The Adventurer Read Online Free PDF Page A

while the crowd had only swelled, to the point that Isabella seriously questioned whether another person could possibly fit inside the room.
    Just then she noticed the imposing figure of a lady, her skirts at least five feet in breadth, pushing her way through the overcrowded doorway like a beribboned battleship.
    Apparently another person
could
fit into the room after all.
    “Do you see him, dear?” said Aunt Idonia beside her. The woman stood barely four feet and ten, so Isabella could scarcely see her head even though she was standing on her toes and craning her pudgy neck above her lace neckerchief to try to see. “Do you see
le Roi Soleil?”
    Isabella turned, smiling in apology to a young courtier whose elbow she’d brushed. “Aunt, that Louis isn’t the king any longer. ’Tis his great-grandson now, Louis the
Fifteenth.”
    She decided not to mention that if by some stretch of divine providence the previous Louis were still king, he would by then be the rather ripe old age of one hundred and nine.
    “Goodness,” was all Idonia could say before a trumpeter’s blast sounded out, signaling that the captain of the guard was readying to summon the next name on his list.
    Isabella looked around the room. There was no possible way the king would be able to see them all. She began to wonder if her errand would prove a colossal waste of time as the door leading to the king’s private apartments opened and closed.
    Voices hushed. Necks craned. The room fell so silent Isabella could hear the grumble of someone’s hungry stomach who was standing nearby. Suddenly, a voice bellowed out in French from the opposite side of the room.
    “Lady Isabella Drayton and Lady Idonia Fenwycke of Drayton Hall in Northumbria!”
    Isabella’s heart gave a nervous lurch.
    Heads began turning left and then right, searching the crowd for the stranger who’d been called. Some whispered. Others muttered, grumbling that they hadn’t yet been chosen. Isabella quickly arranged the gift box under one arm, took her aunt by the hand, and headed off for the door, struggling to weave her way past the scores of others standing in her way.
    Pardon ...
    Excusez-moi ...
    S’il vous plaît, monsieur ...
    It took several minutes and a great deal of effort, and by the time they arrived, the captain was readying to call the next name on his list.
    “Non!”
she cried out.
    He gaped at Isabella as she shoved through the crowd.
“Oui, mademoiselle?”
    “You just called for me. I am Lady Isabella Drayton,” she answered in practiced French. “And this is Lady Idonia Fenwycke.”
    The captain frowned blandly. “The king does not much like to be kept waiting, mademoiselle.”
    “Yes, I’m certain but I—”
    He spun on his heel and marched through the door.
    “Oh, no.” Isabella looked at her aunt. “We were too late getting through the crowd. Now we’ll never get to see—”
    “Mademoiselle,” whispered a palace guardsman who stood like a statue to one side of the door. He motioned with a quick shake of with his periwigged head. “You are to follow the captain inside.”
    Isabella smiled at him. “Oh, thank you so very—”
    “Mademoiselle Drayton.”
    The captain had reappeared, looking quite annoyed with her. “Do you or do you not wish to see the King of France this morning?”
    “I do. I do,” she said again and hastened to meet him, quickly dragging Idonia behind her.
    The captain didn’t say a word as he ushered them through a series of at least a half dozen different chambers, each more elegant than the last. Walls were papered in rich red silk beneath gleaming gold and sparkling chandeliers. Their footsteps echoed on floors tiled in gleaming black and white marble. It was quite like entering the gates of Olympus and leaving the mortal world behind; indeed the rooms reflected that same notion as they passed through chambers named for Venus, Diana, Mars, and Mercury, each with scenes of their divine namesake emblazoned across