The French Affair (Endearing Young Charms Book 2)

by M C Beaton

  When the maid had gone, Delphine opened the window again and sat in a chair next to it, listening to the night sounds of London. The harsh voice of the watch said it was eleven o’clock and a starry night.

  Eleven! It seemed so early to Delphine, who had become accustomed to going to bed at dawn.

  There were further wild sounds of drunken roistering from the street below. The sounds became louder and louder and then gradually faded away as the revelers passed below.

  It was then that Delphine became aware of the strange rumbling sounds from the chimney.

  She started to her feet and stared at the fireplace. Was there some great bird trapped in the chimney? Was there about to be some gigantic fall of soot? That had happened before. Soot had cascaded into the room with a soft thuck, blackening her and everything in the bedroom. But the chimneys had all been cleaned since then.

  The noises grew louder. Just as Delphine was about to ring the bell, there was an almighty crash, and a small black figure staggered out of the fireplace and landed on the hearth.

  Delphine’s first emotion was one of pity, not fear. It must be some poor little climbing boy who had been trapped in the flue, and had just managed to get down.

  A choked voice emerged from the blackened figure.

  “Missus,” it said plaintively.

  “Charlie!” Delphine reached for the bell.

  “Don’t,” said Charlie desperately. “You’ve got to listen to me.”

  “I do not listen to traitors and spies,” said Delphine, her eyes filling with tears of shock.

  “Wot you talkin’ abaht?” said Charlie hotly. “The guv ain’t no spy. He’s a hero. He fought all them Frenchies at Waterloo. Didn’t nobody tell you nuffin?”

  Delphine sat down weakly. “What are you talking about, Charlie? The last I heard, your master was branded as a spy and a traitor. Maria wrote me such a dreadful letter through my lawyers telling me all about it. I did not want to believe it, but my servants confirmed it.”

  “But that was at the beginning,” said Charlie. “I’ll tell you how it was.”

  He sat down on the hearth and crossed his legs and began to talk quickly, afraid that she might scream for help before she heard it all.

  When he had finished, Delphine said quietly, “I am very glad, Charlie, so very glad, to hear this. No one told me. Mr. Garnett must have assumed that … that Jules would tell me.”

  “Then that’s all right.” Charlie grinned. “We looked and looked for you when we got to London, but we couldn’t find you no place. The servants at Marsham wanted for to tell me, but they couldn’t ‘cos you’d made them swear they wouldn’t. Let’s go and see the guv.”

  “No, Charlie,” said Delphine sadly. “Our marriage is over and should never have taken place. I trust you will keep these confidences to yourself.”

  “You’re going to say I’m forgettin’ me place,” said Charlie, “but I don’t care. You never asks for expianations when you ought, missus. You saw him kissing and hugging that there Bryce-Connell female, now, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Delphine. “But that is none of your …”

  “And you ran away and didn’t wait to see. That Harriet comes in and walks up to the guv and kisses him on the mouff, and he’s that taken aback, he don’t know what to do.

  “But he pulls back and wipes his mouth and stares at her, oh so haughty, and he says, ‘I love my wife, Miss Bryce-Connell, and if I gave you any other impression, I am heartily sorry,’ and she ups and offs in a rage.”

  “Is this true?”

  “Of course it’s true, and I’d have told him you saw it long ago, only what with all the fighting and all, I didn’t get around to it till after Waterloo, and since he followed you up the stairs and come down whistling, I thought it was all right. He told me you had left him an awful note,” said Charlie, looking up at Delphine. “He don’t talk on familiar terms wiff me as a rule, but it was arter the battle and the social barriers didn’t seem that important, I s’pose.”

  “Oh, dear, I’ve been such a fool!” cried Delphine, clutching her hair.

  “Yus,” agreed Charlie.

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s performing as a conjurer at Lady Trowton’s party.”

  “But why …?”

  “‘Cos we didn’t have no money and we couldn’t find you, and so he had to make a living same as always. There’s a reward coming through for him, but these things take a lot o’ time.”

  “We must go. Now!” said Delphine. “You will take me.”

  “Wot! Like this?”

  “No, of course not. You must have a bath.”

  “Me! I’ve never ‘ad a bath in all me born days.”

  “Obviously,” said Delphine with a laugh. She rang the bell. Her lady’s maid answered promptly, took one look at Charlie, and began to scream the house down.

  Servants in various stages of undress came running, Mrs. Castle appeared with a frivolous nightcap over one eye, and the staff had to be quieted and orders given.

  At last, by two in the morning, Mrs. Castle and Delphine set off for Lady Trowton’s party. Charlie was up on the roof of the coach next to the coachman. He was scrubbed and scented and pomaded.

  A page’s livery had been found for him. He was still in a state of outrage, and he complained bitterly and incessantly to the coachman that he had been washed all over, making a rose-scented bath sound like a rape.

  “What is this all about?” Mrs. Castle kept asking.

  But Delphine would only shake her head. She did not feel like explaining the long and complicated story of her marriage.

