LITMIR.BIZ

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      “A lord is a good thing,” Diana said eagerly. “A very good thing. Unless he was lying, of course. Gentlemen lie about titles all the time, just to impress ladies.”

      “He could have been, and I wouldn’t know.” Mary sighed, feeling foolish for having been so trusting. Her habit was to believe what people told her of themselves, which was, apparently, not the best advice when dealing with strange gentlemen. “He wouldn’t even admit to having a home. He claimed he was a citizen of the world, at ease everywhere he traveled.”

      “Everywhere there’s not a magistrate out to find him,” Diana said wryly. “But now I’m being unfair, aren’t I? Was he handsome? Young? Virile to a fault? Full of charm and honey-words?”

      “Oh, yes,” Mary said, remembering how his eyes danced and sparkled when he teased her. “And he made me laugh.”

      Diana raised her glass of lemon-water toward Mary. “Proving you have most excellent taste. Being my sister, I always thought you must. Oh, Mary, I’m so excited for you!”

      Pointedly Mary glanced at the sleeping governess. “Miss Wood knew nothing of this.”

      “Likely Miss Wood already does. She knows everything,” Diana whispered fiercely. “There’s never keeping any secrets from her. She’s a very hawk for secrets. Why else do you think we were rushed so from Calais?”

      Mary frowned. She thought she’d been most circumspect regarding Lord John, but the haste with which Miss Wood had forced them to leave Calais argued otherwise. Maybe, for once, Diana was right.

      Diana leaned closer. “So tell me, Mary, tell me! How did you find this paragon-lord at breakfast? Did he bring you shirred eggs and bacon, or beckon you with a pot of fresh tea?”

      “He found me yesterday.” Mary smiled, remembering. “He tried to buy the painting of the angel for me, but I wouldn’t let him, and outbid him instead.”

      Diana wrinkled her nose. “You bought that awful picture because of him? Oh, Mary, that’s more blame than any man can bear!”

      “Wait, Diana, I must speak to you about that painting,” Mary said, leaning closer. “I think there might be something—something peculiar about it.”

      “Oh, yes, rare ugliness such as that is—”

      “Be quiet for once, and mark what I say,” Mary said, lowering her voice further. “This morning, before we left Calais, the old Frenchman who sold me the picture came to the inn, and warned me about telling anyone I’d bought it. He begged me to keep everything about it a secret.”

      “Why?” Excitedly Diana bent forward, the coral beads of her earrings swaying against her cheeks with the carriage’s motion. “What could be dangerous about a painting, especially a painting as ugly as that?”

      Mary shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve hidden it away in my baggage, just to be sure. But all I can guess is that it’s a forgery, and Monsieur Dumont wished me to help preserve his reputation by keeping it a secret.”

      “Then I’ll gladly keep the old rascal’s secret, for it’s of no account to me,” Diana said. “I’ll swear I’ve never laid eyes upon the wretched thing. And I’ll keep your secret, too, Mary.”

      “That I bought the picture?”

      Diana winked slyly. “No, silly, about your gentleman.”

      Mary’s smile tightened. “There’s scarce anything to keep secret, Diana. Besides, you’re traveling with Miss Wood and me to become more seemly in your behavior, not to corrupt mine.”

      But Diana only smiled wickedly, and uncorked the decanter that held the sweetened lemon-water. “I think we’d both fare better on this journey, Mary, if we reached a sort of compromise between us. I’ll vow to behave with more decorum, and you must promise to strive for less.”

      “I’ll do no such thing, you ninny!” exclaimed Mary indignantly. She’d already pledged to herself to be more adventurous. She didn’t need to do the same with her sister, or even share her resolution. “Why should I make a ridiculous promise such as that?”

      “Because mine would be equally ridiculous for me.” Diana took Mary’s glass from the hook built for the purpose into the coach’s side. She refilled it, pressed it into Mary’s hand, and then tapped her own glass to the rim of Mary’s. “To forgetting whatever needs to be forgotten.”

      Mary pulled back her glass. “I won’t drink such a preposterous toast. ’Tis far better to learn from past mistakes, than simply to forget them.”

      “Hush your squawking, Mary, else you’ll wake Miss Wood.” Diana glanced one more time at the sleeping governess. “Would you rather come all this way from home only to perish of tedium, smothered by the dust of old pictures and places?”

      Mary thought again of the resolution she’d made. Even though she’d never see Lord John Fitzgerald again, he had immeasurably brightened her first days abroad. Shouldn’t her adventures with him be a beginning for her, and not the end?

      Diana touched her glass gently against Mary’s. “Very well, then,” she whispered. “We’ll drink to the future. To Paris, Florence and Rome.”

      “To Paris, Florence and Rome,” Mary repeated, then grinned. “And to—to adventure!”

      It was nearly midnight by the time that John decided to return to his lodgings at Dessin’s. He had done his best to put the day behind him. He’d drunk more than he should have, and he’d wagered more than he should have over cards. Yet the wine hadn’t made him drunk enough, and the other gamesters had proved less skilled, depriving him of the punishment of losing. Nothing, it seemed, was going the way he’d wanted today, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to change his luck.

      He decided to walk rather than hire a chaise, his hat pulled low and his hands in the pockets of his coat. Calais was not Paris, and at this hour there were few others on the street with him, the sound of the waves on the nearby shore clear throughout the city. Only a girl as sheltered as Lady Mary Farren could find Calais a city full of excitement and diversion, and despite his resolve not to think of her again, he couldn’t help smiling as he remembered how she’d practically hopped up and down with delight at the sight of the basket weave diligence.

      He’d known from the beginning that she’d never be more than a diverting amusement for a day or two, an idle flirtation not meant to last. So why, then, did he feel so sorry for himself that it had ended before it had truly begun?

      His life was his own, to arrange as he pleased. He had women enough in it, beautiful, clever, willing women, with rank and money of their own. He didn’t need to bend to the demands of some high-nosed duke for the privilege of courting his daughter.

      And yet, there’d been something about the girl, something as indefinable as the painting of the angel, that made his regret over her loss sting. He kicked at a stone in the street, muttering halfhearted curses at his life and fate in general, and turned down the last street.

      He smelled the smoke before he saw the flames, heard the shouts of the men running to the burning store with fire-buckets heavy with sloshing water. Then John was running, too, joining the growing crowd before the burning shop. Blown by the breeze from the water, the bright orange flames licked through the curving bow window, the panes of glass shattering with the heat within. Like customers trapped within, statues stood silhouetted against the fire, their somber expressions lit one final time by the bright light. The flames themselves shifted colors, burning blue, green, orange, with each different treasure they consumed.

      Another quarter hour, and Dumont’s Antiquities would be gone.

      “I’d wager the old miser set it himself,” one man in the crowd said to no one in particular. “They say the magistrates were sniffing about him as it was, for selling forgeries.”

      “Burn the evidence, eh?” another man said, his face almost jovial

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