Mademoiselle at Arms Read online

  Chapter Nine

  As she devoured the simple meal of bread and cheese, and several slices of cold roast beef, the whole washed down with a poor sort of coffee, Melusine listened with avid interest to the details of her mother’s life as revealed by the exclamatory conversation of Joan Ibstock. This forthright dame was so excited, she could not keep still, but paced about the parlour much as Melusine had done earlier.

  ‘Well, what was I to think, miss? Martha never wrote nothing about you, and I did ask.’

  ‘You see,’ Melusine explained between mouthfuls of food, ‘poor Marthe had promised to my father that she will say nothing. She broke this promise when she told me that my mother was this Mary, and not Suzanne Valade at all.’

  ‘But she must have known I’d longed to hear of you. When mistress took and died—’ Joan broke off and sighed, moving away to the window. ‘Well, water under the bridge is that, miss. Anyhow, it were me as got you down to the wet-nurse. Come every day to see you was flourishing. On the orders of Mr Jarvis, that were. But I’d have done it without, though it weren’t my place. Only an undermaid I was then. But Miss Mary and me—’

  Melusine looked up as the woman broke off again. She smiled encouragingly, laying aside her plate and turning her chair from the table.

  ‘You knew her well, Miss Mary?’

  Mrs Ibstock turned at the window. ‘We was of an age, you see, miss. Used to play together, we did, all over Remenham House. Miss Mary and me, and Martha too sometimes. Oh, Mr Jarvis paid no mind,’ she added hastily, as if expecting disapproval. ‘That there governess didn’t like it, of course, me being the lodgekeeper’s girl, and Martha just a country wench like me. Her pa was only the smithy. T’weren’t fitting, we knew that. But Mr Jarvis said as how Miss Mary not having no brothers and sisters like, it were good to have friends.’

  ‘I see now how it was that Marthe knew of the secret passage,’ Melusine said.

  ‘Oh, we was always in there, miss,’ admitted Joan, moving closer. She shuddered, adding confidentially, ‘You wouldn’t get me in there now, mind. Nasty, damp passages. Rats and things crawling all over. Horrid!’

  ‘Yes, but it has been extremely useful for me,’ argued Melusine, ‘so that I am very much pleased with this passage.’

  ‘Fancy my old pa thinking you was a French spy. Though he never seen so much of Miss Mary as I did. Mind, when we were all growed up, it were different. And when she took and married that Mr Charvill, we didn’t think to see her at Remenham House no more.’

  ‘But you say that I was born here,’ objected Melusine. ‘Certainly you must have seen her.’

  Mrs Ibstock’s lips tightened and she looked away a moment. ‘Yes, miss. She come home within a few months of the wedding. She were that miserable.’

  Melusine rose from her chair in sudden irritation. ‘Oh, peste. I know why. For that my father so stupide was in love with this Suzanne Valade, is it not?’

  ‘Well, miss,’ temporised Mrs Ibstock, ‘we didn’t rightly know that then. For he come after her, did Mr Charvill. And a right set-to there were betwixt him and Mr Jarvis, I can tell you. Miss Mary being his only child ’an all, he were in a right pelter.’

  Melusine could not suppress a smile. ‘And with my grandfather Charvill also so very angry, it was not perhaps so very comfortable for my father.’

  ‘Between the devil and the deep blue sea, he were,’ agreed Pottiswick’s daughter. ‘Small wonder in a way that he found hisself consolation elsewhere.’

  Melusine sobered, sitting down again. ‘Yes, only that this consolation he had found before he married my mother. This I know for at the Valade estate it was talked of very much, even that they supposed me there to be the daughter of Suzanne.’

  ‘But you don’t look anything like her,’ burst out Mrs Ibstock.

  ‘Comment? You have then met this Suzanne?’

  The woman turned a deep red. ‘It weren’t my wish, miss, I can tell you that. Only your pa knew as how I were the one as saw to you at the wet-nurse’s cottage, and he got a-hold of me and made me bring him to you.’

  ‘Eh bien? And so?’

