A Desperate Fortune

by Susanna Kearsley

  “I have.”

  The other woman looked at Mary as though trying to imagine what that would be like, to spend one’s whole life in one place.

  On the table between them the cards from last evening’s play still lay untidily stacked. Mistress Jamieson set down her cup and gathered all the cards into her two hands, at first seeming only to want to align them, but then as though the feel of them within her fingers altered her intent, she loosely shuffled them and turned the top one over to reveal the knave of hearts. Her mouth curved faintly in a private smile before she turned the card again and slipped it in among the rest. “Have you no wish to travel?” she asked Mary.

  “Very much the opposite. I wish it more than anything, but women cannot up and see the world when we so choose. That is,” she stammered as she realized that the other woman had just come some distance on her own, “I mean—”

  “No, you are right in that,” said Mistress Jamieson. “And I was told so bluntly as a child—a woman cannot travel with the freedom of a man. The road does rarely welcome us, preferring we should stay at home, but I have found the remedy is simply then to move my home itself to other places, and so gain a different view.”

  Mary, feeling happy to have found some bit of common ground to stand upon, remarked, “I am now in the midst of doing so myself.”

  “Oh, yes?” The other woman’s eyebrows arched a fraction, as once more she drew the knave of hearts from deep within the pack of cards and put him back again and shuffled all, not seeing Mary’s nod.

  “Yes. My brother, whom I have not seen for many years, did come to fetch me home. We only stayed our journey here last night because we were delayed upon the road and it became too dark to travel, and my brother is acquainted with Sir Redmond, who was kind enough to take us in. But later on this day I’ll have a different view, as you do say, from quite a different window.” She was trying to sound confident, but some of her uncertainty must have yet wavered in her tone, or so she guessed from watching Mistress Jamieson look up with eyes that seemed to take her measure.

  “Do you travel far this day?” the Scottish woman asked.

  “Not far. My brother lives at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.”

  The lovely eyebrows arched again. “At Saint-Germain?”

  “Yes. Do you know it?”

  This time when she drew the knave of hearts she seemed to do so without paying any heed to it, as though her mind were otherwise diverted. Without answering the question, Mistress Jamieson said lightly, “It is not a place for keeping private thoughts.” And then, on noticing that Mary did not seem to understand, she gave a nod towards the journal lying open on the table. “You will have to guard that well, for Saint-Germain is full of prying eyes and those who love exposing secrets.” But she smoothed the warning with the kindness of her tone, and asked, “And will you go no further in your travels?”

  Mary gave a tiny shrug. “I am dependent on my brother and must wait for his indulgence, naturally, but someday I should like to go to Paris.” She’d have felt a fool to say aloud the reason why; to lay her childish fantasies and dreams before this woman, so she aimed instead for something like sophistication. “I am told the men there are the handsomest in all of France, and very gallant.”

  Mistress Jamieson looked down and traced the corner of the card she held, the knave. “Aye, there are handsome men in Paris.” For a moment it appeared the other woman’s thoughts had drifted far afield, before they were summarily recalled. Laying the knave faceup on the table, she set down the other cards and reached for her forgotten tea. “And men of wit and learning, which are also handsome qualities.”

  Mary tried to match the grace with which the Scottish woman held her teacup, as she said, “I fear I have no qualities that would impress a man of wit and learning, so I must make do with one who has a handsome face.” She’d said it brightly, all in jest, but in the pause that followed, Mistress Jamieson appeared to be considering the matter.

  Straightening the edges of the stack of cards she turned the top one over to reveal the ace of hearts, and set it on the table with the waiting knave so that the two were touching one another with their edges overlapped. She said to Mary, “Any man deserving of your notice will need nothing to impress him but that you should be yourself, and any man deserving of your love will see you as you truly are, and love you notwithstanding.”

