Mademoiselle At Arms, Elizabeth Bailey [bearly read books txt] 📗

>‘What can I do, miss?’

‘Nothing at all,’ cried Melusine. ‘I do not know if even I can do anything now. Oh, peste, he will ruin all. If he succeeds there, I do not know how I can prove myself.’

‘Melusine!’ came sharply from the doorway.

She turned quickly. The nun on the threshold was of middle age and heavily built, her back uneven from toil and her hands roughened. Martha had the square look of solid English citizenry, which was not deceiving. She came originally of country stock, and had been virtually in sole charge of Melusine almost from the hour of her birth—a thankless task, as Melusine had heard her bemoan countless times, with the rider that she had carried it out with a conspicuous lack of success.

Melusine sighed with frustration. Why must her old nurse discover her precisely at this moment?

‘What are you at now, may I ask?’ Martha glared at the footman. ‘Kimble, you shouldn’t be here. Not alone with her, that’s sure.’

‘No, sister, I know that, but—’

‘You needn’t tell me. Go away now, there’s a good lad. Must be plenty of work for you to do.’

‘But, sister, I—’

‘Get along!’

Melusine gave Jack a smile as he cast a worried look at her, and nodded dismissal. She turned to Martha as the lad exited by the back door, but her nurse forestalled anything she might have said.

‘Now then, my girl, why the long face?’

Melusine had no hesitation in placing her trouble before her old nurse, for it was Martha who had made her aware of her true history. She owed the nun a great deal, including her command of English, for no one else thought to ensure she could speak her mother tongue.

‘Oh, Marthe,’ she groaned, using in her accustomed way the French version of her nurse’s name, ‘that pig is going to monsieur le baron.’

‘Mercy me,’ gasped the nun. ‘The general himself?’

‘How shall I get my inheritance if the general will believe that pig?’

‘Do wish you wouldn’t keep on calling him a pig,’ Martha begged. ‘Not at all ladylike.’

‘Of what use to be ladylike when I cannot be a lady?’

‘None of that. You’re a lady all right and tight, and nothing anyone does can take that away from you.’

‘Yes, but if it is only we that know, it is of no use at all to me.’ She flounced back to stare out of the window again.

‘Well, if that’s what the good Lord wants, then you’ll just have to accept it.’

‘But me, I am not very good with accepting,’ Melusine said bitterly over her shoulder.

‘Oh, dearie me, I wish I’d never told you anything about it,’ lamented the nun, moving to the only chair the vestry possessed and sinking down into it. ‘All this gadding about. And don’t tell me what you’ve been up to, dashing off to Remenham House with that Kimble lad, and Lord knows what besides, because I don’t want to know. I’d only have to do something about it, and that I can’t. What our dear mother would say back home I dread to think.’

Melusine turned, an irrepressible giggle escaping her lips as she thought of the Mother Abbess in the convent at Blaye. ‘She would say, espéce de diable, this Melusine.’

‘And she’d be right,’ Martha said severely. ‘A devil is just what you are. It’s that father of yours you take after, no question.’

Melusine shrugged. ‘I do not wish to be like him, but it is entirely reasonable that it should be so.’

‘Aye, more’s the pity. But perhaps he was right not to tell you the truth.’

‘How can you say so?’ protested Melusine.

‘Well, only look what’s come of it. You won’t settle and I’m going mad.’ She shook her head. ‘I should never have told you.’

‘But, Marthe, you do not imagine that I would have taken the veil like you, even if you have not told me. And to wish not is useless, because you have told me from when I was a little girl.’

‘True enough,’ nodded Martha sadly. ‘Thought it was downright wicked to keep you ignorant of your proper background. How was I to know what would happen? He always said if he couldn’t get you a dowry, you could take the veil.’

‘He said!’ Melusine uttered scornfully. ‘What a fate he finds for me. Rather would I have gone with Leonardo—and he wished me to do so.’

‘Melusine,’ shrieked the nun. ‘That’s wicked, that is. You don’t know what you’re saying, and I hope you never will.’

‘Well, but Leonardo he was excessively useful to me, you know,’ Melusine said airily. ‘Many things he taught me. Things that you and the nuns would not think about for—’

She stopped, biting back the words “for a young girl”. If Martha knew all, she would certainly die of shock.

‘You were supposed to be nursing him,’ Martha grumbled, ‘and helping him convalesce. And Mother trusted him. Italians. That’s Italians for you.’

‘Pah! One little kiss, voilá tout.’

Martha got up with a swish of her black habit. ‘That little kiss cost him his sanctuary, my girl, and don’t you forget it.’

Melusine did not forget. She had agonized over it for weeks. Moreoever, it had cost her a whipping and several days’ imprisonment in her cell on bread and water. But her tears had been for Leonardo’s expulsion, and the loss of his companionship. He had changed her life dramatically, and she had missed him dreadfully.

‘Let me tell you,’ went on the nun severely, ‘it would have been better for you if you had taken the veil.’

‘You think it would have been better for me to stay as a nun and be killed like the Valades?’ said Melusine, brutally frank. ‘Or perhaps to marry the soi-disant cousin that Emile portrays?’

