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

dare accuse? It is yourself you should arrest.’

Gerald could not resist. He looked at Hilary and nodded. ‘She’s perfectly right.’ He threw one arm across his own chest and clapped himself on the shoulder. ‘Major Gerald Alderley, I arrest you in the name of the King.’

A peal of laughter came from the girl. ‘It is imbecile that you are. You cannot arrest yourself.’

‘Will you have done, Gerald?’ demanded Hilary, exasperated. ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re playing at?’

‘Let me alone, man,’ Gerald muttered under his breath. ‘I told you I could handle her.’

‘Well, don’t blame me if you get your head blown off.’

‘It is you who will get the head blown off,’ threatened the young lady fiercely. ‘It will suit me very well that you go away, because you are a person without sense and I do not wish to talk to you.’

‘Eh?’

Gerald grinned at Hilary’s blank expression, and was gratified when the girl turned a brilliant smile upon himself.

‘But you,’ she said in the friendliest way imaginable, ‘are a person tout à fait sympathique, I think. I will permit you to rescue me.’

‘It will give me the greatest of pleasure,’ Gerald said at once, making an elegant leg. ‘Only perhaps I can more readily do so if you will put down that pistol.’

The lady frowned suspiciously. ‘I think it is better if I hold the pistol. Then, if you are bad to me, I can more easily blow off your head.’

‘You see? Not to be trusted,’ Hilary uttered disgustedly. ‘And what is it you’re to rescue her from, I should like to know.’

‘From you,’ the lady threw at him furiously. ‘You are stubborn like a mule. Why do you not go away?’

‘Yes, do go away,’ begged Gerald. ‘You are really not helping matters, my friend.’

Captain Roding looked frowningly from one to the other. The lady reseated herself, watching him expectantly. He shrugged and, to Gerald’s relief, made to leave at last.

‘You’re as mad as she is, Gerald. I’ll be waiting for you outside.’

‘No, no, go and fetch the men to the house. And tell Pottiswick to mend that lock we broke.’

‘We!’ said Hilary witheringly, and went off as Gerald laughed and turned back to the lady.

She was frowning, but it was evident that her initial fright had left her. The ruffled chemise-front under the wide lapels of her waistcoat and jacket no longer quivered, and her pose, with the full cloth petticoat spreading about her, was relaxed. Only her ungloved fingers, and the arms in their long tight sleeves as she held the heavy gun aloft, bore any sign of stiffness.

She addressed him in a tone of puzzlement. ‘Why does this person say you are mad?’

‘Because I am risking having my head blown off,’ Gerald answered cheerfully.

The girl nodded sagely. ‘And me?’

‘Oh, you’re mad because you wish to blow off my head.’

A radiant smile dawned. ‘Then I am not mad in the least. I do not wish to blow off a head, you understand.’

‘I am relieved to hear it.’

The smile vanished. ‘But to do only what one wishes, it is not always convenient.’

‘Consider me warned,’ said Gerald solemnly. He removed his cocked hat and came towards her. ‘You don’t mind if I sit down?’

She considered him a moment, her head a little on one side. ‘You are, I think, a gentleman, no?’

Gerald bowed. ‘I try to be.’

‘Ah, that is good,’ sighed the lady. ‘You do not say, “I am a gentleman born.” Frenchmen, they are different.’ She released the pistol which lay in her lap and gestured expressively with her hands. ‘They hold their nose up, so. And look down, so. Englishmen also certainly. But only inside, you understand, that one cannot see it.’

Her conversation was wonderful, Gerald decided. And she was as shrewd as they come. ‘You seem to understand the gentry very well.’

‘You see, I am of them,’ she said seriously, ‘but not with them—yet.’ With pretty imperiousness, she gestured to the bed beside her. ‘Please to sit, monsieur. I am not afraid that you may try to make love to me.’

‘What?’ uttered Gerald, startled.

The thought had not even occurred to him. He was not, in truth, much of a ladies’ man. Which was not to say that ladies were not interested in him. But Gerald took it for the routine interest in an eligible bachelor, although he was aware many females had an eye for scarlet regimentals. He spoke the automatic thought that entered his mind.

‘I should not dream of forcing my attentions on you.’

‘No, you are a gentleman,’ she agreed. ‘And me, I am a lady. Voilà tout.’

Such simple faith touched Gerald. He refrained from pointing out that the case would be exactly the same if she was not a lady. He sat on the bed, throwing aside his hat.

‘That is settled then. May I know your name?’

The lady eyed him. He waited. She frowned, appearing to think for a moment. Then she shrugged.

‘Eh bien. It is Thérèse. Ah, no, I have it wrong.’ With care, she gave it an English pronunciation. ‘Tee-ree-sa.’

Gerald tutted. ‘You must think me a fool, mademoiselle.’

The eyes flashed momentarily. Then the long lashes sank demurely over them. ‘You do not like it?’

‘That is hardly the point.’

She looked up again and smiled sweetly. ‘You do not think it is enough English. I will endeavour.’ She bit her lip and thought deeply. Something seemed to dredge up from the recesses of her memory and she brightened. ‘How is this? Proo-den-ss.’

Gerald gazed at her without expression. ‘Very inventive.’

‘But it is a very good English name,’ she protested.

