Mademoiselle At Arms (32 page)

‘Gérard,’ Melusine uttered on a warning note, desperately
trying to control the quiver at her lip.

‘—and what do I do? Well, we know what I do. Yes, yes, there
is no doubt about it. I see that I am a beast—I beg your pardon,
bête
—and
an imbecile, and an idiot.’

Melusine stifled a giggle. ‘Certainly this is true,’ she
managed.

Gerald shook his head. ‘I can’t think how I’ve tolerated
myself all these years. And I suppose it is too much to expect that any
entirely English young lady would be prepared to tolerate me for the remainder
of my life.’

‘You say—what?’ gasped Melusine. Her amusement fled and she
stared at him, as a slow thump began beating at her breast.

There was question in Gerald’s gaze as it met hers, and
apology in his voice. ‘You see, I had another reason for visiting your
grandfather.’

Melusine hardly dared believe she had heard him aright. He
was apt to play so many games, she was afraid she might have misunderstood.
Eh
bien
, why did he not repeat it? What was she to say?

‘Prudence,’ she began hesitantly, pronouncing the name in the
French way, ‘has said that she will help me to—to marry an Englishman.’

‘Yes, that’s what I’m talking about,’ Gerald said. ‘I, on the
other hand, want to help you to marry this Englishman.’

Melusine’s heart leapt, raced for a moment, and suddenly
dropped again. Just this?
Parbleu
, did he think this was enough? She did
not wish to marry him—at least, not just because he was an Englishman.

‘You have said you do not wish to marry me,’ she accused.

‘Oh, I don’t
wish
to marry you. I’d need to be out of
my senses.’

Quick anger flared, surpassing the fluttering hope.

‘
Dieu du ciel
, is this a way to have me say yes? If it
is that you do not wish to, why do you ask me?’

‘Ah.’ Much to Melusine’s chagrin, Gerald folded his arms and
leaned back, as if wholly at his ease. ‘I can answer that. Of all the entirely
English women I know, you’re the only one with a French accent.’

She was too distressed to bear this. ‘
Imbecile
. Is
this a reason?’

‘Not good enough? Now I had every hope that it would appeal
to you. I’ll have to think of something else.’

‘Do not hope it,’ returned Melusine, snapping uncontrollably.
‘I do not wish to hear any more reasons so foolish, so do not trouble to think
of them. I see now that you make a game with me indeed. You do not wish to marry
me at all, that is seen.’

Gerald unfolded his arms and threw his hands in the air. ‘But
I have been perfectly honest about that. I don’t wish to marry you at all.’

‘In this case, I do not at all wish to marry you,’ Melusine
threw at him furiously. ‘And I have a very good mind to kill you.’

‘But you must,’ Gerald said, quite as if he meant it. ‘Not
kill me, I mean. Marry me.’

‘I will not.’

‘But the general gave his permission.’

‘
Je m’en moque
. And it is not at all his affair.’

‘But it’s my affair, Melusine. You have to marry me.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because I can’t live without you!’

‘That is your own affair, and—’

Melusine broke off, staring at him, shocked realisation
kicking in her gut. Reaction set in and she leapt at him, beating at his chest
with her fists.

‘This is the way you tell me that you love me? You English
idiot
,
you!’

He seized her wrists to hold her off, actually daring to
laugh, much to Melusine’s increased fury.

‘What else do you expect? It’s the penalty you pay for
marrying an Englishman.’

Melusine wrenched her wrists out of his hold and stepped
back, digging into her skirts, which she had adequately prepared some days ago.
‘But I do not pay this penalty.’

‘Uh-oh,’ came from her infuriating suitor and his eyes
dropped to the weapon she was dragging from the holster under her petticoat. ‘Here
we go again.’

Both hands about the butt of her unwieldy pistol, Melusine
glared at him.

‘If you love me, you will say it, or else I will blow off
your head.’

‘Will you indeed? Truly?’

