Exhaustion finally sent Megaera asleep despite her disordered and wavering mind and heart, but it was nearly dawn by then and she roused most unwillingly when her maid came to wake her. Rose examined her mistress with distress. Her lady had been worried and nervous for over a month now, but this was the worst of all. Rose had no doubt that her lady’s lover had betrayed her. Perhaps he had said he would be away for a week or two; perhaps yesterday was the day he had fixed to return, and he had not done so; perhaps her lady had heard yesterday that he had taken a new love—or been killed in a duel.
Rose thrilled to the romantic tragedy, but it so became clear that it was betrayal, not death, her lady was suffering. Her eyes might be heavy and swollen with tears and lack of sleep, but they flashed with controlled rage under their long lashes. What was more, grief for a dead lover did not send one to examining all the invitations in the last week’s post or ordering that all one’s dresses be laid out for refurbishment.
Of course, Rose was sorry that her lady had been disappointed in love, but the kind of love that required sneaking out of the house to a secret, rendezvous was not very satisfactory in the long run. Rose was romantic, but she knew that sort of thing could only lead to trouble. In a way she was glad it was over, and even gladder that in her hurt and disappointment her mistress finally seemed ready to do what Rose had been urging (when she dared) ever since the strict period of mourning for Mr. Devoran had ended. Her lady was so beautiful. Rose was sure that if she had accepted the invitations she received to balls and other social events, she would soon be married again.
Rose understood why her lady did not seem interested in men. A husband like Devoran could easily cure such an interest. Most of the servants had guessed that the marriage was not happy, and Rose knew more of the truth than the others. Nonetheless it seemed ridiculous to the maid that her lady would not go to parties or even more decorous evening engagements like musicales. It almost seemed as if, horrid as he had been, her lady were mourning her husband.
Megaera was fond of Rose and to a degree, trusted her. She was sure Rose would conceal any love affair or any other romantic peccadillo. However, when Rose was frightened by something she did not understand, she could not be trusted to hold her tongue for long. If she had known about her mistress’s smuggling activities, sooner or later she would have gone to someone in the household or even to Dr. Partridge for comfort and assurance. Thus Megaera had been very careful that Rose should not know. And of course, that she had to be out so many nights making deliveries kept her from accepting invitations to evening affairs. Even if she was not delivering on the night of a party, Megaera was in such desperate need of sleep that her bed was far more inviting to her than the most brilliant ball in the world.
Philip’s betrayal had changed that. Megaera was more than willing to give up her sleep—or even a few deliveries—to salve her pride and prove to herself that she would still be attractive to men other than a smuggler’s bastard. Perhaps she was even attractive enough to snare someone who would make her activities as a smuggler unnecessary. Just because Edward and Philip did not find her worth being faithful to was no reason why she should not try again. Perhaps this time she would not be faithful.
Filled with bitter thoughts, Megaera dashed off three acceptances. One for a musicale at the Levallises’, one for an informal party to celebrate a birth at the vicarage, and the third for a masked ball—a very grand affair—at Moreton Place. Although she went in a spirit of bitterness and rage, Megaera enjoyed herself very much. She knew she was a favorite with Mrs. Levallis, but everyone was flatteringly delighted to see her, not least the Levallises’ eldest son and heir, who was a recent widower. Megaera could not bring herself to respond to him, not because she did not like him, but because she liked him too well. Gilly had always been kind to her. She could not repay kindness by allowing him to take on the debts still saddling Bolliet.
Other men paid court at the vicar’s party and Megaera was delighted. She did not repulse any advances, but she certainly did not encourage them either. For each man there was an appropriate excuse. One was too young, another too old, a third did not have sufficient income to help rescue Bolliet, a fourth spoke with a sneer of her father (this was manufactured out of a decent inquiry about Lord Bolliet’s health), for a fifth—Perce Moreton, it was—she simply did not like blond men. There was no way Megaera was going to admit that all faces faded into insignificance beside her memory of Philip’s dark but vivid intensity.
