Chapter Five
‘Now then, young Jack,’ Gerald said, turning to the lad, who was sitting in the place lately vacated by his self-appointed mistress, but in a state of far less relaxation.
He was perched on the very edge of the leather seat of the coach, his three-cornered hat twisting nervously in his hands, and from time to time he passed a tongue over dry lips. Gerald had been confident that the boy would not dream of disobeying an order thrown at him by a major of militia, but he guessed Jack might be wondering if he was about to be haled off to prison.
In fact, Gerald had given order to the coachman to drive out of Golden Square and then stop around the corner. He had no wish to drag the footman out of his way, once he had got his questions answered.
‘No need to shake in your boots,’ Gerald said soothingly. ‘I’m not going to arrest you, young Jack—yet. It was Jack, wasn’t it?’
‘Aye, s-sir. K-kimble, sir,’ stammered the lad.
‘Very well, Kimble. You need only answer me truthfully and you have nothing to fear.’
Kimble nodded. ‘Aye, sir.’
‘That’s better. How long has Miss Charvill been in England?’
‘Not long, sir. Little more’n a week.’
‘I presume you were not with her in France?’
Kimble stared. ‘Who me, sir? Lor’ no, sir. I only seen her when she come with that Sister Martha. Thought she was a nun at first.’ He sighed. ‘Like a vision she were.’ He flushed. ‘I—I mean, she were—’
‘Pretty as a picture?’ suggested Gerald.
‘More nor that. Looked like them statues of the Holy Mother I see about the place.’ His colour deepened. Seeming to feel that this statement called for explanation, he added, ‘I been working for the sisters six month, see. Folks don’t like ’em. Nuns, I mean. But they been good to me, they have, sir. Down on me luck, I was, and they took me in.’
‘What sort of “down on your luck”?’ asked Alderley.
The lad looked alarmed. ‘I ain’t done nothing wrong, I swear it. Lost me place, that’s all.’ He grimaced. ‘Me and the butler didn’t see eye to eye.’
Gerald suppressed a grin. Kimble was clearly a plain-spoken fellow. And he did not lack courage. His initial nervousness had already abated, and it took some valour to allow himself to become embroiled in Melusine’s crazy schemes. Even given that he was hopelessly enamoured of the wench, a fact which was obvious to the meanest intelligence. Gerald’s judgement was borne out a moment later.
‘Tell me what you know of Miss Charvill?’ he ordered severely.
Jack Kimble stiffened, looking at his interrogator with wary anger in his face. He glanced out of the window, looked back at the major and grasped the handle of the door.
‘Don’t even think of it,’ warned Gerald, in the voice generally reserved for his men.
The lad hesitated. ‘You ain’t got nothing on me.’
‘On the contrary. You have been seen loitering with suspicious intent in several places—Paddington, for instance—and I have no doubt at all that you were party to a break-in last week at Remenham House in Kent.’
Kimble’s widening gaze told its own tale, but still he kept his fingers on the handle of the door. ‘You can’t prove nothing.’
‘Do you care to test that theory?’ Gerald suggested easily.
Not much to his surprise, Jack Kimble shook his head. No doubt he knew enough of his world to recognise that he stood little chance against the word of a major of militia. Looking sullen, he released the handle and sat back.
‘Very wise,’ commented Gerald. ‘Now let’s have it. Miss Charvill.’
‘You can arrest me,’ answered Kimble belligerently, ‘but you can’t make me say nothing about her. Wild horses wouldn’t drag it out of me, even I knew anything, which I don’t.’
Amusement flickered in Gerald’s breast. ‘My dear boy, your loyalty is misplaced. I mean Miss Charvill no harm. On the contrary.’
‘How do I know that?’ demanded Jack.
‘I should have thought it was obvious. By rights I ought to have arrested her days ago. But I have not done so, and will not. I have discovered something of her background. I know who she is, and I know that she has been cheated somehow by the people calling themselves Valade.’
