Amberley Chronicles Boxset I: The Impostor Debutante My Last Marchioness the Sister Quest (Amberley Chronicles Boxsets Book 1) (27 page)

Chapter 19

Alphonse handed his card to M. de Montalban’s servant, and was politely requested to wait in an elegant salon, upholstered in gold-coloured fabric with a vaguely Chinese pattern. The high velvet curtains, oriental carpets and custom-made furniture in the newest style were additional evidence that his late wife’s uncle lived in the first style of luxury.

The Comte did not let him kick his heels above ten minutes. “
Mon cher neveu!
I did not expect you to bother to call, at a time like this!” he exclaimed, and made to kiss Alphonse on the cheek. Alphonse recoiled instinctively, and put his hand out instead. The Comte was only in his late thirties, a mere decade older than himself. He found himself resenting his easy assumption of seniority.

“Ah yes, I forgot you grew up in England, among those barbarians.” The hand shaking his was firm. “Please come with me, and would you like some refreshment? But before all, do tell me if you have recovered your little daughter,
la pauvre petite
. Such a tragedy, to have her abducted by her own nurse!”

Alphonse stared at the man. Try as he might, he could not detect the slightest trace of guilt, or even guile. M. de Montalban oozed sincerity and concern. Yet could anything be taken at face value in a man who spent so much of his time seeking favours at the Bourbon court?

“I come for that very reason, since you were a witness of what happened.” Alphonse let some of his genuine anguish and fear show in his expression. “I understand that you were actually in the nursery on the morning they were first missed. Can you tell me exactly what happened? Why were you there?”

“Ah.” His host steepled his fingers, and briefly looked aside, at the huge portrait of a fat baroque gentleman in a flowing wig, sitting in full armour on an understandably nervous horse; it was rearing, the white of its eyes showing. 

“Have you forgotten that little Monique is my relative, all that remains of our beloved Louise-Henriette? You only knew my niece for that one year of your short marriage, but for her own family it was a very different thing. I first saw her when she was a baby even smaller than your Monique. She was adorable.”

“You have always taken a special interest in infants, Monsieur?” Alphonse did not bother to keep the scepticism out of his voice.

“Only those of my own family,
naturellement
. I wanted to see if Monique resembled her poor mother, to find any trace of my niece, of our family features, in the child.”

“And did you find it?”

“Not much, I confess, she seems to be taking after your family, apart from the lighter colouring and smallish size. Our women tend to be a head shorter than the men, and as you can see, I am only of average size.” He shook his head sadly. “Maybe the chin and nose have something of her mother, but it is too early to tell.”

“On the morning when their absence was discovered, the assistant nurse, Manon, gave you a note that you promised to deliver to my mother. She never received it. Why would that be? What was in it?”

The Comte shook his head in confusion. “I have no idea what you are talking about. There was no note.” His eyes met Alphonses’s, open and unblinking.

“I regret to hear that.”

“You sound as though you did not believe me,
mon cher
. Surely you would not take the word of an ignorant maid over mine?”

“The fact that little Monique’s fortune would come to you if anything happened to her does give me pause, I confess.”

“Ah. Some cognac?”

“No, thank you.”

The Comte poured a glass for himself, and took a sip. “Well,” he said after a minute of awkward silence, “ten million francs would not come amiss, I do not deny it; keeping up appearances at court is a very expensive business, and my estates have not yet turned as profitable as before the revolution.” He swirled the liquid in his glass. “Between ourselves, the thought of all that money was in my thoughts while staying in your Château. I tried to fathom if the little girl was really as sickly, and likely to die, as your mother told me more than once.”

“You
admit
it?”

“Only that I watched her, to try and guess at her health. Nothing more than that, I assure you. For what it’s worth, though she’s small like all the girls in our family, I did not see any particular reason why Monique should not grow to adulthood and in due course, enjoyment of her inheritance. That oily quack of your mother’s is only interested in lining his pocket, and exaggerates the smallest sniffle into a life-threatening malady.”

Alphonse did not know what to think. “But – how would you know?”

“I have five children of my own, and pay attention to details. Never mind that – you need to find her, don’t let me keep you further from such a vital task.”

Alphonse ignored the hint and did not budge. “Have you remembered that note from the wet-nurse, by any chance?”

There was an infinitesimal hesitation, but when he spoke, the Comte’s voice was firm. “Sorry – there was no note. I find your insinuations insulting, and only pardonable when I consider the strain under which you labour, having mislaid your only child.”

“I’ll go in a moment, but first let me tell you this,” Alphonse said, in a hard voice. “Neither you or anyone else from your household is henceforth welcome in Ville-Deuxtours, or any of my other homes. You will not approach my daughter again. Until she is an adult, keep your distance. The wet-nurse fled because she thought you were a threat to my child, and whether she was right or not, I hold you fully responsible for any harm that may befall her until she is recovered. “

“You are being absurd.”

“I don’t think a luminary of the very Catholic and conservative court can afford to be embroiled in a nasty scandal, Monsieur. If my child does not survive this I will sue you, not to keep the money, but to make the story public. You might win eventually, but you would still be ruined.” Without waiting for a servant to show him out, Alphonse turned on his heels and strode towards the exit, eager to reach fresh air.

How could he have left his helpless child alone in a place with such creatures as this Comte de Montalban? What had his mother been thinking, to invite him at all? The more he considered the question of the vanished note, the more his conviction grew that there had been genuine danger to the little girl, though it would never be proved. A paid employee had shown more care for Monique’s safety than her own father or grandmother.

