Lord Edward's Mysterious Treasure Page 5

  She gave him a considering look, not smiling. “I fear I may have insulted you. If so, I apologize. My only excuse is that in recent years there have been so many plots and counterplots, so many conspiracies, so much suspicion…” She shrugged. “I have perhaps grown overcautious.”

  He nodded a chilly acceptance of her apology and excuse, such as it was. “You need not fear. I have no interest in your treasure, whatever it may be.”

  “It is not my treasure. If it belongs to anyone, it is the old man’s, and perhaps Antoine’s. I want nothing to do with it. My only interest…” She broke off and shook her head. “No, let us forget the treasure, please. You were going to tell us about your discoveries.”

  A part of him wanted to remain offended, but she was making an effort. The least he could do was make an effort of his own. Turning to her, he noticed how the light from the lamp struck upon her cheekbones, giving a golden glow to the ivory of her complexion. It was really quite lovely… He realized that he was staring at her. So he cleared his throat and took a sip of his coffee.

  “Yes, well, there are letters, diaries—it’s an incredible treasure trove.” He grinned at them all as his enthusiasm spilled out, offense all but forgotten. “There is a diary written by a girl who was at Versailles during the reign of Louis XVI. Letters from Lafayette before he even went to America. So many letters.”

  She sounded actually interested. “And these are helpful for your own researches?”

  “I have barely begun to sort them chronologically, but your relatives seem to have known everyone—even Jean Cottereau. Just glancing through the letters, I saw references to Boishardy, Puisaye, Cadoudal.”

  “And that’s important?” Tony was trying to look interested, but only looked confused. Delphine did not even try to hide her boredom.

  “Of course it’s important. These were all leaders of the resistance here in the west.” Ned couldn’t hide his irritation. He knew that people rarely shared his enthusiasms, but it was always a disappointment.

  The conversation came to an abrupt end when the doctor made an appearance at the door.

  “You will excuse me,” the doctor said to the group at large, before he turned to Marguerite. “Mlle. Benda, I fear you are needed. If you would be so kind?”

  “Of course.” She immediately put down her coffee and followed him out.

  None of the others seemed to think this at all remarkable or even unusual, and the conversation drifted into conventional inanities. But when Ned and Tony went up to bed, there was music, faint harpsichord music coming from the direction of the vicomte’s rooms. It sounded like a gentle, peaceful memory of the past. Ned looked at his friend and raised his brows in inquiry.

  “Oh, that’s Marguerite. Sometimes when the old man is fretting and can’t sleep, it soothes him to have her play for him.”

  Ned felt surprised. He wasn’t quite sure why. Marguerite might seem cold but there was no reason to think she would refuse to help the old man. But the music… It was something familiar. Bach, he thought. One of the English suites. “She plays very well,” he said.

  “Didn’t you know? I’m no judge myself, but I’m told she’s considered quite an accomplished musician. She and her father were very much in demand before the war with Prussia knocked everything sideways.”

  “No,” said Ned slowly, “I didn’t realize.” There was a purity to her playing, a sweetness that he would not have expected from Marguerite. She always looked so cold and stern.

  Tony shrugged. “I don’t know what she’ll do now that her father’s dead. I gather it was lucky for them that the old man invited them here.” He flashed a grin. “Like me, they’re waiting to see what happens next.”

  Penworth Castle

  The sun was pouring through the diamond panes in the window of the breakfast room when Lady Penworth came down. She had never liked having breakfast in her room. Eating in the breakfast room not only meant that the eggs were still hot but—if she was quick enough—gave her the first look at the mail.

  She was rewarded that day with the first letter from her son. Reading it brought a smile to her face, and when her husband joined her, she passed the pages to him as she finished them.

  “Well, Ned certainly seems to be enjoying himself,” said Lord Penworth.

  “A bizarre chateau on the Breton coast, an ancient and apparently demented host, a mysterious treasure—how could he not be enjoying himself?” she laughed. “It sounds as if he has tumbled into one of Wilkie Collins’ sensation novels. There is even a beautiful young girl and her stern, forbidding relatives. What more could he ask?”

  Lord Penworth sighed. “Is he going to decide she is a damsel in distress and fall in love with this one too?”

  “I don’t think we need to worry,” his wife said with a smile. “He only falls half in love with his distressed damsels. As soon as they turn out to be silly or vain or stupid, he ceases to feel romantic.”

  “But he doesn’t stop feeling obliged to help them.” Lord Penworth shook his head ruefully. “I hope this one isn’t going to be too much trouble.”

  She smiled fondly at her husband. “He’s still just a boy, and never gets too deeply involved. As for trouble, there has never been any that we couldn’t extricate him from easily.”

  “Yes, but one of these days…” A worried frown passed over his face.

  Chapter Eight

  Morning was no more cheerful than the evening had been. Another gloomy day of clouds and fog meant there was no sunshine to brighten the gray dining room. Even the silver of the serving dishes seemed dull, and the steam from the coffee might as well have been more fog. Tony was pale and withdrawn, Mme. d’Hivers sat stiffly in black, and the only spot of color came from Delphine, smiling cheerfully in yellow ruffles.

  No. Ned realized that he was wrong. Marguerite, though she was also in black, did show some color. There were two red spots on her cheeks. “I regret that I left so abruptly last evening,” she said stiffly. “It must have seemed rude. And I do not want you to think I am not interested in your researches.”

  “Not at all,” Ned assured her. “I gather your departure was something in the nature of an errand of mercy.” The spots of color on her cheeks were obviously embarrassment. He doubted she apologized very often, and he looked at her assessingly, trying to see if this new information about her made a difference in the way he saw her.

  No. In the cold light of morning—and it was a cold light—she was still a stern portrait in black and gray. Those spots of color faded from her cheeks. The dull black dress drained all remaining color from her face, framed by the dark hair pulled into a bun at her neck, and her brows were still fierce slashes above dark eyes that gave nothing away. Was there no womanly softness in her at all? She seemed to hold the whole world at defiance.

  As he might have expected, she shrugged, as if to dismiss the notion that she might be considered anything so gentle as an angel of mercy. “But I must apologize. When you first mentioned your researches, I assumed you were just another dilettante looking for glorious stories about the heroic noblemen defying the rabble of the Revolution. But from what you said last night, I see that you are actually a serious historian.”

  “I hope I am.” He offered his own self-deprecating shrug. “What interests me about the resistance here in the west—in the Vendée farther south and the Chouans here in Brittany—is the alliance between the noblemen and the peasants. That did not happen elsewhere. It occurs to me that there might be an analogy with the Highland clans, with lairds and crofters alike rising up to support the Stuarts. Since both the Bretons and the Scots are Celts, I wondered if there might be something in the Celtic heritage to explain it.”

  Her response was an incredulous laugh. “So you are romantic after all? Do you think the Celts have an inborn tendency to throw their lives away in a hopeless cause?”

  That was offensive. “Hardly,” he said stiffly. “Neither cause seemed hopeless at the beginning. But there was a collabo
ration between lord and peasant here, a loyalty that did not seem to exist in other parts of France.”

  Tony snorted. “I don’t know that it was loyalty so much as proximity. The peasants here weren’t as badly off as those in some places, and most of the nobles weren’t all that wealthy. They mostly stayed here at home because they were too poor to try to make a show at Versailles. Besides, the Bretons have always considered themselves independent of France. The fact that the Revolution came from Paris was reason enough to resist.”

  “But brave! They were truly brave,” broke in Delphine excitedly. “My mother told me stories about the vicomte’s brothers. They were so heroic, dying with their men. They were like the Marquis de Larochejaquelein. Do you know of him? Do you know what he said as he led his men to battle?” She stood up and gestured dramatically as she spoke. “If I advance, follow me. If I flee, kill me. If I die, avenge me!” She sat down again with a sigh. “Is that not splendid?”

