‘Pah! One little kiss, voilá tout.’
Martha got up with a swish of her black habit. ‘That little kiss cost him his sanctuary, my girl, and don’t you forget it.’
Melusine did not forget. She had agonized over it for weeks. Moreoever, it had cost her a whipping and several days’ imprisonment in her cell on bread and water. But her tears had been for Leonardo’s expulsion, and the loss of his companionship. He had changed her life dramatically, and she had missed him dreadfully.
‘Let me tell you,’ went on the nun severely, ‘it would have been better for you if you had taken the veil.’
‘You think it would have been better for me to stay as a nun and be killed like the Valades?’ said Melusine, brutally frank. ‘Or perhaps to marry the soi-disant cousin that Emile portrays?’
That silenced Martha, for the Mother Abbess had sent her off with Melusine to England not only for the sake of the girl herself, but to save at least one of her nuns from the growing wrath of the populace of France. Many a black veil hid a high-born dame, and the religious habit was no protection.
But Melusine’s own words had thrown an idea into her head. ‘Cousin? But I am a fool. Monsieur Charvill, he is also my cousin. If Emile can see him, then so also can I.’
‘What are you about now, child?’ demanded Martha apprehensively.
‘You know what I am about,’ exclaimed Melusine impatiently. ‘To go to these Charvill, it was not in my plot. I wish nothing at all from them. And by monsieur le baron, of a disposition entirely unforgiving, I do not desire to be recognised in the least. Now I require it, only that I may stop this pig from ruining all. Alors, one must steel oneself.’
***
Gerald Alderley stepped out of a house he had been visiting in Hamilton Place and the door closed behind him. He stood on the top step for a moment, lost in deep thought. As he hesitated, unable to make up his mind what to do for the best, a heavy rumbling on the cobbles penetrated his absorption.
He looked up to see an ancient coach making its ponderous way down the street. A grimy, battered object, which had no place in the fashionable quarter of town. It had evidently seen better days before being relegated to the ministrations of a hackney coachman, one who evidently served the less affluent inhabitants of London.
Gerald watched its approach with vague interest, which quickened when he saw that it was drawing up outside the very house out of which he had just stepped. The door opened. A black-garbed young lad leapt out and let down the steps. Immediately a feathered hat emerged, under which a familiar countenance was visible.
Of all the amazing coincidences. Though Gerald must suppose it was inevitable she should eventually come here. But to choose this of all moments. Or had she, like himself, been held up until the fellow returned to town? He waited, his ready humour anticipating her likely reaction.
Melusine—the real Melusine—evidently did not see him immediately, for her attention was on her descent from the high vehicle. She accomplished it with the aid of the young fellow’s hand, and stepped down into the road, glancing up at the house as she did so. Gerald saw her eyes change as she recognised him.
‘Oh, peste.’
‘How do you do?’ Gerald said pleasantly, stepping from the pillared portico and coming down the shallow stairway.
‘What do you do here?’ demanded the young lady, moving to meet him. ‘Again you seek to interfere in my affairs?’
‘I did warn you I had every intention of doing so,’ said Gerald. ‘And I am delighted to see that you are ready to admit that the Charvills—or rather the Valades—are indeed your affair.’
A multitude of changes flitted across Melusine’s features as she stood there for a space, unusually silent. Gerald guessed she was biting her tongue on an explosive retort as she eyed him. No doubt she was wondering what he had done in Charvill’s house and what he intended now. That she was provoked by his interference was obvious.
Aware of the footman hovering, and the hackney coachman’s curious eyes looking down from his box, Gerald leaned a little towards her and spoke in a lowered tone.
‘Come, mademoiselle, it is of no use to conceal anything from me, you know. Which are you—Valade or Charvill? Or, no, let me guess. Both, perhaps?’
At that, her eyes darkened with fury. ‘I have told you that I am entirely English.’
‘Charvill, then,’ Gerald concluded, unperturbed.
‘This is altogether insupportable!’
She dug a hand into the recesses of the petticoat of her riding habit and a moment later Gerald found himself once again confronting the barrel of her overlarge and tarnished pistol. There was a concerted gasp of shock from both the black-garbed lad and the coachman.
‘Don’t, miss,’ uttered the boy.
‘Don’t concern yourself,’ Gerald said calmly. ‘She won’t.’
He took a pace forward, seizing the gun with one hand, while the other locked her arm so that he could forcibly wrest the weapon from her. The struggle was brief, and Gerald stepped aside, the pistol in his possession, while the girl Melusine stood trembling and glaring. She turned on the lad with her, who was visibly relieved.
‘Jacques! This—this bête he attacks me, and you stand there and you do nothing.’
‘But he’s a major of militia, miss.’
Gerald noted the mixture of respect and apprehension in the glance he received from the boy. ‘You see, unlike you, mademoiselle, your cavalier here would not wish to be arrested.’
‘You will not arrest him, because I will shoot you first,’ snapped Melusine.
‘But I have the pistol,’ Gerald pointed out. He looked the boy over with interest. ‘I suppose he isn’t this Leonardo you spoke of?’
‘Certainly he is not Leonardo. He is Jacques. En tout cas, Leonardo is also a soldier.’
‘Oh, is he?’ Gerald said grimly.
‘Give me my pistol!’
Gerald shook his head, slipping the pistol into his pocket. ‘I can’t do that. Besides, you cannot visit people armed with a pistol in London, you know. It is not at all comme il faut.’ He bowed slightly, and indicated the house behind them with a wave of his hand. ‘But don’t let me stop you from going to see Charvill. That is why you came here, isn’t it?’
‘Alors, now we know who is the spy, Monsieur Gérard.’
‘And now we know also who is the prétendant, Mademoiselle Charvill.’
