Page 5 of A Secret Correspondence
“Yes, well,shedoesn’t have much of a choice. If she does not come with me now, she will not be welcome in my home again.”
She? Samuel was not so far into his cups to mistake that. Claude was a man’s name. He lifted an eyebrow. “That’s not very motherly.”
“I cannot manage another litter of kittens, Mr. Harding. I don’t have the time for it.”
His brain was tired and, he would admit, a little fuzzy, but he could piece the bits together. “You once believed your cat was male.”
“Yes.” She huffed, looking up at Claude. “But then she brought home a litter of kittens, and I learned my error. It was too late to change her name, though. She would not answer to anything else. Not even Claudette.”
Samuel bit back his amusement. Madame Perreau clearly wanted the cat indoors to avoid needing to care for more kittens. There was really nothing else for it. Samuel would need to climb the window ledge.
He shrugged out of his jacket and folded it neatly before holding it out. “Here, take this.”
“Whatever for?”
“It’s new, madame. I cannot risk a tear. You, of all people, should understand that.”
She did not argue but took the jacket and stepped back, allowing him room to take hold of the window ledge. He gripped the eaves with both hands, put one boot up on the window, and swung himself up. One more step, and he was eye level with the cat. “Come here, Claude. Your Madame Perreau would like to take?—”
Before he could reach for the cat, something in the eaves came loose. He heard the crack before he felt them give way. For the second time that evening, Samuel found himself tumbling to the ground. He hit the earth, his arms rising to protect his face from falling lumber, but nothing came.
A moment of silence followed Madame Perreau’s gasp. Samuel looked up at her from his position on the ground while he waited for his lungs to fill with air again. “Were you hit?”
“No. Are you hurt?”
“Not mortally. My ego has taken a beating, however.” He pushed to his feet, the strain and soreness tugging him already in different places. “Nothing fell on you?”
Madame Perreau looked up at the swinging eaves. “It’s only come loose on the one side.”
The eaves were hanging, cracked and broken, in front of the entrance to the shop. Samuel would need to return in the morning and repair it, or pay the proper person to do a proper job of it. Right now, he imagined Mr. Moran would not appreciate being awakened with the news when the work could not begin until the sun was up as it was.
“I will take care of that tomorrow.” Samuel rubbed the back of his neck and reached for his coat. “Where did your cat go?”
Madame Perreau gestured down the street with a weary sigh. Moonlight shone over her pale eyes, highlighting her frustration. “She ran off. I’ll never find her now. I suppose I have no choice but to surrender.”
“Then I will bid you a good night.”
“Thank you for your attempt to help me,” she said, dipping a quick curtsy before hurrying back down the road toward her shop, where she also lived. Samuel stood in front of the chandler’s shop, waiting until the modiste was inside and her door closed, before he started the walk home.
The night sky was bright, lighting his way. He was well over halfway home, wondering if he should have remained on the High Street and taken a room at the inn, when a pair of eyes flashed in the moonlight on the edge of the road. Samuel stopped, noting the familiar gray fur. Surely it could not be—but it had the same penetrating gaze. “You’ve caused a lot of trouble this evening, Claude.”
The cat didn’t so much as blink.
He neared the bank, crouching in his ruined trousers. “Will you come to me, you little rascal? Shall I have to speak to you in French? That would be troublesome, since I do not remember very much.”
To Samuel’s immense surprise, the cat didn’t move away as he neared. He reached forward and picked her up, as he haddone with his cousin’s cat many times in their youth. Claude allowed him to hold her. He stroked her head, speaking soothing words, and she seemed to nestle into his chest.
Pausing, he stood up, alone, in the dark, on a quiet road…holding a cat.
Well, what the deuce was he meant to donow?
Chapter Two
The little bell jingled above the front door in the shop, alerting Marguerite to a visiting patron. She’d first seen the contraption while visiting a shop in London and went about procuring a similar device for herself, since she far preferred working in her back parlor when she had no customers. As a woman who had been forced to make her way in the world from a young age, she had developed an eye for efficiency and constant improvement.
Marguerite placed the half-stitched pink brocade bodice on the sofa and stood, smoothing her gown and pinning a smile in place. When she had come to England as a girl of eight, she hadn’t known any English at all. The modiste she’d been placed with had all but erased her French accent, beating proper English into her with every stitch and seam. It became clear as Marguerite had aged, however, that in her particular line of work her heritage could lend her gravitas.
The accent that had once been scrubbed clean was woven back into her dialect until she found a careful balance, one that reminded the patrons where she hailed from but was folded into enough English they were kept comfortably in their homeland. They wanted to walk the High Street of Harewood but feel asthough they had purchased fashions directly from the shops of Paris.
