Desperate Fortune

by Susanna Kearsley

  I was focused on this when I felt a soft tap on my forehead, and I glanced up as a second something hit me very lightly on my cheekbone. From his seat across the table from me, Luc grinned as he lowered his toy blowpipe with its ammunition of small wads of paper. “You make an easy target when you’re thinking. Denise wants us all to move into the salon. Would you like brandy?”

  In the salon, Claudine dimmed the lamps to let the fairy lights and decorations show and shimmer. Opening the doors of a tall cabinet, she revealed a television that I hadn’t known was there, and soon a program called Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde—“The Greatest Cabaret Show in the World”—was working hard to entertain us with a dazzling cavalcade of international performers seeking to outdo each other with their acts of song and dance and acrobatics. There was a magician, too, who managed complicated things with scarves that briefly captured Noah’s interest, but when that was done the boy returned his own attention to his handheld gaming console.

  “What is that you’re playing?” asked Luc.

  “Robo Patrol.”

  Denise explained to Luc, “It was a gift from Uncle Thierry.”

  “Yes, of course it was. Your brother only gives gifts that make noise.” Luc held his hand to Noah. “Can I have a go?”

  Noah shook his head, not looking up from his game. “Uncle Thierry said that it is not for you. He says you are too old to play it.”

  “Uncle Thierry is older than I am.”

  “He seems a lot younger.”

  “Not mentally,” put in Denise, and Luc answered by raising his toy blowpipe, aiming it in her direction and pinging her with a small wad of bright paper.

  “Just give me the game.”

  Noah handed it over and waited, and smiled when the synthesized music trailed off on a flourish. “You died.”

  “I’m only wounded,” said his father, and the music started up again.

  Claudine curled into her armchair and said, “Noah, why don’t you show me your new card trick?”

  I was finding it difficult focusing with all the movement and noise from the cabaret program combined with the sounds of the video game and the room’s conversation, so I only had half an eye on the boy as he rummaged in one of his pockets and drew out a pack of cards, but when he said, “I just need to take some of them out, first,” and Claudine asked, “Why?” I recovered my focus in time for his answer.

  “Because this trick’s done with a pack like you use when you’re playing belote, when you first take out all of the cards between one and six.”

  I sat more upright. I doubted that anyone noticed, because they went on with what they had been doing around me, but if all the gears in my brain had been audible, there would have been an explosion of noise that stopped everyone else in their tracks. I excused myself quietly. Crossed to the workroom.

  The lines from the first journal entry of Mary Dundas leaped insistently into my view:

  Supper being done we then amused ourselves at play upon the cards. There being three of us (for Lady Everard declined to play but chose instead to sit apart and so be entertained) we played the Renegado with Sir Redmond and myself aligned against my brother…

  Renegado. The computer took a moment to oblige me, but eventually it told me renegado was a form of the once-popular game ombre, in which the eights, nines, and tens were removed before play, thus creating a forty-card pack.

  I turned round in my chair again, seeking the small blotted numbers marked down in the margin, to make very certain they still read the same as they always had: eight, nine, and ten.

  It was not just the cards on their own, I thought, feeling the warm spreading thrill of discovery. No, it was the game.

  “Clever you,” I applauded the long-faceless woman who’d crafted this over a tea table so long ago. It was simple, as Mary had said, but with all the right twists to avoid being obvious. Taking my pencil in hand I began to work through the results, reading over the rules of the card game again and fine-tuning the whole thing before I applied what I’d learned to the first line that Mary had written in cipher. The patterns made sense now, and words started shaping themselves from the numbers.

  I nearly missed hearing the knock at my door.

  It was open, and Luc had stepped into the room by the time I looked up. He was wearing his hat with the mistletoe stuck to the brim. From across in the salon behind him I heard a man singing along to the musical strains of the cancan. “It’s midnight,” said Luc. “Happy New Year.”

  I met the blue of his gaze with a smile that felt brilliant from my side. “I’ve got it!” I told him. “They did it with playing cards, and they had played renegado, so they took out all of the eights, nines, and tens, and each player’s dealt nine cards to start with, so that means you have to begin with the ninth letter, and now I’ve got the whole key to the cipher. I’ve got it!”

  He looked at me a moment, as though something in my features held him fascinated, then he left the doorway and came forward in two strides and leaned across the desk and bending down, he kissed me. It was not the same as when I’d kissed him before dinner in the salon. This was warmer, lasted longer, and the pressure of it changed and deepened, lingering as he drew back to smile into my eyes.

  “Come have champagne. We’ll celebrate,” he said.

  I heard my cousin’s warning voice flash briefly through my mind: “That’s not a rabbit hole you want to tumble down. Don’t get involved.” And then I pushed that voice aside and took the hand that Luc was holding out.

  “All right,” I said.

  I left my workbook on the desk, where the first words of Mary’s secret diary lay reclaimed from silence, written out in plain text for the world to read:

  At three o’clock, my brother came to fetch me with the news that I was wanted…

  Chapter 12

  They best succeed who dare.

