped and curling. From his speech and clothes, he’d seemed the gentleman he’d claimed to be, but then he’d tried to buy the painting for her as a gift, something no true gentleman would ever do.

But maybe this was only one more thing that was different between England and France. Maybe here it was perfectly proper for strange gentlemen to offer expensive gifts to ladies. Maybe in France such conversations and such generosity happened every day, without a breath of impropriety.

And maybe such an exchange, with such a charming gentleman, was exactly the reason she’d wanted to come abroad in the first place—except that she’d been too self-conscious to enjoy it, exactly as Diana had said. She’d meant to be cautious, reserved, her usual sensible self. Instead he’d doubtless considered her to be a hopeless prig, too timid to take a gentleman’s arm. Not that she’d have another chance, either, not with Lord John. They would be leaving Calais for Paris as soon as it could be arranged, and because her life was never like a novel or play, her path would never again cross with his.

“Ahh, Mary, you’ve returned from your walk.” Miss Wood joined them, as pale as Diana, but neatly dressed in her usual gray gown and jacket and white linen cap, as if to defy any mere seasickness to steal another day from her. “No doubt the fresh air off the water would have done Lady Diana and me some good as well.”

Diana groaned at the suggestion, flopping back against her pillows. “She didn’t just walk, Miss Wood. She went into a shop, and bought an ugly picture.”

“It’s not ugly, Diana,” protested Mary. “It’s simply not to your taste. Miss Wood shall be the judge.”

She turned the painting toward the governess, but Miss Wood’s startled expression told Mary more than Miss Wood would ever dare speak.

“What matters is that the picture pleases you, my lady,” the governess said, ever tactful. “Each time you glimpse it, you’ll remember this day, the first of our adventure abroad.”

Mary looked back at the picture. It would, indeed, remind her of Calais, just as that fierce angel would forever remind her of Lord John. But of an adventure—no. Foolish, foolish she’d been, and far too cowardly to seize the adventure that had presented itself.

“Perhaps in the morning you can show us what you’ve discovered about this town, Lady Mary,” Miss Wood was saying. “I should like to see the gate to the city properly before we leave. It’s regarded as the centerpiece of Calais, you know, with a great deal of history behind it. We can even return to the shop where you bought this picture, if you wish.”

“No, no!” Mary exclaimed, stunned by such a suggestion. What if Lord John were there again, and thought she’d come hunting for him? Or worse, a fear that was more selfish and unworthy: what if she did meet him again, but this time he saw only Diana, the way that always seemed to happen? “That is, since I already bought the choicest piece in the shop, there’s no reason for returning to it.”

Diana made a disparaging sniff. “If that picture was the choicest, then I’ve no wish at all to visit such a place. Surely there must be some public parade, or park where people of fashion gather. Why, I’ve heard Calais has more officers of every service than even Portsmouth.”

“No officers for us, my lady, and no parade grounds,” Miss Wood said, clasping her hands at the front of her waist. “I needn’t remind you of the warning your father His Grace gave to you before we sailed. You are traveling to improve your mind and edify your soul, and to learn to modify your behavior regarding every classification and rank of men.”

Diana clapped her hands to her breast as if she’d just sustained a mortal wound. “Ugly paintings and stupid old gates for months and months and months. How shall I ever survive?”

“With grace and dignity as befits your station, my lady.” Miss Wood swung open the window, letting in a breeze redolent of the ocean, mingled with the tavern’s stables on the other side of the yard. “Besides, I expect us to be leaving Calais the day after tomorrow. That’s scarce time for any intriguing, no matter how determined.”

“You are too cruel, Miss Wood!” cried Diana, hurling one of her pillows across the room at the governess. “Too, too cruel!”

“So you’ve often said, my lady.” Unperturbed, Miss Wood plucked the pillow from the floor beside her, smoothed the linen with her palms, and returned it to the end of the bed. “But you’ll have to tolerate my decisions, especially now. There was a letter waiting here at the inn for me from Monsieur Leclair, the gentleman His Grace your father engaged as our bearleader.”

“‘Bearleader,’” Mary repeated, unable to resist the silliness of the expression. “It sounds as if we’re his pack of she-bears in some vagabond circus. Why aren’t they just called guides?”

“Because they’re not, my lady,” Miss Wood said patiently. “In any event, Monsieur Leclair’s mother has been taken grievously ill, and he begs our understanding and forgiveness while he makes arrangements for her. Instead of attending us here in Calais, with our leave he shall join us in Paris instead.”

“Of course he’ll have our leave,” Mary said. “Poor Madame Leclair! She should have her son with her. We can manage perfectly well on our own from here to Paris.”

Diana smiled mischievously at Mary. “You are so independent, Mary.”

“It’s an admirable trait to possess, Diana,” Mary said, praying that Diana would offer nothing more incriminating. “Especially whilst traveling.”

Miss Wood nodded with approval. “That is true, my lady. We’ll have our two days here in Calais, and then on to Paris. That was the itinerary approved by His Grace your father, and we shall follow it even without Monsieur Leclair to lead us.”

Two days, thought Mary with regret, and one of those days was nearly done. Miss Wood and Father had been wise to leave no time at all for intriguing in Calais. Their only miscalculation had been which daughter had longed for the intrigue.

