Melusine’s mind was reeling, but she reached out and seized his wrist. ‘No, no, Jacques, you have done very right. But, when? When do they go?’
‘Today, miss. That’s why I come to tell you.’
‘Dieu du ciel! But this is catastrophe.’
Kimble gaped at her and Melusine struggled to pull herself out of the shock.
‘What can I do, miss?’
‘Nothing at all,’ cried Melusine. ‘I do not know if even I can do anything now. Oh, peste, he will ruin all. If he succeeds there, I do not know how I can prove myself.’
‘Melusine!’ came sharply from the doorway.
She turned quickly. The nun on the threshold was of middle age and heavily built, her back uneven from toil and her hands roughened. Martha had the square look of solid English citizenry, which was not deceiving. She came originally of country stock, and had been virtually in sole charge of Melusine almost from the hour of her birth—a thankless task, as Melusine had heard her bemoan countless times, with the rider that she had carried it out with a conspicuous lack of success.
Melusine sighed with frustration. Why must her old nurse discover her precisely at this moment?
‘What are you at now, may I ask?’ Martha glared at the footman. ‘Kimble, you shouldn’t be here. Not alone with her, that’s sure.’
‘No, sister, I know that, but—’
‘You needn’t tell me. Go away now, there’s a good lad. Must be plenty of work for you to do.’
‘But, sister, I—’
‘Get along!’
Melusine gave Jack a smile as he cast a worried look at her, and nodded dismissal. She turned to Martha as the lad exited by the back door, but her nurse forestalled anything she might have said.
‘Now then, my girl, why the long face?’
Melusine had no hesitation in placing her trouble before her old nurse, for it was Martha who had made her aware of her true history. She owed the nun a great deal, including her command of English, for no one else thought to ensure she could speak her mother tongue.
‘Oh, Marthe,’ she groaned, using in her accustomed way the French version of her nurse’s name, ‘that pig is going to monsieur le baron.’
‘Mercy me,’ gasped the nun. ‘The general himself?’
‘How shall I get my inheritance if the general will believe that pig?’
‘Do wish you wouldn’t keep on calling him a pig,’ Martha begged. ‘Not at all ladylike.’
‘Of what use to be ladylike when I cannot be a lady?’
‘None of that. You’re a lady all right and tight, and nothing anyone does can take that away from you.’
‘Yes, but if it is only we that know, it is of no use at all to me.’ She flounced back to stare out of the window again.
‘Well, if that’s what the good Lord wants, then you’ll just have to accept it.’
‘But me, I am not very good with accepting,’ Melusine said bitterly over her shoulder.
‘Oh, dearie me, I wish I’d never told you anything about it,’ lamented the nun, moving to the only chair the vestry possessed and sinking down into it. ‘All this gadding about. And don’t tell me what you’ve been up to, dashing off to Remenham House with that Kimble lad, and Lord knows what besides, because I don’t want to know. I’d only have to do something about it, and that I can’t. What our dear mother would say back home I dread to think.’
Melusine turned, an irrepressible giggle escaping her lips as she thought of the Mother Abbess in the convent at Blaye. ‘She would say, espéce de diable, this Melusine.’
‘And she’d be right,’ Martha said severely. ‘A devil is just what you are. It’s that father of yours you take after, no question.’
Melusine shrugged. ‘I do not wish to be like him, but it is entirely reasonable that it should be so.’
‘Aye, more’s the pity. But perhaps he was right not to tell you the truth.’
‘How can you say so?’ protested Melusine.
‘Well, only look what’s come of it. You won’t settle and I’m going mad.’ She shook her head. ‘I should never have told you.’
‘But, Marthe, you do not imagine that I would have taken the veil like you, even if you have not told me. And to wish not is useless, because you have told me from when I was a little girl.’
‘True enough,’ nodded Martha sadly. ‘Thought it was downright wicked to keep you ignorant of your proper background. How was I to know what would happen? He always said if he couldn’t get you a dowry, you could take the veil.’
‘He said!’ Melusine uttered scornfully. ‘What a fate he finds for me. Rather would I have gone with Leonardo—and he wished me to do so.’
‘Melusine,’ shrieked the nun. ‘That’s wicked, that is. You don’t know what you’re saying, and I hope you never will.’
‘Well, but Leonardo he was excessively useful to me, you know,’ Melusine said airily. ‘Many things he taught me. Things that you and the nuns would not think about for—’
She stopped, biting back the words “for a young girl”. If Martha knew all, she would certainly die of shock.
‘You were supposed to be nursing him,’ Martha grumbled, ‘and helping him convalesce. And Mother trusted him. Italians. That’s Italians for you.’
