The Adventurous Bride

“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 whips drooping listlessly from their hands.

“What a curious coach!” exclaimed Mary, standing beside John. “I never would have seen such a thing if I’d stayed in Kent!”

It was, she decided, as good as any play. With its thick wooden wheels and double-horse team, the diligence did resemble its English cousins. But the body of the coach was long and flat, and made not of panels, but of tightly woven splints, with a small, covered compartment with an arched roof in the front to protect the driver. The passengers packed inside and on top looked like so many eggs gathered in a basket for market.

And a diverse assortment of passengers it was, too. There were the usual half-drunk sailors with long queues down their backs and soldiers in ragged uniforms to be found on any English coach. But there were also two fat monks in brown robes, their tonsured heads gleaming in the sun, a grumpy-faced woman dressed in a red-striped jacket who carried a cage full of chirping canaries, an old man with an extravagantly tall white wig and a rabbit-fur muff so large it hung to his knees, and a pair of young women with gowns cut low enough to display their rosy nipples through their neckerchiefs, much to the delight of the sailors and soldiers. Around her bubbled a rush of French words and exclamations and likely curses, too, all in dialects that bore scant resemblance to what she’d learned in the schoolroom.

“So does the Paris diligence qualify as another adventure, my lady?” John asked. He was smiling so indulgently at her that she felt foolish, more like a child hopping up and down before a shop window full of sweets than the touring lady of the world she was trying to be.

Purposefully she drew herself up straighter. “It would be an adventure if I took my passage to Paris in it. Hah, imagine what Father would say to that!”

His smile widened, daring her. “Then do it. The driver and postilions will change the horses, turn about, and leave for Paris again. I’ll come with you for—for companionship. You’ll have a score of chaperones to keep your honor intact, you’ll improve your French mightily, and I’ll give my word that you’ll have a true adventure.”

She stared up at him, more tempted than she’d wish to admit. “But we’ve no provisions, no food, no—”

“Dinner and supper are included in the fare,” he said. “And I guarantee that those meals, too, won’t be like anything you find in Kent.”

“None of this is like Kent,” she said, but she was laughing, pushing her breeze-tossed hair back from her face. She’d never even considered doing anything as scandalous as riding in a public coach for days and nights at a time with a man she scarcely knew, and yet somehow now it seemed less scandalous than, well, adventurous.

“Then come with me,” he said, cocking his head toward the unwieldy diligence. “Be brave. This is Calais, not your blessed Kent. No one knows you here, nor cares what you do. When else will you have such an opportunity?”

She shook her head, laughing still. What was it about him that made the most ridiculous proposal she’d ever received seem so wickedly intriguing? If it had been Diana with one of her swains, she would have been horrified.

“Do you like strawberries, my lady?” he asked, out of the blue. He raised his dark brows, and held out his hands, slightly curved, as if offering the largest imaginary strawberry for her edification. “Juicy and sweet upon the tongue, fresh as the morning dew in the mouth?”

“Excuse me?” she said, and laughed again. She’d never met another gentleman who could make her laugh so often, or so richly. She’d always prided herself on being practical, responsible, capable. Who would have known that she’d have such a store of laughter inside her, as well? “Why ever ask me of strawberries now?”

He shifted behind her, resting his palms on her shoulders, and gently turned her toward the diligence. “Because there, climbing down from the top, is a sturdy French farmwife with a basket in each hand, the sort of deep, narrow basket that is used only for strawberries in this region.”

He’d kept his hands on her shoulders after the reason for having them there was done, and his palms were warm, the weight of them oddly pleasant, as if in some strange way they belonged there.

She twisted her head around to face him. “I do like strawberries, Lord John,” she said, delighted by how his eyes were the same blue as the June sky overhead. “In fact I am monstrously fond of them.”

“Then I shall fetch some for you directly,” he said. “Perhaps they’ll persuade you to make an adventurous journey with me.”

He winked—winked!—and gave her shoulders a fond, familiar pat before he went striding toward the farmer’s wife with the berries. The tails of his coat swung with a jaunty rhythm, his square shoulders broad and easy, his dark hair tossing in the light breeze.

If he’d tried to kiss her, she would have kissed him back. It was a staggering realization for her to make. He might still kiss her once he’d returned with the berries, and she knew she’d kiss him them, too, and that was more staggering still.

“Lady Mary!”

She frowned and glanced around her, not knowing who was calling her name. Hadn’t Lord John just reminded her that in Calais she was a stranger?

“Lady Mary, here!” The shopkeeper Dumont was standing in the shadow of an alley beside the inn, half-hidden by a pyramid of stacked barrels. He wore an old slouch hat pulled low over his face, a grimy scarf wrapped many times around his throat, and the same leather apron she remembered from his shop. Agitated, he looked from side to side to make certain he’d not been noticed, then beckoned to her.

“If you please, my lady, if you please!” he called in a anxious quaver. “I must speak to you at once!”

“On what subject, monsieur?” She hesitated, unwilling to be drawn so far from the bustle of the inn’s front door, even on this sunny day. “Why do you wish to speak to me?”

“The picture, my lady!” His claw of a hand beckoned again. “The angel! Do you have it still?”

