Mademoiselle at Arms Page 8

  Chapter Eight

  For an instant in the silence that followed, shocked into immobility, Melusine stared in horror at the body lying there so still. Then a surge of rage welled up.

  ‘Espéce de diable,’ she screamed.

  Running to Gosse, she seized the portrait from his hand and lashed out, taking him off guard, so that he staggered back and fell against the card table. Following him, and acting out of instinct rather than intent, Melusine took a firm grasp of the gilt frame with both hands, lifted it high in the air and, with a shrieking curse, brought it down hard.

  There was a tearing sound as the canvas gave way, and the precious portrait ripped apart as the top of the Frenchman’s head came through it. Gosse sagged under the impact, knocking over the card table, and falling to sit, half stunned, the discharged pistol flying from his slackened grasp.

  Satisfied he was immobilised for the moment, Melusine fell to her knees beside Jack, dragging at his suddenly heavy body to turn it on its back.

  ‘Oh, mon dieu. Jacques, Jacques!’

  His face was white, but his eyes were open, if a trifle glazed. He groaned, much to Melusine’s relief.

  ‘Jacques, where are you hurt?’

  But as she asked the question, she saw the wound. It was at his side below the breast, hidden by the dark colour of his close-fitting jacket. Melusine ripped at the buttons of the garment, dragging it open and away, and gasped at the massive red stain on his shirt.

  She glanced at the Frenchman, and found him struggling with the portrait that was embedded around his scalp. All at once she became aware of sounds outside. Furious shouting, and the thunder of running feet.

  The soldiers! They must not find her here. Nor Jacques. Better they should find the so-called Valade. They would arrest him for the French spy they had thought her at first. What better way to be rid of him?

  ‘Jacques,’ she uttered urgently. ‘Quickly! You must get up. We will go to the passage and then I shall bind you. Come, mon ami, come!’

  Ever faithful, Kimble dragged himself into a sitting position, gasping at the pain this caused him.

  ‘Parbleu, the bullet is still inside you,’ Melusine guessed, remembering how the Mother Abbess had diagnosed Leonardo’s suffering when he had first come to the convent.

  She looked round wildly, as if seeking some source of help, as the boots halted at the front door and the shouting intensified.

  But there was only Gosse, still struggling with the picture, looking dazedly towards Melusine and the lad he had shot, then away towards the sounds of pursuit, and back again.

  ‘Do not think—’ he panted, ‘that I am finished—with you, mademoiselle.’

  ‘Let’s...go...while we can,’ Kimble managed, and dragged himself onto his knees.

  Melusine got to her feet and, tucking her shoulder under his arm on the uninjured side, put her arm about him to hold his waist, and thus contrived to take most of his weight. Together they made their painful way to the door, not even checking, in the effort this cost both, on what Gosse might be doing.

  Once they were on the move, Kimble seemed to find strength from somewhere. ‘I’ll make it, miss. Hurry...before them soldiers...get in. The panel in the bookcase...it’s open.’

  They passed through a little antechamber, and Melusine sighed with relief as she entered the library next door. Activity in the hall intensified. The militia were in already. They must have a key. She hurried with Jack as fast as she could to the open door to the passage. The lantern was on the ground inside, ready. She let Jack go as he passed through the opening. He went in and leaned, panting, against one wall.

  Melusine came in, picked up the lantern, and heard the library door bang open just as the panel clicked closed behind her.

  ‘Come, Jacques, mon pauvre,’ she uttered, and reached for the lad again, hardly aware of the muted sounds of running feet and much banging and crashing beyond the secret door.

  She helped Jack to sit down, and dragged the jacket off him, lifting his shirt to expose the gash that had sliced across his side. Using the shirt, she cleaned away the blood. It was not as bad a wound as she had at first thought, and the blood was only oozing now. Melusine sighed with relief and set to work by the light of the lantern.

  Jack seemed glad enough to rest, his back against the wall, and closed his eyes. Melusine ripped strips off her under-petticoats and fashioned a pad, which she bandaged as tightly as she could over the wound, working swiftly, unperturbed by the gore. She had not nursed Leonardo for weeks for nothing. The nuns had no regard for the sensibilities of a “lady” and expected Melusine—for it was her allotted task—to clean and tend the soldier’s wounds even when they festered.

  While she worked, Melusine worried over the problem of getting Jack home. First the passage to be negotiated. Then a ride to London on horseback. Could she hold him and manage the reins? If only Gerald had not gone. No, this was imbecile. She had begun alone. She would end alone. Voilà tout.

  ‘Up, Jacques, up,’ she ordered.

  Her faithful servant struggled, with her assistance, to rise. Melusine’s heart ached for him, but she had to force him on.

