Mademoiselle At Arms (31 page)

‘I have justice. I have Remenham House which is my right. It
is known that I am Melusine Charvill, which is also my right.’ Her breath
tightened and she was obliged to control an inner ferocity. ‘Do you think I
would do to him as he made a threat to do to me? No. This is not honourable.’

This was Leonardo’s philosophy. Those who lived outside the
law might squabble among themselves, even unto death, Leonardo told her. But
never would any so dishonour himself as to hand a fellow rogue over to the
authorities.

‘I rather suspect,’ added Prudence, ‘that Major Alderley’s
motives were somewhat different. A trial always brings those involved into
public notice, and I dare say he feels there will be scandal enough without
adding to it. A nine days’ wonder is soon forgotten. But with Gosse and the
woman in prison here, there is always the chance that the whole affair may be
raked up all over again.’

There was sense in what she said, Melusine was obliged to
concede. But next moment, Captain Roding put up her back.

‘You’ve cause to be grateful to Gerald, then.’

‘Grateful? Certainly I am grateful,’ Melusine snapped,
knowing full well she sounded anything but gratified. ‘Still more would I be so
if he had come himself to tell me this.’

‘How could he when he didn’t even handle it himself? Went
off, I told you, and left it all to me. I’d to go to Remenham House as well,
and show Pottiswick your letter of authorisation. And, incidentally, check on
that unfortunate young fellow Kimble.’

‘But where? Where has he gone? Always he goes off, and he
says no word to anyone. I shall know what to say to him when he comes.’

The door opened and Saling entered again.

‘Major Alderley, ma’am, and General Lord Charvill.’

Melusine’s heart leapt, and as swiftly clattered into dead
stillness as the implication of the second name hit home. She flew up from her
stool and faced the door. The figure she had longed to see came into her line
of vision, but at this crucial moment of hideous realisation, Melusine barely
took it in, her eyes fixing blankly on the man behind. An old man with a bent
back who limped in, slow and stiff, leaning heavily on a cane.

A slow heavy thumping started up in Melusine’s chest, and she
scarcely took in the astonished silence in those present in the room.

Gerald vaguely noted that his junior leapt to his feet at
sight of his former commander, and that Lucilla sat with her mouth at
half-cock, dread in her face. His attention was focused on Melusine’s
transfixed stare and he forgot to say any of the things he had planned to say. He
had known she would be shocked, but he was equally certain Melusine would have
refused to see her grandfather had she been forewarned. To his relief, Mrs
Sindlesham stepped into the breach, grasping her cane and rising painfully from
her chair.

‘Good God! Everett Charvill, as I live. I suppose you have
come to see your granddaughter.’ She moved to Melusine’s side as she spoke. ‘Here
she is.’

‘Don’t need you to tell me that, Prudence Sindlesham,’ barked
the old man, his glance snapping at her briefly, before resuming his study of
Melusine, who, to Gerald’s intense admiration, was standing before him, glaring
and stiff with defiance. ‘I’ve eyes in my head, haven’t I?’ He grunted. ‘No
mistaking you this time. Spit of your mother.’

‘
Parbleu
,’ burst from Melusine indignantly. ‘I do not
need for you to tell me this. I also have eyes, and I have seen the picture.’

Gerald drew his breath in sharply as Lord Charvill took a
step towards his granddaughter, thrusting out his head.

‘What’s this? Impertinence! French manners, is it?’

‘
Grace à vous,
’ Melusine threw at him fiercely.

‘She means thanks to you, General,’ Gerald translated
automatically, forgetful of his old commander’s fiery temper.

Predictably, Charvill turned on him. ‘I know what it means,
numbskull! Didn’t spend years in the confounded country without picking up some
of their infernal tongue.’ His head came thrusting out at Melusine like a
belligerent tortoise from its shell. ‘What in Hades d’ye mean, thanks to me? Want
to blame anyone, blame that rapscallion who calls himself your father.’

‘He does not call himself my father, for he calls himself
nothing at all,’ Melusine told him, her tone violent with fury.

‘Dead then, is he?’

