“I appreciate your assistance, Miss Ash,” Jean-Marc said, “but I don’t appreciate your rudeness. Have your say—preferably without insulting anyone else.”
“Lavinia,” Meg said, joining them again. “Do let go of poor Pierre. He only did what the rest of us did, and followed because he wanted to help.”
“Th-thank you, Miss Smiles,” Pierre said, drawing in his lower lip.
Meg stared at him, at his broad shoulders and his strongly made form.
“Buck up, Godly-Smythe,” Lavinia snapped. “You are going to get your way because it will suit me—I mean, because it will suit everyone best. Sibyl knows she has few choices left her. She will marry you, and Meg will live with the two of you. That’s what matters most here.”
Ila waved her pistol with abandon. “It was the good old Godly one who managed to get Meg and Sibyl’s allowances reduced, you know.”
“Please,” Reverend Baggs said, “surely enough has been said.”
“I thought they ought to know,” Ila said.
“Meg will go nowhere,” Jean-Marc said. He no longer cared about Godly-Smythe’s transgressions. The man was finished. But the caper merchant was an annoyance and a puzzle, and she spoke with enough authority to fool some. “In future, Meg will go where I go.”
How easy it would be to rejoice in his declaration, Meg thought. But too much had been said about her position being vastly inferior to his, which it was. However, an accident of birth did not mean a woman didn’t have a mind of her own.
“I will never marry William.” Sibyl crossed her arms and turned her head from him. “Never, never. Never intended to. I said I would to trick him into revealing the truth about his wrongdoings. I’m sure a criminal would not be allowed to keep what he dared to gamble away—our home.”
Give me the strength to carry on as long as I must. Oh, to be resting in my own beloved newel post, watching very few people come and go. I will gather my strength and do my best with this wretched woman, who has such little presence. Remind me to deal with Hunter Lloyd. It still pains me to think of his flippant disregard. He should be embarrassed to be likened to me in looks? Pah! It is I who should be horrified at the suggestion.
“Who,” Meg said, growing exhausted from her efforts, “who attacked whom? At Number Seventeen.” She could not help but look at M. Verbeux.
“I know,” he said, “you think I must have been behind it all, but it’s not so. If I were, would I arrange to have myself beaten? And no, I can’t tell you who did such things.”
“You allude to something you cannot reveal,” Jean-Marc said. “Surely the time for secrets is past. My father’s enemies know something that would be deeply embarrassing to you, is that it?”
“Deeply embarrassing—and disastrous—to another. Please don’t press this, My Lord.”
“That sound,” Jean-Marc said slowly, closing his eyes to listen.
Meg did the same, “Yes, that. I heard it many times but didn’t notice until—”
“Until this oaf set upon you in the dark when you followed him.” Lavinia Ash gave Pierre another rough shake. “I can’t believe how obtuse you are. He’s been meeting his foreign friends, and they’ve been telling him what to do. I know. I’ve been there.”
“You couldn’t be,” Pierre protested.
“See how the fool confesses his sins?” Ash pointed out. “He likes to work in the dark. He pushed M. Verbeux around because he hates him, and because Verbeux was careless. And he enjoyed getting his hands on the Upworth creature.”
“I heard him sucking in his lip,” Meg said. “In that awful room when he burned me.”
Ash waved her free arm like a windmill blade. “At last you notice. I hoped he might do away with you—I mean, I feared he might do away with you, but he is afraid, just like the rest of you, afraid of being caught, so when victory is in his grasp, he runs away.”
Jean-Marc looked narrowly at Pierre and moved slowly toward him, planning how he would inflict the greatest pain. “You enjoy attacking helpless women,” he said. “Now you shall learn how it feels to be helpless.”
“Oh, who cares?” Ash said. “Let’s get on with things. Send him back to your father, My Lord. He’ll deal with him. Mr. Godly-Smythe, kindly ignore Sibyl’s protests and take her and Meg away. And you, Baggs, may get lost and be grateful for my mercy. Verbeux will have to go to the Prince, too. Obviously he comes under the jurisdiction of Mont Nuages. Too bad about Princess Marie.” Her laughter held anything but pity. “Then there is Lady Upworth.” Ash scratched her large nose. “Now what, I wonder, would be best there?”
