“You might make it on a mule.”
“I have a lady with me.” Shortly. “Mules are out of the question.”
“A boat…?”
“Perhaps if the lady is superfluous,” Mary interrupted, “you could leave her behind, and carry out your errand on a mule, alone.”
The picture was certainly an enjoyable one.
George looked at her, visibly mastered his unspoken reply, then shook his head.
“She must come.”
“Lord Newstead,” Mary went on, “would you like to see your daughter? She is not superfluous either, and she is here.”
George glanced nervously at the coach, then back. “Is Claire here as well?”
“Yes.”
George looked grim. “This is not … a good time.”
Bysshe summoned an unaccustomed gravity. “I think, my lord,” Bysshe said, “there may never be a better time. You have not been within five hundred miles of your daughter since her birth. You are on an urgent errand and may not tarry—very well. But you must spend a night here, and can’t press on till morning. There will never be a better moment.”
George looked at him stony-eyed, then nodded. “What hotel?”
“La Royale.”
He smiled. “Royal, eh? A pretty sentiment for the Genevan Republic.”
“We’re in Vaud, not Geneva.”
“Still not over the border?” George gave another nervous glance over his shoulder. “I need to set a faster pace.”
His long hair streamed in the wind as he stalked back to the coach. Mary could barely see a blonde head gazing cautiously from the window. She half-expected that the coach would drive on and she would never see George again, but instead the postboys turned the horses from the waterfront road into the town, toward the hotel.
Bysshe smiled purposefully and began to stride to the hotel. Mary followed, walking fast across the wet cobbles to keep up with him. “I can’t but think that good will come of this,” he said.
“I pray you’re right.”
Much pain, Mary thought, however it turned out.
* * *
George’s new female was tall and blonde and pink-faced, though she walked hunched over as if embrassed by her height, and took small, shy steps. She was perhaps in her middle twenties.
They met, embarrassingly, on the hotel’s wide stair, Mary with Claire, Alba in Claire’s arms. The tall blonde, lower lip outthrust haughtily, walked past them on the way to her room, her gaze passing blankly over them. Perhaps she hadn’t been told who Alba’s father was.
She had a maid with her and a pair of George’s men, both of whom had pistols stuffed in their belts. For a wild moment Mary wondered if George had abducted her.
No, she decided, this was only George’s theatricality. He didn’t have his menagerie with him this time, no leopards or monkeys, so he dressed his postboys as bandits.
The woman passed. Mary felt Claire stiffen. “She looks like you,” Claire hissed.
Mary looked at the woman in astonishment. “She doesn’t. Not at all.”
“She does! Tall, blonde, fair eyes…” Claire’s own eyes filled with tears. “Why can’t she be dark, like me?”
“Don’t be absurd!” Mary seized her sister’s hand, pulled her down the stairs. “Save the tears for later. They may be needed.”
In the lobby Mary saw more of George’s men carrying in luggage. Pásmány, the fencing master, had slung a carbine over one shoulder. Mary’s mind whirled—perhaps this was an abduction after all.
Or perhaps the blonde’s family—or husband—was in pursuit.
“This way.” Bysshe’s voice. He led them into one of the hotel’s candlelit drawing rooms, closed the crystal-knobbed door behind them. A huge porcelain stove loomed over them.
George stood uncertain in the candlelight, elegant clothing over muddy boots. He looked at Claire and Alba stonily, then advanced, peered at the tiny form that Claire offered him.
“Your daughter Alba,” Bysshe said, hovering at his shoulder.
George watched the child for a long, doubtful moment, his auburn hair hanging down his forehead. Then he straightened. “My offer rests, Miss Clairmont, on its previous terms.”
Claire drew back, rested Alba on her shoulder. “Never,” she said. She licked her lips. “It is too monstrous.”
“Come, my lord,” Bysshe said. He ventured to put a hand on George’s shoulder. “Surely your demands are unreasonable.”
“I offered to provide the child with means,” George said, “to see that she is raised in a fine home, free from want, and among good people—friends of mine, who will offer her every advantage. I would take her myself but,” hesitating, “my domestic conditions would not permit it.”
Mary’s heart flamed. “But at the cost of forbidding her the sight of her mother!” she said. “That is too cruel.”
“The child’s future will already be impaired by her irregular connections,” George said. “Prolonging those connections could only do her further harm.” His eyes flicked up to Claire. “Her mother can only lower her station, not raise it. She is best off with a proper family who can raise her with their own.”
Claire’s eyes flooded with tears. She turned away, clutching Alba to her. “I won’t give her up!” she said. The child began to cry.
George folded his arms. “That settles matters. If you won’t accept my offer, then there’s an end.” The baby’s wails filled the air.
“Alba cries for her father,” Bysshe said. “Can you not let her into your heart?”
A half-smile twitched across George’s lips. “I have no absolute certainty that I am this child’s father.”
A keening sound came from Claire. For a wild, raging moment Mary looked for a weapon to plunge into George’s breast. “Unnatural man!” she cried. “Can’t you acknowledge the consequences of your own behavior?”
“On the contrary, I am willing to ignore the questionable situation in which I found Miss Clairmont and to care for the child completely. But only on my terms.”
“I don’t trust his promises!” Claire said. “He abandoned me in Munich without a penny!”
“We agreed to part,” George said.
“If it hadn’t been for Captain Austen’s kindness, I would have starved.” She leaned on the door jamb for support, and Mary joined her and buoyed her with an arm around her waist.
“You ran out into the night,” George said. “You wouldn’t take money.”
“I’ll tell her!” Claire drew away from Mary, dragged at the door, hauled it open. “I’ll tell your new woman!”
Fear leaped into George’s eyes. “Claire!” He rushed to the door, seized her arm as she tried to pass; Claire wrenched herself free and staggered into the hotel lobby. Alba wailed in her arms. George’s servants were long gone, but hotel guests stared as if in tableaux, hats and walking-sticks half-raised. Fully aware of the spectacle they were making, Mary, clumsy in pregnancy, inserted herself between George and Claire. Claire broke for the stair, while George danced around Mary like an awkward footballer. Mary rejoiced in the fact that her pregnancy seemed only to make her more difficult to get around.
Bysshe put an end to it. He seized George’s wrist in a firm grip. “You can’t stop us all, my lord,” he said.
George glared at him, his look all fury and ice. “What d’ye want, then?”
Claire, panting and flushed, paused halfway up the stair. Alba’s alarmed shrieks echoed up the grand staircase.
Bysshe’s answer was quick. “A competence for your daughter. Nothing more.”
“A thousand a year,” George said flatly. “No more than that.”
Mary’s heart leaped at the figure that doubled the family’s income.
Bysshe nodded. “That will do, my lord.”
“I want nothing more to do with the girl than that. Nothing whatever.”
“Call for pen and paper. And we can bring this to an end.”
Two copies were made, and George sig
ned and sealed them with his signet before bidding them all a frigid good-night. The first payment was made that night, one of George’s men coming to the door carrying a valise that clanked with gold. Mary gazed at it in amazement—why was George carrying so much?
“Have we done the right thing?” Bysshe wondered, looking at the valise as Claire stuffed it under her bed. “This violence, this extortion?”
“We offered love,” Mary said, “and he returned only finance. How else could we deal with him?” She sighed. “And Alba will thank us.”
Claire straightened and looked down at the bed. “I only wanted him to pay,” said Claire. “Any other considerations can go to the devil.”
* * *
The vaudaire blew on, scarcely fainter than before. The water level was still high. Dead fish still floated in the freshwater tide. “I would venture it,” Bysshe said, frowning as he watched the dancing Ariel, “but not with the children.”
Children. Mary’s smile was inward as she realized how real her new baby was to Bysshe. “We can afford to stay at the hotel a little longer,” she said.
“Still—a reef in the mains’l would make it safe enough.”
Mary paused a moment, perhaps to hear the cold summons of Harriet Shelley from beneath the water. There was no sound, but she shivered anyway. “No harm to wait another day.”
