Mademoiselle At Arms, Elizabeth Bailey [bearly read books txt] 📗
- Author: Elizabeth Bailey
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‘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.’
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—’
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