The Emerald Swan by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online Page A

beginning. He merely asked, “Where?”
    Miranda shrugged. “In Paris somewhere, when I was a baby.”
    He nodded. “And how old are you now?”
    Miranda shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. Mama Gertrude thinks I must be about twenty. She found me in a baker’s shop and since I didn’t seem to belong to anyone she took me with her. And now she wants me to marry Luke. Which is absurd. Luke’s been my brother all my life. How can one marry one’s brother?”
    “Without benefit of clergy.”
    Miranda grinned at this dry response. “You know what I mean.”
    He just laughed and refilled her goblet. “So the troupe is the only family you’ve ever known. You speak English as if it’s your mother tongue.”
    “I speak lots of languages,” she said almost indifferently. “We all do. We travel all over, you see … Oh, Chip!” She gave a mortified cry, grabbing up the monkey, who had slid from her shoulder while her attention was diverted and was now digging into the stew-pot. He flourished a piece of carrot between two fingers before cramming it into his mouth, chattering gleefully.
    “I do beg your pardon, milord. He must have realized there were vegetables as well as meat in the pot.” Miranda looked stricken. “His fingers are quite clean, though.”
    “How reassuring,” Gareth replied without conviction. “Fortunately, I’ve satisfied my appetite for the moment, so you might as well let him dig to his heart’s content.”
    “It’s very kind of you to feed Chip, milord,” Miranda said as they watched Chip forage. “So many people seem to be afraid of him. I can’t understand why, can you?”
    “Your fellow players presumably accept him.”
    “Some of them don’t like him.” Miranda sipped her wine. “But he earns his keep. The crowds love him and he’s very good at collecting money after our act … and Robbie loves him. He makes him laugh.” Her smile was sad, her lovely blue eyes momentarily shadowed.
    “That’s the little crippled boy?”
    She nodded. “One foot is badly formed and one leg is shorter than the other. It means that he can’t do much toward earning his keep, but I share my takings with him and he does what he can.”
    “Whose child is he?”
    “No one knows. He was found, too. I found him in a doorway.”
    Gareth was startled by his response to this simple speech, to the simple generosity and the depths of human feeling that lay behind it. The girl had so little togive, but what she had she freely shared with those even less fortunate than herself. And no one could describe the hand-to-mouth existence of a strolling player as a fortunate one. He’d grown accustomed to the idea that his own better nature had died with the discovery of Charlotte’s betrayal. Life had seemed so much easier once he’d stopped expecting anything from people that he had embraced his own cynicism with pleasure and relief, but this diminutive scrap seemed to make nonsense of such cynicism.
    “So what is your proposition, milord?” She changed the subject, resting her chin on one elbow-propped palm, her other hand firmly clutching Chip’s jacket.
    “I would like you to stand in for someone,” he stated. “In my house just outside London, I have a young cousin who is frequently unwell. She looks rather like you … in fact you are astonishingly alike … and I think it might be helpful if you were to take her place in some situations that might arise.”
    Miranda blinked in astonishment. “Pretend to be someone else, you mean?”
    “Precisely.”
    “But this cousin … won’t she object? I wouldn’t like someone pretending to be me.”
    His smile was a trifle sardonic and took Miranda aback. She hadn’t seen such an expression on his face before. “In the circumstances Maude will not mind,” he said.
    “Is she very ill?”
    He shook his head, and the sardonic smile would not go away. “No. Maude is more of an imaginary invalid.”
    “What situations are going to