TheEnglishHeiress

by Roberta Gellis

  “You are armed to repel an army,” the patron remarked, but the worst of the deadly softness was gone from his voice, replaced by an amused respect.

  “Yes, and we will remain so armed. There are other muskets in the carriage, all loaded. You must have discovered that I am also a gunsmith. However, I mean no threat. I only wish to ensure my own safety.”

  “You have ensured it. Now, let us go to this cache of yours.”

  “Get in the carriage, Leonie,” Roger said, forgetting the formality of “Miss de Conyers” in the stress of the moment. She obeyed quickly. “Now your man, if you please, patron.”

  There was a low chuckle, acknowledgment of another move stymied, but the patron gave the order and the man returned to the carriage. Roger thought feverishly. He had no cache and had planned to hand over the gold right here and then drive away. Now that scarcely seemed like a good idea. If the escape had already been discovered, searchers would surely rush to each gate. It was most unwise to be so close. Still, Roger had not the faintest idea of where to go. He jumped up into the driver’s seat. Leonie was in the back. It was very silent there. Did she know her father was dead?

  “Where are you going, monsieur?” the clerk whispered from beside him, and then, even more softly, “Do you know Monsieur de Conyers is dead?”

  Roger nodded to the second question. As he did, he realized he might have an answer to the first. “The farm,” he whispered in return, “can I leave you there?”

  “That is very kind,” the clerk said, but with a nervous glance over his shoulder, “but…”

  He did not want the patron to know the farm. Roger bit his lip “Is there a lane, a bit of wood, anywhere that we can stop for a little while? I cannot be rid of those who follow until I give them what was promised.”

  “Ah yes. Give me the reins.”

  Released from the need to drive, Roger turned back toward Leonie, but he could see nothing. Inside the carriage there was no light at all. However, the moon struck full on his face, showing the sorrow and anxiety he felt. After a moment, a tired, broken whisper came. “I know.”

  “I am so sorry,” Roger said softly.

  “I am only afraid,” Leonie replied. “I have no right to be sorry. It is what he wanted.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” Roger comforted. “I will keep you safe. I promised your father, and I will.”

  There was nothing more to say. Roger wished Leonie did not have to sit beside her father’s corpse, but there was nothing he could do about it. He racked his brains for new words of comfort without results. After another moment, Leonie said softly, “I am all right. Don’t worry so.”

  It was the strangest thing, but even as she said the words, hoping only to ease the distress on the face of this stranger who had so miraculously appeared, Leonie realized she had spoken the truth. She was grieved about her father but knew her grief was selfish. He had not wished to live. The memories he carried were too bitter, the wounds in his soul too deep. He could never have found peace. Safety and comfort would have been a far more terrible punishment to him than imprisonment or death. He blamed himself for his wife’s and daughter’s despoilment, for his wife’s and son’s deaths. How could he have lived with such a burden?

  For his sake, Leonie knew she should be glad. She had seen the joy of release in her father’s eyes when Monsieur St. Eyre promised to care for her. She should be glad that Papa had gone so quickly, with so little suffering. But it was dreadful to be alone, all alone in the whole world. A sob choked her, and then another.

  “Don’t cry, Leonie. My poor child, don’t. Here, come change places with me,” Roger said urgently. “It isn’t right for you to have to sit—”

  “I am not afraid of Papa,” Leonie managed to say. “I am afraid to be all alone…”

  Before Roger could answer, the clerk pulled the horse sharply right into a dark, narrow lane. Roger gave a distracted glance into the dark and then said, “Stop as soon as you like,” but the clerk drove on for another five minutes.

  After he stopped, it was only a moment’s work to pull up the floorboard and release the catch to the seemingly solid underside of the seat. Leonie had to move aside, but Roger was able to pull out the two small chests and close the panel again without disturbing Henry’s body. Then Roger got down and asked the clerk to hand down the chests. The second carriage had just pulled up behind them. Roger dragged the strongboxes forward and then retreated to the side of his own carriage, but he made no attempt to get in. Behind him the long nose of a musket pointed outward at the man who descended from the patron’s carriage. He came forward, his eyes flicking so nervously between the muzzle of the musket and the pistol in Roger’s hand that he tripped over the chests and nearly fell. From the closed carriage, the patron’s voice came.

