Charlotte stared in astonishment, unable to speak for some time. Then she stood up and began to pace the room.
“Then he is not my cousin Frederick, not Lady Norville’s son?”
“No. Monsieur is vicked, he plots to seize ze money and land belonging to Lord Norville. He say his son is only four years older than the young Lord Norville, who died in Chartres as a boy, and is enough like his sister to pass as her son. He makes Claude and his sister pretend. My Claude is weak, but he vould not plot such a thing by himself. He must obey his fazer. Monsieur Jean, he is a friend of Bonaparte, you see, and vishes to obtain the money for his master. He vas so angry ven Claude said he had married me, secretly, and said I must be paid off. But that I do not vish, for I love Claude, though he treat me so bad! I followed him to England, and he comes to me sometimes, and pays for my lodging. But I vill not permit that he marry anozer, and Claude shall not say he does it only to go back to France viz ze money from her dot!”
“Can you prove what you say?” Charlotte asked in great excitement. Here might be the proof which would save them all, and preserve Rowanlea, make Harry the heir once more.
“Naturally. I have letters, and a marriage certificate, and because I zought it might be necessaire to persuade him not to abandon me, I brought also a letter from ze cure who buried ze little boy in Chartres.”
“What do you want? For Claude to go back to France with you?”
“Of course, for I love him.”
“Let me think,” Charlotte said urgently, and for a few moments there was silence. So engrossed was Charlotte in her cogitations that she did not hear the front door open and the murmur of voices in the hall.
“Vill you help me?” Madeleine said when the silence had been more than she could bear.
“Yes. Of course I will. Will you bring these letters to my uncle, Mr Norville—I suppose he really is Lord Norville now?”
Madeleine shook her head.
“I vill show zem to you, but you understand I cannot permit you take zem away from me.”
“Where, then?”
“You, come to my lodging, alone, and you see zat I speak ze truth. Zen you can tell your uncle, and he must arrange for me to go somevere that Claude’s fazer cannot harm me, but where Claude can come to me. He vould kill us both if he knew I tell you!”
“Where are your lodgings?”
“Near vat you call ze Strand. You come now?”
“I cannot, not yet,” Charlotte suddenly remembered. “I promised my mother I would go to a house she is buying, but it is not far, and I need stay there only a little time, so I—and my young brother must come with me—we will come with you after going to Hill Street.”
“It is not a good place, vere I lodge,” the girl warned. “Do not be vearing jewels, or too fine gowns.”
“Thank you, I won’t. You poor thing, to have been treated so! How monstrous of Claude to be trying to rid himself of you!”
“I love him, and I know one day he come back to me, when zis masquerade is finished,” she said with a shrug, and Charlotte, for all her youth and inexperience, knew this was unanswerable.
“Will you come with me while I go to Hill Street?”
“It is not convenable. I follow, and zen ven you come out, you follow me. I go now, and wait outside ze house.”
Charlotte accompanied her to the front door, and then ran upstairs to find her oldest pelisse, giggling at the thought of what her mother would say when she presented herself at Hill Street in it. Her heart was singing for joy at this unexpected good fortune. That proof should fall from heaven, as it were, was a tremendous piece of good fortune. Soon Claude would be unmasked, and Harry would be the heir, and could ask Elizabeth, who would have been saved in time from a disastrous marriage, to marry him. Her own feelings on this aspect of the matter she firmly suppressed, telling herself that since Harry would never consider marrying her anyway, it was better one of them should be happy, and he could be with Elizabeth, therefore he should marry her.
James was waiting for her, only too glad to be released from a tedious task of Latin translation, and they set off for Hill Street, with the girl Madeleine following discreetly behind.
Charlotte resolved to say nothing yet to her mother, for she was aware it might all turn out to be a hoax, and did not wish to raise false hopes prematurely. She realized she would have to take James into her confidence later, since he would still be with her, and she would not be able to leave Hill Street without his escort, and if the truth were told did not greatly desire to penetrate the insalubrious district near the Strand by herself. But James, although not aware of her and Harry’s suspicions regarding Claude, would vastly enjoy the exploit, and his presence would be some slight comfort to her.
