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But undoubtedly he had great influence, his was a power to be reckoned with, yet Amé, this child without a name, was pitting herself against him. Amé versus Prince Louis de Rohan.

  The Duke chuckled.

  Quite suddenly the whole scenario appealed to his sense of humour.

  He glanced out of the window.

  They were nearing Chantilly.

  If he was to make a decision, he must make it now and quickly.

  “Please help me, please take me with you! Only you can save me.”

  Amé was now speaking again and her face was turned up to his, her lips trembling with the intensity of her plea.

  The coach was slowing down. The inn lay just ahead of them.

  Lights were burning brightly in a dozen windows and the Landlord was hurrying out to welcome his most distinguished guest.

  The Duke made up his mind.

  “Very well,” he said curtly. “I will take you with me.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Duke, finishing a large breakfast in a private sitting room of the Hôtel de la Poste at Chantilly, was conscious of a sense of well-being.

  The hotel was not a pretentious one, but the food was excellent. The omelette that he had begun his meal with had been very tempting and the chops that had followed it had come from a freshly-killed baby lamb. To accompany them there were delicious wines from the local vineyards.

  The Duke had eaten heartily and well. He had no use for the type of dandy who picked at his breakfast and who started the day with nothing in his stomach save a glass of brandy. Amid all the dissipations of his life, and there were many of them, he had always managed to appear at a reasonable time the next morning.

  It was perhaps due to this rule and to the fact that, when he was in England, he took an immense amount of exercise that the Duke was so healthy and many of his contemporaries called him a ‘man of iron.’

  It was his virile good health that made him ever-increasingly attractive to the opposite sex. There had been tears and sighs the night before the Duke left England and yet it was characteristic of him that he had hardly spared a thought for the fair charmers he had left behind him.

  He set down his glass now. It was time to be off, he was anxious reach Paris and start the work that lay ahead of him and, pushing back his chair, he made as if he would rise. As he did so, there came a tap at the door.

  “Entrez!” the Duke called out briefly.

  The door opened slowly and then, as he waited to see who might be approaching him so diffidently, a face appeared round the door and a gay voice exclaimed,

  “You are alone, Monseigneur – c’est bon! I wanted you to see me first and be sure that everything is all right.”

  As she spoke, Amé came into the room and closed the door. The Duke looked at her and realised that he had not been mistaken last night when he thought that she was pretty. If she had been attractive in the coach and when, disguised under her hood, he had hurried her into the inn and upstairs out of sight of the curious gaze of those who were watching his arrival, there was no doubt now, in the sunshine that streamed through the lattice-paned window of the sitting room that she was lovely beyond dispute.

  Her hair, as the Duke had suspected at that first glance, when he had seen it in the light of the lantern, was that strange deep shade of Venetian red, which is rarely encountered but by artists who immortalise it on canvas. And in vivid and unexpected contrast her eyes were blue, the pale translucent blue of an English sky in summer.

  Her eyelashes were dark and her eyes were so large that her tiny straight nose set between them seemed somehow lost and half-forgotten. Her lips were full and curved generously, her smile was very sweet, a little shy and yet eager with a touch of excitement in it as if within herself she was full of joy.

  She was small, in fact the top of her head barely reached to the Duke’s shoulder, but there was an air of budding maturity about her so that one realised that, tiny though she was, she was no child.

  Then, as she stood before the Duke, her eyes on his, her lips parted and an air of expectancy about her as she waited for his verdict, he took his eyes from her face and saw what she was asking him to approve.

  Last night he had seen her with her hair tumbled about her shoulders, the dark cloak covering the straight, shapeless white robe of a novice.

  This morning her hair was drawn back from her oval forehead and tied in a bow at the base of her neck. There was a fine lace cravat at her throat and she wore a page’s suit of black velvet.

  The Duke raised his quizzing glass and looked her over carefully. As he said nothing, Amé could no longer wait in silence.

  “Do you think I look all right?” she asked anxiously. “It is not Adrian’s best suit. I have kept that for when we arrive in Paris. It is his second best, but I think it fits me better than the one he has for grand occasions.”

  “Has Adrian gone?” the Duke enquired.

  “Yes indeed he left an hour ago. He was most delighted, your valet said, to be returning home.”

  “And he did not see you?” the Duke asked.

  “No, of course not,” Amé replied. “No one has seen me except your valet and I like him. I feel one could trust him with any secret.”

  “Dalton has been with me for many years,” the Duke said. “You can be assured of his loyalty.”

  “He would not betray me. But you have not yet told me, Monseigneur, what you think of me.”

  The Duke smiled.

  “That is a very feminine question. You make a very attractive page. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “No! No!” Amé replied impatiently. “I just want to know if I look like a page. Am I well disguised? Will anyone who sees me believe me to be a boy of fifteen, your young cousin, Adrian – what was his name?”

  “Court,” the Duke supplied.

  “Oui – j’ai oublié, Adrian Court. It is not a very exciting name, I think.”

  “I am sorry if it does not please you,” the Duke said drily. “Court happens to be my family name.”