  —Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book Three

  Chatou

  January 23, 1732

  Frisque had fallen asleep. Mary might have done likewise, for dinner had been a large meal and a full hour after they’d finished, her body was still wanting time to digest it. And now she’d been called to this room where the air was uncommonly warm from the fierce fire Sir Redmond kept stirring to life with his poker and tongs, and the ponderous tick of a longcase clock’s pendulum lulled her with every swing closer to slumber. What saved her from falling asleep was the fact that the chairs in this small upstairs chamber were favored with cushions as firm as their rush-bottomed seats, and while Frisque had the softness of Mary’s own lap and the satiny folds of her skirts to surround him in comfort, she was forced to sit upright or risk an undignified fall to the hearth rug.

  Her brother had taken a seat in the armchair beside her and stretched out his boots to the fender, and now with a long sigh Sir Redmond sat too, on her other side. Taking a bright silver snuffbox from one of his pockets, he followed her gaze to the two portraits hanging in narrow gold frames just above the dark wood of the mantelpiece.

  “Very good likenesses, wouldn’t you say?” he asked Mary.

  She couldn’t be sure, since she recognized neither the boy nor the girl in the portraits. She wouldn’t have guessed at their ages—they looked to be no longer children, exactly, and yet not quite adults. The girl, with her lovely large eyes and her delicate features and curling brown hair crowned with flowers, gazed straight from the canvas at Mary and smiled. She was holding more flowers in one of her ladylike hands, and her richly blue gown was embroidered in gold with a light fall of lace at the edge of her sleeves. The boy, who had similar features, was looking away with one hand on his hip, with a chest piece of armor strapped over a red coat with gold braid and buttons. His hair was brown too, though in his case the long fall of curls was more likely a gentleman’s periwig much like the ones Mary’s father had made, in the style men had worn at the time of her b
irth.

  She asked, “Are they relations of yours?”

  “Relations of…? No, my dear.” Sir Redmond seemed to be hiding a smile as though she had amused him. “No, I can claim many grand things in my lineage, but to my knowledge I’ve no claim to royalty. That,” he said, giving a nod to the portraits, “is our good King James when a boy, and his sister the Princess Louise Marie, God rest her soul.”

  Mary had no memory of the princess, having been not two years old when smallpox had descended upon Saint-Germain-en-Laye and struck the young King James and his beloved sister, among others. But she’d heard the stories. Mary’s aunt had often spoken of the day the princess died, when no one told the ailing king for fear that knowing he had lost his only sibling and his close companion would destroy his own will to recover. Her aunt, who had a weakness for a tragic tale, had said to Mary once, “You’ve never seen a man in such pain as the king was on the day they judged him well enough to hear the sad news. He had loved her so, and it was terrible to watch his grief.”

  The king had then been four and twenty years of age, the princess not much younger than herself, thought Mary. Looking to where Nicolas was sitting with his gaze upon the shifting fire, she wondered whether he would grieve her death so deeply, if she were to die as the princess had died, before she’d truly had a chance to live.

  She doubted he would have considered her his close companion, nor was she his only sibling, but he’d thought enough of her to fetch her home to live with him, which told her he must hold her dear, or else he would have left her where she was and not increased his household burdens and expenditures.

  As though he felt her watching him, he turned his head and smiled a little. “You were nearly named Louise Marie. Our mother much admired the princess.”

  Sir Redmond with his focus on the portraits said, “She was a lovely child. As was the king. And I gather his own sons, the princes, are handsome as well. Is that not so?”

  “They are fine lads, both of them.” Nicolas nodded. “The king and queen dote on them.”

  “God bless them and keep them. A family,” Sir Redmond remarked, “is a very great thing.” He opened his snuffbox and held it to Mary. “It’s fine Barcelona, my dear, you may take it with no fear of sneezing. No?” He offered it next to her brother, who did take some, dipping a small measure out of the box with a tiny pipe. Sir Redmond leaned back in his chair and did the same, tapping the snuff to the back of his hand before sniffing it in and replacing the box in his pocket while taking his handkerchief out. He did not sneeze as many men did, but he did wipe his nose before saying again, “Yes, a family’s a very great thing, Mistress Dundas. Do you not agree?”

  Mary looked to her brother, and feeling the warmth of his encouragement beside her answered, “Yes, sir, I do. Most wholeheartedly.”

  “For my own part, there is little that I would not do for the love of my family,” Sir Redmond said. “Their cause is my cause; their need is my own. Do you feel the same way?”

  Mary wasn’t entirely sure why the older man wanted to know her opinion, but she told him, “Yes, sir.”

  His eyes held approval. The fire had started to settle, and taking the poker in hand he leaned forward to stir the flames higher. “Your family has long served the king, Mistress Dundas. If he were in need of your services now, would you help him?”

  She frowned faintly, not understanding. “I’m sure I could be of no help to the king.”

  “If you could be,” he pressed her, “what would you do then? Would you honor your family and keep to their path?”

  She glanced sideways at Nicolas only to find he was looking deliberately into the fire, and away from her. Mary said slowly, “I hope I would always remember my family and honor them, sir, if I could. But I—”

  “Ask her more plainly,” said Nicolas in a low voice to Sir Redmond. “She has the intelligence to understand.”

