Mademoiselle At Arms (3 page)

‘From you,’ the lady threw at him furiously. ‘You are
stubborn like a mule. Why do you not go away?’

‘Yes, do go away,’ begged Gerald. ‘You are really not helping
matters, my friend.’

Captain Roding looked frowningly from one to the other. The
lady reseated herself, watching him expectantly. He shrugged and, to Gerald’s
relief, made to leave at last.

‘You’re as mad as she is, Gerald. I’ll be waiting for you
outside.’

‘No, no, go and fetch the men to the house. And tell
Pottiswick to mend that lock we broke.’

‘We!’ said Hilary witheringly, and went off as Gerald laughed
and turned back to the lady.

She was frowning, but it was evident that her initial fright
had left her. The ruffled chemise-front under the wide lapels of her waistcoat
and jacket no longer quivered, and her pose, with the full cloth petticoat
spreading about her, was relaxed. Only her ungloved fingers, and the arms in
their long tight sleeves as she held the heavy gun aloft, bore any sign of
stiffness.

She addressed him in a tone of puzzlement. ‘Why does this
person say you are mad?’

‘Because I am risking having my head blown off,’ Gerald
answered cheerfully.

The girl nodded sagely. ‘And me?’

‘Oh, you’re mad because you wish to blow off my head.’

A radiant smile dawned. ‘Then I am not mad in the least. I do
not wish to blow off a head, you understand.’

‘I am relieved to hear it.’

The smile vanished. ‘But to do only what one wishes, it is
not always convenient.’

‘Consider me warned,’ said Gerald solemnly. He removed his
cocked hat and came towards her. ‘You don’t mind if I sit down?’

She considered him a moment, her head a little on one side. ‘You
are, I think, a gentleman, no?’

Gerald bowed. ‘I try to be.’

‘Ah, that is good,’ sighed the lady. ‘You do not say, “I am a
gentleman born.” Frenchmen, they are different.’ She released the pistol which
lay in her lap and gestured expressively with her hands. ‘They hold their nose
up, so. And look down, so. Englishmen also certainly. But only inside, you
understand, that one cannot see it.’

Her conversation was wonderful, Gerald decided. And she was
as shrewd as they come. ‘You seem to understand the gentry very well.’

‘You see, I am of them,’ she said seriously, ‘but not with
them—yet.’ With pretty imperiousness, she gestured to the bed beside her. ‘Please
to sit, monsieur. I am not afraid that you may try to make love to me.’

‘What?’ uttered Gerald, startled.

The thought had not even occurred to him. He was not, in
truth, much of a ladies’ man. Which was not to say that ladies were not
interested in him. But Gerald took it for the routine interest in an eligible
bachelor, although he was aware many females had an eye for scarlet regimentals.
He spoke the automatic thought that entered his mind.

‘I should not dream of forcing my attentions on you.’

‘No, you are a gentleman,’ she agreed. ‘And me, I am a lady.
Voilà
tout
.’

Such simple faith touched Gerald. He refrained from pointing
out that the case would be exactly the same if she was not a lady. He sat on
the bed, throwing aside his hat.

‘That is settled then. May I know your name?’

The lady eyed him. He waited. She frowned, appearing to think
for a moment. Then she shrugged.

‘
Eh bien
. It is Thérèse. Ah, no, I have it wrong.’ With
care, she gave it an English pronunciation. ‘Tee-ree-sa.’

Gerald tutted. ‘You must think me a fool, mademoiselle.’

The eyes flashed momentarily. Then the long lashes sank
demurely over them. ‘You do not like it?’

‘That is hardly the point.’

She looked up again and smiled sweetly. ‘You do not think it
is enough English. I will endeavour.’ She bit her lip and thought deeply. Something
seemed to dredge up from the recesses of her memory and she brightened. ‘How is
this? Proo-den-ss.’

Gerald gazed at her without expression. ‘Very inventive.’

‘But it is a very good English name,’ she protested.

