Christina Hollis (10 page)

‘If you keep working continuously, Master Philip, you’ll make yourself ill. You’re the doctor—you should know!’ She tried a laugh, but Adamson did not join in. ‘Who knows? With all the spare time you’ll have, you might even be able to find your brother!’

At her words, Adamson snatched up another handful of grasses. The seedheads were like plump furry caterpillars and he dragged them from their thread-like stems.

‘Why?’ he whispered at last, not looking at Madeleine. ‘Why? I’ve had to give up everything I’ve ever wanted. Michael gets to start a new life with no old responsibilities to drag him down.’

He clenched his fists until the knuckles went white, crushing the grass heads to powder.

Madeleine couldn’t help herself. In an instant she had bridged the distance between them and encircled him with her arms. He was as taut as an angry child, so different now from the uncontained passion of the night before.

‘Don’t, mademoiselle...’

‘I haven’t done anything yet.’ Madeleine tried to pull him closer, but he was immovable.

‘Please—don’t.’

‘Would you like to talk about it?’ she continued, loosening her hold on him. The longing for his touch had increased with every passing hour. While he seemed so vulnerable, Madeleine knew it was unfair to coerce him.

‘The matter is avoided as much as possible.’

‘That’s no way to solve anything. Get everything out into the open. Two heads are supposed to be better than one—I’m sure there’s a way to sort everything out, if only you’d confide in someone. Me, perhaps?’

After a pause he threw down the grass seeds. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Of course I do, Master Philip.’

The coachman’s hailing interrupted, calling them back to the carriage.

They stood up, Adamson brushing flakes of bark from his jacket before pulling it on with a sigh.

‘Could I trust you with confidences?’ he murmured, almost to himself.

‘Of course. Tell me as much or as little as you please. It won’t go any further. Who would I have to tell?’ Madeleine laughed.

Adamson was arranging his cuffs and cravat, and when he looked at her again Madeleine was silenced by the look in his cool grey eyes.

‘My mother knows nothing other than the plain fact that Father—’ he hesitated and his glance flickered away from her ‘—that Father and Michael had a disagreement over money...’

‘If that is how you wish things to remain, then you have no fear as far as I’m concerned, sir. Mistress Constance won’t hear a word from me on the subject.’

Adamson looked at her quizzically, then seemed to satisfy himself that her words were genuine.

He bowed, gravely offering her his arm for the walk back to the coach.

‘I hope that taking my arm is a gesture of your renewed trust in me,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Trust that I will never abuse again. We may disagree upon certain matters, Mademoiselle Madeleine, but I hope that honesty is not one of them.’

Madeleine smiled, but secretly crossed her fingers.

At that particular moment she wasn’t feeling in the least bit honest.

She was also secretly hoping that Adamson would not be taking any respect for her too far.

It was days before Madeleine was to learn more. The Adamsons’ party was to spend that night in Rouen. Wearied with the heat and travelling, Mistress Constance went straight to her room in their lodging house for a nap.

Madeleine was given the rest of the afternoon to herself. When Adamson suggested they take a walk around the town, she agreed readily. It would be the first time they had been alone together since their walk in the woods.

‘My mother is very impressed with your vitality, Mademoiselle Madeleine. She wonders at your energy, considering the rough lodgings we have had to endure since leaving Paris.’

Madeleine smiled mysteriously. Any one of the places they had stopped at were palaces compared to her little room back in the city.

‘And now I do believe you intend to walk me to the point of exhaustion!’

Adamson was unusually cheerful, and Madeleine wondered if he was building up to a revelation.

‘Oh, nonsense, sir! We’ve only seen the market and the cathedral. There look to be dozens of little shops up the side-streets to see yet!’

They walked past a poor tenement that was particularly noisome in the evening warmth. Swifts screamed through clouds of flies about its open sewers while children, pigs and dogs splashed about in the filth. Just like home, Madeleine thought with a shiver of disgust.

‘I think a good drink will be in order before we venture far in that direction, mademoiselle!’