  “Melyncourt is exciting and lovely,” Amé exclaimed, “and it suits you. It is the sort of name you ought to have.”

  “Thank you, I am gratified that you approve.”

  “Now you are laughing at me,” Amé said quickly. “Was it wrong, what I said? I don’t quite understand.”

  “No, no, it was quite right. It is just that ladies as a rule do not flatter a man quite so openly.”

  Amé’s eyes opened a little wider.

  “But I am not flattering you. Flattering somebody means to say things to them which you think will please them, but which are not quite true. What I say to you is the truth, the absolute truth. Is it wrong for me to say that I think you have un air distingué and that you are a very wonderful person?”

  “Quite wrong, for it is not true,” the Duke said brusquely. “Let’s talk of you instead. You have taken the place of my page and therefore you must act the part completely or we shall both be in trouble before we are much older.”

  “You mean I must do correctly the things a page should do?”

  “I mean just that.”

  “Will you tell me what they are?”

  As Amé spoke, she approached the table and sat down in the chair next to the Duke.

  “First of all,” the Duke said sharply, “you will not sit in my presence without my permission, you will not speak unless you are told to. If I address you and you reply, you add the words, ‘Your Grace’.”

  “Yes, yes, I will remember all that.”

  “You must remember as well that you are English. You must be very careful how you speak. I think that a Frenchman would not notice the little mistakes you make or the slight accent that tinges some of your words. But an English person would know at once.”

  “Tiens!” Amé exclaimed and then, looking at the Duke’s face, she laughed. “I am forgetting already. You will have to be very severe with me or I shall make, how do you say it – a mistake that will let the cat out of the bag
.”

  She laughed at her own joke and it would have been difficult for anyone to resist the sparkle of her eyes and the lilt in her voice. Yet the Duke was frowning a little.

  “I have been thinking that it would be best for you to powder your hair. Anyone who is looking for you will be told to search for red hair and blue eyes. That unusual combination would be noticeable anywhere.”

  “But, of course,” Amé exclaimed, clasping her hands together. “I ought to have thought of that myself. I will run upstairs and get Dalton to powder me. It will not take long.”

  The Duke drew a gold watch from his vest pocket.

  “We leave in a quarter of an hour. The sooner we get away from here the better.”

  Amé jumped to her feet.

  Then she hesitated.

  “You would not go without me, would you, Your Grace?”

  There was something pathetic and wistful in the question, as if for a moment she doubted not only him but everything around her.

  “I have given you my word that I will take you to Paris with me,” the Duke reassured her gravely.

  The anxiety cleared away from Amé’s expression.

  “Pardon, Monseigneur,” she said softly, “I don’t know why I asked you such a silly question, except that sometimes I think I must be dreaming. Yesterday I was in the Convent, angry, upset, afraid and uncertain of the future and now today I am with you, Your Grace. Everything is very different.”

  “I think yesterday you were in the right place,” the Duke commented.

  “No, it was not right,” Amé contradicted him. “It is without reason that one should be commanded to do things that concern one’s faith. And they commanded me, they ordered me as if I was a servant who must obey whatever feelings I might have myself.”

  She raised her chin as she spoke. There was so much pride and unconscious arrogance in her words and in the carriage of her little head that the Duke smiled.

  Whatever Amé’s name might be, he was very sure of one thing, she came from a good family. There was patrician blood in her.

  Then, with a little cry, realising that the precious minutes were passing and she was not ready, Amé ran to the door and disappeared through it like a flash of quicksilver.

  For some seconds after she had gone the Duke stared after her.

  In repose his face was curiously saturnine, it was only when he smiled, which was not very often, that the natural gravity of his expression gave place to one of youthfulness. The years in which he had sought pleasure both by day and by night had taken their toll, not of his strong healthy body, but of his face.

  It was a handsome face, no one would deny that, and yet the lines of dissipation were there upon it for all to see, the dark circles beneath his eyes, the heavy lines between nose and mouth, the cynical twist to his lips and the expression in his steel-grey eyes. It was the face of a man who had grown used to querying life itself, who had found little that he might take on trust and less than he might put his faith in.

  After some minutes the Duke rose from the table and, as he did so, there came a knock at the door.

  “Entrez!”

  The fat good-natured Proprietor stood there.

  “May I have a word with Your Grace? It is of importance.”

  He glanced over his shoulder as he spoke and closed the door behind him.

  Then he walked across the room to say,

  “There are two gentlemen here to see Your Grace. They insist on an audience, although I have told them that Your Grace is just about to depart.”

  “Who are they?” the Duke enquired.

  “One is a Priest, Your Grace, and the other wears the Cardinal’s livery.”

  What can they want with me?” the Duke asked.

  “They are making enquiries, Your Grace, about someone who is missing from the Convent de la Croix at St. Benis. It is but five miles from here on the road that you yourself travelled last night.”

  “Why should these strangers imagine that I should have knowledge of what has occurred at a Convent?”

  The Proprietor glanced again over his shoulder.

  “They are making searching enquiries as to who came here last night with Your Grace’s entourage. I have told them that Your Grace arrived alone and your servants came an hour later.”

