Mademoiselle At Arms (17 page)

She bit her lip, but her eyes betrayed her. ‘Do not say such
things, you—you
imbecile
.’

With satisfaction, Gerald noted that her voice was hopelessly
unsteady and drove home his advantage.

‘I will not, if you will assure me that an imbecile is a
better marriage prospect than a starving pig.’

Melusine bubbled over and warmth rose in Gerald’s chest.

‘
Idiot
. Near as
idiot
as this
capitaine
of yours. He believed me when I asked him to marry me. You would not have
believed me, I know well.’

Gerald eyed her with interest. ‘Did you sigh and flutter your
eyelashes?’

‘Certainly I did.’

‘No, I wouldn’t have believed you.’ He glanced at Roding. ‘Don’t
concern yourself, Hilary. She was only trying to distract you so that she might
escape.’

‘Distract me? She nigh on gave me an apoplexy.’

Gerald laughed, and turned back to Melusine, who was frowning
again. ‘What now?’

‘Now,’ she answered flatly, ‘you will please to tell me at
once why you have come here.’

‘That’s easy. You’re trespassing again, and I’ve come to
arrest you,’ Gerald said promptly.

‘I do not believe you.
En tout cas
, I am not
trespassing at all. This—’ waving an imperious hand in a sweeping arc about the
library ‘—is my house.’

So that was it. Gerald glanced at Hilary and saw the stunned
look on his face. The fellow Kimble, to whom Gerald was indebted, was gaping.

‘You will have to prove it, you know,’ Gerald said quietly.

‘Do you think I do not know? What am I doing here, do you
think?’

‘That’s just exactly what I’ve been asking myself,’ he
returned. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘But looking for proof,’ Melusine uttered impatiently. ‘Have
I not said so?’

‘No, as it happens.’ He smiled down at her. ‘But that will do
for a start. Now I’d like the rest of your story.’

Melusine’s eyes flashed. ‘You would like? And do you imagine
that I will tell you?’

‘Won’t you?’

‘No, a thousand times.’

‘Damnation!’

‘What the devil ails you?’ demanded his friend, striding
forward. ‘You know pretty much everything you need to know.’

Melusine swung round and stared at him, while Gerald silently
cursed.

‘How much does he know?’ Without waiting for a reply, she
turned narrowed eyes on Gerald. ‘So it is that you have made Jacques betray me.’

‘No, miss,’ cut in Kimble.

She glanced at him and made a dismissive gesture. ‘Do not be
alarmed, Jacques. I am not angry with you, but with this—this—’

‘Idiot? Imbecile?’ offered Gerald in a helpful tone.

Melusine choked on a laugh, and Gerald at once seized the
initiative, speaking in a tone deliberately soothing.

‘You have every right to be angry with me. You see, I
kidnapped poor Jack and made him promise to send me word if you went careering
off anywhere. He was extremely loyal to you. Indeed, he told me nothing at all.
But he was at last persuaded that I mean you no harm, and that I might—just
possibly, since I am both a gentleman and a major of militia—be able to be of
more assistance to you than he himself. So, you see—’

‘Do not say any more,’ Melusine uttered, flinging away and
moving to the fireplace. She turned there, clasped her hands behind her back
and put up her chin. ‘I see that Leonardo was right. One cannot trust any man
at all.’

The lad Kimble moved swiftly to the door and walked out of
the room. Disappointment flickered in Gerald’s chest, and he did not hesitate
to speak his mind, unable to help a reproachful note.

‘I don’t think he deserved that, Melusine.’

Quick remorse raced through Melusine’s veins, but she hit
back strongly. ‘It needs not that you tell me.’ Then she ran swiftly out of the
library, calling out as her cavalier was almost at the front door. ‘Jacques!’

He stopped, but he did not turn. Melusine ran to catch at his
arm.

‘Jacques, do not go!’

Jack gazed steadfastly at the floor. ‘You were right, miss. I
didn’t ought to have sent for him.’

