Mary bent her head, closing her eyes and pressing her hands over her ears to try to shut out her quarrelling family. Soon enough she’d be called in to stand between them. She’d have to soothe Father’s temper, and coax fresh promises of reformation from Diana. One more time, she’d make some manner of a shaky peace, the oil poured on the constantly roiling waters of Aston Hall.
From behind the closed door came the crash of hurled porcelain, and Mary hunched her shoulders like a turtle retreating into its shell. In three days, she’d sail for France, and be free of it all.
Only three more days….
The door flew open. “He is cruel, Mary, unspeakably cruel to me and to you—to us both!” Diana sank down on the floor before the bench, her wrinkled yellow skirts spreading out around her, and clutched Mary’s hands in her own. “Oh, Mary, I am so vastly sorry!”
“Don’t fuss over me, Di,” Mary whispered urgently, knowing they’d little time before it was her turn. “What made him most cross? Quick, quick, tell me! What must I say to coax him back to good cheer?”
But Diana only shook her head, her face still flushed with weeping. “Oh, Mary, how can you forgive me? I only meant to amuse myself for a moment or two, and now look what has happened! For Father to make us both suffer so, when—”
“Mary, come,” called Father sharply from inside the library. “I know you’re waiting out there, for you always were the obedient one.”
“Don’t worry, Diana, I’ll set things to rights.” Mary smiled, and gave Diana’s hands one final squeeze to reassure her. Then she smoothed her skirts, raised her head high, and joined Father in the library.
“Here you are at last, Mary.” He was sitting in his leather-covered armchair, pushed back from his desk. Though a widower, Father was still in his prime, his belly flat beneath his Chinese-silk waistcoat and besotted ladies tittering about him wherever he went. Unlike most gentlemen of his generation, he’d chosen to follow the newer fashion, and had abandoned wigs in favor of his own dark hair cropped short and feathered with gray.
Yet as Mary came to stand before him, what she noticed first was how the large vein in his forehead pulsed, a bad sign that she recognized all too well. His temper seemed to simmer around him like a swarm of hornets, anger and disappointment and general irritation vibrating together in the warm night air.
“Your sister has shamed me again, Mary,” he began, his voice an irate growl. “Not even you can defend her this time.”
“I would not defend Diana, no,” Mary countered with care, searching for the best way to soothe him. “Thus I ask not for forgiveness for her, but for mercy.”
“Oh, mercy you.” He snorted with disgust. “Come along, Mary, I’d expect more wit from you than that.”
“Mercy doesn’t require wit, Father.”
“No, but I do.” With his guests now departed, he’d shed his coat and rolled back the ruffled cuffs of his shirt to his elbows, his thick fingers drumming irritably on the carved mahogany arm of his chair. “Why do you defend Diana, anyway? She was acting like a common slattern with that rascal, as if her good name and mine weren’t worth a brass farthing.”
“She didn’t mean to upset you, Father, I’m sure of it,” Mary said. “I’ll grant she was irresponsible—”
“Oh, aye, letting some base-born groom ruck up her skirts,” he growled, and struck his open palm on the arm of the chair with frustration. “I’ve no right to be upset about that?”
“Yes, Father,” Mary said, knowing from experience that this was always the safest reply, and often the only acceptable one. “Of course you have.”
“Then why does your sister keep shaming me like this?” Unable to sit still any longer, he shoved back his chair and rose, turning his back to Mary to stare out the window. “It’s high time she weds. I’m too old for her willfulness. She needs a strong, young husband to thrash her into obedience, some young lion who’ll break her spirit and fill her belly. That’s what she needs—an honest husband and a brood of children. What better way to make a wild filly into a mare?”
“Yes, Father,” Mary said again. “If Diana can only find a gentleman she can love with all her heart—”
“Don’t speak to me of drivel like that, Mary,” Father snapped. “Love! The last thing your sister needs is a dose of that foolishness.”
“No, Father,” Mary said softly. She remembered her parents as being devoted to one another, as much in love as any sweethearts. Since her mother’s death, Father spoke of love with only bitterness and scorn, and no tenderness for Mama’s memory, as if her last, wasting illness were some personal affront to him. “But if she is able to make a favorable match in London, one that pleases you, then—”
“No London.” His hands were clasped so tightly behind his back that they looked more like clenched fists. “How can I possibly introduce Diana to Her Majesty after such scandalous behavior?”
“But none of the guests learned of it,” Mary protested. “The only one who might talk would be that wretched groom, and I’m sure Mr. Robinson will speak to him so he won’t—”
“That ‘wretched groom’ will have the next three years of his life to repent,” Father said curtly. “I’ve ordered Robinson to give him over to the press gang, so that he might serve His Majesty’s navy instead of my daughter.”
“The press gang!” she exclaimed, appalled by so severe a punishment. “Oh, Father, you would not send Diana away, too!”
“If it were my choice, I’d lock her away in the darkest convent I could find,” he said grimly. “But you’ve asked me to be merciful, Mary, and so I shall.”
“Then you will forgive her?” Mary asked with fresh hope. “You’ll take her to London, and to court?”
“I said I’d be merciful, not a fool.” At last he swung around to face her. “I’m sending her abroad with you.”
Chapter Two
Calais, France
W ith the small brass bell jangling overhead, Lord John Fitzgerald stepped into the musty shop that housed Dumont’s Antiquities, and paused to let his eyes grow accustomed to the gray twilight. John had been here many times before; he knew what to expect, even the murkiness and mildew, and none of it fooled him. Though Dumont himself was French to his bent old bones, the signboard that hung outside the shop was painted in English, a beckoning convenience for Dumont’s mostly British customers.
It was a credit to the Frenchman’s shrewdness that he acknowledged the importance of those British visitors to his trade, just as he recognized how they’d reverently interpret every speck of ancient dust as proof of authenticity. Since the last peace had been signed between Britain and France and travel to the Continent had once again become fashionable, scores of English gentlemen and ladies trooped through Dumont’s shop with their eyes wide and their purses open, ready to lap up whatever tales he told about his dubious wares, and to pay whatever he asked for the privilege.
John, however, knew otherwise. He’d a gift for discerning the false from the true, and he wasn’t afraid to say so, either. In a shop that prospered from deceptions, his eye and his knowledge made him the least-welcome of Dumont’s customers: an English gentleman too knowledgeable to be properly fleeced.
“Ah, bonjour, my lord.” Dumont groaned sourly, and rolled his eyes toward the dusty heavens. “So you’ve returned to plague me again, eh?”
“And a good day to you, too, Dumont,” John said, his gaze swiftly scanning the cluttered shop for anything new of value. Because Calais was so often either the first or the last stop on his journeys,