‘Very. But it is not your name. Nor is Theresa, or even
Thérèse.’

The lady opened her eyes very wide indeed. ‘You do not
believe me?’

‘I do not.’

‘Pah!’

‘Precisely.’

She let out a peal of laughter. ‘You are not at all stupid. Even
if you pretend sometimes to be without sense.’

‘Well, let us leave your name for the present. From what do
you wish to be rescued?’

The girl fluttered her eyelashes, sighed dramatically and
spread her hands. ‘I escape from a fate entirely
misérable
, you
understand.’

‘Indeed?’ Gerald said politely. ‘What is this fate?’

‘
Un mariage
of no distinction. My husband, he is cruel
and wicked, and—and entirely undistinguished. It is very bad.’

‘Your husband?’ Gerald tutted. ‘I agree with you. That is
very bad indeed. I shall be delighted to rescue you. Where is this
undistinguished husband?’ Leaping to his feet he seized his sword hilt and
partly withdrew it from its sheath, saying dramatically, ‘I shall kill him
immediately!’

Her eyes widened, but she did not move. ‘Kill him? Oh.’ The
lady’s gaze dwelled thoughtfully on the half-drawn sword and then came up to
meet his, an odd look in her eyes. ‘He is not in England, you understand. I
have—run away.’

‘That I do not doubt,’ Gerald muttered drily, but added in a
tone of intense satisfaction, ‘Then this husband is still in France? Excellent.’ The sword was released to slide back into its scabbard. ‘In that case, he is
probably already dead, and you have nothing to worry about.’

Her face fell. ‘Oh, you are making a game with me. You do not
believe me.’

‘When you begin to tell the truth,’ Gerald told her severely,
‘I shall be happy to believe you.’

‘
Parbleu
,’ exclaimed the girl, jumping up in some
dudgeon. ‘You are not
sympathique
in the very least.’ She raised the
pistol.

‘If you shoot me,’ Gerald said quickly, throwing out a hand, ‘I
shan’t be able to rescue you.’

‘I do not need the rescue from such as you. And I think I
will indeed blow off your
imbecile
head.’

‘In that case, I ought to warn you that my friend, Captain
Hilary Roding, who is even less
sympathique
than myself, you remember,
will undoubtedly arrest you for murder.’

The lady stamped her foot. ‘
Alors
, now I am also a
murderer. This is altogether insupportable. Take, if you please, your own
pistol. Take it, I tell you. From your pocket there.’

‘What for?’ asked Gerald, half laughing, as he put his hand
in his pocket and brought out his elegant pistol. ‘Now what?’

The girl’s voice was shaking, and there were, he saw now,
angry tears in her eyes.

‘At me,’ she uttered, holding her own pistol high and aiming
it steadily. ‘Point it at me.’

‘Like this?’

‘
Parfait
.’ She sniffed and swallowed. ‘I am not a
murderer. The chance it is the same for both. It is no more a murder, but a
duel, you understand.’

She was backing across the room, moving towards the screen.
Cocking
the gun
. He was damned if he knew what to do. Was the girl seriously
expecting him to pull the trigger? Lord, but she had courage!

‘Shoot, then,’ urged the lady. ‘And we shall see which of us
is more quick.’

‘There is no need for this,’ he ventured mildly, and lifted
his finger to show his own pistol was not cocked. ‘I cannot possibly shoot a
lady, you know. I am far too much the gentleman.’

She halted, her pistol still held firm and straight, both
hands gripping it, her expressive features at once determined and uncertain.

‘If, in truth, you are a gentleman,’ she said in a trembling
tone, ‘you will move to the side that I may leave this room.’

‘And where do you propose to go?’ enquired Gerald carefully.

She lifted her shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘Where is
there that I can go?’

All at once Alderley felt acutely suspicious. What was the wench
at? Yet he could not maintain this stand off forever. He was by no means
certain that she would not in fact attempt to blow off his head as she had
threatened.

‘Very well,’ he said, lowering his own weapon. After all,
Hilary must be near returned by now. Where was the harm in letting her go? She
could not get far.