With so much to occupy her thoughts, she was hard put to it to show proper enthusiasm over the neat, pretty little house her mother was so happily making plans for. Lady Weare took her all over it, showing her the wallpaper and curtain patterns she had already selected for some of the rooms, and saying that Charlotte should choose her own, even though she was not likely to stay there for very long. Charlotte shook her head, wondering whether she would be well advised, once Harry were safely tied to Elizabeth, to accept Richard and endeavor to make the best she could of her life. An uncomfortable feeling that this would hardly be fair to Richard, and she would in any event dislike it greatly, however much she liked him as a friend, made her dolefully conscious of the fact that she would most likely be occupying the room she was taking so spurious an interest in for far longer than her doting mother expected.
At last she was able to get away, and outside the house turned towards Berkeley Square, where she could see Madeleine waiting.
“James, I have a most important errand to do, and you must promise to keep it secret until I say you may tell,” she said urgently.
He had expected to be able to go off on his own affairs once he had escorted Charlotte back home, and was inclined to take exception to this disposal of his time, but at last reluctantly agreed to accompany her for a short distance while she told him the story. By the time she had related only half of it, he was urging her to hasten, so eager was he for the adventure, and the glory of helping to expose the cheat who had dared threaten his beloved Wolf.
Chapter 12
When Charlotte and Madeleine left the green saloon Claude softly closed the communicating doors which he had found slightly ajar on entering the rear apartment. He had preferred, when informed by a disapproving Rivers that Miss Charlotte was interviewing a young person who had called demanding to see him, to make his entrance into the green saloon by way of the other room. His caution had been amply rewarded, and he had overheard enough to bring a frown of concentration to his brow as he sat down at a small table and contemplated this unfortunate development in his affairs.
“Damn Madeleine!” he said vigorously after a few minutes of intense thought. He had been so certain that in her slavish devotion to him she would agree to this pretend marriage, which he had assured her would be a temporary arrangement only until he had had time to transfer what money he had been able to acquire to France. It had seemed too good an opportunity to miss, when an attractive heiress had shown herself only too willing to receive his attentions, of adding her fortune to what he could raise from the sale of the Norville estates. He had had no intention of burdening himself with Elizabeth once he returned to France, and had trusted that the war which was inevitable would by then have enabled him to abandon her in England. Now his wife’s inopportune disclosures had ruined his plans.
Ruined them, that is, if Charlotte betrayed what she had learned to the other members of her family. He thought furiously, and decided there was just a chance Charlotte would permit herself to be taken to his wife’s lodgings alone, and she might be silenced.
Claude knew Monsieur de Vauban had been intending to visit Glossop to give the agent some instructions regarding the sale of more property, and having ascertained from Rivers that he had left the house some time ago, he went out himself and took a hackney to the offices in the City where the agent had his rooms. Monsieur de Vauban had not yet arrived, and Claude left a brief note with stern orders he was to be given it the moment he appeared, and then went in some haste to a certain disreputable tavern near the Tower, where he was soon in conversation with a villainous-looking fellow countryman, the captain of a small vessel lying at that moment in the Pool, awaiting the evening tide.
Matters having been arranged, not without considerable haggling, to their mutual satisfaction, Claude turned his steps towards the Strand, plunging northwards into one of the noisome streets leading towards Drury Lane.
Meanwhile Charlotte and James, once they were away from the more fashionable streets, had increased their pace to come up with their guide, partly through some natural apprehension at venturing away from their normal haunts, and partly to question her more thoroughly about the astonishing revelations she had made.
She told them she was the daughter of a shopkeeper in a small town near Bordeaux, and had met Claude three years since when, an officer in the French army, he had been stationed there. He had persuaded her into a secret, runaway marriage, saying his family, who were still prosperous landowners due to their ability to please whatever government was in power, would need time to become accustomed to so imprudent a match, for Madeleine brought neither money nor revolutionary influence with her.
