Page 48 of Miss Desirable
“Cyrillic, I suppose, from Lord Fairchild’s time in Saint Petersburg. What of the Italian letters?”
The boy at the bar tucked into a meat pie, and Nevin took a leisurely sip of his drink.
“I don’t now a ruddy thing about the Italian letters, your lordship, or the Canadian letters, or any of the letters. Some have black bands, some don’t. Young miss answers her mail on Thursdays and Mondays, and I take the lot of it here to be posted. His lordship always franked the mail when he was at home, but the young miss pays for hers. Not everybody does.”
Most mail was paid for by the receiver, a custom that ensured the mail was, in fact, delivered.
“Focus on the letters from the Continent. Does Miss Fairchild’s French correspondence come from Paris?”
“How would I know? I can barely make out simple English.”
“Get that haughty barmaid to look it over for you.”
Nevin finished his ale and set the tankard down with athump. “Seeing as I don’t speak a word of Frog, and Nan gets along just fine in the king’s English, I’d have to pay her for that service, wouldn’t I?”
A gentleman was at all times in control of his temper, but Armbruster was sorely tempted to dash his ale in Nevin’s face.
“For your information, Thurlow, Miss Fairchild has in the past exercised poor judgment, and her youthful folly could at any moment redound to her discredit. She was on the Continent when she committed her worst blunders, and she is vulnerable now to gossip. I seek to prevent such misery from befalling her, and your intransigence is not helping.”
“In-tran-si-gence.” Nevin rose and pulled on his cap. “Is that like stubbornness? Maybe it’s more like I have work to do—honest work—and snooping about the young miss’s affairs for the sake of your self-proclaimed saintly intentions has grown tiresome.”
Armbruster well knew how to deal with insubordinate underlings—humor them as long as needful and not one second longer than that.
“Fine,” Armbruster said. “Go wield your muck fork when you could be whiling away the morning over a pleasant pint. Far be it from me to interfere with a man’s honorable work. Mark me on this, though, Thurlow. Miss Fairchild is due to receive, or has received, an epistle that will put an end to her careless frolicking with encroaching Frenchmen. She will soon appreciate the support of an old friend, and her Dorning connections will have nothing to say to it.”
“How fortunate for the young miss that you are so gallantly willing to ride to her rescue. Excuse me, my lord. I am powerless to resist the allure of my muck fork.”
Nevin blew a kiss to the barmaid, nodded to the boy wolfing down his meat pie, and departed, cap in hand.
The urchin at the bar was eyeing Thurlow’s empty tankard, probably hoping to cadge the dregs, the little vermin. Armbruster finished his own ale in no hurry whatsoever, lest the brat get ideas, and considered the day’s developments.
Catherine was enjoying her freedom, and that was understandable. She did, after all, have a wide streak of reckless rebellion in her soul. The Frenchman wasn’t bad-looking, and he’d slink off to cozen some other wealthy Englishwoman when Catherine tired of him.
“I do not have time to indulge her bad taste,” Armbruster muttered. The barmaid, damn her disrespect, had been right. Nothing in life was free, and the time had come for Catherine to pay for her sins.
Armbruster finished his ale and tapped his hat onto his head. From behind the bar, the serving maid watched him with a disdainful gaze.
“You are issuing me a challenge of some sort,” Armbruster said, ambling over to the bar. “That translates plainly enough. Cease your attempts at subtlety, and tell me what you know.”
“Your hat,” she replied, holding out her hand. “I want your hat.”
Ye gods, she had cheek. “You’ll not get my hat.”
The scruffy boy watched this exchange from two yards away, his meat pie half eaten.
“I will have your hat, and then you will know from precisely where in France your Miss Fairchild gets a monthly letter. Has since I started working here a year ago.”
“Every month, without fail?”
“Every month. She receives the black-banded letters from all over. But the monthly letter has no marks of mourning.”
Well, damn. This was intriguing. “A man’s hand or a woman’s?”
“Fine penmanship, educated, but I cannot say whether from a man or a woman based on the handwriting.”
A shrewd and probably honest answer, implying more information was available.
Armbruster flashed his besttrust me, I’m a lordlingsmile. “Where is the letter from, Nan?”
