Tante Héloise sighed. “It is not the piano’s fault, little one. But you must be careful. Men like him, aristos, they care nothing for people like us.”
She shook her head. “But he seems different. He is not arrogant, careless, like those creatures at the concerts in Paris.” They had posed no danger to her. For them she felt only dislike. This one, however… He had made her lose control back there in the breakfast room. No man had ever made her lose control. She must not do that. She could not afford it.
“That is simply because the English aristos are so assured of their place in the universe that they need not proclaim it. The French aristos are always uncertain now. They must keep reminding us that they are the powerful ones, lest we forget and believe once more in Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” A corner of Tante Héloise’s mouth lifted in a bitter smile. “And lest we bring out the guillotine again.”
She wanted to protest, but she knew Tante Héloise was right. “I know I should pay no attention to him. I do know that. But Delphine was prattling on about heroism and glory. Does she not remember what it was like in Paris just a few months ago? Has she already forgotten the misery? The hunger? The fear? Or has she been so completely wrapped up in her own dream world that she never even noticed?”
“Pftt. Of course she did not notice. You know she notices nothing that does not affect her, and even then she twists it in her mind.”
Marguerite looked off into her memories. “We almost made it. That week in May when the army came in to put down the Commune—it was ending. Everyone knew it.”
Tante Héloise put an arm around her shoulders and joined her in the memory. “Yes. The Commune was defeated, the cold and the hunger and the fear were coming to an end. We thought that in a day or so life could return to normal.”
Marguerite lifted a hand as if to catch the memory, or perhaps to hold it at bay.
The gunfire in our quartier had stopped. Even the shouting seemed to have come to an end. We were all still crouched behind the furniture, waiting until Papa said it was safe to move. It was so quiet. We were not used to the quiet. All through the quartier people must have been waiting. As if we were all holding our breath.
Finally Papa stood up, ever so cautiously. He stepped into the middle of the room, a smile slowly appearing on his face—the first smile in many months. “I think it may be over,” he said. “I think it is over.” He opened his arms, and I started to run to him.
And then some fool, some wicked, evil monster of a fool out in the street started shooting off his rifle wildly at nothing. Nothing! Didn’t he know it was over? Hadn’t there been enough shooting? It should have been over. Except that one of those wild shots came through our window and hit Papa. He just stood there for a moment, the smile fading into a look of surprise, but still holding his arms out to me. His legs just crumpled beneath him. By the time I reached him, he was gone.
The trembling overwhelmed her and she collapsed against Tante Héloise. The older woman held her, rocking her like a child. She would have liked to weep, but the tears would not come. There was only the fear. What was she going to do? How was she going to take care of Delphine and Tante Héloise? And poor, simple Horace?
They could not stay here. Delphine might like to pretend that she would be the lady of the chateau, but was simply foolishness. The invitation from the vicomte had been fortunate…ah, it had been more than fortunate. She had buried Papa in the midst of the nightmare that was Paris, when so many were being buried that she feared the cemeteries would not hold them all. That had been necessary, and she had done it, but afterward? Afterward she’d had no idea what to do.
Finally she pulled herself up.
“You are all right?” Tante Héloise looked at her doubtfully.
“Well enough. There is no choice, is there? One must be well enough.” She would have liked to give Tante Héloise a reassuring smile, but she could not manage that.
The older woman nodded her understanding and squeezed Marguerite’s hand before leaving.
Marguerite stared at the piano keys, and pressed down a few notes. Then she straightened up, put both hands on the keys, and slowly, softly began to play. Music. At least there was music. The chords piled upon each other, growing louder and louder until they drowned out all the worries.
A bit of sun escaping from the clouds drew Ned down from his tower. The breeze off the sea was chilly, but it had blown away the fog and for the moment at least the world was bright and clear.
The chateau boasted a surprisingly attractive formal garden, small but neat with its miniature boxwoods and topiaries in stone planters. Even now, with summer’s flowers vanished, its straight paths and clipped hedges gave pleasure. He was admiring its mathematical precision—so distinct from all the churning undercurrents roiling the inhabitants of the chateau—when he caught sight of Delphine wandering along the same paths as he.
He had to admit that she made a pretty picture. The ruffles of her dress cascaded below her short cape, and a silly bit of nonsense perched on her curls. She looked delicate and fragile.
Footsteps startled him, and he turned to see Horace looming at his shoulder. Tony’s distaste for the fellow seemed more understandable every time Ned saw him. Horace was large, yes, but he didn’t give the impression of strength so much as thickness. He was not wearing any unusual amount of clothing, and what he wore seemed to hang loosely. It was as if his body were made up of extra layers of flesh. Combined with the dull look of his eyes and the way his mouth often hung open, his appearance was somehow discomfiting. That discomfort made Ned feel guilty. It was hardly Horace’s fault that he was a simpleton.
“Mlle. Delphine is very pretty,” said Horace.
“Yes, she is.” Ned was not sure this was an appropriate thing for Horace to be saying. The young man might be simple, but he was still a young man.
“I take care of her.” Horace smiled proudly. “M. Benda told me to watch over her, and I do.”
