by M C Beaton
“You should have told me earlier! If you had told me when you received the letter, then I would have waited for them. You only said they might arrive any day.”
“I did it for your own good. I have taken a liking to you and have no wish to see you in the toils of a Frog. What is it, Jensen?”
“There are three persons to see you, madam.”
The butler stood in the shadowy doorway. He appeared to be trembling, but then, he always shook a little.
“What has come over you, Jensen? I don’t see people, and I definitely don’t see persons. Send them away.”
“I would, madam, but one of the persons has a gun at my back.”
The butler walked slowly into the room. Emma rose to her feet again and faced the door. Behind Jensen walked the Beauregards and Lord Fletcher. Lord Fletcher had the gun. The three had been delighted to hear stories in the town of Mrs. Simpson’s elderly retinue of servants.
Madame Beauregard raised the heavy veil she wore over her face and stared at Emma, her eyes glittering with venom.
“I would like to see you die slowly, Emma Wright,” she said, “but we will make it quick.”
Giles, the footman, shuffled into the room with a tea tray which he placed on the table in front of Mrs. Simpson.
“Get out of the way, you old fool,” Lord Fletcher snapped. “Lady Wright, stand aside or we will kill them as well as you.”
Giles straightened up and stared in amazement at the gun in Lord Fletcher’s hand. There was a shuffling in the doorway and the rest of the old household servants, attracted by the commotion, came to see what was the matter.
“Oh, no,” said the old footman, slowly shaking his head. “We can’t have guns here, sir.”
Lord Fletcher raised his pistol. “Stand back!” he shouted, but the footman continued to advance on him, shaking his hoary locks and champing his toothless gums.
“Shoot him and let’s get on with it,” commanded Madame Beauregard.
Lord Fletcher pulled the trigger and fired, but the ball went whizzing harmlessly over the footman’s head, for Giles had sunk to his knees in front of Lord Fletcher and had grasped him round the knees. “No, no,” he mumbled. “Can’t have guns.”
Beauregard ran forward and tried to pull the old footman away, and Lord Fletcher went toppling to the floor.
Mrs. Simpson, with amazing speed, jumped on his hand which held the pistol and then snatched it up. “Get them!” she screamed, dancing from foot to foot. “Get the traitors!”
The butler flung himself on top of Beauregard and Lord Fletcher and began kicking and punching and gouging while Madame Beauregard backed to the window as what seemed to her a whole army of gibbering and mouthing ancient females advanced on her.
Mrs. Simpson seemed beside herself with glee. She grabbed the poker and began cracking it down on the writhing figures on the floor. Emma seized her work scissors and cut the bell rope, and as a final couple of cracks rendered both Fletcher and Beauregard senseless, she knelt down and began to tie their hands behind their backs.
Madame Beauregard was screaming like an animal. “I’ll hit her as well,” cried Mrs. Simpson, rushing forward with the poker.
But Madame Beauregard had suddenly fallen silent. As the maidservants who had pummeled her to the floor hoisted her to her feet, she stood swaying in their grasp, her eyes empty, a thin line of spittle running down her chin.
“She has lost her reason,” whispered Emma, and sat down on a chair, suddenly weak with shock.
“I trounced ’em,” yelled the indomitable Mrs. Simpson. “Just like Count Florimund did the Turk. Tie up that mad woman as well and then one of you go and get the militia. Giles, you may take my best horse.”
The old footman’s eyes gleamed. “I shall ride like the wind,” he croaked, leaving Emma, despite her shock and fear and distress, to register that the servants probably read all the romances that their mistress had finished with.
“Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!” called the town crier in the center square of Tadminster.
Jolly reined in his horse and called to the comte, who was looking impatiently over his shoulder to see what was delaying his friend. “Wait a bit. Let’s hear the news.”
The comte stopped and waited while Jolly’s horse minced up alongside his own.
“Why do we wait?” demanded the comte. “It will be the usual rural news.”
“Shhh!” admonished Jolly.
