The Little Pretender

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1“Bonjour, Mademoiselle! Vous êtes tres charmante!”

Iona stopped and looked up, for her eyes had been on the ground as she picked her way carefully over the dirty, cobbled street. In front of her, barring her way stood a gentleman. He was dressed in the height of fashion, but neither his clothes nor the rouge and powder with which his face had been carefully embellished could hide the fact that he was elderly.

But if he would disguise his age, the wrinkled Lothario made no attempt to hide the question in his peering, lecherous eyes or the invitation that twisted his thin, reddened lips.

Iona drew herself up to her full height, which was not very high, and in a voice as disdainful as she could make it she replied in French,

“You have made a mistake, Monsieur! Permit me to pass!”

But her gesture of dignity had perhaps been a mistake, for as she threw back her head, the dying light of the afternoon revealed the whiteness of her skin, the surprising colour of her eyes and the delicate features which had been half-hidden by the darkness of her fur-trimmed hood.

The rake’s smile broadened and he took a step forward over-eagerly. He had not been mistaken – here was loveliness.

His sudden movement made Iona shrink away from him. She was not really afraid, for she had moved about Paris alone since she had been a child and was accustomed to the roués and the vieux marcheurs who thought that any young woman who walked the streets unchaperoned was theirs for the taking.

Usually she could deal with them effectively and with little trouble to herself, but this evening she was in a part of Paris she did not know well and she was uneasily aware that she was inviting unpleasantness by walking alone in such a neighbourhood.

But she had no choice in the matter, and now she looked swiftly round her to find the best means of escape. It was not easy to know what to do. The street was very narrow and in the centre the cobbles sloped to a deep gutter where the water from recent rains strove to flow against the piles of sewage, refuse and rotten vegetables flung out daily by the inhabitants of the tall, dirty houses.

It might be possible to cross the gutter, Iona thought, and proceed down the other side of the street, but the cobbles were wet and it would be easy to slip and fall ignominiously should she try to move swiftly. There was nothing for it, she decided quickly, but to face her persecutor defiantly.

She pulled her dark cloak further round her, and then clearly and in a slightly louder tone, so that he should not think her afraid, she said,

“I am on business of the utmost importance, Monsieur. Be kind enough to stand aside.”

Perhaps it was her tone, perhaps the haughty carriage of her head or maybe the look of utter contempt in her eyes that told the reprobate all too clearly that here was someone he could neither entice nor threaten into obliging him. Almost instinctively he started to move aside, and then perversely changed his mind.

“If you must leave me, most beautiful Mademoiselle,” he said, “at least allow me to kiss your lips before you go.”

His voice was silky, but there was an undercurrent of lust in it, which warned Iona of the danger in which she stood. Unwisely perhaps, but impulsively, she attempted to push past the man who barred her way, and instantly found herself clasped in his arms.

She was so slight and slender that he seemed to enfold her, his white hands covered with glittering rings having a surprising strength, and the folds of his velvet cloak swirling around her so that she felt that he both suffocated and overpowered her. She fought against him frantically and in terror realised that his desire had given him the strength of the youth he had long lost.

“Au secours! Au secours!” she cried, and then in her extremity called in English, “Help! Help!”

Already she could feel the hot breath of her captor on her cheek, could see his dark eyes looking down at her as he forced her head back against his shoulder, and then, when she felt almost faint from the horror of it, help came unexpectedly.

Quite suddenly a dark shadow seemed to blot out the light as she struggled, panted and cried. One moment she was captive, the next moment she was free, freed so quickly that she staggered and almost fell. But to her surprise she saw that he who had held her at his mercy was now at the mercy of another – a tall man, so tall, so broad shouldered that the old roué seemed but a pygmy in his hands.

“This man is molesting you, Mademoiselle?” the newcomer asked.

“Oui, Monsieur.”

Iona’s answer was barely a whisper between her lips, which were quivering.

The Frenchman struggled like a rat held beneath the paws of a cat.

“Lachez-moi, Canaille! Lachez-moi!” he cried, but he was as impotent and powerless as Iona had been but a few seconds before. He screamed, a scream of rage and terror as the big man picked him up by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his breeches and flung him into the gutter. There was a splash and a squelch of mud and filth as he sprawled on his back in the dirty, polluted water, his silk-stockinged legs in the air.

He looked so comical with his face distorted with rage, his wig askew revealing his bald head, that for a moment Iona felt the laughter swell in her throat, and then she was aware that her heart was beating quickly and that she was still trembling a little from her fright.

She turned towards her rescuer.

“Thank you, sir, thank you,” she said, and even as the words fell from her lips she was aware that unwittingly she had spoken in English. She was answered in the same language.

“I am glad that I could be of assistance, Mademoiselle.”

