The Adventurous Bride

Pointedly Mary glanced at the sleeping governess. “Miss Wood knew nothing of this.”

“Likely Miss Wood already does. She knows everything,” Diana whispered fiercely. “There’s never keeping any secrets from her. She’s a very hawk for secrets. Why else do you think we were rushed so from Calais?”

Mary frowned. She thought she’d been most circumspect regarding Lord John, but the haste with which Miss Wood had forced them to leave Calais argued otherwise. Maybe, for once, Diana was right.

Diana leaned closer. “So tell me, Mary, tell me! How did you find this paragon-lord at breakfast? Did he bring you shirred eggs and bacon, or beckon you with a pot of fresh tea?”

“He found me yesterday.” Mary smiled, remembering. “He tried to buy the painting of the angel for me, but I wouldn’t let him, and outbid him instead.”

Diana wrinkled her nose. “You bought that awful picture because of him? Oh, Mary, that’s more blame than any man can bear!”

“Wait, Diana, I must speak to you about that painting,” Mary said, leaning closer. “I think there might be something—something peculiar about it.”

“Oh, yes, rare ugliness such as that is—”

“Be quiet for once, and mark what I say,” Mary said, lowering her voice further. “This morning, before we left Calais, the old Frenchman who sold me the picture came to the inn, and warned me about telling anyone I’d bought it. He begged me to keep everything about it a secret.”

“Why?” Excitedly Diana bent forward, the coral beads of her earrings swaying against her cheeks with the carriage’s motion. “What could be dangerous about a painting, especially a painting as ugly as that?”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve hidden it away in my baggage, just to be sure. But all I can guess is that it’s a forgery, and Monsieur Dumont wished me to help preserve his reputation by keeping it a secret.”

“Then I’ll gladly keep the old rascal’s secret, for it’s of no account to me,” Diana said. “I’ll swear I’ve never laid eyes upon the wretched thing. And I’ll keep your secret, too, Mary.”

“That I bought the picture?”

Diana winked slyly. “No, silly, about your gentleman.”

Mary’s smile tightened. “There’s scarce anything to keep secret, Diana. Besides, you’re traveling with Miss Wood and me to become more seemly in your behavior, not to corrupt mine.”

But Diana only smiled wickedly, and uncorked the decanter that held the sweetened lemon-water. “I think we’d both fare better on this journey, Mary, if we reached a sort of compromise between us. I’ll vow to behave with more decorum, and you must promise to strive for less.”

“I’ll do no such thing, you ninny!” exclaimed Mary indignantly. She’d already pledged to herself to be more adventurous. She didn’t need to do the same with her sister, or even share her resolution. “Why should I make a ridiculous promise such as that?”

“Because mine would be equally ridiculous for me.” Diana took Mary’s glass from the hook built for the purpose into the coach’s side. She refilled it, pressed it into Mary’s hand, and then tapped her own glass to the rim of Mary’s. “To forgetting whatever needs to be forgotten.”

Mary pulled back her glass. “I won’t drink such a preposterous toast. ’Tis far better to learn from past mistakes, than simply to forget them.”

“Hush your squawking, Mary, else you’ll wake Miss Wood.” Diana glanced one more time at the sleeping governess. “Would you rather come all this way from home only to perish of tedium, smothered by the dust of old pictures and places?”

Mary thought again of the resolution she’d made. Even though she’d never see Lord John Fitzgerald again, he had immeasurably brightened her first days abroad. Shouldn’t her adventures with him be a beginning for her, and not the end?

Diana touched her glass gently against Mary’s. “Very well, then,” she whispered. “We’ll drink to the future. To Paris, Florence and Rome.”

“To Paris, Florence and Rome,” Mary repeated, then grinned. “And to—to adventure!”

It was nearly midnight by the time that John decided to return to his lodgings at Dessin’s. He had done his best to put the day behind him. He’d drunk more than he should have, and he’d wagered more than he should have over cards. Yet the wine hadn’t made him drunk enough, and the other gamesters had proved less skilled, depriving him of the punishment of losing. Nothing, it seemed, was going the way he’d wanted today, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to change his luck.

He decided to walk rather than hire a chaise, his hat pulled low and his hands in the pockets of his coat. Calais was not Paris, and at this hour there were few others on the street with him, the sound of the waves on the nearby shore clear throughout the city. Only a girl as sheltered as Lady Mary Farren could find Calais a city full of excitement and diversion, and despite his resolve not to think of her again, he couldn’t help smiling as he remembered how she’d practically hopped up and down with delight at the sight of the basket weave diligence.

He’d known from the beginning that she’d never be more than a diverting amusement for a day or two, an idle flirtation not meant to last. So why, then, did he feel so sorry for himself that it had ended before it had truly begun?

His life was his own, to arrange as he pleased. He had women enough in it, beautiful, clever, willing women, with rank and money of their own. He didn’t need to bend to the demands of some high-nosed duke for the privilege of courting his daughter.

