Mademoiselle At Arms (9 page)

‘And now,’ he said, drawing Madame to the seat, and
contriving to sit close enough that his anatomy touched hers at several points,
‘let us talk about you, madame.’

‘About me?’ The lady’s lashes fluttered and her fan came up. ‘You
would know more of me?’

‘I would know everything about you,’ Gerald told her, his
tone at once provocative and inviting.

The major might not indulge in this sort of flirtation in the
ordinary way, but he had seen enough among his army colleagues to know just how
to go about it.

She responded at once, rapping him on the knuckles with her
fan. ‘I hope I do not understand you.’

You mean you hope you do, thought Gerald cynically. But he
seized the chance to entrap her fingers, fan and all, and look deeply into her
eyes. They were a dull grey, but the dark frizzed hair that framed her face was
attractive.

‘To begin with,’ he said, ‘allow me a very tiny intimacy. Your
name.’

‘Ah, that is easy,’ she began, laughing.

‘No, let me guess,’ he interrupted. ‘Let me see if our minds
are attuned.’

The lashes fluttered demurely. ‘You would read my mind?’

Gerald was pretty certain he already had, but he did not say
so. This was unscrupulous, he admitted, because he had no intention of
following through on the seductive promise in his conduct. But if not himself,
there would be another soon enough. Madame Valade was that kind of woman.

‘I would read your body,’ he whispered, and lifted her
fingers to his lips. Then he released her hand, and sat back a little,
appearing to concentrate his thoughts on her face. She waited expectantly.

‘Let’s see now. Would it be Thérèse?’

She shook her head. ‘Quite wrong, monsieur.’

‘Alas. Then perhaps it is Prudence?’

‘Oh la la! That is not me at all.’

‘No, perhaps not,’ Gerald agreed with a smile. ‘Léonore, then?’
She shook her head animatedly, enjoying his attention. ‘Then it must certainly
be Eugénie.’

‘But, no,’ She dimpled. ‘You cannot read my mind at all,
monsieur.’

‘I’m afraid you are right. Very well, I give up. You will
have to tell me.’

‘I could have done so at the first and saved you the pain,’
she told him merrily. ‘It is Yol—’ She broke off abruptly, her face collapsing
into an expression of acute consternation.

Gerald was instantly on the alert. ‘Something wrong, madame?’

Her fan came up swiftly, hiding the lower part of her face. She
fluttered it with a trembling hand, averting her eyes from his, and he could
hear her uneven breath behind it.

‘It—it is—nothing,’ she uttered jerkily. ‘I thought—I thought
I saw my—my husband.’

Gerald cast a swift look up the corridor, but there was no
one there, not even a shadow. His frowning gaze came back to her. She was
making it up. It was an excuse, dredged up on the spur of the moment to cover a
slip. What had she so nearly said? She had almost spoken a name—and quickly
withdrawn it. He remembered also, all at once, the very first words he had
heard her speak: “I was not born to this.” Lord, he was right! But softly now. Let
him be sure.

‘Have no fear,’ he uttered soothingly, reaching out to pat
her free hand. ‘I will make certain that we are unobserved.’

He made a pretence of rising and making a sortie to the
corner to see if anyone was there. She seemed to have recovered herself as he
returned, but rose as if she would go back to the saloon.

‘Ah, no,’ Gerald uttered at once, lowering his voice and
infusing it with all the promise he could command. ‘Not yet, madame. You will
leave me utterly distraught.’

Madame Valade reseated herself, and Gerald set himself to
flatter her into relaxation again. He succeeded so well that by the time he
asked for her name once more, she fluttered her lashes as coquettishly as ever.

‘You will not guess again?’

‘No, no, I am quite out of ideas. And you promised to tell me.
Quick, now. I can no longer bear to address you by that formal
madame
.’

‘Then you shall no longer do so. I am called Melusine.’

