The Mysterious Miss M

She took a deep breath. He did not understand. Farley’s patrons did not concern her, but perhaps those she did fear encountering would not recognise her either. Surely the years had altered her?

‘Where are we bound, then?’ She gazed up at Devlin, so tall and handsome. His green eyes sparkled in the sunlight, like emeralds on a necklace a young man had once bestowed upon her before Farley snatched it away. If necessity bade her to walk in daylight, it pleased her to be beside him.

‘Bart found a dressmaker only four streets from here,’ Devlin said. ‘How he should know about dressmakers foxes me.’

She laughed. ‘Bart is very clever, isn’t he? He and Sophie. I do believe they can do everything.’

‘Unlike me, I suppose.’ He smiled, but the humour did not reach his voice.

‘You are the hub around which all revolves.’ She spoke absently, transfixed by a coach rumbling down the street. ‘Oh, look at the matched greys. How finely they step together. They are magnificent, are they not?’

‘Indeed,’ he answered.

She watched the coach-and-four until it drove out of sight. ‘Oh, my.’ She cast one last glance in the direction it had disappeared. ‘What were you saying, Devlin?’

‘I was remarking about how utterly useless you find me.’

She glanced at him. ‘You are funning me again. What would have happened to me and Linette without you, Devlin?’

Madeleine felt her face flush. She should not have spoken so. To suggest he had any obligation to her was very bad of her. She had awoken in her own bed this morning. The only service she could render him, he’d refused.

‘It is I who am useless, not you, Devlin.’ She sighed. ‘I am skilled at nothing…well, nothing of consequence.’

A curricle drawn by two fine roans raced by. Madeleine stopped to watch it.

‘Do you like horses, Maddy?’

‘What?’ She glanced at him. ‘Oh, horses. I used to like horses.’

‘Not now?’ His mouth turned up at one corner.

‘I have not been on a horse since…for many years.’

‘You ride, then?’

She had careened over the hills, giving her mare her head, clearing hedges, sailing over streams. Nothing unseated her. She outrode every boy in the county and most of the men. When she could remain undiscovered, she spent whole days on horseback.

Had she not been out in the country on her mare, unchaperoned as usual, she might not have met Farley, might not have succumbed to his charm. Never riding again was fitting punishment for her fatal indiscretion.

She blinked away the regret. ‘You might say I used to ride horses as well as I now ride men.’

‘Maddy!’ Devlin stopped in the centre of the pavement and grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘Do not speak like that. I ought to throttle you.’

She tilted her chin defiantly. ‘As you wish, sir.’

He let go of her and rubbed his brow. ‘Deuce, you know I will not hit you, but why say such a thing?’

‘Because it is true. I know what I am, Devlin. There is no use trying to make me otherwise. It is my only skill. Bart and Sophie can do all sorts of useful things. You, too. You can win at cards and go about in society. You have fought in the war. What could be more useful than that? But me, there is nothing else I know how to do.’

He extended his hand to her, wanting to crush her against him and kiss her until she took back her words. Though the kissing part might not prove the point, exactly, he admitted. He dropped his hand and, putting her arm through his, resumed walking.

After a short distance in silence, he said, ‘That’s what you meant last night. Saying it was the only thing you could do.’

She did not reply.

Devlin held his tongue. This was no place for such a conversation in any event. Besides, each time some handsome equipage passed by in the street, she slowed her pace a little.

He chuckled. ‘Horse mad, are you?’

She pointedly turned her head away from him.

‘Now do not deny it, Maddy. You are horse mad. I recognise the signs. I was myself, as a boy. Why, I liked being with the grooms better than anyone else. My brother, the heir, could not keep up with me when I rode, though he’s a good ten years my senior. Nothing he could do but report to Father that I was about to break my neck.’

He threw a penny to the boy who had swept the street in front of where they crossed.

‘Oh, look at all the shops!’ Madeleine exclaimed. ‘I had not reckoned there to be so many.’

Like a child at a fair she turned her head every which way, remarking on all the delicious smells and sights.

‘You have not been to these shops?’

She laughed. ‘Indeed not. I always wondered what the London shops would be like.’

‘You’ve been in London three years and have never seen the shops?’ This was not to be believed.

‘Lord Farley did not take me to shops.’

This time Devlin stopped. ‘Do you mean that devil did not let you out of that house?’

‘Not as bad as all that, I assure you.’ She patted his hand and resumed walking. ‘When Linette was big enough, I was allowed to take her to the park across the street. But only in the morning, not when other people might be about. And there was a small garden in the back of the house. Sophie and I were allowed to tend it, though I mostly had the task of digging the dirt, because I did not have the least notion how to make the flowers grow. I enjoyed feeling the soil in my hands, though.’

Such a small space of geography in which to spend more than three years. ‘I wish Farley to the devil.’

She gave him a look. It struck him as almost the same expression Sophie bestowed on Bart.

As they stood at the entrance to a shop with an elegant brass nameplate saying ‘Madame Emeraude’, Madeleine shrank back. Devlin had to practically pull her into the establishment. She held her fingers to the hood of her cloak, covering her face.

A modishly dressed woman emerged from the back. ‘May I be of assistance?’

Since Madeleine had turned away, Devlin spoke. ‘Good morning. Madame Emeraude, I collect?’

The woman nodded.

Devlin gestured to Madeleine. ‘The young lady is in need of some new dresses.’

‘Certainly, sir. Shall I show you some fashion plates, or do you have certain styles in mind?’

It irritated Devlin that the dressmaker addressed him directly instead of Madeleine, as if Madeleine were his fancy piece to dress as he wished, but, he supposed, in this neighbourhood, her clientele were almost exclusively from the demimonde.