Mademoiselle At Arms (23 page)

‘Why not? I am unworthy, eh? Because I am a servant.’

‘Because you are a pig!’ retorted Melusine hotly.

‘Nevertheless, you will marry me,’ he snarled. ‘I have the
means to compel you.’

‘Compel me? You do not know me, monsieur.’

‘And you do not know me. Do not underestimate my power. I
have been the vicomte’s secretary, remember.’

Shock suspended Melusine’s breath and she gasped. ‘You have
rifled his papers.’

‘He had no further need of them,’ Gosse said and his laugh
sounded heartless to Melusine. ‘Whereas my need was very great indeed. Do not
mistake me. I have proofs of many things that can endanger you. Believe me, it
will be better by far that you should consent to marry me.’

‘I do not marry a man who makes me a threat like this,’ she
flashed. ‘A man who is false, who steals papers, who has a plot to take another’s
name, who lies to the Mother Abbess and to me, and above all this—’ her voice
near to breaking ‘—one
who is French
.’

Gosse blinked. ‘French? But what else?’

‘I do not like Frenchmen,’ Melusine snapped. ‘Least of all,
one who takes advantage of another’s misfortune. You disgust me.’

Emile’s eyes blazed. ‘I disgust you, eh? Very well, then. You
may enjoy your pride, your arrogance—in a coffin.’

‘
Comment
? How will it serve you to kill me?’

‘I do not need to kill you. I have only to denounce you as a
member of the family Valade.’

Melusine gasped. But what a monster was this Emile. He would
condemn her to the vengeance of the mob all for refusing to marry him. But she
did not believe he would do that. It hardly served his interests.

‘And then you will be obliged to remain in France,’ she
pointed out. ‘You cannot be André Valade if you tell them I am one of this
family.’

For a moment he looked daunted. Then he rallied, smiling a
little. ‘Come, mademoiselle. You have not considered the advantages.’

Melusine bit her lip on a sharp retort. That would not help
her. The man was dangerous. She prevaricated.

‘
Alors
, what advantages?’

‘But think,’ he said earnestly, moving a little closer. ‘As
Madame Valade, you will be an
émigré
, not a nun. That is what they call
these aristocratic refugees, the English. As such, you may command the
sympathies of the gentry. I hear they are very much affected by the tragedies
of their neighbours in France. You will join a world of fashion, a world of
wealth, a life of ease.’

‘A life of ease?’ repeated Melusine. ‘When one is penniless,
one does not expect a life of ease.’

‘Ah, but why remain penniless? After all, your grandfather
Charvill—’

‘Again with the grandfather?
Mon ami
, if you imagine
that this grandfather will welcome a daughter of Nicholas Charvill, whom he has
never forgiven that he married a Frenchwoman, then you have an imagination
entirely wrong.’

‘But it was not your fault,’ protested Gosse, shocked.

‘That is true,’ Melusine conceded. ‘Nevertheless, he will
neither help me, nor will I seek his help.’

‘But if I am with you, as André Valade, as your husband, an
émigré
—’

‘Pah!’ Melusine spat. ‘Never. This is a plot entirely
abominable, and I scorn to be part of it.’

‘Then you will die at the hands of the
canaille
.’

‘Better than to live at the hands of a villainous
blackmailer,’ Melusine threw at him.

‘
Sapristi
,’ he shouted angrily. ‘Obstinate fool!’

She saw Gosse raise a hand, and dug into her nun’s habit for
the knife she had not thought to need. Too late. Emile’s fist crashed into her
temple and stars exploded in her vision.

When she came to, she was lying with her head in Martha’s lap,
and a livid bruise was forming at the point of a raging headache.

‘The man’s gone,’ her old nurse told her, when she had
recovered a little. ‘Taken the girl with him.’

‘Yolande, my maid?’

‘You don’t need a maid,’ Martha said stoutly. ‘Not where we’re
going.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Back to Blaye, my girl. Can’t travel alone, a pair of nuns.’

‘Back?’ Melusine put a hand to her aching temple. ‘No, I do
not go back. Never. You may go back, Marthe. But me, I am going to England.’

