Lady in the Stray (24 page)

“Mon dieu!”
exclaimed Minette from the top of the stair case. “Observe,
mon cher.
Charlot has captured Edouard!”

As requested, Lionel observed. Arm in arm, they descended the staircase. Trailing after them were two legal-looking gentlemen.

“Mr. Appleby! Mr. Thorpe!” Charlot stared. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Gambling!” responded the amiable Mr. Appleby with a broad grin. Mr. Thorpe’s dour expression indicated that he wanted no part of so very disorderly a scene. “Thought we’d have a look about for the”—Mr. Appleby noticed the fascinated audience— “the whatsis, but Lionel tells us it ain’t here. By Jove, what a lark this has been! Is that the Frenchy you’re sitting on, halfling? If so, you may leave him safely to us.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Charlot rose from Edouard’s inert person, and bade his menagerie do likewise. Muttering very darkly about proper legal channels and precedents, Mr. Thorpe bent down, grasped Edouard’s collar and hauled him erect.

“What is going on here?” Aunt Adder inquired.

“I didn’t
really
capture Edouard,” explained Charlot to Minette. “It was—” He was interrupted by a commotion at the top of the stair. Vashti had appeared there, Lord Stirling at her elbow. “Vashti! I
told
you it isn’t proper to go about in your dressing gown!”

Vashti did not look up from the paper that she held. “Don’t fuss so, Charlot! Lord Stirling and I are going to be married.”

“Married?” Minette clapped her plump little hands. “And so am I! Edouard has done us both a favor, eh? The
vipère!”

“That’s all well and good,” interjected Charlot, “though I think someone might have asked me. I
am
the head of the family. But you’re hardly going to marry all these other gentlemen who are gawking at you, Vashti!”

“Other gentlemen?” Vashti glanced up from the paper to find herself the cynosure of all eyes. She flushed. Then she noted the newcomers, standing apart from the others. “Aunt Adder,” Vashti said without enthusiasm, and then: “Gracious God! Papa!” She flew down the staircase and flung herself at the tall gentleman. “Papa, you are safe!”

The comte accepted this homage as his just due.
“Oui,
Vashti, it is your papa; and I beg you will cease to crumple my coat!”

An interested murmur rippled through the onlookers as all heads turned toward the Comte Defontaine. Charlot climbed up several steps to obtain a better view. The comte looked like he should be dressed in satins and brocades, with jewels blazing at finger and knee, instead of unexceptionable trousers and jacket and a caped greatcoat. His thin, aristocratic face was deeply seamed, his white hair drawn back in a queue.

Aunt Adder sniffed. “What a touching scene.”

“Ain’t it, by Jove?” Mr. Appleby moved to answer another summons at the front door. Into the hallway strolled a corpulent gentleman with untidy waistcoat, bristling brows and rosy cheeks. “Hallo, Yves!” said the newcomer to his godson, who was ironically observing Vashti’s reunion with her papa. “I decided to see for myself what has caused your overwhelming fascination with Mountjoy House.” With the eye of a connoisseur, he contemplated Vashti.

That young lady sneezed, to the further detriment of her parent’s coat. “I am sorry to make such a fuss, Papa; I have been very worried about you! You must meet Yves, and Charlot.” She turned to make the necessary introductions. Her gaze alit on Delphine, who still held the pistol trained on Edouard. “The ghost!”

Minette made a moue.
“La vache!
I must explain. She is
not—
”

“She’s the one who captured Edouard!” Charlot handsomely admitted. “I was just in his way when he tried to run down the stairs.”

“We must be eternally grateful to you, ma’am!” Vashti said emotionally. “If not for you—”

Aunt Adder had been ruminating upon a previous remark. “Gambling!” she now uttered. “Surely my ears fail me! This cannot be
a
gaming house?”

“Why can it not?” inquired Minette, intrigued. “It is a private establishment, you understand.” Mr. Thorpe was heard to murmur beneath his breath about illegal faro banks.

Aunt Adder turned on Vashti. “I knew I could not trust you to have a proper way of thinking, you wretched girl! Try as I did to impose a check upon your spirits, you engaged in the gravest folly and indecorum as soon as you were out of my sight! My patience is exhausted! I—”

“Faith, but it’s a gabble-grinder!” Delphine turned the pistol on Aunt Adder. “Perhaps I should shoot
her!”

