Jane Feather - Charade

by Unknown

  of compromise, I think, but we understand each other now?"

  "I understand that I am wedded to a lifetime of headaches and anxiety and that the woman in my bed

  will be the mother of my children only when she choosesand belongs only to herself and accepts no jurisdiction but her own. I am mad to accept it and even more so for liking it. I just beg that you will

  keep my hag-ridden existence a secret from Society."

  "You are not hag-ridden!"

  "Am I not?" His eyebrows shot up. "And by a nineteen-year-old-chit to add insult to injury."

  Danny squirmed from beneath the sheets with an agile twist and flung herself against him, bearing him down onto the bed in helpless laughter. As they tumbled together, Justin, mindful of her bruises and delicate condition, found himself at a considerable disadvantage.

  "Vagabond!" He managed to catch her hands eventually and yanked her arms above her head, scissoring her legs between his own. "Yield, you impossible wretch."

  "I yield." Her body became soft beneath him; the brown eyes glowed an invitation.

  It was an invitation Justin ached to accept, and he shook his head with the greatest reluctance. "My love, you are not in a fit condition."

  Danielle pulled a face, comical in its disgusted resignation. "No, I suppose I am not. You will not, however, expect me to restrain myself for more than one more day." Suddenly serious, she took his hand and pressed it to her belly. "Perhaps you cannot feel it yet, but our child is awake, my love. I think he is going to be in much mischief when he feels his feet."

  "That would not surprise me in the least," Justin murmured, "since you will be guiding his steps."

  She smiled and lay back on the bed. "It is a son, Justin."

  "How can you know that?" Lying beside her he began to stroke her body in a long languid caress, carefully circumventing the bruises on her legs and arms.

  "I know it." She smiled softly. "Women's witchcraft, husband."

  * * *

  On the night of June 21, 1791, Dr. Stuart was aroused from his bed by a sleepy manservant. His presence was required immediately in Grosvenor Square and the Linton chaise waited at the door. He dressed hastily but still careful of the folds of his cravat, the set of his coat. One did not assist at the accouchement of a countess in slovenly fashion, however inconvenient the hour; and babies were notoriously inconsiderate when it came to night and day. Hat correctly in place, bag of instruments in hand, the court physician entered the chaise with a calm disregard for the coachman's impatience. First babies were never in a hurry to enter the world.

  Bedford stood in the open doorway, the lights of the hall throwing his figure into sharp relief as the carriage drew up. He was dressed as usual in dark cloth, not a fold or hair out of place, but there was both anxiety and excitement on his face. It was three o'clock in the morning and the entire household appeared to be up and about. Housemaids in dressing gowns popped up from behind pillars and in the corridors; Peter Haversham in shirt and britches paced the hall; knots of footmen tried to look as if they had some work to attend to at this ungodly hour and Bedford, in his wisdom, made no attempt to send them about their business. A child would soon be born and while Lady Danny labored an anxious household kept watch and waited.

  Stuart followed Bedford upstairs. No cries of agony reached him as he walked along the corridor to My Lady's bedchamber where the butler discreetly withdrew, leaving him to make his own entrance. As he did so a voice said distinctly, "Mon Dieu! C'est abominable. Give me your hand, Justin."

  "You have it already, my love." The calm unmistakable voice of the Earl of Linton reached the doctor who stood blinking bemusedly at this unusually orderly scene.

  "You do not mind that I hurt you . .. Jesu!" A gasp of pained protest drowned whatever else Danielle had been about to say as she used her husband's hand, disdaining the knotted bedsheet hanging ready from the bedpost to transfer some of the convulsive pain of this process of birthing.

  "My lord, here is more lavender water." Molly handed Linton a fresh cloth and he nodded, ignoring the scrunching of his knuckles as he bathed the sweat-drenched brow on the pillow.

  The physician looked around for a moment. The room was brightly lit, kettles of boiling water steamed beside the fire. His patient was attended by the Countess of March, brisk in an enormous white apron,

  the maidservant, and most extraordinarily by her husband. Husbands, in Stuart's extensive experience, never appeared in the birthing room.

  "Ah, Doctor." Lady Lavinia turned to him. "The child appears to be in the birth canal, but there has been no progress for the last fifteen minutes."

  Stuart scrubbed his hands vigorously in the bowl Molly held for him and nodded his comprehension. Women giving birth for the first time rarely knew what to do.

  "I think that the next time I shall scream," Danielle said prosaically. "But you must not worry if I do."

  The physician exchanged an astonished look with Lady Lavinia but the scream never came, only a

  stream of French that only Justin understood, fortunately for the delicate sensibilities of their companions.

  Stuart made his own examination and his own decision. This woman was not one of his usual patients, out of her head with pain and embarrassment at her predicament. "My lady, you must push the child

  into the world now. It needs your help."

  "Only tell me how," she gasped.