‘Don’t talk soft,’ begged Martha. ‘You can’t go to England. Leastways, not on your own. How will we get there, I’d like to know? We’ve no
money. The rogue took everything we had.’

Melusine cursed Emile roundly, but raised a defiant head. ‘Then
we will beg. We are nuns. At least, you are one, and I am disguised like one. We
will beg our bread and our shelter, and our passage on a boat. But to England we will go.’

Not all the arguments Martha advanced, and they were many and
varied, had the power to move Melusine. Although Martha did not know it, she
had her pistol and her daggers, and her knife. More importantly, she had her
wits. Vitally, she had the letter that proved her identity as a Charvill: the one
her father had written to the Abbess when he sent her to the convent.

Only she hadn’t. When her shock and the headache subsided,
and she remembered that she had been reading the letter when Gosse had accosted
her, she looked for it in vain. It had gone with the rest.

She had not thought anything could equal her despair at that
moment. Almost had Martha won out. But Melusine had overcome the weakness,
calling the loss but a temporary setback. She had braved all obstacles to
pursue her dream. Arrived in England, she had sought out Gosse, to keep an eye
on his activities and thus keep one step ahead of him, meanwhile hoping that
she might find herself another means of proof at Remenham House.

Melusine came back to the present to discover that tears were
rolling down her cheeks. She had found that proof. And now the fiend Gosse had
taken even that away from her. This time she was indeed beaten.

The tears flowed faster. Melusine dashed them away, but they
kept on coming.
Peste
, where was her handkerchief? She remembered then
that it had been lost in the struggle with Gerald. At the thought of the major,
her tears redoubled and she was obliged to rip off a piece from the remnants of
her already maltreated under-petticoats with which to blow her nose and soak
the damp from her cheeks.

If only Gerald would come. Even that he was an interfering
person, if he walked through that door this moment, she would fling herself at
him and weep all over his chest.

Bête
, she told herself fiercely.
Imbecile
.
Idiote
. What need had she of Gerald, or anyone? Yet, if he was here,
would he not make some foolish game with her and make her laugh? Instead of
behaving in this fashion so
stupide
, and crying, crying, crying.

She had recourse to the torn off strip of petticoat again,
and blowing her nose with an air of determination, sniffed back the tears.

A sudden knock at the door startled her. Gerald? But could he
be here so quickly?

She hastily dabbed at her eyes, thankful for the darkness
that she saw had come on outside unnoticed, dimming the room.

‘Come,’ she called.

The door opened. A stout female stood in the aperture, an oil
lamp in her hand. She came into the room. A middle-aged countrywoman, plump of
cheek, and a little shy. She held up the lamp.

‘Beg pardon, miss, but I’m told as how—’ She broke off, her
eyes widening, her jaw dropping open.

All at once Melusine remembered Pottiswick, and the errand he
had run.

‘You are Mrs Ibstock, I think,’ she said eagerly.

Pottiswick’s daughter found her tongue. ‘Lawks-a-mussy! It’s
Miss Mary. Miss Mary to the life.’

As she devoured the simple meal of bread and cheese, and
several slices of cold roast beef, the whole washed down with a poor sort of
coffee, Melusine listened with avid interest to the details of her mother’s
life as revealed by the exclamatory conversation of Joan Ibstock. This
forthright dame was so excited, she could not keep still, but paced about the
parlour much as Melusine had done earlier.

‘Well, what was I to think, miss? Martha never wrote nothing
about you, and I did ask.’

‘You see,’ Melusine explained between mouthfuls of food, ‘poor
Marthe had promised to my father that she will say nothing. She broke this
promise when she told me that my mother was this Mary, and not Suzanne Valade
at all.’

‘But she must have known I’d longed to hear of you. When
mistress took and died—’ Joan broke off and sighed, moving away to the window. ‘Well,
water under the bridge is that, miss. Anyhow, it were me as got you down to the
wet-nurse. Come every day to see you was flourishing. On the orders of Mr
Jarvis, that were. But I’d have done it without, though it weren’t my place. Only
an undermaid I was then. But Miss Mary and me—’

Melusine looked up as the woman broke off again. She smiled
encouragingly, laying aside her plate and turning her chair from the table.