  There was barely room for one, let alone two, in the passage, and Melusine ended up backwards, supporting Jack as best she could as he stumbled along, grasping the rough walls on either side with both hands.

  Melusine cursed herself for his injury. Cursed him for his devotion that had made him come back for her, only to get himself shot by the fiendish Gosse. And where was that devil? Had the soldiers found him? She could not think he had escaped, for she had only just made it into the passage as they entered the library. Unless—would he hide from them as he had hidden from her? It was a big house, he said. Catch him, she begged silently.

  All at once she realised that Kimble had halted, leaning heavily against the wall.

  ‘Jacques?’

  ‘No...good, miss. I can’t...’

  He slid slowly down and collapsed to the stone floor, fainting dead away.

  ‘Jacques!’

  Melusine dropped to her haunches beside his inert form, feeling for the wound. It was bleeding again. She tightened her bandage and sat back, biting her lip. They could not go on. Tears sprang to her eyes. What a pig she was. If Jack should die, all though her fault, she could never forgive herself.

  She put a hand to the lad’s cold cheek and choked on a sob. ‘Jacques, do not die while I am gone.’

  Grasping the lantern, and heedless now of the discomforts of the passage, Melusine flew like the wind back towards the library, the vision of Jack Kimble’s white face driving her on. Reaching the panel, she was able with the aid of her lantern to find the lever at once. Her heart full of dread, she dragged on it.

  As the secret door opened, the sounds within the house came at once to her ears: the tramping of feet above, and the hoarse voices echoing through the mansion. Leaving the panel wide, Melusine dashed to the library door and flung it open, racing into the hall.

  ‘You, soldiers,’ she yelled. ‘To me, quickly!’

  There was a brief hush, and then the shouts resumed and several pairs of feet clattered towards her from, as it seemed, several directions. A militiaman came belting down the stairs, another leapt from outside the front door, and a third, stalwart and stolid, came in through the door that led to the rooms to the front of the house. Melusine recognised the burly form of Captain Roding’s sergeant.

  ‘Ha! It’s you, is it?’ He threw a glance at his two juniors. ‘Cover her, men. That Frenchie, that’s who she is.’

  Relief flooded Melusine. ‘You are the one that I have met in London.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed the militiaman, coming forward to stand before her. ‘Sergeant Trodger is who I am. Now then, missie—’

  ‘Bon,’ said Melusine, interrupting him without ceremony, and paying no attention to the muskets that were pointing at her from two directions. ‘I am glad it is you, because you can help me.’

  ‘That depen
ds, that does,’ said Trodger guardedly. ‘Now then, where did you spring from?’

  ‘Do not concern yourself from where I come,’ Melusine snapped. ‘More important is that you help me instantly, as even your capitaine would command.’

  ‘Capting Roding wouldn’t never command me to help no Frenchie,’ said the sergeant positively.

  ‘Parbleu, you waste time. Certainly your major—’

  ‘Ah, now that’s just it, missie. According to what I’ve heard, you oughtn’t to be here. Major said you’d gorn.’

  ‘Yes, but I have not gone,’ Melusine said impatiently.

  ‘That’s just it. Why ain’t you gorn? Seems to me I had ought to arrest you.’

  ‘You may arrest me later. Now it is—’

  ‘What are you doing still here, missie, that’s what I’d like to know?’ demanded the man Trodger, sticking to his guns.

  ‘Oh, peste. What matters it? My servant, he is wounded—and by a Frenchman, if you wish to make an arrest.’ She frowned suddenly. ‘And why have you not arrested him? Do not tell me you have allowed him to escape you.’

  Trodger eyed her with suspicion. ‘What Frenchman would that be, missie? We ain’t let no one escape.’

  ‘But if you have not seen him, then he has certainly escaped.’ Disappointment flooded her. Gosse had hidden himself successfully then. ‘That is the man who tries to kill me, but he wounded instead my servant. Did you not hear the shot?’

  ‘I ain’t saying as I didn’t hear no shot,’ Trodger said carefully, peering at her out of eyes narrowed with interest, ‘but what I do say is, it’s mighty peculiar you saying as how there’s a Frenchman in the case, when it’s as plain as the nose on your face that you’re a Frenchwoman yourself. And you know all about that shot.’

  Melusine threw her hands in the air. ‘But you are idiot. I tell you, if you do not help me this instant, you will find that your major he will very likely shoot you.’

  ‘Woof!’

  The sergeant appeared nonplussed, and Melusine pressed her advantage. ‘While you are making me this interrogation, my poor Jacques bleeds to death.’

  ‘Who’s bleeding to death?’ demanded Trodger.

  ‘But I have told you. My servant. He is in the secret passage.’

  ‘Secret passage, is it?’ The sergeant seemed to brighten at this. ‘Well, we’ll just go on up and have a look at this here passage, missie, shall we?’