  Delphine was wearing an underdress of white crêpe with an overdress of green crêpe, heavily covered with silver spangles. Her hair had been bound tight to her head with a diamond crescent in front and a diamond comb behind. Long diamond earrings blazed in her ears and a magnificent diamond necklace sparkled and shone on her bosom.

  Lady Trowton lived in a small townhouse in Great Ormond Street. Delphine had no trouble in gaining admittance, although she did not have an invitation card. Her shining jewels were passport enough.

  It appeared that the conjurer was about to give his second performance in a half hour’s time. That much Charlie was able to find out from the servants.

  Delphine wanted to rush wildly from room to room, searching for him, but Charlie counseled her to be calm.

  “It wouldn’t be romantic,” he said, “to rush into ‘is arms wif everybody staring.”

  Anxious but amused at the same time at Charlie’s budding awareness of protocol, Delphine contented herself by strolling from room to room with Mrs. Castle. Charlie, taking his new duties as page seriously, followed her, carrying her fan and stole.

  There were fewer people present than Delphine had at first thought. The impression of a larger crowd was given by the many statues which loomed in the candlelight in every room. Marble had been used in profusion, and the gigantic chimney pieces were florid and lavish. Badly painted panels ornamented the walls; figures, putti and medallions, with trophies, swags, and other enrichments, crowded the friezes and panels.

  There were many people present whom Delphine had not met, her hostess being one of them.

  Delphine exchanged a few polite words with Lady Trowton and thanked her for her “kind invitation,” which caused that poor lady much distress, since she could not remember having invited Delphine at all.

  Finally, a bell rang, and the butler called to the guests to take their places in the music room for “the entertainment.”

  Delphine found seats for herself and Mrs. Castle at the back of the room. Charlie stood behind her chair.

  “I think it is very strange of Lady Trowton,” said a pallid female seated in front of Delphine, “to perpetually want to produce a sort of Astley’s Circus. She goes around the street fairs looking for all these oddities.”

  “Why are we here?” whispered Mrs. Castle for the umpteenth time.

  “Very well,�
� murmured Delphine, “I am here to renew acquaintance with my husband.”

  “What!” screamed Mrs. Castle, and was violently shushed by her neighbors. The show was about to begin.

  The first act found favor with the gentlemen but was greeted by silence and haughty stares from the ladies.

  A saucy girl with large black eyes and improbable gold hair, with her skirt higher above the ankle than was decent, performed a dance with a gold hoop, leaping nimbly in and out of it like a performing poodle. She sang a song in a thin, little voice, which consisted of a great many tol-rol-diddle-down-days, and was greeted by rapturous applause from the gentlemen of the company.

  Next came a gloomy German baritone who sang in his native language with such unmusical force that it sounded like a string of oaths. It all seemed highly cultural, so everyone applauded him in the event it might be thought they didn’t understand a word, which was, in fact, the case.

  After him, a young man with a prominent Adam’s apple recited a long poem he had written himself about the Battle of Waterloo.

  Its only literary merit was that the lines eventually rhymed, even if they were not matched in length and were singularly lacking in meter.

  “The cannon roared, the drums they sounded

  and ‘What am I to do?’

  Asked Blucher, and Wellington replied,

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s up to me and you.’“

  A polite spattering of applause and several groans greeted the end of the epic.

  And then the comte strode in front of the audience.

  Delphine’s heart gave a great lurch.

  From the top of his guinea-gold curls to his glossy Hessian boots, he looked every inch the English gentleman. His face was as handsome as ever, his blue eyes sleepy and amused.

  The pallid woman in front of Delphine sat up. “Isn’t he divine!” she breathed.

  “That’s him, isn’t it?” demanded Mrs. Castle, and Delphine nodded.

  A table was pushed across the floor next to the comte, containing glasses and cups and plates, which he proceeded to juggle with his usual dexterity. Then he performed a rapid series of conjuring tricks, never once pausing for applause. He produced eggs from ears, scarves from his sleeves, and, finally, two singing canaries from the décolletage of the saucy singer’s low-cut gown. This was met by wild applause from everyone, except Delphine, who felt a sharp pang of sheer jealousy.

  Then he went back to juggling as the footmen went about the room, putting out the lights.

  Just as the last candle was extinguished, the footmen ran on stage carrying blazing torches, which the comte seized from them and proceeded to juggle until he was surrounded by a blazing arc of flame.

  The candles were lit again. He deftly caught the torches and doused them in a bucket of water and took his bow.

  The crowd of fashionables roared and stamped like children and began to throw money and jewels on the floor at the comte’s feet.

  “He can’t pick them up,” said Charlie. “It ain’t his place.” And with that, he shot forward onto the stage area and began to cheerfully collect everything into a large handkerchief.

  The comte winked at Charlie, bowed, and made his exit. Delphine had been twisting a handkerchief in her hands during his performance. It was now in shreds.

  Charlie appeared at Delphine’s elbow like a jack-in-the-box. “Best takings we ever made,” he said cheerfully.

  “What did he say when you told him I was here?” asked Delphine.

  “Oh, lor’!” Charlie’s look of dismay was almost comical. “I was that excited, I forgot.”

  “Then go and fetch him!” Delphine nearly screamed.