  ‘He says as how he’s going to take you with him to France with his new wife.’ Joan sniffed. ‘Well! I hadn’t no notion as he’d got hisself married again. I didn’t believe him and I said so. I said as how I’d tell Mr Jarvis as he wanted to take you away. So he bring me to see this Suzanne, who were staying at an inn nearby.’

  ‘But it is imbecile,’ interrupted Melusine, struck by the impracticalities of her father’s scheme. ‘To take a baby all the way to France without a wet-nurse.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Joan Ibstock shamefacedly. She went across to the little window again, her back to Melusine. ‘He arst me to find him someone who might go with you. I’m that shamed to confess it, miss, but it were then I thought of Martha.’

  Melusine stared. ‘Martha was my wet-nurse? But she is unmarried.’

  Joan nodded, her face still averted. ‘Aye, that she was. Fell to sin, did Martha. Took and ran away when she got herself with child. Only she sent me a message, and together we found a cottage for her to stay at. An old woman took her in. She were brought to bed a few days after Miss Mary. Only her babe died. And so—’

  ‘And so she was able to become my—’ Melusine did not say it, for wet-nurse no longer seemed appropriate. Martha had been more to her than that.

  ‘It was a good chance for a new life,’ Joan explained, venturing to face Melusine again, ‘and Martha took it. Small blame to her. But we were both pledged to secrecy, and I couldn’t reveal my part for fear that I would lose my place. For Mr Jarvis was beside himself when the letter come from Mr Charvill and he knew he’d lost you as well as Miss Mary.’ Tears glistened in her eyes. ‘He’d have been that happy if he’d known how you’re the spit of her, miss.’

  Melusine jumped up, full of new hope, all the earlier clouds vanishing from her horizon. ‘But this is altogether a chance of the luckiest. You will be my witness, Madame Joan. When I shall go to the lawyers that have the interest of this estate Remenham, you will come with me.’

  ‘Me, miss?’ uttered Mrs Ibstock doubtfully. ‘Who’d believe me? And I’d have to tell my part in it all, too.’

  ‘What matters it?’ cried Melusine impatiently. ‘Who is to be angry with you now?’

  ‘Miss Prudence, that’s who,’ stated Joan bluntly. ‘What’s more, I wouldn’t blame her.’

  Arrested, Melusine eyed her with interest. ‘Prudence? This name I have heard it spoken. It is a very good English name, no? But who is she?’

  ‘Mrs Sindlesham, I should say,’ said Mrs Ibstock, correcting herself. ‘And she’s—’ She broke off, a sudden light in her eyes. ‘Why, that’s it. That’s who you ought to go and see, miss.’

  ‘Who, Joan, who? Of whom do you speak?’

  ‘Mrs Sindlesham. Mr Jarvis’s sister, that was. Leastways, she’d be your great-aunt, wouldn’t she?’

  Astounded, Melusine was just about to demand further information, when a commotion outside the room interrupted her. She turned towards the door, and had taken a pace towards it when it was flung open.

  Captain Roding strode into the parlour. He was no longer in military uniform, and it was evident from his suit of brown brocade that he had been disturbed while preparing for an evening engagement.

  Without preamble, in a voice of extreme exasperation, he demanded, ‘Now what the devil’s to do? What in God’s name do you mean by sending Gerald such a ridiculous letter? Never read anything half as crazy. What do you mean by it, eh?’

  ‘But I did not send it to you,’ Melusine rejoined instantly. ‘Where is Gérard?’

  ‘Out of town,’ Hilary said briefly. ‘And I’d like to know what the devil—’

  ‘Out of town?’ repeated Melusine, stupefied. ‘Parbleu, is this a moment to be out of town? What is the matter with him that he is out of town when I need him?’

  ‘Famous!’ uttered a new voice from the doorway. ‘I knew
you would be furious. Did I not say so, Hilary?’

  Melusine’s glance shot across to the newcomer, and found a petite blonde standing there, very fashionably attired in a velvet mantel over an apple-green robe, the furred hood framing a face alive with mischief. She came quickly into the little parlour, which now seemed inordinately crowded, and coming up to Melusine, seized her hands in a warm clasp.