  Such advice, thought Mary, must be spoken from experience. The only ring the other woman wore was on her right hand, not her left—a ring of gold wrought in a curious design of two hands clasping a crowned heart, and looking nothing like the wedding ring her own aunt wore, but Mary could not keep herself from asking, “Are you married, Mistress Jamieson?”

  Again, as when she’d given Lady Everard her name, there was the faintest pause, too brief to be much noticed but enough time to arrange her thoughts. She raised her cup to drink. “And if I were, I should not own it.”

  “Why is that?”

  Above the teacup’s rim the level gaze seemed to assess Mary’s intelligence. “Come now. You overheard me speaking to Sir Redmond, and you clearly are no fool, so then you know what I am doing.”

  Mary flushed a bit to be reminded of her accidental indiscretion, but she answered just as plainly. “Yes.”

  “Well, then. Had I a husband whom I loved, that love alone would lead me to deny him, lest my actions bring him also into danger.”

  Mary, frowning just a little, said, “But if you had a husband…”

  “Yes?”

  “Forgive me, but if you did have a husband and if he loved you, how could he then permit that you would put yourself in danger?”

  Another pause, and then a shrug. “My mother likes to say some people choose the path of danger on their own, for it is how the Lord did make them, and they never will be changed.” Emptying the settled tea leaves from her cup into the common slop bowl, Mistress Jamieson continued, “If I had a husband, and if he loved me, then he would understand my nature and not think that he could sway me by withholding his permission, for he’d know I cannot stay beside the hearth and tend my needlework when those I love risk more in their adventures.”

  At that moment Mary felt convinced that Mistress Jamieson was all at once the bravest and most fascinating woman she had ever met, and emptying her teacup in her turn she reached to take her pen in hand and started searching through the lines she had last written in her journal for the places where she’d mentioned Mistress Jamieson by name, and with a new respect for secrecy began to strike them out so as to leave no written record that could carelessly incriminate this woman she admired.

  Mistress Jamieson, observing her, remarked, “There is a better way to guard your secrets, when you write. Would you like me to show you?”

  “If you speak of ciphers,” Mary said, “you need not waste your time, for I am sure I never could remember anything so complicated.”

  “He never rode that never fell,” the other woman answered, but since Mary had not ever heard that proverb she was unsure what it meant till Mistress Jamieson translated it more simply: “Nothing venture, nothing have. Come, take a clean page from your journal—tear it out, for you must keep it loose—and we’ll devise a cipher. Is there tea left in the pot?”

  “Yes, I believe so.” Mary rose in what she hoped was a fair imitation of the other’s competence and grace. “Shall I pour?”

  The cipher proved to be a simple thing for her to master after all. She had converted her own name and Frisque’s to numerals by the time Sir Redmond’s wife returned to keep them company, at which time Mary closed her journal altogether with the ciphered sheet set at the place where she’d been writing, laying it aside as Lady Everard went over to inspect the little linnet in its cage.

  “Will not you sing for us this morning?” Lady Everard addressed the bird, and tapped a finger lightly on the bars. “You’ve had your breakfast, give us payment. D
on’t be selfish.”

  Mary said, “Perhaps he’s sad.”

  The older woman clucked her tongue. “What reason has he to be sad? He’s warm and fed and fussed over.”

  “But you have set his cage beside the window,” Mary pointed out, “where he may see the wider sky, and any bird on seeing that would want to try his wings in it.”

  “He’d freeze were he to try his wings out there this morning.” Lady Everard turned from the linnet’s cage and settled in a nearby armchair and remarked, “You do that very neatly, Mistress Jamieson. I can no more play at cards than I can shuffle them, though dear Mr. O’Connor has been trying to instruct me in the simpler games.”

  The Scottish woman, who had once again been idly shuffling through the pack of cards and drawing out the knave from time to time, stopped the repeating motion, looking up to ask, “Mr. O’Connor? You’ll forgive me, I’m acquainted with some members of that family, and I wonder…”

  “Do you know him, then?” Sir Redmond’s wife looked pleased. “He comes with Colonel Brett quite often here to visit with us. Mr. Martin O’Connor, of the Mine Adventurers Company.”

