That Scoundrel Émile Dubois

by Lucinda Elliot

  “Keep away, Georges, you don’t want to join in the fun. I may be drawn in. I could try running away, but it might come after me –”

  “Get away from it!” As Émile didn’t move, Georges dragged him away from the bed. He swore as the swirling images followed them and Émile yelled, “Leave go of me, Georges!”

  The next moment, they were pulled up into the pictures and landed on Hounslow Heath on a late summer afternoon.

  Émile and Georges both stumbled. Their accomplice Tom cursed. When the nerves are strained, any unexpected sound or movement infuriates.

  It was an overcast warm afternoon, the air on the heath sweet. A distant curlew took flight, its sleepy cooing retreating.

  Georges saw his own horror reflected in Émile’s eyes, and even as he fought to speak, he saw Émile struggling too. He felt himself fainting and gasping as he fought to bring out the words.

  Still struggling to speak, Émile caught at Tom, who seeing the horror in his eyes, stared, speechless at what he took to be Monsieur Gilles in a funk. Émile stammered out, “Beware–” Then he choked. Georges snatched at Tom’s arm, but Tom flung it off, swearing.

  Then there came the sound of horses’ hooves and rattling wheels. Tom shouted and leapt on his horse, eyes wild, rummaging for his pistols, while Émile and Georges did likewise.

  As the coach drew in sight, they fired overhead to intimidate. Tom roared, “Stand and deliver!”

  Having heard somewhere that is what highwaymen said, he said it. Likewise, seeing Messieurs Gilles and Georges being gallant to the ladies, he played that part too.

  There was a chaos of whinnying, plunging horses, the driver swearing, a woman screaming repeatedly, “I told you!” A male voice shouted querulously: “Why don’t you do something, you lubbard? Did I pay you for nothing?”

  Georges’ mind swam, the clarity of his foreknowledge fading, though he still remembered enough to know he and Émile had been here before, and that something horrible would happen. The details came to him in sudden flashes, only to disappear the next moment.

  Automatically he was joining Émile in reassuring the women, “Please do not fear for your safety, Mesdames. Permit us hand you down…”

  Tom was asking if any of them wished to dance. Some order was restored. Monsieur Gilles helped a stout matron down and Georges was all attentiveness to a younger, while Tom did a few turns with the third.

  A shouted order cut through the air, followed by shots.

  The passengers cried out and the horses panicked once more.

  Georges usually loved an escape on horseback, the wind in his hair, the mud splashing up underneath the horses beating hooves, the sound of the pursuit dying away.

  This one began with disaster. As Tom jumped into the saddle, a shot caught him in the back. The horse reared and neighed. He jerked, fell sideways, and screamed as it bolted, dragging him by a foot caught on the stirrup through bushes and over stones, turned from a bold highwayman to an embodiment of pain. The women, crouched now by the carriage, mingled their shrieks with his.

  Georges’ first pistol jammed. He saw a soldier aim for him, a lanky fellow similar in build to Émile, who fired on him. The man fell with a shout, clutching his shoulder. Tom’s screams from the thicket behind were still loud as the horse dragged him away.

  Émile tried to calm his own plunging horse, while Georges, freeing the blockage in his weapon, fired on the stout sergeant he thought had shot Tom. He cursed as he missed, and gaining his horse, turned to fire on him with his second pistol, hating the man’s red, excited face, crimson in contrast to the scarlet of his jacket.

  Émile turned to shoot behind him with his second pistol, aiming for him too. The man seemed to have a charmed life, for he ducked and the shot sang over his head.

  A couple more shots missed them as Émile leaped on his mount and she reared again. Then he and Georges were galloping into the thicket after Tom, the soldiers chasing and firing.

  They came on Tom soon. He lay still, having come apart from the horse when in its panic it ran up against a sapling. He was torn and bleeding all over. Georges noted the blood trickling from his ears, which satisfied him Tom was dead or near enough to make no difference.

  Émile reined in and threw himself down to retrieve the broken remnants of the most arrogant Gentleman of the Road.