  ‘Have I not been saying so?’ snapped Melusine, exasperated. ‘En tout cas, it is not up at all, but down.’

  Trodger had started towards the stairs, signing to his men to get behind the lady. But at this, he halted, turning his frowning gaze back on her.

  ‘Now see here, missie. The major himself told me that this secret passage started upstairs. And if you’ve any notion—’

  ‘Yes, it is upstairs,’ Melusine agreed, crossing to the library door. ‘But so also it is downstairs. There are two ways to go in, you understand. But you must come this way now. Vite, I pray you. Jacques is very bad, and I am afraid he may die.’

  Upon which, she darted through the library door, galvanising both the sergeant and his two militiamen into action. She heard them diving after her, and noted their starting eyes as they spied the opened panel. She did not wait, but grabbed up the lantern and slid into the passage, calling to them to hurry.

  Her heart in her mouth, hoping against hope, Melusine made her way back to where she had left the boy. Jack was lying so still, for a moment she panicked.

  ‘Jacques, are you dead? Jacques, do you hear me?’

  Melusine put her cheek to his lips, and felt the faint warmth of his breath. Relief flooded her.

  ‘Grace à dieu, he breathes still.’

  Looking round, she found the little coterie of soldiers crowded into the passage behind them. ‘Why do you stand there? Take him up, and bring him out at once.’

  But she reckoned without the fellow Trodger.

  ‘If you’ll have the goodness, missie, to move yourself out of the way,’ he said aggrievedly, ‘and let us at him, we might have a chance of doing just that.’

  She was obliged to acknowledge the justice of this complaint, and moved further into the passage to allow the men access. But her temper almost flared again when the sergeant spoke.

  ‘Now then, my lad, you’re under arrest you are. But I suppose as I’ll have to wait until you can hear me to tell you again. Now then.’

  Melusine had to bite her lip to stop herself from interfering as, under Trodger’s direction, the two militiamen gave up their muskets into his keeping and lifted Jack. With some difficulty, they managed to negotiate the passage with their burden and carry him out into the library.

  ‘Lay him down on a sofa,’ Melusine said, coming out behind them and moving towards the antechamber.

  ‘You keep a-hold of him,’ Trodger ordered his men.

  ‘Parbleu, do you think he will run away? He has a bullet inside him, and it must be taken out.’

  ‘If he has a bullet inside of him,’ said the sergeant stolidly, ‘there ain’t no one can take it out better nor me. Many’s the bullets I’ve dug out of fellows in my time.’

  ‘But you are not a surgeon,’ protested Melusine.

  ‘I’m a soldier, missie. Been in the wars with both the major and Capting Roding, I have,’ Trodger informed her loftily. ‘I knows how to do better nor any surgeon.’

  ‘Then do it,’ Melusine said with impatience. ‘But lay him down.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m thinking as how this here house ain’t the best spot for an operation of that kind, missie,’ explained the sergeant, and Melusine noted that his men exchanged anguished glances. Trodger laid down their muskets and turned on them. ‘That’s right, you bone idle do-nothings. You can come back for these, for you’ll carry him to the gatehouse, that’s what you’ll do.’

  Melusine jumped. ‘The gatehouse? But why must you move him at all?’

  ‘Listen, missie. If you can’t see as how there ain’t nothing in this barrack of a place to help me do the job, I can. Water I need. Clean water. A handy knife, and a good tot of something sharp to clean out the wound. Blue Ruin will do the job nicely. Ah, and put him under if he wakes up. Now I ain’t saying as how that there Pottiswick—’

  ‘How you talk,’ interrupted Melusine impatiently. She pushed at the closer of the two soldiers bearing the precious burden. ‘Go then. At once. If it is that you need these things, then of course we will go there.’

  ‘Get going, then,’ Trodger told his men.

  Next moment, he had Melusine by the arm. ‘Now then, missie. You’ll come along of me, for you’re under arrest, too.’

  ‘Pah! Your major will say something to this. But you need not fear,’ she added, shaking him off. ‘Do not imagine that I will leave poor Jacques. I will go with you.’

  ‘Can’t say as I’m sorry to hear you say that, missie,’ confessed the sergeant, on a relieved note, as he locked the front door of the mansion and pocketed the key. ‘Couldn’t reconcile it with my dooty to leave you here—’

  A thought made Melusine stop dead, turning to him. ‘You did not find Gosse, that is seen, but—’

  ‘Gosse? Gosse? Who’s this here Gosse then?’

  ‘He is the Frenchman of whom I told you. You did not find him, but did you find his pistol? In the room beyond the bookroom there—a big room where a table had fallen. And a broken picture that was torn when I hit him with it.’