“Oh, monsieur, I do not believe I could allow that,” said Madame Gris, the innkeeper’s wife, guarding the doorway to the private dining room as conscientiously as any royal sentry. The Coq d’Or had its reputation to maintain as a respectable house, especially among the English gentry. “The young lady is dining alone, and wishes not to be disturbed. Her governess and her sister—the mal-de-mer, you see.”

“Then all the more reason, madame, that the lady’s in need of company and cheer.” John glanced down at the bouquet he’d brought for Lady Mary, a confection of pinks and roses gathered in a paper frill and red ribbon, the way that the French did so well. Other times, he would have simply sent the flowers, but given this was bound to be a hasty flirtation at best, he’d decided to bring his offering himself.

But Madame Gris still shook her head, her plump chin shaking gently above her checkered kerchief. “This is no scandalous house of assignation, monsieur.”

“Keep the door open, madame, and listen to every word that passes between us,” John said, placing his hand over his heart. “I swear to you that not even a whisper of scandal will pass my lips.”

The innkeeper’s wife stared at him with disbelief. Then she tipped back her head and laughed aloud.

“You’d laugh at me, madame?” John asked, striving to sound wounded, yet unable to keep from joining her laughter. He never had been able to feign earnestness, and he hadn’t succeeded this morning, either. “You’d laugh at my humble suit?”

“‘Humble,’ hah,” she said, giving his arm a poke with her finger. “I’d wager you’ve never been humble about anything in your life, monsieur, a fox like you! Go, go, take your posey to the lady, and plead your heart to her. But mind you, the door stays open, and if I hear one peep from her—”

“No peeps, madame,” John said, winking wickedly as he slipped past her. “Only the greatest gratitude for your kind understanding.”

Madame Gris laughed and jabbed at John again, her good humor following him as he headed down the hallway to the small private parlor at the end. The inn had welcomed its respectable guests for the last two hundred years, and the wide old floorboards creaked beneath John’s feet, and he had to duck his head beneath the age-blackened beams overhead. Yet the whitewashed room before him seemed to glow, the windows with their diamond-leaded frames open to the bright summer morning and sunlight falling over the girl.

Lady Mary was sitting in a spindled armchair with her back to the half-open door. Her hair was loosely pinned in a knot on top of her head, the sunshine turning the escaped tendrils dark red. She was dressed in a simply cut white linen gown with a wide green sash around her slender waist, the style that the French queen had first made so famous, yet now was associated almost entirely with English ladies. Lady Mary wore it well, the simplicity suiting her creamy skin and dark hair and the full, layered skirts, falling softly around her chair, made translucent by the sun.

Yet what caught John’s attention first, and held it, was the delicate curve of her neck, the pearl earrings gently bobbing on either side of her throat. With her head slightly bent over her dish of tea, her nape was exquisite, the vulnerability of it almost heartbreaking.

His weight shifted, just enough for his foot to make the floorboard beneath it squeak. She twisted around in her chair and caught her breath, a slice of bread with jam forgotten in her fingers.

“You!” she cried, her cheeks flushing a furious pink. “How did you come here? How did you find me?”

“Calm yourself, Lady Mary, please, I beg you!” he exclaimed, holding one hand palm up to signal for quiet, and the other brandishing the flowers. He’d told Madame Gris that she could interrupt if she heard the girl object, and he had no doubt that the innkeeper’s wife would enjoy doing exactly that. “I don’t mean you the least bit of harm!”

“Oh, no, no, I didn’t intend that.” Hastily she rose to her feet in a swirl of white linen, the bread still in her hand. “That is, you have surprised me, but I—I am not upset. Not in the least, not when—oh, blast!”

A forgotten, glistening blot of red jam dropped from the bread in her hand and splattered on her arm, barely missing her white sleeve. She dropped the bread, grabbed the napkin from the table, and slapped it over the jam, pressing the cloth there as if she feared the errant jam would somehow escape to shame her again.

John smiled: not only because he knew he was the cause of her being so discomfited, but because that extra blush and fluster was a side of her he hadn’t seen at Dumont’s. There she’d been so much in control of herself that she’d been able to steal the painting away from him. But now—now she was as rattled as a cracked teacup, and all because of a blot of jam.

“I’ll have you know I’m not like this, my lord,” she confessed. “Not generally. Not at all.”

“I’m not like this, either,” he said. “Rising at this unholy hour, begging Madame Gris for entrance, startling ladies at their breakfast. Not like me at all.”

“Of course it’s not.” She rubbed the napkin over her arm one last time to make sure the jam was gone, crushed the napkin into a lumpy knot, and stuffed it under the edge of her plate. “I wouldn’t give you permission to walk with me yesterday, but if you ask to take breakfast with me now—even though it’s a meager sort of French breakfast, without eggs or meats—why, I shall agree.”

“You will?” No matter how confident he’d been before, he hadn’t expected this invitation. Not that he meant to accept it. Because he half expected her sister or governess to join her at any moment, he’d rather coax her out-of-doors, away from the inn, where he’d be sure to keep her company to himself. He already had an image of the seasick sister: plain and peevish and nothing like Lady Mary, and as for the governess—well, she was a governess. “You’ll walk with me after all?”

“I will.” At last she smiled, only a moment. “It’s not often one has the chance to set mistakes to rights. Those flowers are quite lovely. Are they for me?”

He handed the bouquet to her with the same bow that yesterday had earned him only disdain. Now she took the flowers with a happy little chuckle, cradling them in her arms.

“So 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.”