She did seem on quite friendly terms with the supposed Mr. Bonaventure. In fact, she’d served him ale a few minutes ago and now was seated next to him in low-voiced conversation. About what? A woman in league with a spy might easily be in danger of her life.
As if aware of Julian’s scrutiny, she stood and left the room. A few minutes later, she returned with a leather-bound volume. “Here it is. Don’t touch it with inky fingers.” The marquis was in the process of writing letters by lamplight and had already mended his pen twice.
“Perhaps you might hold it open for me, whilst I write the pertinent information,” Bonaventure said. “Antoine assures me it is a most lively tale, just the sort my sister will enjoy.”
There, Julian was ascribing motives to her that didn’t exist. She hadn’t left because he’d been watching her, or because they’d been conferring about espionage. She’d left to fetch a novel.
She held it open close to the light, and the marquis dipped his pen in the ink and wrote.
“Antoine is correct, but I am surprised that he read it,” Daisy said. “Men do not usually enjoy stories such as The Lady’s Ruin.”
“He found it at the house of some friends of mine, and was sufficiently ennuyé to try it. He was pleasantly surprised and urged me to read it, too.”
Daisy made a face. “I doubt you would enjoy it, Mr. Bonaventure. Such novels are meant for women dreaming of adventure they will never have. I do not say men never read them, which is obviously untrue, but most men consider them absurd.”
He finished writing, and she shut the book. “Leave it here, please,” he said. “I should like to glance through it once I finish my correspondence.”
“You do realize, I hope, that such novels contain much talk of love, which I think frightens most men.”
“I am a Frenchman, mademoiselle,” he purred. “I do not fear love.”
She laughed and sashayed back to the kitchen.
Julian did his utmost not to glare.
Daisy smiled to herself. She hadn’t forgotten how to flirt, and couldn’t help but enjoy Mr. Bonaventure’s playful remark. It felt safe enough. She doubted he would make an improper offer, since he’d stayed at the inn several times before, when he’d thought her a barmaid, and had never done so.
She hoped he wouldn’t read her book. She didn’t care whether or not he liked it, but it revealed a little too much of her own heart. He didn’t know who had written it, but soon he might. Soon everyone might.
Oh, she needn’t worry. His usual fare was lengthy tomes about wars and history and the rights of man. After two pages, he would throw it down in disgust. She settled herself at the deal table, where Sally and Alice were cleaning beans, and recommenced reading The Lady’s Revenge aloud. They had just reached the part where Dianthus recovers the first charm, when a shout interrupted them.
“Ho, Sally! We’re parched and dyin’ out here!”
“Honestly,” Sally muttered, “I don’t see why my brother can’t serve the ale now and then.”
Ned could, but he thought reading was a waste of time. Sally filled several tankards with home-brewed and stomped out to the coffee room. “Meanwhile, we’re dyin’ to hear The Lady’s Revenge,” she admonished the locals.
“Oo, floggin’ with a wet ribbon, I’ll bet,” said one of the boys.
“I’ve got a sword,” another said, “and I’ll sheath it for her, too.”
“The lady’s got a much longer sword than anything you could provide, Walt,” Sally quipped. “Beware the man who jests at her expense. Just ask Antoine. He’s reading it too, and he knows.”
“A nithing of a Frenchman,” someone said.
“You’re just jealous,” Sally said, “’cause us girls like him.” She headed for the kitchen, tossing a parting remark over her shoulder. “I’m serving no more ale for fifteen minutes, so don’t waste your breath calling for it.” She hurried back into the kitchen. “At this rate, Antoine will finish the book before we do, and that’s not fair.”
Unfortunately, Antoine might soon find out that Daisy had written it. Before, it had been a delightful secret. Any day now, she, and her improper secret thoughts, might be exposed to the world.
Fine, she would weather the infamy as she’d done before, but no one was trying to kill her.
She tried to read with her usual verve, tried to revel in the enjoyment of her listeners, but she didn’t quite succeed.