“I would be grateful if you did,” remarked Lord Stirling. “It would save me the trouble—and subsequently languishing in jail.”

All eyes were briefly on Delphine as she pondered giving way to temptation, and the consequence. The old woman was looking especially fine this evening, in a gown of clear lawn with back-lacing bodice and long rose-colored sashes, and a hat profuse with ribbons and feathers atop her powdered hair. “A pox on the lot of you!” muttered Delphine, and lowered the gun.

“Delphine is not a ghost.” Minette was determined to make a clean breast of all her sins. “We merely let you think so because she refuses to leave Mountjoy House. She is an indigent connection of Marmaduke.”

“Flibbertigibbet!” Delphine curtsied to the assembled company. “How d’ye do?”

Lionel stared at the old woman. “You! When mention was made of a ghost, I didn’t realize—I thought after Marmaduke’s death, you’d gone elsewhere.”

“Bright as a penny, ain’t you?” inquired Delphine.

“Do not blame yourself,
mon cher!”
Minette favored the old woman with a hostile glance. “A reasonable person would have removed herself. Besides, you only met her once.”

Vashti’s attention was on more important matters. She clutched at her father’s coat. “Papa,
do
say I may marry Yves!”

Looking pained, the comte disengaged himself. “It would be churlish of me to refuse my consent, daughter, since Stirling was instrumental in our removal from France—and barely in time! The conduct of the French government has obliged your Farmer George to recall his ambassador from Paris. Next we will hear that war has been declared. Travel under such circumstances is
très difficile.”

Though Vashti was hugely interested in how her papa had spent the years since their last meeting and would query him at length about his adventures at some later date, she was during this moment seized by a dreadful premonition.
“We?”
she echoed, awarding the veiled lady a searching glance.

The stranger wore a short coat of many colors over a light gown of very dashing cut, and a large straw hat trimmed with innumerable flowers.
“Oui, chérie!”
With fine dramatic timing, the lady threw back her veil. So marked was the resemblance between the newcomer and Vashti that the onlookers gasped.

The lady smiled at Yves.
“Bonjour, mon ami.”

“I am not your
ami,”
Lord Stirling responded coolly. “In point of fact, Valérie, I would like to throttle you. What the devil was the idea of making mischief with Vashti’s name?”

Valérie’s amber eyes twinkled. “You liked my mischief well enough at the time, as I recall it,
mon
—Yves! Time changes all, eh?
C’est la vie.”

Vashti recovered sufficiently from shock to glower at Valérie. “What are you doing here? I had thought you happily settled with your general in France.”

“How unimaginative you are,
chérie!
Often I have remarked it.” Valérie sighed. “As for my generals, they are a great deal too occupied with military affairs these days, which is very dreary.” She turned her attention on Richard, the only person in the immediate vicinity to regard her with anything close to appreciation. “The females of my family are very amenable to romance. If we are loved, we thrive. If not, we languish. It is a sad thing to languish, m’sieur.”

Richard had been studying these two young women who looked so much alike. Seen together, there were marked differences between them. Valérie was older, more sophisticated, more worldly. She was also much more to his taste. “And you, mademoiselle,” he murmured, “are perhaps more susceptible to romance than most.”

“Oui.
I admit it. But I had not expected to find an Englishman so
sympathique.”
Valérie twinkled. “Perhaps I will not find life in this country so dreary as I had expected, eh?”

Richard patted the dainty hand that she’d placed upon his arm. “I shall endeavor to insure that you do not.”

Vashti broke into this exchange of pleasantries. “You cause me countless difficulties, and then shrug them off? Valérie, I could
murder
you!”

“Someone should,” Charlot remarked severely. “Thanks to Valérie, everyone thought Vashti was a straw damsel and I was a by-blow!”

“A—” Aunt Adder had recourse to her smelling salts.

Valérie laughed. “Because of my little game? How droll! Instead of having my head for washing, you should thank me for helping your sister to catch Santander on her hook. Sometime you must tell me how you accomplished it, Vashti. I anticipate a very entertaining tale! As for him and me—” She shrugged. “I would change it if I could, but I cannot, so you must try not to mind it, because it was a very long time ago.”