Nonetheless all the attention was delightful, and Megaera promised herself that she would shift deliveries or try letting John go alone to the places he had been most frequently so that she could reestablish a social life beyond the afternoon visiting and tea parties among ladies, which was all she had permitted herself for more than a year. There was now the masked ball to look forward to instead of donning riding clothes and going to see whether the new tenant farmer in the high valley had plowed over the fallow field and left the fields she had pointed out to lie fallow, Megaera began a careful inspection of her ball gowns. At a masked ball part of the fun was not being recognized. All of her gowns had been worn too often, and she and Rose conferred earnestly over how to turn several of the old into something new.
It was ridiculous, of course. Rose knew that one glimpse of her lady’s hair or eyes would give her away, but she was too happy to see Megaera interested in something feminine to protest. Between them they devised a breathtaking confection of white spider gauze embroidered with acorns of silver (from Megaera’s wedding dress, which she had never worn again) over an underslip of blue-violet that matched her eyes. Harbor master’s daughter indeed, Meg thought, looking at herself in the long, oval mirror. Even she had to believe she was lovely. Well, Philip had said he was returning. She would give him something to regret before telling him she never wanted to see him again.
In happy ignorance of Megaera’s intentions, Philip was joyfully making ready to leave for Cornwall at the very moment Megaera was planning just what cruel things she would say to him. Despite his intense eagerness to return to Meg, he had not been quite as happy several days earlier when the proposition from the Foreign Office had first been broached to him. This had nothing to do with the proposition itself, but was owing to the fact that Philip was not at all convinced he would live long enough to accept the mission. Never before had he had the experience of listening to a convoluted political plot while enduring a hangover of really titanic proportions.
Hangovers were not exactly a new experience for Philip, although he had not had one for nearly two months, which possibly added to the horror of this one. However, he had never had the misfortune of being unable to sleep off the worst of the effects of overindulgence previously. Thus, when his valet persisted in trying to wake him after he had mumbled, “Go ‘way. Laisse-moi tranquille,” Philip had struck out at him. He had only meant to push Sorel away sharply, but the push had struck the valet, who was leaning over the bed, in the nose with rather more force than Philip intended. Not that he knew anything about it then. He had sunk back into a blessed unconsciousness—but not for long.
Being prodded with a cane was also something totally outside Philip’s experience—with or without a hangover. Naturally, being recalled to his misery did nothing to reduce the indignity. Philip let out a bellow of rage which was a terrible mistake. The agony that followed, of course, enraged him even more, but he was saved from further painful reaction by a trill of feminine laughter that filled the gasping, agonized silence following his roar of fury.
For one moment Philip was paralyzed with shock. Could he have brought a whore home with him to his father’s house? He had been living with Roger and Leonie since his return from France, partly because it did not seem to him worthwhile to open his own rooms for the short time before he left for Cornwall and partly because it was easier to conceal his trips to the Foreign Office if he slipped into Roger’s carriage. Indeed, he looked enough like his father in height and body shape and unconsciou
sly copied mannerisms that, if his face were not clearly seen, he could be mistaken for Roger.
In the next moment a spate of French had relieved his mind on that score. The intruder, the poker with canes, was Leonie. This was so astounding—Philip had not been of an age when his father and Leonie married that encouraged visits from a very young stepmother to his bedchamber, and he could never remember Leonie entering his room before—that Philip sat up. Naturally, he was then so taken up with the agony in his head and the urgent need not to retch that he did not understand a word she said to him. For a woman who had little experience of drunken men, Leonie had great patience and sympathy with Philip’s condition. She repeated twice, but more softly, that he had a letter marked “Urgent” from the Foreign Office.
“Read it to me,” Philip groaned.
“It says ‘Urgent’,” Leonie reminded him, unwilling to intrude on state secrets.