Melusine’s heart twisted. ‘Jacques, you have been very much
my friend. I have had no one but for you. But it is that I have a very bad
temper, you understand.’

She sighed relief to see a faint grin as he ventured to raise
his head.

‘I know that, miss. I don’t mind it.’

‘But you mind that I say I do not trust you. This is not true
at all.’

Melusine put her arm through his in a friendly way and moved
with him outside to stand on the porch, leaning into him in a confidential way.

‘Even the nuns they say I am like a devil. But you have
looked after me very well, and we will not allow this Gérard, who makes me all
the time excessively angry, you understand, to make trouble between us.’

‘I think he only wants to help you, miss,’ offered Jack. ‘He
don’t mean you no harm.’

Melusine withdrew her hand. ‘Yes, but I do not know why he
should wish to do so, and therefore I cannot permit that he interferes.’

She was about to develop this theme, when Jack’s gaze became
fixed, and his expression changed. ‘Inside, miss!’

‘But what is it?’

‘Quick! We need the major.’

Before she could object, Melusine found herself hustled back
into the house and dragged willy-nilly towards the library door, where Jack
called softly.

‘Major, sir!’

The major appeared so swiftly that Melusine was instantly
suspicious. Had he been listening inside?

‘What is amiss?’

‘That Frenchie, sir. He’s riding down the drive.’

‘Valade?’

‘Aye, sir.’

Shock threw Melusine’s heart out of kilter and she looked
instinctively towards the major. ‘But―but how can he know?’

His soldier’s instinct overtook Gerald and he dropped all his
insouciance in a bang, becoming brisk.

‘Never mind that now.’ He called through the library door. ‘Hilary!’

The captain appeared, alert at the note in his major’s voice
as Gerald had known he would be.

‘What’s to do?’

‘Valade is here. Go out there and head him off, will you? Tell
him anything you like, but don’t let him in, and don’t tell him Melusine is
here.’

Roding left the house instantly, not even pausing to nod.

Gerald seized Melusine by the hand and drew her towards the
stairs, throwing a command at Kimble as he did so. ‘Keep watch, Jack! If
Captain Roding fails to keep the man out of the house, run upstairs and warn me
quickly. We’ll be somewhere on the floor above.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Kimble said at once, and took up his stance at
the bottom of the stairs as Gerald dragged Melusine up them.

‘But, Gérard—’

‘Don’t start arguing,’ he said in a tone that brooked no
defiance. ‘We’ll have you right out of the way, just in case. And don’t talk
until we’re well out of earshot.’

Rather to his surprise, she obeyed this injunction as he led
her up two flights of stairs to the first floor. Moving swiftly to the end of
the corridor, he pushed open a door at random and entered a large room, which
looked to have been a saloon, judging from the faded gilt and crimson
wall-paper, a mirror above the fireplace which was surrounded by an ornate
gilded frame, now sadly tarnished, and a worn Chippendale sofa with striped
upholstery and tasselled cushions.

Gerald closed the door and released Melusine, and then went
to open the shutters on a window that faced the side of the house. Light
flooded the uncarpeted chamber, revealing the decayed state of the place.

‘Lord,’ he uttered, glancing about with a disparaging eye. ‘One
would take it that the house had been ransacked.’

Melusine had crossed to the window that overlooked the front
of the house, and was trying to peep through a crack in the shutters. Cursing
under his breath, Gerald moved swiftly across and dragged her away.

‘You’ll make shadows.’

She allowed herself to be pulled to the centre of the room,
but uttered in a low tone, full of suppressed anxiety, ‘How can he know? How
can he know?’

‘You mean how can he know that this is your house?’

Melusine looked up at him, distress in her eyes. ‘There is no
one who could have told him this. No one.’

‘What of your grandfather?’

Her lips parted in surprise. ‘You know?’