  “Do you think you are Sir Lancelot?” Georges cursed as Émile managed to drape the inert body over the front of his saddle while another shot from their pursuers winged overhead. Another hit the trunk of a sapling in a shower of bark while a bird shot upwards, squawking. Georges took aim with his second pistol at a glimpse of red and smiled nastily as he heard a cry and confused shouts.

  Then they were off again, with Émile urging Georges to go ahead; his own overburdened horse couldn’t make good speed. Georges knew – though he would never have admitted it – he would have stopped for Émile should there be the slightest chance one spark of life remained in him, but he cursed Émile for insisting on rescuing the remains of Tom.

  How they escaped, Georges never knew, for there was little enough cover; perhaps the soldiers were stupid; perhaps Georges’ last shot had killed the sergeant; Georges hoped so.

  Again and again he sensed this having happened before, how they should not be here at all; something about Émile told him he felt it too. Meanwhile, somehow they eluded pursuit, hiding behind the largest bushes, taking a convoluted route across open country. Tom still breathed raggedly when they arrived at Mr and Mrs Kit’s.

  They watched Tom dying in the bed, still mercifully unconscious. Georges finally brought out, “This has happened before. I don’t mean one of us being shot, I mean everything –” He stopped speaking as the drowning feeling overcame him.

  Émile spoke with an effort, “I feel so too…” His eyes told Georges the rest.

  Mrs Kit had helped undress Tom without comment beyond wincing at his injuries. She folded ancient, holey blankets underneath him. His breath now came with the rattling Georges and Émile knew well. They shared a bottle of brandy and waited.

  “I should have guessed from that miserable publican salaud’s sneaky eyes.”

  Émile roused from where he sat, head supported on one hand, eyes resting on the figure in the bed. “Of course, Georges, we cannot expect everyone to share our own moral uprightness.”

  “Informers is different, and you know it…Poor sod was cut to ribbons, eh?”

  The flickering on the ceiling came and their eyes met. “Again–” Émile choked.

  They were back at Plas Planwydden, dropped softly on the rug, gasping with relief to be away from his rattling breath.

  Émile staggered to his feet, naked once more, and shaking himself. “I would have given something not to have relived that one, Georges. I only knew what must be in those first moments, when I could see you trying to warn the poor bastard even as did I.” He pulled on his robe and paced about in the dim light.

  It was still dark outside. The fire had died down to glowing embers and the room smelt strongly of wax, two of the candles having just guttered.

  Georges went up to him and placed a hand on his arm. “Mon pauvre ami, I thought you deluded. I assumed petite Mademoiselle Sophie was submitting to your madness. Now I believe you.” He gave the arm a squeeze. “It must have been a torment for you.”

  Émile smiled, and putting his hand on Georges’, briefly returned the pressure. “I am not used to soft words from you, Georges. Tom’s agony was too strong a meat even for That Jade. I remember now she got up to turn the page on the book by the bed before it began.”

  “Think you this is some enchantment?”

  “I don’t know. It may be Kenrick’s through her uses me for experiments, much as some use rabbits. I cannot see Madame troubling to focus on my meeting with Sophie, neither. It may be she skipped past that, too, and that somehow made it come to me. She liked the brawls and the raids.

  ‘Sophie told me how she remained aware of how things were
throughout her time with me in Paris. She tried to tell me, but couldn’t speak. It was so with me, when I dropped down into the cafe, but my awareness lasted but moments, leaving me with the feeling tantalised us at Hounslow Heath, yet not so strong. At times during this last trip, my memory near returned.”

  He paced about. “What goes on, Georges? For sure our current bodies were not there, for we had the clothes and pistols we wore last summer. I’d have looked silly enough, eh, trying to hold up a coach stark naked, without a pistol to speak of? But Sophie was wearing that grey dress, both by my bed and in Paris. She gave me her necklace and I was able to keep it, which is strange indeed.

  ‘I have read something that suggests that we have many bodies, the outward one being the most corporal. I believe that whilst Sophie’s material body travelled so from England last May, when we were drawn back together we left our physical bodies behind, having them in that time and space already.”

