Mademoiselle At Arms by Elizabeth Bailey (ebook reader online .TXT) 📖

Kimble nodded. ‘Aye, sir.’

‘That’s better. How long has Miss Charvill been in England?’

‘Not long, sir. Little more’n a week.’

‘I presume you were not with her in France?’

Kimble stared. ‘Who me, sir? Lor’ no, sir. I only seen her when she come with that Sister Martha. Thought she was a nun at first.’ He sighed. ‘Like a vision she were.’ He flushed. ‘I—I mean, she were—’

‘Pretty as a picture?’ suggested Gerald.

‘More nor that. Looked like them statues of the Holy Mother I see about the place.’ His colour deepened. Seeming to feel that this statement called for explanation, he added, ‘I been working for the sisters six month, see. Folks don’t like ’em. Nuns, I mean. But they been good to me, they have, sir. Down on me luck, I was, and they took me in.’

‘What sort of “down on your luck”?’ asked Alderley.

The lad looked alarmed. ‘I ain’t done nothing wrong, I swear it. Lost me place, that’s all.’ He grimaced. ‘Me and the butler didn’t see eye to eye.’

Gerald suppressed a grin. Kimble was clearly a plain-spoken fellow. And he did not lack courage. His initial nervousness had already abated, and it took some valour to allow himself to become embroiled in Melusine’s crazy schemes. Even given that he was hopelessly enamoured of the wench, a fact which was obvious to the meanest intelligence. Gerald’s judgement was borne out a moment later.

‘Tell me what you know of Miss Charvill?’ he ordered severely.

Jack Kimble stiffened, looking at his interrogator with wary anger in his face. He glanced out of the window, looked back at the major and grasped the handle of the door.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ warned Gerald, in the voice generally reserved for his men.

The lad hesitated. ‘You ain’t got nothing on me.’

‘On the contrary. You have been seen loitering with suspicious intent in several places—Paddington, for instance—and I have no doubt at all that you were party to a break-in last week at Remenham House in Kent.’

Kimble’s widening gaze told its own tale, but still he kept his fingers on the handle of the door. ‘You can’t prove nothing.’

‘Do you care to test that theory?’ Gerald suggested easily.

Not much to his surprise, Jack Kimble shook his head. No doubt he knew enough of his world to recognise that he stood little chance against the word of a major of militia. Looking sullen, he released the handle and sat back.

‘Very wise,’ commented Gerald. ‘Now let’s have it. Miss Charvill.’

‘You can arrest me,’ answered Kimble belligerently, ‘but you can’t make me say nothing about her. Wild horses wouldn’t drag it out of me, even I knew anything, which I don’t.’

Amusement flickered in Gerald’s breast. ‘My dear boy, your loyalty is misplaced. I mean Miss Charvill no harm. On the contrary.’

‘How do I know that?’ demanded Jack.

‘I should have thought it was obvious. By rights I ought to have arrested her days ago. But I have not done so, and will not. I have discovered something of her background. I know who she is, and I know that she has been cheated somehow by the people calling themselves Valade.’

Kimble chewed his lip, but his hostility was visibly lessening. ‘Seems to me like you know just about as much as me.’

He had abandoned the “sir”, Gerald noted, realising that the footman’s respect for him had dropped sharply.

‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But then again, possibly not. I have not found the secret way into the house, for instance.’

Jack gasped. ‘You know about that?’

‘It was the only possible deduction. Now tell me, if you can, something about the man who calls himself Valade.’

‘The Frenchie? I only knows as how Miss says he will ruin everything. She calls him a pig, and she says he ain’t Valade. But I swear she ain’t told me nothing more, sir.’

Authority had won again, Gerald thought with satisfaction. But it looked as if the boy was not going to be of much use. He tried again.

‘Do you at least know how he came to be in a position to cheat Miss Charvill, and to pass off his wife in her place?’

‘In her place?’ There was no mistaking the boy’s ignorance of this part of the tale. ‘You mean that his missus is pretending to be my mistress? Lord-a-mercy!’

‘Precisely. And I have no doubt at all that there is a great deal of money in the case. Which, if we are not all of us very careful indeed, will be stolen from Miss Charvill.’

Jack Kimble took a deep breath. ‘I knowed he were a wrong ’un, but that.’ He clenched his fists and grew red in the face. ‘Well, sir, if I’ve to choose betwixt him and you, I’ll take you, no question.’

‘I thank you,’ Gerald said drily. ‘Would that your mistress were as trusting.’

‘Aye, but she don’t reckon to militiamen. Thinks they’re the same as soldiers. Seems as she don’t trust soldiers easy.’

‘That was hardly the impression I got,’ Gerald murmured, remembering Melusine’s attitude to Leonardo.

‘Sir?’ enquired the lad.

‘Nothing. Listen, Jack. If you can tell me nothing I don’t already know, so be it. Only promise me this. If Miss Charvill should take it into her head to dash off on some foolish errand, go with her by all means. In fact, I order you to do so. But send me word. Do you understand?’

‘Aye, sir. But—but how?’

‘Can you write?’ Gerald asked, digging into one of his capacious pockets and bringing out a leather ring purse.

‘Only me name,’ Kimble said apologetically.

‘Very well, never mind.’ He opened the purse and extracted a couple of guineas. ‘I’ll send one of my men to see you here this very evening.’ He added, as alarm spread over the lad’s face, ‘Don’t concern yourself. He won’t be in uniform. He’ll appoint a meeting place with you and be ready at any time to bring a message to me.’ Handing over the guineas, he added, ‘For you.’

An expression of livid fury contorted the young man’s face and he thrust the coins back at the major. ‘I don’t want no gold! Not for serving my mistress.’