Taking her arm, Adamson led Madeleine back towards their lodging house. They crossed the town square, laughing at the starlings chattering and clapping their wings about the great cliff face of the cathedral. Nestlings were still peeping down from among the saintly carvings and chortling at the townspeople far below.

The lodging house was dim and deserted. A cool breeze flowed between the open front and rear doors, lifting curtains and fluttering stray cobwebs. Sensing customers, the landlord loomed in from his seat in the sun, a black silhouette at the back door.

He showed Madeleine and Adamson to one of the curtained booths set about the cool stone walls. Conversation here would be private, but with the curtains clipped back there could be no hint of impropriety about their meeting.

The landlord brought chilled fruit cup. This disappointed Madeleine, who had been itching to try some sherry wine. All the aristos were said to drink it, but it seemed a rare commodity as far as the Adamsons were concerned.

Philip Adamson picked up one of the two glasses provided for them and ladled out a measure of fruit cup for Madeleine.

‘You are the first unchaperoned young lady I have ever spent time alone with, mademoiselle. Such an afternoon as we’ve had could never be countenanced in England!’ he said drily, filling the second glass with cordial.

Madeleine took his words with a very large pinch of salt. Any young man who looked like Philip Adamson would be no stranger to unchaperoned girls, if not ladies.

Grateful for the cold drink, both quenched their thirsts. Madeleine liked the fruit cup but was not so impressed by the fruit bobbing about in it, which seemed a needless extravagance.

‘You are doubtless a good Roman Catholic, Mademoiselle Madeleine,’ Adamson began after they had both cooled down a little.

Madeleine wondered what to say. She couldn’t remember having been to a church service in her life.

He continued without waiting for her reply.

‘You will understand, therefore, how difficult confession can be.’

‘If you want to talk, sir, that will be good enough.’

‘I meant—the kind of confession I am to make to you, mademoiselle.’

He was gripping his glass and staring intently into the middle distance. When he seemed reluctant to go on, Madeleine reached out and put her hand on his wrist. He looked at her, his grey eyes no longer cold but soft with apprehension.

‘I can’t possibly tell you all the details, mademoiselle. It is sufficient to say that the real truth of the matter was that Michael—’ he stumbled over the name ‘—was not as careful as he should have been in affairs of the heart—’

‘He got a girl into trouble?’ Madeleine said brightly. At this Adamson flushed and fell silent. He had to fortify himself with another drink before continuing.

‘You will find England a very staid place, Mademoiselle Madeleine. Such things are never spoken of in company, let alone to a lady.’

‘I understand. I was wrong to make such a silly assumption.’

Adamson put down his cup and was fiddling with his cuff, but looked up sharply at her interruption.

‘Oh, no, mademoiselle. You are quite right. I had known about it for some time—then one day, Michael visited me in my rooms in Cheltenham.’ His voice slowed abruptly, each word that followed part of a terrible confession. ‘To see if I could do anything about it...’

Madeleine ladled him another drink from the punch bowl. Pushing the glass towards him, she smiled.

‘And could you?’ The question had only been half serious. The restrained and upright Philip Adamson, involved with things like that?

‘I was going to.’

Outside, swifts screamed over the town square. Adamson sat back while Madeleine tried to stifle her horror invisibly.

‘That must come as a great shock to you, mademoiselle.’

It was plainly a matter of great shame to him. His eyes were downcast, and when Madeleine stirred herself to pat his hand comfortingly he did not resist the gesture.

‘I had no wish to be involved in such a matter, of course. The only thing that persuaded me was the thought of what the girl might be driven to if I did not. In the end I couldn’t go through with it. A time was arranged, the place made ready—right down to the bottle of gin I was going to stupefy her with. It was no good. I knew I could never bring myself to do it. By the time they arrived I had drunk most of the gin myself and told them both to go to—Hell...’

He stumbled over this word too, and when Madeleine looked at him she saw even deeper emotions only just below the surface.

She sighed. A couple of workmen strolled in for their early evening drink, but paid little attention to the couple seated in the booth.

