Regency: Innocents & Intrigues: Marrying Miss Monkton / Beauty in Breeches

Charles was waiting for her, his expression impassive, and yet there was a knowing gleam in his eyes when they settled on her that made Maria avert her gaze. There were others in the room eating breakfast before setting off on their journey.

As Maria did ample justice to her breakfast, she only half listened to the conversation around her. When she heard how a chateau, the home of an eminent nobleman, had been burned to the ground just yesterday in the Ardennes, she stopped eating and raised her head.

Knowing precisely what thoughts were going through her head, Charles shot her a warning look, his eyes conveying to her the danger of reacting too much to this news.

‘Did you hear what they said?’ she said softly, her face stricken. ‘I know the chateau they speak of. It is not far from Chateau Feroc. We often went there—such a lovely family. It can’t be true! I won’t believe it!’

Alarmed that her sudden distress would draw attention to them, Charles rose abruptly. ‘Come, the carriage is waiting. Finished eating? I think we should leave immediately. I know what happened at the chateau. Such things are happening all over France.’ Placing his hand on her elbow, he steered her outside to the waiting carriage.

‘But—but what about my aunt—and Constance?’ she asked, having to run to keep up with his long strides. ‘What are we to do?’ She was churning inside, her mind spilling with horrible thoughts.

‘There is nothing we can do,’ he told her briskly, handing her valise to Pierre to secure to the coach and assisting Maria inside. Sitting across from her, he said, ‘I warned the Countess this could happen. I urged her to leave.’

‘But what will happen to them?’ Maria’s eyes searched his, and for a terrible stabbing moment she knew a fear so strong it seemed to take the breath from her body. She strove hard to curtail it. ‘How could I have left them? I should have stayed. Everyone has been talking about what was happening, but I didn’t really know how bad things were.’ She leaned forwards and gripped Charles’s arm with her hand. ‘Charles, we have to go back. We must.’

Astounded by her totally unreasonable request, Charles looked at her. She really was ignorant of what was happening in France. She really had been contained in some kind of bubble at the chateau, living in some kind of dream world, while chaos went on all around her.

There was a brooding, hopeless expression in his eyes. ‘We cannot go back. It has to be faced.’

She stared at him, tense and white faced. People were milling about in the yard as the carriage began to move, but she did not see them. She said in a hard, breathless voice that she fought to control, willing him to comply to her wishes, ‘Please, Charles. It is not much to ask.’ She could not endure it and she could not bear to think about it. ‘I have to find out if she is all right—help her if need be.’

‘Stop it,’ Charles said curtly, averting his gaze as they took to the road. ‘You don’t know what you are asking. It isn’t as easy as that. There is nothing that can be done beyond what I have already done. We go on to Calais.’

She snatched her hand away. ‘You mean you won’t do anything? That’s what you’re saying.’

He turned his head and looked at the white face beside him. Her eyes were no longer hard, but wide and imploring, and there was pure panic in her voice. The change in that face was like a knife in Charles’s heart. After a moment, he said, ‘No. I’m sorry.’

She did not look at him and her own hurt made her desire to hurt him also. ‘No, you’re not. You don’t care—and why should I expect you to? You don’t know them. They mean nothing to you. You don’t understand,’ she whispered numbly.

‘Oh, yes, I do,’ he hissed fiercely, the frustration of his inadequacy to do anything to help her aunt and cousin increasing his anger. ‘I understand only too well. You did not understand the dangers that threatened you all at Chateau Feroc, and now you do you are perfectly prepared to jeopardise your chances of escaping the troubles, and risk both our lives into the bargain, just so that you can do what? If the chateau has not been attacked, then nothing will have changed. Your aunt will be as indomitable and awkward as ever, so our return will achieve nothing.’

‘At least I will know.’

‘Know? Know what, Maria? When I went to the Chateau Feroc to see the Countess I had just come from Paris. I had seen with my own eyes what was happening—the riots, the violence, death and looting that was going on all over the place. I hope I am wrong and that Chateau Feroc is not attacked. I can only say that in the event of my timorous fears proving justified, I hope the Countess will obtain some comfort from the realisation that she has sacrificed the life of her daughter and jeopardised the safety of the chateau in order to demonstrate a confidence in the fidelity of her servants.’

‘You speak harsh words. Do you forget that when you arrived she had just lost her husband? For her to contemplate leaving her home so soon was anathema to her.’

Charles’s precarious hold on his temper had departed and his voice was raw edged with anger. ‘I appreciate that, but this is no time for sentiment. She must have had doubts, but she would not admit it. It is all very laudable. But in the present crisis it is hardly practical.’

‘And if the chateau has been attacked?’ Maria asked, her eyes hard and accusing. ‘What then?’

‘As to that I cannot say. It depends on the mood of the mob.’

