That Scoundrel Émile Dubois

by Lucinda Elliot

  She asked too – she must seem inquisitive – about his cure for Miss Lydia, who was rumoured to have strange symptoms of restlessness at night and a retraction of the gums.

  As ever, the Count was eager to talk about his remedies. “I was using two mixtures of herb. One with primarily a combination of rosemary, sage, thyme, mint, fennel and garlic, afterwards one with a proportion of nettle and St John’s wort added.”

  It seemed like enough to Katarina’s cure.

  “How often did you recommend she take it, Sir?”

  “Call me Ynyr, please. Are we not more doubly related now? I thought it best for her to have it six times a day at first, reducing after the first four days.”

  Sophie went to take Morwenna to one side to offer her a present of a cross. “You may laugh, Miss Mor – Morwenna, but I believe it protects one from many unpleasant influences. I wear one myself.”

  Morwenna laughed. “You are not perchance going over to Rome, Sophie, as you did the same by all the staff before leaving us? Émile is shockingly irreligious, so this cannot be his influence. Sure it is a kind thought and I will wear it accordingly.”

  Émile came up behind them. He smiled on Morwenna while covertly caressing Sophie’s back. No doubt in his rakish experience, he had done it often enough. Now he seemed accustomed to his talons and they scratched Sophie’s flesh tenderly, a part of the caress.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The fair-haired girl looked thin, alarmingly so. But then, she was in a decline.

  In the manner of dreams, her lips didn’t move. “Take care. Recollect you – Recollect you ‘Viens ici, salaud’.” She said the words reluctantly. The last one meant nothing to Sophie.

  “But you’re –” Sophie began. Their eyes met.

  Then Mademoiselle Charlotte was gone.

  Sophie woke with a start as the clock on the stairs window sill chimed three. For the first time, Émile was gone.

  She leapt out of bed. With some remnant of modesty, she pulled on her nightdress. Not even pausing to pick up the guttering candle, she rushed through her own dressing room and the intervening door to Émile’s.

  The room was faintly lit, like hers, by the embers of the dying fire. He wasn’t in there. Thankfully Georges wasn’t either, having a far better room than the one under the attics allotted to him at Plas Uchaf.

  She rushed through to Émile’s bedroom and gasped with relief. He was sitting at a table, wearing his deep blue dressing gown, working on some papers. The room was lit only by the glowing embers in the fireplace. He turned with the look of one preoccupied. “Sophie, I hope my poor sleep is not infectious?”

  “Oh, Émile, I thought–”

  “That I had turned into a bat?” He may have meant to speak lightly, but his tone came out sour.

  “I feared you were drawn into the past again.”

  “Alors, I would have woken you by pitching you out of the bed.” He gave her a chuck under the chin. “Do not trouble. I often sleep ill, as I have told you. I am working on some formulas merely.”

  She glanced at the sequences of figures. She could only just make them out in the semi darkness (it was startling, even alarming, how he could see so well without more light) though they would have meant nothing to her even had she been able to see them clearly.

  Someone once told her people with a talent for music often shone at mathematics; she didn’t seem to have the mathematical ability. It was a mystery to her how Émile could make sense of such things. She gazed at him, wondering at the clever thoughts flitting about – no, not that word, too redolent of bats – taking place, rather – in his head.

  Then, sensing something evasive about him, a suspicion took her. She put her hands on his shoulders, and spoke at once. “You have said Kenrick believed with the application of mathematics, he could introduce a precision to some form of – of magic.”

  His guarded expression destroyed her hope he would chuck her chin, laughing at her absurdity. “He did, Sophie. I never expected such dramatic proof that he wasn’t raving.”

  “But Émile, surely you would not experiment with his awful ideas yourself? I know I am ignorant of such things, but does the Dowager Countess not have the right of it when she speaks of his ‘Mischievous Experiments’?”

  He smiled, eyes still veiled. “Eh bien, Madame ma Tante has ideas rigid and outdated in all things, n’est pas? To some extent, so does Ynyr. He gave me these arguments this afternoon. I have no choice, my poor girl. Kenrick has involved me in his experiments whether I would or no, and I must do what I can to understand what happens.”

