A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley Read Free Book Online Page A

Frisque had calmed beneath it when they’d crossed the bridge, so Mary felt the comfort of it now, and felt the tension leave her body and her mind. She’d slept so poorly these past days with all the worry and excitement, waiting for her brother, both impatient for and dreading his arrival, and in truth she had not realized just how weary it had made her till that small but tender action and its show of his approval seemed to lift from her the burden of uncertainty.
    In the peaceful moments following, with Nicolas’s shoulder pressing close against her own within the jolting chaise, she watched the fall of snow between the branches of the dark trees growing close beside the road, a sign they’d entered the great forest that belonged to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. She had so often looked towards this forest and imagined it, but now she let her eyes drift closed against the sight and wondered if she’d ever felt this measure of contentment in her childhood, with no cares or fears to vex her for the moment, and her brother close beside her, and the sense that she was loved and safe and wanted.
    * * *
    She had slept. The trees were gone, replaced by level farmland lying thick with shadows in the blue of twilight, and the night was coming on. Already shapes were indistinct; through the front window of the chaise she saw the driver’s figure outlined by the yellow braid that trimmed his coat and by the paleness of the powdered wig beneath his hat, but both the horses, being dark, were nigh invisible, the bursts of their warm labored breath appearing in the winter air like shapes of passing ghosts.
    In faint confusion Mary raised her head from where it had been resting on her brother’s shoulder. “Are we nearly there?” she asked. For surely, if it was now nearly night…
    “We were diverted,” said her brother, “by an accident. A wagon overturned upon the road, so we were told, and one horse injured, and a rider was sent back to give a warning that the way was quite impassable. We had to turn and come the southern route along the river, which has cost us time and daylight, I’m afraid.”
    She sat more upright, holding Frisque a little closer. Up ahead, she saw a long and jagged slash of forest showing black between the deep blue-gray of sky and the dark green-gray of the land. It stood some distance off still. “And is that the woods of Saint-Germain-en-Laye?”
    “No. No, we are two leagues to the east of Saint-Germain. That is the forest at Chatou. There is a bridge there we can cross.”
    The shadows of the night had nearly swallowed all the light now, till the blackness of that forest drew the color from both land and sky and flattened them to nothing. Tiny flecks of yellow gleamed and glittered and were one by one extinguished—all the windows of the houses by the river, Mary realized, being shuttered. Only two small lights were left to burn, to mark the bridge.
    She did not relish traveling across that bridge and through the wood so late, but she’d resigned herself to doing it when Nicolas remarked, “I have an old friend at Chatou who keeps a grand house and a grander table, and is always keen to welcome company. We’ll stop here for the night.”
    She masked her own relief with calmness. “If you think it wise.”
    “I do.” She could not see her brother’s features in the dimness, but she heard the reassurance in his voice and felt it as he warmly laid his hand on hers again. “I would not have you journey in the dark.”

Chapter 5
    The light never lasted at this time of year. There had still been a hint of late afternoon sun when we’d landed in Paris, but that had been fading so steadily I was now finding it difficult to read my map well enough to direct Jacqui while she was driving.
    I told her, “I think we should keep to the right, here.”
    “I’m sure we can find it.”
    “You said you’d been here before.”
    “Only once,” she defended herself, “when Alistair sent me to look at