She stared at him, images of the chateau burning and her aunt and Constance at the mercy of those terrible, maddened people. ‘Do—do you think they would …?’

‘There would be nothing that you or I could do for them. I’m sorry, Maria, but that is the truth of it and you must face it.’

‘I never will.’

Although her glorious green eyes were glaring defiance at him, they were sparkling with suppressed tears, shining with an inner pain, and listening to her breathless, pleading voice, Charles would have given anything in the world to take her in his arms and kiss her tears away. But he knew that he must not.

‘I would never have left had I thought anything bad would happen.’

‘You don’t know that anything bad has happened,’ he said, trying to temper his impatience. ‘Plead their case all you like, Maria, but you will be wasting your breath. I have to be in London very soon and I cannot afford to let anything interfere with that.’

‘And I am one responsibility you can’t wait to be rid of,’ Maria retorted ungraciously.

‘I will not turn back, Maria. It is out of the question. We go on. Both of us,’ Charles said pointedly. ‘With any luck we’ll reach the coast tomorrow.’

The journey continued with Maria quietly seething at what she considered to be his overbearing and unreasonable attitude. Charles did not attempt to draw her out. He wished that he did not feel so responsible for her. It was an absurd feeling. It annoyed him and there was no reason for it. Nevertheless he could not rid himself of the feeling.

Glancing across at her, at her sad face and her small hands clasped together on her lap, he frowned. He was aware of a disturbing tug at his heart, and thinking again of how fortunate she was to be leaving France, he knew that should they be apprehended she was going to be a devilish responsibility.

Aware of Charles’s penetrating gaze, Maria looked at him at this point in his reflections. She noted the frown and it brought back her courage and a sudden spark of anger. Sitting straight-backed, she said in a cool, composed voice, ‘I apologise for my lapse in composure. It won’t happen again.’

‘There’s no need to apologise. Just as long as you understand why I had to refuse your request to turn back.’

‘I do. Of course we can’t go back. It would be madness. I am just so concerned for my aunt and Constance.’

It was almost dark and they were about to stop for the night at the next hostelry when they saw the flames rising from a large villa on the outskirts of a nearby village. The fire was licking upwards, a thick plume of smoke curling into the darkening sky.

On his perch with a loaded blunderbuss beside him, Pierre stopped the coach in alarm when they were approached by a noisy, bedraggled band of people heading away from the fire. Many of the excited villagers had poured out on to the streets to view the spectacle, amid a great deal of howling and buffoonery. The men approaching the coach, their confidence already heightened with bloodlust, were armed with sticks, poles and spades and anything else that constituted a weapon.

‘What is it? What do they want? Why have they stopped us?’ Maria asked in alarm.

Charles looked at her. In the glow from the carriage lamps her face was white, her eyes enormous but quite steady. ‘No doubt we’ll find out soon enough.’ His eyes were anxious and alert, but his voice was neither. He spoke to Maria in an entirely matter-of-fact tone that somehow carried complete conviction. ‘Whatever happens, trust me. Unless they order you to get out, stay in the coach. We’ll get out of this.’

‘I wish I had your confidence,’ she murmured fearfully, her eyes on the ever-increasing rabble.

Charles did not answer. It was as if she was not there. He was watching the men saunter towards them. There was an odd, still look on his face. His eyes narrowed suddenly. The abstraction left them and his hand closed round the butt of his pistol on the seat beside him, concealed by a fold in his coat, and Maria, watching him, as she always watched him when he wasn’t looking at her, was all at once aware that behind that casual gesture his nerves were tense and alert, as if he were waiting for something to happen.

The leader of this band of unsavoury, hostile peasants was a man in a green-caped coat, his complexion the colour of ivory. His hatchet face with the thin lips and heavy, drooping eyelids was a curious mixture of alertness and perturbability. The chin that rested on the abundant folds of his untidy and soiled neckcloth was long and resolute. He peered inside with a somewhat suspicious glance at the coach’s inhabitants.

‘What is this?’ Charles asked calmly. ‘We have done you no harm and most certainly intend none.’

‘Well, now,’ the man drawled. ‘It’s simple enough. We’ve got no reason to see you and your lady—uncomfortable, but we’ve got no reason to trust you either.’ He squinted one eye at Charles. ‘Why, I don’t know you—not at all.’

‘It is a simple enough problem to cure,’ Charles returned. ‘Duval’s the name. Charles Duval. I am of the people—of peasant stock on both sides.’

‘But now you walk and talk like a swank.’

‘I’ve bettered myself, I admit. Do you find something wrong with that?’

The man nodded slowly, without taking his eyes off the stranger. ‘No—I was right. I don’t know you.’

‘The fire? Whose house is it?’ Charles asked, appearing coolly unruffled by the interruption to their journey and the threat this band of miscreants posed to their safety.

‘The house of the Seigneur,’ the man growled. ‘And the Seigneur is feeding the flames this very minute.’