  “It is most unfortunate you are so suspicious.” The tone implied that great gain would accrue to Roger if he would come and have a private talk.

  In spite of tension and distress, Roger could not help smiling. It must be nearly impossible for the patron to understand how to deal with someone who had what he wanted and wanted no more. The smile died as Roger remembered that Henry was dead. Well, there was nothing the patron could offer him that would cure that.

  “You may think so,” Roger replied, “but I assure you that from your point of view as well as mine, it is not. I desire no trouble, only to leave here in peace and safety. Please count the money and go. I swear to you I have nothing more. You have left me with about five francs and my stock in trade.”

  Whether Roger had at last convinced the man he was stripped clean or whether he realized Roger was not going to make a mistake, the patron said no more. The chests were lifted into the carriage, a light came on inside. After a little time the horse was induced to back slowly until a wider spot in the lane permitted the driver to turn the carriage. Slowly the sound of the horse’s hooves and the creak of the wheels died away. Roger allowed his pistol to drop and leaned back against the side of the carnage, breathing deeply. It seemed to him that it was the first time he had breathed since he had gone down the cellar steps in the Hôtel de Ville.

  He turned to thank Foucalt’s clerk for backing him up so cleverly, and his eyes fell on Leonie’s strained face. The muzzle of the musket wavered. “My poor child,” he exclaimed, taking the gun from her hands, “where is—”

  “Gone through the trees to the road to make sure they do not wait for us. He will wait until their carriage is out of sight,” she interrupted. “Monsieur St. Eyre, do you really think they will let us go?”

  “I hope so,” Roger sighed. “I would have allowed him to search the carriage, but even that would not have convinced him, I fear. Greedy men cannot or will not believe there is no more.”

  There was a pause. Roger strained his ears, but there was no sound except the ordinary noises of a late summer’s night in the woods. Leonie looked at his clear-cut features and wondered whether all Englishmen were so good-looking. Papa was—her thought checked and she corrected herself—had been handsomer than all the other men she knew. Papa was dead and she was alone. She had better keep her mind on essentials.

  “Monsieur St. Eyre,” she said anxiously, “now that we have a few moments to talk, I wish to thank you for making my father’s last moments so happy. It was very generous of you. However—however—I understand that—that it might be—inconvenient… I mean—”

  “Inconvenient! Leonie! Oh, I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle de Conyers, I did not mean to be familiar.”

  Grief and fear notwithstanding, Leonie had to laugh. Only an Englishman would think of apologizing for informality at such a moment. “Please, Monsieur St. Eyre, do call me Leonie,” she said.

  “Perhaps I should,” he mused. “We must travel together. Yes, of course. Could you bring yourself to call me Roger?”

  “Travel together?” Leonie’s voice trembled. “Do you mean…? Was it true what you said to Papa? Not only to comfort him?”

  “Indeed it was true, Leoni
e. I came to France with the single purpose of finding your father and helping him bring his family home, if he needed and would accept my help.”

  “My uncle sent you?” Leonie cried.

  “My God,” Roger muttered. “Oh, my poor child, I have more bad news for you. No, let it wait. You have enough to bear—”

  “Tell me,” Leonie insisted, her voice rising, so that Roger realized that uncertainty and doubt would be worse for her than fact. “Has my uncle changed his mind? Will he not receive us—me?”

  “Not receive you? He would have done so with all his heart. He is dead, Leonie. I am sorry.”

  “Uncle William is dead?” Her lips quivered. She had never met her Uncle William, but they had corresponded, and he had sent her a present once that had been very dear to her. Leonie wrenched her mind away from that. It was all past, all dead, even the little dog most likely. She must think of practical things now. “I am glad Papa did not need to know. But then, Uncle Joseph—do you think he will not want me because he has his own children?”