“You take care of her?” Ned was not sure how a simpleton could take care of anyone. Perhaps Delphine had been told to take care of him.
“Yes. I make sure that nothing bad happens when she is around. Nothing that might upset her.”
That sounded marginally like a duty that might be given to a simpleton. “I’m sure that you do an excellent job of that.” Ned smiled uncomfortably and patted Horace on the shoulder.
Delphine greeted him with one of her shy smiles, peering up at him through her lashes. “Good afternoon, Edward. You too seek the sunshine. It is pleasant after all these days of clouds and mist, no?”
“Indeed it is. And you are looking quite as delightful as the sunshine.” He felt a bit foolish saying that, but she seemed to expect that sort of florid compliment. There could be no harm in indulging her, since she could not be finding life here at the chateau terribly exciting.
She dimpled prettily and took his arm. “They are very foolish who say that the English are cold. You are far more charming and gallant than my cousin Antoine, who thinks of nothing but business. Come, we will explore this so very pretty little garden.”
She really was a pretty little thing herself, he thought, and he patted the hand clinging to his arm. “Yes, it is a charming garden, and decidedly unexpected here.”
“Unexpected? But why unexpected? A chateau should have a garden.”
“Well, the chateau seems very much of the Middle Ages, very gothic and forbidding, and this garden seems to belong to a later, more frivolous period.” He thought perhaps that he needed to explain more since she looked puzzled, but before he could, her face cleared.
“You have not seen the real chateau then.” She gave a little laugh. “Come, I will show you where the family lived—not in the fortress the old man has chosen for himself.”
She tugged on his arm and drew him along the side of the chateau. As they turned a corner, they encountered a deluge of music pouring down from a window above them. Music so powerful that it had an almost palpable presence.
Ned stopped as if he had run into a wall, causing Delphine to stumble slightly.
“What is it?” she demanded crossly.
“The music…” He held up a hand to ask for her silence, but she ignored it.
“That is only Marguerite. She is forever at the piano. One learns to ignore it.” She tugged at his arm.
He refused to move. He could not.
The music swept him up, took him to a place he had never been, arousing emotions he had never known, teaching, tempting, tormenting. It swirled, rose and fell. One moment there was joy, and then it tumbled toward despair. But always it rose again, never quite surrendering, ever hopeful.
It filled the world. There was nothing but the music. It wrapped around him, obliterating everything, overwhelming him.
He stood spellbound until the notes exploded in a final inevitable conclusion, leaving him bereft. He longed to reach back, to return to that place where the music had been everything.
At a sound behind him—half groan, half sigh—he turned and saw that Horace too had been listening, mesmerized. The fellow looked as awestruck as Ned felt himself. For the first time he felt a kinship with Horace, and shame for the distaste he had felt earlier.
“There. She is finished. May we proceed now?” Delphine vibrated with irritation.
He shook his head in amazement. “I had no idea. I mean, I knew she played, but…but I had no idea.” When she played the harpsichord—that had been good, impressively good. But this? This was music of a different order.
“Of course she plays. That is how she earns her living.” At the look of confusion on his face, she sighed impatiently. “She played with her father in concerts, in people’s homes and on public stages. You can imagine the humiliation for me.” She shuddered theatrically and pulled him down the path.
It seemed futile to protest. Delphine obviously understood nothing of what they had heard. How could she be so deaf? Even poor simple Horace knew that Marguerite’s music was something extraordinary. This was not the music of a polite young lady entertaining her guests, or even a professional performance in a concert hall. This was something entirely different, a kind of music he had never heard before. It swept him to places he had never known existed and left him filled with longing.
Chapter Ten
If he had been paying attention, he would have realized that Delphine was leading him to the same door he had used when he arrived at the chateau. As it was, he was still under the spell of the music and did not notice where he was until he stood again on the stone floor, with the somber paintings of religious processions looming over him.
He frowned. “I came this way when I arrived.”
“Yes, I know.” She tossed him a smile over her shoulder. “But no one uses this entrance any more. That is why it took so long for anyone to let you in.”
He continued to frown. “But you, you were up there at the top of this staircase.” He gestured at the stone staircase that was, he now noticed, an elaborate one of carved granite. Surely this was no servants’ entrance. Why had his entrance here been so unexpected?
“Yes, of course,” she said, starting up the stairs. “This way we can reach the real chateau, not that dreary part the vicomte chooses to live in now. All those gloomy stone walls. This is where his family lived when all was beautiful and gay. You will see.”
Horace held back. “But Madame said we should not go there.” He stammered slightly.
“Nonsense.” Delphine waved an airy hand as she continued up.
“But Madame said,” Horace repeated stubbornly.
At the top of the staircase, Delphine spun around. “Then do not join us. Go back to Madame. Go!” She waved dismissal.
Horace managed to look both mulish and cowed, with his lower lip stuck out before he turned and shuffled off, muttering, “She said. You know she did.”
Ned looked after him uncertainly. “Is this part of the building unsafe?”
“No, of course not, unless you consider dust dangerous. Come along.” She waved to him impatiently and vanished down the corridor.
He followed more slowly, feeling uneasy for reasons he did not understand. Part of it was simply that he was a guest here, and had no business intruding on private—or forbidden—areas. No one was likely to reprimand him, of course. Over the years he had learned that few people ever reprimanded the son of a marquess. That made him particularly careful to avoid overstepping boundaries. He disliked even the possibility that he might be taking advantage of his position.
But was this part of the chateau private? No one lived in these rooms. That much was obvious. Dust there was in plenty, dust everywhere, piled up in corners and covering every surface. The only indication that anyone had entered these rooms in years—possibly in centuries—was the disturbance in the center where footprints and smears could be seen. Small footprints, probably Delphine’s. And smears from her trailing skirts. Did anyone else come here?
His first thought, that the building might be physically unsafe, seemed wrong. The floor under his feet was definitely solid, and there seemed to be no danger from the ceiling. The plasterwork and cornices showed no missing pieces, no likelihood that bits might come tumbling down. The only possible threat came from the spiders that had spun those webs up there.
So why had Delphine been told not to come here?
“In here. Come.” Her head appeared from a doorway and promptly disappeared.
He obeyed.
The doorway was one of those immensely high ones with double paneled doors folded back on each side. And the room itself was…incredible. He turned slowly, drinking it in. Even covered with decades of grime, something of its old glory shone through. It was a ballroom, he supposed. It was too big for anything else. On one side were long windows so coated with dirt that they barely let in any light now, but he imagined that they probably opened onto a balcony stretching the length of the room. On the opposite wall were long mirrors, their frames echoing the window frames. The chandeliers were long gone, only the plaster rosettes and brackets in the ceiling showing where they had once been. Bits of fabric still clung to the window frames, tattered remnants of old glories.
Ned shook his head. It was all incredibly sad.
Delphine stood on the dais at one end of the room, smiling joyously and stretching out her arms. “Is it not magnificent?”
He raised his brows. “That is not quite the way I would have described it.”
“Oh, not at the moment, perhaps.” She shrugged dismissively. “But when I have restored it, then you will see.”
“You are planning to restore it?”
“Not yet, of course. I must wait until it is mine. It will be expensive, no doubt. I will need to find the treasure. He cannot live much longer, and he really must tell me how to find it before he dies.” She was looking around the room meditatively.
“You are the vicomte’s heir?” She seemed to assume so, but no one else had said anything about it.
“Who else?” She was not paying much attention to Ned. Her attention seemed focused on the windows.
Ned did not know whether to laugh or scold. She had said something of the sort once before. Playing games of make-believe was all very well and good, but she really should learn not to talk that way. “Tony is his great grandson,” he pointed out. “And Marguerite is as closely related to him as you are.”
She made a dismissive noise. “I told you, they are not truly of the nobility. Not any more. Their blood has been contaminated by their parents’ mésalliances.”
“Delphine!” It was more gasp than protest, more shock than either.
He might as well not have spoken for all the attention she gave him. Her thoughts were directed elsewhere, and hectic red spots appeared on her cheeks. “Tell me, do you think I should have velvet for the draperies or brocade? It must be blue to match my eyes. I may have to have it specially dyed. And I shall wear sapphires in my hair. The guests—they too will be of the ancient nobility, none of these new creations—t
hey will all be struck with admiration for me, and they will recognize my worth. I shall reign over them all.” She tilted her head as if in gracious acceptance of the admiration of the crowd.
Ned did not know what to say. Was this just a childish fantasy? He was beginning to doubt it. She looked and spoke as if she seriously planned all this. As if she believed what she was saying.
“Delphine.” To his relief, Marguerite came through the door. She approached slowly, almost hesitantly, and spoke in the soothing tones one used for a frightened child or a wounded animal. He had heard her use that tone to Delphine before. “Delphine, I thought…”
“There is no need for you to worry, Marguerite,” Delphine interrupted with a regal wave of her hand. “I have not forgotten you. There will be a piano up here on the dais for you, beside the orchestra, and you will be able to play for my guests.” She looked at her cousin with a frown. “But if you persist in dressing like a crow, I must insist that you sit behind a screen. I will have no black at my ball.”
“Very well, dear, no black. But don’t you think…” Marguerite stretched out a hand toward the younger girl.
“Stop that!” Delphine leaped back, out of reach. “You don’t believe me. You think I am just being silly. But it will all be true. This will all be mine. Why do you deny it?” Her voice kept rising.
“Calm yourself, Delphine.” Marguerite kept her voice soft, but she looked as if every muscle in her body was tensed.
Ned wanted to help. He hated that he was just standing there, but he did not understand what was happening and he feared making things worse. There did not seem to be any physical danger at least.
“Enough.” Mme. d’Hivers’ voice was not loud but was decisive. “It is time, Delphine. You will come with me.”
Everything seemed frozen. Mme. d’Hivers stood in the doorway, holding out a hand to Delphine, dominating by her very presence. Horace hovered behind her, his head appearing over her shoulder. Inside the room, Marguerite waited, watching Delphine, just watching.
Lord Edward's Mysterious Treasure Page 6
