Mademoiselle At Arms (13 page)

He was perched on the very edge of the leather seat of the
coach, his three-cornered hat twisting nervously in his hands, and from time to
time he passed a tongue over dry lips. Gerald had been confident that the boy
would not dream of disobeying an order thrown at him by a major of militia, but
he guessed Jack might be wondering if he was about to be haled off to prison.

In fact, Gerald had given order to the coachman to drive out
of Golden Square and then stop around the corner. He had no wish to drag the
footman out of his way, once he had got his questions answered.

‘No need to shake in your boots,’ Gerald said soothingly. ‘I’m
not going to arrest you, young Jack—yet. It was Jack, wasn’t it?’

‘Aye, s-sir. K-kimble, sir,’ stammered the lad.

‘Very well, Kimble. You need only answer me truthfully and
you have nothing to fear.’

Kimble nodded. ‘Aye, sir.’

‘That’s better. How long has Miss Charvill been in England?’

‘Not long, sir. Little more’n a week.’

‘I presume you were not with her in France?’

Kimble stared. ‘Who me, sir? Lor’ no, sir. I only seen her
when she come with that Sister Martha. Thought she was a nun at first.’ He
sighed. ‘Like a vision she were.’ He flushed. ‘I—I mean, she were—’

‘Pretty as a picture?’ suggested Gerald.

‘More nor that. Looked like them statues of the Holy Mother I
see about the place.’ His colour deepened. Seeming to feel that this statement
called for explanation, he added, ‘I been working for the sisters six month,
see. Folks don’t like ’em. Nuns, I mean. But they been good to me, they have,
sir. Down on me luck, I was, and they took me in.’

‘What sort of “down on your luck”?’ asked Alderley.

The lad looked alarmed. ‘I ain’t done nothing wrong, I swear
it. Lost me place, that’s all.’ He grimaced. ‘Me and the butler didn’t see eye
to eye.’

Gerald suppressed a grin. Kimble was clearly a plain-spoken
fellow. And he did not lack courage. His initial nervousness had already
abated, and it took some valour to allow himself to become embroiled in
Melusine’s crazy schemes. Even given that he was hopelessly enamoured of the
wench, a fact which was obvious to the meanest intelligence. Gerald’s judgement
was borne out a moment later.

‘Tell me what you know of Miss Charvill?’ he ordered
severely.

Jack Kimble stiffened, looking at his interrogator with wary
anger in his face. He glanced out of the window, looked back at the major and grasped
the handle of the door.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ warned Gerald, in the voice
generally reserved for his men.

The lad hesitated. ‘You ain’t got nothing on me.’

‘On the contrary. You have been seen loitering with
suspicious intent in several places—Paddington, for instance—and I have no
doubt at all that you were party to a break-in last week at Remenham House in Kent.’

Kimble’s widening gaze told its own tale, but still he kept
his fingers on the handle of the door. ‘You can’t prove nothing.’

‘Do you care to test that theory?’ Gerald suggested easily.

Not much to his surprise, Jack Kimble shook his head. No
doubt he knew enough of his world to recognise that he stood little chance
against the word of a major of militia. Looking sullen, he released the handle
and sat back.

‘Very wise,’ commented Gerald. ‘Now let’s have it. Miss
Charvill.’

‘You can arrest me,’ answered Kimble belligerently, ‘but you
can’t make me say nothing about her. Wild horses wouldn’t drag it out of me,
even I knew anything, which I don’t.’

Amusement flickered in Gerald’s breast. ‘My dear boy, your
loyalty is misplaced. I mean Miss Charvill no harm. On the contrary.’

‘How do I know that?’ demanded Jack.

‘I should have thought it was obvious. By rights I ought to
have arrested her days ago. But I have not done so, and will not. I have
discovered something of her background. I know who she is, and I know that she
has been cheated somehow by the people calling themselves Valade.’

Kimble chewed his lip, but his hostility was visibly
lessening. ‘Seems to me like you know just about as much as me.’

He had abandoned the “sir”, Gerald noted, realising that the
footman’s respect for him had dropped sharply.

‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But then again, possibly not. I have
not found the secret way into the house, for instance.’

Jack gasped. ‘You know about that?’

‘It was the only possible deduction. Now tell me, if you can,
something about the man who calls himself Valade.’

‘The Frenchie? I only knows as how Miss says he will ruin
everything. She calls him a pig, and she says he ain’t Valade. But I swear she
ain’t told me nothing more, sir.’

Authority had won again, Gerald thought with satisfaction. But
it looked as if the boy was not going to be of much use. He tried again.

‘Do you at least know how he came to be in a position to
cheat Miss Charvill, and to pass off his wife in her place?’

‘In her place?’ There was no mistaking the boy’s ignorance of
this part of the tale. ‘You mean that his missus is pretending to be my
mistress? Lord-a-mercy!’

‘Precisely. And I have no doubt at all that there is a great
deal of money in the case. Which, if we are not all of us very careful indeed,
will be stolen from Miss Charvill.’

Jack Kimble took a deep breath. ‘I knowed he were a wrong ’un,
but that.’ He clenched his fists and grew red in the face. ‘Well, sir, if I’ve
to choose betwixt him and you, I’ll take you, no question.’

‘I thank you,’ Gerald said drily. ‘Would that your mistress
were as trusting.’

‘Aye, but she don’t reckon to militiamen. Thinks they’re the
same as soldiers. Seems as she don’t trust soldiers easy.’

‘That was hardly the impression I got,’ Gerald murmured,
remembering Melusine’s attitude to Leonardo.

‘Sir?’ enquired the lad.

‘Nothing. Listen, Jack. If you can tell me nothing I don’t
already know, so be it. Only promise me this. If Miss Charvill should take it
into her head to dash off on some foolish errand, go with her by all means. In
fact, I order you to do so. But send me word. Do you understand?’

‘Aye, sir. But—but how?’

‘Can you write?’ Gerald asked, digging into one of his
capacious pockets and bringing out a leather ring purse.

‘Only me name,’ Kimble said apologetically.

‘Very well, never mind.’ He opened the purse and extracted a
couple of guineas. ‘I’ll send one of my men to see you here this very evening.’
He added, as alarm spread over the lad’s face, ‘Don’t concern yourself. He won’t
be in uniform. He’ll appoint a meeting place with you and be ready at any time
to bring a message to me.’ Handing over the guineas, he added, ‘For you.’

An expression of livid fury contorted the young man’s face
and he thrust the coins back at the major. ‘I don’t want no gold! Not for
serving my mistress.’

Gerald raised his brows. ‘I can see why you lost your place,
young Kimble. Pity you aren’t under my command. We’d soon cool that temper of
yours.’ He paused for the effect of his words to sink in, and then added, ‘Don’t
be so ready to show hackle. The guineas are not for serving your mistress. They
are for serving me. Are you satisfied?’

Grudgingly, Jack Kimble took back the coins. Had he but known
it, his outburst had done him no harm in the major’s eyes. He might not condone
it, but the feelings that had prompted it augured well for Melusine’s safety.

Having accomplished his intent, Gerald let the lad go and had
himself driven back to Stratton Street. He had barely settled at his desk in
his library, when he was disturbed by two morning callers. Captain Hilary
Roding and his inamorata, Miss Lucilla Froxfield.

‘Nothing would do for her but to come here,’ grumbled Hilary,
wiping his heated brow with a pocket handkerchief dragged from his immaculate
white uniform breeches.

‘Naturally I had to come,’ confirmed the lively blonde, her
eyes twinkling up at Alderley. ‘Gerald, what have you been about? Dorothée
tells me that you were flirting outrageously with Madame Valade on Monday
night.’

‘And who, may I ask, is Dorothée?’ asked Gerald.

‘Don’t try to turn it off,’ ordered Miss Froxfield. ‘You know
perfectly well that she is the daughter of the Comtesse de St Erme.’

‘It’s no use blaming me, Gerald,’ uttered Roding, shrugging
helplessly as his senior turned questioning eyes on him. ‘I told her you couldn’t
have been flirting, but she wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Do you take me for a fool, Hilary?’ demanded his betrothed. ‘I
know just what he was doing. For heaven’s sake, give him some Madeira or
something, Gerald! Anything to calm him down.’

