Читать книгу Love Me Forever - Barbara Cartland - Страница 3

The Château was impressive, surrounded on three sides by thick dark woods. Its turrets and towers seemed to have an almost unreal air as they glittered silver in the sunshine and were reflected on the smooth surface of a large artificial lake.

They crossed the lake over a series of bridges cunningly designed to give an illusion of fragility. But there was no illusion about the guard who stood at the entrance to the Château or about their muskets and pistols.

The Duke’s eyes noted everything and then calmly and in an unhurried voice he said to Amé,

“Be careful to be as unobtrusive as possible here. Keep behind me while we are received, say as little as possible and make no movement unless I personally command you to do so.”

He glanced down at her as he finished speaking.

“Are you frightened?” he asked.

He liked the way she raised her head and the sudden flash of pride in her eyes as she replied,

“Not while I am with you, Your Grace.”

There was no time to say more. The guard on the stone steps leading up to the front door of the Château came to attention, the door of the coach was opened and the Duke stepped out.

He glanced neither to right nor to left but walked slowly and with a tremendous dignity up the steps and in through the open doors of the Château.

A Major Domo at the head of a long line of footmen wearing a red, white and blue livery bowed and led the way down a long corridor decorated with valuable pieces of furniture and hung with a fine collection of oil paintings.

The Major Domo crossed the hall and flung open two large mahogany doors on the further side of it.

“His Grace, the Duke of Melyncourt,” he announced.

The Duke had an impression of a large salon bathed in bright sunshine. There was the sparkle of crystal chandeliers, the glisten of many gilt mirrors, the luxuriance of brocade and velvet and, by an open window, a small group of people.

For a moment it seemed that they were all strangers and then one man detached himself from the others and came towards him, a tall ponderous figure, exquisitely dressed and bejewelled, his heavy florid face alight with a smile in which there was both amusement and a hint of malice.

“My dear Melyncourt, this is indeed a pleasure.”

“Chartres!” the Duke expostulated.

“So you remember me?”

“But, of course. It is five years since we met, but I am not likely to forget the dinner you gave for me and my friends in Paris.”

“My dear fellow, it was nothing. But it is delightful to see you again. I heard you were on the road and could not allow you to pass my home without according me the pleasure of entertaining you.”

“Your invitation was at least dramatic,” the Duke said sardonically.

As he spoke, he was watching the Duc de Chartres closely and his brain was trying to penetrate the veneer of overacted friendliness and to find the truth.

“Now, you must meet my friends,” the Duc said effusively, taking him by the arm. “We are just a small party for it is really too hot for lavish entertainment but I promise you one thing, you will not be bored.”

He presented with elaborate ceremony two gallants and three attractive young ladies to the Duke. There was a flutter of fans and eyelashes, a rustle of silks and satins and a polite exchange of courtesies, then glasses of wine were carried in on big silver trays.

All the time the Duke was thinking.

It was true that he remembered Philippe, Duc de Chartres, heir to the Duc d’Orleans, despite the fact that he had only met him twice before in his life.

The Duc de Chartres was not someone one forgot easily. Even five years ago he had been dangerous and after the last meeting, in which he had more or less forced his hospitality upon a party of English sportsmen, the Duke had deliberately avoided him and refused all further invitations.

He had also taken care not to meet the Duc when he visited London the previous year. That the Prince of Wales had honoured the Frenchman with his friendship had not altered in the slightest the opinion which the Duke had formed of him.

The Duc de Chartres had Royal blood in his veins and sprang from a branch of the Royal house as old as that to which Louis XVI belonged. Wealthy, powerful and ambitious, he did not hesitate to oppose the King’s will in the Parliament of Paris and it was natural, therefore, that he should become the leader of the malcontents who were against the Throne.

But, by nature a rake, a spendthrift, a gambler and a dandy, the Duc de Chartres would never have attained or wished for the power he now held had not the whole bitterness and hatred of his shallow nature been directed against one person, the Queen.

She was his declared enemy and, although all others who disliked the Government of France, who were against the Royal line of Bourbons or who wished to overthrow the present regime came under his protection, the Duc’s own battle was with Marie Antoinette and there alone was all his venom centred.