His smile held so much tenderness, she was tempted to
surrender at once. But, no. This she would not endure. She infused menace into
her voice.

‘Say it.’

Gerald remained infuriatingly calm. ‘I’ve never before made
love at pistol point.’

‘But you do not make love,’ Melusine pointed out.

‘I kissed you once, didn’t I?’

Her pulses jumped and she stared. ‘You would say that already
then you love me?’

His glance was a caress and Melusine’s resolve weakened.

‘When we met probably, and you threatened me at the first. But
it was only when that damned scoundrel nearly spitted you in the chapel—’ He
broke off and, to her intense satisfaction she saw he was not as much in
command of himself as he would have her believe. ‘It must have been so,
Melusine, or I wouldn’t have kissed you.’

A tiny giggle escaped her, and she lowered the pistol a
trifle. ‘
Eh bien
, you are not like Leonardo.’

His face changed, all the humour and tenderness leaving it in
an instant. Something like a snarl crossed his face, and ignoring the pistol,
he moved forward, seizing her shoulders.

‘Leonardo again,’ he growled. ‘What was Leonardo to you?’

Melusine was instantly on the defensive. ‘
Laisse-moi.
’

‘Damn you, answer me!’

Her eyes flashed. ‘It is not your affair.’

‘Was it yours?’

Insulted beyond bearing, Melusine lost her temper. ‘
Dieu
du ciel
, for what do you take me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he threw at her. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

The fury welled. ‘You wish a reason for jealousy?
Eh bien
,
you may have it. Leonardo he was my—’

‘Don’t say it,’ Gerald cut in hoarsely. There was a pause,
while the steel grey eyes sliced at her. Then pain entered their depths. ‘You
wound me to the heart, Melusine.’

Releasing her, he turned and walked swiftly towards the door.
For an instant, Melusine watched him go. Then instinct took over. With a cry of
distress, she dropped the pistol and flew after him, racing past him to the
door. Flinging her back against it, she put her hands out, barring his way.

‘Gérard, do not go,’ she cried, breathless. ‘Me, I am
tout
à fait stupide
. You make me angry, and I lie.
Voilà tout
. Leonardo
was to me nothing at all.’

There was a kind of aching hunger in Gerald’s gaze. ‘Do you
swear it? There’s no knowing if one can believe you.’

‘I do not lie to you now,’ she said, near frantic at the
thought of losing him. Yet her hands dropped, and she sighed deeply. ‘You do
not understand, Gérard. Leonardo was to me perhaps like a father, not a lover
as you think.’

‘I don’t want to think it,’ he said, and she thrilled to the
savagery in his tone.

‘You are jealous!’

‘Yes,’ he agreed simply. ‘Because I love you. I can’t help
it.’

Melusine’s eyes misted. ‘You said it. And I have no more the
pistol.’

She was seized by two strong hands and drawn close. Gerald’s
gaze bored into hers.

‘Tell me the truth, Melusine.’

‘Of Leonardo? Yes, I will tell you.’ She spoke with
difficulty, holding down the rising emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘He
was very kind to me. Not like my father. Nor my grandfathers both. To them all
I am nothing. They do not come for me, to find me and bring me home. And for Suzanne
and the vicomte, I am nothing. I am no one, Gérard.’

Gerald did not speak, but there was a look in his face that
made Melusine glad she had at last had the courage to confide in him. The
jealous burn at his eyes subsided and his finger came up. She felt the softest
touch caress her cheek, and a wave of tenderness engulfed Melusine. Her hand
came up and she laced her fingers with his.

‘That is why I have come to England, you understand. To—to
find myself. Because Leonardo, he made me see that I can be someone.’

‘You were always someone, Melusine. Even if you didn’t know
it.’

