‘But what do you want it for, miss?’
‘But to protect myself. Do not be a fool, Jacques. And go quickly that I may finish to search.’
She thrust him into the aperture, and pushed the hilt of the sword into his hand. Next moment, she had shut the bookshelf panel upon him.
Melusine sighed with relief at being alone at last and free to resume her search among the portraits. Leaving the library by the same door she had first used to enter it earlier that day, she crossed the two little antechambers and moved on through the rooms. She made a slow tour of the front of the house without success, and then started back along the rooms behind, dragging open the drapes each time to get just enough light to recognise what was on the walls.
As time went on, she began to think Martha had been mistaken. When she judged that she must be nearly back at the library, she began to feel somewhat dispirited. Would she ever find it?
Sighing, she opened the door to the next room, and drew back the drapes. One of the shutters was a trifle damaged, letting in added light. Melusine turned to look at the walls, and saw, immediately opposite, set between two candelabra above a marquetry side table, a gilded mirror.
‘Ah, now I may see what damage Gérard has done to me,’ she muttered, crossing to the table and putting her hand to the sore place at her neck.
The image in the glass was not clear, for the light was not bright enough to see properly, but the shadows of her riding habit and the hat with its waving plumes framed a countenance that gazed serenely back at her out of long-lashed blue eyes.
Melusine tilted her head to catch sight of her neck, and froze, staring at the image. The image did not move. Her pulses began to race.
‘Comment? This is not a mirror!’
It was a portrait. Melusine stepped back a pace, her gaze fixed on the vision before her. She had thought it a mirror, because it was her. It had her raven locks, her pouting lips. And the fact that it was dressed in riding gear had fooled her into thinking it was her own image.
‘But it is entirely myself,’ she exclaimed aloud. Martha was quite right. Mary Remenham had passed on her every feature to the daughter whose advent had taken her from this world.
Melusine came close again, and reached up a finger tentatively to the face depicted there.
‘Maman?’
‘How touching,’ said a sarcastic voice behind her in French.
Melusine whirled.
At the door through which she had entered the room stood the so-called Monsieur Valade. He was alone, hatless and without his boots, and he held a wicked-looking French-made duelling pistol, covered in silver and gold—property no doubt, was Melusine’s fleeting thought, of the late vicomte.
‘You!’
‘Yes, it is I, mademoiselle,’ he continued in his own tongue. ‘I knew I should find you still here.’
‘Emile Gosse,’ Melusine said flatly, in the same language.
‘Valade, if you don’t mind.’
‘Pah! You can never be Valade. Gosse were you born, and Gosse will you remain to your death. Which, let me assure you, villain, will not be so far away.’
‘That,’ said Gosse, ‘is a matter of opinion. Indeed, it is rather a matter of whose death is close.’ He glanced at the portrait behind her. ‘And that object confirms me in the belief that it is not I who will shortly meet my maker.’
Melusine edged a little away from the portrait. ‘That is my mother.’
‘So I infer. A pity you did not think to tell me that part of the tale at the outset.’
‘I had never the intention to tell you anything, pig!’
Gosse moved forward a little. ‘No, for you had your own selfish plans already made, that is now seen. You wanted to play a lone hand. Eh bien, you have now the opportunity. You really are extremely stupid, Melusine.’
‘Don’t call me by name,’ she snapped. ‘You have not the right.’
‘Because I was a servant in the vicomte’s house? Things have changed. Or had you not noticed?’ He sneered. ‘You have made a serious mistake, Melusine.’
She edged sideways a little more, her eyes on the pistol in his hand. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You should have gone to Charvill.’
‘Nothing would make me do so, except to tell him how you have cheated me.’
He nodded. ‘As I said, a mistake. Too late now. Neither Charvill nor his heir know anything of your presence in England.’
‘But Gérard knows. He knows everything. That you are not Valade at all, and that I am Melusine Charvill, the granddaughter of monsieur le baron, the general.’
Gosse smiled and Melusine read triumph there. ‘But Gérard—if you mean the fellow Alderley who was making eyes at Yolande—is not here. I saw him ride away with that other fellow.’
‘You saw? Where were you? How did you see?’
‘Your heroic milice are not as clever as they thought. Easy enough to look as if one rides away. I did so.’
‘Then Gérard may come back,’ Melusine cried involuntarily on a sudden rising hope.
‘Not if I heard him aright. Shouting to his companion, even as they passed by where I hid myself, he called out that he thought to find you at the convent.’
Melusine bit her lip. Now the pig knew where to find her—for it would not take long for a Catholic to locate the convent in Golden Square—even if she escaped him here.