  ‘How do you do? I am so happy to meet you. I am Lucilla Froxfield, you must know. I am betrothed to Captain Roding, which is why you can’t have him, you see.’ She smiled on the last words, adding, ‘Oh, I don’t blame you for trying. He is delightful, is he not?’

  ‘That will do, Lucilla.’

  Melusine found her tongue. ‘If you mean this capitaine, he is on the contrary altogether the least delightful person I have met.’

  ‘What, even less delightful than Gerald?’ enquired Lucilla, her eyes dancing.

  ‘As to that, I am at this moment altogether displeased with Gérard, you understand,’ Melusine temporised.

  ‘I rather gathered as much,’ said Miss Froxfield, releasing her hands. ‘And I do understand. Quite trying of him not to be there when he is wanted. But that is men all over.’

  ‘Yes, and it seems to me a very strange thing that he interferes all the time in my affairs when I do not want him to do so,’ Melusine said aggrievedly, ‘and the very first time that I wish him in truth to rescue me, he is not there. Parbleu, but I will certainly kill him this time.’

  A peal of delighted laughter greeted this threat. ‘Yes, do,’ approved Lucilla. ‘Will you—what was it?—“blow off his head”?’

  Melusine eyed her, a little uncertain. ‘You make a game with me, I think.’

  ‘No, no,’ the other lady assured her with a twinkle. ‘I can’t tell you the times I’ve wished for a gun to point at Hilary’s head. Perhaps I may borrow yours one day?’

  ‘Lucilla, you wretch,’ burst from the captain.

  ‘But she will not shoot you,’ Melusine told him flatly. ‘One does not blow off the head of a man with whom one is in love, en effet.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure,’ said Miss Froxfield darkly, with a mischievous glance at her betrothed.

  ‘I can’t help but be sure,’ he returned shortly. ‘You wouldn’t know one end of a pistol from the other.’ He turned to Melusine, ignoring the indignant protest that greeted his words. ‘And it may interest you to know, mademoiselle, that the first thing Gerald must needs do on reaching town is to rush off to that convent of yours to make sure you were safe.’

  ‘Truly?’ asked Melusine, warmth lighting her bosom. ‘But I was not there.’

  ‘Of course you weren’t there,’ snapped Hilary. ‘Knew you had the lad with you, and thought you were merely delayed. So he made his dispositions and went off on some other fool’s errand.’

  ‘But what dispositions?’

  ‘Posted the men I had brought back with me all about Golden Square to watch for Valade.’

  ‘Ah, that was well done of him,’ exclaimed Melusine. ‘In this case, I will not kill him at all, even that he should have remained to wait for my letter.’

  ‘Well, I am glad he did not,’ intervened Lucilla, forestalling another withering comment from the captain. ‘For your messenger was obliged instead to come and find Hilary, and it has given me the opportunity to meet you. And I have wanted to so very much.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Melusine, astonished, and somewhat overwhelmed by the other girl’s volubility.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Such a mystery as you have set up. Anyone would be intrigued.’

  ‘Yes, but I do not wish to have a mystery.’

  ‘It cannot be helped now. Oh, and only look at those stains,’ cried Miss Froxfield, gesturing at the blood on the ruffles to the sleeves of Melusine’s riding-habit, and on the chemise she wore under it.

  Melusine shrugged. ‘It is nothing. One little minute with soap and water, voilà tout.’

  ‘Glad you’re so sanguine,’ interrupted Captain Roding. ‘Gerald had to change both shirt and breeches.’

  The reference to Major Alderley’s wounds reminded Melusine all at once of the fight they’d had, and its consequence. Peste, she had forgot the sword. What was to happen now? She turned to Roding quickly.

  ‘You have come to me in place of Gérard? But how is it you will help me?’

  ‘That’s all right and tight. We’ve brought a carriage to take you back to London, and I’ve settled with Trodger, who has just given me a coherent account of the affair. You’re neither of you any longer under arrest.’