The gentleness in his voice nearly overset her. ‘It did not
seem to me that it was so. Until Leonardo.’ Then all at once remembrance made
her smile. ‘
En tout cas
, it is not reasonable that I could be at all in
love with him. He is extremely old—forty at least—and he has a belly
excessively fat. Also he is ugly. And I was altogether disgusted when he kissed
me.’

‘How shocking,’ Gerald returned, grinning. ‘I trust you were
not altogether disgusted when I kissed you.’

‘But I have told you not,’ she protested. ‘And if it is true
that you love me, I do not know why it is that you do not kiss me again at
once.’

‘I would have done, only you threatened to blow off my head,’
Gerald reminded her, laughing.

‘Do not be
imbecile
. Do I blow off the head of a man
with whom I am in love?’

‘That,’ said Gerald, disengaging his hand and at last drawing
her into his arms, ‘deserves a reward.’

Melusine drowned in his kiss. Her heartbeat raced, her limbs
turned to water, and it was only by a miracle and the strength of the arms that
held her that she remained standing on her feet.

It was some time later, after a series of these devastating
assaults, that Melusine found herself seated on the sofa lately vacated by
Lucilla and Captain Roding, cuddled firmly in the arms of a major of militia
reduced quite to idiocy.

‘—and I love your raven hair, and your bright blue eyes, and your
very kissable lips—’ suiting the action to the words ‘—and I love the crazy way
you speak English, and the way you curse at me. I love you calling me Gérard
and
idiot
, and I love you when you threaten me with every weapon under
the sun, and—’

‘Pah!’ interrupted Melusine, scorn in her voice. ‘I do not
believe you. You make a game with me,
imbecile
.’

‘And I love the way you call me
imbecile
,’ finished
Gerald.

Melusine giggled, and tucked her hand into his. ‘Certainly
you are
imbecile
. If I did not love you
en désespoir
, I would
assuredly blow off your head.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Why do you think I’m
indulging in all this very un-English love talk?’

‘But you are
idiot
, Gérard. The pistol, it was not
loaded.’

‘You mean I need not have said it? Damnation.’

‘But I have still a dagger,’ Melusine warned.

‘Oh, have you? Well, in that case, I love your little booted
feet, and your ridiculously long eyelashes, and—’

Elizabeth
Bailey
grew up in the open spaces and tropical atmosphere of colonial Africa, one of
four siblings with distinctly unconventional parents. Reading and drama were
inculcated from an early age and both have borne adult fruit in acting,
directing and writing. Elizabeth returned to the England of Mary Quant and
geometric hair, and ended a brief secretarial career by landing in drama school
and thence treading the boards. In her thirties, Elizabeth discovered her true
métier as a writer and fulfilled an early addiction to Georgette Heyer by
launching into historical romance. It took the proverbial lengthy
apprenticeship before Harlequin Mills & Boon accepted her first novel, but
they have overall published 18 of her novels.

Elizabeth
’s
writing recently swerved in a new direction with the publication of the first
two in a Georgian historical crime series, THE GILDED SHROUD and THE DEATHLY
PORTENT, published by Berkley Books (Penguin US). But since she still loves
writing romance, Elizabeth is delighted with the opportunity to publish her
work independently.

You
can find out about Elizabeth Bailey’s writing career and her books at
www.elizabethbailey.co.uk and follow her on twitter @lizbwrites.

ALSO BY ELIZABETH BAILEY

and soon available in digital format

THE CONQUEROR’S DILEMMA

The last thing William Westerham expects is for his carefully
maintained position in Society to be endangered by the allure of a pair of
impish eyes. Particularly when they belong to a girl perched precariously on
the edge of social disaster. As “the Conqueror”, can Will afford to recognise
Miss Tiffany Felton, whose chaperon is a creature beyond acceptance?

But Tiffany, wholly at sea among the unfamiliar rules of
convention, is torn between gratitude for the Conqueror’s help and distress at
his crushing rejection. Can the social barriers be breached? Or is Tiffany
doomed to yearn hopelessly for what can never be?