  Georges stared. “You talk in riddles, Monsieur Gilles, yet it does sound like to what Kenrick rambled on heretofore.” He glanced over at the bedside cabinet. “There’s the funny little book you had on you when you came back that day. ‘On the Use of Imitative Representation’. Eh, did Kenrick give it you?”

  Émile’s look struck him as evasive. “Why think you that, Georges? I believe I picked it up on Ynyr’s shelves. Georges, with this hanging over me, how can I marry Sophie and risk her so apart from the menace to her and everyone I may become as a monster bat.”

  Georges glanced at the clock. “It approaches seven. Too late and as a gentleman, you cannot call it off besides.”

  Émile ran his hands through his hair. “Time has gone askew, Georges. We weren’t up late for all we drank well. Some hours have vanished. On the last occasion, I was too confused to make much of it. How long were we back there? Four hours at most, even counting the endless ride. This thing has always happened when I am half asleep. Mon Dieu, Georges, how can I risk my angel being caught in anything like that?”

  “Alors, there will be no danger of it happening tonight, for you won’t be doing much sleeping for sure.”

  Sophie sang as Agnes dressed her in the wedding gown – an altered cream ball gown she had only finished in time with help from Éloise and Katarina. “Agnes, it is perfect! You are the cleverest girl!”

  A smile kept spreading across Sophie’s face. She knew there was no dignity in her behaviour.

  Harriet and Éloise were helping too. If Éloise felt resentment, she hid it well.

  When Katarina looked in, Harriet sent her on an errand.

  Sophie protested, “But I want Katarina back soon because I asked her to help with my bouquet.”

  Katarina was too happy at going to live at Plas Planwydden with her four favourite people to trouble about Sophie’s sister-in-law. Besides, she, Agnes and Georges were already invited to the wedding.

  She had already done an Exclusion Ritual to keep vampires out of Plas Planwydden (this didn’t keep out those who were already part of the household). Last night, she had gone about Plas Uchaf carrying out a final protection rite. She feared the Count and Dowager Countess might invite Mr and Mistress Kenrick over in the future, but there was nothing she could do about that.

  Harriet was secretly too impressed with Sophie’s cleverness in catching her rakish grand relative to scold her for long about staff discipline. Besides, having seen the familiarities Émile allowed, she supposed Sophie was changing to suit him.

  “It’s lovely Miss Sophie looks!” Agnes kept exclaiming, as she finished Sophie’s hair.

  Sophie thought how the One Thing nobody mentioned on the wedding day was surely the one foremost in everybody’s mind, unless hers was particularly improper.

  The Dowager Countess had appeared in Sophie’s room two nights ago, looking as though she’d swallowed a poker and actually clearing her throat: “I assume, Sophie, that your late Mama or your sister Harriet* have told you of the Duties of the Marriage Bed?”

  “Yes, Madam.” Sophie needed to fight down an urge to giggle, though the snatches of talk she had overheard might have made her cry instead.

  “Yes, well, as you are so clearly in love, it does make it easier…”

  Sophie looked forward to the Duties of the Marriage Bed as she stood with her party at the front steps.

  John took out his watch – the tower clock was in sight, but he only trusted his own timepiece – and smiled. “We won’t set off for five minutes. We must make the young devil sweat it out. Recollect you how Harriet kept me waiting?”

  When her party arrived at the church, Sophie suppressed another giggle at the look of relief the magnificent Émile shot over his shoulder. Had he dreaded she might vanish again? As she began the leisurely walk up the aisle on John’s arm, despite the eyes on her, she couldn’t stop that gleeful smile from coming.

  Émile – who normally avoided churchgoing if possible – had attended twice in the last week to make sure that, ‘I do not suddenly fall down at the entrance, clutching my throat with a horrible gargling, though it might provide some entertainment and Mrs Brown would be delighted.’

  As Émile slipped the wedding ring on her finger, Sophie repressed a start. She knew how often he needed to trim his nails these past few days, sometimes, when nobody else was by, taking out his dreadful knife to do so. Now she saw why.

  The nails didn’t only look sharp; they were taking on the hooked, inhuman appearance of talons.

  The reality of marrying a man who might become a monster came to her as a sudden shock. She raised her eyes to his.