  “God in heaven, no! He is dead also, Leonie, and his whole family.”

  Her eyes widened. “I do not believe you,” she whispered raggedly, at last on the verge of hysteria. “For some reason you are trying to drive me mad. It is not possible! It is not possible that every person to whom I could belong is gone! Why are you here? What are you trying to do?”

  Roger caught her hands and held them. “Child, child, I am here to protect you. What an idiot I am! I shouldn’t have told you. I swear you will be safe with me—as safe as I can make you.”

  Roger’s effort at comfort was somewhat misdirected. Leonie did not fear him in a personal way. Nonetheless, the strong yet gentle grasp of his hands and his obvious distress steadied her. Her fears were general. One, which she had voiced already, was of the unknown. If her uncles had not sent St. Eyre to help her father, how and why had he come? Just now anything unknown had an air of mystery and menace. Her second fear was more formed and more poignant.

  “Where am I to go? What am I to do?” Leonie cried.

  “I beg you not to be frightened,” Roger soothed. “First, as soon as I can, I will take you to my father’s house. You will be safe there. Lady Margaret is the kindest woman. Then, when you are a little recovered from this dreadful experience, you will decide what you wish to do.” Leonie pulled back, and Roger released her hands. She put one waveringly to her head. “You mean you will still take me to England? But I do not understand. If my uncles are dead,” she choked back a sob, “how will I live? I do not wish to be a beggar, a charge on strangers. I suppose—I suppose I could teach French. Does—”

  “No, no, do not be silly. You will be no charge on anyone,” Roger assured her. “I do not know exactly how the entail is arranged, but I am sure the bulk of the property will come to you as heir general. Indeed, Leonie, you will be a very, very wealthy young woman”

  “What?” Leonie gasped. “What can you mean? Papa was not rich. Some money came from England, I know, but it was not—”

  “That is true. Your father was the youngest son, and the estate settled upon him was not large. That will come to you in its entirety, I am sure, but you will also have nearly all of your Uncle William’s and Uncle Joseph’s property—no, not Joseph’s unless—” Roger cut that off.

  He was an idiot, he thought. How could he maunder on about the legal problems involved if Joseph’s small daughters were not found? Leonie was staring at him, open-mouthed. Then she swallowed and dropped her eyes. Had the answer to her second fear also answered the first? Leonie remembered her father and mother making jest of the “proprieties” of England, of the fact that an unmarried woman alone with a man would lose her “reputation” and be forced to marry him. Could he—Roger—have come to marry an heiress? No, how silly! When he left England he must have believed that Mama and François were still alive. She would not have been an heiress under those circumstances. She raised her eyes again.

  “I still do not understand. How did you come here? How did you happen to be in the crowd that attacked the Hôtel de Ville? How did you happen be in Saulieu on this particular day? How—”

  Roger cleared his throat. “I am afraid, Leonie, that I am in some sense guilty of your father’s death. It was I who arranged the attack on the Hôtel de Ville—that is, the money I gave that man in the other carriage was for arranging it for me. I cannot tell you how grieved I am that this happened. I will never forgive myself for not having foreseen that Louis would sound the tocsin. I will always blame myself for—”

  Leonie reached out and grasped Roger’s wrist. “For not being God and having foreknowledge? Do not say it! Do not think it! I told you Papa made himself live because he knew it was his duty to protect me, but he was—was dead inside already because he also blamed himself for—for many things only God could have foreseen.” Leonie had almost said “for my mother and me being raped”, but that was none of St. Eyre’s business.

  She was about to assure him again that death had been what her father craved, when the clerk returned from down the road. He had seen the patron’s carriage turn back toward Saulieu without hesitation. Then he waited until he could not hear the horse or wheels any longer He could not, of course, swear that they had not stopped and waited farther down the road, but there was no way of being sure about that. He advised turning the horse, going back to the road, and if the patron’s carriage was not in sight, going on their way.

