The Adventurous Bride. Miranda Jarrett
The girl didn’t answer, bending down to study the painting’s surface more closely, her brows drawn into a skeptical frown.
Undaunted, Dumont plunged ahead. “The brushwork is superb, is it not, my lady? I sold a picture much like this—though not half so fine—to an English gentleman last week, and delighted he was to procure it for his estate.”
“I should not,” she said, stepping back. “Be delighted to possess such a picture, that is. Who would wish to look at those dreadful satyrs every day over tea?”
“Ahh, so her ladyship has a certain taste,” Dumont murmured, wincing. “A refined taste, that is.”
“What I have a taste for is quality, sir,” the girl said with thumping conviction. “It’s not the satyrs themselves that I dislike, but how clumsily they’re painted. You slander Claude, sir, by claiming this daub’s by him.”
“The school of Claude, my lady, the school,” Dumont said hastily, moving to a morose still life painting of wilted flowers and rotting fruit. “Perhaps you would prefer a more edifying picture, my lady, a reminder of our own mortality and a caution against the consequences of a worldly life.”
“A lady should have no need of such reminders, sir,” she said. “But this picture here—this one I quite like.”
Gracefully the girl stepped around Dumont and crouched down before a small painting propped against the wall. She tipped the heavy gold frame back with her gloved fingers and smiled with triumph.
Dumont frowned. “That one, my lady? Oh, I fear not, I fear not!”
John’s curiosity rose. From his place by the window, he couldn’t see the little painting behind the sweep of the girl’s pale linen skirts. What kind of eye did the girl have? Was she taken by a simpering shepherdess or droop-eared puppy the way most young English ladies would be, or had she discovered something with true merit?
Still crouching with her hand on the frame, Lady Mary looked up at Dumont, her face full of disbelief. “However could you fear a painting such as this one? It’s fine, most wonderfully fine, and not at all fearsome. Why didn’t you show it to me first?”
To John’s surprise, Dumont scowled, his wizened hands now folded defensively over his chest. “It’s new to the shop, my lady, and since I believe in honesty with my customers, I must confess that I know nothing of its painter nor its history. Without that knowledge, I cannot in good faith sell such a picture to you.”
“You cannot sell it to me, sir?” She narrowed her eyes, shrewdly calculating the challenge by tipping her head to one side so the pearl earring bobbed against her cheek. “Cannot, or will not?”
“Whichever pleases you to believe, my lady.” Dumont grabbed the painting from Lady Mary, and shoved it behind the counter, out of her reach. “But I regret that I must remain firm. The picture is not for sale.”
And that, at last, was enough for John.
“Dumont, Dumont, what’s come over you?” he said, stepping forward from the window’s curve. “You know better than to deny a lady’s request like that. I assure you, my lady, his manners are generally more agreeable than that.”
She straightened at once, clasping her hands tightly together around the handle of her parasol. “Forgive me, sir, but I do not believe I know you.”
Dumont sighed, and made a testy wave of his hand. “My Lady Mary, my Lord John Fitzgerald.”
“My lady, I am honored.” With the Mercury still cradled in one arm like an unappealling infant, John made a graceful bow. “And I am at your service, willing to be your champion against this dragon.”
Dumont the dragon snorted, with disgust, not fire.
Nor was Lady Mary amused.
“My lord.” Her expression was frosty, with no smile to spare for John. “I do not recall asking for a champion.”
“You didn’t need to,” he said as winningly as he could, doing his best to disarm her. He was unaccustomed to women rebuffing him like this. He knew he was a well-made man, only twenty-nine, and handsome enough to make most females smile back when he smiled first. He wasn’t exactly vain about his appearance, but he had come to expect a certain response to his charm, and it felt odd now not to receive it from Lady Mary. Perhaps she was more trouble than she was worth, a challenge he’d be wiser to turn away from now.
But not quite yet. “Come, come, Dumont. Let me see this picture, and—”
“I’m perfectly capable of conducting this transaction myself, Lord John,” she interrupted, her cheeks flushing. “I would not have ventured into this shop myself if I couldn’t.”
“It’s hardly a question of incapability, my lady.” John set the Mercury down on the counter beside him with a thump. “I only thought you might need a bit of assistance in your negotiations with Monsieur Dumont.”
“I need nothing of the sort,” she said tartly. “If I can manage the affairs of my father’s household and estates, then surely I have the ability to choose a picture to my liking.”
How the devil had he ruffled her feathers so badly? He let his smile fade, and tried a different tactic. “Then it’s no wonder your father has showed his confidence in you by letting you come to the shops by yourself.”
She gave a small, restless twist to her shoulders. “My father trusts me so much that he has sent me abroad while he remains in England. He has no doubts about my capability.”
“You are traveling alone?” John asked, so surprised he was almost stunned. Usually young English ladies on the Continent were so burdened with parents and chaperones and elderly maiden aunts that it was a marvel they managed to see any sights at all. “You are here by yourself in Calais?”
“Here now, m’ lord, none o’ those questions,” the footman warned, moving between John and Lady Mary. He was formidable, a large country specimen, and John was disinclined to quarrel with him. “Her ladyship don’t have to answer them.”
But with an impatient quick sigh, the girl ducked around the footman to confront John once again.
“I am traveling with my sister and our companion, and several servants,” she said, her dark eyes wide and earnest. “So you see that ‘by alone’ I meant without Father.”
John knew otherwise. Without her father or any other male relative, she was as good—and as vulnerable—as travelling alone. The only difference lay in the words, and what she chose to believe, the pretty, parsing creature.
Perhaps she was not so great a challenge after all.
“And as you travel, you’re collecting art,” he said. “With your father’s trust, of course. But do you consider yourself a connoisseur, Lady Mary, or merely a dilettante?”
Doubt flooded her face, exactly as he’d intended. “I’m not certain I’m either.”
John smiled, his suspicions confirmed. Of course the foreign words would be unfamiliar to her; likely she was as willfully ignorant as every other English lady, and couldn’t tell a bonjour from a buongiorno.
“Ah, well, no matter,” he said expansively. “It was unfair of me to ask.”
“I’m perfectly aware of my own ignorance, Lord Fitzgerald,” she said, bristling at the condescension that he hadn’t quite bothered to keep from his voice. “My father has always been afraid I’d become too educated and unattractive to gentlemen, so what I do know has been slipped to me on the sly by Miss Wood, like sweets stolen from the kitchen.”
“Forgive me, Lady Mary,” he began, thankful that she wouldn’t realize how easy it was for his wicked old mind to jump from stolen sweets to lost innocence. “I didn’t intend—”
“I rather think you did,” she insisted. “Don’t pretend