‘If I could say that he is dead, it would give me very much
satisfaction. But this I cannot do. I do not know anything of him since I have
fourteen years, and that he sent me to Blaye to be a nun.’

‘Ha! You’re Catholic, too, damn his eyes,’ growled the
general.

‘Certainly I am
catholique
. I say again,
grace à
vous
.’

‘How dare you?’ roared the general.

‘And you!’ shrieked Melusine. ‘You dare to come to me? What
do you wish of me? Why have you come? I do not want you!’ She swept round on
Gerald abruptly and he braced for the onslaught. ‘Now I see that you are mad
indeed. You bring me this grandfather, whom you know well I do not in the least
wish to see, for I have told you so.’

‘I didn’t bring him,’ Gerald returned swiftly. ‘He just came.’
He gestured towards the fulminating general. ‘Can’t you see he is not a
gentleman with whom one can argue?’

‘You think so?’ Melusine said dangerously, and her eyes
flashed as she swept about again and confronted her grandfather once more. ‘I
can argue with him very well indeed.’

‘Pray don’t,’ begged Mrs Sindlesham, one eye on the general’s
embattled features. ‘I don’t want him having an apoplexy in this house.’

‘Don’t be a fool, woman,’ snapped Charvill, thrusting himself
further into the room.

At this point Lucy, in an effort perhaps—foolhardy, in Gerald’s
opinion—to pour oil on troubled waters, rose swiftly to her feet and came
towards the old man, her hand held out.

‘How do you do, my lord? I am Lucilla Froxfield.’

‘Tchah!’ He glared at her. ‘What has that to say to anything?’

‘Nothing at all,’ smiled Lucy nervously. She indicated the
captain who had retired behind the sofa. ‘I think you know my affianced
husband.’

‘Captain Roding, sir,’ put in Gerald, adding on a jocular
note, ‘Another of the green whippersnappers you had to contend with some years
back.’

‘None of your sauce, Alderley,’ rejoined the general, shaking
hands with Hilary who came forward to greet him. Then he looked towards his
granddaughter once more, who had flounced away to the window at her great-aunt’s
interruption. ‘Now then, girl.’

She turned her head, eyes blazing. ‘Me, I have a name.’

‘Melusine, sir,’ Gerald reminded the general, exchanging a
frustrated glance with Mrs Sindlesham. Her efforts were vain. There was going
to be no quarter between these two.

Lord Charvill champed upon an invisible bit for a moment or
two, closing the gap between himself and the girl, and muttering the name to
himself in an overwrought sort of way. ‘Melusine…Melusine. Pah! Damned Frenchified—’

‘If you say again,’ threatened Melusine, moving to meet him
like a jungle cat poised for the kill, ‘this scorn of a thing French,
monsieur
le baron
, I shall be compelled to give you this apoplexy of which she
speaks, madame. I am entirely English, as you know well. If it is that I am in
the least French, and that you do not like it—’

‘I don’t like it,’ snapped the old man. ‘And I’ll say it as
often as I choose, you confounded impertinent wench! Who do you think you’re
talking to? I’m your grandfather, girl.’

‘Pah!’ rejoined Melusine, apparently unconscious of echoing
him. ‘You and Jarvis Remenham both, yes.
Parbleu
, but what grandfathers
I have!’

It was stalemate, Gerald thought, irrepressible amusement
leaping into his chest. They confronted each other, barely feet apart, neither
apparently any longer aware of anyone else in the room. An old man and a young
girl, the one as stubbornly offensive as the other.

‘I’m damned if I see what you have to complain of,’ uttered
Charvill, a faintly bewildered note underlying his irascibility. ‘What could
either of us have done?’

To Gerald’s acute consternation, Melusine’s lip trembled
suddenly, and her eyes filled. In a voice husky with suppressed despair, she
answered.

‘You could have
fetched me home
.’

Pierced to the heart by the poignancy of this utterance,
Gerald could neither move nor speak. It was a moment before he recognised that
the effect had been similar on all those present, including General Lord
Charvill. With astonishment, Gerald saw a rheumy film rimming his old commander’s
eyes. Swiftly he looked back to Melusine and found she had whisked to the
window, dragging a pocket handkerchief from her sleeve and hastily blowing her
nose.