Sternly, Vashti gazed upon the personification of the countless ways in which a family escutcheon could be besmirched. Valérie’s saving grace was her ability to disarm. “If you ever so much as look at Yves—”

Valérie was wounded.
“Naturellement,
I must look at Santander if he is to become one of the family, but I will not look at him
that
way. I am not without loyalty,
je t’ assure!
I would not think of such a thing. Tat any rate, there is little reason to cast out lures to a gentleman who is running mad over another female,
n’est-çe pas?”
She dimpled at Richard, who responded with his singularly sweet smile. “Moreover, I have other fish to fry!”

Lest Valérie commence to fry those fish in public, Aunt Adder was compelled to speak. “A gaming house!” she repeated incredulously. “Marmaduke was queer in the head!”

“That reminds me,” said Vashti. “Cousin Marmaduke must have meant to leave Mountjoy House to you, Valérie, and you may have it with my blessing! Although you would be well served if I
didn’t
let you have it, since the whole misunderstanding was result of your usurping my name.”

“Comment ça?”
Valérie looked appraisingly about, at the vaulted ceiling, the staircase carved with monkeys and apes and dogs. “That would be very poor-spirited of you,
cousine
. So you give me a gaming hell. Among all the things I have done
pour
m’amuser
has not been to run a gaming hell.” She glanced at the comte. “It will serve nicely, do you not think, Etienne?”

The comte roused from the deep abstraction into which he had sunk.
“Merveilleux.”

Aunt Adder drew in a sharp breath. “You cannot be serious! You don’t mean—”

The comte looked down on her from his considerable height. “Adelaide, you are a dead bore. One finds oneself doing all manner of odd things when one’s pockets are to let
.”

“Oui,”
said Valérie, with feeling. “One contrives.”

“That is what
I
always say!” cried Minette, distracted from the conversation of Messrs. Appleby and Thorpe regarding the fate of the unhappy Edouard.

“No more you don’t!” said Lionel, firmly. “From now on you may leave the contriving to me.”

“Mon cher,
I shall adore to!” Minette’s long lashes fluttered. “First, you may tell me what we are to do with Edouard.”

In the response to this question, Edouard himself had considerable interest. He had no reason to think his captors would be lenient. If only he could make a break for freedom—but that opportunity was past praying for, what with Delphine pointing his own pistol at him, and Thorpe shaking him periodically like a terrier with a rat.

But then Dame Fortune chose to be capricious, as is sometimes her wont. The instrument of Edouard’s salvation was Calliope, descending the carved stair. Calliope was feeling almost as sorely imposed upon as Edouard, although she had not the disadvantage of a sorely aching head. Nonetheless, the cat was in search of diversion. When she saw the ribbons and lace of Delphine’s hat swaying just beneath the stair rail, Calliope pounced.

A great
mêlée
ensued, with all the gentlemen rushing to offer assistance and in the process tripping over various members of Charlot’s menagerie, most notably Mohammed, engaged in darting gaily through the forest of feet. Aunt Adder shrieked, Valérie laughed, Messrs. Appleby and Thorpe stared in astonishment—and Edouard took advantage of the general lack of vigilance to flee. The comte regarded the scene with regal indifference until the moment when Vashti sought to save her pet from imminent extinction by swatting Delphine’s pistol-gripping hand with a piece of rumpled paper. His daughter had been very absorbed in that piece of paper when first she descended the stair, the comte recalled. He strolled forward and plucked it from her hand.

“I had quite forgot!” Vashti wrestled Calliope way from the murderously-inclined Delphine. “We found Cousin Marmaduke’s treasure—at least, I think we did! Rather, Yves found it when he knocked his elbow against the post of Marmaduke’s bed. There was a secret cavity.”

“Marmaduke’s bed?” Valérie murmured wickedly.

“I am glad to discover Santander has not changed all
out of recognition.” Yves’s godpapa laughed.

“Marmaduke’s treasure!” cried Charlot from the staircase, where he’d been sitting and marveling at the antics of the grown-ups. “Jupiter!”

“I fear there is little cause for excitement, Charlot.” Vashti relaxed somewhat, now that Delphine had been relieved of the pistol by an ashen Orphanstrange. “Had Papa ever told me what Marmaduke’s treasure
was—”

“Steaming port.” The comte read aloud from the paper which he held. “Roasted lemon—” He folded the paper and carefully tucked it away.

“But what is this treasure?” cried Valérie.

Vashti transferred the snarling Calliope to Lord Stirling’s arms. “Merely a recipe for punch.”