Mademoiselle At Arms (19 page)

He closed the panel and came slowly out of the little
dressing-room, Roding at his heels.

‘Suppose you don’t know what sort of proof she was after?’ he
asked.

‘That’s what started the fracas,’ Gerald admitted ruefully,
nursing his injured hand as he recalled it. ‘She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘Take care,’ warned Hilary, his eyes on his improvised
bandage. ‘Don’t want it to break out bleeding again.’

‘Lord, man, it’s only a scratch!’ Suddenly Gerald snapped his
fingers. ‘Wait a minute, though. Proof? There is someone who might be willing
to help. Why in heaven’s name didn’t I think of that before?’

‘What are you talking of?’

‘Never mind that now. I’ll have to make a visit out of town. But
first, we’ve got to secure the convent. I’ll need you to go back to the
barracks and fetch more men up to town. Not Trodger. We’ll leave him here, with
a couple of others.’

‘Think Valade will come back here then?’

‘Melusine thinks so,’ Gerald said, pausing at the top of the
stairs. He looked at his friend. ‘What would you do in Valade’s place?’

‘You mean, knowing that the girl was here and liable to queer
my pitch?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Get rid of the wench,’ Roding said brutally.

Gerald’s chest tightened. ‘Yes, I thought you’d say that.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘In Valade’s place, with so much at stake—and more perhaps
than he thought, for if he goes to the lawyers he’s bound to find out about
this house—’

Hilary said it for him. ‘You’d do the same.’

There was a silence. Abruptly, Gerald turned. ‘Come on. I’ve
to collect my sword and hat, and then we must get back to London. Fast.’

Speeding down the two flights of stairs, Gerald mentally
thanked God that it was the practice of himself and Roding—in case of
emergency, of which this was a prime example—to stable their horses at the
posting inns all the way to London. He had got here at speed by that means. By
now the horses would be rested and he might go as swiftly back again.

But on arriving in the tattered saloon where he and Melusine
had hidden, a shock awaited Gerald. One swift glance about the room, and a sensation
of grim foreboding swept through him.

‘She knows what she’s up against. She’s taken my sword.’

The tapping for which Melusine had been waiting came at last.
She sighed with relief. It was cramped even at the end of the passage. It was
also cold, and dark, for there had been no time to light the lantern.

‘Jacques?’ she called.

‘They’ve gone, miss,’ came the answer, muffled through the
panel door.

‘Then open it quickly.’

It was a wait of several minutes while Melusine chafed. She
guessed Jack was having trouble finding the right piece of carving. At last the
panel swung back into the library. Melusine grasped the hilt of the sword she
had been carefully holding, and came out into the light.

‘
Parbleu
, but it is not comfortable in the least in
there. Such a time that it takes for them to go.’

‘Only a few minutes, miss. I waited for them to get right out
of the grounds. They went to the gate and stopped there, gabbed with their men,
and didn’t even dismount. Then they rode off at speed.’

Melusine nodded. ‘Gérard will think that I have gone back to London. That is good.’

‘I still think you ought to have waited, miss. That there
Frenchie didn’t look any too friendly to me.’

‘Certainly he is not a friend,’ Melusine agreed, ‘but he has
gone, after all.’

‘Begging your pardon, miss, but I think as how you ought to
go back to London,’ Jack ventured.

‘I will do so. But first,’ said Melusine with determination, ‘I
will find that which I came to find. Everyone has gone away again, so that I
can do so all alone.’

‘Alone, miss?’

‘Certainly alone. Do you not remember that this
capitaine
has heard us talking? You may believe that Gérard will not let the soldiers
leave from the gate. If they come here to walk around, they will hear us. So
you, Jacques, must go and wait for me with the horse. Only first you must find
the lantern and light it again and leave it here, near the door, for me to
find.’

‘But—’

‘Do not argue with me, but go at once,’ ordered Melusine
swiftly, taking a high tone intended to subdue the independent spirit Kimble
had lately shown himself to possess. She held out the foil. ‘And take you this
sword. Stow it in the saddle, for I will take it with me.’

Kimble frowned direfully, staring at the weapon with its gold
hilt and decorative pattern down the blade. Suspicion was in his face.

‘Where did you get that, miss?’

‘It is the sword of
monsieur le major
.’

‘How did you come by it? You didn’t steal it, did you?’

‘Certainly I did not steal it,’ said Melusine indignantly. ‘I
have only borrowed it.’

‘What?’ squeaked Kimble. ‘But the major—’

‘The major can say nothing at all. Has he not himself taken
my daggers and my pistol and my knife?
Alors
, he has given me back my
pistol and one dagger,’ she conceded conscientiously, ‘which is a very good
thing. And you need not fear that I shall not give back the sword when I have
finished using it.’

‘But what do you want it for, miss?’

‘But to protect myself. Do not be a fool, Jacques. And go
quickly that I may finish to search.’

She thrust him into the aperture, and pushed the hilt of the
sword into his hand. Next moment, she had shut the bookshelf panel upon him.

Melusine sighed with relief at being alone at last and free
to resume her search among the portraits. Leaving the library by the same door
she had first used to enter it earlier that day, she crossed the two little
antechambers and moved on through the rooms. She made a slow tour of the front
of the house without success, and then started back along the rooms behind,
dragging open the drapes each time to get just enough light to recognise what
was on the walls.

As time went on, she began to think Martha had been mistaken.
When she judged that she must be nearly back at the library, she began to feel
somewhat dispirited. Would she ever find it?

Sighing, she opened the door to the next room, and drew back
the drapes. One of the shutters was a trifle damaged, letting in added light. Melusine
turned to look at the walls, and saw, immediately opposite, set between two
candelabra above a marquetry side table, a gilded mirror.

