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‘We have made you sad with our jollity,’ Jay said. ‘I am sorry. I had hoped to cheer you.’
‘You have,’ Lisette assured him. ‘But Papa often thinks of home and what is happening there. There is so little news and what there is, is bad. Some of the émigrés I teach tell frightening stories of horror and cruelty, especially towards the nobility.’
‘Perhaps they exaggerate. People do, you know, if they have a ready audience. And tales grow with the telling.’
‘No doubt you are right.’
‘Would you like to dance with me? The steps are easy to learn.’ He held out his hand to her.
She took it and he led her into a country dance which was energetic to say the least. They laughed a great deal as she tripped over her own feet and stepped on his toes. ‘I am clumsy,’ she said. ‘Papa always said I ought to have been another boy.’
‘I am glad you are not,’ he said and when she looked up into his eyes, added hastily, ‘I should look a fool dancing with another man.’
He was paying compliments to a lady, something he had learned when courting Marianne; it was, he told himself, simple courtesy, nothing more. She had no doubt been teased all her life about her figure and likeness to her brother and it had obviously had a profound effect on her. Had she deliberately played up to that masculine image of herself as a kind of defence? Had no one ever told her anything different? Certainly her father had not. He suspected that having lost one son to his King, he was using Lisette as a substitute. She was tall and exceptionally slim, but that did not mean she was unfeminine and incapable of feminine wiles. He was, he told himself sternly, immune to feminine wiles.
The dance came to an end and he escorted her back to her seat. She was flushed and a little breathless and her pale hair had become unpinned in places; wisps of it hung about her face. He felt a sudden urge to pull out all the pins and see it cascade about her shoulders. No one would doubt her femininity then. He shook himself, bowed over her, made his excuses and went to break up a quarrel between two village children. He was becoming soft and softness led to hurt and hurt led to anger. He must not let that happen. He must not.
Soon after that, the party broke up and Lisette and the Comte returned with Lord and Lady Drymore to Blackfen Manor. Apart from a brief bow on his part and a curtsy on hers, Lisette had no more conversation with Jay, whose rather sudden departure from her side after the dance had puzzled her. He was once more the cool, aloof man she thought had been banished. Whatever troubled him it was not so easy to banish. She wondered why it mattered to her and realised with a jolt that his happiness was important to her. And gratitude had nothing to do with it. It was a monumental discovery and one she dare not voice, dare not think about.
It was, she decided, time to think of leaving Highbeck and finding somewhere else to live. They could not impose on the generosity of Lord and Lady Drymore much longer. The only reason she had done nothing about it before now was that she was waiting to hear from her brother, but there had been nothing, not a word. She considered going back to France to find out for herself what was happening, but was unable to think of a practical way of doing it. She was also aware that if anything happened to her, her father would have no one.
Lady Drymore was vehemently opposed to them leaving. ‘Your father is not fit to be moved,’ she said. ