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

>A slow heavy thumping started up in Melusine’s chest, and she scarcely took in the astonished silence in those present in the room.

***

 

Gerald vaguely noted that his junior leapt to his feet at sight of his former commander, and that Lucilla sat with her mouth at half-cock, dread in her face. His attention was focused on Melusine’s transfixed stare and he forgot to say any of the things he had planned to say. He had known she would be shocked, but he was equally certain Melusine would have refused to see her grandfather had she been forewarned. To his relief, Mrs Sindlesham stepped into the breach, grasping her cane and rising painfully from her chair.

‘Good God! Everett Charvill, as I live. I suppose you have come to see your granddaughter.’ She moved to Melusine’s side as she spoke. ‘Here she is.’

‘Don’t need you to tell me that, Prudence Sindlesham,’ barked the old man, his glance snapping at her briefly, before resuming his study of Melusine, who, to Gerald’s intense admiration, was standing before him, glaring and stiff with defiance. ‘I’ve eyes in my head, haven’t I?’ He grunted. ‘No mistaking you this time. Spit of your mother.’

‘Parbleu,’ burst from Melusine indignantly. ‘I do not need for you to tell me this. I also have eyes, and I have seen the picture.’

Gerald drew his breath in sharply as Lord Charvill took a step towards his granddaughter, thrusting out his head.

‘What’s this? Impertinence! French manners, is it?’

‘Grace à vous,’ Melusine threw at him fiercely.

‘She means thanks to you, General,’ Gerald translated automatically, forgetful of his old commander’s fiery temper.

Predictably, Charvill turned on him. ‘I know what it means, numbskull! Didn’t spend years in the confounded country without picking up some of their infernal tongue.’ His head came thrusting out at Melusine like a belligerent tortoise from its shell. ‘What in Hades d’ye mean, thanks to me? Want to blame anyone, blame that rapscallion who calls himself your father.’

‘He does not call himself my father, for he calls himself nothing at all,’ Melusine told him, her tone violent with fury.

‘Dead then, is he?’

‘If I could say that he is dead, it would give me very much satisfaction. But this I cannot do. I do not know anything of him since I have fourteen years, and that he sent me to Blaye to be a nun.’

‘Ha! You’re Catholic, too, damn his eyes,’ growled the general.

‘Certainly I am catholique. I say again, grace à vous.’

‘How dare you?’ roared the general.

‘And you!’ shrieked Melusine. ‘You dare to come to me? What do you wish of me? Why have you come? I do not want you!’ She swept round on Gerald abruptly and he braced for the onslaught. ‘Now I see that you are mad indeed. You bring me this grandfather, whom you know well I do not in the least wish to see, for I have told you so.’

‘I didn’t bring him,’ Gerald returned swiftly. ‘He just came.’ He gestured towards the fulminating general. ‘Can’t you see he is not a gentleman with whom one can argue?’

‘You think so?’ Melusine said dangerously, and her eyes flashed as she swept about again and confronted her grandfather once more. ‘I can argue with him very well indeed.’

‘Pray don’t,’ begged Mrs Sindlesham, one eye on the general’s embattled features. ‘I don’t want him having an apoplexy in this house.’

‘Don’t be a fool, woman,’ snapped Charvill, thrusting himself further into the room.

At this point Lucy, in an effort perhaps—foolhardy, in Gerald’s opinion—to pour oil on troubled waters, rose swiftly to her feet and came towards the old man, her hand held out.

‘How do you do, my lord? I am Lucilla Froxfield.’

‘Tchah!’ He glared at her. ‘What has that to say to anything?’

‘Nothing at all,’ smiled Lucy nervously. She indicated the captain who had retired behind the sofa. ‘I think you know my affianced husband.’

‘Captain Roding, sir,’ put in Gerald, adding on a jocular note, ‘Another of the green whippersnappers you had to contend with some years back.’

‘None of your sauce, Alderley,’ rejoined the general, shaking hands with Hilary who came forward to greet him. Then he looked towards his granddaughter once more, who had flounced away to the window at her great-aunt’s interruption. ‘Now then, girl.’

She turned her head, eyes blazing. ‘Me, I have a name.’

‘Melusine, sir,’ Gerald reminded the general, exchanging a frustrated glance with Mrs Sindlesham. Her efforts were vain. There was going to be no quarter between these two.

Lord Charvill champed upon an invisible bit for a moment or two, closing the gap between himself and the girl, and muttering the name to himself in an overwrought sort of way. ‘Melusine…Melusine. Pah! Damned Frenchified—’

‘If you say again,’ threatened Melusine, moving to meet him like a jungle cat poised for the kill, ‘this scorn of a thing French, monsieur le baron, I shall be compelled to give you this apoplexy of which she speaks, madame. I am entirely English, as you know well. If it is that I am in the least French, and that you do not like it—’

‘I don’t like it,’ snapped the old man. ‘And I’ll say it as often as I choose, you confounded impertinent wench! Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m your grandfather, girl.’

‘Pah!’ rejoined Melusine, apparently unconscious of echoing him. ‘You and Jarvis Remenham both, yes. Parbleu, but what grandfathers I have!’

It was stalemate, Gerald thought, irrepressible amusement leaping into his chest. They confronted each other, barely feet apart, neither apparently any longer aware of anyone else in the room. An old man and a young girl, the one as stubbornly offensive as the other.

