Mad for Love Read Online Free Page B

above it. But the long wooden handle of a halberd, with its sharp pike and gleaming axe blade, came off its pegs, sliding silently down to fill her hands.
    Thus armed, she drew in a deep breath to steady herself, and to gather enough courage to move. To get up off the stair, and creep nearer to the salon, where the low glow from the fireplace embers revealed the thief closely examining the Hals with the light from his shuttered lantern.
    “ Arettez .Do not move,” she said, her voice over-loud and cracked with the fear that gripped her as tightly as she gripped the heavy medieval weapon.  
    The thief of course moved—whirling around, wielding his lamp to try to find her in the darkness, finally training the thin beam of the lantern on her. “Well damn my eyes,” he said in the most pleasant of English tones. “Look at ye.”
    It was not exactly the sort of response she had been seeking. She moved the head of the weapon to shield her eyes from the light. “Put down that painting.” She made her voice firmer. “Put it down. And the lantern as well.”
    Astonishingly, he did as she bade. Which emboldened her to step sideways, nearer to the bell pull just inside the wide door to the salon—Henri might be out of the house, but the thief might not know that.
    Despite the dim lighting, the thief had clearly followed her gaze, and deduced her intent. “Miss Blois, please.” The thief smiled as he took two steps toward her. “I can expla—”
    “Stay where you are. How do you know my name?” Her voice was high and frightened, but she brandished the halberd with such erratic force that he stopped, and put his hands in the air for good measure.
    Yet his voice was everything calm and unruffled. “It’s my business to know.”
    The words themselves chilled her, but his manner—so civil, so helpful, so English —took away a great deal of their ice.
    From its place against the table, the Cavalier smirked up at her. Why the thief could not have set his eye to stealing any of the other paintings—one of the few originals in the premises, for instance—was beyond her. Because this one, she had to defend. She couldn’t possibly let it out of the house—the paint was probably not even properly dry. “Why did you choose that painting when you might have taken”—she pointed her pike around the room—“any of the others?”
    The thief shrugged, and spread his long lean arms in a gesture of complete innocence. “It was the handiest,” he lied cheerfully, ignoring the six other paintings that were closer to the window. “But I’ll just go, shall I? No painting, no crime.” He smiled charmingly, making polite conversation as if he were at a tea room, and not being held at the business end of a pike. “I was only going to take the one painting, and ye’ve got so many,” he said, as if this justified his crime. “Chances were, ye might not even have missed it.”
    Clearly he did not know her papa if he thought Charles Blois would not miss even one of his creations. But—  
    Another idea intruded. “Did my papa put you up to this?” It would be just like her papa to mastermind a theft of his own painting to increase the notoriety of the Blois Collection, as he called his mishmash of stolen family art and forgeries.
    “Yer papa?” His eyes narrowed, as if he thought he might have mis-heard her.
    Mignon didn’t answer his question, nor did she repeat hers. Mostly because she really had to concentrate to keep the long halberd steady in her shaking hands.
    “I’ll just put the painting back, shall I?” The thief hefted the large frame, and replaced in onto its hooks in the wall. “There.” He stepped back to admire it, and then adjusted it, as if it actually mattered to him that it was hung evenly. “Oh, it is magnificent. Pity.”  
    “Pity? About what?”
    “Nothing.” And then he smiled at her in a way that was meant to show her that he was a rather handsome man—tall and elegantly-formed in a rangy