She took one reluctant step closer, and no more. She glanced swiftly over her shoulder, wishing now that Lord John had returned. “Of course I’ve kept the picture. I only bought it from you yesterday.”

“Has anyone asked you for it, my lady?” he asked urgently. “Does anyone know it’s in your possession?”

“Only those in my traveling party,” she said, her heart racing with fear of what she didn’t understand. “Monsieur, I do not believe that any of this is your—”

“You must tell no one, my lady,” Dumont interrupted, his voice shaking with emotion. “Tell no one that the picture is your property now, or that you bought it from me, or even that you have seen it!”

“You can’t threaten me like that!” she exclaimed, trying to be brave. “I paid you dearly for that painting, and if it’s your game to try to intimidate me into selling it back to you, why, I’ve no intention of doing so!”

The old man shook his head. “I would not take it back, my lady,” he said vehemently. “It is yours now, and the peril with it, and I—”

“Lady Mary!”

That voice Mary recognized at once.

“Miss Wood!” Quickly she turned to her governess, glad for an excuse to leave Dumont and his unsettling questions. “Oh, Miss Wood, how glad I am to see you feeling better!”

“What I am feeling, my lady, is inestimable relief at finding you unharmed.” She bustled forward and took Mary firmly by the upper arm. “But look at you, my lady! Out in the street by yourself, without a hat or parasol or gloves to keep you safe from the sun! Now come inside and gather yourself, my lady, so that we can go.”

“Go?” Mary asked, confused. Her governess was dressed not for walking, but for traveling, in her quilted skirt and jacket. “Where are we going, Miss Wood? Do you wish to visit the Calais gate?”

“We’re leaving Calais directly, my lady,” Miss Wood said. “I have had enough of this wretched inn and the insufferable people that own it. I’m told our coach is ready, and now that we don’t have to wait for Monsieur Leclair to join us, we’ll depart as soon as you are dressed properly. Hurry now, please, we need to make as much progress as we can before dark.”

“Now?” Mary said faintly, looking past Miss Wood to scan the street for Lord John. The diligence was empty, with only a few people still gathered around it. But where was the farmer’s wife with the basket of strawberries, and where was Lord John?

“What is it, Lady Mary?” asked the governess, concern in her voice. “Are you unwell? You look as if you’ve taken too much of the sun, out here without your hat. Your cheeks are pink.”

“I was expecting a—a friend, Miss Wood,” she said. Perhaps he’d had to follow the woman for the strawberries. Perhaps she wouldn’t sell them to him at all, and he’d gone elsewhere. He wouldn’t abandon her the first time she turned away, not after offering to take her clear to Paris. “A friend.”

“A friend, my lady?” Miss Wood frowned. “Forgive me, my lady, but what friend could you possibly have here in Calais?”

What friend, indeed? Mary shook her head, unwilling to believe the empty proof of her own eyes. Perhaps it was for the best that Lord John had disappeared like this. She could hardly have introduced him to Miss Wood, or worse, to her sister. This way she’d still had an adventure, only just a smaller one than he’d proposed. She would dutifully leave Calais now with the rest of her party, and disappear, and treat him the same as he’d treated her. Her reputation was spared a journey with him in a crowded diligence. There’d be no farewell, no regrets for what had never happened. Only the slight sting of disappointment, and she already knew how to cope with that.

Her smile was wistful, her feelings bittersweet. No more laughter, and no promised strawberries, sweet and juicy on the tongue. No more adventures today.

She glanced back to the end of the wall, where Monsieur Dumont had warned her about her painting. Now he, too, had vanished. She couldn’t have imagined all of it, could she?

“Come, Lady Mary,” said Miss Wood, leading her back into the inn. “Deborah will have your trunk packed by now, and Lady Diana should be ready, too.”

But as she began up the stairs with Miss Wood, Madame Gris hurried toward her, the beautiful ruffled bouquet of roses and pinks in her arms.

“My lady, a moment, please!” she called. “You forgot these in the parlor, my lady. The flowers the gentleman brought for you, my lady, and such pretty ones they are, too.”

Miss Wood looked sharply at Mary, her expression full of silent questions.

“I am sorry, Madame,” Mary said slowly, “but I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Those flowers weren’t for me.”

Madame Gris’s brows rose with surprise. “But my lady, I am sure that—”

“No, Madame,” Mary said. “The bouquet was not meant for me, and neither was the gentleman.”

Chapter Four

J ohn stood in the street with the basket of strawberries in one hand and a tiny tin pail of cream, covered with a checkered cloth, in the other. He did not quite feel like a fool—it would take more than this to do that—but he wasn’t happy, either.

Where in blazes had Lady Mary gone, anyway?

He looked back once again to the Coq d’Or, hoping to find her standing where he’d left her. This time Madame Gris herself was standing in the open front door, ordering a servant with a trunk to carry it to the back of the inn. Madame’s manner was brusque, the blunt side that her guests seldom saw. But taking the edge from this particular order were the incongruous pink-and-white flowers in her arms—the same bouquet that John had brought earlier to Lady Mary.