‘Ah, now I may see what damage Gérard has done to me,’ she
muttered, crossing to the table and putting her hand to the sore place at her
neck.

The image in the glass was not clear, for the light was not
bright enough to see properly, but the shadows of her riding habit and the hat
with its waving plumes framed a countenance that gazed serenely back at her out
of long-lashed blue eyes.

Melusine tilted her head to catch sight of her neck, and
froze, staring at the image. The image did not move. Her pulses began to race.

‘
Comment
? This is not a mirror!’

It was a portrait. Melusine stepped back a pace, her gaze
fixed on the vision before her. She had thought it a mirror, because it was her.
It had her raven locks, her pouting lips. And the fact that it was dressed in
riding gear had fooled her into thinking it was her own image.

‘But it is entirely myself,’ she exclaimed aloud. Martha was
quite right. Mary Remenham had passed on her every feature to the daughter
whose advent had taken her from this world.

Melusine came close again, and reached up a finger
tentatively to the face depicted there.

‘
Maman
?’

‘How touching,’ said a sarcastic voice behind her in French.

Melusine whirled.

At the door through which she had entered the room stood the
so-called Monsieur Valade. He was alone, hatless and without his boots, and he
held a wicked-looking French-made duelling pistol, covered in silver and gold—property
no doubt, was Melusine’s fleeting thought, of the late vicomte.

‘You!’

‘Yes, it is I, mademoiselle,’ he continued in his own tongue.
‘I knew I should find you still here.’

‘Emile Gosse,’ Melusine said flatly, in the same language.

‘Valade, if you don’t mind.’

‘Pah! You can never be Valade. Gosse were you born, and Gosse
will you remain to your death. Which, let me assure you, villain, will not be
so far away.’

‘That,’ said Gosse, ‘is a matter of opinion. Indeed, it is
rather a matter of whose death is close.’ He glanced at the portrait behind her.
‘And that object confirms me in the belief that it is not I who will shortly
meet my maker.’

Melusine edged a little away from the portrait. ‘That is my
mother.’

‘So I infer. A pity you did not think to tell me that part of
the tale at the outset.’

‘I had never the intention to tell you anything, pig!’

Gosse moved forward a little. ‘No, for you had your own
selfish plans already made, that is now seen. You wanted to play a lone hand.
Eh
bien
, you have now the opportunity. You really are extremely stupid,
Melusine.’

‘Don’t call me by name,’ she snapped. ‘You have not the
right.’

‘Because I was a servant in the vicomte’s house? Things have
changed. Or had you not noticed?’ He sneered. ‘You have made a serious mistake,
Melusine.’

She edged sideways a little more, her eyes on the pistol in
his hand. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You should have gone to Charvill.’

‘Nothing would make me do so, except to tell him how you have
cheated me.’

He nodded. ‘As I said, a mistake. Too late now. Neither
Charvill nor his heir know anything of your presence in England.’

‘But Gérard knows. He knows everything. That you are not
Valade at all, and that I am Melusine Charvill, the granddaughter of
monsieur
le baron
, the general.’

Gosse smiled and Melusine read triumph there. ‘But Gérard—if
you mean the fellow Alderley who was making eyes at Yolande—is not here. I saw
him ride away with that other fellow.’

‘You saw? Where were you? How did you see?’

‘Your heroic
milice
are not as clever as they thought.
Easy enough to look as if one rides away. I did so.’

‘Then Gérard may come back,’ Melusine cried involuntarily on
a sudden rising hope.

‘Not if I heard him aright. Shouting to his companion, even
as they passed by where I hid myself, he called out that he thought to find you
at the convent.’

Melusine bit her lip. Now the pig knew where to find her—for
it would not take long for a Catholic to locate the convent in Golden Square—even
if she escaped him here.

‘And so you sneak back,’ she threw at him, ‘like the jackal
that you are. How did you get into this house?’

He shrugged. ‘I broke in. Easy enough. It is a big house and
there are many rooms in which to hide.’

Her flesh crept. He must have been following her from room to
room, silent in his stockinged feet. Too intent on her search, and convinced
besides that she was quite alone, she had been an easy prey. She recalled that
she had heard nothing that first time when Gerald and the captain had burst in
upon her.
Parbleu
, but she was a fool. And now she had sent Jack away. She
was alone with a deadly enemy.

As if he read her thought, he spoke it aloud. ‘No one is
here, Melusine, except you and I.’ He laughed. ‘You see now how dangerous it is
to play this lone hand. You should have confided in me, and fallen in with my
plan at the beginning.’

‘I spit on your plan,’ Melusine told him furiously. ‘Rather
would I die than fall in with such a plan.’

The expression on Emile Gosse’s face was vicious under the
smile. ‘A convenient desire, Mademoiselle Charvill.’

Melusine looked from his coarse red features to the pistol,
and froze inside as she recognised his intention. Gerald’s voice came back to
her, saying that she could not hope to outwit “a man who means business”. The
challenge gave her courage.
Eh bien
, they would see about this.

She must weigh her situation. She was, she guessed, close to
the library. But how close? She glanced about at the shrouded furnishings for
possible cover. None this end. A couple of gilt straight-backed chairs only. The
fireplace was at the other end, with the sheeted shapes of two sofas either
side. The
soi-disant
Valade held the centre of the room now, only an
uncovered but closed card-table, its surface dusty, between him and the suite
at the fireplace.

There were three exit doors. The one nearest to her, which
must lead to the library. The one through which she had come and Gosse had
entered behind her. A third that joined this to the chambers at the front of
the house. The man could put a bullet through her before she could hope to
reach any one of them.
Eh bien
, she must use her tongue against him.