If the words were formal, the tone in which the stranger spoke them was even more so. Instinctively Iona felt that though he still stood there, he had withdrawn himself from her presence.

She glanced up at his face and knew that, having been of service, her rescuer was anxious to efface himself. She could not have explained why she knew this, for the man who had saved her from the unwelcome attentions of the Frenchman made no effort to withdraw into the shadows, nor was his three-cornered hat pulled low over his eyes, yet Iona was convinced that there was some mystery about him.

He was handsome, she thought, perhaps the most handsome man she had ever seen, yet there was such an air of aloof frigidity both in his expression and in his chiselled features that the words of gratitude which she would have spoken died on her lips. She felt somehow that they would sound false, for there was something so cold and imperious about this stranger that she felt only humiliated that it should have been necessary for him to champion her.

His clothes were plain, so plain that Iona was sure that they had been chosen for that reason. He wore no jewellery and yet she was sure that this, too, was deliberate. She had looked at him for but a second, and yet she felt that she had taken in so much and yet had learnt nothing. Without speech or gesture she knew that he was urging her to go, and compelled by some force she could not attempt to understand or explain, she obeyed.

She curtsied, he bowed, and then Iona was hurrying down the street with not even a backward glance at the spectacle of the amorous voluptuary picking himself out of the gutter. She moved so quickly that she was breathless when, after taking a turning to the right, she found herself at her destination.

She raised her hand to the knocker on the door and then waited until she got her breath. For the first time she looked behind her to see only another street as dingy and as dirty as the one she had just left.

She knocked on the door. It was opened almost immediately as if someone had been waiting there for her arrival. Iona stepped forward and, as she did so, the door was shut behind her and bolted, She stood uncertainly in what seemed to her a vacuum of darkness, and then a wheezing voice said,

“Ici ’moiselle!”

A door was opened ahead, and now there was light, the light of four candles on a table in the centre of a room. There were six men seated round it, and as Iona entered, blinking a little after the darkness of the outer hall, two rose, one moving into the shadows at the far end of the room, while the other turned towards her.

With a little smile of pleasure she recognised a friendly face.

“I have come, Colonel,” she said simply.

“I knew you would not fail,” he replied.

He was a big man, red-faced and jovial, and there was something reassuring in the warmth and strength of his hand, so that Iona felt her fears and apprehensions of the last few days slip from her.

She had lain awake at night worrying, and had gone through the days haunted by an aching fear of her own incompetence, and yet now at the clasp of Colonel Brett’s hand all that seemed fantastic and impossible became quite reasonable and possible.

Instinctively she took a deep breath and raised her hands to throw back the hood from her head. Colonel Brett turned towards the table.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “This is the lady of whom I was speaking.”

As the four men rose and bowed, Iona was aware that she was being scrutinised minutely and searchingly. Then before it could embarrass her Colonel Brett drew her to the table and pulled up a chair.

“Sit here, my dear,” he said kindly. “Will you have wine or coffee?”

“Coffee, please,” Iona replied.

It was set down in front of her and she lifted the cup to her lips. It was hot and strong, and as she drank, Iona took stock of her surroundings. Now, counting Colonel Brett, there were five men at the table, but still one chair was empty. It was an armchair at the head of the table and in the shadows by the mantelshelf the sixth man was standing.

She could see nothing of him, but she knew that he was there and that he was listening. The men at the table were middle-aged or elderly, and Iona only had to look at them to know that they were all Scots, that they were exiles even as her guardian had been.

Quite suddenly homesickness and nostalgia for the years which had passed, came over her so strongly and so vividly that she felt as if she would choke. It was the familiarity of the scene – the darkened room, the lighted candles on the table, the half-empty wine glasses, and the air heavy with tobacco smoke.

How well she knew it. How well she recalled the lowered voices, the heavily shuttered windows, and the servant on guard at the outer door. Yes, she knew it all, the talk which would go on in to the early hours, the arguments which would wage backwards and forwards across the table, the problems to which there would never be a solution, the sadness – or was it yearning – which seemed to overlie the expression on every face until they seemed to appear almost alike, related one to the other by a mutual suffering.

How much she missed all this. She only knew now how long the last two years had seemed and how utterly lonely she had been. She sat there very still and quiet in her high backed chair, her hair shining a fiery red in the candlelight seeming to draw the men’s eyes as if it were a torch.

At last Colonel Brett spoke.

“Iona,” he began, and his voice was low and deep. “I have told these gentlemen of your coming, but I have waited until your arrival to go deeply into the matter which concerns us all. One thing I want to make quite clear, and that is this – if you have changed your mind, if you feel that you cannot undertake what we ask of you, then do not be afraid to say so. We shall understand – all of us.”

There was a little murmur from the other gentlemen as if of approval, but Iona merely lowered her eyes, the long dark lashes seeming almost to touch the paleness of her cheeks.