Alderley grinned as his incensed friend refuted the
suggestion that he was in need of a pacifier, and moved to the tray which his
butler had just a short time past brought into the room and laid on the desk.

‘Something for you, Lucy?’ he asked, interrupting a heated
argument that had obviously been in progress for some little time before their
arrival.

‘I’ll take wine,’ the lady said briefly, turning back
instantly to Hilary. ‘It is of no use to try to stop me. I know very well
Gerald has been fishing for information about that girl, and I am determined to
find out what he knows.’

‘Why the devil should you be interested, I should like to
know?’ rejoined Roding.

‘Because I’m a female,’ declared Lucilla unanswerably. With a
swirl of her floral chintz petticoats, she placed herself in the capacious window
seat, accepted the glass Gerald handed to her, and smiled mischievously up at
him. ‘Now then, Gerald, out with it.’

He took his seat next to her, waving the fulminating captain
towards the tray. ‘Help yourself, Hilary.’

‘I’ve a good mind to leave the pair of you to it and take
myself off,’ threatened his junior, marching across the room and snatching up a
decanter.

‘Don’t be silly. You cannot possibly leave me here alone with
Gerald. Only think how compromising.’

‘Lord, yes,’ agreed Gerald, in mock horror. ‘Don’t put me at
the necessity of marrying the abominable little wretch.’

‘You traitor, Gerald,’ laughed Lucilla, her yellow curls
bouncing under a huge straw bonnet all over flowers. ‘For that I shall
certainly not leave until you have told me every tiny detail.’

‘I don’t know that there is so much to tell.’

‘Aha, you have found something out. I knew it.’

‘Gammon!’ burst from the captain, who had just tossed off a
glass of Madeira. ‘How could you possibly know it?’

‘I know it,’ Lucilla told him frostily, ‘because Dorothée
told me that Madame Valade went off with Gerald positively purring in her ear—which
is a thing he never does—and came back with him looking like the cat after
cream. Gerald, I mean, not Madame Valade. She looked, Dorothée said, just as
she always looks. Like a trollop in heat.’

‘
Lucilla
,’ gasped Hilary, his cheeks reddening with
wrath.

‘Well she does,’ insisted Miss Froxfield impenitently, and
turned to Gerald. ‘Doesn’t she, Gerald?’

Gerald held up his hands. ‘Don’t involve me in your lover’s
tiff.’

Lucilla let out a peal of laughter. ‘Lover’s tiff indeed.’ She
threw a melting look at Roding. ‘Poor Hilary. I’m behaving shockingly, I know. Never
mind. There is only Gerald to see me, after all.’

‘That has put “only Gerald” very firmly in his place,’
mourned Gerald. ‘I wonder why the females of my acquaintance have absolutely no
respect whatsoever for male authority?’

‘Ha!’ came from Hilary. ‘Seen her again, have you? Well, if
she’s been giving you as much saucy impudence as I’ve had to contend with, I
can only say I’m glad of it.’

‘Then you will not be disappointed. I have been insulted, and
cursed at, and threatened with both pistol and dagger. I am apparently a beast,
a pig and an imbecile, too, if memory serves me.’

Lucilla burst into laughter and clapped her hands. ‘Oh,
famous. How I wish I might meet this delightful mystery lady of yours.’

‘She is no longer a mystery,’ Gerald said.

‘What?’ Roding snapped, coming quickly to tower above the
window seat. ‘You’ve found her out?’

‘Tell us at once,’ urged Miss Froxfield.

‘Give me an opportunity to open my mouth, and I will.’

‘Sit down, Hilary,’ ordered Lucilla, and to Gerald’s
amusement, her betrothed did so, perching on the desk close by and staring
fixedly at the major.

‘Her name is Melusine Charvill,’ Gerald began.

‘Charvill?’ uttered Roding frowningly. ‘You mean—’

‘Hilary!’ Lucy turned excited eyes back to Alderley. ‘Go on,
Gerald.’

‘Miss Melusine Charvill,’ he repeated, ‘is a convent-bred
genteel girl, who is in all probability the granddaughter of General Lord
Charvill.’

‘
What
? But—’