Page 35 of Miss Delectable
“May I bring Hannah to call on you and the boys on our half day?”
Broad shoulders relaxed, military posture eased. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Not in the least.”
“The boys and I would be in your debt.” He did not kiss her, but he did smile, a purely charming, delighted smile that banished the wind, rain, and cold as effectively as did the roaring fire in the kitchen’s open hearth.
“Until Wednesday, Colonel.”
He bowed politely and slipped through the door.
Ann watched his progress across the dank and chilly garden. She was halfway through her lecture to Hannah about cleaning every utensil and bowl thoroughly after each use when she realized that, for a man who claimed to avoid sweets, Colonel Goddard had certainly made short work of a plate full of crepes.
Chapter Seven
“Cousin!” The child hurled herself at Orion, and he had no choice but to catch her up in his arms.
“Nettie,mon agneau chéri. Qu’est-ce tu dessines?”His lamb had left behind the toddler’s solid physique for the more coltish dimensions of girlhood. When had that happened?
“She is drawing battles, of course,” Tante Lucille said, motioning Rye into the parlor. “You bring the cold and damp with you, and why did not that useless Marie hang up your coat?”
“Marie took a little package for me to the kitchen.” A sizable package bearing tea, spices, honey, white flour, a half wheel of cheese, and a few other comestibles. “Show me your great battle, Nettie.”
She scrambled out of his embrace. “Devez-vous parler anglaise, Colonel?”
“We must both speak English, child, until you can think as easily in one language as the other.” Though it was never quite that simple. Rye dreamed in French, the language of his mother’s lullabies, while English was the natural choice for cursing.
“I am drawing the great Bonaparte,” Nettie said, retrieving a square of paper from the table by the window. “He was victorious everywhere save Waterloo, and then he was defeated by the treacherous mud.”
The great Bonaparte had erred beyond redemption by trying to best a Russian winter, and he’d made tactical blunders approaching his final battle too—thank the heavenly hosts. Rye shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the back of a chair facing the hearth. The fire was giving off adequate heat, but no more than adequate.
“You have drawn the emperor on a fine steed,” Rye said, bending to kiss Tante Lucille’s smooth cheek and taking a seat at the table. “He looks quite handsome.” Nettie had drawn Bonaparte brandishing his sword. In battle, the man had been brave to a fault.
“Madame Martin comes by,” Tante Lucille said. “She shows Nettie a few little things to improve her drawing.”
Thus did the émigré community sustain itself. Madame, whose late husband had once owned thousands of acres, would not take money for instructing Nettie, but she would enjoy a cup of tea and some sandwiches during the lesson, and Lucille would press the leftovers on Madame when she left,lest they go stale.
Lucille, despite her advanced years, watched other people’s children most days. The fiction that the children gathered in Lucille’s parlor merely to play preserved parents from parting with coin. More than once, Rye had stopped by of an evening and found Lucille reading to a half-dozen children whose mothers were apparently employed in evening work.
If there was any justice, Bonaparte would have been made to apologize to his countrymen and countrywomen for what his ambitions had cost them.
“Nettie,” Rye said, “might you see if Marie can use assistance in the kitchen? I did bring a few little treats with me, and they will need to be put away.”
Nettie was out the door in the next instant, Bonaparte clearly forgotten.
“You spoil her,” Lucille said. “Little girls should be spoiled from time to time. Little boys too. We heard you took some business from Fournier. Well done.”
Rye had come here specifically to catch up on the gossip, but Lucille’s blunt change of subject rankled. “How did you hear that?”
“Fournier grumbled,naturellement, and because he grumbled to his valet, his clerks, his mistress, his groom, and his dog, one could not help but hear. Our champagne is far superior to the pig swill he peddles, and he knows it.”
Fournier served a decent, irreproachable champagne. His fault lay in what he charged for his product. “Dorning has allowed me a foot in the door at The Coventry Club, and Fournier will respect the family connection, but somebody has taken it into his head to breathe new life into the old rumors about me.”
Lucille twitched at her shawl—only the one today, an exquisite creation of crocheted wool. The colors were an autumnal blend of gold, copper, olive, and slate blue and the weave loose. In her youth, Lucille wouldn’t have been caught even at home in such a pedestrian garment, but for the next six months, she would likely wear it daily.
“Fournier is a businessman,” Lucille said. “He would not dredge up military gossip to use against you. He would malign your grapes, your bottles, your prices, but notyou.”
“How do you know the gossip is military, Tante?”
