The idiocy of this notion stuck in his craw and he could think of nothing else for a moment.
‘Pardon, milor’,’ said Valade, ‘but Monsieur Charvill, he was not at fault. Not entirely.’
‘I find that difficult to believe,’ snapped the general, jerking to and fro as his agitation mounted.
‘As I have said, it was a quarrel between the vicomte and Monsieur Charvill. The vicomte has, he say, enough femmes in his hands. He will not provide for the daughter. He is the one who has said that she must go to the convent. Monsieur Charvill, he has not the means to choose different.’
‘Hadn’t the wit, you mean.’
‘Also madame his wife—’
Charvill’s gorge rose. He’d borne mention of the woman’s name. But that title he would not endure.
‘Don’t dare call her that to my face.’
Both Valade and the granddaughter gazed at him blankly. Then Valade—was the man as big a fool as Nicholas?—tried again.
‘Suzanne, if I may say, had also not the choice. One would say she could try to—to prevent that her daughter will go to the convent. But the vicomte has said that his sister may remain, but that the daughter must go. Even the love of a mother does not sway him.’
Abruptly, the niggling doubt that had been plaguing Lord Charvill came sweeping to the surface. Mother? Suzanne Valade, her mother?
With deliberation, he spoke. ‘Do you tell me that my disreputable son had the infernal insolence to pass you off as that whoring Frenchwoman’s daughter?’
His answer was in their faces. His anger gave way to grim humour and he thrust towards them, leaning heavily on his cane.
‘Typical. Hadn’t the stomach to admit the truth, had he? I’ll lay any money he labelled you with some foul French name as well. What was the name on those marriage lines you showed me?’
‘M—Melusine,’ stammered the woman, her countenance yet registering shock.
‘I knew it.’ The snaking suspicion rolled through his mind again. ‘And you come to me, thinking yourself half French, and expect me to take you in. What is it you’re after? Money, I suppose. Don’t you know I disinherited the rogue?’
‘This we knew, milor’,’ said Valade. ‘Also that it was that you did not wish the French connection.’
‘And your precious vicomte didn’t wish for the English one,’ said Charvill, acid in his voice. ‘They eloped. But he didn’t marry her. Not then. Too damned chickenhearted to confess to me he’d run off with the woman. If I’d known, there would have been a different story.’ Bitterness rose up as he looked at the female. ‘And you, my girl, if you’d been born at all, would have been just what you think you are. Half French.’
The woman shrugged helpless shoulders, looking to her husband. ‘André? Que dit-il?’
‘My wife does not understand,’ said the fellow, frowning deeply.
‘Of course she don’t understand,’ snapped Charvill irascibly. ‘Been led up the garden path by that confounded rapscallion. Your mother, for what it’s worth to you—for there’s nothing for you here, by God!—was the woman I chose for Nicholas. An Englishwoman. Good-looking girl.’ He looked the girl up and down. ‘You don’t favour her, bar the black hair. Don’t favour your father much, either, if it comes to that.’
It had not before occurred to him, but this realisation fuelled the general’s growing conviction that he was being imposed upon in some way. How would it serve Nicholas to keep the truth from his daughter? A tiny thread of disquiet troubled him.
‘But this Englishwoman,’ asked the man Valade, his puzzlement plain to see, ‘who was she?’
The question irritated Charvill. ‘What are you, a nincompoop? She was Nicholas’s wife, of course. His first wife. Married the other and ran off after Mary died.’ His eyes found the girl again, and he added rancorously, ‘Giving birth to you. Couldn’t face me with what he’d done, the miserable blackguard.’
The crack in the iron front widened a little, and the general was obliged to clamp his jaws tight against the rise of a pain too well remembered.
‘Might have forgiven him,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘if he hadn’t taken the babe.’
At this, the fellow Valade burst into unwise speech.
‘Sapristi. Then Melusine is in truth your granddaughter. Yes, yes, you do not like the French, and so this English lady here, she is altogether your flesh. It is that you cannot refuse her sanctuary.’
The girl held out her hands. ‘Ah, grandpére.’
Fire enveloped Charvill’s mind and he brought up his cane, pointed like a musket. ‘Keep your distance! You dare to tell me I cannot refuse?’ He glared at the girl. ‘Do you think I could endure to hear you prattling your abominable French in my ear day by day? Enough to drive me straight into my grave. I’ll give you grandpére!’
‘But milor’—’
‘Pardon!’
No longer master of his actions, the general lurched forward, waving his cane. ‘Get out! Out, I say! Think I want another miserable cowardly good-for-nothing wastrel on my hands? Begone! Out of my house!’
He drove them to the door, grimly satisfied when the girl’s nerve broke.
‘Ah, bah, it is enough,’ she cried, and turning, ran out of the room.
Valade stood his ground, holding the doorjamb, and facing up to the general. Charvill’s fury was burning out. He stopped, panting hard, slamming his cane to the floor to make use of its much-needed support.
‘Well?’ he uttered between heavy breaths. ‘Still—here? Wasting your—time. Get nothing out of me. Try your luck with Jarvis Remenham—if you will.’
A sudden frown sprang to the fellow’s face. ‘You said—who?’
‘Remenham. Maternal relations. Kentish family. Find them at Remenham House—if you can.’ A gleam of rare humour slid into Charvill’s chest. ‘For my money, you’ll not get much out of old Jarvis either. He’s dead.’
Chapter Six
