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Authors: Maggie MacKeever

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BOOK: French Leave
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“Not so successful as all that. He left little but debts.” Mab tried to think what had brought her cousin to her. She could not imagine that it was anything good.

Mab was as destitute as she? Barbary’s heart sank. She had thought of her cousin as her last resort. “I had hoped that you would help me, and now it appears that we must help each other, being in the same boat—or basket, as it were. But that is a long story, and we have walked all the way from the diligence station, and are very hot and tired. And hungry as well!”

At mention of food, Tibble stirred in his chair. “Not frogs!” he said. “Frogs is not what I am accustomed to!”

“No, no!” soothed Barbary. “Definitely you shall not have frogs.” She smiled at Mab. “We saw someone eating a dish of frogs on our journey here. Tibble noticed their little feet and fainted. He has not yet got over the shock. Perhaps some bread and cheese? Washed down with a little French beer.”

Mab wouldn’t have minded some French beer herself. She did not move to do her cousin’s bidding, but stood with folded arms. “And your husband?” she asked. “Will he be joining us also?”

“He most definitely will not! You might as well know that my husband and I are not on speaking terms. In addition, I was robbed on the way here of what little money I possess. I cannot return to London because I have outrun the constable, so you see that I am in a pretty pickle. Don’t think you must prose and preach at me! Tibble has already done enough of that.” Barbary sighed. “I would, of course, be more than willing to listen if you cared to give me any practical advice.”

It sounded very much to Mab like Barbary needed a good shaking. “What a lot of difficulties.”

“My dear, you don’t know the half of it.” Tired of waiting for a welcome, Barbary sank down in a worn armchair, removed her shoes, and rubbed her feet. Her own enthusiasm for Paris had dimmed somewhat on the journey here. She felt very much a stranger in this labyrinth of crazy crumbling medieval houses with their pointed roofs and macabre gables that reached high into the sky.

Barbary felt little more at home in this crowded studio, where dust lay thick upon the floor and bizarre objects rubbed shoulders with easels and portfolios and plaster casts. “Is this truly where you live?”

Mab heard censure in her cousin’s voice. “There are a couple other rooms. Papa hired the floor below also, but I could not afford to keep it.” She glanced at Tibble. “Your manservant will have to sleep in a closet if you decide to stay.”

Barbary refrained from looking at Tibble. She didn’t know what else they could do but stay. Her indignant refusal of Lord Grafton’s offer of protection now seemed a trifle rash. Ah, well, there was no use crying over spilled milk.

That reflection reminded Barbary of her hunger. “I do not mean to belabor the subject,” she said plaintively, “but we have not eaten for some time.”

Mab could hardly turn her cousin out to starve in the street. Once they had been very close indeed, sharing scrapes and confidences and even identities; had vowed eternal sisterhood, pledged to stand by each other in the face of all adversity, no matter how large or small. Well, here was adversity. Mab fetched a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese to the table and cleared a space with her elbow.

Barbary removed herself with some difficulty from the seemingly bottomless depths of the armchair. “I promise you will not regret your generosity, Mab. Tibble can be of great assistance to you.” She sliced off a piece of cheese and popped it into her mouth. “As can I.”

Tibble, too, approached the table, on which stood a collection of bottles of oil, paraffin, varnish, and siccative, brushes and materials for cleaning them, and other nameless objects. He was feeling more himself now that he’d escaped the dangers of the streets. Gingerly, he broke off a hunk of bread from the loaf. Mab said, “I’m afraid the establishment doesn’t run to beer.”

“Oh!” Barbary looked guilty. “How selfish I have been, walking in and making demands of you. Must you look so angry? We were friends once, I think.”

Definitely Mab must make an effort to improve her expression, if two people mentioned it in the same day.
“Merde!”
she muttered, as she belatedly remembered the first of those two people, who lay forgotten beneath the rug.

Barbary abandoned the cheese. “You
are
angry!” she wailed. “For you to be angry on top of everything else—it’s more than I can bear!”

“We swore to stand by each other,” Mab interrupted. “Do you still mean to keep that vow?”

This was a queer conversation. “Of course I mean to keep it.” Barbary protested. “The question is, do you? Because as I see it, I’m the one who needs standing by.”

Mab’s emotional state may be fairly judged by the fact that she felt triumphant to be in an even bigger pickle than her cousin. “That’s all you know.” She moved to the stove and flung back the rug.