  ‘Woof!’ Sergeant Trodger’s eyes fairly popped out of his head, and he seized his prisoner’s arm again. ‘Seems to me, missie, as you’re as dangerous a female as I’m like to see. Pistols and pictures? Now it fair goes agin’ me nature to act rough with a lady, but you’ll come along of me at once. I got to have you under guard in the gatehouse, I can see that.’

  Melusine gave it up. There was nothing to be got out of the man. ‘Certainly you may have me under guard. I do not care in the least. Only that you will hurry and help Jacques.’

  In
the cosy little parlour that Pottiswick rarely used, Melusine paced restlessly to and fro. She had removed her hat and utterly disarranged her already unruly black locks by running agitated fingers through them. Outside the door stood one of the soldiers. The other was helping Trodger with his operation upstairs.

  In truth, she had been quite glad to lose the argument about remaining while the bullet was dug out of Jack’s side. She was not squeamish—although the sight of the sergeant’s ominous preparations had severely tried her fortitude—but Kimble’s white face plagued her conscience. She allowed herself to be ejected, therefore, and retired to the parlour after cleansing the blood from her hands and her own slight wound in the kitchen.

  With the immediate necessities in train, Melusine fell to brooding on her situation, which she found insupportable. With Jack so badly injured, how would she get him home? How get herself home, now that Trodger had arrested her. What of Gosse, whom those soldiers had allowed to escape? Hiding—or perhaps gone. Then there was also the horse. Peste, but everything had become difficult. And all to find that picture of Mary Remenham.

  The thought of the picture but added to her despondency. The sergeant had not seen it for he understood nothing of what she told him. What had happened to it? She had broken it, certainly. And severely hurt that pig, which was a very good thing. But it was her proof. Had Gosse taken it as he escaped? What could she do? Gosse now knew that she was the daughter of Mary Remenham. If he wished, he could even take this inheritance from her.

  For the first time, Melusine heartily regretted her rejection of the major’s services. She cursed herself for a fool. Was not Gerald altogether on her side? He was, even though he played games like an imbecile, a person tout à fait sympathique as she had discovered at the outset. And what did she do? Not only did she cut his hand in her rage, but she refused to let him help her, and then she ran away from him. Of a certainty, she also was imbecile. Or mad, just as the captain had said so many times. For was not Gerald a gentleman? An Englishman, whose services any female—excluding her own self so idiote—would be very happy to have.

  Her eyes filled as she thought of him, the image of his laughing countenance coming into her mind, to be swiftly followed by a vision of the blood running from his cut hand. A hollow feeling opened up inside her, and she felt her heartbeat quicken.

  She would write to Gerald. He would come swiftly to her aid, she knew it. For she needed him. How she needed him!

  Next moment, she had wrenched open the door, and was confronting her guard. ‘You! Tell this fool who is the keeper here to come to me at once.’

  ‘Miss?’ gaped the soldier.

  ‘The old man who lives here, idiot.’

  ‘Pottiswick, you mean, miss?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Go quickly and call him.’

  ‘But I can’t leave you, miss.’

  ‘Pah! Do you think I will run away? Do not be so foolish, and go and fetch him this instant.’

  Thus adjured, but mindful of Trodger’s orders, the militiaman went down the hall backwards, his eyes fixed on the prisoner. At the door to the kitchen, he called out, ‘Pottiswick!’

  The old man came out, shoving his chin in the air and glaring. ‘Now what?’

  The guard jerked his head up the corridor. ‘She wants you.’

  Melusine caught the fellow eyeing her with resentment and beckoned as she called out to him. ‘You! Have you pen and paper?’

  ‘Pen and paper now, is it?’ grumbled the old man as he shuffled down the hall. ‘Ain’t enough as my bed is took, my sheets all bloodied, and my gin took for to waste on that fellow’s wound. Ain’t enough as I’ve got militiamen quartered on me this se’ennight, lazing about all day, eating me out of house and home and drinking my liquor into the bargain. Nor as I’ve to put up with a French spy in my parlour—’

  ‘Peste, how you talk,’ interrupted Melusine impatiently, barely taking in his complaints. ‘Pen and paper, do you have them?’

  ‘Danged if I have,’ came the truculent response. ‘What was you wanting it for, may I ask?’

  ‘You may not ask, for it is none of your affair,’ Melusine snapped. ‘But I will tell you this, mon vieux. The day comes when you shall regret how you have spoken to me.’

  Pottiswick sucked at his teeth through the gaps. ‘Don’t rightly know how you make that out, you being a French spy and a prisoner and all.’

  ‘I will tell you how I make that out,’ Melusine said fiercely. ‘Me, I am Mademoiselle Charvill, the granddaughter of Monsieur Jar-vis Re-men-ham.’