“I shall go wherever you go, Verbeux,” Lady Upworth said.
“Fair enough.” Ash spoke with alacrity, apparently unaware that not a soul was following her instructions. “You, My Lord, had better run along and continue with the business of marrying off your unpleasant sister.”
“Has something happened to my father’s wife?” Jean-Marc said, referring to Princess Marie.
Verbeux surged forward. He turned a fearsome glare on Ash and said, “You are spreading tales, my good woman. I suggest you stop at once, or I may have to stop you.”
Ash’s smile was stunningly mocking. “How will you do that? Kill me? Oh, I am very frightened of that. I hear Princess Marie is much younger than her husband and a rather—sexual creature.”
“Enough, I tell you.”
“Of course,” Ash said, her expression serious again. “But you shouldn’t have allowed yourself to be found out by people who could use your transgressions against you. That’s why you’re in this pickle, young man.”
Jean-Marc stared at Verbeux, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “You fool.” That was all Jean-Marc said. Princess Marie was no blood relative of his.
“There,” Ash said. “That’s that, and all’s well.”
“How very tidy,” Jean-Marc said, continuing to size up how he would deal with Pierre—at least for now. “If you’ve forgotten anything, I doubt it’s important.”
“Thank you, My Lord,” Ash said. “You aren’t as much of a dolt as I took you for.”
Meg caught her breath and glanced at Jean-Marc. He frowned at Ash, but with curiosity, not anger. “Apart from being beyond rude, madam, you are gifted with an extraordinary ability to sound—”
“Like a man,” Meg finished for him.
Ash’s response was a loud, enraged, “Ow!” Pierre had twisted until he could sink his teeth into his tormentor’s arm. He did this with ferocious intent.
“Animal,” Ash roared. “Low creature who does not know his—ow!—place!”
Wild-eyed, Pierre punched her ribs and, when she doubled over, slammed his fists into the back of her neck.
Verbeux made a grab for him, but too late.
“You won’t send me back to the Duke,” Pierre said, speaking of Louis and laughing hysterically. “Never.”
Spinning away from Jean-Marc’s outstretched hands, the valet’s valet dashed across the room and flung himself at the mullioned and bowed windows.
Glass shattered, spun out into the glittering rain and seemed to hang suspended around the man’s form. The force of his impact tore lead cross-hatch from its frames and bent it to cradle his body.
Jean-Marc strode to look down at the street.
Pierre had died before he hit the ground.
A single spear of that lead had entered his back and exited his chest. The final expression on his face would remain a wide-eyed, wide-mouthed mask of surprise.
Screams came from below and from within the room. Sibyl and Meg threw themselves into each other’s arms. Reverend Baggs, sitting on the windowsill, stared with amazement at the opened vista upon houses and street.
Despite the sound of anguished voices outside, stillness settled on those assembled in the bedroom.
Reverend Baggs rose and leaned to look downward. “I’d follow him,” he said, “if I wasn’t too tired.” He tossed his pistol on the bed. “And if I wasn’t too much of a coward.”
If she looked at him, Meg decided, she would weaken. To do so without a great deal of thought would be to abandon all pride and risk losing herself entirely.
“Come, Sibyl,” she said. “We should return home and talk.”
“Talk?” Sibyl said, sounding shaky. “I like it at Number Seven, Meggie. I’m going to stay there.”
Meg couldn’t bring herself to say she would also continue to live in Mayfair Square. She wasn’t sure she could, at least not while Jean-Marc was so close by.
“I will not give up, I tell you,” Ash bellowed, not sounding at all like herself. “No, no, no, I cannot bear it. Someone is to blame for this failure, and I will find out who it is. Then heads will roll, and I know exactly who will tell me all about how that is achieved.”
Bellowing in baritone, she marched to the landing and down the stairs.
