The Sparks Fly Upward Read Online Free PDF Page B

Blanchard was never seen; Mesdames Hastings and Saint James were here tonight but abandoned, as usual, to talk to each other.
    Eton, Philippa had long decided, was an octopus that never let go; if she and Stephen had a son, he would be kept from its toils.
    Andrew took her into his library, her favorite room in the house.
    â€˜ Waltzing ,’ she said, once they were inside. ‘Ma nearly went home.’
    â€˜Didn’t, though, did she? Bein’ whisked ’round like a spoon by some elderly Frog when I found her. And one’s got to keep up with the times.’ He collapsed into a chair and put his legs on the massive table that served as his desk in order to massage one superb boot. ‘Feel I’ve kept up with a couple of centuries.’
    He was up again in a second to light a cigar, to check on a new saddle that lay across a wooden horse at one end of the long room. He was rarely still; among the other members of The League, who adopted fashionable indolence when on show, he resembled an energetic sheepdog keeping a long-legged flock together. But The League had been his idea and his was the busy brain that had enabled it to snatch nearly fifty people from the guillotine.
    Philippa crossed to the room’s other end and automatically adjusted a Stubbs painting of Andrew’s Derby winner. ‘I wish you’d get this chain fixed. Poor Corsair’s always running either uphill or down.’
    â€˜Fussbudget.’
    â€˜Slobberguts.’
    â€˜What d’you think of her, Pippy?’
    â€˜Very lovely.’
    â€˜Told her all about you. She’s dyin’ to be friends.’
    She turned round, smiling. ‘Then we shall be.’
    â€˜Takin’ her on a tour of the estates tomorrow, beginnin’ with the north. She’d like you to join us at some point.’
    He’s no idea , Philippa thought. He’s not only dragging his bride to a Cumbrian castle in midwinter, he’s suggesting that another woman join them on their honeymoon. She’d prefer a stretch on the rack. So would I.
    â€˜We’ll see.’
    He went back to the table to light a cigar. ‘What’s up?’
    She sighed and went to stand in front of him, her hands folded. ‘First of all, you’ve got to promise you won’t be going back to France.’
    He shook his head. ‘Feel a bit liver-faced about it, but no. Me wife’—he paused to relish the term—‘she won’t have it. Made me swear it on our wedding day—got a horror for her own country, which ain’t surprising. I need a son or two before I risk the old neck again.’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘Tell you the truth, Pip, it was gettin’ a bit warm over there. Had a narrow shave or two with the National Guard. Seemed to be on the lookout for me. Popped up in Paris once too often, I suppose.’
    â€˜A carroty, freckled Saxon among all those Gauls? Surely not.’
    Every time he went on one of The League’s missions, she’d imagined him, standing out among the Parisians like a Union Jack, every beat of her pulse asking: What if I lost him?
    â€˜I’ll have you know I am a master of disguise.’ He squinted at her again. ‘You never approved, did you?’
    â€˜I approve of saving people.’ It had been a treasured moment when he’d discussed The League’s formation with her before anybody else. ‘I just think if the French peasants had been saved from starvation, there needn’t have been a revolution in the first place.’
    â€˜I didn’t know any bloody peasants.’
    Typical , she thought. Politics meant nothing to him, only people. He’s like Ma in that. If he’d met a family of French destitutes, they’d have been made rich within the minute; he just hadn’t met any. There had been no destitutes at Versailles, whence he’d been sent in ’88 as an unofficial British ambassador to make trade