Free Minuet by Joan Smith Page B

you!” Sally said, not at all pleased to see him. “Mais vous vous trompez. This is not Henri.”
    “Mérigot? Good God, you’re not Harlock’s daughter!” the stranger exclaimed in fearful accents, for the tale of Lady Céleste’s arrival and shopping trip had already begun to make the rounds.
    “Allan! Surely it’s not you!” Degan shouted, and reaching out he pulled the half mask from the stranger’s face.
    The stranger at this moment recognized the intruder as well, and shouted, “Good lord, what the deuce are you doing here, Degan?”
    “Qui est-il?” Sally asked Degan.
    “It’s Lord Ashmore,” Degan said, astonished to the marrow of his bones to find a friend whom he had always believed to be a sober and responsible gentleman involved in such a contretemps.
    “ Monsieur, je suis enchantée de faire votre connaissance ,” Sally said with a polite curtsy.
    “How do you do, ma’am?” Ashmore replied, coloring up, and trying to redeem some shred of respectability in the young lady’s eyes. “I had no idea who you were.”
    “Yes? May I know who it was you meant to treat so rudely?” she asked him.
    “I didn’t know you were a lady. I thought you were... Degan, how do you let your cousin come to a place like this, and abandon her so shamefully?” Ashmore demanded, turning on poor Lord Degan.
    “He thought I was a strumpet,” she explained to Degan, while Ashmore grimaced at her. “What is it, a strumpet? Is it what one takes with tea?”
    Degan turned to Lord Ashmore, hastily considering whether to hit him or demand the more formal satisfaction of a duel. “I had no idea who she was!” Ashmore rushed in, in a tone of abject apology. “In a place like this, you know...” Then he turned to Sally, still babbling, “I am truly sorry, ma’am. Pray forgive my rudeness.”
    “Very well, but you mustn’t call me names again, and when I wish to leave a room, I do not expect a gentleman to bar the door, but open it. Comprise?” she asked in a coquettish way.
    “Yes, certainly,” he said, leaping to the door to hold it wide. Degan, envisioning the scandal of a duel in the lady’s honor, jerked his head toward the door in a dismissing gesture. Ashmore was not tardy in escaping.
    “I hope you’re satisfied!” he said, turning to Sally in a fine rage. His heroics were all reduced to farce, and the lady not grateful but laughing.
    “No, monsieur, I am not at all satisfied to find Englishmen such poltrons. If you were French, you would have demanded satisfaction in a duel. I think I am insulted, to be called a strumpet. What is it, the strumpet?”
    “I think you know very well what it is, and it is what you will be taken for if you carry on in this loose way.”
    “No, but I don’t know, Degan. Is it the prostituée? Is that what that vaurien called me? And you let him walk out the door with his head still on his shoulders. Morbleu, I must tell Henri. He will protect my name.”
    Things were going from bad to worse. “No! Don’t tell him! If he’d been with you as he should have, this wouldn’t have happened. No one but riff-raff comes to a place like this. The women are all lightskirts, and the men here to pick them up.”
    She stared at him with fascination. “Mon Dieu, you amaze me! I would not have expected to find Citoyen Degan at such a place, but saying his prayers in church. Which lightskirt is it you mean to take home, citoyen?”
    “You.”
    “Ah, you forget! I must not be caught till I am safely married. I am not a lightskirt, but have my pockets weighed down with Aunt Dee’s gold. Cela change tout, n’est-ce pas?”
    “I didn’t mean that!” he said through clenched teeth.
    “I do not appeal to you? Your friend Lord Ashmore has better taste.”
    “That is a matter of opinion. I came here to take you home to your father. I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
    “Well, I think I have,” she said consideringly, while she ran her eyes over his getup. “This