“Amazing,” Jean-Marc said. “For all the world like an angry…man.”
Slipping an arm around Sibyl’s shoulders, Meg cast a last look at the man she loved, and guided her sister from The Frog’s Breath.
Verbeux took Ila’s pistol from her, picked up the one Baggs had discarded on the bed and, together with his own weapon, handed them to Jean-Marc. “Perhaps you would like some time to think,” he said. “You can trust us to return to Mayfair Square and await your wishes.”
Jean-Marc nodded and turned his back on them.
They closed the door as they left, and he was alone.
36
“Meg, it’s you. You’ve come!” Princess Désirée wrenched open the carriage door and placed the steps herself. “Come out at once and let me see you. Oh, Meg, you can’t imagine what I’ve been suffering.”
“Since only yesterday, Your Highness?” Meg asked, stepping into bright sunlight beneath a cloudless sky. The scent of fresh-mown grass rushed at her, and she breathed deeply. She looked toward Riverside, at the riot of roses in many colors covering the facade, and toward the shimmering river beyond.
“Oh, do hurry,” the Princess said, her face puckered with impatience. Halibut hissed and spat at the end of a long piece of green ribbon fashioned into a harness and lead. “Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. Of course, mostly he’s silent, but he glowers so fiercely. He does say Mr. Chillworth may come to Windsor to continue painting me, but then won’t send for him or tell me when he will send for him. He has become a bad-tempered creature I wish I didn’t know.”
“Has he? And who is he?”
“You know very well. He’s miserable and making me suffer for it. You must make him buck up. You can do it. Only you can do it.”
Hiring a carriage and coming at all had felt very daring to Meg. Not coming had been out of the question. The idea of never seeing his face again had kept her awake all night, and she could not bear the thought of such sleepless nights stretching ahead forever.
“Thank goodness you didn’t wait longer to come,” Princess Désirée said, hopping from foot to foot. Her pink and lavender dress became her. The wild condition of her hair did not. “Everything that happened yesterday has been reported to me. Ash was furious and told it all to Millie, who, of course, told everybody. I truly feared I might never see you again. I can scarcely believe that poor wretch, Pierre, was in the employ of my wicked uncle Louis. Actually, and I’m ashamed to admit it, I rather liked my uncle. He was kind to me—when he noticed me at all. And now he’s dead.”
From the Princess’s manner, Meg didn’t think Ash had spoken of Princess Marie and Verbeux. Meg wished she need never again think of all she had learned. “Your uncle was a very bad man who intended to have your brother killed or disgraced—whichever would dispose of him most efficiently.” She did not say what she could not forget, that she had become the chosen method of disgracing Jean-Marc.
“I feel sorry for Verbeux,” Princess Désirée said. “He is already on his way back to Mont Nuages—with Upworth, of course. I am surprised at her bravery.”
“She is in love,” Meg said.
They were quiet.
Her Royal Highness cleared her throat. “I actually thought Verbeux liked Sibyl.”
“I’m sure he did. He must have known they could never be suited because he stopped looking at her in that way he has. And she lost interest in him. Just as well.”
“And Sibyl will remain at Number Seven. Will she be sad? And lonely?”
“I will not allow her to be,” Meg said, and felt guilty because it was not Sibyl who filled her heart and mind today. “But yes, she will remain there. She insists that’s her home now.”
Princess Désirée set her lips so tightly a white line formed around them. She said, “I tell you, since we arrived last evening, that brother of mine has been impossible. Come, we’ll walk into Castleberry and find him.”
For a moment Meg hung back, unsure she could carry out what she’d promised herself she’d do.