The Queen had mortified his incredible vanity when she had prevented the bestowal on him of the office of Lord High Admiral of France. Almost from that moment the Palais Royal had become a revolutionary centre to which the Duc de Chartres welcomed all discontented elements.

There met Liberals, Constitutionalists, Voltarians, Innovators and Free Masons, besides those who were heavily in debt, disgruntled aristocrats, unemployed lawyers, demagogues and out-of-work journalists. As yet they had no war cry, but it lay unspoken in the hearts of those who entered the Palais Royal. Against the King and, above all, against the Queen.”

The Duke, on his last visit to Paris, had not been concerned with the Duc de Chartres’s activities, but he had disliked him on sight. There was something pretentious and unpleasant about him and though he had, there was no doubt about it, a popularity with the people, he was in himself shifty and very untrustworthy, a man whose friendship was, to say the least of it, undesirable.

Yet the Duc de Chartres had greeted him now, the Duke noted, with a gushing effusion that pretended, at least to those who knew no better, that their acquaintanceship in the past had been close and intimate.

Sipping his wine, the Duke was all the time conscious of Amé standing a little behind him, discreetly self-effacing and yet to the Duke at any rate difficult to ignore.

The Duc de Chartres had not, however, given her more than a passing glance and his friends had not even deigned to notice the presence of a page.

They were all laughing and talking. The ladies, in their full-skirted gowns and glittering with jewels, were as colourful and fragrant as the flowers that filled this room, as they had filled the corridor and the hall. There was no pause in the conversation.

The Duke set down his glass on the side table with an air of decision.

“This has been most enjoyable,” he said. “But you must forgive me if I take my leave. I have arranged to be in Paris before evening.”

There was a sudden pause. It was as if those present were aware of the importance of what had been said. It was too, as if they were all upon a stage and the minor actors hung back, waiting for the leading man.

The Duc de Chartres laughed.

“My dear fellow, that is impossible, we have promised ourselves the pleasure of your company for a few days, perhaps a week. For you to go now would spoil everything and all my plans of all the fantasies that I have devised for your entertainment.”

“It is with sincere regret that I must refuse such kindness,” the Duke began, when with an imperious hand the Duc de Chartres seemed literally to sweep his words away.

“There can be no arguments, all is arranged. Five or six days, my dear Duke, and then you can continue your journey.”

There was, the Duke was well aware of it, a threat behind the pleasant persuasive words. For a moment the eyes of the two men met. The Frenchman’s expression was still one of amiability and yet the Duke could sense a sinister determination behind the fulsome smile.

He knew then what he had suspected from the moment his coach had been intercepted on the road.

He was a prisoner and for a moment he tried hard to guess the reason.

Then one of the ladies lifted her glass and said with a coquettish smile,

“To the English Duke, our gain is, of course, the loss of Paris.”

It was then that the Duke understood the situation as clearly as if the Duc himself had put it into words. This was yet another step to humiliate the Queen. It was quite obvious that, as one of the premier Noblemen in England, he would, on his arrival in France, call first at the Court of Versailles. Hugo Waltham would have notified the British Ambassador of his intended visit and word would have been carried to Louis and Marie Antoinette and there would, without any doubt, be an invitation to Court awaiting him immediately on his arrival in Paris.

That he should delay his arrival to be the guest of the Queen’s most bitter enemy was something that could not fail to cause consternation and even dismay at Versailles. The Duke knew that, although outwardly he was going to France in no official capacity but merely as a visitor and a pleasure-seeker, he was yet a representative of his own country and his title made him a person of seniority and entitled to take precedence over all those at the French Court save the immediate Royal family.

That he should be tricked into the situation in which he now found himself was intolerable to say the least of it. And yet, what could he do? The guards at the door of the Château had not been there unintentionally, the armed escort that had brought his coach from the high road to the Château were all part of the unspoken but very obvious threat that lay beneath the Duc de Chartres’ most insistent hospitality.