  ‘You ain’t never,’ gasped Pottiswick. ‘Danged if I ever hear the like! A Frenchie is what you are, and there ain’t no granddaughter Charvill no more. Not these twenty year.’

  ‘That is what you think? Eh bien. You have a daughter, no? Madame Ibstock, I think.’

  The lodgekeeper’s jaw fell open. ‘Who telled you that?’

  ‘Do not ask me impertinent questions, but only go you and fetch this daughter here to me. At once.’

  The old man simply stared at her. ‘Danged if I ever hear the like,’ he repeated blankly.

  ‘Parbleu, you are deaf perhaps? It is seen that you are very old, certainly.’

  Colour suffused the man’s face. ‘Deaf? Deaf? I’ll have you know, miss—’

  ‘Do not have me know anything,’ interrupted Melusine crossly, and digging into her habit, produced the fateful dagger that had cut Gerald’s hand. ‘To the contrary, I will have you to know something. You will do as I say, or—’

  ‘Hoy!’ called Trodger from down the hall. ‘You put that thing away now, missie. We don’t want no trouble, do we?’

  At sight of him, everything went out of Melusine’s head but the thought of Jack Kimble. She started forward.

  ‘Jacques? You have done it? He is alive?’

  ‘Oh, he’s alive, all right,’ confirmed the sergeant, putting the petrified Pottiswick—stockstill and staring in horror at the dagger—firmly out of his way and taking his place before Melusine. ‘Sleeping like a baby, he is. He’ll do.’

  Melusine sank against the wall of the corridor, closing her eyes. ‘Merci, dieu.’

  ‘Now then, missie,’ began the sergeant severely, ‘just you hand over that dagger. Nice goings on. Ladies with weapon’s on ’em.’ He took the thing from Melusine’s listless grasp and went on, ‘Now then, what’s all this here argy-bargy with Pottiswick?’

  Melusine opened her eyes and straightened up. She had hardly noticed the loss of her dagger, so strong had been the waves of relief that attacked her on hearing that Jack had returned from death’s door. But this was important.

  ‘Bon. You will make him get his daughter, if you please. She is called Madame Ibstock, you understand.’

  ‘Is she now? And what would you be wanting of her, may I ask?’

  ‘Because she knows something that may make this fool understand that I am the mistress of—’ She broke off. There was no sense in creating further difficulties for herself by arguing with the sergeant over her identity. An admirable alternative presented itself and she sighed, spreading her hands. ‘You see, it is that I am a female, and you all are men. It is not at all comme il faut.’

  Trodger frowned, and chewed his lip. ‘Something in that, missie. But I’m thinking as how I’d best report to the major over this here shooting.’

  ‘Yes, do so,’ rejoined Melusine enthusiastically. ‘En effet, it is for this that I was enquiring of this man if he has pen and paper. I will write to your major, and you will send the letter very quickly. Also, you must send someone to fetch my horse—at least, it is not mine but I have borrowed it to come here—because it will be dark very soon and—’

  ‘Woof! Hold it, hold it,’ begged the sergeant. ‘One thing at a time, missie.’ He turned to the lodgekeeper behind him, whose shocked fear had given place to a direful frown. ‘Here you, Pottiswick. Get pen and paper for the missie. Then go and fetch this daughter of yourn. Don’t stand gawping, man. And you’d better have her fetch in s
ome food for the missie, an’ all. Get on, do.’

  He gave the gaping Pottiswick a shove, passing him on to his junior, who was waiting patiently by the kitchen door. The militiaman at once thrust the old man between the shoulder blades, pushing him into the kitchen.

  Melusine soon found herself seated at a table, with a dirty piece of paper in front of her, and a badly mended pen between her fingers. The ink, contained in a grimy bottle unearthed in the outhouse, was old, and made blotches as soon as it touched the paper. But it would serve.

  Mon cher major, Melusine began. And then scratched it out and wrote instead, “Gérard”. She sat in deep thought for a moment or two, and then nodding briskly, dipped the pen in the ink again and began to write.

  “Jacques is wounded and we are arrested by this imbecile of a sergeant. The soi-disant Valade escapes and takes my proof, which I have broken on his head. Hurry to me, I entreat you. Never did I need a rescue so much. It is at the lodge that we stay. I pray you, Gérard, do not fail me. Á bientot—Melusine.”

  To her relief, Trodger sent one of his men posthaste to London with this missive, while the other went to fetch the horse, having been given precise directions on how to negotiate the passage so that he might find it at the other end. The old man Pottiswick, still grumbling, much to Melusine’s disgust, had gone on his errand to his daughter’s house some two miles distant. And the sergeant, having carried out all Melusine’s instructions as if they had come out of his own head, went up to check on his patient, apparently at last convinced that his prisoner would not attempt to run away.