Bysshe smiled at her hopefully. “Very well. Perhaps we’ll have a chance to speak to George again.”
“Bysshe, sometimes your optimism is…” She shook her head. “Let us finish our walk.”
They walked on through windswept morning streets. The bright sun glared off the white snow and deadly black ice that covered the surrounding high peaks. Soon the snow and ice would melt and threaten avalanche once more. “I am growing weary with this town,” Bysshe said.
“Let’s go back to our room and read Chamouni,” Mary suggested. Mr. Coleridge had been a guest of her father’s, and his poem about the Alps a favorite of theirs now they were lodged in Switzerland.
Bysshe was working on writing another descriptive poem on the Vale of Chamouni—unlike Coleridge, he and Mary had actually seen the place—and as an homage to Coleridge, Bysshe was including some reworked lines from Kubla Khan.
The everlasting universe of things, she recited to herself, flows through the mind.
Lovely stuff. Bysshe’s best by far.
On their return to the hotel they found one of George’s servants waiting for them. “Lord Newstead would like to see you.”
Ah, Mary thought. He wants his gold back.
Let him try to take it.
George waited in the same drawing room in which he’d made his previous night’s concession. Despite the bright daylight the room was still lit by lamps—the heavy dark curtains were drawn against the vaudaire. George was standing straight as a whip in the center of the room, a dangerous light in his eyes. Mary wondered if this was how he looked in battle.
“Mr. Shelley,” George said, and bowed, “I would like to hire your boat to take my party to Geneva.”
Bysshe blinked. “I—” he began, then, “Ariel is small, only twenty-five feet. Your party is very large and—”
“The local commissaire visited me this morning,” George interrupted. “He has forbidden me to depart Montreux. As it is vital for me to leave at once, I must find other means. And I am prepared to pay well for them.”
Bysshe looked at Mary, then at George. Hesitated again. “I suppose it would be possible…”
“Why is it,” Mary demanded, “that you are forbidden to leave?”
George folded his arms, looked down at her. “I have broken no law. It is a ridiculous political matter.”
Bysshe offered a smile. “If that’s all, then…”
Mary interrupted. “If Mr. Shelley and I end up in jail as a result of this, I wonder how ridiculous it will seem.”
Bysshe looked at her, shocked. “Mary!”
Mary kept her eyes on George. “Why should we help you?”
“Because…” He paused, ran a nervous hand through his hair. Not used, Mary thought, to justifying himself.
“Because,” he said finally, “I am assisting someone who is fleeing oppression.”
“Fleeing a husband?”
“Husband?” George looked startled. “No—her husband is abroad and cannot protect her.” He stepped forward, his color high, his nostrils flared like those of a warhorse. “She is fleeing the attentions of a seducer—a powerful man who has callously used her to gain wealth and influence. I intend to aid her in escaping his power.”
Bysshe’s eyes blazed. “Of course I will aid you!”
Mary watched this display of chivalry with a sinking heart. The masculine confraternity had excluded her, had lost her within its own rituals and condescension.
“I will pay you a further hundred—” George began.
“Please, my lord. I and my little boat are entirely at your service in this noble cause.”
George stepped forward, clasped his hand. “Mr. Omnibus, I am in your debt.”
The vaudaire wailed at the window. Mary wondered if it was Harriet’s call, and her hands clenched into fists. She would resist the cry if she could.
Bysshe turned to Mary. “We must prepare.” Heavy in her pregnancy, she followed him from the drawing room, up the stair, toward their own rooms. “I will deliver Lord Newstead and his lady to Geneva, and you and Claire can join me there when the roads are cleared. Or if weather is suitable I will return for you.”
“I will go with you,” Mary said. “Of course.”
Bysshe seemed surprised that she would accompany him on this piece of masculine knight-errantry. “It may not be entirely safe on the lake,” he said.
“I’ll make it safer—you’ll take fewer chances with me aboard. And if I’m with you, George is less likely to inspire you to run off to South America on some noble mission or other.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Mildly. “And I think you are being a little severe.”
