Lady in the Stray (8 page)

Indifferently, Edouard glanced around him. “It is a great mausoleum,
hein?
Not the setting I would choose for
ma petite.
But tell me, is Stirling often here?”

“Stirling?” This abrupt change of topic startled Minette anew. “I’ve never seen him before this night. Why do you ask?”

Edouard was not prone to anything so straightforward as explanations. “I was right; it
is
here. The old fool!” he murmured, almost to himself. “What was that noise? It sounded like rats in the walls. I’m not fond of rats, Minette.”

Minette thought her kinsman should be rather more tolerant, being himself possessed of a somewhat ratlike aspect. “Then you wouldn’t like to live here, Edouard; the house teems with vermin. Rats and beetles—we even have a frog and a turtle and a snake. Not to mention a pair of very unusual lovebirds— unusual because they both are male.”

Edouard’s brow lowered suspiciously. “You jest.”

“Ah, ça non!”
Minette brimmed with good cheer. “I assure you it’s true. But you didn’t come here to speak to me of vermin—nor to assure yourself of my continued good health. You want something. Let us beat no more around the bush.” On second thought, this talk might be better continued somewhere with an absence of noisy walls, an affliction that had stricken a great many rooms of late. “You will wish to be private! Come with me.” A somewhat circuitous route led them, at length, outside.

The Prior’s Garden, as for some unknown reason it was called, was in perfect keeping with Mountjoy House, being overgrown and neglected and an excellent setting for any prospective haunts. The small walled area had much more the aspect of a cemetery than a garden, despite the inclusion of Apollo and Daphne in bronze.

Against the latter, Minette leaned. “Now, then, Edouard.”

He raised his hands to frame her face. “Now, then, you are alone at last with your
preux chevalier.
You offer me opportunity to furnish a proof of my devotion.” His icy fingers fell to her bare shoulders. “It has been a long time since I was so honored, Minette.”

Now she was in for it! Minette cursed her lack of foresight. She would have rather a snake crawled over her skin than endure Edouard’s touch. In truth, Edouard was as cold and calculating and conscienceless as any reptile—and as dangerous. Therefore, impassively, Minette suffered his caress.

He laughed and released her. “Clever Minette! You should know better than to seek to play off your cajoleries on me for I know you too well. We are wondrous great together, are we not? But we shall discuss that another time,
ma cocotte.
Curb your disappointment: I mean to see a great deal of you. We have been too distant. You will learn to rely on me, now that you are alone in the world.”

“Not alone, precisely.” The air was chill, and Minette chafed her bare arms. “You forget the turtle and the frog and the lovebirds—not to mention the rats. Your concern overwhelms me, Edouard, but I go on quite nicely. I wish you’d make your point.”

“Take care, lest I think you don’t enjoy my conversation,
petite.”
Edouard took off his elegant coat and draped it over her shoulders. “Witness my solicitude! I shudder to think what may become of you if you don’t take better care of yourself. You are very precious to me, Minette.”

Minette turned her head to gaze up at the rooftop, half expecting to see a raddled figure peering out from amid the tall pinnacles and gargoyles. “Precious, am I?”

Edouard drew that coat tightly around her throat. “
Certainement!
You are my means of access to Mountjoy House. There is less time than anticipated, if Stirling is  nosing about. He will be acting for his godfather, of course. I thought that imbecile Mountjoy was involved in this business when first I heard of it. This is a heaven-sent opportunity! I
must
find it first.”

These remarks, directed less to her than to himself, prompted Minette to temporarily cast caution to the winds. “Does the whole world know of Marmaduke’s treasure?” she cried.

“ ‘Treasure’?” Edouard’s voice was soft and deadly, his grip harsh. “What ‘treasure’ is this, petite?”

“I don’t know! Truly!” Minette sought to pry away the hands so tight upon her neck. “It was what he used to say—that he had hidden away his treasure in Mountjoy House, and it was worth a fortune in the right hands. That’s all I know, I swear it, Edouard! Let me go!”

He did not let her go entirely, but slightly loosened his grip. “If you’re lying to me, Minette—”

“I’ve already taken my oath that I am not. Consider, Edouard: if you strangle me, you will have no easy access to Mountjoy House.” With a muttered curse, he withdrew his bruising fingers. Minette drew in deep lungfuls of air and rubbed her sore neck.