And yet, there’d been something about the girl, something as indefinable as the painting of the angel, that made his regret over her loss sting. He kicked at a stone in the street, muttering halfhearted curses at his life and fate in general, and turned down the last street.

He smelled the smoke before he saw the flames, heard the shouts of the men running to the burning store with fire-buckets heavy with sloshing water. Then John was running, too, joining the growing crowd before the burning shop. Blown by the breeze from the water, the bright orange flames licked through the curving bow window, the panes of glass shattering with the heat within. Like customers trapped within, statues stood silhouetted against the fire, their somber expressions lit one final time by the bright light. The flames themselves shifted colors, burning blue, green, orange, with each different treasure they consumed.

Another quarter hour, and Dumont’s Antiquities would be gone.

“I’d wager the old miser set it himself,” one man in the crowd said to no one in particular. “They say the magistrates were sniffing about him as it was, for selling forgeries.”

“Burn the evidence, eh?” another man said, his face almost jovial by the firelight. “Save the gold first, then burn the lot!”

John pushed his way to the front of the crowd, squinting against the flames and smoke. “Has anyone seen Dumont?” he demanded. “He lived behind the store. He could still be inside.”

“Eh, let Dumont go to the devil,” someone called. “That’s where he belongs!”

Drunk with excitement, the crowd laughed raucously and whooped like savages before the flames, doing nothing to help the few men with the fire-buckets.

But John refused to stand by and do nothing. Swiftly he tore off his coat, tied his handkerchief around his nose and mouth, and ran down the narrow alley to the back door of the shop. The heat gathered between the brick buildings felt as hot as the flames themselves, pushing against John like an invisible hand. Yet still he kept going, his eyes stinging from the smoke, squinting as he tried to make out the back door. To his surprise, it was half open, and with his shoe he kicked at it, and pushed his way inside the billowing smoke.

“Dumont!” he called, bending low to try to stay below the worst of the smoke. “Dumont, here!”

No answer came, nor did he expect one, not now. If the old man were still within, the flames would surely have caught him, if the smoke hadn’t. Coughing himself, John turned, crouching along the floor, and felt something soft and heavy, clad in rough wool. A leg, Dumont’s leg, and without pausing John grabbed it and began to pull, dragging the old man from the fire and into the yard behind the shop.

Clear of the fire, John dropped to his knees, coughing and wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. His lungs burned as if they were full of fire, too, and he gasped for breath, tears streaming down his cheeks. He felt a hand on his shoulder, but he was struggling too hard to breathe to be able to turn.

“Are you harmed, monsieur? Monsieur?”

At last John forced himself to look through his tears to the man beside him: an officer of the local police, in the blue and white uniform of the garrison near the water. In case of a fire such as this, the police would naturally take the place of a brigade, protecting the town and its people however was necessary.

He sat back on his heels, still struggling to breathe. Behind him he could feel the heat and the crackling of the flames, but at least now with the soldiers here, the fire would soon be controlled.

“I—I am fine,” he croaked. “Dumont—where—”

“I am sorry, monsieur, but Monsieur Dumont is dead,” the officer said. “He was already dead when you pulled him from the door. So much risk to you for nothing, eh?”

“The—smoke?” John asked. “Or the—the fire?” His eyes still smarting, he wearily turned toward the old man’s body, stretched out on the dirt beside him. He wiped his eyes again, trying to make sense of what he saw.

Dumont’s face was smudged with soot, his coat singed and his white hair on one side scorched high against his blistered temple. His hands were bound with a cord behind his back, a rag tied tight around his head to gag him into silence. The front of his shirt was black with soot, and crimson with a garish blossom of blood from the gunshot wound on his chest, soaking through his coat and the waist of his breeches, even splattered across his once-white thread stockings.

“Murder, monsieur,” the officer said, giving the body a disrespectful poke with the toe of his boot. “Murder, and nothing less.”

With a muttered oath against ineptitude, the Comte de Archambault read the letter one last time, crumpled it in his weakened fist, then tossed it into the flames in the fireplace before him. The task he’d ordered had seemed simple enough, yet once again the men he’d hired had not been able to rise to the challenge.

Of course the old man in Calais would claim no knowledge of the painted angel. If this Dumont had possessed any sense of his trade, he would have recognized the value of the picture at once, perhaps even its significance. He must also have suspected it was stolen, from the nameless thief’s nervousness as well as his willingness to sell it for so little.

Surely Dumont would then have held the painting for a favored customer, or at least one willing to pay mightily for it. He wouldn’t have offered it to the pair of bullies who’d broken into his shop and threatened him. No wonder the old man had suffered an apoplexy before he could give any real information, leaving those impotent, incompetent hired fools to shoot an already dead man and set fire to his shop in their moronic frustration.