  Still confused, Mary looked to the Irishman who smiled kindly and set down the poker.

  “There is at this moment in Paris,” Sir Redmond told Mary, “a man whose affairs are of interest to King James. This man is now sought by the English, and must be protected. I do have a plan for this, but I require your help.”

  “My help?” Mary considered this such an unlikely request she was frankly astonished. “But how?”

  “I can tell you no details beyond that you would be expected to live for a short while in Paris, my dear, and to keep a great secret. It’s very important.”

  She felt a small thrill in her breast. Her help. Keeping a secret. Mere hours ago she had talked with and watched Mistress Jamieson, feeling quite certain she’d never be able to be as adventurous nor half as brave, and now here she was being told she might be given the chance to do just that. And in Paris, where she’d so long dreamed of going.

  Sir Redmond asked, “Will you do it?”

  “Yes.” She got the word out before indecision could hold it back. “Yes, sir, I will.”

  “Splendid.” Sir Redmond turned his attention to Nicolas, who was still watching the fire.

  Mary thought she knew, now, why her brother had seemed so distracted. He clearly was not in approval of Sir Redmond’s plan of her going to Paris and would have preferred she returned with him to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, although his loyalty to king and cause left him duty bound not to complain. She was trying to find the right speech to assure him her choice would amount to no more than a minor delay of his plans, when Sir Redmond spoke first.

  “You were right, sir,” he said to her brother. To Mary, he added, “He told me last month you’d be perfectly suited to take this assignment, and so you are.”

  Mary’s hand stilled on Frisque’s sleeping back. She looked quickly at Nicolas and this time caught the corner of his sideways glance before it slid away again.

  A log fell splintering in the fire and something deep in Mary splintered too, and fell in flames as hot and searing, but she struggled not to let the sudden pain inside her show in her expression as the longcase clock began to chime.

  “What, four o’clock already?” asked Sir Redmond. “You must soon be on your way, sir, if you hope to make it home by dark.”

  Her brother stood. “I’ll see my sister to her chamber first.”

  She did not speak to him the whole length of the corridor, nor he to her, but when they reached her chamber she set Frisque down on the carpet by the bed and, turning from her brother so he would not see the hurt she knew was showing plainly in her eyes, asked, “Am I to remain here, then?”

  “Sir Redmond and his wife are very kind.”

  She nodded slightly. “Do be sure to give my compliments to your good lady and your children.”

  “Mary.”

  “I am sorry that I shall not have the chance to meet them, but—”

  “’Tis only for a little while. A few weeks, possibly, until the man is moved to safer quarters.” When she did not speak in answer to that, Nicolas continued, “When Sir Redmond said he needed a young woman who spoke French and yet whose loyalty was absolute, I thought…”

  “You thought of me. I understand.” She understood too well, she realized. “So, when this is finished, this affair in Paris, where will I go then?”

  “Then you will come, as I have promised you, to live at Saint-Germain.”

  She did not want to ask the question, but her heart was bound to know the answer. “Tell me, if Sir Redmond had not needed me, if there had been no use for me, would you have still been moved to write the letter that you wrote? Would you have wanted me to come to you?”

  His pause was a more honest answer than his words. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. You are my sister.” Then to fill the silence that came afterwards he carried on, “There is no danger in what you are being asked to do, I can assure you. I would never have consented to it otherwise, nor placed you in harm’s way.” And as her silence stret
ched, he added, “If you wish to reconsider…if you do not want to go…”

  You always have a choice, her aunt had promised her. And Mary squared her shoulders as she made one now. “I’ll go.”

  “Come then and heal my conscience, for I’ll not away until I know that things are well between us.”

  She could not let him see her face the way it was, because she knew it was not so much different from the face she’d shown her father when he’d left those many years ago, but time if nothing else had given her the gift of hiding how she felt inside by doing what her cousin Colette had so truthfully observed—the conscious mimicry and masking of her own self with another form, the way the fairies in the tales she loved assumed an alternate appearance to disguise themselves. She closed her eyes a moment, blinking back the futile tears of disappointment that she would not have betray her, and allowed the poise and grace of Mistress Jamieson to settle round her shoulders like a robe before she turned.

  Her brother, knowing her but little to begin with, did not seem to mark the change. He seemed relieved, and when she crossed to him he kissed her cheek and asked her, “Is there anything you need me to have sent to you? A new gown, or some shoes with pattens for the Paris streets?”

  She meant to tell him no, there wasn’t anything, but suddenly the linnet in the drawing room downstairs began to sing, a pure exquisite burst of sound that drifted up the stairs to where her brother stood and waited for her answer.

  It was not a joyous song, but one of wistfulness and longing, from a creature forced to ever view the world behind the gilt bars of its cage, to never know the taste of freedom. Mary, with her thoughts on Mistress Jamieson, received that plaintive song as though it had been sung for her alone, a herald’s call reminding her that this might be her only chance to spread her own wings to a wider sky.