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

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 unfolded 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