Read Online Far In The Wilds by Deanna Raybourn - Free Book Online Page B

Cornelia is fine, thanks,” he said blandly. I only asked to be polite and he knew it. Cornelia had been engaged to him before our marriage, and she had snapped him back up before the ink was dry on our divorce papers. But the children were sweet, and I was glad he seemed happy. Of course, Quentin was English. It was difficult to tell how he felt about most things.
    I leaned closer. “How much trouble am I in?” I whispered. He bent down, his mouth just grazing the edge of my bob.
    “Rather a lot.”
    I pulled a face at him and took a seat on one of the fragile little sofas scattered about, crossing my legs neatly at the ankle just as my deportment teacher had taught me.
    “Really, Miss Drummond, I do not think you comprehend the gravity of the situation at all,” Mossy’s English solicitor began. I struggled to remember his name. Weatherby? Enderby? Endicott?
    I smiled widely, showing off Mossy’s rather considerable investment in my orthodontia.
    “I assure you I do, Mr.—” I broke off and caught a flicker of a smile on Quentin’s face. Drat him. I carried on as smoothly as I could manage. “That is to say, I am quite sure things will come right in the end. I have every intention of taking your excellent advice.” I had learned that particular soothing tone from Mossy. She usually used it on horses, but I found it worked equally well with men. Maybe better.
    “I am not at all certain of that,” replied Mr. Weatherby. Or perhaps Mr. Endicott. “You do realise that the late prince’s family are threatening legal action to secure the return of the Volkonsky jewels?”
    I sighed and rummaged in my bag for a Sobranie. By the time I had fixed the cigarette into the long ebony holder, Quentin and Nigel were at my side, offering a light. I let them both light it—it doesn’t do to play favourites—and blew out a cunning little smoke ring.
    “Oh, that is clever,” Mossy said. “You must teach me how to do it.”
    “It’s all in the tongue,” I told her. Quentin choked a little, but I turned wide-eyed to Mr. Enderby. “Misha didn’t have family,” I explained. “His mother and sisters came out of Russia with him during the Revolution, but his father and brother were with the White Army. They were killed in Siberia along with every other male member of his family. Misha only got out because he was too young to fight.”
    “There is the Countess Borghaliev,” he began, but I waved a hand.
    “Feathers! The countess was Misha’s governess. She might be related, but she’s only a cousin, and a very distant one at that. She is certainly not entitled to the Volkonsky jewels.” And even if she were, I had no intention of giving them up. The original collection had been assembled over the better part of three centuries and it was all the Volkonskys had taken with them as they fled. Misha’s mother and sisters had smuggled them out of Russia by sewing them into their clothes, all except the biggest of them. The Kokotchny emerald had been stuffed into an unmentionable spot by Misha’s mother before she left the mother country, and nobody ever said, but I bet she left it walking a little funny. She had assumed—and rightly as it turned out—that officials would be squeamish about searching such a place, and with a good washing it had shone as brightly as ever, all eighty carats of it. At least, that was the official story of the jewels. I knew a few things that hadn’t made the papers, things Misha had entrusted to me as his wife. I would sooner set my own hair on fire than see that vicious old Borghaliev cow discover the truth.
    “Perhaps that is so,” Mr. Endicott said, his expression severe, “but she is speaking to the press. Coming on the heels of the prince’s suicide and your own rather cavalier attitude towards mourning, the whole picture is a rather unsavoury one.”
    I looked at Quentin, but he was studying his nails, an old trick that meant he wasn’t going to speak until he was good and