“That is
why you remained at Mountjoy House,” he said, as calm as if it were commonplace for him to half strangle his lady friends. “I wondered at it, because I also knew Mountjoy had left you nothing— and precious little to anyone else. You sought to find Mountjoy’s ‘treasure.’ “ His laughter, this time, was genuine. “Poor Minette!”

Of all the things she disliked in her kinsman, his sense of humor was high on the list. Minette waited. Edouard would not deny himself the pleasure of explaining his amusement.

Nor did he. “You envisioned gold or jewels, if I know my Minette—treasure, in truth. You would discover these riches and be wealthy beyond all imagining, eh,
petite?
Little pea-goose! Even did you find Mountjoy’s so-called treasure, you’d be none the richer for it—or any the wiser. Indeed, I shall count myself fortunate if you haven’t already thrown it on the fire.”

Minette wished she were before a fire just then, her kinsman’s words and the chill temperature having combined to make her very cold.
“I
shall succumb to the muslin disease if I must stand here much longer!” she snapped. “I wish you would tell me what you are talking about. Don’t try and put me off. If this treasure of Marmaduke’s is of so little value, you wouldn’t be so interested in it.”

“I didn’t say it was valueless. The item that you seek has a great deal of value for me, because I can use it to gain influence and power. That memorandum is worth a great deal more than mere money, Minette.”

“ ‘Memorandum’?” Minette echoed, incensed. “All this time, I have been searching for a piece
of paper?”
She lapsed into French profanities, interspersed with a highly unflattering delineation of the late Marmaduke’s character, emphasized by dramatic gestures and considerable stamping of her plump little foot.

“Hush,
petite!”
Such was Edouard’s tone that she immediately complied. “By serving me you may yourself be well served. We will join forces. You will assist my search.”

Join forces with a man who had come perilously close to strangling her just moments past? Minette thought not. She knew the folly of trusting Edouard. Still, it would be to her advantage did he think her compliant. “It is important, this memorandum?”

“Most
important, put to its best use. I wonder what use Mountjoy meant to make of it—but that makes no difference now.” Edouard’s hooded eyes gleamed. “I wonder too why I should believe in your sudden amiability, Minette. Take my word for it,
petite.
This time you are out of your depth.”

Edouard was determined to convince her that his precious memorandum was of no value to her, Minette shrewdly thought. “Believe what you wish! It was your idea that I should help you search. Me, I don’t give a fig for a silly piece of paper. It was very bad of Marmaduke to hint he had a treasure, when it was a dreary old memorandum instead.” If Marmaduke’s treasure
was
a memorandum, she silently added, a matter about which she cherished doubt. Whatever her continued efforts disclosed would not be shared with her kinsman.

Almost as if he had access to her thoughts, Edouard reached out and roughly grasped her chin. “Do you play me false,” he said with chilling sincerity, “I very seriously and solemnly assure you that I will enact a singularly unpleasant revenge.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

No little time later, Vashti concluded her halfhearted search, and with Mohammed and Calliope and Greensleeves slowly mounted the stair. Sounds of revelry came to her from the gaming rooms. Vashti hoped the gamblers might prove as unlucky as they were roisterous. Were her labors in the library any indication, armaduke’s treasure would not be easily found. True, her thoughts had been a trifle preoccupied with a blond-haired blue-eyed madman, but she had not been neglectful, all the same. That nothing was hidden in the library, Vashti was convinced. She proceeded along the upper corridor to her bedroom.

Candlelight softened the Gothic outlines of the chamber, rendering it both more welcoming and more opulent. Vashti again marveled at her cousin’s flamboyant taste, the Chinese papered walls and oak mantel with carved mandarins, the huge bed with its gauzy gold-fringed draperies which when closed would resemble an exotic tent.

Mohammed strolled to the hearth and collapsed there with a groan; Greensleeves hopped into a far corner of the room. Vashti put down the book she had brought with her from the library—Sir Hugh Platt’s popular cookery and household book of early seventeenth-century receipts,
Delights for Ladies—
and followed Calliope over to the bed. She was almost tired enough to fall asleep without undressing, she thought.

Calliope growled. In the act of drawing aside the gauzy draperies, Vashti froze. There was a large lump beneath her bedcovers. Surely the madman who had accosted her in the library would not dare—

“Hullo, sis!” Charlot emerged from beneath the covers, sleepily rubbing his eyes. “I was waiting up for you, but you took so long. Did you find anything? Why are you looking so pulled-about?”