  Nothing could have been farther from Melusine’s mind. She had come to the end of her resources. It had been a trying day. She was tired, hungry—and thus somewhat impatient for the food Mrs Ibstock might bring—and downcast.

  She sat in a chair in the parlour and regarded the darkening sky through the small casement window. It seemed to her at this moment that there was nothing left for her to do. Gosse, if he had any sense, would immediately seek out the Remenham lawyers. Once he had managed to stake his claim, she would have all to do to prove her identity and win it back. If only monsieur le baron had said nothing, or perhaps instead accepted the couple as the Valades and agreed to help them. Not that there had ever been any hope of that. She had told Emile. She had warned him.

  Her mind wandered back to that fateful day. Was it a week ago? No, perhaps more. Time was moving so fast, she could no longer count the days since Gosse had come to her with his preposterous suggestion at the Coq d’Or, where they were staying and where he had robbed her and left her and Martha to their fate.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ he had greeted her, entering the little private parlour where, Martha being at prayer in their room, she sat alone, reading over and over the letter Mother Abbess had given her and revolving plans in her head.

  She had looked up from her seat at the small round table in the centre of the parlour which, together with the wooden armchairs beside the small fireplace, and a sideboard next the single casement, was all the furniture the place afforded. Melusine, used to the stark surroundings of the convent at Blaye, had no complaint to make. Her desires were not for riches. Only identity, and a chance to be someone other than a nun.

  Not so Gosse. But at this point he was still subservient, still outwardly humble, in spite of the blackhearted villainy that was even then burgeoning in his breast.

  ‘Mademoiselle, there is a way to win to freedom and prosperity.’

  To be sure there was a way. For freedom at least. Why did he imagine she was making this journey to England? She feigned interest.

  ‘But what way, Emile?’

  ‘Your family, mademoiselle, the family of your father.’

  ‘You mean monsieur le baron, the General Charvill, my grandfather?’

  Melusine laid aside on the table the letter she had been studying and turned so that the frame of her nun’s wimple no longer obscured her view.

  ‘Pardon, mademoiselle, but perhaps your father went to England, after all, and—’

  ‘My father went to Italy,’ interrupted Melusine, her heart tightening with the familiar sensation of loss. ‘Never would he have gone to England. And if you mean that he may have reconciled himself with his own father, you waste your breath.’

  ‘That was not what I had in mind.’

  ‘Eh bien, what then?’

  Emile sidled closer. ‘To what do you go, mademoiselle? The life of a nun in a convent, in a country where nuns are unwelcome. Where even to be a Catholic, they say, is to be looked upon with scorn and disgust.’

  Melusine shrugged. She had no intention whatsoever of spending her life in a convent, but that was not his affair.

  ‘It is the life I know.’

  ‘But you must want more. You should have more.’

  ‘I am going to England,’ Melusine stated flatly, ‘because there is no safety at the convent at Blaye. And for that I am connected with the Valades, after what you have told us has happened to them, the Mother Abbess will not consent that I remain in France. Voilà tout.’

  The Mother Abbess—and indeed all the nuns, some of higher birth more fearful than others—were aghast at the horrors that had befallen the family Valade. Gosse had come to Blaye, so he had said, feeling it his duty as the vicomte’s erstwhile secretary to deliver the fateful tidings, bringing with him one of the servant girls, Yolande, who had also escaped the fury of the mob. Her evident terror and distress reinforced the tale he told.

  He had drawn a horrid picture of the fate that awaited mademoiselle when once the populace discovered her relationship to the Valade family. Too close, he reasoned, for safety. He had offered to escort the young lady to England where she might seek refuge with her relations there, and proposed that the maid Yolande might serve Miss Charvill.

  The Mother Abbess, while thankful, could not be brought to consent to allow the girl out of her charge alone with unknown servants, and Martha was delegated to accompany her erstwhile nurseling to the homeland she had thought never to see again.

  ‘You do not want to be a nun,’ he said now, and Melusine noted with a prick at her senses the irritation in his tone.

  She had not felt comfortable in his presence from the first, and with Leonardo’s precepts in mind, was loath to trust him. She did not therefore reveal to him that he had guaged her with accuracy. She fluttered her eyelashes, and adopted the soulful tone that served her well at times.

  ‘It is what my father intended. I must obey.’

  To her astonishment, Gosse’s servile attitude vanished abruptly. Grasping one of chairs about the little table, he drew it forward and sat astride it, in a fashion as insolent as it was unexpected.

  ‘You wish a life of obedience? So be it, Mademoiselle Charvill.’

  Melusine’s instant annoyance must have shown in her face.

  ‘Do not look at me so,’ he snapped. ‘I may have been only a secretary, but times are changing. I am not of the canaille, but a bourgeois. There is no future for me here. I wish to rise in the world, mademoiselle, and you are going to help me.’