“What has George done for us that we should risk anything for him?”
“I do not serve him, but his lady.”
“Of whom he has told you nothing. You don’t even know her name. And in any case, you seem perfectly willing to risk her life on this venture.”
Alba’s cries sounded through the door of their room. Bysshe paused a moment, resignation plain in his eyes, then opened the door. “It’s for Alba, really,” he said. “The more contact between George and our little family, the better it may be for her. The better chance we will have to melt his heart.”
He opened the door. Claire was holding her colicky child. Tears filled her black eyes. “Where have you been for so long? I was afraid you were gone forever!”
“You know better than that.” Mary took the baby from her, the gesture so natural that sadness took a moment to come—the memory that she had held her own lost child this way, held it to her breast and felt the touch of its cold lips.
“And what is this about George?” Claire demanded.
“He wants me to take him down the lake,” Bysshe said. “And Mary wishes to join us. You and Alba can remain here until the roads are clear.”
Claire’s voice rose to a shriek. “No! Never!” She lunged for Alba and snatched the girl from Mary’s astonished arms. “You’re going to abandon me—just like George! You’re all going to Geneva to laugh at me!”
“Of course not,” Bysshe said reasonably.
Mary stared at her sister, tried to speak, but Claire’s cries trampled over her intentions.
“You’re abandoning me! I’m useless to you—worthless! You’ll soon have your own baby!”
Mary tried to comfort Claire, but it was hopeless. Claire screamed and shuddered and wept, convinced that she would be left forever in Montreux. In the end there was no choice but to take her along. Mary received mean satisfaction in watching Bysshe as he absorbed this reality, as his chivalrous, noble-minded expedition alongside the hero of Waterloo tur
ned into a low family comedy, George and his old lover, his new lover, and his wailing bastard.
And ghosts. Harriet, lurking under the water. And their dead baby calling.
* * *
Ariel bucked like a horse on the white-topped waves as the vaudaire keened in the rigging. Frigid spray flew in Mary’s face and her feet slid on slippery planking. Her heart thrashed into her throat. The boat seemed half-full of water. She gave a despairing look over her shoulder at the retreating rowboat they’d hired to bring them from the jetty to their craft.
“Bysshe!” she said. “This is hopeless.”
“Better once we’re under way. See that the cuddy will be comfortable for Claire and Alba.”
“This is madness.”
Bysshe licked joyfully at the freshwater spray that ran down his lips. “We’ll be fine, I’m sure.”
He was a much better sailor than she: she had to trust him. She opened the sliding hatch to the cuddy, the little cabin forward, and saw several inches of water sloshing in the bottom. The cushions on the little seats were soaked. Wearily, she looked up at Bysshe.
“We’ll have to bail.”
“Very well.”
It took a quarter hour to bail out the boat, during which time Claire paced back and forth on the little jetty, Alba in her arms. She looked like a specter with her pale face peering out from her dark shawl.
Bysshe cast off the gaskets that reefed the mainsail to the boom, then jumped forward to the halyards and raised the sail on its gaff. The wind tore at the canvas with a sound like a cannonade, open-hand slaps against Mary’s ears. The shrouds were taut as bowstrings. Bysshe reefed the sail down, hauled the halyards and topping lift again till the canvas was taut, lowered the leeboards, then asked Mary to take the tiller while he cast Ariel off from its buoy.
Bysshe braced himself against the gunwale as he hauled on the mooring line, drawing Ariel up against the wind. When Bysshe cast off from the buoy the boat paid instantly off the wind and the sail filled with a rolling boom. Water surged under the boat’s counter and suddenly, before Mary knew it, Ariel was flying fast. Fear closed a fist around her windpipe as the little boat heeled and the tiller almost yanked her arms from their sockets. She could hear Harriet’s wails in the windsong. Mary dug her heels into the planks and hauled the tiller up to her chest, keeping Ariel up into the wind. Frigid water boiled up over the lee counter, pouring into the boat like a waterfall.
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