But indulging in guilt was not going to bring his child back.

+++

Under different circumstances, James would not have minded strolling through the Paris streets in the late summer evening. He had only been to the French capital twice before, in far less clement weather. During his youth, of course, Paris had been enemy ground and inaccessible; it was not until after Napoleon’s defeat and banishment that all of fashionable Europe flocked to Paris, to see what it had missed. James had done likewise at the time, about half a year before he had met Charlotte.

“The paper reports that Napoleon is very sick, and may not survive much longer,” he remarked, when Alphonse returned from his visit to the Comte. They were in the library of the Maison Ville-Deuxtours, beautiful in its proportions and freshly gilded panelling, but with many bare shelves. James estimated that it would take three generations to fill it up again, though it could never equal what it had been before the revolution. How many priceless and rare works had been stolen and burnt? “Your mother will be ecstatic, if he should die. And not only she.”

“Oh, I don’t know. She hates him so fervently that she would most likely desire him to suffer decades of miserable exile on St. Helena, remembering every day all the glories that he has lost. It will feel strange to our whole generation if he should no longer be there, after the way he dominated Europe throughout our youth.” Alphonse poured white wine into a glass, drank deeply. ”It is still hot out outside.”

“Not dark yet, but too late to set out tonight – I suppose we had better turn in early, and leave at first light tomorrow,” James said.  “But first I want to hear all about your interview with the Comte. Could you tell if he had murderous designs on your daughter?”

“Designs – I am not sure, but he had toyed with the idea, at least. I suspect that Mme Fourrier foiled him by never leaving the child alone for a moment. He denied all knowledge of the note she left, and I am quite certain that he was lying then.”

“So, there.”

“But other things he said did not fit the picture of the conniving villain. He claimed that the child is not as sickly as the quacks and my mother made her out to be, that the very small stature is normal in females on his side of the family.”

“Is it? You must have met some of Louise-Henriette’s relations at your wedding.”

“Not all that many. Like us, they were decimated in the revolution, and it was a small private ceremony, since my father was about to die. It is true that most of the females attending the wedding were small and scrawny, and Louise-Henriette herself was well below the average female height.”

“Even if de Montalban is a villain, he could still be correct in his information on this point.” James hesitated a moment before going on. “Life being uncertain, as you know, we too could easily perish on this journey, at the speeds we have been travelling. I assume you have you made proper provisions for Monique’s care and safety, in case you predecease her?”

Alphonse stopped dead, staring at his friend in consternation. “Good heavens!”

“You mean you haven’t?” James asked, incredulous. “I made a will regarding the guardianship of my children before they were born. Beecham would have insisted, had I not thought of the matter myself.”

“Well, we already had ample evidence that I am a fool and failure, did we not?” Alphonse said bitterly. He violently tugged the bell cord.

The major-domo entered fast enough. “Please send to my legal adviser, Maître Gallicourt, with a request to wait upon me as soon as possible, today,” Alphonse ordered. “The cook should provide a light dinner in about two hours, here at home.” He looked at James. “Anything else you can think of?”

“Nothing, except that we should be informed immediately if the groom returns from Calais – what is his name, by the way?”

“Jaques Denard, Monsieur.”

“And like the good Mme Fourrier, we too should take a hamper of provisions when we continue our journey north, so we do not lose time over lunch on the way.”

“Right,” Alphonse said. “Tell my cook to see to it. The Maître is the most urgent, though.”

As the man bowed himself out of the library, the two friends looked at each other. Alphonse asked, “Would you agree to be Monique’s guardian, in case it became necessary?”

“Most willingly, but you should name another as well, if I were not capable for some reason. I have designated my brother George together with Charlotte, as guardian if I should perish; he surely would not mind if you named him in addition to me. Charlotte could bring your child up with ours, no matter who is nominal guardian; but she does not have enough influence to counter the child’s French relations, if it became necessary.”

“I will accept your advice, and ask George’s permission when he returns from Greece. Given the situation with de Montalban, it might be safest for Monique to be brought up in England, anyway.”

“I still cannot believe that you had not written a will before this.”

“Oh, I have one, but that was before Monique’s birth. From her very first breath everyone was telling me that her life would be cut short, so consistently that I had accepted the sad prospect as inevitable.”

“Even so –“

“I can understand your astonishment,” Alphonse said in a low voice. “But you do not know what this last year, after Louise-Henriette’s death, was like. I moved around like a wind-up toy for entire weeks, going through the motions of existence, playing at the role of Marquis with little conviction and less pleasure. Constructive thought and planning ahead were wholly beyond me. Even food and drink, no matter how delicious, could not arouse any particular enthusiasm. I supervised the repair work because it was there, but I am sure when I look back, that I signed off on inflated numbers and was roundly overcharged. Anyone could see that I did not care, and had too little business sense into the bargain. Forgetting about a new will, and never noticing the simmering tensions among the castle’s staff, are just two of the ways I failed in my duty. At the time, even had you been there to point this out to me, I would not have cared. A black cloud was hanging over me, fogging my brain.”

“What you are describing is melancholia,” James said. “That you of all people could be susceptible to that malady of the spirit is most astonishing. But your description puts me forcibly in mind of the last time I spoke with poor Matthew Hurst at Oxford, before he had that ‘hunting accident’.

“He must have had a worse case than I, because even at the lowest point I never thought of ending my existence. No matter how unpleasant, I always knew it was a temporary state, and by the time I came to you in Sussex, had already put it behind me. It made a great difference that England is the scene of my happier memories.”

“Do you mean that you now dislike that huge castle of yours?”