Chapter Seven
T he house was the sprawling maze that Grace had described. Without Pol to show her the way, Jackie might easily have become lost, even with the map that Grace had helped her draw. Grace was more familiar with the servants’ ways that riddled the walls, and that was the way Jackie had intended to go. But Pol conducted her up the main staircase and along several passages to a separate wing of the house.
Pol explained that the wing had its own door to the garden, which allowed Rotten Riese to come and go without alerting his mother. “His are the only occupied rooms in this part of the house,” he told Jackie. “It used to be the bachelor wing when the family had house parties, but there hasn’t been one of those since before I came here.” He stopped in front of one of the doors. Jackie wondered what it was like to live in a house that had such long hallways and so many doors leading to so many rooms. It was so different than the cottages she and Maman had inhabited. “There. That’s the one.” He found the right key and unlocked the door.
He took back the candelabra he’d given her to hold. “I’ll go first, if you permit me,” he whispered. “Just to make sure Oscar’s valet is not within.”
Jackie did her best not to show any fear. If Pol realized how much her heart quailed, he would refuse to involve her further, and she was determined to be part of the search.
“No one here,” Pol called, softly. “Come in, Jackie.”
When she was a little girl, Jackie’s mother had several times taken her along to the shop of a second-hand dealer who was also a pawnbroker. The shop had fascinated her, crowded as it was with color, shapes, textures—furniture, paintings, ornaments, fire implements, rugs, even drapes. There was no organization, just items piled on one another wherever there was a space. Nothing fitted with anything else.
Rotten Riese’s living room reminded her of that shop, except with more expensive items and more glitter. Mirrors, crystals, and gilt abounded, reflecting the candlelight and dazzling the eye.
“Awful, isn’t it?” Pol said.
“How on earth are we going to find anything?” Jackie wondered.
“Searching it would take hours,” Pol acknowledged. “Maybe days. And there are two other rooms in the suite. But tonight, we are just taking the money you need for the rent, and Oscar always keeps his money in the swan.” He pointed to the gilded bird, which graced—if that was the right word—a table by the window.
“Oh,” said Jackie. “I thought that was a goose. Is it a money box?” She crossed the room and ran her finger down the ornament’s long neck.
She was right. It did look more like a goose than a swan. “Oscar calls it a swan,” he commented, and showed her how it worked. “If you pull the neck down, this aperture opens. You put anything you want to hide on the platform, and when you raise the neck, the object drops into the body of the swan.”
Jackie experimented. “You can’t get your hand in to retrieve what you’ve put in there,” she discovered. “There’s another mechanism?”
He nodded. “Twist the left wing clockwise,” he said.
She did. Another aperture opened under the swan’s tail feathers and a stream of coins dropped onto the table. “It lays gold!” Jackie exclaimed. She twisted the wing again and was rewarded with another stream of coins.
Pol pulled the pile toward him and began counting. “You can’t empty it or he’ll notice, but you can certainly take the rent and the money that the Rieses owe your mother. I need something to put this in.” He looked around the room as if a pouch or purse was going to suddenly appear.
“I have one.” Jackie opened her coat to unbuckle the pouch she wore on her belt. His eyes riveted on her chest, where her man’s shirt molded to her breasts. She had not bound them tonight. She was wearing a coat that disguised her figure, and she figured that—if she was caught—her gender would not stay a secret for long.
As she stilled, her mind screaming at her to run before he seized her, he wrenched his gaze upwards. Even in the candlelight, she could see the color flooding his cheeks. “Thank you,” he said. “Pass it to me and I shall put the money in it. Ten pounds. Will that be enough?”
For the rent. He is talking about the rent . She said, “Yes, perfect.” and finished unbuckling the pouch to hand it to him. Five pounds for the rent, and a whole five pounds besides. Surely that would be enough to move them away from the Rieses?
“I shall walk you home,” Pol proposed.
“That is not necessary,” Jackie said. “I often go around at night dressed like this.”
“You often go out at night? Does your mother not worry?” He must have seen her answer on her face, for he added, “Ah. I see. Your mother does not know.”
“My mother threw me out of the house the evening before last,” Jackie heard herself say. What was it about Pol Allegro that he drew such truths out of her?
Pol was obviously shocked. “Threw you out? But why?”
She had said this much. She might as well tell him the rest. “She sent me to sell our cow to raise the money for the rent. But she is not a young cow, and we could not afford the services of a bull these last two years, so she is not in milk. Maman thought I should have sold her to the knacker for two pounds instead of to a lady who gave me a pound but wanted her for her herd.”
She was being unfair to Maman, telling a stranger such a story without explaining. “She is worried about what will happen to us, and particularly about Rotten Riese’s intentions for me. That makes her irritable, and when she is irritable, she says things she doesn’t mean. She will feel better once I give her the money. I will go home in the morning. It is too late now. She will be fast asleep.”