Gerald let out a sigh both relieved and satisfied and
repeated the name.

‘Melusine. How perfectly charming.’

He sat looking her over in silence for a moment or two, his
thoughts revolving around the name and the way it fitted so exquisitely on
quite another set of features. Presently he caught her puzzled glance, and
recollected himself, turning on the charm again.

‘Now, madame, tell me all about your life in France. Did you
grow up at the Valade estates? You were born a Valade, I take it, even though
your father is English.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, but her manner was a degree less warm.

Gerald at once lowered his voice to that intimate level
again, and leaned towards her. ‘Come, I told you I wish to know everything
about you. That is my way, my dear. I cannot be intimate—’ stressing the word
with a deep look ‘—with one I feel to be a stranger.’

The breathy laugh came, and Madame Valade abandoned her fan. ‘You
would have a history of my life? Very well. I was born of one Suzanne Valade
and an Englishman, Nicholas Charvill.’

She pronounced it with a French inflexion, but Gerald
understood her to mean the English name he knew.

‘You are related to General Lord Charvill?’

‘
Monsieur le baron
, he is my
grandpére
,’ she
confirmed.

As she went on, the story began to sound more and more like a
recitation. ‘I lived with the Valades for some years. But then, because my papa
had no money, you understand, he sent me to a convent.’

‘A convent?’ echoed Gerald with interest.

‘Yes, for there were too many females for the vicomte to make
me a dowry. It was never intended that I should marry Monsieur Valade, but
after the tragedy—’ her eyes darkening in genuine distress ‘—and that he was
the only survivor, he came to me in the convent and married me, and brought me
to England.’

So pat, thought Gerald. A neat tale, giving little away. He would
have to probe further. He allowed his voice to drip with sympathy.

‘Ah, the tragedy. Poor little one.’

Her hand shook as he took it in his, and she uttered
involuntarily, ‘Oh, it was so horrible! They came like animals, with long
knives that they use to cut grass, and heavy clubs. They set about everyone—everyone.
They did not care—servant or master, it meant nothing. People running,
screaming, hiding...’ She shuddered, throwing her hands over her face.

Gerald’s thoughts raced as he reached out supporting hands
and murmured meaningless phrases to soothe. The shock and distress were genuine.
She described it so vividly. Like a nightmare memory that returned again and
again to haunt her.
But she was not
there
. She had just this
moment past told him that Monsieur Valade came to her after the tragedy, to the
convent, from where he married her and brought her to England. She had, poor
inexperienced fool, given herself away. Melusine—the real Melusine—would never
have made such a stupid mistake.

In a moment or two, Madame Valade recovered her sangfroid. She
appeared not to have realised the implications of her outburst, but clung a
little to Gerald’s hands which had taken hers in a comforting clasp.

‘How happy for you that Valade came to take you away from France,’ he said encouragingly, adding with one of those intimate looks, ‘Happy for me,
too.’

She simpered, and withdrew one hand so that she might smack
his fingers playfully. ‘You are outrageous.’

‘I know,’ he said, smiling. ‘Tell me about the convent? Were
you happy there? They were kind to you, the nuns?’

‘Oh, but yes. So kind, so good to me always.’

With difficulty, Gerald bit back a laugh. ‘You must have been
an exceedingly good pupil.’

‘It is so in a convent, you see,’ she explained airily. ‘The
nuns, they teach prayer and obedience.’

Oh, do they? No kitchen service? No feeding of pigs? It was
evident that this woman knew nothing of nuns, if a certain young lady’s artless
reminiscences were anything to go by.

‘And your schooling?’ he pursued.

Madame shrugged. ‘To read and write, of course, and to sew.’

No Latin? And no guns or daggers, naturally. ‘How dull it
must have been for you, poor little one.’ Gerald knew the caress in his voice
was a trifle ironic.

She did not learn the kind of looks she had been bestowing
upon him at a convent. Nor, he would wager, had the heroic Monsieur Valade, who
had rescued her from that life and brought her to England, taught her in that
short time all that Gerald was certain she knew of men. A shy virgin bride
would not press her thigh sinuously against his, nor consent indeed to this
clandestine little comedy he had been playing.

He did not know what her game was, although he had a shrewd
suspicion that she had been co-opted into it by her supposed husband, the
soi-disant
Valade. Gerald did not know who she was, but he knew who she was not. She was
not Madame Melusine Valade.

Two days later, it was quite another Melusine who confronted
a young lad on a sunny morning, at variance with her bleak mood.

‘Say then, Jacques, you have followed him?’ she demanded of
the black-garbed footman.

Jack Kimble nodded eagerly. ‘Aye, miss, like a shadow. I done
just what you asked.’

Melusine was quite aware of the effect she had on the young
lad. She was sorry for his liking her too much for his own good, but her need
was too desperate to cavil at turning it to useful account. She had need of a devoted
cavalier and Jack had proved eminently valuable.

‘That is good,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘for I was
compelled on Saturday to abandon the chase.’

Kimble’s eyes widened. ‘Was you following, too, miss?’

‘Certainly I was following. Only that I was prevented by one
of those soldiers that caught me in the big house.’

‘Militia, miss,’ Kimble corrected her. ‘They weren’t no
soldiers.’

‘They wear a uniform, do they not? They march and fight with
swords and shoot with guns, no?’

‘Well, yes, miss.’                                                                                                                      

‘Then they are soldiers. And me, I know very much of soldiers.
One must be on guard. Now do not make me any more arguments, but tell me at
once where that pig is gone.’

Jack blinked. ‘Pig, miss?’

‘The one who calls himself Valade,
idiot
,’ snapped
Melusine impatiently.

‘Oh, the Frenchie. On Saturday he went to that there Mr
Charvill’s house. In Hamilton Place that is, like I told you before, miss.’

‘Yes, that is Mr Brewis Charvill, as you have found out for
me.’ She struck her hands together. ‘
Parbleu
, that pig, he will ruin all.
Did he see him, this Monsieur Charvill?’

‘I don’t rightly know, miss,’ confessed Kimble. ‘At least I
couldn’t say for sure. He went in there, and he was in there for a good half
hour. But I never seen Mr Charvill, and when the Frenchie come out, I followed
him again, like you told me. But he only went home again to Paddington.’

Melusine swung away and moved to stare dully out of the
window of the little chapel vestry onto the mews outside. At this time of day
the priest would be at his apartments in Brewer Street, a short walk away from Golden Square which the building overlooked. The house had in fact been converted into a
convent, but the fact could not be advertised, not even in the Catholic enclave
that existed in this part of town. The nuns wore their habit, and said all
their offices, and went about their tasks unobtrusively, relieving the poor and
needy and tending the sick. They troubled no one, and as long as they did not
noise themselves abroad and make a nuisance of themselves in this Protestant
country, no one troubled them.

The vestry was perhaps the only room in the place, except her
allotted curtained off portion of the dormitory chamber that served for her
cell—and she could not scandalise the nuns by having a man in there, be he
never so much a servant—where Melusine could be sure of privacy. It was
situated off a little hallway that led also to the kitchens and the back door
to the outside. It was convenient for Father Saint-Simon, who could enter this
way and prepare in the little room before going up the narrow stair to the
chapel above where the nuns waited.

There was little more here than a sideboard, a chest for the
vestments, and a simple wooden chair. But it was generally unused, and so was a
suitable spot for these secret meetings, when Melusine plotted and delivered
her instructions to Jack Kimble. He was officially in the nun’s employ, but
Melusine had commandeered his services immediately on the discovery that he had
conceived a passion for her. Leonardo had told her it would happen, and warned
her to make use of it. It troubled her conscience a little, but Melusine had
learned well of Leonardo and she trusted his word