Archambault groaned, and tapped his cane against the grate with frustration of his own. Did those fools really believe he’d accept their pitiful explanations? Did they truly think he’d excuse their failure as he’d excused no other?

With another groan, he slid the red porcelain parrot an infinitesimal fraction to the left along the marble mantelpiece. There, now it was centered again, symmetrical as all life should be. It was beyond understanding why the maidservants could not dust his belongings without disordering them this way.

He grimaced, and rubbed his hand across his silk-covered belly, hoping to ease the pain twisting within. One more servant to be dismissed for incompetence with a feather duster, two more agents to give over anonymously to the authorities in Calais for the old man’s murder. He would not have their guilt taint his conscience, not so soon before his soul must stand in judgment. Others would soon appear to fill their spots, anyway, and take his money. Obedience and loyalty should be so simple. Why was it this difficult for him to find?

He turned away from the fire, and smiled as his gaze lit upon the painting of the Blessed Mother that hung beside his bed. The painting had been left to him by his grandmother, and the legends of their family with it.

Serenity, he thought. Serenity. The Blessed Virgin stood with her blue cloak outstretched like wings to shelter the miserable world gathered around her skirts, mendicants of every kind finally receiving respite and succor from Her, the Mother of the world.

Why couldn’t he find peace, too, he wondered bleakly? Why was there no comfort for him?

The pain in his stomach was worsening each day, the disease eating away at him from within. None of the surgeons’ bleeding, or purges, or fasts, or enemas, or noxious potions had helped. He was going to die, likely before his fortieth birthday this winter. Some nights when he lay alone in his bed, the sheets soaked with sweat and his body wracked with agony, he would pray for the sweet release of death, even if it came at the peril of his mortal soul.

As slow and bent as a crab, he made his way across the room to the painting. He had no wife, no children. He’d always thought there’d be time before him to marry and sire an heir. Now there wasn’t. He’d squandered the life he’d been given, and ruined so many others for the sake of—of what? For pleasure, amusement, a demonstration of power, or simply to stave off boredom?

He gazed up at the painting. This was what he had left, for the days he had left. This was all that mattered now, and his only hope for redemption. The picture’s power was not in its size—it was small enough to fit into the bottom of a traveling trunk—but in the perfection of every tiny brushstroke, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

He could not look enough at the perfect oval face, full of compassion and understanding. He wanted that serenity. He wanted that peace, that grace, yet he knew he’d never have it until he fulfilled his promise. Two centuries of war and the cruel hand of man’s greed had separated the pieces of the triptych, but Archambault had vowed to make the Blessed Mother’s altar whole again before he died, for Her glory and his salvation.

Last spring his agents had found the panel that had originally hung to Her right, with Archambault’s own ancestors kneeling in worship beneath a chorus of cherubim. The panels had been cleaned, the gilded gesso frames restored.

Yet still the left panel remained lost, a lopsided disgrace to the Blessed Mother’s perfection. He’d dared to believe it had been discovered in Calais this week. He’d believed, and been disappointed again. All his money, all his power and connections, yet once again he’d been left empty-handed.

“Forgive me, my lady,” he murmured hoarsely, bowing as low as he could over his cane. “By my honor, I will find it. I will not give up the quest. If you will only grant me the time, my lady, then it will be done.”

With her head against Diana’s shoulder, Mary drowsed in the coach. While yesterday they’d made effortless progress, stopping for dinner and then at a tolerable inn for the night, this day had been one tedious delay after another. One of the four post horses slated for their team had turned up lame before he’d even been put in the traces, and they’d been forced to wait until another could be brought.

Lord John had predicted that the large English coach would be too unwieldy on more narrow roads, and he’d unfortunately proved an accurate prophet. Over and over again they’d come up behind a farmer’s wagon, and it had taken considerable quarreling between their driver and the farmer, and then even more considerable wrangling of the wagon with the coach before they could pass. There’d even been one time where they’d been stopped for a herd of cattle to be driven from one pasture to the next.

The day had been very warm, too, the sun hot on the coach’s lacquered roof, and the leather cushions had soon grown sticky to the touch. The sweat had collected beneath Mary’s hat and down her neck, sliding down to dampen her shift and stays, and trickled down the back of her legs above her garters, until all she could think of was reaching the next inn and shedding every stitch of her hot, confining clothing, no matter how indecorous or untoward.

Now with their lanterns lit, the driver was striving to make up the lost time with his weary team, driving them as fast as he dared through the dark so they could reach their inn for supper, and the night.

The coach bumped over a rut in the road, waking Mary enough that she pushed herself upright and stretched her arms before her. As sleepy as she was, she sensed that something was different with the coach. She could hear the a new tension in the driver’s voice as he shouted to the postilions, and the way the men riding on top of the coach were moving around, talking sharply to one another. Shaking off her sleep, she slid along the seat to the window, pushing aside the curtain to peer out into the night.

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