Indeed there was, the Duke now realised, nothing that he could do save acquiesce with as good a grace as possible rather than let those who had ranged themselves against him see both his chagrin and his annoyance.

“You must let me show you my garden from the balcony,” the Duc was saying. “The roses are better this year than they have been for a very long time and I have made some alterations to the lake, which I consider a masterpiece in landscape design.”

As he spoke, he led the way onto a balcony leading out from the salon and the Duke followed.

“I regret most sincerely, my dear old fellow, that your valet is not with you,” the Duc de Chartres went on. “My own man shall attend to you. He is a Genoese. There is no one in the whole length and breadth of France who can tie a cravat as he can and he has invented a special pomade for the hair which, I swear, is nothing more than a stroke of genius.”

“Your kindness overwhelms me,” the Duke remarked.

His host appeared to ignore the sarcasm in his voice. They then admired the garden, the ladies simpered coquettishly at the Duke and then, when he was finding the whole falseness of it infinitely wearing, the Duc de Chartres exclaimed,

“It is nearly time for déjeuner. I am sure, Melyncourt, that you would like to wash.”

With Amé a silent shadow at his heels the Duke climbed a broad marble staircase to the first floor. The suite into which they were shown appeared to be in a more ancient part of the Château than the rooms they had just left. The Duke knew immediately on entering the bedchamber that it had been chosen because it overlooked the lake and it was impossible therefore to escape that way.

The footman who had shown them the way, after asking if there was anything they required, bowed and left them alone. And yet, even then, when Amé would have spoken, the Duke held up his fingers to his lips and listened at the door for a moment to be quite certain that the manservant was out of earshot.

“Speak softly,” he said at length, “and in English.”

“What does this mean?” Amé asked. “Tell me quickly. Why are we here and who are these people?”

In answer the Duke sat down in one of the high velvet armchairs that stood on either side of the fireplace.

“It is very clever,” he said, “and something that I could never have anticipated in a thousand years.”

“Explain to me, Your Grace,” Amé pleaded.

“On one thing at any rate I can set your mind at rest,” the Duke said. “This is not because of you.”

“Then why have we been brought here?” Amé enquired.

“As an insult to the Queen,” the Duke replied.”

Amé looked puzzled and the Duke explained the reason why the Duc de Chartres had forced his hospitality upon them.

“The Duc is the acknowledged enemy of the Queen,” the Duke went on. “There has, I understand, in the last few years been a great change of feeling about her. At one time the populace acclaimed her and she was cheered whenever she went. A little while ago it could honestly have been said that the people of Paris loved her. Now everything has altered. I remember someone who was here last year telling me that when Her Majesty appeared in public she was received in silence and some of the crowds were even hostile and that one man, and one man only, was responsible for this. Philippe, Duc de Chartres.”

“But why?” Amé asked.

“Who can understand the mind of such a man?” the Duke replied. “Lampoons, pamphlets and leaflets, which are scurrilous, libellous and at times obscene, are passed from hand to hand and sold in the back rooms of questionable bookshops. No one knows who is responsible for these, but it is no secret that they are printed either at the Palais Royal, the Duc de Chartres’s Palace or in the Luxembourg.”

“But surely a – a Nobleman would not stoop to such treachery!”

The Duke smiled.

“There is little a man will not do when he hates.”

“And nothing a woman will not do when she loves,” Amé added softly.

The Duke raised his eyebrows.

“Who told you that?” he enquired.

“I don’t think anyone told me, I think I have always known it.”

The Duke glanced at her for a moment and then walked to the windows.

“The point is we have to get away from here, but how I have not the slightest idea. Force is out of the question. Chartres has made quite certain that I should realise this. No, our cunning has to equal his.”

“But how?” Amé asked. “What can we do?”

“For the moment we can only wait for our opportunity. There is no other course open to us but doubtless something will turn up. I do not intend to accept defeat easily.”

“I cannot imagine you ever being defeated,” Amé said swiftly.

His lips twisted a little.

“You have a rather inflated idea of my ability,” he said. “I am, as it happens, a very ordinary person caught up at the moment in events that are too big for me.”

