Vintage Love

by Clarissa Ross

  “Do not speak of him like that!” she cried, springing up. “He was a noble figure, and I cared for him deeply. Call it treasonable if you will. Charge me as you like!”

  The stooped man came close to her and said, “I blame you not at all. I did not come here to charge you or condemn you.”

  “Then why?”

  “I wanted to find out if you remembered.”

  “How could I forget?” she asked brokenly as she turned away from him. “It was my first true love affair. I was a child and he a man of much experience. Yet it was beautiful and he, the ogre of my childhood memories, was tender and loving to me. When I learned that because of my father’s illness we were to leave the island, I thought my heart would break. My only consolation was his promise that he would never forget me.”

  “If it is of any small value to you, he never did.”

  She wheeled around to stare defiantly at the weird figure in black. “How can you know all this? You unhealthy man!”

  He smiled. “Do you remember Dr. Barry Edward O’Meara?”

  “Of course. He was the British medical officer appointed to look after the former emperor.”

  “He was my man. A member of the British Intelligence. Unhappily I also had to later recall him. He came under the spell of Napoleon to the extent that he now spends his time writing books in his defense. Needless to say he is no longer one of His Majesty’s spies.”

  “Barry O’Meara!” she exclaimed, a look of days past recalled in her blue eyes. “I always liked him. I never guessed. So he was the one who told you about me.”

  “He and others,” the master spy said. “I have always conducted an efficient department.”

  She sighed. “With all the guards and small freedom left to him, I knew there had to be spies. But I did not guess that Dr. O’Meara was one of them. He was Napoleon’s friend.”

  “He still is,” Felix Black complained. “If he keeps on writing his infernal books, he’s going to wind up in prison.”

  She said, “So you have not come here to help me about my brother’s being sacrificed. Why have you made this visit?”

  He faced her in silence for a moment. “Can I trust you implicitly? Have I your sworn word that what I’m about to say to you will never be repeated?”

  Betsy was upset. “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you swear to remain silent?”

  “Yes,” she said. “As long as it means no harm to anyone.” She was beginning to suspect that he was about to enlist her in some plot against her former friend Dr. Barry O’Meara. It was evident they wished to silence the former spy.

  Felix Black frowned. “Because of what I’m going to tell you, I’m being driven from my office. Reviled! Scoffed at as an old fool living in the past! No one wants to believe me!”

  “Explain,” she said.

  He seized her by the arm and fixed his fanatic’s bright eyes on her. “Napoleon lives!”

  “What?”

  “He lives! He was successfully rescued from the island of Saint Helena, and he is somewhere in Europe in hiding at this very moment.”

  “Preposterous!” she gasped.

  “That is what they are all saying,” Felix Black said, still clenching her arm so that it pained. “They ignore all my years of being mastermind of the world’s greatest spy network.”

  She said, “It is common knowledge that Napoleon died of a liver afflicton that came from his being held on that dread island. My father contracted the same liver ailment, and it killed him.”

  “A man died of a liver affliction in Napoleon’s bed, but it was not Napoleon,” the thin man in black said with passion. “And now the former emperor is virtually a prisoner of one of the great criminal minds of our day, a political upstart named Valmy. This Valmy is the head of a group of ex-military men and others who wish to seize power from the new king of France. Later it is Valmy’s plan to see that Napoleon, once in power again as a puppet leader, is murdered. Then Valmy will become the new ruler of France and be on his way to conquer Europe. His particular hatred is for England and all things English!”

  She listened to the trembling old man in awe, not sure whether all that she heard were the ramblings of a mind which had broken under long years of strain or the stunning information gathered by one who was still a mastermind of espionage. Somehow she felt what he was saying might at least have some truth in it.

  In a hushed voice she asked, “Why have you told me all this?”

  He had released her arm, and now he twisted his hands in nervous fashion and said, “Because I need your help.”

  “My help?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have been discredited at the War Office. I shall be leaving shortly. But I’m going to conduct this campaign on my own. My house shall be my headquarters, and I shall enlist my own agents to try and rescue Napoleon from this Valmy, warn him of the fate in store for him, and have him take an armed vessel to the United States.”

  “The English betrayed him before when he could have made his escape to America easily,” she reminded the man in black. “Why should he trust us again?”

  “Not the nation, but me,” the thin man said excitedly. “He knows of me. There is a house built for him in Louisiana, funds aplenty for a life of ease, and safe passage on a United States armed vessel.”

  “Why should you care what happens to him?”

  “I don’t! But I want to save Europe from the madman Valmy. The nations cannot stand another senseless war, and there will be one if Valmy succeeds with his scheme. The ace card is in his hand — the former emperor.”

  “I find it all impossible to believe,” she said.

  “So do the others,” he told her. “But if I bring this off, the fat oaf we call His Majesty will invite me to the palace for honors. I shall have my revenge. Those that call me mad now will bow to me in gratitude.”

  “What do you want of me?” she asked.

  Felix Black gazed at her grimly. “I need you to be my chief agent. You know Napoleon, and he trusts you. If you tell him what Valmy is up to, he will believe you.”

  “I know nothing of such things,” she said.

