‘He had no further need of them,’ Gosse said and his laugh sounded heartless to Melusine. ‘Whereas my need was very great indeed. Do not mistake me. I have proofs of many things that can endanger you. Believe me, it will be better by far that you should consent to marry me.’
‘I do not marry a man who makes me a threat like this,’ she flashed. ‘A man who is false, who steals papers, who has a plot to take another’s name, who lies to the Mother Abbess and to me, and above all this—’ her voice near to breaking ‘—one who is French.’
Gosse blinked. ‘French? But what else?’
‘I do not like Frenchmen,’ Melusine snapped. ‘Least of all, one who takes advantage of another’s misfortune. You disgust me.’
Emile’s eyes blazed. ‘I disgust you, eh? Very well, then. You may enjoy your pride, your arrogance—in a coffin.’
‘Comment? How will it serve you to kill me?’
‘I do not need to kill you. I have only to denounce you as a member of the family Valade.’
Melusine gasped. But what a monster was this Emile. He would condemn her to the vengeance of the mob all for refusing to marry him. But she did not believe he would do that. It hardly served his interests.
‘And then you will be obliged to remain in France,’ she pointed out. ‘You cannot be André Valade if you tell them I am one of this family.’
For a moment he looked daunted. Then he rallied, smiling a little. ‘Come, mademoiselle. You have not considered the advantages.’
Melusine bit her lip on a sharp retort. That would not help her. The man was dangerous. She prevaricated.
‘Alors, what advantages?’
‘But think,’ he said earnestly, moving a little closer. ‘As Madame Valade, you will be an émigré, not a nun. That is what they call these aristocratic refugees, the English. As such, you may command the sympathies of the gentry. I hear they are very much affected by the tragedies of their neighbours in France. You will join a world of fashion, a world of wealth, a life of ease.’
‘A life of ease?’ repeated Melusine. ‘When one is penniless, one does not expect a life of ease.’
‘Ah, but why remain penniless? After all, your grandfather Charvill—’
‘Again with the grandfather? Mon ami, if you imagine that this grandfather will welcome a daughter of Nicholas Charvill, whom he has never forgiven that he married a Frenchwoman, then you have an imagination entirely wrong.’
‘But it was not your fault,’ protested Gosse, shocked.
‘That is true,’ Melusine conceded. ‘Nevertheless, he will neither help me, nor will I seek his help.’
‘But if I am with you, as André Valade, as your husband, an émigré—’
‘Pah!’ Melusine spat. ‘Never. This is a plot entirely abominable, and I scorn to be part of it.’
‘Then you will die at the hands of the canaille.’
‘Better than to live at the hands of a villainous blackmailer,’ Melusine threw at him.
‘Sapristi,’ he shouted angrily. ‘Obstinate fool!’
She saw Gosse raise a hand, and dug into her nun’s habit for the knife she had not thought to need. Too late. Emile’s fist crashed into her temple and stars exploded in her vision.
When she came to, she was lying with her head in Martha’s lap, and a livid bruise was forming at the point of a raging headache.
‘The man’s gone,’ her old nurse told her, when she had recovered a little. ‘Taken the girl with him.’
‘Yolande, my maid?’
‘You don’t need a maid,’ Martha said stoutly. ‘Not where we’re going.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Back to Blaye, my girl. Can’t travel alone, a pair of nuns.’
‘Back?’ Melusine put a hand to her aching temple. ‘No, I do not go back. Never. You may go back, Marthe. But me, I am going to England.’
‘Don’t talk soft,’ begged Martha. ‘You can’t go to England. Leastways, not on your own. How will we get there, I’d like to know? We’ve no money. The rogue took everything we had.’
Melusine cursed Emile roundly, but raised a defiant head. ‘Then we will beg. We are nuns. At least, you are one, and I am disguised like one. We will beg our bread and our shelter, and our passage on a boat. But to England we will go.’
Not all the arguments Martha advanced, and they were many and varied, had the power to move Melusine. Although Martha did not know it, she had her pistol and her daggers, and her knife. More importantly, she had her wits. Vitally, she had the letter that proved her identity as a Charvill: the one her father had written to the Abbess when he sent her to the convent.
Only she hadn’t. When her shock and the headache subsided, and she remembered that she had been reading the letter when Gosse had accosted her, she looked for it in vain. It had gone with the rest.
She had not thought anything could equal her despair at that moment. Almost had Martha won out. But Melusine had overcome the weakness, calling the loss but a temporary setback. She had braved all obstacles to pursue her dream. Arrived in England, she had sought out Gosse, to keep an eye on his activities and thus keep one step ahead of him, meanwhile hoping that she might find herself another means of proof at Remenham House.
Melusine came back to the present to discover that tears were rolling down her cheeks. She had found that proof. And now the fiend Gosse had taken even that away from her. This time she was indeed beaten.
The tears flowed faster. Melusine dashed them away, but they kept on coming. Peste, where was her handkerchief? She remembered then that it had been lost in the struggle with Gerald. At the thought of the major, her tears redoubled and she was obliged to rip off a piece from the remnants of her already maltreated under-petticoats with which to blow her nose and soak the damp from her cheeks.
If only Gerald would come. Even that he was an interfering person, if he walked through that door this moment, she would fling herself at him and weep all over his chest.
Bête, she told herself fiercely. Imbecile. Idiote. What need had she of Gerald, or anyone? Yet, if he was here, would he not make some foolish game with her and make her laugh? Instead of behaving in this fashion so stupide, and crying, crying, crying.