‘That was the last anyone saw of Michael,’ Adamson began more certainly. ‘Two days later I was summoned home. Privately, Father told me Michael went to him first, requesting to marry the girl. This was impossible as far as Father was concerned, so he suggested that her parents be approached with a settlement. The girl could then be spirited away to a distant relative for the requisite number of months, the child adopted and nothing more said of the matter. Michael would have none of it. Both he and Father were immovable. They argued, and Michael stormed out. He must have come straight on to see me in his anger. I really was their final resort. Michael hasn’t been heard of since the day I let him down.’

There was a moment of silence punctuated by the low, lazy murmur of conversation between patron and customers.

‘Is that the whole story, Master Philip?’ Madeleine murmured at last.

He nodded, looking faintly surprised at what he had done. ‘I’ve never told anybody else every single thing, from beginning to end.’

‘Then thank you.’

Madeleine finished her drink while he considered this. She fished a strawberry from her glass of fruit cup and ate it with relish. Licking her fingers, she nearly wiped them on her skirt, hesitated, then accepted the handkerchief that Adamson flourished.

‘Is your appetite always so insatiable?’ he said in clipped tones.

Madeleine mumbled an apology and cursed herself silently. She found matters of etiquette easier in Mistress Constance’s company, as she could watch and copy. When alone with Philip Adamson there were no clues to the behaviour a lady should adopt.

The piercing stare he was torturing her with did not falter.

‘Now Michael has his freedom while I must forgo every pleasure to keep Mother from poverty. Your common sense and reason no doubt urges that I should accept the poor hand life has seen fit to deal me, mademoiselle, put on a smile and go about my daily toil rejoicing?’

Leaning forward, he folded his arms on the table. One finger stretched out and pushed his glass slowly about the smoke-greased table-top. Madeleine was not impressed. He was surely man enough to make the best of things.

‘This is not about what I think, sir. Weren’t we supposed to be discussing what you feel you must do?’

The tip of Adamson’s tongue appeared between his teeth and he studied the empty glass intently.

‘Mother would say that hard work is the greatest cure for all troubles.’

‘Ah, but I know you don’t always heed your mother’s advice, do you, sir? Mistress Constance doesn’t put up with elbows on the table.’

His grey eyes flicked up at her with sudden, rare amusement. ‘Mother nags at you for that?’

Madeleine shook her head. ‘In a foreigner such things are acceptably quaint. In an English son I think it will be seen as a sign you are going native.’

His expression became impenetrable. And then he smiled.

‘If habits are so easily taken up, Mademoiselle Madeleine, take care that our ways never turn you into a frail English rose. That would never do.’

Rising from his seat, he stood aside to let her leave the table.

‘Time to prepare for dinner, I think. And I shall take care to bear your warning in mind, mademoiselle. I hope my manners in future do not disappoint you.’

The perfect weather held for the rest of their journey. Madeleine had never seen the sea, and in her eyes the Channel was wonderful. The millpond-smooth crossing delighted her. Wide open spaces of sea and sky, sharp with the tang of salt were an amazing novelty.

Instead of hiding food for herself she now distributed scraps to the seagulls. A few soot-grimed birds had haunted the Seine at home, but in nothing like the numbers she met with on board ship.

Each morning she threw handfuls of food on to the deck, retreating to watch the squabbling mass of birds eager for breakfast.

While Mistress Constance laughed with her, Adamson was not so impressed. He resented time and good food wasted on vermin, and made no secret of the fact.

When they reached England, his attitude to dumb animals seemed to change. At every country town along their route Madeleine had to follow the Adamsons around fairs and farmyards while they scrutinised the stock.

The only farm animals Madeleine had seen before were the thin, hidebound cows that stood dolefully in dank Parisian dairies. She was unprepared for the number and variety of English cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and horses.

Every market town was a torture for her. Mistress Constance would stop the carriage and get down for a look around. Madeleine clung on to her employer with more fear than loyalty as huge animals loomed and stamped and snorted about them on all sides.

The final straw came when the Adamsons’ carriage stopped to let a herd of cattle pass on the road.

At the lowing, bellowing, clattering cacophony she shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears.