A Desperate Fortune

by Susanna Kearsley

  It had been years since I’d last celebrated Epiphany in the traditional French way. Or eaten a king cake. “I’ll be here,” I’d told him.

  He’d hugged me in parting the way he’d done last night, and I’d hugged him back, trying not to look awkward. And Luc, as he’d lifted his coat from its peg, had said, “Go do your homework. I’ll just be outside in the lane for a minute.”

  And now here we were.

  I liked lanes. They felt close and embracing, like tunnels. This one had a high hedge, thickly green, on one side and the stepped concrete wall of Claudine’s garden running the length of the other, with bare-branched trees standing attentively all down it, screening the view of the château’s eclectic assortment of roof angles and the warm lights gleaming down from a few upstairs windows. The ground underneath us was level, a long strip of patchy green growing between the broad parallel tracks worn by car tires, so there was no reason I should have felt I was walking on something unsteady. I blamed the effects of my glass of épine. And the man walking next to me.

  “So I’ve been thinking,” he said as we came to the door in the wall. “If you’re not busy Saturday, I thought you’d like to come with me and Noah when we go to his piano lesson. It’s not very far, just up the road a bit in Carrières-sur-Seine. His teacher isn’t fond of parents sitting in, she says we’re too big a distraction, so while Noah takes his lesson we could have a walk around. There are some good places to walk there.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He opened the door for me, swinging it inward and into the garden. “Good night, Sara.”

  He started the bise this time, but when his mouth brushed my cheek for the second time it hovered there for a moment, and paused, and then slowly slid sideways to cover my own. I was already turning to meet it, to welcome it, loving the rush of sensation I got from that one gentle touch. Then it ceased being gentle, and I loved that, too. I was dimly aware of Luc pulling the door shut again, closing both of us back in the silence and peace of the lane, leaving both of his hands free to hold me.

  Somewhere, in the middle of that still and perfect moment, wrapped in warmth, I thought: I will remember this.

  I knew it to be true: I would remember this when other, more important things had faded from my memory. I’d remember how the evening air had breathed its cold against my cheek, and how a car had revved its engine in the unseen street behind me, and how Luc Sabran had tangled one hand in the hair behind my ear to hold my head supported while he kissed me.

  I’d remember, too, the way he’d moved that same hand when the kiss had ended, combing back the curling hair along my temple with his fingers.

  “Till tomorrow,” was his promise, as he reached again to turn the handle of the green door in the wall, and this time when he swung it open for me I passed through and somehow crossed the lawn with less than steady steps and made it to the back door of the kitchen without once looking behind me, for I knew that if I’d stopped at all it might have been a long, long time before I’d left that lane.

  Chapter 23

  Ye sons of the chace, stand far distant…

  —Macpherson, “The War of Inis-Thona”

  Chalon-sur-Saône

  February 18, 1732

  “I must confess I know not what to do with him,” said Thomson.

  He was speaking to the Scotsman, who was walking at his side in front of Mary and Madame Roy as they climbed the sloping road towards the citadel. Their travel in the diligence had been disrupted on the day before by one horse falling lame and forcing them to slow their pace, so when they had been meant to dine at Beaune they had not reached that place till after nightfall, and instead of reaching Chalon on the river Saône last night, they had arrived here late this morning and were now faced with the prospect of a full day’s wait before they would be able to change over to the river barge—the diligence d’eau—that would convey them the remaining way to Lyon.

  Mr. Stevens had seemed little inconvenienced by the change of plan. When he had joined them at Auxerre he clearly had not known that he was traveling alongside the same man he had been following, for otherwise he would have been a fool to speak so freely of his plans to them, but Mary felt quite certain that before that day was done he’d grown suspicious, and the comment he had made to her about the wolves at Saulieu had been proof. He’d dogged their steps all yesterday and kept close by all evening, watching them with an increasing interest Mary did not like. Which was the reason she was outdoors in the open air now, climbing to the citadel, instead of sitting with the mother and her daughters in the comfort of the new inn’s parlor, by a pleasant warming fire—because both Mr. Stevens and the merchant were within the parlor also, talking politics as usual. And hunting.

  Madame Roy, even fatigued from travel and the days of sickness and poor eating, climbed more strongly than did Mary and was not the least bit winded, as though she’d been bred to steep terrain. The four of them were now above the main part of the houses of the lower town, and being where they were no longer likely to be overheard so long as they spoke low, they were now briefly able to converse in English.

  Thomson said, “If, as you say, he knows—”

  “He knows.”

  “—then he does not yet feel so certain of that knowledge in his mind to rouse himself to action, else he would by now have taken me.”

  MacPherson merely cast a sideways look at him as though he felt it hardly needed saying that there was another reason why the Englishman had not yet tried to lay a hand on Thomson. A tall, ill-tempered, very Scottish reason.

  Thomson said, “I know how you would wish to deal with him, but surely there are other ways. You cannot simply kill the man.”

  He fell to silence, thinking.

  Madame Roy glanced sideways at the little dog in Mary’s arms and smiled and said in French, “You’ve spoiled that beast. God gave him four legs and he never gets to use them.”

  Mary answered her in French as well, explaining, “Frisque was spoiled before he came to me. I’m sure it is too late for him to be reformed.” She snuggled him against her and the little spaniel licked her chin and nestled in the warm folds of her cloak.

  At least the dog, she told herself, was yet a true companion and not likely to deceive or disappoint her as the others had.

  She’d found it very hard today to keep up the appearance of normality. She’d kept on seeing Nicolas’s eyes as they had looked on their last parting at Sir Redmond’s—how he’d sworn he’d never put her in harm’s way, when he’d have surely known he’d just consigned her to the keeping of a murderer, a thief, and…well, whatever Madame Roy was. Mary truly did not wish to know. The less she knew, the simpler it would be for her to keep her conscience stainless and not share their guilt.

  Madame Roy observed that the dog did not look old, and Mary replied, “He is nine. He was a great pet of our neighbors’ children, but last winter they fell very ill of…very ill. Two children died, as did their father.”

  “A most grievous loss. What was the illness?”

  Mary hesitated briefly. “It was smallpox.”

  Madame Roy, who very clearly from the scars upon her own face had an intimate acquaintance with that illness, made no comment in reply but only nodded.

  Mary told her, “After that, the mother took the three surviving children and went home to her own people, where there was no room to keep the dog.”

  “No room?” The older woman looked at Frisque. “But he’s so very small.”

  “Some people,” Mary said, and could not keep from glancing at the Scotsman walking silently and unaware in front of her, not understanding what she said in French, “think only of the trouble that an animal will bring them, and they do not want the burden.” Which was true enough in his case. He had told her at the first she could not bring the dog. She looked away, recalling how the little dog had whimpered when her neighbors
had gone off without him, and how desolate he’d been without the children. Like her father when he’d left her, none of them had looked behind—no faces peering from the windows of the coach for one last glimpse of their abandoned playmate—and when Frisque had whined and barked to call them back, it had fair broken Mary’s heart and raised her own pain from that place where she had long since sought to bury it.

  We do not always get the things we want.

  She knew her father’s words were true, and yet she pushed them down again into that grave where she’d now also buried all her brother’s promises.

  “To people such as those,” she said, in hopes her words concealed the hurt that lay beneath them, “small things are the easiest to leave behind.”

  They’d nearly reached the level of the citadel, a great imposing fortress which they did not try to enter but instead, upon MacPherson’s lead, ceased walking and upon a level place turned round to contemplate the view they now commanded—roofs and steeples huddled safe within the old town’s walls beneath them, and the gate they had come in by, and the curving width of river with its bridges and small island, and the plain that stretched beyond that to the distant row of ridges capped with white.

  After a moment, Thomson asked, “What lies beyond those hills?”

  The Scotsman answered him, “Geneva. And the Alps.”

  “And where is Lyon?”

  Nodding to the right, along the river’s course, MacPherson told him, “There.”

  “Is there another way to travel there from here except by water?”

  “Aye, but if he’s close upon our heels it matters little how we go.”

  “So then the trick of it,” said Thomson, “is to make quite sure he’s not upon our heels.” He gave some thought to this, and then remarked, “If you’d brought more whisky I’d have said we ought to get him drunk enough that he would lie abed too late and miss our departure in the morning, but I doubt we could at any rate persuade him not to be suspicious of a friendly drink when we are none of us too friendly with him. Nor could he be tricked into a drinking contest unless we could tempt him with a wager—and apart from my own head upon a platter I have nothing I can wager that he’d want enough to set aside his caution.”

  MacPherson’s gaze stayed level on the distant line of mountains as he told them, very sure, “I do.”

  * * *

  “One cannot fault the food in France,” said Stevens, as he pushed his plate away from him. “And this, although no rival for our English gin, is very good indeed. What did you call it?”

  At his side, the merchant named the liquor: “marc,” although in proper form the c stayed silent so it came out simply “mar.”

  It was made, Mary knew, by fermenting, distilling, and aging the leftover skins, seeds, and pulp of the grapes after they had been pressed to make wine, and her uncle had prized it, but Mary did not like the taste of marc. It was too strong. When Thomson had requested and received a bottle of it from the landlord for their table, she’d declined the offer of a cup and kept instead to the plain wine they had been served with supper.

  “Sometimes it is not so good,” the merchant said, “but this, the Marc de Bourgogne—or of Burgundy, as you would say—it is the very best.”

  “A good end,” Stevens praised it, “to a good meal.” He drank long and studied Mary boldly while he did so.

  She was now the only woman at the table, since the other two young ladies had been hastened by their mother to excuse themselves the moment that their plates were empty, pleading the long journey and tomorrow’s early start as explanations for their quick retreat upstairs, though Mary knew it had been Stevens’s sly persistence in attempting to lay hands upon the elder of the sisters in improper ways beneath the table that had spurred the mother into taking such an action. Madame Roy had taken supper in her room again, as had become her habit of an evening on this journey, and was up there now attending to the dog.

