Zipporah's Daughter (Knave of Hearts) (34 page)

I looked at him quickly and he went on: ‘For the boy, of course. That would be how the Comte’s mind would work. After all, there are only you and that pathetic Sophie now. She was not considered for a moment.’

I looked at him coldly. ‘At such a time you concern yourself with such matters … ’

‘They are there, Lottie. You cannot ignore what is there.’

I wasn’t listening to him. I was thinking of Armand, going down to the river … a group of armed men springing out on him. But perhaps there was only one.

I felt sick and frightened.

I said: ‘I want to go in.’

‘Think about what I have said, Lottie. Marry me. I’ll take care of you.’

‘And the estate,’ I said, ‘and Chariot’s inheritance … ’

‘I’d take care of everything. You need me, Lottie, as much as I need you.’

‘I don’t feel that need,’ I said. ‘Good night, Dickon.’

He left the castle the next day. He was clearly very displeased with his reception.

Lisette wanted to know what had happened and as she knew something important had, I told her.

‘Blanchard!’ she said. ‘Yes, when you come to think of it, he was too good to be true. He was quite handsome, wasn’t he, in a manly way. Yet he never seemed to look at anyone except Sophie. He never made the slightest attempt to be flirtatious with you, did he, Lottie?’

‘Of course not.’

‘With no one but Sophie. That was a very gallant sort of relationship, wasn’t it? It could have been because he was sorry for her. But what was I saying … handsome and courtly. His manners were of the very best … and such a good tutor, recommended by a noble Duc. It was all so very satisfactory. Tell me what Dickon discovered.’

I told her what I knew of the Duc d’Orléans and the Palais Royal, and Soissonson’s connections with them.

‘Dickon tells a good story. When you come to think about it, as good a one could be made up about him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, let’s allow our imaginations to run loose, shall we? Dickon wants you … very much he wants you but he would like you even better if you brought something substantial with you. I suppose the Comte’s wealth is vast. Armand would naturally inherit the bulk … but if Armand were no longer there … well, it is likely that Sophie’s being
hors de combat,
so to say, all that wealth might descend to you.’

‘Stop it,’ I cried. ‘It’s … horrible.’

‘You know what’s coming. If Armand were out of the way, you see … ’

I could not shut out the vivid pictures which came into my mind. Armand going to the river … someone waiting there for him … leaving the horse tethered … dropping the hat by the river … burying the body. Dickon had been out all that day, while Léon Blanchard had spent the morning with the boys in the wood and the afternoon they had sorted out their specimens. Dickon had been out, I remembered. He had come back late.

‘This is nonsense,’ I said.

‘Of course it is. The whole thing is nonsense. You will see Léon Blanchard returning soon and all this suggestion about the Duc de Soissonson will be explained.’

‘There is one thing which cannot be explained,’ I said, ‘and that is Armand’s disappearance … perhaps death.’

‘Yes.’ Lisette looked straight ahead. ‘It may be that one of our theories is right after all.’

Soon after Dickon’s departure the messenger who had come before to see Léon Blanchard arrived at the castle. He did ask to see my father but as he was out at the time left a letter for him.

When my father returned he sent for me and I went to his sitting-room where I found him anxiously awaiting me.

‘Come and look at this,’ he said and gave me the letter which the messenger had brought.

It was from Léon Blanchard and explained that he could not come back to us. He had found his mother very ill indeed when he returned and although she had recovered she was still in a weak condition. He had decided that he could not be so far from her and was most regretfully telling us that he was giving up his posts and was taking something near his mother’s house so that he could live with her and care for her. He thanked us for the happy time he had had in the castle.

He had sent separate notes to the boys telling them that they must work harder, that Louis-Charles must look to his grammar and Charlot to his mathematics. He would be thinking of them and the happy relationship they had enjoyed when he was under the Comte’s roof.

There could not have been more sincerely written letters.

‘And we are to believe that this man was a spy sent to us by Soissonson!’ said my father.

‘Reading those letters it does seem improbable,’ I agreed.