Princess Désirée caught Halibut up into one large armful, grabbed Meg’s hand and led her to a path across the fields. “He is very, very difficult,” she said seriously. “I know he is a great burden, but you have a way with him. You don’t allow him to get too far above himself. I have never seen anyone else deal so perfectly with him.” She paused and raised a hand. “Now I have to encourage you to give him a little time to return to being a human. He isn’t one at the moment, or he wasn’t when I last saw him. He went to the village in a great flurry. Everything must be put right—yesterday at the latest, you understand. The school, the church, the cottages, the shops, and on and on. A sawbones for the villagers. Livestock. Weekly audiences when people may come to him personally with their complaints. He’s already had notices posted to that effect. And he has offered himself to Reverend and Mrs. Smothers to work in and about the church in capacities useful to them. He pretends his anger is at himself for neglecting those who depend upon him. He may have done so—a little. But the truth is that he is madly, wildly in love with you and fears he may have lost you, which he should have after the silly things that were said, and which he does not deny were said.”
Meg grew breathless just listening to the girl, who had been transformed from an irritable, uncertain creature into a confident young woman in a matter of weeks.
“It was all foolish, you know,” Désirée continued. “How could someone as sweet, intelligent, honorable, talented and lovely as you not be a suitable—well, suitable for Jean-Marc? Oh, do hurry, Meg. You aren’t an elderly lady to move so slowly!”
They raced through a meadow, beating a new path. Brilliant flowers, daisies and poppies, wild blue irises and golden butter-cups bobbled their heads in the bright light. Butterflies flaunted their pretty wings, and the sweet perfumes of wildflowers mingled with that of the grass.
A lane was reached by a five-barred gate, which Désirée climbed without decorum. Meg clambered over with only slightly more grace. Then they were off again, holding hands, keeping their skirts from tangling about their feet. The blistered skin hurt less today, but her hems still stung raw spots.
The first cottages they saw were widely spaced. Billowing blossoms crowded tiny gardens. Birds sang in thatched roofs. Pink-faced children played while their mothers talked across walls and paused to watch Meg and the Princess pass.
Closer and closer together the stone homes became until they stood in tight rows that encompassed shops. And in the center of the village, a broad green, a white fence, gravestones and a tiny church with a spire that dwarfed the rest of the building.
“He’s in there,” Princess Désirée said, panting. “There’s Wellington.”
A massive gray cropped grass outside the churchyard fence. “The Count has a horse
called Wellington? How odd.”
The Princess shrugged. “He admires Wellington, so why not?” She opened the gate and trotted inside. Meg followed halfway along the path to the open church door before she stopped.
“Come along,” Désirée urged. “Please, Meg. You have no idea how serious this is. The longer you wait, the worse he’ll become.”
The girl assumed Jean-Marc’s ill humor was because he wanted Meg. Meg could not be so sure.
“He is determined to redo everything, everything—including me.” She spread her arms. “I forgot to tell you. I’m to be my father’s heir. Jean-Marc’s glad, although he doesn’t want to be, I think. Papa isn’t a kind man. He is never gentle, or giving. And he never thanks anyone—including my mama. Poor Jean-Marc. He wants you, Meg.”
Meg raised her face and walked straight ahead and into the church. A pretty little place, where the sun cast colored rays through stained-glass windows. A peaceful place, where the care of many hands showed in tapestry kneelers, in highly polished brass and in starched altar linens.
Meg saw Jean-Marc at once. With puffed-up cheeks, he stood at the end of the nave closest to the altar. Flowers were heaped on a table before him, together with a tall green vase that held several blossoms.
Approaching by a side aisle, hoping he wouldn’t see her until she had gained more courage, Meg observed him pick up a large white rose on a thorny stem and stick it into the vase. He poked it this way and that, stood back to study his handiwork and poked some more.
She turned to whisper to the Princess. She wasn’t there.
“Penance,” she heard Jean-Marc mutter. “Penance, penance.” He hauled all the flowers from the vase and started again. This time he gathered blooms into one large hand, evidently without a care for thorns. He added more and more until almost every daisy, rose, iris, dahlia, chrysanthemum and heaps of greenery were crushed together. This chaotic bouquet he thrust into the vase all at once, squashing the stems and giving the whole a few extra shoves. He slapped his palms together and stood back once more. “There,” he said. “Flowers by Etranger in the latest style—complete confusion.”
All Smiles Page 41