“Hear ye,” said the crier. “Last evening in the parish of St. George, Mrs. Simpson, relict of the late Mr. Geoffrey Simpson, did trounce and capture three French traitors who sought to kill Lady Wright, relict of the late Sir Benjamin Wright, Member of Parliament. Said traitors were taken to the roundhouse and this day will be conveyed to the Tower to meet the fate of all traitors against this glorious realm. God save the King!”
“Don’t that beat all?” exclaimed Jolly. “The old trojan.”
“Come on, man,” said the comte. “Lady Wright may have been hurt in some way.”
When they reached Mrs. Simpson’s house, they found the door open and a great noise coming from the drawing room. They made their way there.
The servants and Emma and various officials formed an audience while Mrs. Simpson stood on a chair, brandishing a poker and reenacting her victory.
Emma turned and saw the comte. She blushed a vivid color and, suddenly shy, looked at the floor.
While Mrs. Simpson continued her tale, the comte found himself cursing inwardly. What a feeble fellow her heroism was making him look! He had left Emma in danger, and instead of being able to rescue her himself, that rescue had been performed by Jolly’s horrible mother and a band of creaking servants, most of them women.
At last Mrs. Simpson finished to loud applause. The comte took Emma aside and said, “Come out to the gardens with me. There is much I have to say to you.”
Emma was back in mourning, he noticed. The blackness of her gown accentuated her palor. There were blue shadows under her eyes and slight hollows in her cheeks.
She walked out of the house with him. It was a glorious morning, glittering and sparkling with a busy wind pushing huge white clouds like galleons across a cerulean sky.
“I am desperately sorry I was not here to protect you,” said the comte.
Emma gave a fleeting glance at him. He looked as debonair as ever. His top boots were burnished to a high shine, and despite his journey, there was not even one speck of mud on his breeches or on his deep blue coat or his snowy linen.
Some imp urged her to say, “It must have been much more entertaining in the drawing rooms of London. I read of your card tricks.”
“And disapproved? But I had to make myself available during the day for several boring old gentlemen who spent their days asking me endless and tedious questions as if by boring me to death they could elicit from my last gasp the names of yet more spies.”
Emma would have thought it more seemly if he had spent his evenings in solitary splendor, thinking of her, but could hardly say so.
“But despite your fright, you were well entertained by Jolly’s mother, hein? She is, as he says, a great sport.”
“I am deeply indebted to her and her servants,” said Emma, “but I would not describe her as a great sport. She treated me as an unpaid companion, and I had to spend my days reading dreadful romances to her.”
“My poor love.”
Emma looked at him, startled.
“Lady Wright… Emma… what I really want to say to you… to ask you, is… oh, what is it?”
He had just been on the point of taking Emma’s hands in his own when a silver tray with two brimming champagne glasses on it was thrust between them.
“Champagne, my lord, my lady,” cackled Giles. “A celebration.”
“Thank you,” said the comte bleakly.
“Giles was so very brave,” said Emma. “It was he who attacked Lord Fletcher.”
“Yes, yes,” said the comte. “You are indeed a brave man.”
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“I says to him, I says,” mumbled Giles, “we’ll have no guns here. That’s what I said. He looked at me and his eyes were red like those of a fiend from hell. But that did not stop me. I knew my duty. I grasped him round the knees like this…” The footman creaked down onto the grass and laid the tray tenderly on the lawn and then put his arms around the comte’s boots.
“Thank you,” said the comte, trying to extricate himself. “That will be all. We shall call you later and you may tell us the full account of your heroism.”
“He fell to the floor,” droned Giles as if the comte has not spoken, “and he smelled of the pit. I am wrestling with the devil, I thought.”
The comte leaned down and put his hands under the footman’s armpits and raised him by force to his feet. “I hear them calling for you indoors,” he said. “We must not be selfish and keep you here when so many wish to hear your story.”
Giles shambled off after picking up the tray.
“It seems very early in the day to be drinking champagne or… or anything,” said Emma nervously.