He moved to one side, bowing and gesturing to the door. ‘Mademoiselle.’

The lady hesitated a moment, her eyes seeming to measure the
distance between where he stood and the door. He stepped back further. Slowly
she released the hammer on the pistol, uncocking it, and Gerald became
conscious that he had been holding his breath.

Giving him a wide berth, and keeping her pistol high, she
made her way to the door and warily peered through it. A glance down the
passage—to see that Roding was not lurking?—and her face came back to Gerald,
triumph in her eyes.

‘
Adieu, imbecile
,’ she threw at him gleefully. Then
she was out of the door and running, fast.

The sound of her flying feet brought Gerald leaping for the
door. He was into the passage in time to see her slip into another chamber at
the end. A door slammed. Racing, he reached it perhaps a moment or two later. He
thought he heard a scraping sound as he turned the handle.

He flung open the door and cast a quick glance round. The
place was gloomy, with its darkly panelled walls, but it was sparsely furnished.
A dresser, a washstand, and a clothes press. No window.

A dressing-room then. But where in the world was the girl? A
door led to another chamber beyond. Gerald tried it. Locked! He sped out to the
corridor and went swiftly into the next room. Wasting no time, he crossed
straight to the shutters and opened them.

Light flooded the place. It was bare of any furnishings. And
empty. The young lady—if she had come in here at all—had vanished
.

‘Our French friends are beginning to form quite a little
coterie,’ remarked Gerald, covertly studying the group gathered in an alcove at
the other side of Lady Bicknacre’s ballroom.

The vast mirrored chamber, with its four little square window
bays, two either side of the large raised dais that led to the French doors,
was very full of company for the start of the Little Season. The clever hostess
having let fall that several distinguished guests from France would be present, the world had flocked to her doors to catch, like the gossip-hungry
vultures they were, a glimpse of them.

Few approached the
émigrés
directly, preferring to
stare covertly from behind their fans, while pretending to admire the simple
elegance of Lady Bicknacre’s neo-classical refurbishments. To Gerald’s eye, the
refugees therefore presented a rather forlorn little group, almost huddling
together and chattering in low tones in their own tongue.

The future Mrs Roding turned bright, laughing eyes on the major.
‘Dare I guess at the reason for your sudden interest in
émigrés
, Gerald?’

‘Lucilla,’ barked Hilary warningly. ‘Not here.’

‘Don’t be stuffy, Hilary,’ admonished his betrothed.

She was a small blonde, not handsome, but with a flair for
fashion demonstrated by her elegant chemise gown in the very latest Canterbury muslin, with its low décolletage barely concealed under a fine lawn handkerchief
set about her shoulders, and decorated with a mauve satin sash at the waist. She
had a warm, fun-loving personality, and an unflattering disrespect for her
future husband’s authority. Gerald liked her enormously.

‘If you did not want me to talk of it,’ she told him with
characteristic insouciance, ‘you should not have mentioned the matter to me.’

‘Are we to infer that he had a choice?’ enquired Gerald.

‘Of course not,’ snapped his friend. ‘She wormed it out of
me, the little fiend.’

Gerald tutted. ‘The cat’s foot, Hilary. You’re going to live
under the cat’s foot.’

‘Fiddle,’ scoffed Miss Froxfield. ‘I am perfectly devoted to
him, as well he knows.’

She bestowed a dazzling smile on Roding, who had reddened to
the gills at these words. Which were perfectly true, as Gerald was aware. Lucilla
clearly adored her betrothed, anyone could see that. If there was such a thing
as love at first sight, these two must epitomise it. And his scarlet coat had
nothing to do with it, as Hilary was fond of recounting, for he had been in
civilian clothes when they met, as he was tonight. Neither he nor Gerald chose
to attire themselves in full military rig on fashionable occasions such as this.
Alderley’s company of militia being his own, he was able to choose duty periods
convenient to himself and his captain, and was under no obligation to wear
dress uniform.