  “I—you have somewhere to go?” he asked uncomfortably. Plainly his conscience told him he should invite them to the farm his relative owned, but he was afraid they would either not be welcome or would be discovered there.

  Roger hesitated. This had all taken much longer than he expected. He was very much afraid that search parties would be out looking for them very soon He knew nothing of the area. If the clerk thought the farm would be dangerous, then…

  “Yes, we have someplace to go,” Leonie said firmly, cutting into Roger’s worried thoughts. “Only tell us what will be best for you.”

  “That is easy, just leave me here,” the clerk said with relief “There is a path a little farther down this lane that will take me where I want to go. I wish I could have done more, but…”

  Roger assured him that he understood, and Leonie echoed his thanks and gratitude. After a brief hesitation, the young man melted away in the shadows.

  “I hope you meant what you said,” Roger remarked, turning to Leonie. “I have not the faintest notion of where we are, let alone where to go. I am sorry to be so…”

  He was very like her father, always feeling responsible for everything, Leonie thought, as she interrupted to assure Roger she knew where to go and instructed him to turn away from the town when they came to the main road. Roger did not do that directly. He paused to descend from the carriage and reconnoiter. The woods certainly seemed empty, and listening did not contradict the evidence of his eyes. When he returned to the carriage, Leonie was in the front seat.

  “I laid Papa down,” she said with only a small tremor in her voice, “so that he would not fall. I thought I had better sit here to direct you. I could not see very well from there, and the back lane to the château is rather overgrown.”

  “The château!” Roger exclaimed. “But Leonie—”

  “I know it is most likely a ruin,” she said, “but we must go there. There is nowhere else to go, and we can hide in the cellars. Papa told me how to find the deep passages. Also, he said there is money there, in a secret room, but—”

  Roger choked back the protest that the château would be one of the first places searchers would come. It was clear from what Leonie said that she knew it. Also, Henry de Conyers must be buried. Roger hoped that the château, like many great houses in England, would have its own mausoleum or area of consecrated ground. What he would do, for a coffin, he had no idea. It offended him and would hurt Leonie simply to cast her father into a shallow, hastily dug grave. He pushed the new problem away, his mind was reeling
between fatigue and anxiety, and he did his best to blank it completely and give his whole attention to directing the horse. The moon was very low in the sky now, and the light was worse.

  Beside him, Leonie leaned forward tensely, her eyes on the left of the road. After a few minutes she said, “There, that is the road to Thoisy la Bec. Turn there.”

  “Must we go through the village?” Roger asked. “It would be better if no one knew a carriage came this way, and so late at night the sound will surely wake someone.”

  “The road does pass through,” Leone replied, and then, “Wait, we can go round through the fields. The haying carts go through. Yes, there are gates. Turn on the road and then keep to the right.”

  Roger drove for a few minutes, slowing the horse to a walk as Leonie put a hand on his arm, but she shook her head. Another long minute passed. Roger could feel her hand tremble. “You are cold,” he said. “Hold the rein a minute. I will give you my coat.”

  “You will be naked,” Leonie murmured.

  “I beg your pardon,” Roger said coldly, appalled at forgetting he was wearing no shirt and furious at the picayune nicety that would worry about a bare chest at such a time. “I did not mean to offend you.”

  Again a laugh was drawn from Leonie. “Dear Monsieur St. Eyre—no, I am to call you Roger—I am not offended. If you give me your coat, you will be even colder than I. That was all I meant.”

  Her answer made Roger ashamed of himself. “Don’t worry about that. It is not really cold, and I am larger and warmer than you. Just take the reins.”

  In fact, he was already feeling chilled because he was so tired, but he was also very worried about Leonie. Her fortitude seemed incredible. He expected any small additional pressure or shock to break her. He knew too, that feeling cold intensified fear and loneliness. But Leonie did not reach for the reins; she shook her head.

  “I am not cold, only nervous and frightened. I am used to being cold I—oh, I did not miss it. There, turn right.”