  “You must tell me what is going on or I shall faint!” wailed Mrs. Castle, but Delphine, with her eyes on Charlie’s small, retreating figure, only said, “Later.”

  “He’s gorn,” said Charlie dismally when he returned a few moments later.

  “Where?”

  “Back to those old lodgings of his in Soho. That’s one thing about Ma Jenkins, she’s that horrible, you can always get a room there when you can’t get one anywhere else.”

  “We must go. Now,” said Delphine.

  “Well, missus, it might be a better idea if you was to go ‘ome and let me fetch him. Can’t go running arahnd Soho sparkling like a chandelier,” he added, eyeing her jewels.

  “No. I am going now, Charlie, and if you won’t come, I’m going myself.”

  “What is happening?” bleated Mrs. Castle pathetically, but Delphine was already on her way out of the door, with Charlie at her heels.

  Mrs. Jenkins, the comte’s landlady, was leaning against the railings outside her tenement, smoking a foul clay pipe and shaking a squat green bottle to see if there was any gin left in it.

  She slowly removed her pipe at the glittering spectacle presented by Delphine.

  “They nivir had costooms like those in my day,” she said in awe. “I was on the boards, too. School for Scandal, I ‘member. Full ‘ouses, we ‘ad.”

  “You didn’t need no school,” said Charlie. “W’en it comes to scandal, nobody can teach you.”

  Charlie jumped back a step as she tried to hit him with her bottle.

  Delphine was already on her road up the stairs, feeling her way in the blackness.

  “And you can tell that doxy,” came Mrs. Jenkins’s unlovely voice, “that I keeps a ‘spectable Ouse.”

  “Garn!” came Charlie’s answer. “Every strolling mort in London’s got a lay here.”

  There came the sounds of an undignified scuffle. Mrs. Castle had remained in the coach and was now cowering in the far corner of the carriage seat, wondering if they would all get out alive.

  “Jules!” called Delphine into the blackness of the staircase. She could not remember which room she had been in before. She did not even know whether he would be in the same room, even supposing she could remember where it was.

  “Jules!” she called more loudly.

  Various angry voices told her to “stow it.” A door opened, and a villainous-looking old man looked down at her.

  And then, all at once, the comte was there, holding up a candle and leaning over the bannister.

  Delphine ran wildly up the stairs towards him. She threw herself against his chest, crying, “Come home with me, Jules. I love you.”

  “Quietly,” he said, drawing her inside the room.

  Before he closed the door, a loud chorus from the other inhabitants serenaded them with various lewd suggestions as to what they could do with themselves.

  The comte placed the candle on a rickety table beside the bed and turned and held out his arms.

  She walked straight into them and turned her face up for his kiss.

  But he held her a little away from him. “I am not going to make love to you here,” he said quietly. “I have missed you so dreadfully.”

  “I thought you and Harriet …”

  “I know. Charlie told me, finally. We’ve wasted so much time.”

  “There is so much you must tell me,” said Delphine. “What happened to that Frenchman? The spy.”

  “Dead. He broke his neck trying to escape his prison. Isn’t there something else you wish me to tell you?”

  Delphine looked at him in mute appeal. “I love you, my heart,” he said. “I never told you that.”

  “I love you, too,” said Delphine.

  He kissed her suddenly and fiercely, feeling her body melt into his.

  “Oh, Jules,” murmured Delphine when she could. “It is time to go home.”

  “To Marsham?”

  “Yes.”

  “And will you take this poor mountebank as he is? I cannot be another Sir George.”

  “I would not wish you any other way,” said Delphine softly. “Come.”

  “Wait a bit,” he said, turning at the door. “I am forgetting my hard-earned winnings. You know, my heart, I was well on the way to making a fortune!”

  “Oh, Jules,” Delphine sighed. Sh
e had been about to add, “Will you never change?” but realized just in time that she never wanted him to be anything other than what he was at that moment.

  Maria Bencastle learned of the couple’s return to Marsham Manor and decided to pay them a visit to see if she could ingratiate herself into Delphine’s good graces.

  She had found herself a small house on the outskirts of Hegsley. But it was a lonely mode of existence. It was the very breath of life to Maria to interfere in someone else’s business. She could not bear living alone.

  She accordingly pasted a humble smile on her heavy features as Bradley answered the door of Marsham Manor.

  “I am afraid his lordship and her ladyship are abed,” said the butler.

  Maria’s eyes flew past him to the clock in the hall.

  Bradley gave an irritatingly Gallic shrug. “Milord needs his rest.” He smirked.

  “That man,” said Maria, turning on her heel, “is bone lazy!”

  Upstairs, in milord’s tumbled bed, Delphine turned her head and looked at him.

  “My love,” she ventured, “it is time to consider the wages for the itinerant harvest workers. Perhaps if we …”

  “No,” he interrupted. “I can’t be bothered. Garnett will see to it.”

  “You are bone lazy!” protested Delphine, unknowingly echoing Maria. “Don’t you have energy for anything?”

  He pulled her into his arms. “The only exertion I enjoy, my heart, is … this.”

  “Oh, Jules.” Delphine sighed, happily surrendering herself to the inevitable.

  “What a convenient marriage!”