The Disdainful Marquis (22 page)

Gracie took the duchess's hand and soothed her with, Catherine saw in amazement, a look of great contentment upon her homely face.

“He told me,” the duchess whispered, “that I was only a mad old woman. Only a senile old woman of no account. And that after a week or two in his cells I would be less than that. He told me I should be locked up for my own safety. That he had the power to do so. And that by the time my family found out, it would be too late for me. Too late for me! ‘The Duchess of Crewe is a succés fou,' he said, and then he laughed and said it was no more than the truth, that I was a crazy old woman. And that everyone knew it and laughed at me, as they laugh at inmates in a madhouse. And then he said that that was just the thing! He would put me in a madhouse, and no one would question him at all. He had the power, he said. He does, Gracie, he does.”

“Your Grace,” Catherine said, but at the sound of her voice the duchess turned to her and cried with some of the old power in her voice, “Go, go from me. I never want to see you again. You have brought me nothing but misery. I should never have taken you on. Butter wouldn't have melted in her mouth, Gracie, I swear it. And now look at her. Begging me to let her stay. I cannot, don't you see? She will bring me to ruin. He wants her and he shall have her. Gracie,” the duchess quavered, “I shall want to go home now. Yes, I want to go home.”

“Let me come with you,” Catherine begged.

“No, no,” the duchess cried out in a strong voice, “for then he will not let me go. Get away. Get away.”

Gracie marched to where Catherine stood. She placed herself so close to her that Catherine had to back away.

“You stop bothering my lady,” Gracie commanded, suddenly forceful and demanding. “You let her alone. You and the others was nothing but a passing fancy for her, like I always said. She's come back to her own sweet self now and she wants to be shut of you and your kind. So the gravy boat has docked and you let her alone. I won't have you battening on her anymore. Take your things and go where you always belonged. To the gutter.” Catherine went white. The hatred in Gracie's eyes chilled her. There was no hope for her here, not anymore. She thought quickly and pleaded once more, “But if I am to go, please, Your Grace, my wages. For I haven't enough funds to get home alone. And I have worked for you. Please do not strand me without funds.”

The duchess rose and went to her dressing table. She opened a drawer and with palsied hands withdrew a small box. She took a handful of coins and flung them onto the floor.

“Here, here. Take your money and go. I never want to see you again.”

Catherine went to retrieve the coins and almost stopped and let them lie when she heard Gracie sneer. “It's the money all right. There's never enough for her kind.”

Catherine had to swallow back a biting reply and stifle the impulse to leave the money and flee with her self-respect intact. But she knew that self-respect alone would never extricate her from her problem. When she had hastily counted out the amount she knew she had earned, she stood again. There was some satisfaction in noting that she had left the better part of the coins still lying upon the floor.

“I have taken only what was due me,” she said stiffly, “and I am sorry, Your Grace.”

“Get out now,” Gracie commanded, arms akimbo and advancing upon Catherine. “Go and good riddance.” Her voice softened as she looked back to the duchess. “Leave Her Grace to me now. I'll see her right, just like I always have. I didn't desert her when she took to the wild fancies she did, and I shan't leave her now that she's come back to her senses. But you get out.”

Catherine heard the door slam behind her, and the sound was ominous. If M. Beaumont had such power as to terrify and override a duchess, what chance had she against him? She could not turn to the marquis, although her thoughts had turned to him a dozen times this evening. For if she went to him, he would only think she had at last decided to take up his offer. Somehow, she was sure that he could stand against M. Beaumont, or anyone in the world, for that matter. But to go to him would be to say she was his. Why should he believe otherwise? And in some small part of her mind Catherine knew that if she went to him, she somehow would become his. And even if he then took her to safety, she would then be lost to herself forever, and be in time no less than Rose and Violet. She would have become, no matter how she examined it, or how many excuses for her behavior she invented, a woman who sold herself to a man, and forever beyond the pale of decent people. And she was done with excuses for her outrageous behavior.

She knew she had enough money to reach the coast now. And enough to take a ship to England. But she knew that M. Beaumont would not let her get that far. So she waited for Rose and Violet to return. Now they were her last hope. They were clever and women of the world. Doubtless, they would have some idea of what she could now do.

Dawn was staining the sky with its gray light when Catherine at last heard some movement in Rose's room. She leaped to her feet and, after gazing anxiously about the empty hall, tapped on Rose's door.

“Who is it?” Rose whispered.

“Me, it's Catherine. Oh, Rose, let me in,” she pleaded, suddenly afraid that Rose, too, would deny her.

But when she entered Rose's room, she saw only her familiar smiling face grow suddenly concerned when she glimpsed Catherine's ashen countenance in the growing light.

“Whatever is the matter, Catherine?” Rose asked, drawing her to the bed to sit. “You look as if you'd seen a ghost. Never tell me that Her Grace's heart's given out? That she's taken a bad turn and left us? For she looked like death itself when I last saw her. And when I went to her, she just shooed me away and told me to leave her be. I should have stayed,” Rose mourned. “Poor old dear.”

“No, no,” Catherine said, “she's well. It is something else. Oh, Rose, you must help me. For I'm in desperate case.”

Catherine took Rose's arm and, feeling the frozen hand which clutched her, Rose stopped chattering and sat quietly while Catherine poured out her story.

“Oh, that's a rum case,” Rose sighed, when Catherine had done at last. “That's a fine predicament.”

Rose stood and shook her head and looked consideringly at Catherine.

“You do have a problem, Catherine,” she said, “and I have got to be right out with you, dear. The easiest thing for you to do would be to go with Beaumont. Hervé Richard ain't a bad sort. He's clean, and he's got something blowing in the wind for him. And,” Rose added, absently rubbing her shoulder, where Catherine could now see in the brightening dawn light, there was a fresh set of bruises, “he ain't got any strange ways about him, so far as I have heard. No, he's a straightforward chap who wouldn't want nothing special from you.”