Barbary followed. She stared down at the Duc. “Handsome devil,” she observed. “What’s he doing on your floor?”

This matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation did not suit Mab’s sense of the dramatic. “I think I’ve killed him. Just look at all the blood.”

Barbary
was
looking. Mab did not appear to be the safe haven Barbary had envisioned. “I may be feckless and improvident, but at least I have never killed someone. Why did you, Mab?”

Mab gazed unhappily upon the Duc. “I did not mean to kill him. He tried to kiss me and I had the pot in my hand.”

Barbary raised her brows. “Was it so bad as all that?”

Mab did not care for her cousin’s attitude. “I have no time for such frivolities.”

Barbary’s brows rose even higher. “No?”

“No!” Mab said crossly. “It is an uncertain world we live in. One has more important things to do than go around kissing people. There are principles at stake.”

Tibble thought that rather more than principles were at stake here. Since neither of the women seemed attuned to the realities of the situation, he knelt beside the Duc’s body. “And,” Mab added, “it was you who taught me to be wary in the first place.”

Barbary looked astounded. “I’m sure I never taught you anything of the sort. And I certainly never hit a man over the head for trying to steal a kiss!”

Mab was belligerent. “Perhaps you should have.”

“Oho!” Comprehension dawned. “You’re still angry about that foolish hussar. I’ve forgot his name. Good gracious, Mab, I was only eleven at the time!”

“So?” Mab bristled. “I was only fifteen, and he was my beau, and you kissed him. Don’t try to deny it. I
saw
you, Barbary!”

Mab had a prodigious long memory. Barbary sighed. “I didn’t kiss him, he kissed me. After I told him he should not.” She stared down at the Duc. “At any rate, it is hardly fair of you to scold me for it now.”

Mab felt like laying violent hands on her unsympathetic cousin. Instead, she picked up the pan, filled it again with water, and slammed it down on the stove. “The man wanted me to become his
petite amie.
You would have taken kindly to such a suggestion, I suppose.”

Barbary contemplated the Duc’s pale face. “A wealthy admirer would not be so bad a thing to have. It is a great pity I didn’t arrive sooner. Since we look so much alike, I could have pretended to be you. Then everyone would have been happy. Or might have been, except that I am vowed to have no more to do with perfidious gentlemen, as result of my heart having broke again. Now we are all in the devil of a fix. Instead of making such a piece of work about it, couldn’t you just have told him you’re a respectable female?”

Mab was feeling wretched enough without listening to her cousin’s strictures. She watched Tibble carefully turn over the Duc and remove the paint-daubed rag that she had placed beneath the wound.

He glanced up at her. “Could I have some of that hot water, Miss Mab? And a clean rag?”

Mab was not even to be allowed her tea. She handed over the hot water and fetched a strip of towel. It didn’t seem right for the elegant Duc to lie now in a bloody puddle, and she was glad for Tibble’s efforts to tidy him up.

Now it was Barbary who was queasy. She turned away from the sight of blood. “People still don’t know where the bodies of Louis and the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette are buried. I hope we may be equally fortunate.”

Mab looked from the Duc to her cousin. “Bodies?” she echoed.
“Buried?”

“You had not thought of that?” Barbary hoped she was not callous, but someone had to be practical. She helped herself to another slice of cheese. “It is scant wonder, in all the excitement. We have to, er, dispose of the evidence somehow. We can hardly leave him lying about.”

Barbary’s point was well taken. There was bound to be an uproar when the Duc was discovered missing. People might even remember seeing him with Mab. But what were they to do with the body? They could hardly carry him down the staircase in plain view of all the other tenants and the inquisitive Madame Gabbot.

The cousins debated the problem. Barbary suggested that it might be possible to drag the Duc’s body out onto the roof. “And then, I suppose,” sneered Mab, “we can shove him off into the street. That is a wonderful way to escape coming to the notice of the police.”

Barbary flushed. “You needn’t make mock of me!” she said crossly. “I’m only trying to help. There must be some way to rid ourselves of the, er, evidence.”

Tibble interrupted then with a request for needle and strong thread. Mystified, Mab fetched them. “It is very good of you to take such trouble, Tibble, but aren’t you going a little far? After all, the man is dead!”

“Begging your pardon. Miss Mab.” Tibble threaded a needle. “But that he ain’t.”