‘Very. But it is not your name. Nor is Theresa, or even Thérèse.’

The lady opened her eyes very wide indeed. ‘You do not believe me?’

‘I do not.’

‘Pah!’

‘Precisely.’

She let out a peal of laughter. ‘You are not at all stupid. Even if you pretend sometimes to be without sense.’

‘Well, let us leave your name for the present. From what do you wish to be rescued?’

The girl fluttered her eyelashes, sighed dramatically and spread her hands. ‘I escape from a fate entirely misérable, you understand.’

‘Indeed?’ Gerald said politely. ‘What is this fate?’

‘Un mariage of no distinction. My husband, he is cruel and wicked, and—and entirely undistinguished. It is very bad.’

‘Your husband?’ Gerald tutted. ‘I agree with you. That is very bad indeed. I shall be delighted to rescue you. Where is this undistinguished husband?’ Leaping to his feet he seized his sword hilt and partly withdrew it from its sheath, saying dramatically, ‘I shall kill him immediately!’

Her eyes widened, but she did not move. ‘Kill him? Oh.’ The lady’s gaze dwelled thoughtfully on the half-drawn sword and then came up to meet his, an odd look in her eyes. ‘He is not in England, you understand. I have—run away.’

‘That I do not doubt,’ Gerald muttered drily, but added in a tone of intense satisfaction, ‘Then this husband is still in France? Excellent.’ The sword was released to slide back into its scabbard. ‘In that case, he is probably already dead, and you have nothing to worry about.’

Her face fell. ‘Oh, you are making a game with me. You do not believe me.’

‘When you begin to tell the truth,’ Gerald told her severely, ‘I shall be happy to believe you.’

‘Parbleu,’ exclaimed the girl, jumping up in some dudgeon. ‘You are not sympathique in the very least.’ She raised the pistol.

‘If you shoot me,’ Gerald said quickly, throwing out a hand, ‘I shan’t be able to rescue you.’

‘I do not need the rescue from such as you. And I think I will indeed blow off your imbecile head.’

‘In that case, I ought to warn you that my friend, Captain Hilary Roding, who is even less sympathique than myself, you remember, will undoubtedly arrest you for murder.’

The lady stamped her foot. ‘Alors, now I am also a murderer. This is altogether insupportable. Take, if you please, your own pistol. Take it, I tell you. From your pocket there.’

‘What for?’ asked Gerald, half laughing, as he put his hand in his pocket and brought out his elegant pistol. ‘Now what?’

The girl’s voice was shaking, and there were, he saw now, angry tears in her eyes.

‘At me,’ she uttered, holding her own pistol high and aiming it steadily. ‘Point it at me.’

‘Like this?’

‘Parfait.’ She sniffed and swallowed. ‘I am not a murderer. The chance it is the same for both. It is no more a murder, but a duel, you understand.’

She was backing across the room, moving towards the screen. Cocking the gun. He was damned if he knew what to do. Was the girl seriously expecting him to pull the trigger? Lord, but she had courage!

‘Shoot, then,’ urged the lady. ‘And we shall see which of us is more quick.’

‘There is no need for this,’ he ventured mildly, and lifted his finger to show his own pistol was not cocked. ‘I cannot possibly shoot a lady, you know. I am far too much the gentleman.’

She halted, her pistol still held firm and straight, both hands gripping it, her expressive features at once determined and uncertain.

‘If, in truth, you are a gentleman,’ she said in a trembling tone, ‘you will move to the side that I may leave this room.’

‘And where do you propose to go?’ enquired Gerald carefully.

She lifted her shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘Where is there that I can go?’

All at once Alderley felt acutely suspicious. What was the wench at? Yet he could not maintain this stand off forever. He was by no means certain that she would not in fact attempt to blow off his head as she had threatened.

‘Very well,’ he said, lowering his own weapon. After all, Hilary must be near returned by now. Where was the harm in letting her go? She could not get far.

He moved to one side, bowing and gesturing to the door. ‘Mademoiselle.’

The lady hesitated a moment, her eyes seeming to measure the distance between where he stood and the door. He stepped back further. Slowly she released the hammer on the pistol, uncocking it, and Gerald became conscious that he had been holding his breath.

Giving him a wide berth, and keeping her pistol high, she made her way to the door and warily peered through it. A glance down the passage—to see that Roding was not lurking?—and her face came back to Gerald, triumph in her eyes.

‘Adieu, imbecile,’ she threw at him gleefully. Then she was out of the door and running, fast.

The sound of her flying feet brought Gerald leaping for the door. He was into the passage in time to see her slip into another chamber at the end. A door slammed. Racing, he reached it perhaps a moment or two later. He thought he heard a scraping sound as he turned the handle.

He flung open the door and cast a quick glance round. The place was gloomy, with its darkly panelled walls, but it was sparsely furnished. A dresser, a washstand, and a clothes press. No window.

A dressing-room then. But where in the world was the girl? A door led to another chamber beyond. Gerald tried it. Locked! He sped out to the corridor and went swiftly into the next room. Wasting no time, he crossed straight to the shutters and opened them.

Light flooded the place. It was bare of any furnishings. And empty. The young lady—if she had come in here at all—had vanished.