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

‘I blame myself. Oh, I grew fond of you as the years went by. But it’s love you should’ve had when you were tiny and I didn’t give it to you. Even though I knew you’d no one else to care. For that worthless father of yours—’

Melusine let go the hand only so that she might throw her own hands in the air. ‘Do not speak of him. Me, I prefer to forget that I have such a father.’ A thought caught in her mind and she turned quickly to her old nurse. ‘But there is something still I do not understand. Why did he take me?’

Martha’s damp eyes were puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘Why take me to France? Why trouble himself with me, when so easily he could leave me to this Monsieur Remenham to keep?’

To Melusine’s instant suspicion, Martha bit her lip, drew a breath, and avoided her charge’s gaze.

‘You were his daughter. He loved you.’

‘Pah! Am I a fool? Have you not this moment past said how he did not?’

Agitation sent her to her feet. How she hated talking of the man who was responsible for her being brought into the world. She paced restlessly to the door and back again, biting her tongue on the hot words begging to be uttered. But they would not be denied.

‘This is not love, Marthe. To love in such a way, it is excessively selfish.’

Leonardo had taught her that. Leonardo had taught her pretty well everything she could have need to know, when they had talked long at his bedside. His stories had enchanted her, even if in some deep corner of her heart she guessed they were not entirely true. But his life, ruled by chance and the fight to survive had appealed strongly to Melusine’s rebellious spirit. As Leonardo had himself pronounced, who better than a mountebank to teach of the perils awaiting the unwary? Who better than a wastrel to demonstrate the worth of thrift? And who could instruct better in the matter of affections than one who had thrown them away?

‘If he had loved me,’ she said, in the flat tone she had learned to use to conceal her vulnerable heart, ‘he would have left me at Remenham House to live a life of an English lady.’ The questions that had long haunted her came out at last. ‘Why did he make me French, Marthe? Why did he give me this name of Melusine, and say I am born of Suzanne Valade?’

Martha looked at her, but her lips remained firmly closed.

‘Dieu du ciel, but answer me!’

Martha’s eyes were swimming again, and she reached out. Melusine felt the calloused hand grasp around hers. ‘I’m only a poor country wench, child. I don’t understand the workings of a gentleman’s mind.’ A grimace crossed her face. ‘But you know. You know, Melusine.’

The familiar hollow opened up inside Melusine’s chest, and she could not prevent the husky note that entered her voice.

‘Yes, I know.’

She dropped to her knees before her old nurse and hugged the work-roughened hand with both her own, looking up into Martha’s face where slow tears were tracing down her cheek.

‘It is that he needed me for his lie, no?’ Melusine said, striving to control the quiver in her voice. ‘That he can say he was married only to Suzanne all the time. This way there will be not so much shame, and the vicomte will let them remain.’ The core of hurt rose up, tearing at her insides. ‘I am not a person, Marthe. I am a thing to be used. And when there is no longer any need to use it, why then, enough you say—and throw it away.’

There was no denial in Martha’s face, though Melusine longed to hear her words contradicted. Her old nurse’s hands returned the pressure.

‘God loves you, even if your father didn’t.’

Melusine fought down the raw emotion that threatened to overwhelm her and drew a steadying breath. She disengaged her hands and stood up.

‘You are wise, Marthe. A true nun. God must love me, for he has guided me here.’

‘In a somewhat roundabout fashion, if you ask me,’ came in a mutter from her old nurse, very much in her usual style. ‘What are you going to do now, child?’

Melusine sighed away the last of her distress. ‘I must see the lady who is my great-aunt. You have spoken her name, I think, Marthe. Or perhaps my father once. For when this Joan said it, I had a memory.’

Martha frowned. ‘All so long ago and my memory ain’t what it was. Wait, though. Prudence? Mr Remenham’s sister that was.’

‘Exactement. Prudence. It is she that I must see.’

‘You won’t go to the general then?’

‘There is no need.’ The one ray of light lifted Melusine’s gloom a little and she smiled. ‘You do not know how I am like my mother.’

‘Oh, yes I do,’ Martha said, getting up off the bed. ‘Why do you think I told you about the portrait? I’d not seen it, of course, but I’d seen Miss Mary just before she got married, which is when it was painted. Joan told me it was hung somewhere in the house, only I couldn’t remember where after all this time.’

‘I do not care any more about the portrait,’ Melusine said, opening the door to the attic corridor that gave off onto the row of little rooms that served as private cells for the senior nuns. ‘I have Joan to tell me how much I look like Mary. And also I have this Prudence.’