Julian had never before visited a tavern where the serving wench told them they would have to wait for their ale. Where the servants lounged in the kitchen being read to instead of doing their work. The fifteen minutes had passed. He pondered going to the tap and serving himself.
“It’s not usually this bad,” Mr. Bennett said with a grin. “They’ve been waiting for this particular novel for months, or so I hear.”
“Good God.” Julian threw a glance at Bonaventure, who seemed immersed in the book Daisy had given him.
The Frenchman raised his head. “Do not scoff until you try it. This one is quite entertaining.”
“No, thank you,” Julian said. “I’ll suspend my scoffing in order to avoid being subjected to such nonsense. My cousin tried reading The Mysteries of Udolpho to me. Never again.”
“What do you like to read?” the marquis asked, “apart from Livy?”
Although they had never discussed fiction, Julian and Philippe had frequently conversed about the secessio plebis in Ancient Rome versus the French Revolution. Now, Julian couldn’t help wondering if there’d always been a note of insincerity in Philippe’s championing of the common people. Perhaps he sought out radical thinkers, potential seditionists, for a more sinister reason.
Julian had never loathed his occupation more than now. It wasn’t just the prospect of informing on his friend. He also didn’t like to think he’d been a dupe all these years. He yearned for outspoken frankness, for truthfulness at all costs—characteristics never to be found in his own close-mouthed family, who were a stodgy, insincere bunch of bores.
Characteristics he thought he’d found in Philippe de Bellechasse.
He couldn’t afford bitterness now, especially when he had to play the role of an unsuspecting friend. “Poetry: Donne. Marvell. Shakespeare. Some of our more recent playwrights, for example, Sheridan, as well as some French and Spanish masters, Molière and Lope de Vega.”
“This book,” Philippe said, indicating the novel, “is no more absurd than Shakespeare’s or Sheridan’s comedies. Perhaps it is to female writers that you object?”
“Not at all,” Julian said, nettled. “England has produced some estimable female playwrights. Who is the authoress of these novels?”
“No one knows. Society guesses, hitherto without success, and she chooses not to identify herself.”
“That seems cowardly,” Julian said.
“Not at all,” an irritated female voice said. Daisy Warren set two tankards of home-brewed before them and deposited the third on Bonaventure’s table. “She would be ruined if her identity were revealed.”
Julian frowned. “Why? Does she make a veiled attack on prominent people?”
“No, she portrays ladies as not only energetic and capable, but also naturally wanton.”
“So do many plays.”
“Written mostly by men or actresses. Ladies are expected to be entirely proper, not to see lustiness as a quality to be desired.”
He couldn’t help but smile at that. “I believe most men enjoy lustiness in their women.”
She raised her brows, coloring delicately. “In ladies as well?”
“With their husbands, yes indeed. No one wants a boring bedmate.”
The pretty color vanished from her cheeks, and the pleasant expression gave way to her habitual glare.
“Perhaps the author isn’t a lady,” suggest
ed Bonaventure.
“Perhaps even a man,” Julian quipped.
Daisy wrinkled her nose. “Not likely, but one never knows.”
The door swung open, and a group of loud, wet fellows lumbered in. Smugglers, no doubt, coming from a successful landing of cargo. They stank to high heaven and immediately began shouting for ale.
“There goes our chance of reading any more tonight.” Daisy scooped up the empty tankards and left.
“One understands, bien sûr,” Bonaventure said, once the clamor had died somewhat and the smugglers were regaling themselves and making bets about how long it would be before the revenuers realized they’d been led on a wild goose chase. The Frenchman had joined Julian and Mr. Bennett at their table. “Miss Warren allowed her natural lustiness free rein without bothering with a husband, and is now an outcast. She would not wish that to be the fate of some other lady, merely for expressing the truth.”
Did that explain her blush followed by pallor? Julian mused. What had he said? Something about ladies being lusty with their husbands. He’d offended her, although he couldn’t see why.
