His soldier’s instinct overtook Gerald and he dropped all his insouciance in a bang, becoming brisk.
‘Never mind that now.’ He called through the library door. ‘Hilary!’
The captain appeared, alert at the note in his major’s voice as Gerald had known he would be.
‘What’s to do?’
‘Valade is here. Go out there and head him off, will you? Tell him anything you like, but don’t let him in, and don’t tell him Melusine is here.’
Roding left the house instantly, not even pausing to nod.
Gerald seized Melusine by the hand and drew her towards the stairs, throwing a command at Kimble as he did so. ‘Keep watch, Jack! If Captain Roding fails to keep the man out of the house, run upstairs and warn me quickly. We’ll be somewhere on the floor above.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Kimble said at once, and took up his stance at the bottom of the stairs as Gerald dragged Melusine up them.
‘But, Gérard—’
‘Don’t start arguing,’ he said in a tone that brooked no defiance. ‘We’ll have you right out of the way, just in case. And don’t talk until we’re well out of earshot.’
Rather to his surprise, she obeyed this injunction as he led her up two flights of stairs to the first floor. Moving swiftly to the end of the corridor, he pushed open a door at random and entered a large room, which looked to have been a saloon, judging from the faded gilt and crimson wall-paper, a mirror above the fireplace which was surrounded by an ornate gilded frame, now sadly tarnished, and a worn Chippendale sofa with striped upholstery and tasselled cushions.
Gerald closed the door and released Melusine, and then went to open the shutters on a window that faced the side of the house. Light flooded the uncarpeted chamber, revealing the decayed state of the place.
‘Lord,’ he uttered, glancing about with a disparaging eye. ‘One would take it that the house had been ransacked.’
Melusine had crossed to the window that overlooked the front of the house, and was trying to peep through a crack in the shutters. Cursing under his breath, Gerald moved swiftly across and dragged her away.
‘You’ll make shadows.’
She allowed herself to be pulled to the centre of the room, but uttered in a low tone, full of suppressed anxiety, ‘How can he know? How can he know?’
‘You mean how can he know that this is your house?’
Melusine looked up at him, distress in her eyes. ‘There is no one who could have told him this. No one.’
‘What of your grandfather?’
Her lips parted in surprise. ‘You know?’
‘Come, come, Melusine. Remember that I’ve seen Brewis Charvill, and I’m well aware of your identity. You told me yourself you are not half French, which means the girl calling herself Madame Valade is completely misinformed, so Valade himself cannot know. But they’ve just been to see General Charvill.’
Fury was in her face. ‘Alors, I see how is this. He will not help them—and I told Emile so—and thus he sends them to my other grandpére, even that he knows he is dead. Pah! What a pig is this générale.’
‘I thought so,’ Gerald said with satisfaction. ‘Jarvis Remenham was your mother’s father.’
She bit her lip, frowning. ‘How did you guess?’
‘I guessed as soon as you said this was your house. Didn’t I say that this whole business of your camping in Remenham House was the one aspect I could not puzzle out?’
‘You are very clever, monsieur Gérard,’ she conceded, although Gerald was amused by the grudging note, ‘but in truth it is not yet my house. I do not know how I shall get it, but I must, you understand.’
‘Why must you?’ asked Gerald calmly.
Melusine opened her eyes at him. ‘But for my dowry, what else? One cannot expect that an Englishman will marry any jeune demoiselle without a dowry. That is not reasonable.’
‘Not if you want one of good family, no,’ he agreed mildly. ‘Unless he is himself a man of substance.’
‘Even that he is, one must be practical. For that such a man does not mind about the dowry, he must be in love en désespoir. And even if that,’ she added bitterly, ‘he must be also a person of a disposition extremely mad, that he can go against the family.’
‘Like your father,’ Gerald put in deliberately.
Her eyes flashed. ‘Exactly like my father. Only my father he is also of a disposition extremely stupide. And it is all for his behaviour tout à fait imbecile, and that of monsieur le baron his father entirely unforgiving, that I am put at this need to come myself and get a dowry that I may marry in all honour. And an Englishman, which is my right of birth.’
She turned and swept away from him, pacing the length of the room to the window Gerald had unshuttered. And turning again, as if the emotions she had churned up kept her on the move, she paced back to the mantel and there stopped, staring at her own reflection in the tarnished mirror.
Gerald watched her perambulations in silence, his heart wrung. So this was what it was all about. Hurt beyond what he could imagine by the selfishness and pride of her forbears, whose fateful disputes had robbed her of the life she should have led, the plucky little devil had taken matters into her own hands. It was not only Leonardo who had instilled in her this distrust of men. Small wonder she had learned to be self-reliant. Every man in her life had betrayed her one way or another.
‘Well then, Melusine,’ he said calmly, ‘it seems as if we must get you your dowry willy-nilly.’
She turned, her eyes narrowed. ‘We?’
Gerald smiled. ‘Precisely. You may command my services at any time. I told you that at the outset.’
‘No.’ She advanced towards him. ‘I do not command your services, mon major. I do not command the services of a person who will not tell me why he offers them.’
Gerald moved to the long sofa, dusted it with elaborate care with one of its cushions, and with a gesture invited her to sit down. Melusine approached with caution and sat warily at one end, looking up at him expectantly. He removed his cockaded hat, putting it down between them as he sat at the other end, placing himself at an angle and, crossing his legs, leaned back at his ease, his eyes fixed on her face.
‘Eh bien?’