“All the more reason,” Philip sighed, holding his head. “Do you think I can see to read?”
Shrugging her shoulders, Leonie broke the seal, but there was nothing she should not see in the note. It merely summoned Philip to a conference at eleven o’clock that morning.
“No,” Philip moaned, “I cannot. He has found someone else to ask me a million stupid questions. I cannot, really, I cannot, Leonie.”
“Now, now,” Leonie soothed, “you will feel much better when you are washed and dressed. I will send Sorel back, but you must promise, Philippe, not to beat him again.”
“Beat him? I have never laid a hand on Sorel in my life—oh anyway, not since I was a baby and he tried to dress me in those velvet and lace confections my mother fancied, but—”
“I do not think he bloodied his own nose,” Leonie interrupted severely. Then she softened her tone. “No doubt you did not mean to do it, but I think you should ask his pardon.”
Since Philip was obviously in no condition to argue, she did not wait for an answer, and she was kind enough to smother her laughter until she was out of the room. She explained Philip’s pitiable state to his valet—who needed no explanation and blamed Leonie rather than his master for the pain and indignity he had suffered. Leonie had not, of course, explained to Sorel the need for Philip to be wakened, only insisted that he should be, and the valet assumed it was some purpose of her own for which she was inflicting this suffering on his master.
By the time Philip reached the Foreign Office he was capable of concealing his misery, although it was still acute. They did not, to Philip’s surprise, remain in Lord Hawkesbury’s office. Instead he was subjected to another half hour of agony, increased by being jolted over cobblestones and then a rutted private lane. The resentment built up in Philip, but even his headache and nausea were quelled—the resentment permanently and the physical discomfort temporarily—by his surprise at the end of the journey. In an elegant room, more French than English, he was in introduced to Charles Philippe, Comte d’Artois, the brother of the current (exiled) King of France.
Philip was asked to repeat yet again his meeting with Bonaparte and his estimate of the climate of public opinion in France. It was apparent that his recitation was not at all to the liking of his auditor. Sharp arrogant questions followed, replete with insinuations concerning Philip’s prejudice and inability since he was merely English, to understand the French.
“If you mean the fine points of the language, monseigneur,” Philip snapped, “it is my first language, spoken from infancy. My mother was Solange Amelie Marie de Honimarceau, fourth daughter of the Comte de Langres. French is the common language of my home even at present, my stepmother being the eldest daughter and heiress of the late Earl of Stour but born in the chateau de Saulieu on the lands of her mother, Marie Victoire Leonie de Conyers. If you mean I lack understanding of Frenchmen, only an idiot, French or English, could have misunderstood. The country is at peace and is prosperous. I was in Brittany, Normandy, and the Pas de Calais, where the most bitter resentment could be expected against Bonaparte for the brutal suppression of uprisings. There were, indeed, individuals who hate him, those who were directly affected by the cruelty of General Brune, but most of them blame Brune rather than Bonaparte, and anyway, that was in 1800. Most have changed their minds. There is law in the land, most officials are just and honest, and most of all there is work and food for all. Between fear of an army devoted to and completely in the control of the first Consul and the good things his rule has brought, there will be no uprising in France in the immediate future.”
“Yet we have had information exactly to the contrary,” Hawkesbury put in hastily.
Although he concealed it well, Hawkesbury was considerably amused by the shock displayed in d’Artois’s face. Surrounded as he was largely by sycophantic émigré courtiers, who lived by the dead rules of Versailles and whose livelihood in many cases depended on what the comte could give them, the noble Charles was not accustomed to the blunt truth, especially not delivered in a voice made irritable by an aching head.
Philip shrugged. “I do not know from whom the information came or what part of the country he was describing, but if it was an émigré he might be self-deceived, my lord. I, as you know, have nothing to gain or to lose. I tell you what I saw and heard. In the future, when the drain of men and the pinch of war touch them—or if there are military reverses—the people may think differently. At present, I could not see any reason to hope that France wishes to be free of her master.”