For an instant, Gerald wished the rest of the world away that
he might go to her and administer appropriate comfort. But the general was
turning on him, the hint of emotion wiped from his lined features.

‘I wish you joy of the wench. If you ask me, you’ll have to
beat her regularly if you don’t want to live a dog’s life.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Sindlesham loudly, casting an anxious
glance upon Melusine.

Well might she do so, Gerald thought in irritation. He caught
the elderly dame’s eye, throwing her a desperate message. To his relief, she
nodded.

‘The truth is, Everett,’ she said brightly, limping up to the
general and tucking a hand in his arm, ‘that the girl is you all over again. I’ve
been wondering where she got her dogged will, and that hot-headed adventurous
spirit, for it wasn’t from either Mary or Nicholas, that’s sure. No one seeing
you together could doubt that she is your granddaughter.’

Gerald was relieved to hear the loud guffaw issuing from the
old man’s lips. ‘You think so? Well, if that’s so, I know where she gets her
impudence, Prudence Sindlesham.’

‘Do you indeed?’ rejoined the old lady, twinkling at him, and
urging him towards the door. ‘Let us go elsewhere and discuss the matter. I
loathe this room. Much too formal for a cosy chat between old friends.’

So saying, she threw a meaning look over her shoulder at
Lucilla, much to Gerald’s approval. Then she passed from the room on the arm of
General Lord Charvill, chatting animatedly to him.

Gerald realised Lucy had taken the hint, for she dragged her
betrothed towards the door. ‘Come, Hilary. Mama will be expecting me. I will
come later to see you, Melusine.’

‘Yes, but I need a word with Gerald,’ protested the captain,
hanging back.

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ said Gerald in a low tone. ‘Talk to me
another time.’

‘What?’ Hilary glanced from Gerald to Melusine, and coloured
up. ‘Oh, ah. Yes, of course. Later.’

The door closed behind them both and Gerald was alone with
Melusine.

From the corner of her eye, Melusine saw Gerald move towards
her and she turned to confront him, the confused turmoil in her mind causing
her chest to tighten unbearably. She gave tongue to the most urgent of her
plaints.

‘Why did you bring him? I hate him.’

‘Yes, that rather leapt to the eye,’ Gerald said, and the
faint smile sent a lick of warmth down inside her. ‘I went to see him because I
thought he ought to know about you, having already been imposed upon by our
friend Gosse. He had to know the truth, Melusine.’

She eyed him, all her uncertainty surfacing. ‘And this is
where you have been all the time?’

‘I would have been back in a day, I promise you. Only your
horror of a grandfather insisted on coming with me, so I had to wait for him to
be ready and travel at his pace. What could I do?’

‘Anything but to bring him to me,’ Melusine threw at him. ‘If
you had told him that I would rather die than see him, he would not have come.’

Gerald grinned. ‘You don’t know him.’

‘No, and I do not wish to do so,’ Melusine pointed out.

His face changed and she saw, with a stab at her heart, the
dawning of irritation in his eyes.

‘Hang it all, Mrs Sindlesham is right! You are two of a kind.’

Melusine took refuge in defiance. ‘But I find you excessively
rude, Gérard. First you do not come to see me since three days, and me, I know
nothing of what happens with Gosse until this
capitaine
of yours has
come today. And now, when you come at last, you bring me this grandfather, and
you dare to tell me I am like him.’

He sighed elaborately. ‘I know, Melusine. I am altogether a
person of a disposition extremely interfering, as you have so often told me.’

‘Do not make a game with me,’ she interrupted, gripping her
underlip firmly between her teeth to stop the threatening laughter.

‘But I am perfectly serious,’ he returned in a voice of
protest. ‘Here were you patiently waiting, without uttering one word of
complaint the entire time, which of course you never do, being yourself a
female altogether of a disposition extremely sweet and charming without the
least vestige of a temper—’