  “Émile, would you really attempt time travel through these rituals, too?” She searched those inscrutable eyes for reassurance.

  She found none.

  He squeezed her hands. “I say I have no choice, Sophie! I did not begin this tussle with Kenrick, but he has taken liberties with me and I will see matters through to the end.”

  He was too masculine to react any other way, of course. She let her hands drop from his shoulders, and paced about in the dim room. “Kenrick wishes you to do precisely that, Émile!”

  He looked irritated. “That hasn’t escaped my attention, Sophie. You do not think I dance to his tune? Yet I must fight him on his own ground. I am amazed Kenrick has overcome these problems, incompetent mathematician as he is, to initiate travel to what we might call a past time stream. Perhaps he blundered upon some crucial factor. I was saying as much to Ynyr and he seemed absurdly concerned by Kenrick’s methods.”

  “Émile, of course you did not enter into this combat willingly! It is all so complicated, for I know well it was travel through time brought us together. Yet though I am ignorant of these matters, I fear it to be pernicious, as surely all of Kenrick’s magical rituals must be?”

  Now, he melted enough to jump up and take her face in his hands. “Try not to worry. I will be careful.”

  She put her hands up to squeeze his shoulders lightly, revelling in those delightful muscles. As she stroked him, a vague memory of the dream made her speak again. “I do not know how to say what I must, Émile –”

  “What, chérie?”

  “Émile, do you have an interest in time travel because of your lost siblings?”

  His face froze but she saw her answer in his eyes. She rushed on, “I understand what a temptation it must be now you know Kenrick has access to the past. I do not understand what is involved, but I fear something awful may happen. You know how when I came back in time you were able to see me and talk to me –”

  His look of outrage faded. “And to kiss you.” His eyes were tender now, but fearing distraction, she hurried on, “Do you wish to go back to the past as your present self to alter it? I could not, but –”

  He looked surprised. “Clever girl.”

  She wasn’t annoyed by his condescension, having been brought up to accept it as natural in men rather less clever than he. “Forgive me for mentioning this – I am sorry to have to speak of something so painful to you – but is it you wish not only to see your brothers and sisters, but perhaps, to – to succeed in rescuing them?”

  Now he looked agonised. “Sophie, I would not fail them twice. You cannot guess at how many times I have relived that night.”

  She hated having to go on. “Ah, Émile, I wish you could save them, and change everything! But – might it not somehow alter the present? I feel foolish in hazarding these ideas, when you know so much more of them than I, but I do wonder. What if we are apart, never having come together, as a result?”

  He tightened his arms about her. “I promise to be careful, Sophie. Of course, I do not wish to change the present in so far as I have you. My visit to the Kenrick ménage that day brought us together, and yet what happened is fearful to you.”

  “Is it not still fearful to you?!” The words rushed out.

  “That is in the main because I fear to lose you through it.” He watched her closely.

  She let that go for the moment. “Émile, of course yo
u did your best for your brothers and sisters that terrible day.”

  His sigh was almost a groan. “It wasn’t good enough, Sophie.”

  “Can you talk to me about it? It might help you.” She wondered – but nobody ever spoke on such matters, so she had nothing to go by – if Émile’s silence on the topic of his lost siblings and their horrible end might be preventing him from recovering from their loss.

  He sat silent for fully two minutes. Then he stood up and with a bow that was slightly mocking, offered her the chair. She sat down in it and he sat himself, eccentrically enough, on the floor with his back to her. She put her hands on his shoulders again, and as he talked to her his muscles became rigid and his voice was hoarse, while she shuddered now and again.

  ‘I would be a hypocrite if I said that I was fond of my parents. I hardly knew them, and mon Père would give a box round the ear for any infringement of his Versailles notions of etiquette while ma Mère was given to religion and melancholy. Sometimes, I think when mon Père was especially provoking, she prayed over us, wringing her hands. That was unpleasant enough. She must have been happy once, but I never remember her so.