  "Your body will tell you if you listen." It was the only answer he was able to give, never having gone through this himself. But having witnessed countless births he knew that some women were able to give spontaneous birth whilst others with no explainable physical difference were not. The more practice they had, of course, the better they became. This child was headfirst and its mother well in control and it would be a pity to have recourse to the shining instruments in his bag. They left marks on the child and tore the mother.

  Danielle paused and let the pain have its way and then realized that this was not pain. What had happened before deserved no other name, but what she was experiencing now was a powerful physical demand, one that if she obeyed it produced no agony, only satisfaction. Her body, freed from the constraints of

  her mind, reacted automatically. As it contracted, she pushed, feeling the child make the long progress into life. There was a moment when Justin gasped—the moment when a sleek head appeared between her thighs and Stuart took over with smooth efficiency.

  Nicholas, Viscount Beresford, catapulted into the world with a loud yell of protest, sound of wind and limb, to be held by his father while the cord was cut and tied and his great-grandmother wept freely and his mother demanded that her son be given to her this instant. Justin laid the blood-streaked scrap against her breast without attempting to control his own tears of joy, before taking the physician downstairs and informing the hovering household that his son and heir was healthy, Her Ladyship well, and anyone who wished to toast the baby's head should do so in the best champagne.

  The lights blazed in Grosvenor Square that night and the champagne flowed. Danielle examined her son, counted his fingers and toes, and gave him her breast. The child sucked greedily. When Linton eventually came back to the bedroom, intending to kiss his wife good night and disappear next door, she clung to

  him and said she was cold and needed him beside her. He put little Nicholas into the crib beside the bed and, ignoring all convention, climbed in to hold Danielle throughout the remainder of the night.

  Chapter 19

  On the night that the infant Viscount Beresford burst vociferously into the world, the seeds of tragedy were being watered in a small French town some ten miles from Verdun. The town bore the same name as the woman laboring in the peace of Grosvenor Square in a country where civil strife had been done with over a hundred years ago.

  In the town of Varennes the tocsin pealed on the night of June 21, rousing the citizens and neighboring peasantry. They flocked in their thousands to bar the entrances to the town, to gape at
and to secure the hapless family of Bourbons held in a room over an epicene belonging to one Monsieur Sauce, the procureur of the commune who, in the absence of the mayor, had exercised his authority to halt the travelers in their four-horsed berline and to demand their passports.

  The royal flight from the Tuileries had been planned with meticulous care over many months and only

  a chapter of accidents for which no one person was to blame resulted in its sorry conclusion.

  During the winter and spring of Danielle's tempestuous pregnancy, the Comte de St. Estephe became

  one of Marie Antoinette's closest confidants. After the return from their summer holiday in St. Cloud

  the previous October, the royal family had been made increasingly aware of the true nature of their imprisonment in the gloom of the Tuileries. The king reluctantly agreed to the secularization of the clergy but continued to practice his religion in the orthodox manner, refusing to acknowledge the bishops and parish cures who had taken the oath of allegiance to the constitution. In Louis's opinion they were mere minions of the state who had abjured papal authority and as such had no authority to hear the king's confession or to offer communion. The tide of public feeling ran high against a king who was not strong enough to refuse to accede to a measure he loathed and too stubborn to pretend that it had his personal approval.

  Marie Antoinette, no longer the child who played shepherdess in the Petit Trianon while the people starved, finally accepted that the monarchy could never regain its popularity; they were prisoners of the people's whim and their only course was to break the chains. She busied herself with plans for flight—a flight that would take them under the protective umbrella of her family; a flight that would follow the path of so many aristocratic emigres to Coblenz and the Austrian court. From there they would march on France, quell the revolution, and restore the Bourbons to an undisputed throne.

  St. Estephe listened to the elaborate plans, ran messages for his queen, heard her secrets while he planted the spies amongst the maidservants and flunkeys, and reported back faithfully to the revolutionary committee. And aU the while he contemplated the abduction and eventual submission of the Countess of Lin ton. He learned much from the Chevalier D'Evron on his visits to Paris—information that made sense of that lady's extraordinary behavior during her stay at the Tuileries. An unsuspecting D'Evron, thankful only to find a self-styled friend of the Lin tons who abhorred the possibility of blood and terror in his native land, spoke freely. St. Estephe hugged his excitement; she would not be easy to break if all the chevalier said was true, but his pleasure would be all the greater.

  On the day that Danielle fought for the life and sanity of Brigitte Roberts, the chevalier, in the company

  of St. Estephe, witnessed Dagger Day. A mob, incited by a rumor that the royal family were intending to flee Paris by an underground corridor from the Tuileries to the prison at Vincennes, marched on the donjon at Vincennes. Nobles flocked to the Tuileries, armed to defend their king, and rumor was seen as confirmed. As far as the mob was concerned, their king had made an abortive attempt at flight and nothing could change that impression. He was no longer to be trusted as a supporter of the new regime and could be classified with the traitorous aristos who made up the emigre court at Coblenz—rich, dissipated, and riddled with plots to summon foreign powers to their side and put down the insurrection

  in their country.