  Those slanty green eyes showed purely human adoration as he said, “With this ring I thee wed.”

  Her heart felt as if it was expanding. She let her breath out, telling herself it was one of the symptoms brought on by the cure, as predicted by Katarina.

  The Reverend Smythe-Jones said, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

  Sophie’s insides lurched as Émile’s lips met hers and her only thought about those nails was a vague hope he would trim them before bed.

  She looked forward to that night throughout the wedding breakfast at Plas Uchaf while Lord Ynyr made the toasts with his usual ease.

  John made an embarrassing speech. It began, “It is with the Deepest and Most Humble Joy that I raise my glass in Honour…” and finished, “To my Dearest Sister, now Rejoicing under the name of Madame Dubois!” Sophie blushed throughout, but that was appropriate for a bride. She was again grateful to Émile for keeping his face solemn and his response amiable.

  While Harriet, Agnes and Éloise dressed her again to leave for Plas Planwydden Sophie couldn’t help singing: ‘Ombra Mai Fu.’

  “I always said to John that that angel’s voice of yours would finally get you well settled.” Harriet fussed over her sash. “We are well pleased with you, dear.”

  Harriet and John were to go home themselves the next day, and Harriet couldn’t wait to call in triumph on everyone she knew. Meanwhile John intended to write a book: ‘A Short History of the Families Llewelyn and Dubois’.

  At Plas Planwydden, the staff was lined up to greet the bride. Sophie did yet more blushing as she smiled on them.

  Agnes looked thoughtfully at the new butler. He was a fat man of perhaps thirty who greeted Sophie with as low a bow as he could manage. “Madame Dubois.” The width of his smile astonished Sophie.

  That wicked grin betrayed him; she knew at once he would be at home in the company of Marcel Sly Boots and the others. She could recognise a scoundrel now, and guessed him to be a prize specimen.

  She shot a glance at Émile. He was all unconsciousness, smiling acknowledgements to everyone (there seemed to be no difference in the appearance of his teeth).

  Sophie greeted the housekeeper standing next to the butler. Mrs Kit was tall, stout herself, though nothing like as fat as her husband, and older than he. Her pale and oddly inexpressive face was long and plump. Under her smartly starched cap her dark hair was lank.
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  As her calculating dark eyes ran over Sophie, Sophie wondered how she and Agnes would get along. Émile had offered Agnes herself the job of housekeeper, but she had refused, saying she preferred to remain Sophie’s maid.

  Agnes had told Sophie how Émile wanted to reward her for caring for him during his illness. She had turned up her short nose at his offers of money: ‘I told him: ‘I did it because I happen to like you, Sir. But should you ever start treating Miss ill, then it is she as shall have my loyalty.”

  ‘So he says, “Agnes, I’ll even forgive you for suggesting I would ever ill treat her. Loyalty is my favourite virtue, ma petite. Will you take a rise in wages instead?”’

  Now, Émile looked at Sophie wryly. “Come and see the stables. There are a couple there whom you will like.”(So he guessed her opinion of the couple she had just met.) He took her arm and they went round the side of the house. “Mr Kit is a good fellow, and has done me favours; Dolly near saved my life. They have had foul luck. I am sure My Angel would not have me turn my back upon them.”

  “No indeed, Monsieur Émile.”

  He whistled and came to a stop. “We are back to that; you are put out indeed.”

  Sophie forced a smile. “No. If they have been good to you then I must like them.”

  “By the by, regarding my continued good behaviour, I thought you might like to know that I received this letter from my solicitor today. Perhaps it will make up for my taking on poor old Kit and Dolly.”

  Sophie glanced at the letter, which was written in legal jargon and concerned his settling on her a sum of ten thousand pounds. “Émile! I could rant about your goodness like to the newly married Pamela herself.”

  He smiled. “I put Morwenna’s copy down long ere I came to that.”

  A furious braying made them turn, laughing. Sophie rushed over to admire the brown male donkey who was bawling his disapproval of the world. Meanwhile the grey jenny munched at a pile of hay. “Émile, you got them for me! I wish I had a carrot. What are their names?”

  “Jean and Jenny. Shall we see if we can find a treat for them?”