  “Splendid!” Mme. d’Hivers threw the word down in contempt. “Larochejaquelein was a twenty-year-old boy with dreams of glory and no idea what he was doing. They made him a general because he was an aristo, and his men were slaughtered because he had no idea how to lead them. As if being a marquis meant he had been born with any knowledge of strategy and tactics.” She threw down her napkin and strode from the room.

  Delphine rolled her eyes. “She is impossible!”

  “I gather Mme. d’Hivers is not very fond of aristocrats,” said Ned.

  “Why should she be?” asked Marguerite, sounding defensive. “It is the aristocrats, the powerful ones, who start the wars and who benefit from them. They care nothing for those beneath them. What do they care if the poor suffer and die, as long as they are safe and comfortable.”

  “That is hardly a fair assessment.” He was growing irate. “The vicomte’s own brothers gave their lives.”

  “Pftt!” She snapped her fingers. “A few foolish boys who led hundreds of others to death. And the other aristos? They fled abroad until it was safe to come back to their chateaus and their hôtels and their wealth. Nothing has changed. They still trample on those they consider beneath them. They still think themselves entitled to everything and obliged to do nothing. Useless parasites!”

  “That is ridiculous. It is no more just than saying that all peasants are brutes.”

  “But that is indeed what the aristos do say, is it not? Peasants are all brutes or ignorant fools who must be driven like animals.” Marguerite had jumped to her feet and was facing him defiantly.

  “No, it most certainly is not!” Ned stood as well, and flung down his own napkin. It seemed the appropriate gesture. With one part of his mind he noticed that Marguerite’s phrasing became more French when she was upset, and that his own gestures became more florid in response. “It’s absolute nonsense, and you know that perfectly well. You’re an aristocrat yourself, after all. You and Tony and Delphine are all cousins, aren’t you?”

  “Are we? When one’s mother has been disowned, it is hard to say.” She spun around and marched out, head high.

  Ned opened his mouth and then closed it. He could hardly shout after her, and he didn’t know what to shout anyway. What had that been about, anyway? He rubbed the back of his neck and turned to Tony.

  “Don’t look at me.” Tony held up his hands to ward off any questions. “I haven’t the faintest idea. And I have no interest in your old battles.” He got up with a grimace. “What I need is to study the figures Georges sent and see if I can think of any way to raise the rest of the money we need, so if you’ll excuse me.”

  He added his napkins to those on the table and left.

  Delphine had been sitting calmly through the eruption, dripping honey on a brioche. “She carries on that way at times. One must simply ignore it.”

  Ned looked at her in surprise. That did not sound like Delphine.

  She shrugged. “That is what they say about me all the time. I thought it was time for me to return the compliment.”

  Ned frowned. Perhaps Delphine was not quite as childish and unknowing as he had thought. He filed that thought away, to be considered at some later time. Right now his confusion centered on Marguerite. “Do you have any idea why she is so, so angry? Why both of them are so angry?”

  That warranted another shrug. “It is mostly because of Mme. d’Hivers, I think. She was assaulted by some aristocrats—I think she must have been pretty when she was young—and when her husband tried to protect her, they killed him. That is what she claimed, anyway, my mother said.”

  Ned was shocked, both by the story and by Delphine’s indifference. “That is a dreadful story, and not at all the sort of thing someone would make up.”

  Delphine dismissed his comments with a wave of the hand. “It was years ago, but also just before the war with Prussia, my uncle was angry when a comte commissioned a series of concerts and then refused to pay the musicians. It is very bourgeois to think so much of money, is it not?”

  “It is hardly noble to cheat people and to fail to pay your bills,” Ned frowned severely. That was something his parents had drummed into him. “Taking advantage of people, abusing them, is contemptible.”

  Delphine waved a graceful little hand. “They should have felt honored by the opportunity to play for a comte. No. I think the problem is that Marguerite and Mme. d’Hivers are jealous.”