Amé laughed a little scornfully.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” she asked. “Why, no one could ever think you were ordinary. Among those people downstairs you stand out. You are so strong and so different. The man who plays host to us may be the Duc de Chartres but he cannot be compared with you. Big as he is, you could crush him with one hand.”

“That is just the point,” the Duke said, “this is not a trial of physical strength. It is a trial of mental ability and Chartres is in a position of advantage, which, for the moment, I must confess, seems impregnable.”

“You will think of something, Your Grace,” Amé told him confidently.

She turned away as she spoke and began to inspect their suite. The Duke’s sitting room and bedroom both overlooked the lake. The walls dipped sheer down to it with no footholds. Opening out of the sitting room there was a small room, which, Amé realised, was where she was intended to sleep.

There was a window that opened onto the gardens, but in front of it were bars, bars newly erected as heavy and immovable as any in a prison.

“He is no fool,” the Duke said briefly as Amé pointed out the bars. “We are not the first persons whom our host has held in his power and nor will we be the last.”

“What do you mean by that?” Amé asked.

“I don’t exactly know myself,” the Duke said, “yet I have a feeling that what this biased unstable man is plotting is something greater and more far-reaching than the humiliation of one frail woman.”

“The poor Queen,” Amé said softly. “Why should anyone wish to hurt her?”

“You must ask me that question after we have been to Paris and we will get there, never doubt that.”

He went back into the sitting room, leaving Amé alone in the small bedroom with its barred window.

For a moment she stood gazing after him and then she put up her hands to her cheeks.

Here or in Paris, she thought to herself, what did it matter where she was, so long as she could be with him, this man she had met only last night and yet who, at this moment, filled her life to the exclusion of all else?

Were they in danger? She did not know. This strange new world she found herself in was almost beyond her comprehension. People who hid threats beneath honeyed words, people who smiled with their lips and yet whose eyes were hard and venomous.

These were things that she did not understand and a moment of panic filled her lest she should fail the one person she wished to help. And even as she felt afraid, even as she felt herself shiver at the thought of the Duc de Chartres waiting for them downstairs, she knew that she was not so helpless or as ignorant as she had at first feared.

Wherever she might be in a Convent or on the floor of a strange coach or here in a magnificent Château belonging to one of the wealthiest and most dangerous men in France, her sense of values remained. She knew what was right and she knew what was wrong, that was one thing that her life in the Convent had taught her, to know whom she could trust and to know that her instinct in such matters would never be at fault.

She had known, she thought now, exactly who she was dealing with as she felt the fur rug snatched from her and raised her head to see the Duke facing her on the seat of the coach.

The light from the lantern had been full on his face and she thought, as she remembered it, that her first sight of him would be etched for ever in her heart, the clean-cut lines of his features, the firm strength of his lips and the questioning directness of his eyes, they were all there for her for all time.

He had been tense, a man on guard, a man surprised by the unexpected and yet she had not been afraid of him. She had known from that first moment that she could trust him. Why, she could not explain to herself, except that something greater than herself told her that all was well.

Then when she knew that her salvation lay with him and she pleaded with him to save her, she had felt that there was something familiar about it all, he was no stranger to her, this man she had just encountered.

He was very much more than that, someone she had always known in her dreams, or was it in her heart, and someone who in some unfathomable extraordinary way was already a part of her life.

Slowly Amé dropped down on her knees beside the bed. She hid her face in her hands and began to pray as the nuns had taught her, but with winged joy in her heart that was inexplicable.

She was still praying when the Duke came into the room some minutes later.

So intent was she on her prayers that she did not hear him and he watched her from the doorway for some time before he spoke.

Then at length he called her name.

“Amé, we should be going downstairs.”

She started and then raised her face from her hands.

There was colour in her cheeks from the pressure of her fingers and her eyes were shining with a light that the Duke had not seen there before. For a moment she stared at him almost uncomprehendingly as if he called her back from some strange place that she had gone to and where he could not follow.

Then she smiled and her parted lips were sheer delight.

“Voila! I am ready, have I kept you waiting?”

“No, but we should go down. I don’t want them to think that we are plotting”

The Duke hesitated for a moment and then quizzed her,

“Were you praying for yourself or for the situation that we find ourselves in?”

“I was praying for you, Your Grace,” Amé answered. “I know that, if you wish to escape, then a way will open. Prayers are always answered, have you not found?”

“I am afraid I don’t pray,” the Duke replied.

“You don’t pray!” Amé’s astonishment was obviously quite genuine and unfeigned. “But why?” and then before he could answer she added, “but, of course, that is a silly question, if you don’t pray, it is because you do not realise how much it can help you.”

“You are sure of that?” the Duke questioned with a sudden twist of his lips.

Amé looked at him in perplexity.

“I am very very sure of it,” she stated, “but perhaps that is because I know nothing of the world. Outside the Convent to pray may be more difficult.”

“It is,” the Duke said briefly.

Still Amé looked perplexed and then abruptly, as if he was almost ashamed of his own sentimentality, the Duke suggested,

“Go on praying. Don’t be influenced by anything or anybody who persuades you against it.”

He turned from the bedroom and crossed the sitting room to the door. His hand was on the latch when he heard Amé’s footsteps on the floor behind him.

“I shall pray for you always, Your Grace,” she said without the least trace of self-consciousness.

“Thank you,” the Duke replied in all gravity, “and now let’s descend and see if your prayers have been answered and we can discover some Heaven-sent way of escape.”

He was sneering at himself, although Amé did not know it for having been beguiled into a moment of unwarranted softness because he had seen a lovely child at prayer.

But Amé seemed unperturbed at his words, she merely smiled confidently and then, as the door opened and a footman was waiting outside, she slipped behind the Duke and followed him downstairs at a respectful distance.

The meal that followed was long-drawn-out and elaborate. Course succeeded course, dishes of great rarity vied with each other to tempt the palate and there were wines of fine bouquet to bestir the blood.

When at length what was nothing less than a feast was over, the party withdrew onto the balcony of the salon, where they were served with coffee and with many and varied liqueurs.

They had dined in the Banqueting Hall where the Duke was amused to note that they were served with a pomp and grandeur far more Royal than anything he had seen at Buckingham Palace or in the past at Versailles. A powdered footman, wearing the Orleans livery with its heraldic fleurs-de-lis embossed on their gold buttons, stood behind every chair. Others carried in the magnificent crested dishes of solid gold.

The crystal goblets from which the guests drank were engraved with gold, the tablecloth was embroidered with gold thread and everywhere there was an exhibition of wealth and beauty, luxury and opulence that was amazing to contemplate.

And the Duke saw, as he watched, managing to eat sparingly despite the abundance of the repast, that part of the danger from the Duc de Chartres came from the fact that he had, and there was no doubt about it, a grandiose idea of his own omnipotence.

His father, Philippe le Gros, the fourth Duc, was not yet dead, but lived with his mistress in retirement at Bagnolet, where he hunted in spite of being enormously fat and often falling off his horse. He loved gambling better than conversation and had a horror of anything serious. He had not even been perturbed by the behaviour of his wife, the beautiful Louise-Henriette de Bourbon-Conte who died when she was only twenty-three. The doctors said the cause of her death was consumption, but everyone else knew it was due to debauchery.

Philippe had been the child of his parents’ first passionate and unrestrained affection. In fact the eagerness of their amorous behaviour was so uncontrolled that the Duchesse de Tollard remarked that they had at last discovered the method of making marriage indecent.

There was a striking family resemblance in all the Orleans line. Father to son there was the same heavy figure, the same over-sexed temperament, the same love of war and pleasure, the same debauchery, gout and apoplexy.

With such a heritage Philippe Duc de Chartres was not prepared to find life dull. He went up in a balloon, he went down into a mine, he made Horse Racing popular, he took as a mistress the Governess of his children and his gambling and extravagance brought him to the verge of bankruptcy.