‘Well now,’ went on my father, ‘we have to look for a new tutor. I promise I shall keep Soissonson out of this!’ he added with a laugh.

I wondered what Dickon would have said if he could have seen those letters.

I was sure he would have insisted that they proved his case.

The whole household was talking about Léon Blanchard who was not coming back. The boys were clearly upset and Charlot said they would hate the new tutor. I explained that it was unfair to hate someone before you had seen him.

‘His trouble will be that he is not Léon,’ said Charlot.

The servants talked continually of what a delightful man he had been. ‘Always the gentleman,’ they said.

He certainly had the power to charm.

Lisette told me that Jeanne had said Sophie was taking Léon’s departure very badly.

‘I think that is the really tragic part of it all,’ I said. ‘I wonder if it would have come to anything if he had stayed.’

‘If he had intended it should, surely he would have done something about it.’

‘I am not sure,’ I pondered. ‘Class distinction comes very strongly into it and I imagine a man like Léon Blanchard would be very much aware of that. Perhaps he was just being chivalrous to Sophie and she, poor girl, longing to escape from what her life is here, imagined something which was not there.’

‘Poor Sophie,’ said Lisette. ‘His going is a tragedy for her.’

That night I was awakened by some dream to find myself in a state of terror. I could not understand what was happening. Then I was suddenly aware that I was not alone.

For those first waking seconds I was transported back in time to the days before my wedding to Charles when I had been awakened in just such a way to see Sophie at the foot of my bed in my wedding veil.

I cried: ‘Who is that?’

Then she came out of the shadows. She stood by my bed. She had taken off her hood and her face looked grotesque in the moonlight.

‘Sophie!’ I whispered.

‘Why do you hate me?’ she asked.

‘Hate you! But Sophie … ’

‘If you don’t, why do you try to hurt me? Haven’t I been hurt enough to please you?’

‘What do you mean, Sophie?’ I replied. ‘I would do anything I could for you. If it were in my power … ’

She laughed. ‘Who are you? The bastard. You have come here and won my father from us all.’

I wanted to protest. I wanted to cry: He was never yours so how could I take him from you?

She stood there at the end of my bed as she had done on that other night. She said: ‘You took Charles from me.’

‘No! You gave him up. You wouldn’t marry him.’

She touched her face. ‘You were there when this happened. You went off with him and left me.’

‘Oh, Sophie,’ I protested. ‘It was not like that.’

‘It is long ago,’ she said. ‘And then you told my father, did you not, that Léon wanted to marry me … and you persuaded him that it would not be right because he was only a tutor and I was a Comte’s daughter. I heard you talking to him about me at the moat.’

‘It is not true. I said no such thing. I said it would be good for you and for him. I assure you, Sophie, that is what I said.’

‘And he was sent away. There was this story about his mother … and now he is to stay with her and he won’t come back here. That is your doing.’

‘Oh Sophie, you are quite wrong.’

‘Do you think I don’t know? You tried to pretend first that he was a spy … you and your friend … that man … that Dickon. You are going to marry him, are you not? … when my father is dead and everything comes to you. What of Armand? How did you and your lover get him out of the way?’

‘Sophie, this is madness.’

‘Madness now, you say. Is that what you want them to say of me? I hate you. I shall never forget what you have done to me. I will never forgive you.’

I got out of bed and approached her, but she put out her arms to ward me off. She walked backwards to the door her arms stretched out before her as she went. She looked like a sleepwalker.

I cried: ‘Sophie … Sophie … listen to me. You are wrong … wrong about everything. Let me talk to you.’

But she shook her head. I watched the door shut on her. Then I went back to bed and lay there, shivering.

G
LOOM HAD DESCENDED ON
the castle. I could not forget Sophie’s nocturnal visit and I wondered how I could ever get her to accept the truth. I had not realized how much she had resented me. It was only since the coming of Charles, of course; before that she had accepted me as her sister.

Perhaps I had been too taken up with my own affairs to give enough attention to hers. Poor girl, so fearfully scarred, and then to lose the man she was to marry and again to have lost the chance of happiness. I must try to understand.

