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

>Glancing swiftly towards the doorway, Gerald saw his friend’s disbelieving face and burst out, speaking over the top of Melusine as she made another grab for the little square of linen.

‘This idiotic female—’

‘This imbecile has made me—’

‘—made me lose my temper, and I—’

‘—cut him with my dagger, and he is—’

‘—damn near slit her throat!’

‘—bleeding like a pig!’

‘Whoa, whoa!’ stormed the captain, starting forward.

Next instant, Gerald felt his wrist seized in an iron grip. It was wrenched away from Melusine’s clutching hands.

‘Gad, what a mess!’

Gerald pulled free, and Melusine broke back, staring at him. Her neck was smeared with red and remorse flooded him.

‘Oh, my God, Melusine, what have I done?’

Melusine shook her head. ‘No. It is what I have done.’

‘Don’t start arguing again, for God’s sake,’ snapped Roding irritably, dragging out his own large pocket-handkerchief. ‘If ever I met such a pair of lunatics!’

‘Give me that, Hilary,’ Gerald said at once, ignoring his remark and reaching out for the handkerchief. ‘She’s still bleeding.’

His friend held it out of the way. ‘So are you.’

‘But—’

‘You’ll get her all over blood again. Let me bind you up, and then you can attend to her.’

To Gerald’s chagrin, Melusine regarded Hilary with approval.

‘That is very sensible, mon capitaine. But I do not need that Gérard attend. I will be very well without him.’

‘Which is exactly what started us off,’ Gerald said to his friend with a grin, as he gave up his injured hand to the other’s ministrations.

‘What started you off, you madman,’ Roding told him frankly, as he set about tying his handkerchief around the wound, ‘was being born at all.’

‘That wasn’t my fault.’

‘No, but you’ve made up for it since.’

Gerald laughed. ‘This from a man who calls himself my friend.’

‘Yes, well, I was too young to see it,’ the captain said, tying a knot in his makeshift bandage. ‘Too late by the time I realised to what a dunderhead I’d pledged my friendship.’

‘You mean imbecile, don’t you?’ Gerald said, and turned his head to share the joke with Melusine.

She was no longer there.

Consternation gripped him. ‘Oh, my God, she’s gone!’

Wrenching his hand from his friend’s slackened grasp, he darted for the door, Roding behind him.

‘How the deuce did she get out without me seeing her?’

‘Took advantage of the distraction, cunning little devil,’ Gerald snapped, racing down the corridor.

‘But you know everything now,’ protested Hilary, keeping pace as Gerald took the stairs two at a time. ‘Where’s the sense in running away?’

‘Doesn’t trust me,’ Gerald said briefly.

He reached the top floor and ran down the corridor to the little dressing room at the end where he had lost her before. It was empty. Gerald kicked the panelled wall in frustration.

‘Damnation! Too late.’

‘Wait!’ Leaning forward, Hilary tapped on the panel. ‘Hollow.’

Triumph leapt in Gerald’s chest. ‘The secret passage!’

It did not take long to find the mechanism of the candlesconce that opened the door. Gerald studied the darkness beyond the aperture.

‘Think it’s worth getting some sort of light and following her down there?’ asked Roding. ‘That is, if she’s gone that way.’

Gerald considered. ‘I doubt it. Though I’ll wager she used this passage, and we certainly ought to investigate it.’

‘What about the lad?’ said the captain suddenly. ‘Must be still downstairs.’

‘She will have taken him with her. And it’s no use thinking he’d stop her. The boy’s besotted.’ He thought Roding gave him an odd look, but his next question was already in his head. ‘What did you tell Valade?’

‘Well, when I asked him what he wanted, he told me straight out that he had been told his wife was related to Jarvis Remenham, and he had come to see whoever lived here now that Jarvis was dead.’

‘So Charvill did tell him,’ Gerald said, once more staring into the hole in the wall.

‘Looks like it. In any event, I explained that no one lived here and that we’d been called in because of suspected intruders.’ Roding’s voice changed. ‘That piece of information seemed to interest him very much.’

Gerald looked round. ‘Did it indeed?’

‘I should think he’s guessed, don’t you?’

‘Without any doubt at all.’

‘Oh, she’ll be safe enough, Gerald. He doesn’t know where she is, and I told him he’d have to apply to Remenham’s lawyers if he wanted anything to do with this place.’

Gerald’s jaw tightened. ‘That’s not much comfort. He must know she’ll be at a convent. Where else could she go?’

‘And there aren’t too many of them around,’ agreed Hilary on a gloomy note.

‘She hasn’t said so, but I presume Valade had got hold of all the useful papers,’ Gerald went on. ‘Which means if he goes to the lawyers, he’ll get in ahead of Melusine. She has no proof—yet.’ He sighed. ‘No, I don’t see much future in pursuing her down this passage. We’ll have Trodger check it out later.’

He closed the panel and came slowly out of the little dressing-room, Roding at his heels.

‘Suppose you don’t know what sort of proof she was after?’ he asked.

‘That’s what started the fracas,’ Gerald admitted ruefully, nursing his injured hand as he recalled it. ‘She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘Take care,’ warned Hilary, his eyes on his improvised bandage. ‘Don’t want it to break out bleeding again.’