  ‘Generally, though, we didn’t see much of them. Our old Nurse was far closer to us. When we were over here, and I stayed for weeks with Ynyr’s family, I envied Ynyr having a father in the late Count, who was approachable.

  ‘Ynyr often came to stay. We would play marbles in the courtyard, with the sun on our backs.

  ‘Later in Paris, I asked myself, is the cold or are my insides frozen? Recollect you my telling you of a dead cat squashed by a carriage on the frozen road out of Paris? Of how I felt like to it? It was that made me able to live so savage an existence. I sense you look at me in concern, ma chère; I am glad you know not what I mean.

  ‘Charlotte was a year younger than I, always practical, yet with an other- worldly side to her nature. In some ways, your Agnes puts me in mind of her.

  Bernard was younger than me by two years, a quarrelsome scamp; he looked much like Georges. We never got along; I never would have believed how I would yearn to hear his voice disputing something, anything, but once more.

  Marguerite, ten years younger than I, was my favourite. Whenever I had been away, I would look for her first. I believe it was partly because something about Katarina reminded me of her that I could not leave her to the mercy of the Kenrick’s.

  One day out hunting I met Georges, whose mother had been a maid at the Château. Later, he condescended to be my page. He was closer to me than my brother, for we each recognised in the other a rascal.

  ‘When the riots broke out across the country, I came back from the University to warn mon Père, pointing out how the people had suffered since the bad winter ruined the olive crop. He would not listen. Ma Mère clicked her tongue at the peasants forgetting their Christian resignation. They carried on with their engagements as ever.

  ‘In this, mon Père displayed the same form of obduracy sustained him on the day of their execution, when he offered Madame ma Mère his arm, for all the world as if they were stepping out to their carriage for a social occasion rather than for a journey by open tumbrel to the guillotine. And so they went to their end, with him looking through the crowds as though they did not exist, which contempt led the rabble to hoot and hurl things, while ma Mère was praying for God to forgive them.

  ‘I feel you flinch, Sophie moi. I begged an oblivious universe ceaselessly for it to be over, for I felt I must stand in the crowd to see it all. My parents having sent me word not to dare to intervene, I had to respect their last wishes and stand by, clenching my fists. It was only afterwards I noticed the cuts where my nails went through the skin.

  Yet, their end was not so unfair. After – what happened in Provence – mes parents had embroiled themselves in political intrigue in the north. Après tout, they had lived a large part of their lives acquiescing in the brutal treatment of the peasants. So many times mon Père ordered me whipped as a boy when I questioned that. Always, I vowed when I came to run the estate, things should be different. Bien sûr, they are different indeed!

  Our parents were away overnight when things ignited.

  ‘Georges and I for some nights slept in an anteroom, swords and pistols at the ready. When the locals attacked we were first shooting over their heads, but they came in waves, and soon we were cutting at them through those long windows while the sweet night air gushing in. We forced that wave back, but meanwhile some got in the other way and lit fires. The ancient tapestries were so dry they made a perfect fuel.

  The Château was easily alight. Georges and I gave up trying to fight the rioters off; there were too many. We ran for the youngsters and the old Nurse.

  I could not get Marguerite out of the nursery without her favourite doll, and all the while I could hear the crackling getting louder as the Nurse’s face turned to a strange colour. As we came out into the gallery I met Georges, forcing Bernard up the corridor with threats and hauling along Charlotte. As we went spluttering up the long gallery, the tapestry was blazing up and coming down, and I was saying to Marguerite, ‘Do not worry, Émile will not let a little thing like this absurd bonfire get in his way.’

  ‘Then the Nurse fell in an apoplectic fit. I wondered how I was going to carry her as well as Marguerite, for she was stout – but one look at her staring eyes told me she was dead.

  “It is only lately I have recalled how, as I struggled along, I thought I saw myself. I believed it the affect of strained nerves at the time. Now I wonder.”