‘You knew her well, Miss Mary?’

Mrs Ibstock turned at the window. ‘We was of an age, you see,
miss. Used to play together, we did, all over Remenham House. Miss Mary and me,
and Martha too sometimes. Oh, Mr Jarvis paid no mind,’ she added hastily, as if
expecting disapproval. ‘That there governess didn’t like it, of course, me
being the lodgekeeper’s girl, and Martha just a country wench like me. Her pa
was only the smithy. T’weren’t fitting, we knew that. But Mr Jarvis said as how
Miss Mary not having no brothers and sisters like, it were good to have
friends.’

‘I see now how it was that Marthe knew of the secret passage,’
Melusine said.

‘Oh, we was always in there, miss,’ admitted Joan, moving
closer. She shuddered, adding confidentially, ‘You wouldn’t get me in there
now, mind. Nasty, damp passages. Rats and things crawling all over. Horrid!’

‘Yes, but it has been extremely useful for me,’ argued
Melusine, ‘so that I am very much pleased with this passage.’

‘Fancy my old pa thinking you was a French spy. Though he
never seen so much of Miss Mary as I did. Mind, when we were all growed up, it
were different. And when she took and married that Mr Charvill, we didn’t think
to see her at Remenham House no more.’

‘But you say that I was born here,’ objected Melusine. ‘Certainly
you must have seen her.’

Mrs Ibstock’s lips tightened and she looked away a moment. ‘Yes,
miss. She come home within a few months of the wedding. She were that
miserable.’

Melusine rose from her chair in sudden irritation. ‘Oh,
peste
.
I know why. For that my father so
stupide
was in love with this Suzanne
Valade, is it not?’

‘Well, miss,’ temporised Mrs Ibstock, ‘we didn’t rightly know
that then. For he come after her, did Mr Charvill. And a right set-to there
were betwixt him and Mr Jarvis, I can tell you. Miss Mary being his only child ’an
all, he were in a right pelter.’

Melusine could not suppress a smile. ‘And with my grandfather
Charvill also so very angry, it was not perhaps so very comfortable for my
father.’

‘Between the devil and the deep blue sea, he were,’ agreed Pottiswick’s
daughter. ‘Small wonder in a way that he found hisself consolation elsewhere.’

Melusine sobered, sitting down again. ‘Yes, only that this
consolation he had found before he married my mother. This I know for at the
Valade estate it was talked of very much, even that they supposed me there to
be the daughter of Suzanne.’

‘But you don’t look anything like her,’ burst out Mrs
Ibstock.

‘
Comment
? You have then met this Suzanne?’

The woman turned a deep red. ‘It weren’t my wish, miss, I can
tell you that. Only your pa knew as how I were the one as saw to you at the
wet-nurse’s cottage, and he got a-hold of me and made me bring him to you.’

‘
Eh bien
? And so?’

‘He says as how he’s going to take you with him to France with his new wife.’ Joan sniffed. ‘Well! I hadn’t no notion as he’d got hisself
married again. I didn’t believe him and I said so. I said as how I’d tell Mr
Jarvis as he wanted to take you away. So he bring me to see this Suzanne, who
were staying at an inn nearby.’

‘But it is
imbecile
,’ interrupted Melusine, struck by
the impracticalities of her father’s scheme. ‘To take a baby all the way to France without a wet-nurse.’

‘That’s just it,’ said Joan Ibstock shamefacedly. She went
across to the little window again, her back to Melusine. ‘He arst me to find
him someone who might go with you. I’m that shamed to confess it, miss, but it
were then I thought of Martha.’

Melusine stared. ‘Martha was my wet-nurse? But she is
unmarried.’

Joan nodded, her face still averted. ‘Aye, that she was. Fell
to sin, did Martha. Took and ran away when she got herself with child. Only she
sent me a message, and together we found a cottage for her to stay at. An old
woman took her in. She were brought to bed a few days after Miss Mary. Only her
babe died. And so—’