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

alcove at the other side of Lady Bicknacre’s ballroom.

The vast mirrored chamber, with its four little square window bays, two either side of the large raised dais that led to the French doors, was very full of company for the start of the Little Season. The clever hostess having let fall that several distinguished guests from France would be present, the world had flocked to her doors to catch, like the gossip-hungry vultures they were, a glimpse of them.

Few approached the émigrés directly, preferring to stare covertly from behind their fans, while pretending to admire the simple elegance of Lady Bicknacre’s neo-classical refurbishments. To Gerald’s eye, the refugees therefore presented a rather forlorn little group, almost huddling together and chattering in low tones in their own tongue.

The future Mrs Roding turned bright, laughing eyes on the major. ‘Dare I guess at the reason for your sudden interest in émigrés, Gerald?’

‘Lucilla,’ barked Hilary warningly. ‘Not here.’

‘Don’t be stuffy, Hilary,’ admonished his betrothed.

She was a small blonde, not handsome, but with a flair for fashion demonstrated by her elegant chemise gown in the very latest Canterbury muslin, with its low décolletage barely concealed under a fine lawn handkerchief set about her shoulders, and decorated with a mauve satin sash at the waist. She had a warm, fun-loving personality, and an unflattering disrespect for her future husband’s authority. Gerald liked her enormously.

‘If you did not want me to talk of it,’ she told him with characteristic insouciance, ‘you should not have mentioned the matter to me.’

‘Are we to infer that he had a choice?’ enquired Gerald.

‘Of course not,’ snapped his friend. ‘She wormed it out of me, the little fiend.’

Gerald tutted. ‘The cat’s foot, Hilary. You’re going to live under the cat’s foot.’

‘Fiddle,’ scoffed Miss Froxfield. ‘I am perfectly devoted to him, as well he knows.’

She bestowed a dazzling smile on Roding, who had reddened to the gills at these words. Which were perfectly true, as Gerald was aware. Lucilla clearly adored her betrothed, anyone could see that. If there was such a thing as love at first sight, these two must epitomise it. And his scarlet coat had nothing to do with it, as Hilary was fond of recounting, for he had been in civilian clothes when they met, as he was tonight. Neither he nor Gerald chose to attire themselves in full military rig on fashionable occasions such as this. Alderley’s company of militia being his own, he was able to choose duty periods convenient to himself and his captain, and was under no obligation to wear dress uniform.

With a rustle of her full lilac petticoats, Miss Froxfield turned back to Alderley. ‘Would you like me to enquire for your mystery lady, Gerald? I know the Comte and Comtesse de St Erme quite well.’

‘How can you possibly enquire for her?’ demanded Hilary acidly. ‘We don’t know who she is.’ He threw a fulminating glance at Gerald. ‘Though we might have done, if a certain addlepated clothhead hadn’t let her get away.’

‘Addlepated imbecile, Hilary,’ corrected Gerald calmly.

‘Did she call you that?’ asked Lucilla, amused. ‘How famous. I shall borrow it and apply it to you, Hilary.’

‘Don’t you dare. In any event, I would not have let her escape me so easily.’

‘Yes, she duped me finely,’ agreed Gerald.

‘And then vanished into thin air,’ rejoined Hilary on a sardonic note.

‘No, no, I am convinced your very first theory was right. She walked through the walls.’

Lucilla Froxfield laughed gaily. ‘Fiddle, Gerald. Hilary could not have suggested such a thing.’

‘He did, you know,’ grinned Gerald. ‘Though he didn’t mean it. I do, however.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Gerald is convinced there is a secret passage into the house,’ explained Roding. ‘And since the entire company and Pottiswick himself were unable to find hide nor hair of the infernal French female—’

‘English, Hilary,’ Gerald reminded him.

‘Gammon. She is no more English than that set of beggars over there.’

‘For shame, Hilary,’ admonished his fiancée, casting a pitying glance at the refugees. ‘They cannot help it. But, Gerald, do you believe there is a secret passage indeed?’

‘Well, we covered every inch of the house and grounds, and I swear she never left that room by way of the door. I would have heard her.’

‘How exciting.’ A sudden thought brought a frown to her brow. ‘But if there is one, how in the world did this mystery lady of yours know of it?’

‘That, Lucy, is precisely the point that has been exercising my mind,’ Gerald said, turning his eyes once more to the group of French exiles in the alcove.

‘Can’t have been a common housebreaker, you see,’ Hilary explained to Lucilla, quite unnecessarily.

‘Of course I see that,’ she said impatiently. ‘Could she have been a spy, after all?’

‘Oh, she’s not a spy,’ Gerald answered, almost absently.

‘How do you know?’

‘Exactly,’ pounced Roding bitterly. ‘Ask him. All he will say is that she said so—as if anyone could believe a word the girl said.’

Gerald grinned. ‘Difficult, I grant you. But though she lied about pretty much everything else, she didn’t lie about that.’

‘How do you know?’ Lucilla repeated, almost as sceptical as her intended spouse.

‘If you had met her, you’d understand.’ With an unexpected flush of pleasure, he recalled the girl’s antics. ‘When she lies outright, she thinks about it. It’s the feinting tricks you have to watch for. Wily little devil she is.’

Miss Froxfield regarded him in some interest. ‘You speak as if you expected to meet her again, Gerald.’

Hilary exploded. ‘Expect? He’s had a twenty-four hour watch on Remenham House these two days. The men have never had so much work to do since they banded. You’d think he wanted to meet the wretch again.’

‘To be sure I do,’ said Gerald swiftly. ‘I haven’t been so much entertained since I left the Army.’

