The Duke's Agent Read Online Free

directly, girl!’
    Jarrett shrugged himself into his coat, picking up his hat and a Malacca cane. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass as he passed. ‘Fine enough for the provinces,’ he murmured to his reflection. He was leaning down to polish a smudge from one hessian boot when he remembered the letter. He picked it up from the table and slid it into his coat. It was better not left lying about. Settling his hat on his head with a smart tap, Mr Jarrett set off for church swinging his cane.
    *
    The street below was clogged with gigs and carriages as the worthies of Woolbridge arrived for the service. St John’s church stood on a hill. To the north it fronted the road. To the south its graveyard fell away behind the church, its oak-bordered boundary giving on to the Desmenes, the open common land that marked the town’s eastern edge. Snaking up the hill came a patchy line of the lesser folk among the Reverend Prattman’s congregation. Tenant farmers with their sturdy wives, and the lumbering lads, their farm workers, straggling behind them as they eyed the girls, serving girls from the merchants’ and tradesmen’s houses who giggled together in knots. Weavers with their thin-faced apprentices,shopkeepers and small traders, they all walked up through the graveyard, stopping to greet acquaintances on the paths under the oaks.
    These two sides of Woolbridge, the carriage kind and the stout ordinary folk, met and mixed at the west door where the Reverend Prattman presided. He towered above his people, tall and hearty in his clerical wig and wide-winged black gown, flinging out his massive hands in welcome. He was the benign epitome of the Established Church, embracing in his range of responses the whole people of his parish. He greeted the rough sallies of the farmers with loud appreciative barks of laughter; he bent over the delicate Mrs Gilbert, the surgeon’s wife, with gentle attention; he directed his clerk and bell-ringers while swapping a Cambridge jest with a retired parson colleague from his old college.
    The number of eyes that looked studiously away as he met them made Jarrett aware that he was the principal object of speculation that morning among the carriage trade. The blatant attention annoyed him. He set off on a circuit of the church to while away the few minutes before the service began.
    The southern wall of the chancel revealed plain, elegant Norman lines. He was admiring a thirteenth-century clerestory window to the left of a low hammer-headed door when he heard sounds of female voices advancing up the steep path. From behind a fine coffin tomb he saw a party of girls approaching.
    His first impression of her, as she lifted her skirts to climb the hill, was of a slim ankle accentuated in a fresh white stocking. She had delicate feet, neatly shod in black shoes decorated with a bright square buckle. On his first full view of her his immediate association was with a canvas by de Goya he had seen in Spain – inappropriate perhaps for an English setting, for it was of the painter’s mistress reclining naked on a sofa. This girl had the same sensuous black curls,luminous skin and air of seductive mischief. He found the source of his impression hard to pin down, but her movements were redolent with it. A certain confidence. The bold openness with which her dark eyes cast about the world. Here was a subject for an artist’s pencil!
    â€˜Now then, Sal, have you had a token from your soldier boy?’
    The black-haired girl turned. The question came on an ill-natured note and she paused. ‘What’s it to you, Prudence Miller? Have you so few followers of your own that you have to ask after others’?’
    The circle of accompanying girls laughed, half-uneasy, half-eager, their eyes wide in anticipation. Prudence Miller, a solid, bonny girl with a ruddy complexion, advanced to confront the black-haired Sal.
    â€˜At least mine ain’t