Kimble chewed his lip, but his hostility was visibly lessening. ‘Seems to me like you know just about as much as me.’
He had abandoned the “sir”, Gerald noted, realising that the footman’s respect for him had dropped sharply.
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But then again, possibly not. I have not found the secret way into the house, for instance.’
Jack gasped. ‘You know about that?’
‘It was the only possible deduction. Now tell me, if you can, something about the man who calls himself Valade.’
‘The Frenchie? I only knows as how Miss says he will ruin everything. She calls him a pig, and she says he ain’t Valade. But I swear she ain’t told me nothing more, sir.’
Authority had won again, Gerald thought with satisfaction. But it looked as if the boy was not going to be of much use. He tried again.
‘Do you at least know how he came to be in a position to cheat Miss Charvill, and to pass off his wife in her place?’
‘In her place?’ There was no mistaking the boy’s ignorance of this part of the tale. ‘You mean that his missus is pretending to be my mistress? Lord-a-mercy!’
‘Precisely. And I have no doubt at all that there is a great deal of money in the case. Which, if we are not all of us very careful indeed, will be stolen from Miss Charvill.’
Jack Kimble took a deep breath. ‘I knowed he were a wrong ’un, but that.’ He clenched his fists and grew red in the face. ‘Well, sir, if I’ve to choose betwixt him and you, I’ll take you, no question.’
‘I thank you,’ Gerald said drily. ‘Would that your mistress were as trusting.’
‘Aye, but she don’t reckon to militiamen. Thinks they’re the same as soldiers. Seems as she don’t trust soldiers easy.’
‘That was hardly the impression I got,’ Gerald murmured, remembering Melusine’s attitude to Leonardo.
‘Sir?’ enquired the lad.
‘Nothing. Listen, Jack. If you can tell me nothing I don’t already know, so be it. Only promise me this. If Miss Charvill should take it into her head to dash off on some foolish errand, go with her by all means. In fact, I order you to do so. But send me word. Do you understand?’
‘Aye, sir. But—but how?’
‘Can you write?’ Gerald asked, digging into one of his capacious pockets and bringing out a leather ring purse.
‘Only me name,’ Kimble said apologetically.
‘Very well, never mind.’ He opened the purse and extracted a couple of guineas. ‘I’ll send one of my men to see you here this very evening.’ He added, as alarm spread over the lad’s face, ‘Don’t concern yourself. He won’t be in uniform. He’ll appoint a meeting place with you and be ready at any time to bring a message to me.’ Handing over the guineas, he added, ‘For you.’
An expression of livid fury contorted the young man’s face and he thrust the coins back at the major. ‘I don’t want no gold! Not for serving my mistress.’
Gerald raised his brows. ‘I can see why you lost your place, young Kimble. Pity you aren’t under my command. We’d soon cool that temper of yours.’ He paused for the effect of his words to sink in, and then added, ‘Don’t be so ready to show hackle. The guineas are not for serving your mistress. They are for serving me. Are you satisfied?’
Grudgingly, Jack Kimble took back the coins. Had he but known it, his outburst had done him no harm in the major’s eyes. He might not condone it, but the feelings that had prompted it augured well for Melusine’s safety.
Having accomplished his intent, Gerald let the lad go and had himself driven back to Stratton Street. He had barely settled at his desk in his library, when he was disturbed by two morning callers. Captain Hilary Roding and his inamora
ta, Miss Lucilla Froxfield.
‘Nothing would do for her but to come here,’ grumbled Hilary, wiping his heated brow with a pocket handkerchief dragged from his immaculate white uniform breeches.
‘Naturally I had to come,’ confirmed the lively blonde, her eyes twinkling up at Alderley. ‘Gerald, what have you been about? Dorothée tells me that you were flirting outrageously with Madame Valade on Monday night.’
‘And who, may I ask, is Dorothée?’ asked Gerald.