  Mary, who was watching Mistress Jamieson, saw something that looked strangely like relief and disappointment intermingled cross the other woman’s features as she answered, “Ah. Then no, I do not know him.”

  “He’s a very charming gentleman,” Sir Redmond’s wife continued. “Very charming, though my husband has his doubts about his teaching me to play at cards.” She turned a little to address her husband who was entering the drawing room. “Is that not right, dear?”

  “Oh yes, very likely,” he indulged her, though he could have hardly known what she was referencing, a fact they both acknowledged with a shared smile of affection.

  “I was saying,” she informed him, “that you had your doubts about Mr. O’Connor teaching me to play at cards.”

  Her husband nodded. “Most emphatic doubts. O’Connor is an unrepentant sharper, and I fear he’ll teach you all his means of cheating.”

  “Mistress Jamieson, although she does not know him, is acquainted with some others of that name.”

  “They are more honest men, I hope?” Sir Redmond asked the Scottish woman, jokingly.

  “I fear,” said Mistress Jamieson, “the unrepentant sharpers do outnumber honest men within that family.” Setting down the pack of cards, she stood and shook her skirts to smooth them, startling Frisque who leaped to stand alert himself, tail wagging with anticipation. “Do you have the letter, then, for Mrs. Farrand?”

  “Yes, I have it here.” He made to hand it to her, but his wife delayed him.

  “But you’ll not be leaving yet so soon?” she asked the Scottish woman. “You must stay to dinner.” Turning to her husband, she said, “Darling, do persuade her she must stay to dinner.”

  Any effort he could have put forward to persuade her was cut short by the distinctive sound of horses’ hooves outside and wheels that crunched and squeaked upon the snow, and looking through the window nearest to her Mary saw a covered carriage with a driver sitting huddled in his cloak upon his box, his hat drawn low upon his forehead as he turned the mismatched team of horses—one a chestnut, one a bay—to smoothly halt before the house. A man, no doubt Sir Redmond’s groom, came briskly out to greet him, and the two spoke briefly before the groom turned again and headed round the house.

  Lady Everard peered out as well, with interest. “What now?” she asked her husband. “Who is this? Are you expecting someone?”

  “No, not I. But here comes Evans now, to tell us,” said Sir Redmond, as the tramping of the groom’s boots could be heard approaching from the rear part of the house. “What, Evans, who is come?”

  The groom, ignoring Frisque’s excited sniffing at his boots, touched his forehead respectfully. “Beg pardon, Sir Redmond, my lady,” he said, and looked to Mistress Jamieson. “It is your driver, madam, come from Paris. He desires me to remind you that the morning is a cold one and he asks you would you very kindly hurry.”

  Mistress Jamieson, who during this had also looked out through the window, turned her head to show the same small, private smile she’d given when she’d found the knave of hearts within the pack of cards. “I do suspect he said it rather less politely.”

  “Yes, madam,” the groom replied.

  Sir Redmond’s wife stared in open surprise at the form of the driver outside. “He is insolent.”

  Smiling still, Mistress Jamieson told her, “Aye, frequently.”

  Taking the letter Sir Redmond held out to her, she took her leave of them, wishing them all a good day, and on seeing that Frisque had begun a small circling dance on the floorboards, observed, “Your dog needs to be taken outdoors, Mistress Dundas. Come, wrap yourself well and walk out with me.”

  Mary wished her own cloak was as elegantly cut as Mistress Jamieson’s, and had a fur-lined hood. Outside, the air was so intensely cold it burned her lungs when she drew breath, then turned that breath to steam when she exhaled.

  Beside her, Mistress Jamieson stepped lightly in the snow as though accustomed to the cold. “You said your brother came to fetch you home. Where were you previously?”

  “With my uncle and my aunt, who raised me.” It was difficult to speak in such a cold wind.

