The Spy's Reward Read Online Free Page B

“We should have brought your maid,” Diana said, lifting her mother’s heavy hair and gently untangling the ends with little swipes of the brush.
    Abigail sighed. “Fanny needed Rosie in London. And I thought it would be simpler to hire servants here, people who speak the language and know how to go on.”
    â€œOur coachman has become lost several times,” Diana observed, moving around behind her mother. “Lisette cannot dress hair to save her life. Mademoiselle Esmond looks more like a vulture than a chaperon. And Captain Hervé is very gallant, but a bit impractical.”
    â€œHe seems to think I am paying him to kiss my hand and protest his eternal devotion. Rather than to organize our route and book rooms and make sure we have decent horses. You should have seen his dismay when I told him I wanted to leave at nine tomorrow morning.”
    â€œHe is always shocked when either one of us appears before noon,” Diana said. “Poor man, I feel sorry for him. What is a cavalry officer to do when the war is over and his side has lost and he has no pension? He can hardly take up ditch digging.”
    Abigail tilted her head back, letting Diana run the brush all the way through from the top of her head. “You could be a ladies’ maid if we lost our fortune,” she said. “You are almost as good as Rosie.”
    â€œMmm hmmm,” said Diana, still brushing. Abigail could see her face in the mirror. Her eyes were lowered, and she looked very demure.
    â€œWell then.” Abigail sat up suddenly, putting an end to the performance. “This is all very nice, but what do you want?”
    â€œAm I so transparent?” Diana tried a rueful smile, a mixture of charm and repentance.
    That smile had worked quite well on Diana’s father. It did not usually work on Abigail. “Yes,” she said tartly. She pulled her hair forward and began to braid it in quick, expert movements. “I cannot in all honesty say that I prefer Lisette’s attacks on my scalp, but it has not escaped my notice that every time you offer to brush my hair on this trip you lull me into a trance and then make some outrageous demand. So, what is it this time? Could we possibly put off our departure tomorrow, because another young man has invited you on an outing to another ruined castle, and you will never have such a chance again, and it would be so very lowering to have Mademoiselle Esmond or even worse, your mother, along, so just this once would I be willing to let the young man’s sister or aunt or ex-mistress be the chaperon—”
    â€œMama!” Diana flushed in annoyance; she hated it when Abigail was sarcastic. “She was not his ex-mistress.”
    â€œShe was not a respectable woman.”
    â€œWell, neither are you ,” snapped her daughter, before she could stop herself. Then she turned bright red. In the mirror Abigail could see the panic in her eyes, quickly replaced by mortification. “Oh!” She threw down the hairbrush. “It is your fault I am so horrid! I was never like this with Papa!” Turning, she ran out of the room, leaving the door open behind her.
    Apparently she had forgotten that in order to accommodate the anticipated arrival of Cousin Joshua she had given up her own bedchamber and was now sharing with Abigail. Abigail counted to sixty: ten for Diana to reach the door of her former room, ten for her to remember that it was no longer hers, ten to try to open the locked door anyway, and thirty to concoct some new scheme to placate her disobliging mother. At the end of sixty Abigail still heard no footsteps outside. She shrugged, closed the door, wrapped herself in a shawl, and sat down by the lamp with her book. In the fifteen months since she had become reacquainted with her daughter there had been many similar scenes.
    Five minutes later there was a tap on the door, and the handle turned gently. Diana peered around the