‘Don’t try to turn it off,’ ordered Miss Froxfield. ‘You know perfectly well that she is the daughter of the Comtesse de St Erme.’
‘It’s no use blaming me, Gerald,’ uttered Roding, shrugging helplessly as his senior turned questioning eyes on him. ‘I told her you couldn’t have been flirting, but she wouldn’t believe me.’
‘Do you take me for a fool, Hilary?’ demanded his betrothed. ‘I know just what he was doing. For heaven’s sake, give him some Madeira or something, Gerald! Anything to calm him down.’
Alderley grinned as his incensed friend refuted the suggestion that he was in need of a pacifier, and moved to the tray which his butler had just a short time past brought into the room and laid on the desk.
‘Something for you, Lucy?’ he asked, interrupting a heated argument that had obviously been in progress for some little time before their arrival.
‘I’ll take wine,’ the lady said briefly, turning back instantly to Hilary. ‘It is of no use to try to stop me. I know very well Gerald has been fishing for information about that girl, and I am determined to find out what he knows.’
‘Why the devil should you be interested, I should like to know?’ rejoined Roding.
‘Because I’m a female,’ declared Lucilla unanswerably. With a swirl of her floral chintz petticoats, she placed herself in the capacious window seat, accepted the glass Gerald handed to her, and smiled mischievously up at him. ‘Now then, Gerald, out with it.’
He took his seat next to her, waving the fulminating captain towards the tray. ‘Help yourself, Hilary.’
‘I’ve a good mind to leave the pair of you to it and take myself off,’ threatened his junior, marching across the room and snatching up a decanter.
‘Don’t be silly. You cannot possibly leave me here alone with Gerald. Only think how compromising.’
‘Lord, yes,’ agreed Gerald, in mock horror. ‘Don’t put me at the necessity of marrying the abominable little wretch.’
‘You traitor, Gerald,’ laughed Lucilla, her yellow curls bouncing under a huge straw bonnet all over flowers. ‘For that I shall certainly not leave until you have told me every tiny detail.’
‘I don’t know that there is so much to tell.’
‘Aha, you have found something out. I knew it.’
‘Gammon!’ burst from the captain, who had just tossed off a glass of Madeira. ‘How could you possibly know it?’
‘I know it,’ Lucilla told him frostily, ‘because Dorothée told me that Madame Valade went off with Gerald positively purring in her ear—which is a thing he never does—and came back with him looking like the cat after cream. Gerald, I mean, not Madame Valade. She looked, Dorothée said, just as she always looks. Like a trollop in heat.’
‘Lucilla,’ gasped Hilary, his cheeks reddening with wrath.
‘Well she does,’ insisted Miss Froxfield impenitently, and turned to Gerald. ‘Doesn’t she, Gerald?’
Gerald held up his hands. ‘Don’t involve me in your lover’s tiff.’
Lucilla let out a peal of laughter. ‘Lover’s tiff indeed.’ She threw a melting look at Roding. ‘Poor Hilary. I’m behaving shockingly, I know. Never mind. There is only Gerald to see me, after all.’
‘That has put “only Gerald” very firmly in his place,’ mourned Gerald. ‘I wonder why the females of my acquaintance have absolutely no respect whatsoever for male authority?’
‘Ha!’ came from Hilary. ‘Seen her again, have you? Well, if she’s been giving you as much saucy impudence as I’ve had to contend with, I can only say I’m glad of it.’
‘Then you will not be disappointed. I have been insulted, and cursed at, and threatened with both pistol and dagger. I am apparently a beast, a pig and an imbecile, too, if memory serves me.’
Lucilla burst into laughter and clapped her hands. ‘Oh, famous. How I wish I might meet this delightful mystery lady of yours.’
‘She is no longer a mystery,’ Gerald said.
‘What?’ Roding snapped, coming quickly to tower above the window seat. ‘You’ve found her out?’
‘Tell us at once,’ urged Miss Froxfield.
‘Give me an opportunity to open my mouth, and I will.’