  From that moment the king's fate was sealed. Two months later, St. Estephe stood in the inner court of the Tuileries palace watching as Louis XVI's attempt to take his family early for the traditional summer holiday at St. Cloud was aborted by a riotous crowd, yelling protest as they surrounded the coach, ignoring the harangues of the king's generals and advisers, ignoring the king himself as, for two hours, he attempted to persuade them that flight had been far from his mind. What had been on his mind was that in the seclusion of St. Cloud he would be able to celebrate Easter under the auspices of a non-juror priest and the public would be none the wiser. Instead, the people of Paris had seen only treachery. Eventually the royal family was forced to return to their rooms in the Tuileries.

  St. Estephe slipped from the courtyard. There was no longer any doubt but that the king and queen of France were prisoners; the last shreds of pretense had been torn away by the events of this day. Knowing Marie Antoinette as he now did, the comte was in no doubt that she would work to perfect her plans for escape, sure in the knowledge that there was no alternative.

  The plan would fail, St. Estephe decided, and he would do his part in ensuring that it did. And when it failed his own path would be clear. There would be no further need for duplicity— courting the queen, listening in patient attention to the complaints, the elaborate plans, reporting in secret to the committee. The reign of the Bourbons would be over and the sovereignty of the people absolute. At that point he would cast in his lot with the power-makers, consolidate his position, and find an official reason to visit London. He would offer his services to the chevalier and the Countess of Linton and by so doing achieve a double purpose—the trust of the young countess and valuable information for his government.

  Nearly two months later the flight took place. St. Estephe, to his fury, was left at the starting gate. He

  had thought he was in the queen's total confidence but realized that he had merely been used as a useful subject on the far outskirts of the coterie.

  The fact that he had not known the details or the timing of the escape plan would not increase his status with the committee.

  The plan was elaborate, circumventing the care of the Paris commune, alerted through St. Estephe via one of the queen's maids that an attempt at escape was imminent. The mayor of Paris and the commandant of the palace guard were spending the night of June 20 in the Tuileries. Guards were posted throughout, but in the southeast corner of the palace there was one door left unwatched. It led directly by an unlighted passage to the royal apartments. The children, Madame Royale, and the dauphin, who was disguised as a girl, made their escape first. The king, dressed in gray coat and wig, impersonating a valet, followed some forty-five minutes later from the Petit Carousel at the north end of the Tuileries. At midnight, the queen appeared, dressed as a governess, and the journey began.

  Twenty-four hours later it ended in ignominy at Varennes. The royal family were turned back and returned to Paris under escort, the third time in two years that Louis had been brought back as a prisoner to his capital.

  The course of the revolution was finally set. Danielle, playing with her month-old baby on a rug beneath

  a spreading beach tree at Danesbury, heard D'Evron's account of the declaration of martial law—the massacre of the Champs de Mars when defenseless civilians were fired upon for no apparent reason by cavalry, artillery, and infantry, and the subsequent denunciations, arrests, and imprisonments in the name of public safety Paris was now a panic-stricken city of hard faced, rebellious people who had lost all faith in their king and all trust in a National Assembly that could decree martial law and murder the people.

  The word "Republic" was on everyone's lips. The stage was set for the rule of the mob and the Reign

  of Terror.

  "It is beginning then," Danielle said, absently tickling little Nicholas with a long stalk of grass. "The mob

  is a fearsome many-headed hydra when aroused. We shall have much work to do soon, chevalier." She frowned, biting her lower lip. "Our own kind will begin to flee in droves. There will be no safety for them when the people declare a republic."

  "They have not done so yet, Danny," Linton reminded her.

  There was something about that frown that made him distinctly uneasy.

  "No, but they will," she said with quiet conviction. "It is only a matter of time. If it could be established without blood, a republic would be for the best, I think. The people have suffered too long under the ancien regime, but it will not happen peacefully and much as I despise many of my own kind, I cannot

  sit
by and watch their slaughter."

  Linton sighed. "You are not, I hope, proposing to visit Paris yourself and halt the progress of this horror with your little finger? Not that I don't think you could do it," he added with a grin. "The mere sight of you would turn Robespierre into a purring kitten."

  The chevalier chuckled, but Danielle said somberly, "I do not consider it a laughing matter. You forget, perhaps, what I have seen."

  The warm summer afternoon seemed to take on a chill and even the peaceful droning of the honey bees seemed to pause. The baby's face crumpled and he let out a loud wail. "Ah, tu as laim, mon petit." Danielle lifted him up and rose to her feet. "I must feed him at once." She hurried across the lawn toward the mellow, timbered Elizabethan house, soothing the child's wails with promises of imminent satisfaction.

  Justin watched her, smiling slightly. His son never had the opportunity to exercise his lungs since the smallest expression of need was instantly answered. As a result, the little viscount was plump and sunny tempered in his solipsistic world. But since he was rarely out of his mother's arms, Justin strongly suspected that they were in for trouble when they returned to London and Danielle found it impossible