These Old Shades (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 1)

Léonie kicked her foot free of the stirrup, and slid to the ground.

‘But yes, I am staying at Avon. I am the – bah, I have forgotten the word! – the – the ward of Monseigneur le Duc.’

A shadow crossed the lady’s face. She made a movement as though to stand between Léonie and the children. Léonie’s chin went up.

‘I am not anything else, madame, je vous assure. I am in the charge of Madame Field, the cousin of Monseigneur. It is better that I go, yes?’

‘I crave your pardon, my dear. I beg that you will stay. I am Lady Merivale.’

‘I thought you were,’ confided Léonie. ‘Lady Fanny told me of you.’

‘Fanny?’ Jennifer’s brow cleared. ‘You know her?’

‘I have been with her two weeks, when I came from Paris. Monseigneur thought it would not be convenable for me to be with him until he had found a lady suitable to be my gouvernante, you see.’

Jennifer, in the past, had had experience of his Grace’s ideas of propriety, and thus she did not see at all, but she was too polite to say so. She and Léonie sat down on the tree-trunk while the small boy stared round-eyed.

‘No one likes Monseigneur, I find,’ Léonie remarked. ‘Just a few, perhaps. Lady Fanny, and M. Davenant, and me, of course.’

‘Oh, you like him, then?’ Jennifer looked at her wonderingly.

‘He is so good to me, you understand,’ explained Léonie. ‘That is your little son?’

‘Yes, that is John. Come and make your bow, John.’

John obeyed, and ventured a remark:

‘Your hair is quite short, madam.’

Léonie pulled off her hat.

‘But how pretty!’ exclaimed Jennifer. ‘Why did you cut it?’

Léonie hesitated.

‘Madame, please will you not ask me? I am not allowed to tell people. Lady Fanny said I must not.’

‘I hope ’twas not an illness?’ said Jennifer, with an anxious eye to her children.

‘Oh no!’ Léonie assured her. Again she hesitated. ‘Monseigneur did not say I was not to tell. It was only Lady Fanny, and she is not always very wise, do you think? And I do not suppose that she would want me not to tell you, for you were at the convent with her, n’est-ce pas ? I have only just begun to be a girl, you see, madame.’

Jennifer was startled.

‘I beg your pardon, my dear?’

‘Since I was twelve I have always been a boy. Then Monseigneur found me, and I was his page. And – and then he discovered that I was not a boy at all, and he made me his daughter. I did not like it at first, and these petticoats still bother me, but in some ways it is very pleasant. I have so many things all my own, and I am a lady now.’

Jennifer’s eyes grew soft. She patted Léonie’s hand.

‘You quaint child! For how long do you think to stay at Avon?’

‘I do not quite know, madame. It is as Monseigneur wills. And I have to learn so many things. Lady Fanny is to present me, I think. It is nice of her, is it not?’

‘Prodigious amiable,’ Jennifer agreed. ‘Tell me your name, my dear.’

‘I am Léonie de Bonnard, madame.’

‘And your parents made the – the Duke your guardian?’