“I do not think Méhée de la Touche is the kind of man to be self-deceived,” d’Artois said frostily.
“Then you give me no choice but to wonder whether he is in Bonaparte’s pay,” Philip replied with deliberation.
There was a brief, appalled silence before d’Artois broke out, “That is nonsense! Do you think a man—even such a lunatic as this upstart Corsican—would pay someone to start a plot against himself?”
“Bonaparte is no lunatic. Do not for a moment deceive yourself with that pleasant notion. He may be a monomaniac, but he is astute, brilliant, in his comprehension of the possible. He does not dream vague dreams made up of vapors. He puts thousands of men to work and hundreds of thousands to train and builds a fleet and an army that will give reality—if he is not stopped—to his mania.”
“Be that as it may,” d’Artois riposted, “you are ignoring the question of starting a plot against oneself.”
“But that must be obvious,” Philip hesitated, restraining the words even to you. “You start a plot against yourself when you are sufficiently secure, to smoke out any traitors you suspect who are close to you and concealing their dissatisfaction. I said that the bourgeois and the lower orders were satisfied. I can imagine, however, that other ambitious generals, who have seen what Bonaparte has accomplished, might think they were better fitted for his exalted position than ‘the little corporal’, as he is called. Moreover, there would always be the chance that some or all of the remaining house of Bourbon could be lured into his grasp.”
This time the silence lasted so long that Philip looked from one face to another then closed his eyes. Apparently he had hit a tender nerve with that last, wild guess. Lord Hawkesbury said something that Philip could safely ignore, since it was addressed to the Comte d’Artois. Quite suddenly his headache and nausea had flooded back, made more intense by his distaste for the comte. If Bonaparte had not demonstrated so clearly his unalterable intention of destroying “perfidious Albion”, Philip would have preferred him infinitely to the haughty, stupid, self-important Bourbon.
Fortunately he was not required to continue the conversation. In a few minutes, as the worst of the effects of his hangover receded again, he realized that Lord Hawkesbury was taking leave. Philip managed a civil if unembellished farewell, and they were back in the carriage. This time, however, Philip was not allowed to suffer in silence. Lord Hawkesbury embarked on the full tale of the results of Méhée de la Touche’s information.
The man, well known to the Comte d’Artois, had arrived in February with a most c
onvincing tale. The Republicans were much alarmed by the cavalier behavior of Bonaparte. He had reestablished religion, emasculated or suppressed the elected and appointed bodies designed to help him govern, extinguished the free press, induced the emasculated Senate to offer him a life tenure as First Consul, and established a Legion of Honor, which many felt to be a monarchial institution. In fact, the Republicans felt that the First Consul meant to make himself king. They were ready to rid France of this incubus. If they must have a king, they would prefer the rightful monarch so long as he would rule by constitutional right rather than divine privilege.
The Royalists, whom Bonaparte had granted amnesty and invited back into France, did not love him any the better for that, Méhée de la Touche also pointed out. They had been promised far more than they had received. Bonaparte had refused to return lands purchased from the state during the Revolution. Even when the lands were still vacant, he had only permitted the recovery of a small part of what had previously been theirs. What was more, all their ancient privileges over canals and highways and other public institutions had been withheld. They were scarcely better off than when they had been in exile. They, too, desired the return of the rightful king.
For the first time, Méhée de la Touche said, the Royalists and Republicans were ready to compromise. Both ardently desired the removal of Bonaparte. The Royalists were now willing to accept a constitutional government if the rightful king headed it. The Republicans were willing to accept the king if he headed a constitutional government. Both groups were convinced that they could rouse the parts of the country in sympathy with them against the foreign upstart who had seized power because of a few victories really won by other generals who had been deprived of the honors owing to them.
The Cornish Heiress (Heiress, Book Two) Page 30