“Not?” Mab leaned weakly against the stove, then jumped, because it was hot. “Not dead?”

“No, Miss Mab.” With an expertise bordering on the macabre, Tibble stitched up the Duc’s wound. “Which isn’t to say that this isn’t a very nasty business, because it is.”

“I’ll fetch a doctor.” Mab grabbed her shawl and hurried toward the door.

“Wait!” Barbary plopped down again in the worn armchair. “You haven’t thought.  How will you explain the injury? Say that be slipped and hit his head against the stove? No one will believe you, and you’ll end up thrown into prison for assault or murder, whichever proves to be the case.”

This argument was well taken. Mab turned away from the door. “What do you suggest?”

“Let Tibble tend to him.” Barbary avoided her manservant’s eye. “That way, when the Duc recovers, he must be grateful for the care that has been taken of him. Meanwhile we will concoct some story of how he was injured in the first place. Don’t you see? You must have an opportunity to persuade him not to take offense at your having bashed him over the head. If you give him over into someone else’s keeping now, the fat will truly be in the fire.”

Mab had forgotten that Barbary could, on rare occasion, make very good sense. “The fat will also be in the fire,” she retorted, “if he dies.”

“Talking won’t pay toll,” interjected Tibble. “We need to get him up off the floor and into a bed.”

A great deal of bustle followed this suggestion. The only proper bed in the apartment belonged to Mab; and although she was willing to give it up, Barbary was very loathe to sleep upon the floor. At length Mab remembered a camp cot upon which her father had sometimes napped. After a considerable search among the various objects that littered the large room, the cot was discovered and set up. Tibble grasped the Duc’s shoulders and the ladies each a foot, and they heaved him as gently as possible onto the cot. Mab looked doubtfully at his ashen face. “Are you sure he isn’t dead?”

“Don’t fret yourself. Miss Mab,” Tibble said bracingly, and rummaged through his shabby traveling-case until he discovered a bottle of laudanum. Triumphantly, he held it up. “And if he wakes up before we wish him to, we’ll just dose him with this!”

 

Chapter Six

 

Mab hurried through the noisy narrow streets, past peddlers and pedestrians, auvergnants who dragged little water butts mounted on wheels, or carried pairs of buckets hooked onto wooden rings. The weather was so unremittingly hot and dry, water so scarce, two pails sold for two sous.

Mab was very thirsty. She was also very late. She held her breath and took a shortcut through an odoriferous, garbage-littered alleyway; finally arrived at Maurice’s studio and ducked behind the dressing-screen.

Maurice strolled among his students. Today he had put on working clothes, the better to become a part of the studio. “No, no!” he said to one young man who had incorporated an unfortunate degree of realism into his work. “How many times must I say it? Modern classicism is the attempt to introduce into art the practices of the ancients. We must attempt to do as the ancients did, to aspire to the ideality of form, the
beau absolu.
For moral and aesthetic reasons, the antique alone is considered noble. But I should not have to tell you this! You do not attend. To refresh your knowledge of mythology, and hopefully also nourish your inspiration, I refer you to the
Dictionnaire abrégé de la fable pour l’intelligence des poètes et la connaissance des tableaux la fable
.”

The student looked unhappy. Maurice could not blame him. Pierre Chompre’s classical work was not altogether a pleasure to read.

Mab emerged from behind the screen arrayed in her antique draperies. Maurice helped her into position on the model’s platform, with the assistance of the ropes that hung from the ceiling, and a heelrest for the foot that did not rest upon the floor. He glanced at the students and winked.
“Regardez!
Today our
chère petite
does not look like a thundercloud. We must make hay while the sun she shines.
Alors!
To work!”

Mab flushed. Maurice clearly thought she had been with Edouard. Well, and so she had, but not in any manner that Maurice would visualize. Mab had left the Duc, still unconscious, in the care of her unexpected houseguests. She was relieved when Maurice left her to wander among his students, commenting on their work.

Normally, Mab listened keenly to these lectures, eager for her own enlightenment. Today she was too distracted to concentrate. What if the Duc did die, despite Tibble’s best efforts to the contrary? What would they do then? Mab swallowed hard at the unpleasant suspicion that, in such a case, she would meet the very fate that she had wished upon the Duc and make the personal acquaintance of Madame Guillotine.

BOOK: French Leave
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