‘Sit down, Hilary,’ ordered Lucilla, and to Gerald’s amusement, her betrothed did so, perching on the desk close by and staring fixedly at the major.
‘Her name is Melusine Charvill,’ Gerald began.
‘Charvill?’ uttered Roding frowningly. ‘You mean—’
‘Hilary!’ Lucy turned excited eyes back to Alderley. ‘Go on, Gerald.’
‘Miss Melusine Charvill,’ he repeated, ‘is a convent-bred genteel girl, who is in all probability the granddaughter of General Lord Charvill.’
‘What? But—’
‘Precisely, Hilary. That was supposed to be Madame Valade. Only she is not Madame Valade at all. Who she is I have not discovered, but she is masquerading as Melusine, and for all I know, is not even married to the man who calls himself Valade.’
‘But what a perfectly famous adventure. And so your Melusine is busy trying to prove that she is the real one.’ Lucilla frowned. ‘But what in the world was she doing at Remenham House?’
‘Your quickness is astounding, Lucy,’ Gerald told her admiringly. ‘It is precisely that point over which Melusine and I fell out.’ Reminiscence made him smile. ‘Because she, naturally enough, does not consider that it is in any way my affair.’
‘What about this Leonardo fellow?’ Hilary asked, still frowning heavily.
Gerald was conscious of that sliver of irritation again at mention of the name. ‘That,’ he said stonily, ‘is yet another point over which we fell out.’
Lucilla eyed him with one of those particularly feminine looks it was difficult for a mere male to interpret.
‘But who was he, Gerald?’
‘A damned condottiere,’ exploded Gerald, forgetting his company.
‘Good God!’ uttered Roding.
‘What in the world is that?’ demanded Miss Froxfield.
‘Italian adventurer,’ explained her fiance briefly. ‘Soldier of fortune. You know the sort of thing. Lives by his wits and gambling. Likely as not outside the law, too.’
Lucilla gaped. ‘But how did she meet such a person in a convent?’
‘He was wounded and came there for sanctuary,’ Gerald explained, adding almost through his teeth. ‘Thanks to him, Hilary and I nearly had our heads blown off. I might forgive him that, for he obviously taught her a good deal that she has found useful. But what else he saw fit to teach her I do not care to stipulate.’
Lucy was silent for a space, once again wearing that inscrutable expression. Faintly bothered by what it might mean, Gerald rose from his seat and crossed to the tray to pour himself a glass of wine. He turned just in time to see Lucilla exchange an amused look with Hilary. Just what in the world was that about? Before he could hazard a guess, Lucy looked back at him.
‘What are you going to do now, Gerald?’
He sipped his wine and shrugged. ‘There is little I can do at present. I’ve made an ally of her champion.’
Hilary’s brows shot up. ‘Champion?’
‘The lad you saw following her. Jack Kimble. He’s a footman who works for the nuns and has taken up the cudgels on her behalf.’ He glanced at the captain. ‘By the by, get Trodger to send up one of our best men, will you? Someone discreet. I want him immediately, so you can send Frith with my phaeton if you like. And I want him out of uniform.’
Roding bl
inked. ‘What the devil for?’
‘Messenger,’ Gerald explained. ‘I don’t want that girl running her head into any more danger.’
‘As if you could stop her.’
‘Probably not. But, whether she likes it or not, I aim to be on hand to get her out of it.’
‘Quite right, Gerald,’ approved Lucilla.
‘She won’t like it,’ prophesied the captain gloomily. ‘And nor do I. You’ll end up dead, that’s what.’
‘Nonsense. I’ll have to wait here, of course, which means you, Hilary—’
‘Will have to do tomorrow’s patrol. Yes, very well. Better check on Remenham House, I suppose.’
‘Yes, do. I’ve seen Brewis Charvill, by the by.’
‘Eh? Why did you not say so, man?’ demanded Hilary crossly.
‘I am saying so,’ protested Gerald mildly.