“Oh, damme the champagne,” said the comte, taking her glass from her and throwing it across the lawn and hurling his own after it. “Emma, for God’s sake, will you marry me?”
Emma experienced a great rush of gladness followed by one of fear. She was no longer an innocent virgin. What if this handsome French count should turn out to be a monster in the bedchamber like her husband? All the yearnings she had experienced for him while he had been absent fled to be replaced by doubt and uncertainty.
She hung her head. “I do n-not know,” she stammered. “Please give me time.”
“No,” he said. “If I give you time, you will worry and fret yourself into believing me a man such as your husband. Look at me, Emma!”
She looked up into his eyes, at the love and warmth and tenderness there, and felt her legs turn to jelly. He put his hands lightly on her shoulders and drew her to him. When his lips met hers, it was gently and warmly, not fiercely or passionately. There was nothing to fear. It was like coming home.
There was a commotion from the house, the sound of the officials taking their leave. The couple broke apart.
Mrs. Simpson ambled out onto the lawn and moved toward Emma. “I have decided, my dear, and so I told Peter, that you must remain here with me to recuperate from your adventures.”
“I am afraid I cannot,” said Emma firmly. “I have a house in London I wish to redecorate and much to see to.”
“Lady Wright will be perfectly safe with Jolly and me,” put in the comte.
“Humph!” said Mrs. Simpson, who obviously still did not approve of the comte. “We would never have become involved in all this French business had it not been for you.”
“Now, that is not fair,” said Emma sharply. “The Comte Saint-Juste was eager to clear my name which is why he interested himself in my husband’s murder in the first place.”
Under her gray whiskers, Mrs. Simpson’s face fell. Emma saw the loneliness in the old lady’s eyes and said impulsively, “Return with me, Mrs. Simpson, as my guest. You may stay as long as you please.”
She caught a cynical glance from the comte and colored. Her generous impulse, she knew all at once, appeared to him as simply a ruse to avoid answering his proposal, and in a way, she was suddenly sure he was in part correct.
How could she explain to this very worldly and sophisticated French count her fear of the intimacies of the bedchamber?
He and Jolly elected to stay the night at Mrs. Simpson’s and make their journey on the following day. The comte appeared to have withdrawn behind a barrier of frivolity. He entertained Emma, Jolly, and his mother with all the London gossip, but Emma felt he had cut himself off from her and never guessed for one moment how badly his pride had been wounded.
The comte had never proposed marriage to any woman before, and was angry that she did not appear to want him, and yet, the more distant he became the more wretched Emma felt and she longed to see his customary affection for her back in his eyes.
When they finally reached London, he left Emma and Mrs. Simpson at Curzon Street with punctillious politeness. He did not say he would call on her or refer to his proposal of marriage, and Emma retired to her bedchamber and to the administrations of Austin, feeling close to tears.
It was only on the following day that Emma realized the full impact of what her generous offer of hospitality was to mean. Mrs. Simpson, surrounded by London bookshops and all the latest novels, was ready to embark on an orgy of reading, except the reading was to be done by Emma.
The house smelled uncomfortably of new paint and new plaster. Outside, the world went about its business and inside Emma read to Mrs. Simpson, just as if she were still immured in the country.
Two days passed and still there was no sign of the comte. At last Emma felt she could not bear it any longer and sent a message to Matilda, asking her to meet her at Mrs. Trumpington’s, and left her maid, Austin, to take over the chore of reading.
Mrs. Trumpington was delighted to welcome Emma, who also received a rapturous welcome from Matilda, who was already there and waiting for her. After Emma had recounted her latest adventures and Mrs. Trumpington had fallen into her customary afternoon sleep, Matilda leaned forward and said, “I wonder what is keeping Annabelle.”
“I did not invite her,” said Emma in a low voice. “You see, it was all most odd, the way Fletcher knew that I was going to the Carruthers and waylaid me.”
“Annabelle was very worried and distressed by that,” said Matilda. “But you know, she feels he might be telling the truth in that he said he had told Fletcher about your visit the evening before.”
“But you do not?”
