LITMIR.BIZ

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concern in her voice. “Are you unwell? You look as if you’ve taken too much of the sun, out here without your hat. Your cheeks are pink.”

      “I was expecting a—a friend, Miss Wood,” she said. Perhaps he’d had to follow the woman for the strawberries. Perhaps she wouldn’t sell them to him at all, and he’d gone elsewhere. He wouldn’t abandon her the first time she turned away, not after offering to take her clear to Paris. “A friend.”

      “A friend, my lady?” Miss Wood frowned. “Forgive me, my lady, but what friend could you possibly have here in Calais?”

      What friend, indeed? Mary shook her head, unwilling to believe the empty proof of her own eyes. Perhaps it was for the best that Lord John had disappeared like this. She could hardly have introduced him to Miss Wood, or worse, to her sister. This way she’d still had an adventure, only just a smaller one than he’d proposed. She would dutifully leave Calais now with the rest of her party, and disappear, and treat him the same as he’d treated her. Her reputation was spared a journey with him in a crowded diligence. There’d be no farewell, no regrets for what had never happened. Only the slight sting of disappointment, and she already knew how to cope with that.

      Her smile was wistful, her feelings bittersweet. No more laughter, and no promised strawberries, sweet and juicy on the tongue. No more adventures today.

      She glanced back to the end of the wall, where Monsieur Dumont had warned her about her painting. Now he, too, had vanished. She couldn’t have imagined all of it, could she?

      “Come, Lady Mary,” said Miss Wood, leading her back into the inn. “Deborah will have your trunk packed by now, and Lady Diana should be ready, too.”

      But as she began up the stairs with Miss Wood, Madame Gris hurried toward her, the beautiful ruffled bouquet of roses and pinks in her arms.

      “My lady, a moment, please!” she called. “You forgot these in the parlor, my lady. The flowers the gentleman brought for you, my lady, and such pretty ones they are, too.”

      Miss Wood looked sharply at Mary, her expression full of silent questions.

      “I am sorry, Madame,” Mary said slowly, “but I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Those flowers weren’t for me.”

      Madame Gris’s brows rose with surprise. “But my lady, I am sure that—”

      “No, Madame,” Mary said. “The bouquet was not meant for me, and neither was the gentleman.”

       Chapter Four

       J ohn stood in the street with the basket of strawberries in one hand and a tiny tin pail of cream, covered with a checkered cloth, in the other. He did not quite feel like a fool—it would take more than this to do that—but he wasn’t happy, either.

      Where in blazes had Lady Mary gone, anyway?

      He looked back once again to the Coq d’Or, hoping to find her standing where he’d left her. This time Madame Gris herself was standing in the open front door, ordering a servant with a trunk to carry it to the back of the inn. Madame’s manner was brusque, the blunt side that her guests seldom saw. But taking the edge from this particular order were the incongruous pink-and-white flowers in her arms—the same bouquet that John had brought earlier to Lady Mary.

      “Madame Gris!” He hurried forward, the basket of strawberries swinging from his hand. “Have you seen Lady Mary?”

      Madame’s expression seemed faintly pitying, not a good omen. “I’ve see her, yes, my lord,” she said. “I’ve seen her, and she said she didn’t want the flowers, and she didn’t want you, either.”

      He couldn’t believe that, not after she’d so obviously been enjoying herself, and his company. She couldn’t have feigned that. She was too young, and too inexperienced for such dissembling; it was much of her charm for him. But what could have changed her mind so fast?

      “Are you certain, madame?” he asked. “She left no message for me?”

      “No, my lord.” Madame shifted the flowers from one plump arm to another. “But she was with her chaperone, the small, plain woman. She could have ordered her ladyship to come away. They’re to leave at once, in that grand private coach of theirs.”

      “Oh, yes, the coach.” She’d go to Paris as her father had intended, sealed up tight in a lacquered cocoon of English money and privilege. “Of course.”

      Madame Gris nodded sagely. “A high-born English lady like that—she has no choice, does she? She must marry where her father says, yes?”

      Now the strawberries in his hand did feel foolish, and so did the cream. The girl might laugh with him, and rhapsodize about old pictures, and pretend she was considering running off to Paris with him in a public conveyance, and smile so softly that he’d let himself believe she’d never smiled that way at any other man—she might do all that, but in the end, she’d go back to where she knew she belonged.

      And not dawdle with the rootless sixth son of an impoverished, obscure Irish marquess.

      “Forgive me for asking, my lord, but what should I do with these flowers?”

      “Whatever pleases you, madame, for they didn’t please her.” He dropped the strawberry basket and the pail of cream on the bench beside the door. “Do the same with that rubbish as well. If she didn’t want me, odds are she’ll have no use for that blasted fruit, either.”

      And without another word, he turned away, determined to leave behind her memory as surely as she’d forgotten him.

      With an ivory-bladed fan in her hand, Mary sat in one corner of the coach and Diana sat in the other, with Miss Wood riding backward on the seat across from them. The leather squabs had been newly plumped with fresh sheep’s wool for the journey, and the heavy leather straps beneath them that served as the springs to cushion their way had been refurbished as well. The coach’s glass windows were folded down, letting in the fresh, tangy breezes from the sea on one side, and the summer-sweet scent of the fields of low grain on the other.

      The post road from Calais to Paris was an easy one, along the coast to Boulogne-sur-Mer and past the lime-washed houses of the hilltop town of Montreuil. The road turned inland at Abbeville, to Amiens and Chantilly and finally Paris. Mary had marked the names on the map she’d brought with her to trace their journey, and the road was scattered with inns and post stops well equipped to cater to foreign travelers.

      At the last stop, they’d opened the hamper filled with cold chicken, wedges of ripe cheese, and biscuits that Miss Wood had had prepared, and Diana still sipped lemon-water from the crystal glass that had been carefully packed for them, too. They’d every comfort imaginable for their journey, and yet as Mary stared out the window, she was far from happy.

      The diligence would have been hot, crowded and uncomfortable, but it would have been different, and it would have been exciting, too. Lord John would have made it that way, and she would have relished every noisy, dusty minute on the road.

      But this coach could very well have been carrying her from Aston Hall to church, it felt so much like home. Safe and comfortable and secure and very, very boring.

      With a sigh that soon lapsed into gentle, wheezing snoring, Miss Wood’s head tipped to one side, her small-brimmed gray bonnet slipping over her closed eyes.

      Diana chuckled, swirling the lemon-water in her glass. “So, sister dear,” she said softly. “Tell me all.”

      Mary glanced pointedly at their governess. “Hush, Diana, you’ll wake Miss Wood.”

      “You won’t wriggle free that easily, Mary,” Diana whispered, her blue eyes wide with anticipation. “The servants were all atwitter about it at the Coq d’Or. Who was the handsome gentleman you met for breakfast?”

      One by one, Mary clicked the blades of her fan together, then patted it lightly into the palm of her hand. The sooner she told Diana the truth, the sooner it could be

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