She had discovered by accident the plan to travel to England and impersonate Claude’s English cousin, who had, as she had already confirmed, died in Chartres some years earlier. Claude’s father had attempted to bribe her to forget the marriage, but she had been so distressed that Claude, who apparently still had some affection for her, had promised that if she did as he told her, she could come secretly to England and be able to see him as frequently as he could contrive. This she had been content to do until she had, by watching his movements from Grosvenor Square, seen his assiduous attentions to Elizabeth, and read the announcement of his betrothal in that day’s Gazette.
She knew Elizabeth was an heiress, and she knew that in order to obtain her money Claude would have to go through a marriage ceremony with her. What terrified her was the thought that so beautiful an English girl would steal her husband away from her, and that could not be borne. She had to act.
By this time they were in the Strand, and Madeleine led the way through a maze of streets growing poorer, narrower, and more congested with scarcely human beings who apparently preferred to live in the noisy, smelly and airless streets littered with obnoxious rubbish and foraging dogs, flies, and probably worse vermin, than inhabit the rickety, dilapidated tenements that hemmed them in.
Charlotte and James, in their good and clean clothing, attracted much unwelcome attention, but Madeleine seemed immune to the misery around her. She hustled them along as fast as they could pick their way over the rotting refuse, and drove off with pithy French oaths the many who crowded about these strangers with noisy and sometimes threatening demands for alms. The language may have been foreign, but the tone was familiar to the beggars, and they reached the house where Madeleine lodged without any real trouble.
The door was comparatively newly painted, and was closed instead of hanging drunkenly on one hinge, as most of the other doors in this street did, and Charlotte heaved a sigh of relief when it closed firmly behind them, shutting out the stinks and the evidence of poverty and degradation.
“What a terrible place!” she gasped. “You poor thing! How awful to have to live here! I did not realize such dreadful places existed. How can you bear it, Madeleine?”
Madeleine shrugged.
“It vas all zat Claude could afford, and one gets used to it. Zere are places like zis and vorse in France. My rooms are on ze first floor. At least I have ze best in ze house!”
Charlotte thought of all the money Claude was winning at cards, according to Harry, as well as all his fine clothes and the horses and carriages he had bought, a curricle for himself, a barouche for his mother, and comfortable chaise for his uncle. He should have been able to provide accommodation for his wife in one of the better hotels, as well as some decent clothes, and a maid to give her respectability. How could he be so inhuman as to force her to live in a place like this?
Madeleine led the way up the stairs, produced a key from her pocket, unlocked the door, and indicated to Charlotte to enter first.
Charlotte walked into a poorly furnished but spotlessly clean room. Another door led to a room at the back of the house which must be Madeleine’s bedroom, for this room contained only a few chairs and a table. There was a small fire in the grate, making the room overpoweringly hot, for the windows were tightly shut, doubtless to keep out the noise and the smells from the street, but it appeared to be the only means of cooking, and a cauldron containing something which smelled delicious was suspended on a hook above the flames.
Madeleine walked swiftly across to the cauldron and stirred the contents anxiously, then nodded in satisfaction and turned to smile tremulously at Charlotte and James.
“Vill you please sit down? I vill fetch ze papers from my bedroom and show zem to you.”
So saying she turned to the communicating door, but before she could reach it it opened, and Claude stood calmly surveying them.
* * * *
“What a pleasant surprise to see you here, my dear coz,” he drawled, at the same time as Charlotte shrieked to James to run for help.
James managed to reach the door, but as he wrenched it open Claude seized him by the shoulder, having with a couple of strides crossed the room to forestall him. Viciously he sent James spinning back across the room, and it was only because Charlotte moved forward swiftly that she was able to catch him, and prevent him from falling heavily against the table. As it was, the force of the collision sent both of them sprawling onto the floor, and Claude’s scornful laughter made Charlotte turn a face of fury on him as she struggled to her feet.