“Well, I do think Annabelle’s husband is a wastrel. On the other hand, you cannot think for a moment that Annabelle had a hand in it.”
“Of course not.”
“And with no more money to earn from the traitors, if they did pay him, Carruthers is no longer a threat.”
“Nooo,” said Emma slowly. “But I do not trust Carruthers, and Annabelle would see that distrust in my face and perhaps might be worried and frightened by it.”
Matilda sighed. “She is already a worried and frightened woman. But you yourself still look scared, Emma. I thought you would be so happy now that you are free of threat and free from censure.”
Emma twisted a cambric handkerchief between her fingers. “It is the Comte Saint-Juste. He has asked me to marry him.”
“And what is the problem? You have no need to marry, and if you do not love him, you are under no obligation to accept his proposal.”
“I long for him,” said Emma, tears starting to her eyes, “and yet I am frightened of him at the same time. It is the intimacies of marriage, Matilda…”
Matilda thought of her own unhappy experience and repressed a shudder.
“Take him!” said Mrs. Trumpington, startling them both. “A fine man like that. Good legs. Keep you amused.”
“I did not reply to his proposal,” said Emma. “I invited Mrs. Simpson to London out of compassion, for I feel she is so very lonely, but I could see the comte thought it was simply a way of not facing up to his proposal. I… I have not seen him since.”
“He must be very hurt,” said Matilda. “You should have said something one way or the other, Emma. If you are this miserable without him, you had better accept him.”
“Yes, I am miserable,” said Emma. “What shall I do?”
“Get it over with,” said Matilda in her usual forthright way, so much at odds with her delicate appearance. “Write to him and then invite us all to dance at your wedding!”
Chapter Nine
“You are not much fun anymore,” grumbled Jolly. “All you do is bite a chap’s head off.”
“I am bored,” said the comte lightly, “and so I take it out on you. What shall we do today?”
“Leave London and go to Brighton,” said Jolly promptly. “There ain’t nobody in town wor
th knowing. Get some sea breezes to blow your megrims away.”
“Perhaps you have the right of it, and yet…”
“And yet, Emma Wright is still in London. I went over the other day and she was reading by the yard to m’mother. ’Course with my mother for company, she’s well entertained.”
The comte thought privately that Mrs. Simpson, brave and redoubtable as she had proved to be, was nonetheless one of the most boring eccentrics he had come across in a long time. His anger with Emma was in part because she had not taken the trouble to reply to his proposal, and in part because she preferred to read trash all day long to a smelly old woman rather than do anything to seek out his company.
Perhaps it would be better to go to Brighton, where the Prince Regent and his retinue were already in residence, and take up his old frivolous life.
His manservant entered with a letter on a tray. “Delivered by hand, my lord,” he said.
The comte was about to toss it aside, when he was suddenly sure he recognized that handwriting. He cracked open the seal.
“‘Dear Comte Saint-Juste,’” he read. “‘I wish to accept your proposal of marriage. Yr. Humble and Obedient Servant, Emma Wright.’”
He felt exactly as if a skyrocket had gone off inside him.
“Won the lottery?” asked Jolly. “Told you 937 would come up.”
“Better than any lottery,” said the comte dreamily. “She’s going to marry me.”
“Thank goodness for that,” said Jolly. “You’ll find it was my mother who brought her up to the mark. Great old rip, my mother.”
Mrs. Simpson was standing by the window of Emma’s drawing room, waiting for the delivery of a parcel of new books, when she saw the comte climbing down from his carriage.
“Tcha!” she said over her shoulder to Emma. “Here’s that Frog.”
Emma ran to the glass, patted her curls, and pinched her lips to bring some more color into them. “I’ll tell that Tamworthy to send him on his way,” said Mrs. Simpson.
“Oh, no!” gasped Emma. “You see, I sent for him.”
“I will never understand why you and my son like the company of that scapegrace,” said Mrs. Simpson. “But there is no call for me to see him. I am going to my room. Let me know when he has gone and, if those books arrive, tell Austin to bring them to me.”