Vashti could hardly explain to a lad of such tender years that she felt all out of reason cross to discover that a handsome blue-eyed stranger had
not
invaded the sanctity of her bedchamber. Not that Vashti would have welcomed such an intrusion, naturally, save for the opportunity offered her thereby to give the bold intruder a sharp setdown.

She perched on the edge of the tent bed. “I thought you were the madman.”

Curiously, Charlot eyed his sister, who was looking far from her usual neat self, with tousled hair and a preoccupied expression and dust on cheek and gown. Something was definitely in the wind.
“What
madman?”

“The madman who accosted me in the library.” Absentmindedly, Vashti pulled a protesting Calliope into her arms. Diplomatically, she refrained from explaining the precise manner in which she had been accosted, or that she had liked it overwell.

“Accosted
you?” Charlot echoed indignantly. “Jupiter! Shall I mill the scoundrel down?”

This chivalrous offer roused Vashti from her preoccupation. “No need for that, my pet! I’m making a piece of work about nothing. The gentleman thought he knew me, and I’m quite in a puzzle as to
why.
He even made free with my name, though I don’t recall having ever set eyes on him.” The gentleman was one, she mused, who wouldn’t be easily forgot.

Doubtfully, Charlot stared at his sister, who still cradled the hissing Calliope. “Tell you what, Vashti! Mayhap he had shot the cat.”

“I wondered that myself at first, but he didn’t act like a gentleman in his cups.” Save for offering her attentions that had been too pointed, the stranger’s behavior had not been that of a gentleman who had overindulged in the grape. Or so Vashti fancied, not having had a great deal of experience with gentlemen in this state. Or any other. For all she knew to the contrary, gentlemen might habitually go about embracing unfamiliar females at whim.

“You’re looking cross again,” observed Charlot. “Here, you may hold Bacchus if you wish! If this stranger of yours wasn’t foxed, he must have been a rattle-brain. It’s not likely he would know you, when Aunt Adder never let you meet anyone.”

“He wasn’t a rattle-brain.” How quickly she leapt to take up the cudgels in the lunatic’s defense! Vashti’s cheeks flamed. “How can I explain? He wasn’t so much thick-skulled as he was wrongheaded; he
did
believe he knew me. He said I was an unconscionable little liar, and that between us there was no need for formality.”

Vashti having overlooked his generous offer of companionship, Charlot cuddled Bacchus himself. Wisely he observed: “Sounds to me like he was talking about someone else.”

“Someone else?” Vashti might have thought of this explanation, had not the stranger’s ardor wreaked havoc with the orderly working of her brain. But who could look so much like her that such an error could be made? Some member of the family, doubtless; the Defontaines all shared the same features.

The answer was not long in presenting itself; only one other Defontaine, to Vashti’s knowledge, had escaped from France. Vashti’s hand flew to her mouth. “Gracious God! Valérie!”

“Valérie?” Charlot looked intrigued. “You think this lunatic of yours knew Valérie?”

“Not only the lunatic,” Vashti answered slowly as she tucked up her feet. “We must stop calling him that, because if what I suspect is true, it is more a matter of mistaken identity. His name is Stirling. Lord Stirling. Orphanstrange informs me that Stirling is a man of wealth and position, who for some reason seems determined to break our faro bank.”

Charlot was too young to be overly concerned with faro banks. “What did you mean by ‘not only the lunatic’? You told me that when Aunt Adder turned Valérie out, she came to London. That is when she would have met this Stirling fellow—but how does he know
your
name?”

Caught up in the outraged dismay of her conclusions, Vashti did not immediately respond. Her thoughts leapt about in a fashion that would have brought down no discredit upon Greensleeves the frog. There had been a startling similarity in appearance between Valérie Defontaine and herself—and none at all in character. Valérie had from the cradle indulged in behavior that merited the sternest reproof, had run counter to conventional behavior at the drop of a hat—had tossed her bonnet over the windmill so many times that even the most interested of spectators must have eventually lost count. “It would have been like her to use my name,” Vashti said slowly. “She would have thought it a good joke. Valérie must have encountered our cousin Marmaduke in London also; they would have rubbed on together famously, from all accounts.
That's
why he left me this house; he thought he was leaving it to her. What a wretched coil!” Vashti thrust her hands into her hair.