‘Well, let us leave your name for the present. From what do you wish to be rescued?’
The girl fluttered her eyelashes, sighed dramatically and spread her hands. ‘I escape from a fate entirely misérable, you understand.’
‘Indeed?’ Gerald said politely. ‘What is this fate?’
‘Un mariage of no distinction. My husband, he is cruel and wicked, and—and entirely undistinguished. It is very bad.’
‘Your husband?’ Gerald tutted. ‘I agree with you. That is very bad indeed. I shall be delighted to rescue you. Where is this undistinguished husband?’ Leaping to his feet he seized his sword hilt and partly withdrew it from its sheath, saying dramatically, ‘I shall kill him immediately!’
Her eyes widened, but she did not move. ‘Kill him? Oh.’ The lady’s gaze dwelled thoughtfully on the half-drawn sword and then came up to meet his, an odd look in her eyes. ‘He is not in England, you understand. I have—run away.’
‘That I do not doubt,’ Gerald muttered drily, but added in a tone of intense satisfaction, ‘Then this husband is still in France? Excellent.’ The sword was released to slide back into its scabbard. ‘In that case, he is probably already dead, and you have nothing to worry about.’
Her face fell. ‘Oh, you are making a game with me. You do not believe me.’
‘When you begin to tell the truth,’ Gerald told her severely, ‘I shall be happy to believe you.’
‘Parbleu,’ exclaimed the girl, jumping up in some dudgeon. ‘You are not sympathique in the very least.’ She raised the pistol.
‘If you shoot me,’ Gerald said quickly, throwing out a hand, ‘I shan’t be able to rescue you.’
‘I do not need the rescue from such as you. And I think I will indeed blow off your imbecile head.’
‘In that case, I ought to warn you that my friend, Captain Hilary Roding, who is even less sympathique than myself, you remember, will undoubtedly arrest you for murder.’
The lady stamped her foot. ‘Alors, now I am also a murderer. This is altogether insupportable. Take, if you please, your own pistol. Take it, I tell you. From your pocket there.’
‘What for?’ asked Gerald, half laughing, as he put his hand in his pocket and brought out his elegant pistol. ‘Now what?’
The girl’s voice was shaking, and there were, he saw now, angry tears in her eyes.
‘At me,’ she uttered, holding her own pistol high and aiming it steadily. ‘Point it at me.’
‘Like this?’
‘Parfait.’ She sniffed and swallowed. ‘I am not a murderer. The chance it is the same for both. It is no more a murder, but a duel, you understand.’
She was backing across the room, moving towards the screen. Cocking the gun. He was damned if he knew what to do. Was the girl seriously expecting him to pull the trigger? Lord, but she had courage!
‘Shoot, then,’ urged the lady. ‘And we shall see which of us is more quick.’
‘There is no need for this,’ he ventured mildly, and lifted his finger to show his own pistol was not cocked. ‘I cannot possibly shoot a lady, you know. I am far too much the gentleman.’
She halted, her pistol still held firm and straight, both hands gripping it, her expressive features at once determined and uncertain.
‘If, in truth, you are a gentleman,’ she said in a trembling tone, ‘you will move to the side that I may leave this room.’
‘And where do you propose to go?’ enquired Gerald carefully.
She lifted her shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘Where is there that I can go?’
All at once Alderley felt acutely suspicious. What was the wench at? Yet he could not maintain this stand off forever. He was by no means certain that she would not in fact attempt to blow off his head as she had threatened.
‘Very well,’ he said, lowering his own weapon. After all, Hilary must be near returned by now. Where was the harm in letting her go? She could not get far.
He moved to one side, bowing and gesturing to the door. ‘Mademoiselle.’
The lady hesitated a moment, her eyes seeming to measure the distance between where he stood and the door. He stepped back further. Slowly she released the hammer on the pistol, uncocking it, and Gerald became conscious that he had been holding his breath.
Giving him a wide berth, and keeping her pistol high, she made her way to the door and warily peered through it. A glance down the passage—to see that Roding was not lurking?—and her face came back to Gerald, triumph in her eyes.
‘Adieu, imbecile,’ she threw at him gleefully. Then she was out of the door and running, fast.
The sound of her flying feet brought Gerald leaping for the door. He was into the passage in time to see her slip into another chamber at the end. A door slammed. Racing, he reached it perhaps a moment or two later. He thought he heard a scraping sound as he turned the handle.
He flung open the door and cast a quick glance round. The place was gloomy, with its darkly panelled walls, but it was sparsely furnished. A dresser, a washstand, and a clothes press. No window.
A dressing-room then. But where in the world was the girl? A door led to another chamber beyond. Gerald tried it. Locked! He sped out to the corridor and went swiftly into the next room. Wasting no time, he crossed straight to the shutters and opened them.
Light flooded the place. It was bare of any furnishings. And empty. The young lady—if she had come in here at all—had vanished.
Chapter Two
‘Our French friends are beginning to form quite a little coterie,’ remarked Gerald, covertly studying the group gathered in an alcove at the other side of Lady Bicknacre’s ballroom.
The vast mirrored chamber, with its four little square window bays, two either side of the large raised dais that led to the French doors, was very full of company for the start of the Little Season. The clever hostess having let fall that several distinguished guests from France would be present, the world had flocked to her doors to catch, like the gossip-hungry vultures they were, a glimpse of them.