  “It is good that you have said that,” the Duke approved. “Can your people be trusted?”

  “Implicitly, Your Grace. The staff in the house are fortunately all my own family, my two daughters, my wife’s niece and the wife of my eldest son who is at present away in the Army.”

  “And the outside staff?” the Duke enquired.

  “I can swear they saw nothin’, Your Grace. There are but two grooms, local village boys and they were gaping at Your Grace’s horses. I can be as certain of that as I can be of my ultimate salvation.”

  “Good and do these gentlemen know that one of my coaches left here this morning?”

  “They saw it go, Your Grace. They were in the yard as it drew away.”

  “That is all I wanted to know,” the Duke said. “You may show them in.”

  Then for a moment the Proprietor did not move. He stood in front of the Duke looking up at him, his eyes worried, his hands plucking nervously at the coarse cambric of his apron.

  “Whatever happens, Your Grace, will you be sure that I don’t get into trouble? I am a poor man and the Cardinal is very powerful.”

  “You will get into no trouble so long as you keep your mouth shut,” the Duke replied. “You have already told these strangers I came here alone. I will assure them that you spoke the truth. Now, show them in.”

  “Yes, Your Grace. Of course, Your Grace.”

  The Proprietor hurried to the door, he then opened it and gave an exclamation that told the Duke only too clearly that the gentlemen in question had been waiting in the passage directly outside the sitting room.

  He glanced quickly at the door. It was stoutly made and he doubted if it was possible to hear what had been said, however sharp an ear had been applied to the keyhole.

  “Two gentlemen to see Your Grace,” the Proprietor announced after a muttered conversation outside the door.

  The Priest came into the room first. He was a tall gaunt man, unprepossessingly thin with eyes that seemed to bore through those on whom he turned his gaze. He was followed by a younger man wearing the elaborate and ornate livery of the Cardinal de Rohan.

  The Duke, drawing his snuffbox from his pocket, took a pinch of snuff before he so much as glanced at his visitors and then with a somewhat haughty inclination of the head he acknowledged perfunctorily the bows they accorded him.

  “You wish to see me, gentlemen?”

  “You are the Duke of Melyncourt?” the Priest asked.

  “I am.”

  “I am Father André and this is Captain Theve of His Eminence the Cardinal de Rohan’s Guard.”

  “And your business with me, gentlemen?” the Duke enquired. “You must not think me rude if I ask that what you have to say you say quickly. I am at this moment leaving for Paris and if there is one thing I dislike more than another it is to keep my horses waiting.”

  “We will not keep you waiting long, Your Grace. You arrived here last night?”

  “That is so.”

  “Five miles from this village you passed the Convent de la Croix. It is about two kilometres outside the hamlet of St. Benis.”

  “Indeed? I am afraid I am not very conversant with small hamlets on this road or indeed for that matter with Convents.”

  “As you passed by the Convent last night you did not see anything unusual on the road? You were not stopped? No one asked you for a lift?”

  “No, and if they had, is there any reason why I should relate what happened to you?”

  The Duke’s question was suddenly aggressive.

  “None, none, Your Grace. We were but asking for your help.”

  “Indeed? You did not mention that you required my assistance until now. In fact I appeare
d merely to be undergoing some form of Papal Inquisition.”

  “No, no, of course not. We intended nothing of the sort,” the Priest said. “It is just that you came by that road last night and someone whom we seek might have asked your help or enquired about the way.”

  “A coach travelling at the speed of mine does not halt easily nor for the first person who signals to it from the roadside.”

  “No, no,” the Priest agreed. “It was just that you might have seen something. Did you not stop in the neighbourhood of St. Benis?”

  There was something in his question and in the glint in his eyes as he spoke that told the Duke that he knew more than he pretended.

  The Duke drew out his snuffbox again slowly.

  “Now that you mention it,” he said, “it may have been in the neighbourhood of St. Benis that I was forced to change horses last night. It was dark and I was getting hungry, so I paid little attention to anything save the need to move on as speedily as possible.”

  “What happened during that halt?” the Captain asked quickly, speaking for the first time.

  “What happened?” the Duke repeated. “I have already told you, gentlemen, we changed horses. One of my postilions followed on more slowly with the horse that had gone lame. It was, in fact, a loose shoe and I am told this morning that the horse in question is back in the traces.”

  “And while you were waiting when this exchange was taking place on the road, you did not see a lady?”

  “A lady!” the Duke exclaimed. “What sort of lady?”

  “The Captain looked at the Priest and there was a quick exchange of glances between them.

  “A nun, as it happens.”

  “A nun!” the Duke repeated. “No, I am quite certain I should have noticed it if a nun had been walking abroad at that hour of the night. Was she elderly?”

  At his question the Priest and the Captain glanced once again at each other.

  “You saw no one,” the Priest said, “in which case there is no need for us to bother Your Grace further. We must regret if our questions have sounded in any way impertinent. We have orders from the Cardinal himself.”

  “Yes, of course,” the Duke said. “I am grieved that I have not been able to be of any assistance to you.”