‘Dunderhead. Get on with it, then. I suppose you came right out and asked him about his family?’
‘Nothing of the sort. I was extremely subtle—in fact, as devious as Melusine. I told him Valade had tried to borrow money off me and asked if he could vouch for the fellow. It seems Valade visited him that day to present his credentials, and Charvill posted straight off to inform his great-uncle. Which is why I wasn’t able to see him until today. He gave Valade the go-ahead and they’ve gone off to visit him.’
‘Well? Well? What did the fellow have to add to this rigmarole?’
‘He confirmed that Nicholas Charvill—presumably Melusine’s father—had been disinherited for marrying Suzanne Valade.’
‘Ah, so that’s where Valade comes in,’ nodded Lucy.
‘Precisely. Madame Valade—for want of any other name to call her by—told me that she, in her character of Melusine, was the daughter of Suzanne Valade and Nicholas Charvill.’
‘But that would make her half French,’ Hilary pointed out.
‘Whereas Melusine insists she is entirely English,’ agreed Gerald. ‘Therefore she cannot be the daughter of Suzanne Valade. Voilà tout, as Melusine herself would say.’
‘Oh, this is becoming nonsensical,’ exclaimed Lucilla.
‘Of course it is,’ corroborated Hilary. ‘Must be another of her lies.’
‘Or she imagines that being half English is the same as being completely English,’ suggested Lucilla.
‘Parbleu,’ said Gerald. ‘I borrow the expression from Melusine. She may be an infuriating little devil, but she is far from stupid. Moreover, she claims that this whole enterprise of hers is purely for the purpose of marrying an Englishman.’
‘That’s fortunate,’ murmured Lucilla.
Gerald frowned. ‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ snapped Roding, with an odd look at his bride to be that Gerald could not interpret. ‘Does Charvill know that this Melusine of yours is here?’
The question distracted Gerald. ‘You mean that there is a rival Melusine to the one he has heard about? He does not. At least, I frustrated her design in calling upon him this morning. I can’t but feel it’s an undesirable complication to drag in the Charvills at this point. Time enough to do so when she has her affairs settled—if she can settle them.’
‘And if she can’t?’ asked Lucy.
‘We’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.’
‘What if she goes back to Charvill?’ demanded Roding.
‘Why do you think I want a man ready to run to me with every move she makes?’ countered Gerald. ‘She may well try to go back. She says she will have to, though she does not wish to. Which is also puzzling.’ Gerald frowned. ‘I only wish I might have won her confidence.’
Lucilla sat up. ‘She won’t confide in you? Now, why?’
‘Because that scoundrel Leonardo drummed it into her head that no man was to be trusted,’ Gerald announced viciously.
‘The more I hear about this Leonardo,’ Lucy said severely, ‘the more I want to meet your Melusine. I daresay you have the whole thing wrong, Gerald. Men usually do.’
‘It’s immaterial, in any event,’ Roding put in. ‘What we have to find out is whether or not the wretched female is in fact Lord Charvill’s granddaughter. What had Brewis Charvill to say to that, Gerald?’
‘He had nothing to say to it. It does not matter to him either way. But what he did say is that he thinks the Valades will receive very short shrift from his great-uncle the general.’
Everett, General Lord Charvill, master of a barony stretching over a wide estate that encroached on the hundreds of Witham, Thurstable and Dengy, stood before his own fireplace, glaring at his visitors from under bushy white brows from a head held necessarily low above a back painfully bent by rheumatism. He was a thin old man, a wreck in a ruined body, but nothing would induce him to stand in any other way than as stiffly erect as possible like the soldier he had always been, even though he was obliged to lean on his silver-handled cane to do so.
That he received guests of the name of Valade at all would have surprised anyone who knew his history. But he had been forewarned by his great-nephew. His first reaction had been explosive as the hurts of the past rose up to taunt him. Lord Charvill’s sense of justice would not, however, allow him to repudiate his granddaughter, if indeed this female proved to be the infant lost to the family so many years ago.
To be confronted with the girl’s damned Frenchman of a husband was another matter altogether. Particularly when it was obvious the fellow was one of these pitiful wretches weak enough to allow themselves to be ousted from their inheritances and thus obliged to come seeking succour of their neighbours. The general had little doubt he was going to be asked to provide for the fellow as well as for his legitimate descendant.
Five minutes ago, his butler had entered the green saloon, an austere apartment, with dark forest-green wallpaper flocked with a swirling design, and heavy mahogany furniture. The news that his granddaughter desired an audience Lord Charvill had greeted with merely a grunt, which turned into a roar as his gorge rose when he heard that she was accompanied by her husband.
The visitors, when they entered, looked thoroughly intimidated and Everett concealed a grim smile. Just so had his subordinates shown their apprehension. It suited him to dampen the spirits of any who sought to impose upon him, as these relics of the loathed family of Valade seemed like to do.
Charvill did nothing to ease their path and it was left to the man to open negotiations, which he did by producing a set of folded papers, slowly approaching the general, and holding them out at arms’ length.
‘The credentials, milor’,’ he ventured.
Without a word, the general reached out and took them, but his glance searched the girl’s face. Under this unnerving scrutiny, a slow flush mounted to the woman’s cheeks. She fidgeted and looked away. Everett’s gaze dropped to the papers in his hand.
He passed but a cursory glance over the formal certificate that identified the Frenchman before him as one André Valade, distant cousin to the Vicomte Valade. The marriage lines that confirmed a union between the said André Valade and Mademoiselle Melusine Charvill touched the old scars and he gave vent to a muttered expletive. But the letter, written in his son’s own hand, and addressed to the Mother Abbess of the Convent of the Sisters of Wisdom near Blaye in the district of Santonge, dated a little over five years previously, exercised a powerful effect upon him.
Recognising the handwriting, he glanced swiftly at the signature, and uttering an explosive curse, cast the paper from him. That it provided proof of the girl’s identity was one thing. Charvill’s command of French was enough to tell him that, for its entire content was devoted to commending Nicholas Charvill’s fourteen year old daughter into the care of the Abbess. But the mere recognition of his son’s signature was enough to stoke the fires of his long-held rage. Proof that the scoundrel had risen from the dead—for he was dead to his father!
He glared at the female whose appearance in England had revived those painful memories—churning unbearably since Brewis Charvill had brought
him the news and put him in the worst of tempers—and the fury spilled out.
‘Tchah! So you’re the whelp’s girl, are you? Suppose you’ve nothing but that villainous French in your tongue.’
‘I have English a little,’ the girl offered, her voice shaking as she essayed a smile and sank into a curtsy.
English a little! ‘You ought to have English only.’
Her lashes fluttered. ‘But this is not to my blame, grandpére.’
A burning at his chest, the general ground his teeth. ‘Don’t dare address me by such a title.’
The girl bit her lip and backed a little, while her husband shifted to stand at her side.
‘Monsieur, my wife intended not to anger you,’ he said in a tone of apology.
‘Then let her keep her Frenchified titles to herself. She may address me as “Grandfather” if she chooses, since I’m obliged to accept her in that capacity. But I don’t wish to hear that abomination on her lips again.’
‘Please forgive, milor’, but my wife, and even I myself, have yet very much trouble with English.’
Charvill eyed the girl with resentment. ‘Well, she’d better learn fast if she wants any truck with me. I won’t tolerate any foreign tongue in this house, least of all that confounded French.’
The fellow seized on this. ‘Then it is that you will have pity? Here we have come, we poor, for aid. Pardon! I wish to say, for your granddaughter, we seek succour.’
‘I dare say you do,’ said the general, grim satisfaction overtaking his anger as his prophesy proved accurate.
‘It is not for myself, you understand,’ pursued the man, in an unctuous tone that sickened the general, ‘but for this poor one. Lost from all protection, all her family dead—as are mine.’
Shock ripped through Charvill’s chest. ‘What, is Nicholas dead?’
He saw the two of them exchange glances and an instinct of danger rose up. What was the fellow about? Was he being imposed upon? He watched as the man Valade turned back, spreading his hands in the French way.
‘General, we do not know. The last that is known of Monsieur Charvill is when he departed the Valade estate.’
Departed? ‘Tchah! I suppose the vicomte threw him out?’
Watching the fellow’s face, Everett felt his suspicion growing. Was the man debating whether or no to tell the truth? A grimace played about Valade’s mouth and the general waited, maintaining his own rigid pose.
‘It is, you understand, that Monsieur Charvill did not—how do you say in English?—having an eye to an eye—’
‘Didn’t see eye to eye with the Vicomte Valade? That I can well believe.’
‘It was so,’ said Valade, becoming a trifle more fluent. ‘And that Suzanne, the sister of my cousin the vicomte, must choose between Monsieur Charvill and her brother. For a pity, she has chosen to remain, and it has been her death.’
‘Slaughtered with the rest, was she?’
Despite his hatred of the woman who had caused so much grief, the general found he could not rejoice as he wanted to. Brewis had told him the Valade family had been victim to wholesale murder, and a twinge of compassion had wrung even his deliberately hardened heart. Well, let him be honest. Had this not been the case, he must have refused even to see his Frenchified granddaughter.
‘Monsieur Charvill,’ pursued Valade, ‘has left the chateau, and since we have heard from him nothing at all, but for the letters to his daughter from Italy.’
‘But two letters,’ put in the woman. ‘And if he is dead I know not.’
A question leapt into Everett’s head and he recalled the letter to the Abbess. ‘Was this when Nicholas commended you to this Abbess?’
‘But, yes. Papa has sent me to be religieuse.’
Fury rippled again. ‘That rascally knave sent you to become a French nun?’
Looking positively terrified, the girl nodded dumbly.
‘Dolt! Muttonheaded oaf! Why the deuce couldn’t he have sent you home?’
Valade cut in at that. ‘Monsieur Charvill thought perhaps that his daughter would find not a welcome.’
‘Tchah! Better a doubtful welcome here than a confounded French convent. The fellow is little better than a lunatic. How the deuce did I ever manage to father such a brainless nincompoop? A nun, for God’s sake! A confounded Catholic nun. A granddaughter of mine!’
The idiocy of this notion stuck in his craw and he could think of nothing else for a moment.
‘Pardon, milor’,’ said Valade, ‘but Monsieur Charvill, he was not at fault. Not entirely.’
‘I find that difficult to believe,’ snapped the general, jerking to and fro as his agitation mounted.
‘As I have said, it was a quarrel between the vicomte and Monsieur Charvill. The vicomte has, he say, enough femmes in his hands. He will not provide for the daughter. He is the one who has said that she must go to the convent. Monsieur Charvill, he has not the means to choose different.’
‘Hadn’t the wit, you mean.’
‘Also madame his wife—’
Charvill’s gorge rose. He’d borne mention of the woman’s name. But that title he would not endure.
‘Don’t dare call her that to my face.’
Both Valade and the granddaughter gazed at him blankly. Then Valade—was the man as big a fool as Nicholas?—tried again.
‘Suzanne, if I may say, had also not the choice. One would say she could try to—to prevent that her daughter will go to the convent. But the vicomte has said that his sister may remain, but that the daughter must go. Even the love of a mother does not sway him.’
Abruptly, the niggling doubt that had been plaguing Lord Charvill came sweeping to the surface. Mother? Suzanne Valade, her mother?
With deliberation, he spoke. ‘Do you tell me that my disreputable son had the infernal insolence to pass you off as that whoring Frenchwoman’s daughter?’
His answer was in their faces. His anger gave way to grim humour and he thrust towards them, leaning heavily on his cane.
‘Typical. Hadn’t the stomach to admit the truth, had he? I’ll lay any money he labelled you with some foul French name as well. What was the name on those marriage lines you showed me?’
‘M—Melusine,’ stammered the woman, her countenance yet registering shock.
‘I knew it.’ The snaking suspicion rolled through his mind again. ‘And you come to me, thinking yourself half French, and expect me to take you in. What is it you’re after? Money, I suppose. Don’t you know I disinherited the rogue?’
‘This we knew, milor’,’ said Valade. ‘Also that it was that you did not wish the French connection.’
‘And your precious vicomte didn’t wish for the English one,’ said Charvill, acid in his voice. ‘They eloped. But he didn’t marry her. Not then. Too damned chickenhearted to confess to me he’d run off with the woman. If I’d known, there would have been a different story.’ Bitterness rose up as he looked at the female. ‘And you, my girl, if you’d been born at all, would have been just what you think you are. Half French.’
The woman shrugged helpless shoulders, looking to her husband. ‘André? Que dit-il?’
‘My wife does not understand,’ said the fellow, frowning deeply.
‘Of course she don’t understand,’ snapped Charvill irascibly. ‘Been led up the garden path by that confounded rapscallion. Your mother, for what it’s worth to you—for there’s nothing for you here, by God!—was the woman I chose for Nicholas. An Englishwoman. Good-looking girl.’ He looked the girl up and down. ‘You don’t favour her, bar the black hair. Don’t favour your father much, either, if it comes to that.’
It had not before occurred to him, but this realisation fuelled the general’s growing conviction that he was being imposed upon in some way. How would it serve Nicholas to keep the truth from his daughter? A tiny thread of disquiet troubled him.
‘But this Englishwoman,’ asked the man Valade, his puzzlement plain to see, ‘who was she?’
The questio
n irritated Charvill. ‘What are you, a nincompoop? She was Nicholas’s wife, of course. His first wife. Married the other and ran off after Mary died.’ His eyes found the girl again, and he added rancorously, ‘Giving birth to you. Couldn’t face me with what he’d done, the miserable blackguard.’
The crack in the iron front widened a little, and the general was obliged to clamp his jaws tight against the rise of a pain too well remembered.
‘Might have forgiven him,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘if he hadn’t taken the babe.’
At this, the fellow Valade burst into unwise speech.
‘Sapristi. Then Melusine is in truth your granddaughter. Yes, yes, you do not like the French, and so this English lady here, she is altogether your flesh. It is that you cannot refuse her sanctuary.’
The girl held out her hands. ‘Ah, grandpére.’
Fire enveloped Charvill’s mind and he brought up his cane, pointed like a musket. ‘Keep your distance! You dare to tell me I cannot refuse?’ He glared at the girl. ‘Do you think I could endure to hear you prattling your abominable French in my ear day by day? Enough to drive me straight into my grave. I’ll give you grandpére!’
‘But milor’—’
‘Pardon!’
No longer master of his actions, the general lurched forward, waving his cane. ‘Get out! Out, I say! Think I want another miserable cowardly good-for-nothing wastrel on my hands? Begone! Out of my house!’
He drove them to the door, grimly satisfied when the girl’s nerve broke.
‘Ah, bah, it is enough,’ she cried, and turning, ran out of the room.
Valade stood his ground, holding the doorjamb, and facing up to the general. Charvill’s fury was burning out. He stopped, panting hard, slamming his cane to the floor to make use of its much-needed support.
‘Well?’ he uttered between heavy breaths. ‘Still—here? Wasting your—time. Get nothing out of me. Try your luck with Jarvis Remenham—if you will.’
A sudden frown sprang to the fellow’s face. ‘You said—who?’
‘Remenham. Maternal relations. Kentish family. Find them at Remenham House—if you can.’ A gleam of rare humour slid into Charvill’s chest. ‘For my money, you’ll not get much out of old Jarvis either. He’s dead.’
Mademoiselle at Arms Page 5