  “You are an excellent shot, you fence as well as any man, and you ride horseback like a trained cavalry officer,” he said.

  “You have been well informed.”

  “Always,” he agreed. “It is my strong point. There are only a few tricks to be learned and I can soon teach them to you. A matter of codes, techniques for getting information, a knowledge of picking locks, and a familiarity with needed poisons.”

  She said in disbelief, “You wish to enlist me to go to France in search of a returned Napoleon and save him from this Valmy?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “You would not be alone, of course. I shall direct this strictly private group. I hope to enlist O’Meara as a member, and I would have you work in conjunction with a trained male spy who has gained a reputation under the code name of Robin. It would be his duty to protect you.”

  “I’m afraid I must refuse you,” she said. “I am happy to be living a quiet country life here with my mother and my stepfather.”

  The man in black smiled at her coldly. “Did you say you are happy here?”

  “Yes,” she said in weak defiance.

  “I wish it were true,” he said. “But it is not so. You are chafing under the indifference of your mother and the cruel arrogance of your stepfather!”

  “Please!” she protested.

  “Let me finish,” he said sharply. “Your blessed stepfather is cutting deep into your father’s estate. At this moment he and your mother are in Canterbury further mortgaging this house and the land it is on to pay his latest gambling debts!”

  “No!” she pleaded, shocked but aware that it was all too likely to be so.

  “And you know how he plans to repair his fortunes?” the man in black asked. “He plans to sell you in marriage to his repulsive friend, the elderly Lord Dakin! A lustful old man rotten with syphillis and stil
l reaching out to taint someone of your youth and beauty!”

  “Go, Mr. Black,” she said in a broken voice “You have said enough.”

  “I could tell you more,” the man in black said “But I have already caused you more pain than I wish. For your own sake you should escape from this house. For the sake of a man you once cared for deeply, you should enlist in this crusade with me. And for the sake of the England for which your brother gave his life, save it from another war! For make no mistake, once in power, Valmy will strike against England.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I believe you are mad, Mr. Black.”

  “I hear that often,” the man in black said with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. “Yet I swear all I have told you is true.”

  “Fantasy!” she said.

  “So they say,” he said with a bitter smile. “They think it is a product of my own mind, put forward so I may hold onto power. So they are removing my power. But I will fight this menace if I have to fight it alone.”

  “Good day, Mr. Black,” she said firmly.

  He bowed. “Good day. If you come to agree with me, you may find me at my house in Fetter Lane. The number is Twenty. I need you badly. So does the man who was your first love.”

  He bowed again and went on out. She stared after him and then crossed to the window where she had been standing when he arrived. She saw him in a his black top hat and suit make his way to the carriage. He gave the coachman some instructions and then stepped inside and vanished. After a moment the black carriage and horse vanished up the gravel roadway, lost among the trees at the turn.

  She stared out at the sullen day and wondered if it had all been a strange trick of her mind. Had she imagined the weird black coach and the visitor who came in it? Had the tall tale which she’d listened to been a hint of her own approaching madness? Surely it was the strangest experience she’d known in a long while.

  A genius of evil! That was how he had struck her. His knowledge had made her think of an all-knowing Satan spying on his unwary subjects and reporting their misdeeds with unholy glee. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she fled up the stairway to her bedroom. There she threw herself on her bed and sobbed.

  Remembrance of St. Helena came back to her all too vividly. Her kindly father had stood up for her when her mother reproached her for her friendship with Napoleon. So she had enjoyed her short stay on the bleak island and spent much time with the exiled emperor.

  He had talked to her of his son, the king of Rome. And he’d said wistfully, “I have no fear whatever about my fame. Posterity will do me justice. The truth will be known, and the good I have done with the faults I have committed will be compared. Although I have failed, I shall be considered an extraordinary man.”

  Only six years ago! How close they had been! Since then she had lost her beloved father. Next Napoleon had died of apparently the same illness brought on by the difficult island climate. At the moment she was in a state of despair, frantic that she might somehow be forced into a hideous marriage with old Lord Dakin.

  And because she’d written about Richard’s death to the War Office, this fantastic man and his utterly insane story had come to her. His invitation to join him in London as one of his private secret agents might seem more reasonable if she could make herself believe what he’d told her. The trouble was that she could not.

  When Betsy went downstairs to dinner, her mother and stepfather had already returned and were having sherry in the drawing room. As she joined them, the big bulldog-faced Sir John Cort was haranguing her mother about something. He stood before the fireplace, his back to it, as he uttered a tirade of abuse at his unfortunate spouse. Maria Cort sat dejectedly in her chair, her glass of sherry held loosely in her hand as she listened to her husband.

  Her thin, lined face lighted up a trifle at the arrival of Betsy since it would mean that some of the attention would be temporarily taken from her. “How nice you look, my dear,” Maria said. “The white gown becomes you nicely. I’m sure Lord Dakin will be taken with it.”

  Almost angrily she replied, “I did not wear it to please Lord Dakin. In fact I wasn’t at all sure he was coming tonight.”