That silenced Martha, for the Mother Abbess had sent her off with Melusine to England not only for the sake of the girl herself, but to save at least one of her nuns from the growing wrath of the populace of France. Many a black veil hid a high-born dame, and the religious habit was no protection.

But Melusine’s own words had thrown an idea into her head. ‘Cousin? But I am a fool. Monsieur Charvill, he is also my cousin. If Emile can see him, then so also can I.’

‘What are you about now, child?’ demanded Martha apprehensively.

‘You know what I am about,’ exclaimed Melusine impatiently. ‘To go to these Charvill, it was not in my plot. I wish nothing at all from them. And by monsieur le baron, of a disposition entirely unforgiving, I do not desire to be recognised in the least. Now I require it, only that I may stop this pig from ruining all. Alors, one must steel oneself.’

***

 

Gerald Alderley stepped out of a house he had been visiting in Hamilton Place and the door closed behind him. He stood on the top step for a moment, lost in deep thought. As he hesitated, unable to make up his mind what to do for the best, a heavy rumbling on the cobbles penetrated his absorption.

He looked up to see an ancient coach making its ponderous way down the street. A grimy, battered object, which had no place in the fashionable quarter of town. It had evidently seen better days before being relegated to the ministrations of a hackney coachman, one who evidently served the less affluent inhabitants of London.

Gerald watched its approach with vague interest, which quickened when he saw that it was drawing up outside the very house out of which he had just stepped. The door opened. A black-garbed young lad leapt out and let down the steps. Immediately a feathered hat emerged, under which a familiar countenance was visible.

Of all the amazing coincidences. Though Gerald must suppose it was inevitable she should eventually come here. But to choose this of all moments. Or had she, like himself, been held up until the fellow returned to town? He waited, his ready humour anticipating her likely reaction.

Melusine—the real Melusine—evidently did not see him immediately, for her attention was on her descent from the high vehicle. She accomplished it with the aid of the young fellow’s hand, and stepped down into the road, glancing up at the house as she did so. Gerald saw her eyes change as she recognised him.

‘Oh, peste.’

‘How do you do?’ Gerald said pleasantly, stepping from the pillared portico and coming down the shallow stairway.

‘What do you do here?’ demanded the young lady, moving to meet him. ‘Again you seek to interfere in my affairs?’

‘I did warn you I had every intention of doing so,’ said Gerald. ‘And I am delighted to see that you are ready to admit that the Charvills—or rather the Valades—are indeed your affair.’

A multitude of changes flitted across Melusine’s features as she stood there for a space, unusually silent. Gerald guessed she was biting her tongue on an explosive retort as she eyed him. No doubt she was wondering what he had done in Charvill’s house and what he intended now. That she was provoked by his interference was obvious.

Aware of the footman hovering, and the hackney coachman’s curious eyes looking down from his box, Gerald leaned a little towards her and spoke in a lowered tone.

‘Come, mademoiselle, it is of no use to conceal anything from me, you know. Which are you—Valade or Charvill? Or, no, let me guess. Both, perhaps?’

At that, her eyes darkened with fury. ‘I have told you that I am entirely English.’

‘Charvill, then,’ Gerald concluded, unperturbed.

‘This is altogether insupportable!’

She dug a hand into the recesses of the petticoat of her riding habit and a moment later Gerald found himself once again confronting the barrel of her overlarge and tarnished pistol. There was a concerted gasp of shock from both the black-garbed lad and the coachman.

‘Don’t, miss,’ uttered the boy.

‘Don’t concern yourself,’ Gerald said calmly. ‘She won’t.’

He took a pace forward, seizing the gun with one hand, while the other locked her arm so that he could forcibly wrest the weapon from her. The struggle was brief, and Gerald stepped aside, the pistol in his possession, while the girl Melusine stood trembling and glaring. She turned on the lad with her, who was visibly relieved.

‘Jacques! This—this bête he attacks me, and you stand there and you do nothing.’

‘But he’s a major of militia, miss.’

Gerald noted the mixture of respect and apprehension in the glance he received from the boy. ‘You see, unlike you, mademoiselle, your cavalier here would not wish to be arrested.’

‘You will not arrest him, because I will shoot you first,’ snapped Melusine.

‘But I have the pistol,’ Gerald pointed out. He looked the boy over with interest. ‘I suppose he isn’t this Leonardo you spoke of?’

‘Certainly he is not Leonardo. He is Jacques. En tout cas, Leonardo is also a soldier.’

‘Oh, is he?’ Gerald said grimly.

‘Give me my pistol!’

Gerald shook his head, slipping the pistol into his pocket. ‘I can’t do that. Besides, you cannot visit people armed with a pistol in London, you know. It is not at all comme il faut.’ He bowed slightly, and indicated the house behind them with a wave of his hand. ‘But don’t let me stop you from going to see Charvill. That is why you came here, isn’t it?’

‘Alors, now we know who is the spy, Monsieur Gérard.’

‘And now we know also who is the prétendant, Mademoiselle Charvill.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Ah, yes? To what do I pretend?’

‘That,’ Gerald said regretfully, ‘I have not yet been able to fathom.’

‘And you will not,’ came triumphantly from the cherry lips. ‘So now you will please to go away and leave me to my business.’

‘But I am not stopping you from carrying on your business. Why don’t you