Gerald raised his brows. ‘I can see why you lost your place, young Kimble. Pity you aren’t under my command. We’d soon cool that temper of yours.’ He paused for the effect of his words to sink in, and then added, ‘Don’t be so ready to show hackle. The guineas are not for serving your mistress. They are for serving me. Are you satisfied?’

Grudgingly, Jack Kimble took back the coins. Had he but known it, his outburst had done him no harm in the major’s eyes. He might not condone it, but the feelings that had prompted it augured well for Melusine’s safety.

Having accomplished his intent, Gerald let the lad go and had himself driven back to Stratton Street. He had barely settled at his desk in his library, when he was disturbed by two morning callers. Captain Hilary Roding and his inamorata, Miss Lucilla Froxfield.

‘Nothing would do for her but to come here,’ grumbled Hilary, wiping his heated brow with a pocket handkerchief dragged from his immaculate white uniform breeches.

‘Naturally I had to come,’ confirmed the lively blonde, her eyes twinkling up at Alderley. ‘Gerald, what have you been about? Dorothée tells me that you were flirting outrageously with Madame Valade on Monday night.’

‘And who, may I ask, is Dorothée?’ asked Gerald.

‘Don’t try to turn it off,’ ordered Miss Froxfield. ‘You know perfectly well that she is the daughter of the Comtesse de St Erme.’

‘It’s no use blaming me, Gerald,’ uttered Roding, shrugging helplessly as his senior turned questioning eyes on him. ‘I told her you couldn’t have been flirting, but she wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Do you take me for a fool, Hilary?’ demanded his betrothed. ‘I know just what he was doing. For heaven’s sake, give him some Madeira or something, Gerald! Anything to calm him down.’

Alderley grinned as his incensed friend refuted the suggestion that he was in need of a pacifier, and moved to the tray which his butler had just a short time past brought into the room and laid on the desk.

‘Something for you, Lucy?’ he asked, interrupting a heated argument that had obviously been in progress for some little time before their arrival.

‘I’ll take wine,’ the lady said briefly, turning back instantly to Hilary. ‘It is of no use to try to stop me. I know very well Gerald has been fishing for information about that girl, and I am determined to find out what he knows.’

‘Why the devil should you be interested, I should like to know?’ rejoined Roding.

‘Because I’m a female,’ declared Lucilla unanswerably. With a swirl of her floral chintz petticoats, she placed herself in the capacious window seat, accepted the glass Gerald handed to her, and smiled mischievously up at him. ‘Now then, Gerald, out with it.’

He took his seat next to her, waving the fulminating captain towards the tray. ‘Help yourself, Hilary.’

‘I’ve a good mind to leave the pair of you to it and take myself off,’ threatened his junior, marching across the room and snatching up a decanter.

‘Don’t be silly. You cannot possibly leave me here alone with Gerald. Only think how compromising.’

‘Lord, yes,’ agreed Gerald, in mock horror. ‘Don’t put me at the necessity of marrying the abominable little wretch.’

‘You traitor, Gerald,’ laughed Lucilla, her yellow curls bouncing under a huge straw bonnet all over flowers. ‘For that I shall certainly not leave until you have told me every tiny detail.’

‘I don’t know that there is so much to tell.’

‘Aha, you have found something out. I knew it.’

‘Gammon!’ burst from the captain, who had just tossed off a glass of Madeira. ‘How could you possibly know it?’

‘I know it,’ Lucilla told him frostily, ‘because Dorothée told me that Madame Valade went off with Gerald positively purring in her ear—which is a thing he never does—and came back with him looking like the cat after cream. Gerald, I mean, not Madame Valade. She looked, Dorothée said, just as she always looks. Like a trollop in heat.’

‘Lucilla,’ gasped Hilary, his cheeks reddening with wrath.

‘Well she does,’ insisted Miss Froxfield impenitently, and turned to Gerald. ‘Doesn’t she, Gerald?’

Gerald held up his hands. ‘Don’t involve me in your lover’s tiff.’

Lucilla let out a peal of laughter. ‘Lover’s tiff indeed.’ She threw a melting look at Roding. ‘Poor Hilary. I’m behaving shockingly, I know. Never mind. There is only Gerald to see me, after all.’

‘That has put “only Gerald” very firmly in his place,’ mourned Gerald. ‘I wonder why the females of my acquaintance have absolutely no respect whatsoever for male authority?’

‘Ha!’ came from Hilary. ‘Seen her again, have you? Well, if she’s been giving you as much saucy impudence as I’ve had to contend with, I can only say I’m glad of it.’

‘Then you will not be disappointed. I have been insulted, and cursed at, and threatened with both pistol and dagger. I am apparently a beast, a pig and an imbecile, too, if memory serves me.’

Lucilla burst into laughter and clapped her hands. ‘Oh, famous. How I wish I might meet this delightful mystery lady of yours.’

‘She is no longer a mystery,’ Gerald said.

‘What?’ Roding snapped, coming quickly to tower above the window seat. ‘You’ve found her out?’

‘Tell us at once,’ urged Miss Froxfield.

‘Give me an opportunity to open my mouth, and I will.’

‘Sit down, Hilary,’ ordered Lucilla, and to Gerald’s amusement, her betrothed did so, perching on the desk close by and staring fixedly at the major.

‘Her name is Melusine Charvill,’ Gerald began.

‘Charvill?’ uttered Roding frowningly. ‘You mean—’

‘Hilary!’ Lucy turned excited eyes back to Alderley. ‘Go on, Gerald.’

‘Miss Melusine Charvill,’ he repeated, ‘is a convent-bred genteel girl, who is in all probability the granddaughter of General Lord Charvill.’