  “Jealous? Jealous of whom?” Ned felt a bit confused.

  “Of me, of course. I am the only one who is truly of the nobility, la haute noblesse. My parents, my grandparents, all the way back we are of the nobility. Not like Marguerite, whose father is nothing but a musician, a performer. And Antoine, his father and grandfather married women whose families were in trade.” She gave a delicate little shiver.

  “Delphine,” he said carefully, not quite knowing how to put this. “Delphine, don’t you think you are being a bit foolish?”

  “But no!” She looked at him with wide, innocent eyes. “That is why the vicomte has called me here.”

  He tried to be patient. “But he also wanted Tony and Marguerite here.”

  “He will doubtless leave them something. But I am the one who must inherit the chateau. That is only sensible. Antoine would turn it into a factory, and Marguerite thinks of nothing but her music.” She looked around with a smile. “But this is the home of my ancestors, and I am the only one who truly belongs here.”

  Chapter Nine

  At least there was a piano, a decent one, and there had been a man in the village who could tune it. Marguerite did not think she could have borne it all without a piano.

  It was not her own instrument, of course. It was not her beloved Pleyel, the piano her parents had given her when she was sixteen. She needed a piano to match her gifts, her mother had said, and hugged her. Her beautiful Pleyel, with its wonderful sound. She closed her eyes, and she could see her father’s smile when he had shown it to her. She remembered the look of pride in his face the first time he listened to her play on it. Would she ever see her Pleyel again?

  What was lost—all that was lost—she did not want to think about that.

  She had come here—fled here—from the breakfast table. What had she been thinking? Ah, what nonsense. She had not been thinking at all. That was the problem. There was no reason for her to lash out at Lord Edward that way. It was hardly his fault that he had always been safe, protected by wealth, position, family. Was she going to turn into one of those bitter people who hated all who were fortunate? No, she would not let that happen to her.

  She caressed the keys gently, playing a soft chord, then another, turning them into a sad, minor cadence as she waited. These days her life was spent in waiting. How she hated waiting. There was nothing she could do until she knew more—anything—about her situation. She had to wait until she heard from M. Villoteau. She had written to M. Canonge also. He had arranged some of her father’s concert tours. Perhaps he could arrange something for her.

  But until she knew, she
could make no decision. They were safe here for the moment, but for how long?

  Wondering would accomplish nothing. There was always work to do at the piano. She began a series of Czerny’s dexterity exercises, familiar to her since she had been a small child. Eventually she began to work on the left-handed etudes. These were also familiar, but her left hand was still weaker than the right, and concentration was needed to force herself to work on this.

  Half an hour later, the exercises ceased to demand her full attention. Her fingers drifted into Chopin’s C-sharp minor etude, its passages of hopelessness all too attuned to her mood.

  “It is of no use to let yourself drift into despair.” Tante Héloise came in scolding. “And you must not let yourself pay attention to my foolish fits. Did the English aristo take offense? If so, I regret it.” She did not sound in the slightest bit regretful, but that hardly mattered.

  At the final chord Marguerite left her fingers on the keys and stared down at them. “It is of no importance. I too flew out at him. I have no idea why. There was no need.” She lifted her fingers and slammed them down in a discordant crash. “Why do I keep doing that?” she burst out. “What demon is driving me?”

  “Ah, little one, I am sorry.” Tante Héloise came up behind Marguerite and, putting one hand on her shoulder, rested her cheek on the girl’s head. “I am sorry. I had not thought. But he is a handsome one. Even I see that.”

  “Handsome enough, I suppose, in that English way.” Yes, standing tall and strong as if he feared nothing, as if there were nothing in this world to fear. And with those eyes, brilliant blue eyes, eyes with no shadows behind them. A man who could make you feel safe. Who could make you accept the illusion that there might be safety in this world. The dangerous illusion. She tightened her jaw and smashed out another chord.