Catherine recoiled and hastily averted her face. The look of horror, however, had not escaped Rose.

“No,” Rose sighed, “I didn't truly think so. Ah, Catherine, forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. It was just an idea, you know. Forget I said it, do. For I know you're a good girl, and I wasn't thinking straight. We have just to get you away from here without Beaumont twigging to it, and all will be well. How to do it is the question.”

Rose and Catherine sat silently in the room as the light increased, each thinking alone. When Rose heard a movement from the next room, her face brightened.

“That'll be Vi. She's just the one. She's far more longheaded than I, and she's a wonder at getting herself out of tight corners. I'll just go get her.”

Before Catherine could look up from her miserable contemplation of the carpet, Rose had fled the room, and before a few more moments had passed, she returned with a tired-looking Violet in tow. In the fresh light of morning, Violet's dramatic orange costume seemed tawdry, and her carefully made-up face seemed blurred and exhausted.

“Here she is,” Rose sang. “Oh Vi, we need your help, for our Catherine's got herself into a terrible problem.”

Violet turned her weary smudged eyes toward Catherine's woebegone form.

“If she's gotten herself in the basket,” Violet yawned, “she's just got to turn round and go home. She can't be increasing in the duchess's employ. The old girl don't want a squalling brat on her hands.”

“Oh Vi,” Rose cried, genuinely staggered, “you know better. Catherine ain't in the family way. And she don't want to be in the game, neither, and that's the problem.”

Violet flung herself upon the bed and lay so still while Rose explained Catherine's situation that Catherine feared she had fallen asleep. But when the tale was done, she opened her eyes and looked at Catherine narrowly.

“You want to skip out, then?” she asked.

“I must,” Catherine said. “But how? And I must do it now, for Beaumont will be here to collect me by nightfall. But how shall I go in broad daylight?”

“It's not impossible,” yawned Violet. “I've done it myself. Remember in London, Rose, when that poxy viscount was after me?” She laughed. “I made a monkey out of him, didn't I?”

Rose nodded eagerly. “So you did, Vi, but this is Paris, and Catherine and I ain't so wise as you. What's she to do now?”

Violet studied Catherine's abjectly sorrowful face. Her thoughts raced behind her sleepy facade. So the Richard lout was about to come into riches and wanted a fine English female? Well, she'd do just as well to console him when he'd lost the one he had his heart set on, wouldn't she? She watched Catherine—she had nothing against the girl, but business was business, and it wouldn't suit her to stick her neck out and defy Beaumont. But if there was some profit to be made from the girl's disappearance, well, there were no flies on Violet. The problem was, she thought, how to get the chit safe away without Beaumont twigging to the fact that she'd helped. After a moment she smiled.

“Rose, you goose. The answer's plain as the nose on your face. Catherine, do you take those things you find necessary, and only a few things at that. Here, wait a tick,” she said, suddenly galvanized, and the two other women stared at her in wonder as she leaped up and ran lightly to her room.

She returned in a few moments. “Here,” she said, placing a worn portmanteau at Catherine's feet. “I always carry it in case I have to skip fast. It's old and battered, but it won't attract attention.”

Catherine looked at the worn case and had to agree. Indeed, it looked as though it had been used in the days of Violet's grandmother.

“Now you take only a little with you, and when you've all secured, act sharp, because time isn't on your side. Then, you come back here. And then, Rose, you take Catherine down to the stables. James is there, and he's a right caution. What he don't know about Paris, the Frogs themselves don't know. He's a game 'un and up to anything. And if your pretty face don't tempt him to help, Catherine, your good gold coins will. For he's always on the lookout to make some extra. And he don't like foreigners above half. Now shoo, go to it, Catherine, time is wasting.”

Catherine fairly flew to her room and collected those few items she felt necessary. She left all her fine dresses and bonnets and slippers without a backward glance, only taking those few dresses she had originally come to the duchess with. She flung toothbrush, hairbrush, and underthings into the portmanteau.

When she was done, she hurried back to Rose's room.

“Good,” Violet smiled. “Now Rose, you take her down the servants' stairs and James'll do the necessary.”

Rose paused and then asked, “Catherine, let me see your purse.”

Dutifully, Catherine handed it over to her.

“Oh, this will never do,” Rose cried, “for you're a pauper. Look, Vi, how far can she go on this?”

Rose hurriedly went to a box in her closet and came back with coins that she poured into Catherine's purse above her horrified protests. “No, no,” Rose said adamantly, “I couldn't sleep nights thinking of you starving in a ditch. We're friends, aren't we?” she asked, suddenly stopping and looking hard at Catherine.

To refuse Rose's money, Catherine realized, would be to deny her friendship.

“So we are Rose,” she whispered, “and I am grateful. Someday I hope to pay you back.”

Satisfied, Rose nodded sharply. “Here, Vi, open the coffers. For you're fast with advice, but tight with your purse. What do you want Catherine to think?”

With ill grace, Violet left, to come back and add her mite to Catherine's growing treasure. “But understand,” Violet said quickly, “if anything goes amiss, you're not to prattle about where you got the funds.”

Catherine smiled bitterly and met Violet's worried eyes. “Do you think M. Beaumont will wonder at my riches?” she asked.

Violet seemed satisfied, but she added, “And I hope you'll not cry rope at us, if he does find you. Do you promise to leave us out of it?”

“Of course,” Catherine said softly. “But I think if he does find me, he won't care how I failed or who helped me fail.”

“But you won't fail, Catherine,” Rose said quickly. “For James is as sharp as he can be. We'll have to think of something Catherine can wear to escape notice, Vi,” she added, biting her lower lip.