Free Mad for Love by Elizabeth Essex Page A

not care if she had confounded him—so long as he did not want to put her papa in gaol, she would kiss him again and again. “I apologize, Your Grace. It was kindly meant. I did not mean it to be familiar, but as a consolation.”
    He looked as if she might well have smacked him as kissed him, so amazed was he. “I don’t know when I’ve been—good God, but you’re lovely.”  
    “You are too kind, Your Grace.” Mignon felt as if the weight of the world—her father’s world full of forged painting—had just lifted off her narrow shoulders. “A kiss is small compensation for an artwork, but it is the best I have to offer.”
    “Is it now?” The poor man actually blushed pink with pleasure. “Aren’t you just the most remarkable thing.”
    She was not remarkable. She was only herself. But she was happy. “Shall we dance?”
    “Really?” His astonishment and his eyebrows climbed another notch. “Yes, yes, indeed.”
    But as she turned toward the dance floor with his stammering grace of Bridgewater, someone else caught her eye—a man who should not have even been admitted.  
    A man with entirely too much cheek. A man who was mad.
    But the way he looked at her—in invitation to something other than a dance—almost made her feel remarkable. As if he were mad, not for her father’s artwork, but for her, and her alone.

Chapter Nine

    Mignon was still in that remarkable and hopeful mood the next morning, when she came down to find Papa at breakfast, taking his usual pains to mix his café au lait exactly to his liking.
      “My darling, you are up early after a late night.”
    “It was you who had a late night, not I.” After her dance with Bridgewater, Mignon had decided discretion was definitely the better part of valor, and taken a sedan chair home. Papa had stayed. She could only pray he had not gotten up to too much mischief. “Good morning, Papa.” She kissed him on both cheeks.  
    “Good morning, my darling. But I thrive upon all this city hubbub, whilst you, my angel, prefer all that is quiet and calm.”
    “True,” she acknowledged. “And speaking of all that is calm, I must tell you all about his grace, the Duke of Bridgewater.”
    “Yes?” Her papa was all eagerness to hear.
    “The flowers were, as I suspected, a ruse to become acquainted with me, but it was all in the service of art, and his collection. He wanted nothing with the Pontormo—so you are all in the clear. He only wanted me to intercede to convince you to sell him the Verrocchio. Even though I told him it was not for sale.”
    “Ah. Bon Dieu . These Englishmen are all mad as hatters. It must be something they put in the tea.”  
    “Yes, indeed.” Mignon was too happy to object on behalf of her new countrymen. Besides, the duke did seem a little mad. As did others who would not be mentioned in her conversation with her Papa.  
    Perhaps madness was going around, like an influenza.
    “ Pardon, Monsieur le Comte .” Henri, stood in the doorway of the breakfast room. “There is a man to see you, sir, from the Society of Lloyd’s Exchange in Cornhill Street.”
    “A man? Not a gentleman?” Papa looked to Mignon. “Henri is too nice about such things.”
    “He is a respectable man,” Henri clarified, “a clerk of some kind, Monsieur le Comte . A senior clerk, I should think.”
    Papa shrugged. “No doubt a respectable, dull man, which will please you, my dear Mignon. Show him in to the salon, if you will, Henri.”
    Mignon followed her papa to meet the elfin man who appeared every small inch a senior clerk, and came up to introduce himself with a short bow. “Mr. Arthur Ossier, sir, from the Society of Lloyd’s. My apologies for calling so early, sir,” the clerk said. “But it was deemed imperative to collect your signature on the policy on the artwork by Verr—” The little man consulted his notes to read out the unfamiliar name. “Sig-nor Veer-oh-chee-oh.”
    “No, no.” Papa smiled serenely. “I