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  “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 ma
n 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.