Pol shook his head. “I doubt it. She has been searching for you. I’ve heard of it from several people today. From the sounds of it, she was out all day, and I cannot believe she will have gone tamely to bed.”
His tone did not sound accusing but his words made her feel guilty, and in her own defense she snapped, “She knows I can look after myself. When will she stop treating me like a child?”
Pol disarmed her by commenting, “I envy you having someone to worry about you. My grandmother is the only person who cares about me, and these days, she is as likely to take me for my father than remember me for myself. At least you have your mother, and she has you.” He held up his hand in the way her mother did when she was pretending to be a gentleman about to escort Jackie onto the floor at a grand ball. “May I walk you home, Miss Jacqueline Haricot? Otherwise, I shall worry.”
Was she touched or merely flattered by his claim? Whichever it was, she gave in. “Very well, Pol. You can walk with me while I go home.” After all, she couldn’t stop him from walking anywhere he wished. It wasn’t as if he was courting her, or anything like that. She had no idea how such a ridiculous thought even entered her head.
She ignored his hand. She was not going to risk the disturbing sensation that had thrilled through her body last time they touched. “I take it we don’t go the way I came in?”
He laughed. “Not quite.” Cautioning her to silence with a finger against his lips, he led her out of Oscar’s rooms, through the quiet house, down the servant stairs, and through servant passages to the breakfast room, which had a door that let onto the terrace.
Once they had crossed the lawn below the terrace and entered the first of the enclosed gardens, he spoke again. “The quickest way is through the maze and then the woods, I believe.”
“Yes,” Jackie agreed. “And we’ll be out of sight most of the way, too.”
“I asked before if you often go out at night, and you didn’t answer. Is Jack Le Gume a regular thing with you?”
“I invented him a year ago, the first time Rotten Riese doubled the rent. My father taught me how to play most games the men around here are interested in. I used to go out once a month, and it was enough. But the shopkeepers in the village have had their rents increased, too, and so they have put their prices up, and Maman is having trouble with rheumatics in her hands, so is not able to complete the same volume of work. I have been able to manage with gambling once a week.”
“Hmm,” he said.
“I don’t cheat,” she assured him. “But I can usually win more than I lose. Especially if I can hold on in the game until everyone else has had too much to drink. I don’t drink, you see, so if I can play for long enough, winning is almost inevitable.”
“Except when other people cheat,” he commented.
“I should have expected that of Rotten Riese. I should have left with my winnings as soon as I had enough to pay the rent. It is my first rule—walk away from the table before you’ve won enough to make the other players angry. It has made me welcome at games in taverns and inns in all the villages for miles around. I gave into the temptation to make your cousin suffer.”
He cast her a sidelong glance, the corner of his mouth quirked in a smile. “I understand the temptation to thrash my cousin. It is ever with me.”
She acknowledged his witticism with a chuckle. “However, you resist!”
They were through the woods, and sure enough, light shone from the windows of the cottage. Maman must be awake. Jackie stopped, uncertain how to tell Pol to come no farther. She had enough to confess to her mother without having to confess she had been out alone at night with a man.
Once again, he showed how attuned he was to her thoughts. “I shall wait here until you are inside. Do you work for the squire tomorrow?”
At her nod, he said, “What time do you finish? I shall meet you on the way home and we can talk about our next steps.”
“I leave by noon and walk back along the lane that runs behind the village,” Jackie said. “Good evening, Pol. Thank you.” She rushed away before she did something outrageous like shake his hand—or hug him.
“My pleasure,” he called after her, his voice so soft she only just caught the words.
Maman had latched the window by which Jackie normally escaped on her nocturnal adventures. She had to knock on the door, and to answer when her mother called out, “Who is it?”
“Maman, it is me. Jacqueline!”
“ Cherie !” Her mother’s voice had a sob in it, and Jackie could hear her removing the bar on the door and fumbling with the latch. She looked over her shoulder to see Pol standing on the edge of the wood, then the door opened, Pol faded backwards into the shadows of the trees, and Jackie’s mother almost leaped from the house and seized Jackie for a ferocious hug.
“I was so worried, dear one.” Maman was speaking French, a clear sign of how upset she was. “I could not find you. I worried that someone had taken you—that dreadful man, perhaps. Come in! Come in! Where have you been? How could you have worried me so?” She hauled on Jackie’s arm, and Jackie let herself be pulled into the house.
“You sent me away, Maman,” she protested. “I disappointed you. I did not want to come back until I could pay the rent.”
“I sent you out of my sight, not out of the house! But there, I should not have been so cross. You did your best, I know this. As for the rent, I spit on it! Do you think I love the rent more than my daughter? We shall go away, cherie . We will start again. It shall not be the first time. We shall find somewhere where the landlord is fair.”
Jackie had been unbuckling her pouch. “I have the rent, Maman,” she said, handing it to her mother.