Page 51 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
By the time she stepped to the cobbles, she’d found her strength. Old hatreds did not die. They simply festered in one’s heart.
“Darling,” Tate murmured to her as he took her hand and they gazed up at the half-timbered shack before them. “If this is not to your liking, we can leave.”
“No. I am here.” She patted the collar of her pelisse to her throat. “Knock and ask if Jocelyn Gatel lives here.”
He rapped on the door. Minutes stretched. No one came. He knocked again. Another minute passed before, inside, someone dragged a foot across ancient, creaking floorboards.
The rough-hewn wooden door inched open. A shriveled gremlin squinted up at Tate. Curiosity had the little person examining him head to toe.
“Bonjour, madame—are you Jocelyn Gatel?”
“Who wants to know?” The little owl of a lady spotted Viv, and shock had her drawing back.
He stated, “Mademoiselle Charmaine de Massé.”
Those watery eyes grew big with shock. But with the bat of a lash, she sent Viv a shrewd, sharp look of greed. “Come to see me after all these years? So noble of you. So kind.” Her wordsimplied nothing of the sort. She leaned on the handle of the door and swept a hand toward the inside.
A waft of putrid air hit Viv like a hot river. But she planted her feet more securely. She’d come this far.
The ugly little creature punched her black cane into the floor and craned her neck at Viv. “Why’ve you come?”
“I have come to visit you, madame, and see to your health.”And not.
Confusion lined the ugly spotted bird’s already wrinkled brow. “Oui?You?” Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “You come to helpme?” She slapped a hand on her knee and cackled.
“Why not?”I can. I will. If you help me.
“Come, girl!” The woman spread her white lips to show small black teeth. Viv felt the scourge of her rotten breath upon her face. “Come inside, then, if can hold your stomach.”
Viv stepped across the threshold, Tate beside her—and the stench brought up her gorge.
“You can smell my mother there.”
Indeed.The woman sat like a corpse in a ragged upholstered chair that Viv would say had belonged once to the house in rue du Four. Her spidery hands to the armrests, the old lady had the complexion of the dead, a few wisps of white hair sprouting from her bald head, and a gown that clung to her emaciated form like a wet rag.
“She never rises from the chair. So that’s why you smell her. Does all her living there, if that’s what you can call it.”
Viv held on to her sanity by a thin thread. “Sad,” she offered.
“Stupid. She should die but lives to drive me insane. What do you want, mademoiselle? To give me money? I’ll take it. How much?”
“I did come to help you if I could.”
The little owl licked her thin lips. “What do you want for the gift of a coin, eh?”
So a transaction was expected. Greed was good. “I thought you might tell me about what happened to the other servants in our house.” That was a lie. But Viv had to improvise. The woman was no simple-minded hag, but one who was still canny, despite the squalor in which she lived.
“You got coin for them too?” She crossed her bony arms. “Lucky you. What do you do for that money? Did your papa give it to you? Did he even live? Ha!” She looked Viv over like a man buying a woman for the night. “Pretty, still. Good breasts. Clothes, too. Earn them on your back?”
Tate cleared his throat.
The owl sneered at Viv. “What do you want, Charmaine?”
The woman did not read newspapers or gossip sheets. She had no money for such frivolous things. Therefore, she had no idea who or what Charmaine de Massé had become. And of course, she was rude to address her by her given name.
Viv did not care what Jocelyn thought of her. “Tell me, Madame Gatel, do you know where our other servants are now?”
“Most are dead. The majordom. The chef and the châtelaine. Your mother’s maid lives north somewhere… Why? Want to give them money, too?”
