Heir to Rowanlea (21 page)

“I will kill you for that!” she declared, but Claude, turning from locking the door, ignored her.

He spoke to Madeleine in French far too rapid for Charlotte, with only schoolroom French to assist her, to follow, but she understood well enough he was upbraiding her for her betrayal of him. Madeleine dissolved into frightened tears, and tried to cling to him, explaining volubly she did not at all wish to hurt him, but she would not permit that he marry another, for he was her true husband, and she loved him.

“Enough!” he said brusquely, and turned to Charlotte and James, now seated in two of the chairs on the far side of the table from him. “My dear Charlotte, how rash of you to have involved your little brother in your schemes. I fear I will now have to dispose of the pair of you, for I cannot permit you to mar the final few weeks of my masquerade.”

“You are a villain!” James said fiercely.

“How did you know?” Charlotte demanded.

He laughed unpleasantly.

“You really should be careful to ensure that those doors between the green saloon and the room behind are closed,” he mocked.

She shrugged.

“So what do you intend to do with us? You cannot think we came here without leaving word of where we were.”

“But I do, my dear! Even if you are speaking the truth, by the time your dear mama or your dear Harry become alarmed, you will both be gone from here, and there will be no trace that you were ever here.”

“Do you intend to murder us?” James asked in disbelief.

Claude looked at him as if considering the possibility.

“I am highly tempted to do so, after all the trouble you have been to me,” he said.

“You would not dare,” Charlotte declared scornfully, hoping the fear that he would indeed dare did not show itself in her voice. “If we are murdered all hope you have of getting Uncle Henry’s money out of England would vanish. They would know who had done it.”

“Yes, there is that,” Claude admitted, but with a smile she could not like playing on his lips.

“You must not, Claude!” Madeleine, who had sunk to the floor beside the fire and was hugging her knees in silent despair, suddenly interjected.

“So you plead for them, my dear?”

“It is not their fault. It was I zat brought zem here. Please, Claude, do not commit more sins!’

“My dear wife actually wishes to take the blame,” Claude said conversationally to Charlotte. Then, he turned to Madeleine and almost snarled at her, “You shall know my displeasure later, Madame, for daring to disobey me!”

“You cannot force us to leave here,” Charlotte declared, her voice calm, but in her heart she knew he could do just what he liked with them now they were so utterly in his power.

Claude eyed her in some amusement.

“You think not? Wait until I explain my plans for you. There is a ship, ready to sail for France tonight, whose captain has agreed to take some passengers for me. I fear the accommodation will not be of the standard you are accustomed to, dear coz, but that cannot be helped.”

“I will not go.”

“Do you imagine anyone here will query it if you are bound and gagged and carried to the ship?”

Recalling the people they had passed on their way to this dreadful place, Charlotte knew he was right, but she managed to suppress the shiver of horror as she began to admit to herself that he might succeed. However, he had said tonight, and surely in the hours that were left before darkness, they would be able to think of some means of escape.

“You would not get away with it,” she maintained bravely.

“Why not? No one knows where you are, and they will not discover it. Will you come quietly, or resist?”

“I shall certainly not meekly do as you order me,” she flung at him, and he laughed as if pleased at her answer.

“Then the sailors will have cause to thank me!”

Charlotte tried not to show how frightened she was.

“What do you mean?”

“I had proposed to send my—father—with you to ensure you were well treated, and to hold you safely in France until my work here is completed, when he would have released you.”

Charlotte, ignoring the intimation that it was not now his intention, felt a moment of hope at this indication murder was not on his mind. If they were still alive when they reached France, surely there would be some opportunity of escaping.

His next words dampened this hope.

“Whether, since war between our two countries would almost certainly have broken out again by then, you would have been able to make your way back to England, I could not promise. However, if I have to drag you unwilling to the ship, I shall not trouble my father to accompany you, but shall instead tell the sailors to treat you as they please on the voyage, and to dispose of you as they choose once they reach France.”

Despite herself Charlotte could not suppress a shiver at these words, and she felt the blood drain from her face.

Claude laughed and James, who had been silent until now, suddenly rushed round the table at him and tried to kick his legs.

“You devil! I never liked you! Let Charlotte go, please! You can send me to France.”

“Don’t be so foolish, child. How can I leave her here? She would tell the authorities immediately.”

He thrust James back into the chair, warning him that if he moved again he would be bound and gagged. Charlotte put her arms round James, hugging him to her, and from his shaking knew he was desperately trying to stop himself from breaking down in tears.

Claude, absently rubbing his shin where James had landed a kick, went on speaking to Charlotte as though there had been no interruption.

“Or they can dispose of you before they reach France. They might decide your brother is too much trouble, and dispose of him at sea. However, I have few doubts of where you will be, my dear, for despite it all you are an attractive piece. They could get a high price for you in a brothel in one of the ports. And sailors are rough lovers, not polite gentlemen, you know.”

“You are a devil!” she said, grateful that her voice did not betray her, and remained level.

“You have brought it upon yourselves. Now I wish to talk with my wife, so you will both be pleased to wait in the bedroom.”

* * * *

Seeing this as an opportunity for discussing their plight with James, if not actually escaping, Charlotte retorted she would be pleased to get away from his contaminating presence, and rose from her chair to sweep haughtily past him and through into a bedroom as sparsely furnished as the other room, followed by James, who was excessively subdued by the recent encounter and his own somewhat unheroic showing in it.

Claude closed the door firmly after them, and Charlotte immediately ran to the window to peer out. To her disappointment she saw the back of the house was at a lower level than the front, and it was far too great a drop without some sort of rope. The yard behind the house was small, surrounded by a high wall, and she could see no doorway, but there was enough rubbish scattered around to help make some sort of ladder which would help them scale the wall. Beyond it she thought there was an alleyway, not more yards, but surely there would be ways out of them if there were. Then there was also the question of whether the window could be made to open, and from the fact that Madeleine had scoured the inside while the outside remained grimed and filthy, Charlotte doubted whether it was possible.

She struggled with it for a few moments, and then sighed in exasperation.

“Botheration! We shall have to break it, and that is sure to bring Claude in upon us before we could escape.”

“There’s a poker here,” James volunteered. “I’ll hide behind the door and we’ll get him to come in, and I’ll break his head.”

Charlotte looked dubious.

“We might kill him,” she demurred.

“What does that matter?”

“Well, I don’t know what the law would say, but we could be hung for it, or even transported. I think it would be easier to get home again from France than New South Wales.”

“But you heard what he threatened. He’d never let us go free when we got there! And he might have them throw me overboard, and I can’t swim very well,” he added, his voice trembling.

Charlotte hugged him, he sniffed, and controlled his imminent tears.

“And I’ve no intention of letting him send us there,” she said firmly, but without a single idea of how she could prevent it. “We’ll think of some other plan to escape.”

Think, she ordered herself, and looked carefully about her. The only useful things she could see were the sheets and blankets on the bed. If she could make a rope, they might be able to break the window and lower James down before the noise brought Claude in to them. But they had to hurry. There was no telling how soon Claude would finish whatever he was saying to Madeleine.

She could hear the murmur of voices through the thin door. Madeleine appeared to be weeping, but Claude did not seem to be beating her, there was no other noise but the drone of his voice, calm and regular.

She swiftly began to strip the blankets from the bed, then the sheets. To her relief the later were of reasonable quality and she began to knot them into a rope, and then, deciding the blankets were too thick to make secure knots and lengthen the rope, added the counterpane.

“I think that will be enough for you to get low enough to jump to the ground,” she said, having considered it carefully. “Fortunately the bed is near the window, so we will not shorten the rope much by tying it to the bedpost.”

“But how can we get out without him hearing us?”