Marie Louise announced her intention of going into a convent. She had long thought of doing so and now that it was almost certain that her husband was dead, there was nothing to keep her in the château. My father was delighted to see her go. He said he thought it would lessen the gloom a little.

He was very anxious about me.

‘You are pining for Dickon,’ he said.

‘No, no!’ I protested. ‘Nothing of the sort. When he comes he creates … disturbances.’

‘But it is disturbance that makes life worth living for you and without it … is it not a little dull?’

‘I have the children and you.’

‘The children are growing up. Claudine is nearly thirteen years old.’

‘So she is.’ When I was that age I had been overwhelmed by Dickon for some time and had thought of marriage to him. Charlot was almost sixteen and Louis-Charles was a little older than that. It was indeed true that they were growing away from childhood.

‘And you are getting older, my dear,’ went on my father.

‘We all are, of course.’

‘It must be thirty-four years ago when I saw your mother for the first time. It was so romantic … dusk … and she stood there like a phantom from another world. She thought I was a ghost too. I had been hunting for a fob I had lost and I rose up suddenly on that haunted patch of land and really startled her.’

‘I know. You have told me.’

‘I should like to see it all again before I die. Lottie, you should go back. You should go to Eversleigh. You should make up your mind what to do about Dickon. I think you are in love with him. Are you?’

I hesitated. ‘What is love? Is it being excited by someone … enjoying the presence of someone … feeling alive when he is there and yet at the same time knowing too much about him … knowing that he wants power, money … and that he is prepared to do almost anything for them … not quite trusting … ? You see, I am trying to see his inadequacies. Is that love?’

‘Perhaps you are looking for perfection.’

‘Didn’t you look for it … and find it?’

‘I never looked for it because I did not believe it existed. I stumbled on it by chance.’

‘It was because you loved so deeply that you found it. My mother might not have been perfect.’

‘Ah, but she was.’

‘In your eyes, as you were in hers. Were you perfect, Father?’

‘Far from it.’

‘But she thought you were. Perhaps that is love. An illusion. Seeing what is not there and perhaps the more deeply one loves the more one deceives oneself.’

‘My dearest child, I should like to see you happy before I die … even if it means not having you with me. The greatest happiness I have known came through you and your mother. Who would have believed that a chance meeting could lead to that? It was an enchanted night, that one, and she was there and I was there … ’

I leaned over and kissed him. ‘I am glad that we pleased you … my mother and I. You pleased
us
every bit as much, you know. I loved the man I believed to be my father. He was kind and gentle … but you … you were different. You were so romantic and gallant in your castle. It was wonderful to learn that you were my father.’

He turned away to hide his emotion. Then he said almost brusquely: ‘I don’t want you to go on living here … growing older, wasting your youth. You are not like your mother. You are more able to take care of yourself. She was innocent. She did not see evil. You are not like that, Lottie.’

‘More … earthy,’ I said.

‘I would say more worldly. You know more of men than she did. You would understand the imperfections and bear them, and perhaps even love the more because of them. I think often of Dickon. He is no saint. But do you want a saint? They can be hard to live with. I think you are fond of him in a special way, and will never forget him whatever happens. So he is with you. He is indeed a man full of faults, but brave and strong, I would say. I think he should be the father of a child for you … before it is too late.’

‘I am not going to leave the château. I like it here.’

‘In this gloomy castle with Sophie in her turret casting her own special sort of spell over the place.’

‘The children are happy here.’

‘They will grow up and have lives of their own. I want you go to England.’

‘Go to England? What do you mean? To Eversleigh?’

‘I do. I want you to take the children, to see Dickon in his home, and there to decide what you really want. I think you should go there to discover.’

‘I shall not leave you.’

‘I thought you would say that. That is why I have decided that I will go with you.’

I stared at him in astonishment.

‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘I have promised myself. I too am tired of the château. I want a rest from it. I want to forget what happened to Armand. I want to forget Sophie brooding in her tower. I want a bit of excitement. What do you say that you and I, with the children, cross the water to England?’