‘I’m damned if I see what you have to complain of,’ uttered Charvill, a faintly bewildered note underlying his irascibility. ‘What could either of us have done?’

To Gerald’s acute consternation, Melusine’s lip trembled suddenly, and her eyes filled. In a voice husky with suppressed despair, she answered.

‘You could have fetched me home.’

Pierced to the heart by the poignancy of this utterance, Gerald could neither move nor speak. It was a moment before he recognised that the effect had been similar on all those present, including General Lord Charvill. With astonishment, Gerald saw a rheumy film rimming his old commander’s eyes. Swiftly he looked back to Melusine and found she had whisked to the window, dragging a pocket handkerchief from her sleeve and hastily blowing her nose.

For an instant, Gerald wished the rest of the world away that he might go to her and administer appropriate comfort. But the general was turning on him, the hint of emotion wiped from his lined features.

‘I wish you joy of the wench. If you ask me, you’ll have to beat her regularly if you don’t want to live a dog’s life.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Sindlesham loudly, casting an anxious glance upon Melusine.

Well might she do so, Gerald thought in irritation. He caught the elderly dame’s eye, throwing her a desperate message. To his relief, she nodded.

‘The truth is, Everett,’ she said brightly, limping up to the general and tucking a hand in his arm, ‘that the girl is you all over again. I’ve been wondering where she got her dogged will, and that hot-headed adventurous spirit, for it wasn’t from either Mary or Nicholas, that’s sure. No one seeing you together could doubt that she is your granddaughter.’

Gerald was relieved to hear the loud guffaw issuing from the old man’s lips. ‘You think so? Well, if that’s so, I know where she gets her impudence, Prudence Sindlesham.’

‘Do you indeed?’ rejoined the old lady, twinkling at him, and urging him towards the door. ‘Let us go elsewhere and discuss the matter. I loathe this room. Much too formal for a cosy chat between old friends.’

So saying, she threw a meaning look over her shoulder at Lucilla, much to Gerald’s approval. Then she passed from the room on the arm of General Lord Charvill, chatting animatedly to him.

Gerald realised Lucy had taken the hint, for she dragged her betrothed towards the door. ‘Come, Hilary. Mama will be expecting me. I will come later to see you, Melusine.’

‘Yes, but I need a word with Gerald,’ protested the captain, hanging back.

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ said Gerald in a low tone. ‘Talk to me another time.’

‘What?’ Hilary glanced from Gerald to Melusine, and coloured up. ‘Oh, ah. Yes, of course. Later.’

The door closed behind them both and Gerald was alone with Melusine.

***

 

From the corner of her eye, Melusine saw Gerald move towards her and she turned to confront him, the confused turmoil in her mind causing her chest to tighten unbearably. She gave tongue to the most urgent of her plaints.

‘Why did you bring him? I hate him.’

‘Yes, that rather leapt to the eye,’ Gerald said, and the faint smile sent a lick of warmth down inside her. ‘I went to see him because I thought he ought to know about you, having already been imposed upon by our friend Gosse. He had to know the truth, Melusine.’

She eyed him, all her uncertainty surfacing. ‘And this is where you have been all the time?’

‘I would have been back in a day, I promise you. Only your horror of a grandfather insisted on coming with me, so I had to wait for him to be ready and travel at his pace. What could I do?’

‘Anything but to bring him to me,’ Melusine threw at him. ‘If you had told him that I would rather die than see him, he would not have come.’

Gerald grinned. ‘You don’t know him.’

‘No, and I do not wish to do so,’ Melusine pointed out.

His face changed and she saw, with a stab at her heart, the dawning of irritation in his eyes.

‘Hang it all, Mrs Sindlesham is right! You are two of a kind.’

Melusine took refuge in defiance. ‘But I find you excessively rude, Gérard. First you do not come to see me since three days, and me, I know nothing of what happens with Gosse until this capitaine of yours has come today. And now, when you come at last, you bring me this grandfather, and you dare to tell me I am like him.’

He sighed elaborately. ‘I know, Melusine. I am altogether a person of a disposition extremely interfering, as you have so often told me.’

‘Do not make a game with me,’ she interrupted, gripping her underlip firmly between her teeth to stop the threatening laughter.

‘But I am perfectly serious,’ he returned in a voice of protest. ‘Here were you patiently waiting, without uttering one word of complaint the entire time, which of course you never do, being yourself a female altogether of a disposition extremely sweet and charming without the least vestige of a temper—’

‘Gérard,’ Melusine uttered on a warning note, desperately trying to control the quiver at her lip.

‘—and what do I do? Well, we know what I do. Yes, yes, there is no doubt about it. I see that I am a beast—I beg your pardon, bête—and an imbecile, and an idiot.’

Melusine stifled a giggle. ‘Certainly this is true,’ she managed.

Gerald shook his head. ‘I can’t think how I’ve tolerated myself all these years. And I suppose it is too much to expect that any entirely English young lady would be prepared to tolerate me for the remainder of my life.’

‘You say—what?’ gasped Melusine. Her amusement fled and she stared at him, as a slow thump began beating at her breast.

There was question in Gerald’s gaze as it met hers, and apology in his voice. ‘You see, I had another reason for visiting your grandfather.’

Melusine hardly dared believe she had heard him aright. He was apt to play so many games, she was afraid she might have misunderstood. Eh bien, why did he not repeat it? What was she to say?

‘Prudence,’ she began hesitantly, pronouncing the name