‘Lord, man, it’s only a scratch!’ Suddenly Gerald snapped his fingers. ‘Wait a minute, though. Proof? There is someone who might be willing to help. Why in heaven’s name didn’t I think of that before?’

‘What are you talking of?’

‘Never mind that now. I’ll have to make a visit out of town. But first, we’ve got to secure the convent. I’ll need you to go back to the barracks and fetch more men up to town. Not Trodger. We’ll leave him here, with a couple of others.’

‘Think Valade will come back here then?’

‘Melusine thinks so,’ Gerald said, pausing at the top of the stairs. He looked at his friend. ‘What would you do in Valade’s place?’

‘You mean, knowing that the girl was here and liable to queer my pitch?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Get rid of the wench,’ Roding said brutally.

Gerald’s chest tightened. ‘Yes, I thought you’d say that.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘In Valade’s place, with so much at stake—and more perhaps than he thought, for if he goes to the lawyers he’s bound to find out about this house—’

Hilary said it for him. ‘You’d do the same.’

There was a silence. Abruptly, Gerald turned. ‘Come on. I’ve to collect my sword and hat, and then we must get back to London. Fast.’

Speeding down the two flights of stairs, Gerald mentally thanked God that it was the practice of himself and Roding—in case of emergency, of which this was a prime example—to stable their horses at the posting inns all the way to London. He had got here at speed by that means. By now the horses would be rested and he might go as swiftly back again.

But on arriving in the tattered saloon where he and Melusine had hidden, a shock awaited Gerald. One swift glance about the room, and a sensation of grim foreboding swept through him.

‘She knows what she’s up against. She’s taken my sword.’

***

 

The tapping for which Melusine had been waiting came at last. She sighed with relief. It was cramped even at the end of the passage. It was also cold, and dark, for there had been no time to light the lantern.

‘Jacques?’ she called.

‘They’ve gone, miss,’ came the answer, muffled through the panel door.

‘Then open it quickly.’

It was a wait of several minutes while Melusine chafed. She guessed Jack was having trouble finding the right piece of carving. At last the panel swung back into the library. Melusine grasped the hilt of the sword she had been carefully holding, and came out into the light.

‘Parbleu, but it is not comfortable in the least in there. Such a time that it takes for them to go.’

‘Only a few minutes, miss. I waited for them to get right out of the grounds. They went to the gate and stopped there, gabbed with their men, and didn’t even dismount. Then they rode off at speed.’

Melusine nodded. ‘Gérard will think that I have gone back to London. That is good.’

‘I still think you ought to have waited, miss. That there Frenchie didn’t look any too friendly to me.’

‘Certainly he is not a friend,’ Melusine agreed, ‘but he has gone, after all.’

‘Begging your pardon, miss, but I think as how you ought to go back to London,’ Jack ventured.

‘I will do so. But first,’ said Melusine with determination, ‘I will find that which I came to find. Everyone has gone away again, so that I can do so all alone.’

‘Alone, miss?’

‘Certainly alone. Do you not remember that this capitaine has heard us talking? You may believe that Gérard will not let the soldiers leave from the gate. If they come here to walk around, they will hear us. So you, Jacques, must go and wait for me with the horse. Only first you must find the lantern and light it again and leave it here, near the door, for me to find.’

‘But—’

‘Do not argue with me, but go at once,’ ordered Melusine swiftly, taking a high tone intended to subdue the independent spirit Kimble had lately shown himself to possess. She held out the foil. ‘And take you this sword. Stow it in the saddle, for I will take it with me.’

Kimble frowned direfully, staring at the weapon with its gold hilt and decorative pattern down the blade. Suspicion was in his face.

‘Where did you get that, miss?’

‘It is the sword of monsieur le major.’

‘How did you come by it? You didn’t steal it, did you?’

‘Certainly I did not steal it,’ said Melusine indignantly. ‘I have only borrowed it.’

‘What?’ squeaked Kimble. ‘But the major—’

‘The major can say nothing at all. Has he not himself taken my daggers and my pistol and my knife? Alors, he has given me back my pistol and one dagger,’ she conceded conscientiously, ‘which is a very good thing. And you need not fear that I shall not give back the sword when I have finished using it.’

‘But what do you want it for, miss?’

‘But to protect myself. Do not be a fool, Jacques. And go quickly that I may finish to search.’

She thrust him into the aperture, and pushed the hilt of the sword into his hand. Next moment, she had shut the bookshelf panel upon him.

Melusine sighed with relief at being alone at last and free to resume her search among the portraits. Leaving the library by the same door she had first used to enter it earlier that day, she crossed the two little antechambers and moved on through the rooms. She made a slow tour of the front of the house without success, and then started back along the rooms behind, dragging open the drapes each time to get just enough light to recognise what was on the walls.

As time went on, she began to think Martha had been mistaken. When she judged that she must be nearly back at the library, she began to feel somewhat dispirited. Would she ever find it?

Sighing, she opened the door to the next room, and drew back the drapes. One of the shutters was a trifle damaged, letting in added light. Melusine turned to look at the walls, and saw, immediately opposite, set between two candelabra above a marquetry side table, a gilded mirror.

‘Ah, now I may see what damage Gérard has