‘Entertained, he says!’

‘Intrigued, then,’ amended Gerald equably, although truth to tell he was enjoying the mystery enormously. He grasped Lucilla’s elbow. ‘What you can do, Lucy, rather than make enquiries, is introduce me to this comte and comtesse.’

‘By all means,’ agreed Lucy at once, and ignoring the automatic protest that issued from Roding’s lips, she threw a command over her shoulder as she turned to go. ‘Come on, Hilary. You don’t want to miss the sport.’

‘Sport!’ grumbled her betrothed, but he accompanied them across the ballroom all the same.

***

 

Madame la Comtesse de St Erme regarded the English major with a lacklustre eye, Gerald thought. Did she suppose him a possible pretender to her daughter’s hand? The girl—Dorothée, if memory served—was clearly marriageable, but he imagined most of these unhappy exiles were all but penniless. Gerald doubted there would be many eager suitors, even assuming the comtesse was keen to marry off her daughter to a foreign protestant.

According to Lucilla, this comtesse had constituted herself something of a social leader in the rapidly growing assemblage of refugees, and would undoubtedly be ready to introduce an eligible bachelor appropriately.

Mesdames Thierry and Poussaint appeared delighted to meet Gerald, and he was obliged to do the pretty to their daughters too. If the young ladies were dowerless, which seemed likely, their attire at least—so Lucilla assured him in a whisper—was of the first stare. Silken open robes over full tiffany petticoats in a contrasting colour were, Lucy assured him, of the very latest Parisian design, cut by the finest French tailors.

Gerald, whose French was adequate from his military service abroad, was able to respond suitably to such remarks as the ladies addressed to him, but was less exercised by their fashionable dress than their decidedly careworn appearance. Both girls looked pale and listless. There was little fighting spirit here. He could not see these two shrinking misses capering about in a nun’s habit and brandishing a defiant pistol.

There was a third lady among the younger set. A buxom piece, who looked, Gerald decided, as if she would be more at home in an amorous engagement in a hayloft than sitting demurely in a ballroom. She occupied a small sofa, a little apart, a ruddy-complexioned gentleman some years her senior beside her, and glanced about with an air of considerable unease.

Briefly, with a careless wave towards the couple, the comtesse presented them as Monsieur and Madame Valade.

‘Who have lately joined us,’ she said, adding sotto voce, ‘A very great tragedy. The entire family massacred. Wiped out, but for these. A lucky escape.’

‘Lucky indeed,’ answered Gerald, glancing at the pair again.

Such stories were increasingly heard in English society. There were some deepseated fears of the rot spreading to England, if the simmering discontent of the peasantry of France were to erupt any further. The gulf between rich and poor was perhaps greater in France, but by all accounts it was not the canaille who were responsible for the present turmoil. It was the incendiary intellectuals of the bourgeoisie, with their militant ideas of revolution, who had raised the populace to a pitch of violence resulting in cases of wholesale slaughter—such as had overtaken the Valades. Families had seen their lands seized, their chateaux ransacked or burned, and those unlucky enough to have failed to anticipate disaster, had been murdered or dragged away to gaol. In Paris, in July, a raging mob had stormed the Bastille, provoking circumspect aristocrats to uproot themselves and take refuge abroad. Also from the capital came news of grave fears for the safety of the royal family, who had moved there from Versailles.

These things were common knowledge among the bon ton, who were generously welcoming these unfortunate escapees. They had not so far been of much personal interest to Gerald, but tonight was different.

He eyed the young couple with the tragic history behind them, and could only suppose that familiarity had dulled their senses. The man had favoured him with a brief nod, but the girl had gone so far as to offer a tiny smile, and a look under her lashes with which not even Gerald, for all his scant interest in female society, could fail to be familiar. It was a look that accorded very well with the hayloft setting that had come to mind.

Now, however, as Gerald watched them, their heads were together and they were murmuring in French. The female’s words caught at his attention, and he no longer heard what the young Poussaint girl was saying to him.

‘I was not born to this. I am not comfortable,’ complained Madame Valade.

‘Courage,’ urged her spouse.

‘It is not easy.’

‘It will be worth the pain, you will see. Hist!’ he added, as he turned his head and noticed Alderley’s glance.

Gerald smiled and excused himself with the Poussaint girl, whose mouth pinched together as she threw a dagger glance at the voluptuous Madame Valade. Gerald, intent on his trail, ignored it.

‘I understand you have not been in England very long,’ he said in English, noting that Madame raised her fan and lowered her gaze demurely.

‘But a week and some days,’ answered Valade.

‘It must seem strange to you at first.’

‘Oui, mais—safe. It is safe.’

‘I imagine it must be a relief to you, after so lucky an escape.’ Gerald infused sympathy into his voice, and deliberately addressed himself to Madame. ‘I am sorry to hear of your misfortunes.’

Madame ventured a glance up at his face, and fluttered her lashes. Her English was halting. ‘But we—mon mari and myself—we have the bonne chance. The rest...’ She shrugged fatalistically.

Monsieur Valade heaved a gusty sigh, and Gerald, with heavy diplomacy and a forced heartiness of manner, turned the subject. ‘How do you like England?’

‘People have been very kind,’ Valade said, answering for them both.

‘More, I think,’ put in Madame, soulfully regarding the major, ‘because I have English, a little.’

‘You speak it very well,’ Gerald said encouragingly.

‘Ah, non,’ exclaimed the husband. ‘My wife would say she is English a little.’

‘Oh, she is English?’ repeated Alderley, interest perking up. He was aware of Hilary, in company with Lucilla and