The Moonless Night Read Free

peacock blue, her full frame encased in a gown of similar color, and in her hand she carried a parasol to ward off the sun. Her eyes widened with interest as she spotted the Boltwood party, and she was soon rushing towards them, having scraped an acquaintance first with David—not difficult to achieve—and soon enlarged it to include the whole ménage.
    “Sir Henry— enchantée to see you!” she smiled, revealing a set of teeth in good repair. “I had fear the humid weather would unsettle you.” She offered her hand, which Sir Henry accepted with diffidence. He was no stranger to the theory that Madame had designs on him, and while he was not averse to the sympathy of a pretty woman, he did not wish to make it a permanent feature in his life, so treated her with reserve.
    “It takes its toll,” he admitted stoically.
    “Ah, but you are pale like a ghost,” she complimented him.
    “I have been leeched,” he informed her, and was congratulated on this wisdom.
    “How do the preparations go on at Bolt Hall?” she asked, knowing what subjects were pleasing to him.
    David slid a knowing glance to his sister. Here is what she is really after , it said. She was told about the telescope, and expressed such an interest in it that David had to interfere before she got herself invited up to the Point for a demonstration by his father. If anyone took her, it would be himself.
    “Any news on the quay today?’ David asked, to change the subject.
    “A rumor for every hour, each proved untrue in its turn. They have turned three hundred customers away at the inn where I stay, and raise the rates every day. They are trying to put an actress into my room with me! Mon Dieu , how I wish I had some acquaintances in the neighborhood to stay with. To be jostled and crowded by commoners is not at all comme il faut , not what I am accustomed to.”
    “You would be wise to leave,” Sir Henry told her, his tough old heart completely in league with anyone who disliked a too close propinquity to commoners.
    “But where to go?” she asked pathetically, hitting him with the full force of her large eyes, hinting at unshed tears. “Do you have many guests at Bolt Hall?” she asked next, making her aim quite clear.
    The question went unanswered. “I meant leave the neighborhood entirely,” Sir Henry explained. “This is no place for a lady.”
    “I plan to return to France as soon as that Corsican villain is sent away,” she explained at once. “There I have many friends. My husband’s home, the Château de Ferville, was requisitioned by Napoleon, you must know. Hundreds of his soldiers desecrating its priceless walls. The Gobelin tapestries thrown on the floor for blankets or rugs. The paintings used for target practice, the silverplate for tools, and the meubles, sans prix , thrown into the grate for firewood. The only thing I managed to rescue was the Monet sapphires, worth a small fortune of course, and a few smaller jewels that I pawn from day to day to pay for the inn. I fear for my sapphires, at that inn with poor locks. But I always take them with me when I go out. I have them on me now, but it is impossible to show them to you,” she explained, patting her bosom to show their resting place. “I shall stay and see with my own eyes he is deported. They should kill him.”
    This tale of awful behavior struck a responsive cord with Sir Henry, who was always happy to hear ill of a foreigner. To hear repeated his own theory that Napoleon ought to be killed went down even better. “Ought to be drawn and quartered,” he agreed.
    “You should set up a petition to that effect. Mine would be amongst the signatures,” she told him, having heard in the streets of his fondness for a petition.
    Somehow the idea of petitioning the Emperor’s death had not occurred to him. In truth, little did occur to him till it occurred first to another who told him of it. The notion appealed strongly to him at once. To be heading up another