Free Lady in the Stray by Maggie MacKeever

high shirt collar was in the French style, rising above his neckcloth almost as high as his nose. On Edouard, the exaggerated fashion didn’t look ridiculous. What did he want of her this time? Minette would be wise to find out.
    “Voyons! If I am ungracious, I apologize,” she sighed. “I’ve been very busy, what with arranging for the reopening of the gaming rooms, but you won’t wish to hear of that. As for my surprise, I’m not accustomed to seeing you here— Marmaduke did forbid you the house.”
    Edouard’s thumb idly stroked her wrist. “I am devastated to discover you would do likewise.”
    “I would?” Minette strove to look innocent, no small feat for a young lady who had drawn every eye to her this evening simply by the depth of her décolletage. “I’m sure it’s nothing to me if you come here or not. It is for me to decide who has the entrée .”
    “No? You’re not disinterested, I think.” With a strange expression, Edouard looked back into the room they had recently left. “Whatever else may be said of you, you are excellently well acquainted with the practical details of running a gaming hell, petite. It was you who was responsible for the smooth operation of the place when Mountjoy was alive—a pity you could not prevent him gaming away the proceeds elsewhere! You see how closely I have kept watch over you, even from a distance. We are bound together by bonds even your benefactor could not break.”
    Reprehensible as had been the late Marmaduke, he had been a paragon of virtue in comparison to the man who now clutched her arm. Whatever the cost, Minette vowed that she would not again be caught up in Edouard’s evil schemes.
    To tell him so outright would be to invite him to coercion, a pastime he liked overwell. Minette summoned forth a smile. “What would you, Edouard? We are family, after all. Me, I think you make too much of Marmaduke’s dislike. He thought you were no good influence on me, and that is why he refused you admission to the house.” Prudently she refrained from voicing Marmaduke’s additional suspicion that her kinsman was less than forthright in his dealings with the cards and dice.
    Indifferently, Edouard glanced around him. “It is a great mausoleum, hein? Not the setting I would choose for ma petite. But tell me, is Stirling often here?”
    “Stirling?” This abrupt change of topic startled Minette anew. “I’ve never seen him before this night. Why do you ask?”
    Edouard was not prone to anything so straightforward as explanations. “I was right; it is here. The old fool!” he murmured, almost to himself. “What was that noise? It sounded like rats in the walls. I’m not fond of rats, Minette.”
    Minette thought her kinsman should be rather more tolerant, being himself possessed of a somewhat ratlike aspect. “Then you wouldn’t like to live here, Edouard; the house teems with vermin. Rats and beetles—we even have a frog and a turtle and a snake. Not to mention a pair of very unusual lovebirds— unusual because they both are male.”
    Edouard’s brow lowered suspiciously. “You jest.”
    “Ah, ça non!” Minette brimmed with good cheer. “I assure you it’s true. But you didn’t come here to speak to me of vermin—nor to assure yourself of my continued good health. You want something. Let us beat no more around the bush.” On second thought, this talk might be better continued somewhere with an absence of noisy walls, an affliction that had stricken a great many rooms of late. “You will wish to be private! Come with me.” A somewhat circuitous route led them, at length, outside.
    The Prior’s Garden, as for some unknown reason it was called, was in perfect keeping with Mountjoy House, being overgrown and neglected and an excellent setting for any prospective haunts. The small walled area had much more the aspect of a cemetery than a garden, despite the inclusion of Apollo and Daphne in bronze.
    Against the latter, Minette leaned.