The Adventurous Bride. Miranda Jarrett
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