It was then that he had a shrewd and brilliant idea. He had been living in his father’s Palace in Paris, now he developed and then commercialised the courtyard and the gardens of the Palais Royal into a colossal centre of gambling and prostitution. This ambitious speculation was a great financial success. It took some years to complete and there was a considerable amount of opposition, but when it was finished the Duc de Chartres became, overnight as it were, the richest man in the Kingdom of France.

The conversation at déjeuner was witty, yet at times a bitter malice underlay the most trivial remarks. The Duc de Chartres and his guests were at pains, the Duke noted, to avoid speaking directly of the Queen, but there was a poisoned fang behind the most innocuous words.

They related scandals at Court, they chattered as people always will of their friends and people they know and yet the Duke noted that the blackest stories, the nastiest anecdotes and the most unpleasant innuendoes were always related about those at Versailles who were in close association with King Louis and Marie Antoinette.

The insidious poison was all the more deadly because the people who spread it were themselves amusing, clever and not without charm.

One of the women present, who had been introduced as Mlle. Lavoul had, the Duke now suspected, been singled out for his delectation. She certainly made it obvious where her interests lay and had his attention not been directed by more important matters he might have enjoyed or even been amused by the very undisguised way that she set out to captivate him.

She certainly was very attractive, with dark hair that was in almost startling contrast to the whiteness of her skin and strange green eyes that slanted a little at the corners and gave her almost an Oriental appearance. Her figure was exquisite and her dress was cut low in the bodice so that the laces and ribbons with which it was decorated revealed rather than concealed her charms.

Mlle. Lavoul was at the Duke’s side throughout the whole of the afternoon. Once or twice he thought he caught a glance of unhappiness on Amé’s face, but it was impossible for him to pay her any attention or to look more often than was necessary in her direction.

On the pretext of sending her to his room for a handkerchief the Duke managed to dismiss her early in the evening but when he went upstairs to change before dinner a strange valet was in attendance and the Duke was unable to have any private conversation with her.

The Duke’s coach always carried a small trunk in case the Berlins with his other baggage were delayed. This was fortunate for he could change into more elaborate clothes than those which he had worn for travelling. Amé, on the other hand, was forced to wear the same velvet suit that she had assumed that morning in the inn at Chantilly. The trunk that she had obtained from Adrian Court had gone with the other baggage and by now would have arrived in Paris.

She wondered what would happen when the staff with the luggage arrived at the Duke’s mansion and there was no sign of their Master. The Duke, as it happened, was wondering the same thing but he knew that it was unlikely that Hugo would make any commotion about his nonappearance, that was one of the penalties one must pay for being erratic and changing one’s plans easily and for resenting what he called, ‘an unnecessary fuss’.

A charming smile, a glance from a pair of dark eyes had tempted him very often to postpone a departure or to delay an arrival. Once on his way back from racing at Newmarket a face at a coach window had led him from the highway along many twisting lanes and strange unfrequented paths.

She had been a most charming widow at whose house he then had rested for three days while Hugo waited anxiously and sent postilions in every direction in search of him. He had cursed his cousin then for being an interfering busybody and he now knew that he must pay for this folly. When he did not arrive in Paris, Hugo would do nothing, at least not for a long time.

He considered the valet who was undressing him, a voluble, excitable little Genoese with, as the Duc had boasted, a genius for tying a cravat. There was, the Duke decided, not the slightest chance, of persuading him to any disloyalty to his Master. He thought him wonderful and extolled his praises all the time he was dressing the Duke’s hair.

“I have often said, Your Grace, that if my Master were the King of France things would be very different from what they are today. The people are hungry. It’s no use sayin’ that they are not and the taxes!” The little man raised his hands in horror. “And all to pay for diamonds for an Austrian throat and a lot of shepherds and shepherdesses at the Petit Trianon. The money that is spent there! They say one might as well try to fill the Seine with gold as to stem the extravagance of Her Majesty!”

It was gossip of the worst kind, the type that the Duke was sure was being spread all over Paris and yet he wisely made no attempt to check the valet. Best to note what was being said and to learn all he could.

