Prologue #2
For a moment, the thought that this was nothing to do with her arose.
Thomas would have told her the woman had a look of bringing trouble with her and that she should hurry into her carriage and leave her to her fate, whatever it might be.
What the ordinary population got up to was no concern of hers.
But hadn’t poor Marie-Antoinette thought just that?
And look what had happened to her. Wasn’t it her responsibility as a fellow woman to be curious about what this young woman was fleeing from?
To help her, perhaps, for she looked for all the world like a person who was in need of immediate assistance.
“Your Grace?” Hawkins said, also turning to look in the same direction as her mistress. Donald straightened up from where he’d been bent over the step. He also looked. Miller, up on the driving seat, wiped a drip from the end of his nose and turned his head to observe as well.
Camilla held up her hand to her servants. “Wait.”
The woman, clutching a bundle of rags to her chest, reached the carriage and darted behind its shelter. Her shoulders rose and fell with her rapid breathing, and her desperate eyes never left Camilla’s. That she feared pursuit was obvious.
Camilla looked across the square, but could see no one who might be chasing the woman.
Yet. Then she turned back to face her. She was young, scarcely more than twenty, with thick dark-auburn hair pinned in a tangled mess that might once have been a bun.
Tendrils pulled loose by her flight hung down over her pale face, and she went to swipe them out of her large violet eyes with one slender hand.
She really was the most arresting young woman Camilla had ever seen, even though mud splattered her plain gown and a tatty shawl covered her narrow shoulders.
It was at that moment that Camilla saw the bundle she was clutching to her chest with her other hand move. A tiny pink hand emerged, clutching with small fingers at the plaid cloth of the shawl.
Camilla staggered back a step. This poor creature was fleeing for her life, and perhaps for the life of her child.
And as she looked into those beautiful violet eyes she knew she had to help her.
This was a moment that was meant to happen.
Fate had brought her to Mademoiselle Binet’s today, and fate had brought this poor woman to shelter behind her carriage with her baby.
She looked back across the square. Two large and disreputable men had emerged from Sutton Street on the far side and were scanning the square. It didn’t take a genius to work out who they were looking for.
She turned back to the woman who was now rocking the baby in her arms. She must be afraid it would cry and give her away.
It had a fuzz of blond hair on its head, so similar to Ambrose’s when he’d been a baby that Camilla’s heart contorted with something that might have been longing and was more likely envy.
There was no decision to be made.
“Get into my carriage,” she said, her voice filled with determination. She was not a woman used to being disobeyed. “Get in and we’ll be away from here and the men who are after you.”
“Ils sont là?” A French émigrée for sure.
But why was she on the run like this? What had she done that had two rough looking men in hot pursuit?
Camilla didn’t like to jump to conclusions, but Thomas had told her that some of the émigrée women had turned to prostitution to support themselves and their families.
Was the young woman such an unfortunate attempting to escape the clutches of the men who’d forced her into it?
Who would be taking most of her money from her?
Camilla nodded. Behind her, the proprietorial Hawkins bristled with the indignation she must be trying to keep in check.
“Oui,” Camilla said, drawing upon her scant knowledge of the language. “Ils sont là.” And she pointed.
The woman glanced from side to side like a hunted beast, before returning eyes that now held hope to Camilla’s face.
Camilla’s motherly heart went out to her.
The woman’s magnificent eyes were so wide the whites appeared huge. But she shook her head with emphasis. “Je ne peux pas,” she whispered, her free hand stroking the baby’s downy head.
“Quickly. Get in,” Camilla repeated. The men were starting across the square, heads swivelling as they looked in all directions.
The young woman shook her head. “Je n’ai plus de temps. Vous ne pouvez pas m’aider, madame. C’est trop tard pour moi. Prenez l’enfant. Aidez le petit.” And she thrust the baby into Camilla’s arms.
Camilla’s instinctive reaction was to hold on tight to the bundle of baby and thick winter shawl, and as her own arms settled around the child, the woman bolted, away from the carriage and away from the square, her booted feet pounding on the sandy road as she vanished down Carlyle Street.
“Your Grace!” Hawkins was by her side. “Well, I never. The cheek of it. Here, give the dirty thing to me, your Grace, lest it mark your fine gown. It smells dreadful.” And she tried to take the child from Camilla’s arms.
But Camilla had already looked down at the little pink-cheeked face gazing back up at her, and been lost. The baby must have been several months old, for it was chubby and looked well-fed, and, despite the headlong flight of its mother, it smiled in evident delight to see her.
It waved its arms, which, she could see now, appeared to be wearing a rather grubby lace-ornamented gown.
Waving Hawkins away with one hand, Camilla held on firmly to the child, her mind already made up.
Fate had brought her to Mademoiselle Binet’s today, and had put into her arms this child in want of a safe home.
The sort of safe home she had. “I’m quite all right, thank you, Hawkins.
And I think I’d like to get this little one out of the cold as quickly as possible and into our warm nursery.
We can make inquiries about his mother once he’s settled and fed.
Thank you, Donald, if you will be so good as to assist me into the carriage, Miller can take us straight back to Grosvenor Square.
” And, baby clutched to her own bosom now, she climbed into the carriage leaving the astounded Hawkins to follow her.
“I don’t know what His Grace will have to say about this,” Hawkins muttered under her breath as she settled herself opposite her mistress. But Camilla, used to Hawkins’s mutterings, ignored her.
*