Charlotte, looking at the window again, began to see how difficult it would be to do everything before Claude heard and was upon them.

“He might go away and leave us locked in for a while,” she said. “Surely he will not wish to remain here all day.”

“There is no depending on that,” James replied gloomily. “And if he does go away he’ll probably tie us up.”

Charlotte had not thought of that, and quickly revised her plan.

“No, I fear you are right. Then we shall have to use guile. We’ll tie this end of the rope to the bedpost, ready. I will go into the other room—he did not lock the door—and create a great noise, crying, and shrieking, and demanding to be set free, and while that is going on you must break the window, have the rope ready to throw out, and slide down it as fast as you can and make your escape. Can you recall the way we came here to bring Harry back? And tell him to bring several other strong men, for he might not be enough for Claude on his own, especially if his father also comes, and if he is supposed to be coming to France with us he is bound to come here sometime.”

“I won’t leave you!”

“James, you must, for it’s our only chance!”

“No! You go, you escape!”

“Don’t be foolish! I would take much longer to climb down the rope and over that wall to get away, and I could not so easily run through these detestable streets without being noticed, and possibly chased! You could, and could bring Harry back here for me. I’ll make certain they do not drag me away before you come back,” she added with more confidence in her voice than she felt.

Gradually she persuaded James her plan was the only feasible one, and he reluctantly agreed to try it, saying that even if they had taken Charlotte away they knew the ship was a French one in the Pool, and it could not sail before the evening tide. They would be able to find her.

When they had knotted the rope and tied it, then concealed it in such a way that it was invisible from the doorway, yet ready to hand for the desperate attempt, Charlotte began to pretend to sob, softly at first, and then occasionally raising her voice as though arguing with James, and finally permitting her wailing to rise to a crescendo of hysterical sobs and exclamations. Since these did not draw Claude in upon them, she ran across to the door and dragged it open, flinging herself out into the front room and throwing herself on Claude, crying wildly and shouting he was a villain and would regret treating her and a poor innocent boy so, and must relent and take her back home, for she would promise never to breathe a word of what he had done.

* * * *

Absorbed as she was in the artistry of this performance, Charlotte heard the faint sound of tinkling glass, and redoubled her noise to try and cover the sounds that were inevitable in James’ escape. Her efforts were in vain, for Claude, rising to his feet and casting her roughly aside, strode through into the bedroom and seized James just as he was carefully negotiating the jagged edge of glass left in the broken pane.

Mercilessly Claude dragged him back into the room, and James suppressed the gasp of pain as his thigh caught on a splinter of glass which tore a gaping hole in his flesh, a hole which, to Charlotte’s horror as she ran into the room after Claude, began to run freely of blood.

“Be careful!” she expostulated, but Claude paid no heed and flung James onto the bed.

“You’ll not trick me,” Claude said, a note of triumph in his voice.

Madeleine had followed them into the room, and she cried out in dismay at the sight of James’ injury.

“Poor boy! Vat have you done to ‘im? He vill bleed to death!”

“It’s a mere scratch,” James said nobly, while Charlotte seized the now useless rope and tore a strip off one of the sheets, and moved across to try and staunch the flow of blood.

“I cannot think why you should bother,” Claude said nastily. “You will both live only long enough for me to get you into the Thames estuary if I have any more trouble from you.”

“No, mon cher, you promised me zere vould be no killing!” Madeleine shrieked, and Claude shrugged his shoulders.

“That depends on their behavior. Oh, very well, bind the little devil up if you wish.”

He watched sardonically while Madeleine fetched a bowl of warm water and, clucking over the wound, cleansed it and gently placed a pad and made a bandage from the already mutilated sheet. Charlotte helped her, bitterly regretting it had been her scheme, and then her lack of noise to cover the sound of the breaking window, that had landed James in this predicament, but he, guessing how much she would be blaming herself, contrived to squeeze her hand and say he was sorry to have been so confoundedly slow in getting through the window.