“Madame Gris!” He hurried forward, the basket of strawberries swinging from his hand. “Have you seen Lady Mary?”

Madame’s expression seemed faintly pitying, not a good omen. “I’ve see her, yes, my lord,” she said. “I’ve seen her, and she said she didn’t want the flowers, and she didn’t want you, either.”

He couldn’t believe that, not after she’d so obviously been enjoying herself, and his company. She couldn’t have feigned that. She was too young, and too inexperienced for such dissembling; it was much of her charm for him. But what could have changed her mind so fast?

“Are you certain, madame?” he asked. “She left no message for me?”

“No, my lord.” Madame shifted the flowers from one plump arm to another. “But she was with her chaperone, the small, plain woman. She could have ordered her ladyship to come away. They’re to leave at once, in that grand private coach of theirs.”

“Oh, yes, the coach.” She’d go to Paris as her father had intended, sealed up tight in a lacquered cocoon of English money and privilege. “Of course.”

Madame Gris nodded sagely. “A high-born English lady like that—she has no choice, does she? She must marry where her father says, yes?”

Now the strawberries in his hand did feel foolish, and so did the cream. The girl might laugh with him, and rhapsodize about old pictures, and pretend she was considering running off to Paris with him in a public conveyance, and smile so softly that he’d let himself believe she’d never smiled that way at any other man—she might do all that, but in the end, she’d go back to where she knew she belonged.

And not dawdle with the rootless sixth son of an impoverished, obscure Irish marquess.

“Forgive me for asking, my lord, but what should I do with these flowers?”

“Whatever pleases you, madame, for they didn’t please her.” He dropped the strawberry basket and the pail of cream on the bench beside the door. “Do the same with that rubbish as well. If she didn’t want me, odds are she’ll have no use for that blasted fruit, either.”

And without another word, he turned away, determined to leave behind her memory as surely as she’d forgotten him.

With an ivory-bladed fan in her hand, Mary sat in one corner of the coach and Diana sat in the other, with Miss Wood riding backward on the seat across from them. The leather squabs had been newly plumped with fresh sheep’s wool for the journey, and the heavy leather straps beneath them that served as the springs to cushion their way had been refurbished as well. The coach’s glass windows were folded down, letting in the fresh, tangy breezes from the sea on one side, and the summer-sweet scent of the fields of low grain on the other.

The post road from Calais to Paris was an easy one, along the coast to Boulogne-sur-Mer and past the lime-washed houses of the hilltop town of Montreuil. The road turned inland at Abbeville, to Amiens and Chantilly and finally Paris. Mary had marked the names on the map she’d brought with her to trace their journey, and the road was scattered with inns and post stops well equipped to cater to foreign travelers.

At the last stop, they’d opened the hamper filled with cold chicken, wedges of ripe cheese, and biscuits that Miss Wood had had prepared, and Diana still sipped lemon-water from the crystal glass that had been carefully packed for them, too. They’d every comfort imaginable for their journey, and yet as Mary stared out the window, she was far from happy.

The diligence would have been hot, crowded and uncomfortable, but it would have been different, and it would have been exciting, too. Lord John would have made it that way, and she would have relished every noisy, dusty minute on the road.

But this coach could very well have been carrying her from Aston Hall to church, it felt so much like home. Safe and comfortable and secure and very, very boring.

With a sigh that soon lapsed into gentle, wheezing snoring, Miss Wood’s head tipped to one side, her small-brimmed gray bonnet slipping over her closed eyes.

Diana chuckled, swirling the lemon-water in her glass. “So, sister dear,” she said softly. “Tell me all.”

Mary glanced pointedly at their governess. “Hush, Diana, you’ll wake Miss Wood.”

“You won’t wriggle free that easily, Mary,” Diana whispered, her blue eyes wide with anticipation. “The servants were all atwitter about it at the Coq d’Or. Who was the handsome gentleman you met for breakfast?”

One by one, Mary clicked the blades of her fan together, then patted it lightly into the palm of her hand. The sooner she told Diana the truth, the sooner it could be forgotten, and besides, it had never been in her nature to keep secrets.

“I don’t truly know who he was,” she confessed ruefully. “It was all in passing, you know. He said he was an Irish lord, but I never learned much else of him beyond that.”

“A lord is a good thing,” Diana said eagerly. “A very good thing. Unless he was lying, of course. Gentlemen lie about titles all the time, just to impress ladies.”

“He could have been, and I wouldn’t know.” Mary sighed, feeling foolish for having been so trusting. Her habit was to believe what people told her of themselves, which was, apparently, not the best advice when dealing with strange gentlemen. “He wouldn’t even admit to having a home. He claimed he was a citizen of the world, at ease everywhere he traveled.”

“Everywhere there’s not a magistrate out to find him,” Diana said wryly. “But now I’m being unfair, aren’t I? Was he handsome? Young? Virile to a fault? Full of charm and honey-words?”

“Oh, yes,” Mary said, remembering how his eyes danced and sparkled when he teased her. “And he made me laugh.”

Diana raised her glass of lemon-water toward Mary. “Proving you have most excellent taste. Being my sister, I always thought you must. Oh, Mary, I’m so excited for you!”