Page 36 of Miss Delectable
Her dark brown eyes went to the scene beyond the window, a modest street of shops that might have been busier, but for the inclement weather. Few trees would sport many leaves after today’s foul weather, and the sun would reach more of the pavement, when the sun deigned to appear at all.
“With you,” she said, “the worst gossip is military. They cannot forget, these English, and they do not forgive. They want French lady’s maids and French chefs. French valets, French tutors, and French fencing masters. They neglect to recall that we French have ears and long memories of our own.”
“What have you heard?”
She waved a delicate hand sporting a fingerless, crocheted glove. “You were a bumbler as an officer. You made foolish decisions. Your men suffered needlessly.”
Mere grumbling. Persistent grumbling. Like every officer, Rye had made mistakes. Understandable, well-intentioned mistakes. Blunders even, or he’d followed stupid orders.
“Nothing more than that?”
Tante was spared a reply by Marie arriving with the tea tray, Nettie gamboling at her side. The maid set the tray down carefully, curtsied and left, while Nettie eyed the tea cakes. The service was Sèvres, and Lucille had famously secreted it in the trunks of her negligees and stockings when she’d fled to London. She’d been smart enough to bring fancy snuffboxes, vanity sets, and jewels as well, and her foresight had saved lives.
Her wealth had long since been dissipated when Rye had found her dwelling among London’s émigrés. Lucille had allowed Rye to compensate her for Nettie’s upbringing—and house her and a half dozen of her aging friends—in exchange for that assistance.
He sipped a cup of tea to be polite and ate a small slice of thetarte aux pommeshe’d brought from Tante’s preferred French bakery.
“The tart wants something,” he said, dusting his hands over his plate. “It’s good, but too well behaved.”
“Calvados,” Tante replied, sipping her tea. “In the cream, in the filling. A touch only. Monsieur Roberts would not waste his stores of good brandy on everyday preparations, but still, the tart is good.”
The tart was French, and that sufficed for Lucille, despite its prosaic flavor.
“The tart is very good,” Nettie declared. “May I have more?”
Tante went off into a scold entirely in French.
“You may be excused,” Rye said, untucking the table napkin from beneath Nettie’s chin. “I want to hear an English poem from memory the next time I visit, Nettie.”
Nettie scrambled out of her chair. “I will find something from Mr. Wordsworth. He likes France.”
Nowhere near as much now as he had earlier in his career. The Terror and ensuing wars had cost France many of her English admirers.
“You choose the poem,” Rye said, “and it must be English.”
She made a face and trotted off without sparing him a curtsey.
“There is time to make her into the perfect English schoolgirl, Orion. Have another slice of tart.”
Had Ann made that tart, she would have known exactly how much calvados to add, when to add it, and how to flavor the cream.
“Tell me more about these rumors, Aunt, and please don’t prevaricate.”
She sniffed, she adjusted her shawl, she generally exercised an old woman’s right to make company wait upon her pronouncements.
“They say you sold secrets to the French. That you did so in exchange for promises that the retreating French army would not loot your farms in Provence.”
“The fighting remained west of Provence.”
“The looting went on all over France, my boy. The Grande Armée made off with our sons and husbands, then it made off with our livestock, and eventually, our very buildings were ripped down to feed its campfires. Thank the merciful God I was not in France to see that.”
The émigrés endured a torn existence, longing for home, mistrusted in England, bitter toward France’s democratic violence, and unimpressed with the recently restored monarchy.
“Who says I sold secrets to the French?”
Lucille gave him an imperious stare.
“I know Deschamps is back in London, Lucille. He has reason to dislike me, and I most assuredly do not like him.”