‘Yes, but how are you going to find her?’

‘I will ask—’

She broke off. She must not tell Martha about Gerald. Better to remain silent. As silent as she had remained about who had brought her home last night. She knew Martha would not ask anything that she did not wish to know. It had ever been her policy, much to Melusine’s relief, for she was apt to complain that it only made her mad and there was nothing she could do about it.

Although she had said a great deal when she heard about the shooting that had left poor Jack so badly injured. Martha had grumbled at being obliged to report the matter to Mother Josephine, who had decreed that Melusine must confess to Father Saint-Simon.

Melusine had confessed this morning, that she had borrowed his horse, that Jack had met with his accident through her fault. But to confess about Gerald—no, a thousand times.

En tout cas, why had he not returned? She pondered the question as, later, she paced about her favourite retreat. Where was the expected message from this captain, who had promised to send her word at the instant Gerald returned to town. He had been gone entirely one day, for yesterday afternoon he had departed from Remenham House, and she had waited with patience like a saint, and now it was again the afternoon. The late afternoon, en effet. Where was the message? Where was Gerald? Until he came back, what was there for her to do? Eh bien, it made no sense to do anything. For if Gerald had indeed gone to see this Prudence, it was better to wait for his report.

At least here she was safe. Without Jack, it was certain that she faced danger if she went outside Golden Square. Besides, the sun had gone in and it looked like rain. And who knew if the men that Gerald had posted there would follow her to protect her somewhere else? In truth, where were these soldiers? She could not see them, although she assiduously searched the mist-shrouded square from the vantage point of the bay window in the large first floor room which had become her headquarters.

It was an odd room, used principally for the reception of guests and visiting dignitaries, packed from end to end with ill-assorted sofas and padded chairs. Every movable mirror had been placed here, to discourage vanity, and since no whitewash covered the brocaded purple wallpaper, its pervasive hue gave an added sense of heaviness to the crowded chamber. Melusine, starved of colour for years, revelled in it.

But not today. Nothing could occupy her attention long today, unless it concerned her situation. Yet there was nothing for her to do. She had thought of the lawyer who conducted the Remenham business, but she knew not where to find him. Gerald perhaps would know how to find him.

A new thought checked her steps and she froze. If Gerald knew, what should stop Gosse from finding out? Perhaps he was even now at the lawyer. He would take with him that traitress Yolande, and claim to the lawyer that this was Melusine Charvill.

Pig and brute! Yet calling him hard names would not help her. Dieu du ciel, but where was Gerald? On the move again, she found herself standing before one of the mirrors, gazing into her own countenance without seeing it.

Automatically, she glanced at the slight red graze left on her neck that marked the point where Gerald’s sword had nicked her. She touched it, and her gaze lifted.

Critically, she stared at her own features. Her long incarceration at the convent in Blaye had taught her to be dismissive of her own appearance. Like the nuns, she hardly ever looked in a mirror. Vanity was a vice not just to be deprecated, but effectively strangled at birth. Only Leonardo, and then Jack, had shown her that she might be admired. Now, as she stared at the image of her own face, she recalled something Major Alderley had said. Her name, he said, was as pretty as its wearer. And he liked her. Her heartbeat quickened.

In truth, she liked Gerald also. Too much, perhaps. For it was not a good thing to like one man too much when one was going to marry another. She could not say who, not yet. But there must be an Englishman who would like to marry her to get Remenham House. For she knew that men married to get something. So it was with Gosse, who had wanted to marry her. Leonardo would not have married her. He had said so. He was not in love with her en désespoir which, he said, was necessary if a man would marry without getting a dowry from his wife. And Gerald—

Melusine swallowed on an unaccountable lump in her throat. Gerald would not marry her even with a dowry. Had he not said so? Not that she wished him to marry her. Not at all. Was she a fool to wish a person of a disposition altogether not pleasing to marry her? Was it not true that he made a game with her very often? Had he not been extremely interfering from the beginning? And had he not kissed her, just when—

Her thoughts skidded to a stop. She closed her eyes and felt again an echo of the swamping warmth that had attacked her when his lips met hers. Dizzily, she grabbed at the mantel for support and, resting her head on her hands, paid no heed to a betraying sound behind her—until an unexpected arm encircled her.

As she started, rearing up her head, a hand stole about her mouth and closed down hard.

‘Silence,’ hissed a voice in French.