Page 49 of Miss Desirable
She snapped her fingers at him. “The hat, monsieur.”
He loved that hat, and the hatter wasn’t about to extend him more credit. Married to Catherine, though, he could afford a different hat every day of the week. Besides, this Nan person was a coldhearted creature, and he had no wish to waste half his morning parleying with her.
Armbruster passed over the hat.
“Cahors,” she said. “A small town two long days’ journey east of Bordeaux in good weather. Every month, this letter comes, and every month, Miss Fairchild replies. To learn more than that, you will have to pay in coin.”
“You know who sends the letters.”
“I know who sends the letters and from exactly which household. You do not know, and one fancy hat will not gain you the information.”
Armbruster’s next quarterly allowance was due to him in a fortnight. He weighed benefits and burdens and the tedium of relying on a half-soused stable hand for his intelligence.
“Tell me, Nan, why do you recall the direction of one letter among hundreds that must pass through this inn?”
“My mother was from Cahors. She was killed spying for the English at the Siege of Toulon. They promised to evacuate her, but alas, the English—for the first time ever and surely the last as well—did not keep their word.”
Toulon had not ended well for Britain or for the French royalists. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Nan stared at him, and Armbruster felt keenly that his head was bare when he was preparing to be out of doors in public.
“You will pay,” she said, “for the information I pass you regarding the next letter from Cahors. Come back next week.” She named an audacious sum, but not beyond Armbruster’s means.
“I will be back in two weeks, and you will tell me everything you know about these letters.”
“Bring the money. Good day, monsieur.”
He was being dismissed by a French barmaid. The boy went back to eating his meat pie, and Armbruster nearly snatched the hat back, so naked did he now feel without it.
“Why the hat?” he asked. “Why not my watch, or some coin, or… Why that hat?”
“The watch is engraved, and I do not need a watch when the church bells tell me the hour all day. You have more coin every three months than any humble family needs for a year, but you caress the hat. You adore the hat. You are stupid.”
He nearly slapped her, but for her, taunting and flirting were probably of a piece. Not a game Armbruster had ever enjoyed. He liked his women adoring and submissive.
“You cannot wear that hat. You cannot eat that hat. Perhaps you, mademoiselle, arestupide.”
“Nevin will wear the hat while he shovels horseshit, my lord. Soon, the hat will smell as rank as your soul, fine aristo that you are.”
She smiled at him sweetly, while the boy snickered into his pint. That snickering had Armbruster bowing and taking his leave rather than returning fire. The exchange stayed with him, though, as he loitered at Tatts and worked up a sweat over foils at Angelo’s.
By the time he’d gone home to change for his evening entertainments, he decided that he’d got the best of the exchange with the fair Nan. All she had was a hat, while he was poised to get hold of what could be one of the Fairchild family secrets.
Perhaps his late lordship had a French by-blow. For an English diplomat to dally with the enemy would not have been the done thing at all. Or perhaps Lady Fairchild owed an outrageous sum of money to some Continental debtor, and the monthly correspondence was a tally of sums paid and still owed.
Armbruster was still pondering possibilities when he dropped by his club to start the night’s revelries. The fellows were having a good laugh at the expense of some duke’s spare, forced to flee to Brussels ahead of his creditors.
Armbruster was declining an invitation to play a few hands at The Coventry Club when he recalled what exactly had made the encounter with the devious Nan so distasteful.
The filthy, snickering imp. The boy had been entertained at the expense of his betters, or so he’d believed. Armbruster hadn’t heard that particularly robust version of derision since the day he’d dubbed Catherine Fairchild the Diplomat’s Dubious Daughter.
Though, on that occasion, the laughter had of course been directed at a deserving object.
* * *
“Were you expecting me?” Catherine asked.
She stood in the doorway between the parlor and bedroom of the guest suite Fournier occupied. Her manner exuded gracious poise, while her eyes gave away uncertainty. She was attired for bed, covered more modestly than she would have been in any evening gown, and yet, the aubergine velvet did marvelous things for her eyes, and for Fournier’s imagination.