  Amazed, Melusine stared at him. Caution forced her to speak calmly.

  ‘I fear you mistake, Emile. I have said that I am but a nun now.’

  ‘You need not be a nun,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘You have the means to take up your rightful place.’

  Melusine’s eyes narrowed and she drew back. He could not know about the Remenham connection, could he? No one knew but her father and Martha.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You have papers of identity, for the Mother Abbess told me so.’

  Melusine frowned, placing her hand on the letter lying on the table. Then she cursed herself for his eyes went to the letter and came back to her face.

  ‘And so?’ she asked.

  ‘And so also have I.’ He reached into an inner pocket of his coat and brought out a packet of papers. Out of these he selected a faded parchment and restored the rest to safety. He then unfolde
d his choice and held it before her face. ‘This, as you see, is an identity for your cousin, André Valade. I do not choose the vicomte, for that would be foolish. His heir is dead, yes, and his name and title available to me. But it would be too risky. The vicomte must be well known to those high-born who have gone to England. Besides, I do not want a price on my head.’

  Melusine was beginning to fill with dread and a burgeoning of anger as the meaning behind his words began to penetrate. But she veiled her feelings.

  ‘I do not understand you.’

  ‘Listen. I can be a gentleman. I have been around them for long enough. Who is to say that I am not André Valade, an obscure relation of the late vicomte.’

  Melusine remembered a thin man of sour aspect, living—like her father and his wife Suzanne—off the vicomte’s bounty. He must be more or less of an age with this man. Rage flooded her at his intent, but she controlled it.

  ‘You will take the place of André?’

  ‘Exactly so. And you, Mademoiselle Melusine, will support this claim.’

  ‘From a convent? Even if I wished to do it, I could not.’

  Emile reached out both hands and grasped her shoulders. ‘But you will not be in a convent. You will be with me. You will be—my wife.’

  For a moment Melusine stared at him as she took in the full horror of his scheme. Then fury claimed her and she could no longer pretend. Wrenching his hands from her shoulders, she thrust them away and leapt up from the chair.

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘My wife,’ he repeated, rising also, his smile mocking her. ‘Is it such a terrible prospect? I will take care of you—as long as you obey me. I will make your grandfather extend to you his protection, and his support.’

  ‘It is money you mean, no?’ Melusine asked with scorn. ‘You are mad, if you think he will give you a sou. You do not know him. And you think I would marry you?’

  ‘Why not? I am unworthy, eh? Because I am a servant.’

  ‘Because you are a pig!’ retorted Melusine hotly.

  ‘Nevertheless, you will marry me,’ he snarled. ‘I have the means to compel you.’

  ‘Compel me? You do not know me, monsieur.’

  ‘And you do not know me. Do not underestimate my power. I have been the vicomte’s secretary, remember.’

  Shock suspended Melusine’s breath and she gasped. ‘You have rifled his papers.’

  ‘He had no further need of them,’ Gosse said and his laugh sounded heartless to Melusine. ‘Whereas my need was very great indeed. Do not mistake me. I have proofs of many things that can endanger you. Believe me, it will be better by far that you should consent to marry me.’

  ‘I do not marry a man who makes me a threat like this,’ she flashed. ‘A man who is false, who steals papers, who has a plot to take another’s name, who lies to the Mother Abbess and to me, and above all this—’ her voice near to breaking ‘—one who is French.’

  Gosse blinked. ‘French? But what else?’

  ‘I do not like Frenchmen,’ Melusine snapped. ‘Least of all, one who takes advantage of another’s misfortune. You disgust me.’

  Emile’s eyes blazed. ‘I disgust you, eh? Very well, then. You may enjoy your pride, your arrogance—in a coffin.’

  ‘Comment? How will it serve you to kill me?’

  ‘I do not need to kill you. I have only to denounce you as a member of the family Valade.’

  Melusine gasped. But what a monster was this Emile. He would condemn her to the vengeance of the mob all for refusing to marry him. But she did not believe he would do that. It hardly served his interests.

  ‘And then you will be obliged to remain in France,’ she pointed out. ‘You cannot be André Valade if you tell them I am one of this family.’

  For a moment he looked daunted. Then he rallied, smiling a little. ‘Come, mademoiselle. You have not considered the advantages.’

  Melusine bit her lip on a sharp retort. That would not help her. The man was dangerous. She prevaricated.

  ‘Alors, what advantages?’

  ‘But think,’ he said earnestly, moving a little closer. ‘As Madame Valade, you will be an émigré, not a nun. That is what they call these aristocratic refugees, the English. As such, you may command the sympathies of the gentry. I hear they are very much affected by the tragedies of their neighbours in France. You will join a world of fashion, a world of wealth, a life of ease.’

  ‘A life of ease?’ repeated Melusine. ‘When one is penniless, one does not expect a life of ease.’

  ‘Ah, but why remain penniless? After all, your grandfather Charvill—’

  ‘Again with the grandfather? Mon ami, if you imagine that this grandfather will welcome a daughter of Nicholas Charvill, whom he has never forgiven that he married a Frenchwoman, then you have an imagination entirely wrong.’

  ‘But it was not your fault,’ protested Gosse, shocked.

  ‘That is true,’ Melusine conceded. ‘Nevertheless, he will neither help me, nor will I seek his help.’

  ‘But if I am with you, as André Valade, as your husband, an émigré—’

  ‘Pah!’ Melusine spat. ‘Never. This is a plot entirely abominable, and I scorn to be part of it.’

  ‘Then you will die at the hands of the canaille.’

  ‘Better than to live at the hands of a villainous blackmailer,’ Melusine threw at him.

  ‘Sapristi,’ he shouted angrily. ‘Obstinate fool!’

  She saw Gosse raise a hand, and dug into her nun’s habit for the knife she had not thought to need. Too late. Emile’s fist crashed into her temple and stars exploded in her vision.

  When she came to, she was lying with her head in Martha’s lap, and a livid bruise was forming at the point of a raging headache.

  ‘The man’s gone,’ her old nurse told her, when she had recovered a little. ‘Taken the girl with him.’

  ‘Yolande, my maid?’

  ‘You don’t need a maid,’ Martha said stoutly. ‘Not where we’re going.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Back to Blaye, my girl. Can’t travel alone, a pair of nuns.’

  ‘Back?’ Melusine put a hand to her aching temple. ‘No, I do not go back. Never. You may go back, Marthe. But me, I am going to England.’

  ‘Don’t talk soft,’ begged Martha. ‘You can’t go to England. Leastways, not on your own. How will we get there, I’d like to know? We’ve no money. The rogue took everything we had.’

  Melusine cursed Emile roundly, but raised a defiant head. ‘Then we will beg. We are nuns. At least, you are one, and I am disguised like one. We will beg our bread and our shelter, and our passage on a boat. But to England we will go.’

  Not all the arguments Martha advanced, and they were many and varied, had the power to move Melusine. Although Martha did not know it, she had her pistol and her daggers, and her knife. More importantly, she had her wits. Vitally, she had the letter that proved her identity as a Charvill: the one her father had written to the Abbess when he sent her to the convent.

  Only she hadn’t. When her shock and the headache subsided, and she remembered that she had been reading the letter when Gosse had accosted her, she looked for it in vain. It had gone with the rest.

  She had not thought anything could equal her despair at that moment. Almost had Martha won out. But Melusine had overcome the weakness, calling the loss but a temporary setback. She had braved all obstacles to pursue her dream. Arrived in England, she had sought out Gosse, to keep an eye on his activities and thus keep one step ahead of him, meanwhile hoping that she might find herself another means of proof at Remenham House.

  Melusine came back to the present to discover that tears were rolling down her cheeks. She had found that proof. And now the fiend Gosse had taken even that away from her. This time she was indeed beaten.

  The tears flowed faster. Melusine dashed them away, but they kept on coming. Peste, where was her handkerchief? She remembered then that it had been lost in the struggle with Gerald. At
the thought of the major, her tears redoubled and she was obliged to rip off a piece from the remnants of her already maltreated under-petticoats with which to blow her nose and soak the damp from her cheeks.

  If only Gerald would come. Even that he was an interfering person, if he walked through that door this moment, she would fling herself at him and weep all over his chest.

  Bête, she told herself fiercely. Imbecile. Idiote. What need had she of Gerald, or anyone? Yet, if he was here, would he not make some foolish game with her and make her laugh? Instead of behaving in this fashion so stupide, and crying, crying, crying.

  She had recourse to the torn off strip of petticoat again, and blowing her nose with an air of determination, sniffed back the tears.

  A sudden knock at the door startled her. Gerald? But could he be here so quickly?

  She hastily dabbed at her eyes, thankful for the darkness that she saw had come on outside unnoticed, dimming the room.

  ‘Come,’ she called.

  The door opened. A stout female stood in the aperture, an oil lamp in her hand. She came into the room. A middle-aged countrywoman, plump of cheek, and a little shy. She held up the lamp.

  ‘Beg pardon, miss, but I’m told as how—’ She broke off, her eyes widening, her jaw dropping open.

  All at once Melusine remembered Pottiswick, and the errand he had run.

  ‘You are Mrs Ibstock, I think,’ she said eagerly.

  Pottiswick’s daughter found her tongue. ‘Lawks-a-mussy! It’s Miss Mary. Miss Mary to the life.’