  “I have always lived in other people’s houses,” said the Scottish woman. “As an education, I do highly recommend it. But,” she added, “you were right about the linnet, Mistress Dundas. Some things weren’t meant to live in cages.” They were halfway to the carriage now. She stopped and turned to Mary. “And the sky is very wide.” Her smile was warm. “I hope you get to try your wings in it.”

  With all her being Mary wished she could have found an eloquent reply, because it seemed to her that such a rare and memorable encounter should be marked with words less commonplace than “Thank you” and “I hope you have a pleasant journey.” But the better words, as always, were eluding her.

  And Mistress Jamieson seemed not to mind. “And you,” she said. “A safe trip home.” And giving one last pat to Frisque she turned and walked away.

  The driver had dismounted and was standing by the carriage door, and Mary could now see he was a tall man and broad shouldered in his snow-flecked cloak and polished boots, for all he stood there hunched against the cold. He raised his head as Mistress Jamieson approached, and Mary saw his face was handsome, made more handsome when he grinned.

  He spoke, and though she stood too far from them to be completely certain she had heard his words correctly, she’d have sworn that in a deeply pleasant Irish voice he’d told the Scottish woman, “See now, this is why I cannot leave you anywhere. You never will sit still.”

  And Mistress Jamieson said something in return that Mary could not hear at all because the other woman’s back was to her, but the driver laughed aloud and offered Mistress Jamieson his hand and helped her climb into the carriage with a solid sort of masculine protectiveness that set off a strange longing within Mary that she might, at least once in her own life, have a man who took such care of her.

  But it was what she witnessed next that she marked most, for in the moment just before the driver swung the carriage door closed, Mistress Jamieson reached up from where she sat inside and took his darkly handsome face in both her hands and kissed him, and the golden ring upon her right hand briefly caught the light as he returned the kiss but swiftly, so that any who were watching from the house would have seen nothing but a driver taking care to see his passenger was safely seated.

  Then he closed the carriage door and turned and tipped his hat to Mary, climbing once more to his box and taking up the reins to turn the horses back the way they’d come, along the road that Mary knew would lead at length across the bridge and over the horizon, into Paris.

  She stood and watched the carriage out of sight, and stood there longer with her feet cold in the snow until
the dancing rhythm of the horses’ hooves had ceased to echo in the air and all the frosty silence fell again around Sir Redmond’s house.

  And then she sighed a breath that turned to mist before the wind stole past and scattered it to nothing, and with Frisque reluctant at her heels she turned and headed back towards the house where, at the window, hung the caged bird that for all its comfort had that morning chosen not to sing.

  Chapter 9

  I had expected more.

  Which wasn’t logical. I’d known that there would only be a single diary entry in plain text, and Alistair had told me he’d learned little from it but the names of Mary and her brother and the fact they’d been acquainted with Sir Redmond Everard, a famous Jacobite who’d lived here at Chatou. Not in this house, of course. I’d asked Claudine already, and she’d told me the Maison des Marronniers had not been built until the middle of the 1800s, and by her best guess Sir Redmond’s house would have been closer to the river, where the oldest buildings of the town had stood. It didn’t matter, really, but I liked to keep the details straight in my own mind.

  I could have wished Mary Dundas had put more stock in minor details, but I knew, again, that wasn’t realistic to expect. I hadn’t honestly believed that she’d have kept a note of all that had been done and said by whom to whom. Most people didn’t, as a rule. I’d seen it done sometimes in novels, where the characters would keep a diary or write a letter that read like a narrative, complete with perfect dialogue, but even in the best of novels that device could never quite convince me, and I’d find myself detaching from the text enough to think, “She’d never write that down in that way. No one would.”

  No, I thought it far more likely that a person in real life would summarize a conversation as Mary Dundas had done, and simply write:

  She proved to be the bravest and most fascinating woman I have ever met, and we did speak awhile of things both great and small, while drinking tea.

  No more than that, and having not been in the room while they were speaking, I would never have a clue what all those “things both great and small” had been.