Desperate Fortune

by Susanna Kearsley

  Mary guessed the merchant had not understood the whole of what the Englishman had said, but he too appeared captivated, leaning close to look at the engraving work, admiring the scrollwork of the lock.

  They might have been children, thought Mary, entranced with a pretty new toy. It was pretty. She had a good view from her side of the table of the silver plate near the shoulder end, fancifully etched with a swan drifting past on the moat of a castle set deep amid trees. But the gilt mount at the front end of the trigger guard was cast in the shape of a wolf’s head, reminding her keenly that this was designed to bring death.

  Stevens, mingling praise and insult, said, “This is no Spanish gun.” Looking to Thomson he asked, “Is it German?”

  Again Thomson kept to his role and gave a convincingly French shrug while turning to Mary and waiting while she played her part in turn, doing the translating. Thomson was then free to ask the same question of Mr. MacPherson in Spanish—though Mary suspected that Thomson’s command of that language did not match the Scotsman’s, who when he replied sounded quite like a native. Still, with the younger of the sisters gone upstairs there was no one remaining who spoke any Spanish at all, so it was left to Thomson to turn what MacPherson had said into French, and then Mary turned that French to English, and so in this ungainly way Mr. Stevens at length got his answer.

  “He wins it in Switzerland. But it is made in Vienna,” said Mary.

  “Wins it?” Stevens frowned a little. “Wins it how?”

  Again the question went round from Mary to Thomson to Mr. MacPherson and back again. This time, when Mary paused to try to phrase her own reply a little more inexpertly, the merchant seemed to leap to the conclusion she was only being modest, and because he was a Frenchman too and understood what Thomson had just told her, he attempted to come to her aid by telling Stevens on his own: “He won it in a game of drinking.”

  “Ah.” The war showed for an instant on his face, between his wanting to possess that rifled long gun and his grudging but pragmatic realization that MacPherson, being larger, would perhaps have the advantage in a competition.

  And that instant was enough. The Scotsman spoke again to Thomson, seeming nonchalant, but there was something in his tone that sounded rather like an insult of his own. And so it was.

  “He says,” said Mary, when the words had come to her through Thomson, “this gun is for the brave, and this is why he wins it. It is not a gun for cowards. He says one day maybe someone comes who proves himself to be…” She knew the phrase, but for the purpose of disguising her abilities she turned now to the merchant and repeated it in French and asked for his advice in choosing English words.

  The merchant had grown slightly flushed and seemed a bit uncomfortable with what was yet to come, but still he told her, “I would say, ‘the best,’ or no, ‘the better man.’”

  She nodded. “Yes. The better man.” Returning her attention to the Englishman, she added in her sweetest tone, “And he does not believe, monsieur, that you will be this man.”

  A flash of something dangerous was there and gone so rapidly in Mr. Stevens’s eyes that if it had not also raised a dark flush on his cheekbones Mary would have thought it had been but imagined. He passed the rifled gun into the Scotsman’s hands without so much as glancing at him. Then with slow, deliberate movements he reached for the bottle of the strong, fierce-tasting Marc de Bourgogne. He filled MacPherson’s glass, and then his own, and turning to MacPherson raised his own glass in a mocking gesture.

  “Well, then,” he said, and with his gaze locked upon the Scotsman’s, drained his glass and set it with a thump upon the table in an open challenge. “May the best man win.”

  Chapter 24

  I am in the land of strangers, where is my friend…?

  —Macpherson, “The Battle of Lora”

  On the Saône

  February 19, 1732

  The gun was in its customary place amid the baggage of the diligence d’eau when they set out next morning for their journey down the river Saône, but Mr. Stevens had mysteriously vanished.

  “It is odd,” the merchant said, as though still trying to make sense of it. “I’d formed the strong impression he was bound, as we were, for Lyon. It was indeed most fortunate that when we helped him to his room we spied that note upon the table and so learned he’d booked his passage on the coach this morning for Dijon, for as it was we had but barely half an hour to get him onto it. And it was fortunate also that señor Montero was not in the condition Mr. Stevens was, for even with my man to help it took the three of us together to convey him with his baggage to the coaching yard. ’Tis no small feat to move a man when he is all but senseless. I fear,” the merchant added, “he will have a rough day’s journey, but at least when he awakes he will be where he planned to be.”

  He spoke in French now, for with Stevens gone there was no longer any need for him to speak in English, so his words would have been lost on the tall Scotsman sitting now across from Mary; though from how MacPherson sat with his eyes closed, his head resting carefully against the wall at his back, she was not at all sure he’d have paid much attention at any rate.

  The movement of the diligence d’eau could not have helped. The river had an undulating current that was proving to have much the same effect on Madame Roy as had their travel over hilly roads by land, which had made Mary wonder why the older woman had been chosen to accompany them, given she could not have harbored any love of traveling.

  This diligence upon the river was, to Mary’s mind, more pleasant than the one that went by road. In form it was a long and shallow barge, towed from the riverbank by horses with a driver, while on board another bargeman did the steering with a pole. The covered cabin, pleasantly appointed with long benches for the seating, had glass windows all around that gave a view of the scenery slipping away to each side, which in a better season might have been quite beautiful but now was half-obscured by a thick dewy mist that hung above the riverbank and fields.

  The merchant’s servant was at least allowed to sit withindoors for this section of the voyage and was huddled now at his end of the bench across from Madame Roy. He looked a mirror image of her misery, his cough grown deep enough to rattle in his chest alarmingly and make the mother of the daughters look at him with disapproval.

  Turning that same disapproving look upon the Scotsman now, the mother said, “It is a most disgraceful vice, to drink for sport. I’m glad I was not there to see it. And I do hope you,” she said to Mary, “did not have to see it either.”

  Mary reassured her she’d seen little of the drinking contest beyond its beginning. “I went early to my bed. I had a headache.”

  She had claimed that headache first because it had been prearranged within their plan that she should do so, once the contest had begun, to give a proper cause for Thomson to remove himself until the threat from Stevens had been dealt with. And once Thomson had escorted her upstairs and gone along to his own room and she’d been left with Madame Roy, the still-pretended headache had become a way for Mary to avoid the need to enter into conversation.

  Mary had not wished to talk to Madame Roy, nor to the others. She had played the part they’d asked of her and wanted to do no more after that but get to Lyon, where she hoped their journey would be at an end and she would be released and then…

  And then what? Mary did not know. She had no money and no friends here, and her brother and Sir Redmond having happily abandoned her to such an expedition could now hardly be relied upon to offer her a rescue.

  In all the years she’d yearned for an adventure, she had not dreamed that when one finally did arrive, she’d find herself so ill equipped to meet it. In the darkness of her room last night, curled lonely in her bed with Frisque a sleeping weight upon her feet, she’d closed her eyes and felt the slow, despairing tears come anyway.

  She’d felt the mattress dip as Madame Roy had sat beside
her, and a cool and soothing hand had stroked the hair back from her forehead, lending sympathy. “The best thing for a headache is to sleep,” the older woman had advised, and Mary, mastering her tears, had kept her eyes tight shut and nodded.

  Madame Roy, she knew, was one of those involved in keeping secrets from her, and so not deserving of her trust, but while she did not want to like the older woman there was something in that touch upon her forehead that brought comfort.

  Mary’s voice had sounded very small when she had said to Madame Roy, “My mother used to do that.”

  And the older woman, giving no reply, had gone on stroking Mary’s hair back from her forehead, very gently, till the blissful dark forgetfulness of sleep had finally claimed her.

  She had woken to discover that, perhaps in retribution, her pretended headache had become a very real one. It had worsened as the morning had progressed and felt like steady pounding hammers at her temples now.

  The Scotsman likely had a headache also, Mary judged from how he kept so still and silent, but she could not muster any thoughts of pity for him. Nor had her own feelings of self-pity long survived the break of day, when they had yielded to a quiet growing anger deep inside her that seemed driven by the cheerful conversation Mr. Thomson had been having with the merchant just as much as by the dull and throbbing pain within her head.

  He had no right to be cheerful, Mary thought, no more than any of them had a right to use her thus—not Nicolas, nor yet Sir Redmond, nor the three who traveled with her now. She had no reason to feel sorrowful; no reason to despair or weep. They were the ones who had transgressed, and if she was yet bound to keep their company, she was not bound to pay them any more than common courtesy—to speak when she was spoken to, and play the role assigned to her until they came to Lyon, when she’d find some means to part with them.

  She felt a rising confidence in that resolve. She was no child, to be required to always follow orders. She was nearly twenty-two years old, a woman. Mistress Jamieson could not have been her senior by more than a few years, after all, and she had found resourcefulness enough to cross the Channel on her own and in disguise, upon an errand that was certainly as daring as the one that Mary faced, and full as dangerous.

  Frisque stirred upon her lap and turned a circle and lay down again, himself a little out of sorts. He wanted room to run, she knew. She patted him and rumpled his soft ears and said, “Be patient.”

  At her side the younger of the daughters said, “He’s very well behaved, your dog. I long have wanted one myself, only Maman will not allow it. See, Maman, how sweet he is?”

  Her mother said, “Yes, very sweet. But dogs may not be put into a cupboard when you tire of them, with all your other playthings.”

  “That is most unfair,” the younger daughter countered. “I am nearly seventeen, and not a child.”

  “When you are married and it is your husband’s problem, you may have a dog,” her mother promised.

  “I should prefer a dog,” the younger daughter told her, “to a husband.”

  Her mother thought that foolish. “Every girl does need a husband to take care of her; to love her and protect her. What do you think, Monsieur Robillard?”

  The question interrupted Thomson in his conversation with the merchant, but he took it in his stride and turning asked, “I beg your pardon?”

  “Would you not wish to see your sister marry well?”

  The fact that such a thought had never crossed his mind was plainly written on his features as he sought to frame the proper answer, none too certain of the conversation he was being asked to join.

  The mother pressed him further, “You would surely not desire she should be always your companion, with no chance to know the joys of being someone’s wife.”

  “No,” he said, “I—”

  “Truly,” said the mother, with a knowing air, “I do suspect you’ll one day find your noble friend, the good Chevalier de Vilbray, has stolen her away from you, for as I do perceive he has already claimed her heart.”

  The elder daughter, who’d been saddened earlier that morning by the loss of Mr. Stevens in their company, revived now with a wistful smile. “He’d certainly lay claim to mine,” she said, “if he behaved to me as gallantly as he has done to Mademoiselle Robillard. Come, mademoiselle, do share another story of your handsome chevalier and his adventures, for the morning is a dreary one and all of us need cheering.”

  Mary felt little inclined to tell stories, but neither did she want to spread her own ill mood to those who had no part in causing it. Pushing the pain of her headache aside, she started to weave a new tale of a voyage on which her invented Chevalier de Vilbray—who now had grown taller as well as more chivalrous than his original—found himself traveling with villains and thieves who intended him harm. It was one of her most inspired stories and filled with excitement and intrigue, and when it had finished the mother and daughters and even the merchant were rapt with attention and greatly impressed.

  “Well!” The mother leaned back as she let out the breath she’d been holding. “Your friend the chevalier is certainly one of the bravest of men.”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “He is.”

  At her side, the young sister had taken a pencil and paper from out of her pocket and was noting down the key points of the story. “My aunt,” she explained, “will be highly diverted by this when I write to her next. You don’t mind if I tell her?”

  “Of course not.” Her tale finished, Mary was just on the point of allowing her own eyes to close when she stopped. Her aunt… “Do you write to your aunt very often?”

  “Oh, yes. She is widowed, you see, and has little in life to amuse her, and when we are traveling she finds it lonely to not have us near, so I write little letters and post them whenever I can. I shall send her the next from Lyon.”

  “Very kind of you,” Mary acknowledged, but absently, her own mind traveling now on a new course of thought. Her Aunt Magdalene and Uncle Jacques were not wealthy, but were she to write them a letter they surely could manage the small price that they’d have to pay to receive it. And were she to ask for their aid they’d be sure to do what they were able to do to assist her.

  Lyon was no village, she knew, but a city—much larger than any of the places they’d stopped before this. If Mary could get to a church and a priest she could make her confession and still keep her oath to Sir Redmond. A priest would not put Mr. Thomson in danger, because being bound by the sanctity of the confessional, he’d be unable to pass on the details of what Mary told him; yet having once heard those same details, a priest would most certainly also be bound, at the risk of her soul, to protect her from further exposure to vice. She could ask for protection until Uncle Jacques could arrange for her safe return to Chanteloup-les-Vignes.

  Hope found a small fertile place to take root in her heart.

  As if sensing the change in her mood, Frisque grew restless again. He turned thrice in her lap this time, pawed at her skirts, and then suddenly gathered his haunches and leaped from her lap to the knee of the Scotsman across from her. Mr. MacPherson’s strong leg did not look like a comfortable bed for the dog, but Frisque turned round and settled upon it decidedly, tucking his nose firmly under his paws.

  Mary had at first been too surprised to react, but before she could lean forward and retrieve the dog the Scotsman’s hand descended on Frisque’s back and stayed at rest there, holding him securely. To anyone who had no notion of MacPherson’s nature, such a gesture might have seemed to be protective and endearing, but to Mary’s eyes it was but an example of the Scotsman’s way of keeping everything around him firmly under his control.

  And although Frisque had not the sense to feel uncomfortable beneath that hold, for Mary it was growing more important to break free of it.

  * * *

  She wrote the letter late that night, when they had stopped to sup and sleep at
Mâcon. Madame Roy had grown accustomed to the sight of Mary writing in her journal and made no remark upon it when she took herself to bed. And when the older woman’s breathing slowed and deepened into slumber, Mary dipped her quill into fresh ink and on a new page wrote a careful message to her aunt and uncle, ever mindful that her letter, once she’d sent it, would be passed from hand to hand and might be read by unintended eyes, particularly as it must be carried close by Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which was, as Mistress Jamieson had warned her, “full of prying eyes and those who love exposing secrets.”

  Notwithstanding that, she could not write in cipher, for her aunt and uncle would not know the key to it. She could but choose her words with purpose, hoping they would look between the cheerful lines and see the desperation that had driven her to write them.

  I pray you do not tell my brother, she included, taking the contrite tone of a child who had been warned against a course of action and who’d acted anyway and viewed that rash decision with regret; although her aunt and uncle would of course know that was not the truth of what had happened—for he will be justly disappointed.

  She kept her obligation to her brother and Sir Redmond and did not give any details of her traveling companions; did not even tell their number. All she wrote was:

  I am told that at Lyon we will be finished with our journey, and I will be most content to stay and wait for your arrival.

  But wait where? she wondered. Lyon was a large place, and although the merchant, having been there many times before, had obliged her by describing several of the major sights he thought she should not miss, she still had no idea where she would be lodged, or what the nearest church might be where she could seek to make confession to a priest and beg protection.