A pity and entirely unintentional, but he must shrug it off and concentrate on assessing the marquis.
Who seemed genuinely interested in the behavior of the smugglers, commenting on the similarities between them and any group of lively young men. “Young bloods behave much the same way with far less reason—all they’ve done is shared some women or boxed the watch, hardly an accomplishment compared to landing a cargo at the risk of their lives. The principal difference is education and the choices it offers.”
All quite true, and there was no reason why the marquis mightn’t hold such beliefs and also spy for Napoleon. Julian pondered leaving Mr. Bennett’s house to take a room at the inn, thus providing himself the opportunity to search the rooms of the other guests. Miss Warren, he’d learned from observation, rented the large room at one end of the inn, and two of the three other rooms were occupied by the marquis and his servant. They weren’t likely to keep anything incriminating there, but one never knew.
He had a feeling Mr. Bennett would strongly object to being confined to bed with an entirely fictitious illness, necessitating Julian’s instant removal, and he didn’t wish to annoy Bennett any more than he had to. Even more, he hesitated to spy upon his friend. Come tomorrow, he might have no choice.
Antoine appeared, seated himself next to one of the more senior of the smugglers, and began to discuss terms for the purchase of some contraband lace, to be sold later at the homes of the wealthy and well-connected. This was indeed excellent cover for espionage.
The patrons got steadily drunker and the odors of seaweed and unwashed men grew stronger, combined with the reek of piss. “Yet another way in which the rich and poor are much alike,” the marquis commented, as one of the men missed the pot in the corner.
And through all this, Sally, Alice, and even Daisy weaved through the melee, serving ale, wiping up spills, and fending off slaps and pinches.
“She shouldn’t have to do this,” Julian muttered.
“She chooses to,” Bennett said.
“It’s her right,” Bonaventure agreed.
“It’s her punishment,” Sir Julian snarled. “How can you just sit there and watch? If that lout in the yellow cap tries to paw her once more, I’ll—”
Mr. Bennett stood and took Julian by the arm. “You’ll do no such thing. We’re leaving before you start a brawl. She can take care of herself, and if she can’t, there are plenty of fellows here who’ll protect her.”
Daisy poured a tankard of ale over the yellow cap. The drunken lecher sputtered, his neighbor cuffed him genially amid hoots and cheers, and the smugglers’ celebration went on.
Right. She didn’t need his help. She was none of his business. He stood and left.
Just because Daisy had learned to handle herself in a lowly tavern filled with drunken smugglers, it didn’t mean she enjoyed it.
It wasn’t any worse, though, than maneuvering through a society made up of malicious gossips. One way or the other, one had to put up with a great deal of unpleasantness. At least she could be herself at the Diving Duck.
Except that this wasn’t really the self she wanted to be. She didn’t quite know what that was, but it didn’t involve working in a room redolent of piss and seaweed, nor a ton party of lazy snobs whose greatest accomplishment was one-upmanship.
She rather liked Mr. Bonaventure’s comparisons between the behavior of rich and poor, educated and illiterate. A worthy man.
So, she supposed, was Sir Julian. He’d been kind and considerate of her, when he might easily have shunned her. Another estimable man . . .
Who wouldn’t want a boring bedmate. God, how that hurt.
Which was absurd. She didn’t care a hoot about Sir Julian’s preferences. He was fairly pleasant and good-looking as well, but so what? They would never be in bed together.
It had been an exhausting evening, often the case after a successful smuggling run. She was too tired to write and not the least bit inspired, so she undressed and went to bed.
She woke to soft, subtle sounds. She lay very still in bed, drowsily wondering what they were. Not the usual creaks and groans of the old inn. Not rain or wind. Not footsteps . . .
Someone was at her door.
Wide-awake now, she sat up, feeling automatically for the knife under her pillow.
