‘Glad you’re so sanguine,’ interrupted Captain Roding. ‘Gerald had to change both shirt and breeches.’
The reference to Major Alderley’s wounds reminded Melusine all at once of the fight they’d had, and its consequence. Peste, she had forgot the sword. What was to happen now? She turned to Roding quickly.
‘You have come to me in place of Gérard? But how is it you will help me?’
‘That’s all right and tight. We’ve brought a carriage to take you back to London, and I’ve settled with Trodger, who has just given me a coherent account of the affair. You’re neither of you any longer under arrest.’
‘Ah, then indeed I thank you,’ said Melusine on a sigh of relief, moved for once to smile at the captain. ‘But my poor Jacques is wounded and—’
‘All taken care of,’ interrupted Hilary. ‘There’s a surgeon on his way, and my men are under orders to do whatever is needful. When the lad is fit to be moved, we’ll bring him home.’
Melusine blinked at this competence. ‘But—’
‘Nothing at all for you to worry your head over,’ said the captain, moving to try and usher her forth. ‘You’ll come with us and get yourself safe back home to your convent, understand?’
‘But wait,’ begged Melusine, hanging back. ‘First I must see Jacques, and—’
‘No need for that,’ intervened Roding, grasping her arm and trying to drag her to the door. ‘Come along. Where is your hat?’
‘Parbleu, is this a way to rescue me?’ Melusine demanded, digging in her heels and wrenching her arm out of his hold. ‘I have first some affairs to finish.’
‘Yes, Hilary, do stop hustling the girl,’ put in Miss Froxfield, much to Melusine’s relief and approval. Shoving between them, she confronted the captain herself. ‘For my part, I am in no hurry to end this exciting little adventure.’
‘Adventure!’
But this sally was not attended to, Lucilla turning at once to Melusine. She put back her hood in a determined way. ‘Go on up to the boy, my dear. I will hold Hilary in check, never fear.’
‘Merci.’
About to hurry from the little parlour, Melusine remembered Mrs Ibstock. She whipped round suddenly, and discovered the woman wedged into the corner by the window, keeping out of the way.
‘Ah, Madame Joan. This woman knows me—’ throwing the remark at Lucilla ‘—and that I am the daughter of Mary Remenham. It is very important because I have lost my proof. She will tell you all the story while I am gone.’
Then she whisked from the room, hearing Lucilla utter a delighted squeal as she closed the door behind her. This Joan would hold them for a little. Enough to let her find out a piece of information most urgent.
Trodger was lying in wait at the bottom of the narrow stairs. ‘Now then, missie, where do you think you’re going?’
‘I must see Jacques only for one little minute,’ Melusine told him prettily, fluttering her lashes. ‘It is to say goodbye, you understand.’
‘Is it, now? Well you won’t, then, for he won’t hear nothing, missie. Fast asleep, he is.’
Melusine spread her hands and sighed. ‘But you do not understand, mon ami. Even that he sleeps, I must give to him my thanks, for he has been excessively brave for me.’
The sergeant’s air became positively avuncular. ‘Ah, trying to be the young hero, I take it, which is why he near got hisself killed. Many’s the young ’un I’ve seen get hisself into just such a knuckleheaded mess all on account of a pretty wench.’
‘But I find it was extremely kind of him,’ protested Melusine, ‘and since it is that he is not any more under arrest—’
‘No, he ain’t,’ interrupted Trodger in some dudgeon. ‘And I don’t mind telling you it goes agin’ the grain with me to let you go free and all, missie.’
‘But I have told you that your capitaine would not like it that you arrest me.’
‘Now that’s where you’re wrong. Left to Capting Roding, as he told me hisself, you’d be in prison this moment. Only the major won’t have it, and we’ve to bide by what the major says.’
‘Merci, Gérard,’ Melusine muttered under her breath, adding aloud, ‘And the major, he will also wish that you let me go to see Jacques. Please to let me go there.’
Grudgingly, the sergeant shifted aside and allowed her access to the stairs, grumbling to her retreating back, ‘If I’d me way, missie, I’d send you back to France where you ought never to have come away from, if you arst me.’
Melusine might have responded that she had not asked him, but she was too intent on her mission. She must speak to Jack. If he was asleep, then she much regretted that she must wake him up.
In fact, Kimble was drowsily awake when she entered the little bedchamber, the state of which left a good deal to be desired, even without the added debris arising from tending a wounded man. It was dusty, with dirty clothing strewn about, a cracked basin thick with grime on the rickety dresser, and a film of grease on the leaded casement.
Melusine, intent on the luckless Kimble, did not care. At sight of his wan features, she forgot the urgency of her need for a moment, and fell to her knees at his bedside, placing her hands on his slack ones where they lay on the soiled coverlet.
‘Oh, Jacques, I cannot forgive myself!’
‘Never you fret, miss,’ he uttered at once in a faint voice. ‘Ain’t no call for you to go a-blaming of yourself.’
‘I thought you were dead,’ Melusine confided. ‘And all to help me.’
‘Not dead, miss. And I’d do it again for you if needs be.’
‘Do not say so. You are to remain here until you are well. That capitaine has arranged it all. En tout cas, I will not permit that you endanger yourself again for me.’
‘I chose to come with you, miss,’ Jack interrupted more firmly. ‘And I wouldn’t be no sort of a man if I’d heard what I heard, and gone off and left you.’
That arrested her. ‘You heard Gosse—I mean, the man you know as Valade?’
‘Clear as day, miss,’ he uttered. ‘Brung the lantern, I did, and opened the door again in case you was ready. Heard voices. Knew something was up. You were only one room removed from the library, see. Saw the villain through the keyhole. So I come round the other way and—Lordy, miss, I’m that sorry I made a mull of it.’ He shifted unguardedly, and hissed a breath, wincing.