“It is not only at the Trianon that Her Majesty spends fortune after fortune,” the valet continued. “There is Madame Rose Bertin, for instance, she receives millions of francs a year. It is not everyone who admires the costumes she creates either. All Paris is laughing at her latest designs. Her Majesty chose a gown from her only last month and when she showed it to the King he said, ‘Pah! It be the colour of a flea’. But was Madame disconcerted? Not she! She seized on the idea and now all Paris is clamouring to be dressed in the hue that the King himself has baptised.

“She has launched the ultra-fashionable tones of ‘flea’s thigh’, ‘flea’s belly’, ‘sick flea’, ‘young flea’ and even ‘decrepit flea’. It makes one laugh, Your Grace, to see what fools people can be.

“But you may be sure, because people laugh, that nothing is cheaper. In fact such notoriety merely makes Madame Bertin’s bills jump higher! And who pays? The people!”

When the Duke was ready, he called Amé from the sitting room where she was waiting and together they descended the staircase to the hall.

They were halfway down and had reached a place where the staircase divided and where for a moment, though they could be seen by the menservants waiting below, they could not be overheard, when Amé’s voice arrested the Duke.

“Wait Your Grace,” she said softly, “the buckle of your shoe is undone.”

The Duke stopped and, raising his foot, set it on the step of the stairs down which he had just descended. Amé knelt to attend to it. There was nothing wrong, as he knew. But, as her fingers fumbled with the buckle, she said,

“Mlle Lavoul has spoken to me of a secret passage down which she would have you visit her. She asked me to tell you that you can have the key should you wish and to say nothing to the Duc.”

“Get the key,” the Duke said briefly and, not daring to say more, continued on his way to the salon.

It seemed both to the Duke and to Amé as if the evening would never end. The Duke was well aware that wine was being pressed on him lavishly. He was aware too that Mlle. Lavoul was not finding it difficult to make herself as pleasant as she had obviously been commanded to do.

As they sat at cards, he could feel her white shoulder pressing gently against his coat sleeve and he was conscious of the exotic fragrance of her scent and the invitation in her eyes as she glanced up at him.

At the same time he could see the smile on the Duc de Chartres’s red face and the way his thick fingers rubbed themselves together as if in satisfaction.

And yet while Mlle Lavoul beguiled him, while her shoulder was soft and her teeth against her lower lip very provocative, the Duke was well aware that never for one moment were they left entirely alone.

Their host was always with them or else the members of the party were at their side. It was intentional, he was sure of that and, as he thought of what Amé had indicated to him on the stairs, his spirits rose.

It was very like a woman not to play the game as was expected of her and if he could obtain access to Mademoiselle Lavoul’s room, he might also find an exit from the Château.

It was two o’clock in the morning when finally their cards were finished and a general movement was made to go to bed. The Duc himself escorted his distinguished guest to his suite.

There were stalwart young footmen on duty in the corridors, late though it was, and the Duke could not forbear to say as he reached the door of his apartments,

“You take no chances, I notice.”

The Duc grasped the inference and gave a little laugh.

“You must appreciate my pertinacity, my dear Melyncourt.”

“I do, I assure you,” the Duke replied.

They bowed to each other and then, as the Duke moved forward into the sitting room, he heard the door close behind him and the unmistakable sound of a key turn in the lock.

“Bonne nuit, mon cher,” came the Duc’s mocking voice from outside.

Then there was the sound of footsteps walking away down the corridor, but only the footsteps of the Duc. The footmen would be on duty all night, the Duke was sure of that. He waited a moment and then went towards Amé’s bedroom. He had sent her to bed three hours earlier with a sharply-spoken command and the snap of his fingers.

“You are considerate of your page,” Mlle Lavoul had said softly.

“Those who work for me would not always say so,” the Duke replied, “but the boy is a cousin of mine and I promised his mother I would treat him lightly. A mistake, I think, boys should be hardened.”

“But not girls surely?” Mlle Lavoul had asked. “Or women?”

“No, indeed,” the Duke said, playing the game because he was certain that it was expected of him. “Girls should be cosseted and protected. Women too. For where would we men be without their gentle influence, their sweetness and, of course, their generosity?”