‘Come, come, Melusine. Remember that I’ve seen Brewis
Charvill, and I’m well aware of your identity. You told me yourself you are not
half French, which means the girl calling herself Madame Valade is completely
misinformed, so Valade himself cannot know. But they’ve just been to see
General Charvill.’

Fury was in her face.
‘Alors
, I see how is this. He
will not help them—and I told Emile so—and thus he sends them to my other
grandpére
,
even that he knows he is dead. Pah! What a pig is this
générale
.’

‘I thought so,’ Gerald said with satisfaction. ‘Jarvis
Remenham was your mother’s father.’

She bit her lip, frowning. ‘How did you guess?’

‘I guessed as soon as you said this was your house. Didn’t I
say that this whole business of your camping in Remenham House was the one
aspect I could not puzzle out?’

‘You are very clever,
monsieur Gérard
,’ she conceded,
although Gerald was amused by the grudging note, ‘but in truth it is not yet my
house. I do not know how I shall get it, but I must, you understand.’

‘Why must you?’ asked Gerald calmly.

Melusine opened her eyes at him. ‘But for my dowry, what else?
One cannot expect that an Englishman will marry any
jeune demoiselle
without a dowry. That is not reasonable.’

‘Not if you want one of good family, no,’ he agreed mildly. ‘Unless
he is himself a man of substance.’

‘Even that he is, one must be practical. For that such a man
does not mind about the dowry, he must be in love
en désespoir
. And even
if that,’ she added bitterly, ‘he must be also a person of a disposition
extremely mad, that he can go against the family.’

‘Like your father,’ Gerald put in deliberately.

Her eyes flashed. ‘Exactly like my father. Only my father he
is also of a disposition extremely
stupide
. And it is all for his
behaviour
tout à fait imbecile
, and that of
monsieur le
baron
his father entirely unforgiving, that I am put at this need to come myself and
get a dowry that I may marry in all honour. And an Englishman, which is my
right of birth.’

She turned and swept away from him, pacing the length of the
room to the window Gerald had unshuttered. And turning again, as if the
emotions she had churned up kept her on the move, she paced back to the mantel
and there stopped, staring at her own reflection in the tarnished mirror.

Gerald watched her perambulations in silence, his heart wrung.
So this was what it was all about. Hurt beyond what he could imagine by the
selfishness and pride of her forbears, whose fateful disputes had robbed her of
the life she should have led, the plucky little devil had taken matters into
her own hands. It was not only Leonardo who had instilled in her this distrust
of men. Small wonder she had learned to be self-reliant. Every man in her life
had betrayed her one way or another.

‘Well then, Melusine,’ he said calmly, ‘it seems as if we
must get you your dowry willy-nilly.’

She turned, her eyes narrowed. ‘We?’

Gerald smiled. ‘Precisely. You may command my services at any
time. I told you that at the outset.’

‘No.’ She advanced towards him. ‘I do not command your
services,
mon major
. I do not command the services of a person who will
not tell me why he offers them.’

Gerald moved to the long sofa, dusted it with elaborate care
with one of its cushions, and with a gesture invited her to sit down. Melusine
approached with caution and sat warily at one end, looking up at him expectantly.
He removed his cockaded hat, putting it down between them as he sat at the
other end, placing himself at an angle and, crossing his legs, leaned back at
his ease, his eyes fixed on her face.

‘
Eh bien
?’

‘You are perfectly right, Melusine. It is quite outrageous of
me to go about rescuing a damsel in distress—’

‘Who does not in the least wish to be rescued,’ put in
Melusine.

‘—without telling her why,’ he finished, ignoring the
interjection. ‘So I shall do so.’ He sighed, spread his hands quite in her own
manner, and fluttered his lashes.

To his intense satisfaction, Melusine bit her lip on a
tremor.

‘You see,’ he pursued blandly, ‘I lead a life of the most
intolerable boredom. And the opportunity to share in your exciting adventures
was just too tempting to be put aside.’