  ‘Ah, then indeed I thank you,’ said Melusine on a sigh of relief, moved for once to smile at the captain. ‘But my poor Jacques is wounded and—’

  ‘All taken care of,’ interrupted Hilary. ‘There’s a surgeon on his way, and my men are under orders to do whatever is needful. When the lad is fit to be moved, we’ll bring him home.’

  Melusine blinked at this competence. ‘But—’

  ‘Nothing at all for you to worry your head over,’ said the captain, moving to try and usher her forth. ‘You’ll come with us and get yourself safe back home to your convent, understand?’

  ‘But wait,’ begged Melusine, hanging back. ‘First I must see Jacques, and—’

  ‘No need for that,’ intervened Roding, grasping her arm and trying to drag her to the door. ‘Come along. Where is your hat?’

  ‘Parbleu, is this a way to rescue me?’ Melusine demanded, digging in her heels and wrenching her arm out of his hold. ‘I have first some affairs to finish.’

  ‘Yes, Hilary, do stop hustling the girl,’ put in Miss Froxfield, much to Melusine’s relief and approval. Shoving between them, she confronted the captain herself. ‘For my part, I am in no hurry to end this exciting little adventure.’

  ‘Adventure!’

  But this sally was not attended to, Lucilla turning at once to Melusine. She put back her hood in a determined way. ‘Go on up to the boy, my dear. I will hold Hilary in check, never fear.’

  ‘Merci.’

  About to hurry from the little parlour, Melusine remembered Mrs Ibstock. She whipped round suddenly, and discovered the woman wedged into the corner by the window, keeping out of the way.

  ‘Ah, Madame Joan. This woman knows me—’ throwing the remark at Lucilla ‘—and that I am the daughter of Mary Remenham. It is very important because I have lost my proof. She will tell you all the story while I am gone.’

  Then she whisked from the room, hearing Lucilla utter a delighted squeal as she closed the door behind her. This Joan would hold them for a little. Enough to let her find out a piece of information most urgent.

  Trodger was lying in wait at the bottom of the narrow stairs. ‘Now then, missie, where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘I must see Jacques only for one little minute,’ Melusine told him prettily, fluttering her lashes. ‘It is to say goodbye, you understand.’

  ‘Is it, now? Well you won’t, then, for he won’t hear nothing, missie. Fast asleep, he is.’

  Melusine spread her hands and sighed. ‘But you do not understand, mon ami. Even that he sleeps, I must give to him my thanks, for he has been excessively brave for me.’

  The sergeant’s air became positively avuncular. ‘Ah, trying to be the young hero, I take it, which is why he near got hisself killed. Many’s the young ’un I’ve seen get hisself into just such a knuckleheaded mess all on account of a pretty wench.’

  ‘But I find it was extremely kind of him,’ protested Melusine, ‘and since it is that he is not any more under arrest—’

  ‘No, he ain’t,’ interrupted Trodger in some dudgeon. ‘And I don’t mind telling you it goes agin’ the grain with me to let you go free and all, missie.’

  ‘But I have told you that your capitaine would not like it that you arrest me.’

  ‘Now that’s where you’re wrong. Left to Capting Roding, as he told me hisself, you’d be in prison this moment. Only the major won’t have it, and we’v
e to bide by what the major says.’

  ‘Merci, Gérard,’ Melusine muttered under her breath, adding aloud, ‘And the major, he will also wish that you let me go to see Jacques. Please to let me go there.’

  Grudgingly, the sergeant shifted aside and allowed her access to the stairs, grumbling to her retreating back, ‘If I’d me way, missie, I’d send you back to France where you ought never to have come away from, if you arst me.’

  Melusine might have responded that she had not asked him, but she was too intent on her mission. She must speak to Jack. If he was asleep, then she much regretted that she must wake him up.

  In fact, Kimble was drowsily awake when she entered the little bedchamber, the state of which left a good deal to be desired, even without the added debris arising from tending a wounded man. It was dusty, with dirty clothing strewn about, a cracked basin thick with grime on the rickety dresser, and a film of grease on the leaded casement.

  Melusine, intent on the luckless Kimble, did not care. At sight of his wan features, she forgot the urgency of her need for a moment, and fell to her knees at his bedside, placing her hands on his slack ones where they lay on the soiled coverlet.

  ‘Oh, Jacques, I cannot forgive myself!’

  ‘Never you fret, miss,’ he uttered at once in a faint voice. ‘Ain’t no call for you to go a-blaming of yourself.’

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Melusine confided. ‘And all to help me.’

  ‘Not dead, miss. And I’d do it again for you if needs be.’

  ‘Do not say so. You are to remain here until you are well. That capitaine has arranged it all. En tout cas, I will not permit that you endanger yourself again for me.’

  ‘I chose to come with you, miss,’ Jack interrupted more firmly. ‘And I wouldn’t be no sort of a man if I’d heard what I heard, and gone off and left you.’

  That arrested her. ‘You heard Gosse—I mean, the man you know as Valade?’

  ‘Clear as day, miss,’ he uttered. ‘Brung the lantern, I did, and opened the door again in case you was ready. Heard voices. Knew something was up. You were only one room removed from the library, see. Saw the villain through the keyhole. So I come round the other way and—Lordy, miss, I’m that sorry I made a mull of it.’ He shifted unguardedly, and hissed a breath, wincing.

  ‘Do not speak any more for you give yourself pain,’ said Melusine fearfully.

  ‘I must. Something to tell you.’

  ‘And do not say you made a mull. I find you were excessively brave, mon pauvre.’ Then she frowned. ‘You wish to tell me something? Parbleu, I have nearly forgot once more. Me, I have a question for you first. The sword, Jacques.’

  Jack blinked at her. ‘Just what I was going to tell you, miss. It’s on the horse.’

  ‘The horse?’ echoed Melusine. ‘But it is not on the horse at all, Jacques. That is why I ask you. I have forgot all about the sword until the capitaine has come. But I have remembered the horse and have asked this sergeant that a soldier fetch him. I told the soldier how he must go by the passage, and he found it and brought it here. But he did not find the sword of monsieur le major, for this sergeant would have recognised it and told me that I am arrested again.’ She stopped, for Jack was feebly laughing. ‘But what is it that amuses you, Jacques?’

  Kimble’s grin spread wider. ‘I’ll wager that militiaman never rode the animal, then.’

  ‘I do not think so,’ Melusine agreed, still puzzled.

  ‘If he had, he’d have found the sword, see. Or felt it. It’s well hidden, miss. Wasn’t easy, I can tell you. But I wrapped it in that nun’s gear you give me. Then I tucked it nice and snug under the saddle-bag. Couldn’t fit it inside, but the horse’s blanket lay over it, and, like I said, as long as no one rides him and don’t remove the blanket, I think it’ll stay hid.’

  ‘But you are excessively clever, Jacques,’ cried Melusine, relief flooding her. ‘Certainly no one will find it. I must have this beast brought to London with me, that is seen. He must be tied behind the carriage.’

  She put in her request for this requirement immediately on returning to the little parlour downstairs, and instantly fell foul of Captain Roding again.

  ‘Tie a horse behind the carriage?’ he echoed incredulously. ‘What the devil for? I’ll have one of the men ride the creature up tomorrow.’

  ‘But, no,’ cried Melusine anxiously. ‘It is excessively important that the horse comes with us.’

  She saw suspicion darken his gaze. ‘Why?’

  Melusine eyed him dubiously. ‘Pray you, do me this one little service, and do not ask me why.’

  ‘Are you off your head? Think I don’t know you’re up to some mischief or other?’

  Melusine feigned innocence. ‘What mischief?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’ll go bail you’re at something. I’m not Gerald, remember.’

  ‘It is well seen you are not Gérard,’ Melusine said, but thankful now that he was not. Gerald would certainly have demanded back his sword. Captain Roding either did not know, or did not remember that she had it. She turned to Lucilla, a plea in her face. ‘Pray you, mademoiselle, can you not—’

  ‘No use trying to enlist Lucilla’s aid,’ snapped Roding. ‘Either you tell me why you want the wretched animal, or it stays here.’

  ‘But, Hilary—’

  ‘Don’t you begin, Lucilla, for I won’t stand for it.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Miss Froxfield frostily.

  ‘Do not beg his pardon,’ intervened Melusine quickly, coming between them. ‘Eh bien, I will tell you. You see, the horse it does not belong to me, nor to the nuns. It is the horse of the priest, you understand, and—and he does not know that I have borrowed it.’

  Captain Roding stared at her, his jaw dropping, while Lucilla hastily turned away, although Melusine caught the laughter in her face.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ enquired the captain at length, ‘that you have had the infernal audacity, the—the gall, the—the— Gad, it’s an outrage! You’ve stolen a horse from a priest?’

  ‘I did not steal it,’ protested Melusine hotly. ‘I have only borrowed it.’

  ‘Without permission.’

  ‘Oui, mais—’

  ‘You are, without exception, the most unprincipled, the most unscrupulous, the most shameless, immoral, devious—’

  ‘Pardon me, sir,’ burst in Mrs Ibstock suddenly, her tone belligerent, bringing the captain’s tirade to an abrupt halt as he turned to glare at her. ‘Ain’t my place, I know that. But stand by and hear such things said about my late mistress’s daughter, I won’t.’

  ‘Bravo,’ applauded Lucilla, clapping her hands.

  ‘Merci, Joan,’ cried Melusine, moving to her and seizing her hand which she clasped between both her own for a moment, as she turned to the others. ‘Now you see why it is I no longer require the proof of which I have spoken.’

  ‘What is all this about your proof?’ demanded Roding, diverted.

  ‘This was a picture of Mary Remenham that I have found today. I thought it was a mirror at the first, for it was so very like myself.’

  ‘So that was it. Couldn’t make head nor tail of that note of yours. Barring that the Valade fellow had sneaked back. And I’ll have that story off you as we journey back to town. How the devil did you break a picture?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse, Hilary. She hit the villain with it. She said that in the note.’

  ‘It’s no use you being superior,’ said Roding severely. ‘You didn’t understand it any better than I.’

  ‘Well, I do now,’ Lucilla said firmly, and turned back to Melusine. ‘What did you do with the portrait then? Not that I suppose it is much use any longer. Was it ruined?’

  ‘But yes, it was entirely ruined. And I think also that Gosse—I mean that one who calls himself Valade—stole it. Only now it does not matter at all because Joan has come and has seen me.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Lucilla excitedly, ‘and she has been telling us how much of a
friend she was to your mother. How fortunate that she recognises the resemblance.’

  ‘Couldn’t help but do so, ma’am,’ said Mrs Ibstock. ‘Knowed it the instant I set eyes on her. Miss Mary to the life, I said, and so she is.’

  ‘I suppose you want to take her along as well as that infernal stolen horse?’ said Hilary sarcastically.

  ‘I have said it is not stolen,’ snapped Melusine indignantly. ‘And certainly I wish that Joan will come with us.’

  Miss Froxfield intervened quickly as her betrothed showed signs of erupting again. ‘I don’t think you need do that, Melusine—if I may call you so. After all, you may easily come to fetch Mrs Ibstock when you need her. It must be some days before you can arrange for her to make an identification.’

  ‘Yes, that is reasonable,’ agreed Melusine, nodding.

  Lucilla shoved Roding out of the way so that she could take hold of Melusine’s hands again. ‘And you know, my dear, I do think you must make up your mind to beard this wretched grandfather of yours. After all, if Valade—or no, what did you say was the villain’s name?’

  ‘Gosse,’ Melusine supplied.

  ‘Well, if the fellow Gosse is still at large, there’s no saying what he will be at next, is there? I see nothing for it but for you to see General Lord Charvill at once. After all—’

  ‘Yes, but I do not wish to see him,’ Melusine protested. ‘And it is perhaps not so necessary that I do so, because Joan has told me of another who may like to say I am the daughter of Mary Remenham.’

  ‘Who is that?’ demanded Lucilla eagerly.

  ‘I do not remember the name,’ Melusine said, turning to Mrs Ibstock. ‘You said?’

  ‘Mrs Sindlesham, your great-aunt, miss.’

  Roding started. ‘Sindlesham? But Gerald has gone out of town to visit that very person.’