  Sophie shivered again as she went on caressing his shoulders in silence and he continued.

  ‘We took them out through one of the windows to the terrace and the outhouse roofs. There were rioters all about the front and sides. We couldn’t tell what they might do. We knew them all, but people madden in a riot, so we hid the youngsters in one of the outhouses. So many times, Sophie, have I cursed myself for choosing that particular building, yet it seemed the safest.

  ‘Georges and I went for horses, leaving the others in Charlotte’s charge. By some fluke, part of the Château roof fell and crushed the furthest outhouse roof.

  ‘Georges and I were galloping the mounts back – we’d had to deal with a few rioters to get them – when we saw the roof collapse.

  ‘We saw Charlotte’s feet projecting from under a pile of beams. We thought her dead; her face was blackened, but later we found it was only soot and she was hardly hurt, though her hair was singed half off. But as for the others...

  ‘I saw what was meant by the phrase ‘death in her face’ as we took her to a safe place. She never did get over it. I felt mad, but at a distance. It was only later, when she was safe out of the country I began to rant and rave. Georges had to jump on me and hold me down while I gabbled crazily of revenge. Whenever any man I could fight gave me excuse, I attacked him like a maniac. Georges – hardly given to moderation himself in that – thought I was become a little mad. He was right, certainment. Then and in my brutal life later, I hoped that someone would serve me a good turn and finish me. It was so in England, after Lotte died.”

  Sophie murmured, hugging his tight frame, “Ah, my dear, I am so sorry. Perhaps I should not have made you speak of them. I hoped that it might make things easier to talk of them, but…” She turned him about – he submitted with surprising docility – and drew his head down onto her shoulder.

  After a couple of minutes, he looked up at her. “It is a relief to talk to you about it. I would not tell anyone else that story. The only person who I could endure to sympathize with me about it is you.”

  A little later she murmured, “Don’t think this presumptuous in me, my love, for I know while I have lost a sister and my parents, it was in the course of nature, and so different; yet, might it not it be better – I can guess how hard this must be for you – to accept what has been – dreadful as it was?”

  He muttered, lips against her skin: “Don’t ask that of me, Sophie.”

  Chapter Six
teen

  Georges, hair perfect, collar and necktie magnificent if pasty in the face, strutted towards the door leading to the outbuildings.

  Agnes, coming down the stairs with a tray, stopped him. “You know Mrs Kit’s orders, Georges. Take your cross!”

  Georges glowered. “I take orders from nobody.”

  “Hoighty toighty, it’s a rule of the house. You are looking poorly. Is it the drink or are you wearing yourself out getting excited about some girl?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Do you care?”

  Their eyes met for a moment before he dropped his. Putting the tray down on a shelf, she fumbled in her pocket for a home made wooden cross. “Wear one of these from Katarina, Georges.”

  He thrust it in his pocket. “Is she any better? Is Monsieur still reading to her?”

  “Yes, and breaking off to say, ‘Zut alors, what is this nonsense, Katarina?’

  Their eyes met again then he suddenly turned and banged out. Agnes, shaking herself, marched off with the tray.

  The footman Guto still looked so out of place in his livery as he stood in Émile’s study, gazing at him in enquiry, it seemed as though he was about to discuss the whereabouts of some strayed cow. Instead, he said, “Here are the stakes, Sir, cut up as you ordered.”

  “Good, Guto. Stoke up the fire with ‘em…Burn the – the sharp ends firstly.” Émile spoke through his teeth as he looked at the remains of the stakes brought with them on the move from Plas Uchaf.

  Guto threw the sharp ended pieces onto the fireplace. “Forgive my forwardness, Sir, but I think you need a good blaze. You shudder.”

  “You speak true, boy. Alors, mind you come back betimes to mend the fire.”

  When Guto had gone, Émile glared at the burning stakes and swore. “That filthy bloodsucker will not escape me, though I become even as he.”

  Some time later, he sat at the desk, legs stretched out and looking endless as he lounged, watching the mirror hanging nearby, on either side of which were two sconces with candles burning.