  Her stepfather, resplendent in blue jacket and fawn trousers, scowled at her, and in his booming voice told her, “I’m sure I made that quite clear. Alfred is coming to stay overnight with us, and it is his hope, and ours, that you will come to some arrangement whereby your engagement can be announced.”

  “Never!” she said, defiantly facing her stepfather.

  “Don’t be rash, my dear!” her mother counseled her.

  “You should consider yourself a fortunate young woman to be picked out by a man like Lord Dakin for marriage. As Lady Dakin you will rule London society,” Sir John Cort said.

  “A groom of sixty-one with an odious reputation,” she said angrily. “All London would either pity me or laugh at me!”

  Sir John Cort’s ugly face took on a purplish shade, and he turned to demand of the hapless Maria, “Is this the respect you get from your ungrateful daughter?”

  Maria, pinched looking under the lace cap she wore, pleaded with the burly man. “Do not be too hard on her, John. She has lost both a brother and a father, each of them dearer to her than I.”

  “Another disgrace!” Cort snapped, his jowls flapping over his tall, hard collar. “The girl was ruined by her father! His bad judgment was exemplified while you lived at Saint Helena — to allow his daughter to become a friend of Napoleon!”

  Betsy exclaimed, “Do not speak against my father!”

  “Ha!” Her stepfather snorted with disdain. “Next you will be warning me to proceed easily with the name of Napoleon!”

  “I do warn you,” she said with defiance. “Napoleon was my true friend!”

  “Listen to her!” her burly stepfather exclaimed. And to Betsy he cried, “I vow you had no scruples of being in the company of an older man then!”

  “Napoleon respected me,” she said. “He did not want to ravish me as your lecherous friend does!”

  Sir John Cort told her angrily, “If Lord Dakin marries you, it will be as close as you can ever expect to your becoming a lady. If only in name!”

  “Lord Dakin is a fine gentleman, my dear,” her mother said in a frightened voice.

  Betsy smiled bitterly and told the two, “I suspect you need the match to replenish the family fortune. It is widely known that in your jaunts to London gaming houses you have squandered most of the fortune left by my father!”

  “You hear that, madam!” her irate stepfather roared at her unfortunate mother. “This girl has no respect for me!”

  “John!” Maria wailed pitifully.

  At that moment Hobbs came into the room and cleared his throat to announce, “Lord Alfred Dakin’s coach is in the drive, sir!”

  “Thank you, Hobbs, I shall go at once to greet him,” her stepfather said. And to them he went on scathingly, “It is not your daughter’s fault that he has not caught us all quarreling like drunken fishwives!” And he strode off to welcome his old friend.

  Maria looked up at Betsy sadly as soon as they were alone. “I do wish you would try to get along with your stepfather.”

  “I hate him!” Betsy said angrily. “I cannot conceal it!”

  “He is only trying to arrange a suitable match for you. It is time you were married! Most of your friends are already raising children!”

  “I can wait for marriage until I meet a man I love,” she told her mother.

  “You may wait a lifetime without finding such a person,” Maria Cort lamented.

  She knelt by her mother and said, “You above all people ought not to say that. I have such fond memories of your happy life with my father. Why did you have to marry again? And marry such a bounder as Sir John!”

  Her mother whimpered, “I thought all men were like your father. Sir John flattered me and made so many promises — none of them which he bothered to keep. My only happiness rests in you!”

  “An
d would you have me married to that old reprobate?”

  “No,” her mother said. “But Sir John is so forceful. I cannot seem to prevail against him.”

  “Then I promise you, I shall,” Betsy told her mother grimly. She stood up again as she heard the voices of her stepfather and Lord Alfred Dakin approaching.

  Lord Dakin came strutting into the room resplendent in a pale yellow silken jacket and dark blue trousers. He wore a wig too black to look natural and somewhat ill fitting. His thin fece was powdered and rouged, and he studied her with his lorgnette held up to his watery blue eyes.

  “Damme, you never looked more lovely!” he said in his high-pitched voice, ending with a giggle.

  “My daughter has been looking forward to your visit,” Sir John Cort said, his eyes at the same time flashing a warning to Betsy not to deny this flagrant lie.

  Her mother was on her feet and smiling at the ancient fop. “May I say how well you look, Lord Dakin. Your youthful appearance is the talk of London society. I have heard matrons whisper behind their fans that while their birth dates are the same as yours, you appear young enough to be their son!”

  “Thank you, dear lady,” Lord Alfred Dakin said. “Perhaps it is because I prefer the company of the young, particularly in my bed, that I have retained my own youth!” He guffawed at his distasteful joke.

  They all, with the exception of Betsy, joined in laughing at his sally. Sir John turned to her with a frown and asked, “Have you no word of greeting for Lord Alfred?”

  “I’m sure he knows he is welcome enough here without my adding to his greeting,” she said quietly.

  “True!” the old roué said, waving his jeweled lorgnette. “I need no reassurances from one who may soon share my love. A true Juliet and her Romeo, determined to be eternally youthful!” He giggled once again.

  Even Sir John looked slightly disgusted at his performance and said, “Let us proceed to the dining room! I have your favorite pheasant and a bushel of fine oysters for your pleasure!”