It wasn’t there. Drat, had she set it aside whilst making her bed this morning? She turned up the oil lamp that burned low on her bedside table. No knife. She opened the drawer and groped for her gun.
It wasn’t there.
Chapter 4
The gun should have been in the drawer. Daisy remembered returning it after being shot at and hadn’t touched it, hadn’t taken it out since, which meant someone else had.
Someone who was now at her door? Someone who wanted to kill her. Heart thudding frantically, she got out of bed. The only weapon she now possessed was a penknife, of all useless things! She considered her options. If she waited, he would get the door open and kill her before she could get past. If she screamed? Her room was at the end of a long corridor, and beneath her was a storeroom. Ned and Sally slept on the ground floor at the back of the house. Mr. Bonaventure’s room was also too far away.
She might be heard, but equally likely might not. She glanced about. The subtle sounds continued ominously. She hurried to the chest of drawers, but it was far too heavy to push across the room to block the door. In a beam of moonlight, the door shifted slightly.
The window.
She dashed to the window, threw open the casement, hiked her nightdress up around her waist, took the penknife between her teeth, and climbed onto the sliver of thatch beneath the dormer. Clinging to the frame, she shut one side of the casement, edged along to the roof proper, and reached back to shut the other side of the casement.
Perhaps he wouldn’t realize where she’d gone.
Because she wasn’t exactly safe up here. If he tried to follow her out the window, she would stab whatever she could reach with the penknife and then push him off the roof. But he might well pull her down with him.
Whoever he was, he probably wasn’t that stupid—particularly since he must be a paid assassin, for she couldn’t imagine Lady Bilchester breaking into her room to murder her in person. What if he came outdoors and shot her? She was far too visible in her white nightdress, in the light of the nearly full moon.
She crawled slowly up the damp, slippery thatch to the crest of the roof and peered down the other side. All was silent and still. If she could get down onto the lean-to addition, her cries might reach Ned or Sally or the groom in the nearby stable.
On the other hand, she would be much easier to shoot from there.
“Miss Warren?” came a soft voice from b
elow.
A few hours earlier, as Julian prepared for bed, he’d tried to formulate a plan. At the Diving Duck, the marquis hadn’t approached any of the smugglers. This didn’t mean much. Quite possibly, he obtained information from highly placed friends and acquaintances, whilst Antoine passed it to France by way of smugglers, under the guise of purchasing silks and laces.
Julian lay in bed, mulling things over, and concluded that his best course was to find out whom Bonaventure intended to visit this summer and wangle a few invitations for himself. Hopefully an easy matter, as he was generally well-liked. His modest, civilized air, which he’d acquired naturally in his tediously respectable family, suited him perfectly for the dubious occupation of spy. Who would ever dream that mild-tempered Julian Kerr dirtied his hands with such foul work?
Ah, well. If Bonaventure’s hosts had connections with government or the military, there might be cause for suspicion. He damned well hoped not.
He found after a while that he wasn’t sleepy and decided to go out for a walk.
It was a faultlessly beautiful night. The River Ribble flowed timelessly past. The moon’s reflection shimmered on the water, and the stars and planets gleamed above. He strolled in the direction of the Diving Duck, his thoughts turning automatically to the impossible Miss Warren. In his imagination, he ignored her scowl and her sharp tongue and pondered her breasts. Would her nipples be pink or brown, large or small? As for her legs . . . she had a well-turned ankle, but he would give something to get a glimpse of her calves. And thighs.
He raised his eyes and got his wish. Far more than a glimpse, and entirely for free.
What the devil was she doing on the roof?
She lay flat on her belly near the top, her nightdress rucked up almost to the apex of her thighs, looking down the other side. He enjoyed the view for a moment or two and then called her name.
She started, then raised her head and slewed around. “Oh, thank God.” Hastily, she tugged at her nightdress, which was too twisted to cooperate. He couldn’t suppress a smile.
Love and the Shameless Lady (Scandalous Kisses Book 3) Page 6