  Mary would have much preferred to have been upstairs as well, for of the men within this room there was not one she wanted to spend time with, Thomson having lost her trust, MacPherson having earned her fear, the merchant being a great bore and an uncaring master to his servant, who had taken early to his own bed from the cough he had developed in his days of being set to travel outside on the diligence, exposed to all the worst of winter’s wind and weather; and lastly Mr. Stevens, being the embodiment of everything that Mary found unpleasant.

  She’d have gladly left them all and let them bear each other’s company without her interference, but she had a part to play, and with the younger of the frilly sisters gone upstairs she knew her role was even more important to the plan they’d laid in place.

  “Your brother,” Stevens said to Mary with the faintest stress upon the second word, “has chosen a good drink for us. Do tell him I am grateful.”

  Mary gave a nod to show she understood, and translating his words to French she passed them on to Thomson who was sitting to her left. Receiving Thomson’s brief but courteous reply she turned that into purposely imperfect English, telling Stevens, “He is very happy you are thinking this, monsieur.”

  She saw a mingling of amusement and acceptance in the Englishman’s expression, as though he meant her to know that he knew well this whole performance was unnecessary. “Tell me, mademoiselle, how is it you speak such good English while your brother knows it not at all?”

  She borrowed from a story she’d invented once at bedtime for her cousin, and adapted it to give herself the background of the heroine. “Ah, is very sad, monsieur. Our parents, they are dead when I am very young, and so my brother has to take the business of our father, but he has no one to care for me, so I am in the convent placed. And in the convent,” Mary said, “a nun from Ireland was, who teached me English.”

  “Did she really?”

  “Yes.” She hoped he did not ask her where the convent was, because she did not have a ready answer. In the fairy story she’d created, it had been in a far-off and magic land without a name, but she could hardly use that portion of the tale. “But in a few years all is well again. My brother came.” The best thing about telling stories, Mary thought, was that one could reshape them as one wished, and change the ending to a happy one. “He takes…he took me home.”

  “And where is home?” asked Stevens.

  Mary faltered, but her tiny pause was neatly covered by the fact the Scotsman chose that moment to excuse himself and stand and leave the room, which actions proved enough of a distraction to the Englishman that Mary gained the time to call to mind the birthplace of that famous authoress she so admired and whom she sought to emulate: Madame d’Aulnoy. “Barneville-la-Bertran,” Mary named the little village in the north of France and trusted it was small enough that Stevens would not know it.

  To her great dismay the merchant said, “Ah yes, I know this place.” He turned to Stevens, and in English added, “It is near Honfleur, in Normandy.”

  “I see.” And letting his gaze slide with seeming nonchalance from Mary to the man beside her, Stevens said to Thomson, “And what is your business, sir?”

  She held her breath. She almost dared not look at Thomson, fearing he would fall into the trap that had been set for him by answering in English, as he’d done before by accident, or simply by revealing he had understood the question. He did neither. With a faintly puzzled frown, he shrugged and looked to Mary, asking her in French, “What did he say?”

  She breathed, and felt a mingling of relief and admiration that she smothered as she might have snuffed a candle flame, reminding herself stiffly that however kind and charming she’d found Thomson, he was not a man to be admired. He was a fraudster.

  If she shielded him now it was only because she felt bound by the pledge she had given Sir Redmond: he’d asked her to help and she’d told him she would, and whatever else happened she would not go back on her promise. Her word. She�
�d have little else left of her honor, she knew, if the identities and crimes of her companions were exposed. Her safety now was tied to theirs—if they were caught, there would be none who would believe she was an innocent accomplice. And by joining in their plan tonight, she knew she’d lost the right to claim full innocence.

  She fixed the mask—invisible to all except herself—across her features and began to translate Stevens’s last question for the benefit of Thomson. She had barely made it halfway through before the Englishman’s attention was again diverted, this time by the calmly self-assured return of the tall Scotsman.

  He was carrying the leather case he’d carried out of Paris—the long cylinder he’d stowed each day atop the moving diligence. The case itself was interesting. It had been made to open not along its length but round its middle, and not hinged but merely fastened on with straps and buckles so the whole top half could be detached and lifted off and set aside. He sat and did that now, revealing to them all the long and polished barrel of a gun.

  “Ah, yes,” said Mary, breaking off her speech as though she’d only just remembered. “Yesterday I tell my brother how you like to speak of hunting, and he thinks you might enjoy to see the gun señor Montero brings from Spain.”

  MacPherson had the gun out of its case now, holding it vertically balanced with one strong hand. Mary knew nothing of guns, beyond their basic structure and their function, but she didn’t need to look at Mr. Stevens’s face to know this one was special. A thing men would covet. It was handsomely made of some richly dark wood, with an ivory-tipped ramrod and fine engraved scrollwork in silver and gold, and an elegant guard to the trigger.

  “May I?” Stevens stretched a reverent hand towards it, and MacPherson passed it over, looking on with an impassive face as Stevens stroked one hand along the piece and said, “It has been rifled, also. Here,” he told the merchant in the manner of a man compelled to share a great discovery, “see these spiral grooves that have been cut within the barrel? These do place a whirling action on the bullet so it spins upon its axis in its flight and so does bore the air as keenly as a screw, and travels straight and true and with prodigious speed. I have heard tell of these,” he said, “but never seen one.”