There was a meaning in his words, which Mlle Lavoul understood and then, as he had expected, he saw her glance quickly at their host before her eyes dropped before his and her mouth pouted petulantly.

“It is not always possible,” she whispered.

He could barely hear the words and he was sure that they were inaudible to anyone else at the table.

“Everything is possible for those who dare the impossible,” the Duke said and he saw the glint in her eye and felt the sudden soft pressure of her shoulder once again against his arm.

Amé had gone to bed, but he knew that he must wake her to hear what else she had to tell him. He rapped softly on the door of her room, but there was no answer. He opened the door and saw that her bed was empty and had not been slept in.

He wheeled round, beset by a sudden anxiety. What had happened to her?

Then, at the far end of the sitting room, he saw what had escaped him when he entered through the door. The fire was burning low, there was only a flicker from the great logs that earlier in the evening had been bright with dancing flames. There was a heavy bearskin on the floor before the fire and, lying on it, still in her velvet suit, her face pillowed against her hands, was Amé.

She was curled up like a child and her face in repose was very young. Her lashes were long and dark against her cheeks. The Duke knelt down on one knee and then, as he reached out to touch her shoulder, he saw that she had been crying.

There was no mistaking the tears on her cheeks or the fact that her breath came in uneven little gulps.

There was a handkerchief by her side, crumpled and wet and for a moment he knelt there staring down at her before he touched her shoulder. She woke up slowly and for a minute her eyes stared up at him, drowsy with sleep and then she smiled.

“I was dreaming about ‒ you,” she admitted.

“It is time you were in bed,” the Duke replied, “but first, tell me about the secret passage.”

Then she was alert, sitting up to rub the sleep from her eyes like a tired child.

“It is very late,” she said at length, glancing at the diamond and china clock over the mantelpiece. “Too late for you to go now.”

“Mlle Lavoul has just gone to her room,” the Duke replied. “What did she say to you?”

“She said – ” Amé began and then broke off. “But why should I tell you? She wanted you to go to her so that you can make love to her. I am not so stupid that I don’t know that and I do not wish you to go. She is not evil and bad like the Duc, but she is vain and stupid. You could not love anyone like that.”

“I don’t love her,” the Duke insisted, “but if through her we can escape, then she is for this moment of the utmost import. Now tell me what she said.”

But Amé still hesitated.

“I command you,” the Duke nearly shouted.

She glanced up at him and saw the resolution in his face and a look of severity she had not seen before. Her face became very white and then, gripping her fingers together, she spoke.

“Mlle Lavoul spoke to me this afternoon. It was when the Duc was showing you his snuffboxes. She was obviously afraid of being overheard for she spoke very softly. ‘Tell your Master,’ she said, ‘that, if he wishes to see me alone, he must come to my room tonight. It will not be easy for reasons that he will understand later but there is, although few know it, a secret passage.’

“Tonight, when the ladies moved into the salon after dinner, she told me to carry her wrap. She drew me on one side and asked if I had spoken to you about the secret passage. I told her that I had.

“He will come?” she asked and I nodded.

“‘He will find the door behind the bed in his bedchamber,’ she whispered. ‘Here is the key, it fits into the rose on the carving of the sixth panel from the floor. At the foot of the stairs he will find himself in a sitting room, which opens directly into my bedroom. Tell him not to make a sound.’

“She could say no more for one of the other ladies was approaching. She dropped her handkerchief and, as I gave it back to her, she pressed the key into my hand.”

Amé rose to her feet and drew a little gold key from her pocket and held it towards the Duke. As she did so, she did not look at him and he knew that tears were gathering again in her eyes.

“There is just a chance that this may show us a way out,” he said.

He walked towards the bedroom door intent on finding the promised passage. And then, as he went, he heard a sob behind him, a broken sound that seemed to come from the very heart. He turned then and, walking back to where Amé stood on the .hearthrug put his hand under her chin and lifted her face up to his.

Her eyes were swimming with tears and her lips were trembling.

For a long moment he looked at her and then he said softly,

“I must go to Mlle Lavoul, but I would much rather stay here with you. Does that satisfy you, you silly ridiculous child?”