‘I’ll be damned if I’ll be put in any cellar!’ said Ludovic. ‘I’ll be off as soon as I can stand on my feet.’
‘No, you will not,’ said Eustacie. ‘I have quite decided that you must stop being a free-trader and become instead Lord Lavenham.’
‘That seems to me a most excellent idea,’ remarked Miss Thane. ‘I suppose it will be quite easy?’
‘If Sylvester’s dead, I am Lord Lavenham, but it don’t help me. I can’t stay in England.’
‘But we are going to discover who it was who killed that man whose name I cannot remember,’ explained Eustacie.
‘Oh, are we?’ said Ludovic. ‘I’m agreeable, but how are we going to set about it?’
‘Well, I do not know yet, but we shall arrange a plan, and I think perhaps Miss Thane might be very useful, because she seems to me to be a person of large ideas, and when it is shown to her that she holds your life in her hands, she will be interested, and wish to assist us.’
‘Do I really hold his life in my hands?’ inquired Miss Thane. ‘If that’s so, of course I’m much interested. I will certainly assist you. In fact, I wouldn’t be left out of this for the world.’
Ludovic moved on his pillows, and said with a grimace of pain: ‘You seem to know so much, ma’am, that you may as well know also that I am wanted by the Law for murder!’
‘Are you?’ said Miss Thane, gently removing one of the pillows. ‘How shocking! Do you think you could get a little sleep if we left you?’
He looked up into her face and gave a weak laugh. ‘Ma’am, take care of my cousin for me till morning, and I shall be very much in your debt.’
‘Why, certainly!’ said Miss Thane in her placid way.
Ten minutes later Eustacie was ensconced in a chair by the fire in Miss Thane’s bedchamber, gratefully sipping a cup of hot milk. Miss Thane sat down beside her, and said with her friendly smile: ‘I hope you mean to tell me all about it, for I’m dying of curiosity, and I don’t even know your name.’
Eustacie considered her for a moment. ‘Well, I think I will tell you,’ she decided. ‘I am Eustacie de Vauban, and my cousin Ludovic is Lord Lavenham of Lavenham Court. He is the tenth Baron.’
Miss Thane shook her head. ‘It just shows how easily one may be mistaken,’ she said. ‘I thought he was a smuggler.’
‘He prefers,’ said Eustacie, with dignity, ‘that one should call him a free-trader.’
‘I’m sorry,’ apologized Miss Thane. ‘Of course, it is a much better title. I should have known. What made him take to s– free trading? It seems a trifle unusual.’
‘I see that I must explain to you the talisman ring,’ said Eustacie, and drew a deep breath.
Miss Thane, a sympathetic listener, followed the story of the talisman ring with keen interest, only interpolating a question when the tale became too involved to be intelligible. She accepted Ludovic’s innocence without the smallest hesitation, and said at the end of the recital that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to assist in unmasking the real culprit.
‘Yes,’ said Eustacie, ‘and me, I think that it was perhaps my cousin Tristram, for he has a collection of jewellery, and, besides, he is a person who might murder people – except that he is not at all romantic,’ she added.
‘He sounds very disagreeable,’ said Miss Thane.
‘He is – very! And, do you know, I have suddenly thought that perhaps I had better marry him, because then he would have to show me his collection, and if I found the talisman ring it would make everything right for Ludovic.’
Miss Thane bent down to poke the fire. She said with a slight tremor in her voice: ‘But then if you did not find the ring it would be tiresome to have married him all to no purpose. And one has to consider that he might not wish to marry you.’
‘Oh, but he does!’ said Eustacie. ‘In fact, we are betrothed. That is why I ran away. He has no conversation. Moreover, he said that if I went to London, I should not find myself in any way remarkable.’
‘He was wrong,’ said Miss Thane with conviction.
‘Yes, I think he was wrong, but you see he is not sympathique, and he does not like women.’
Miss Thane blinked at her. ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘I mean, if he wants to marry you –’
‘But he does not want to marry me! It is just that he must have an heir, and because Grandpère made for us a mariage de convenance. Only Grandpère is dead now, and I am not going to marry a person who says that he would not care if I went to the guillotine in a tumbril!’
‘Did he really say that?’ inquired Miss Thane. ‘He must be a positive Monster!’
‘Well, no, he did not say exactly that,’ admitted Eustacie. ‘But when I asked him if he would not be sorry to see me, a jeune fille, in a tumbril, and dressed all in white, he said he would be sorry for anyone in a tumbril, “whatever their age or sex or – or apparel”!’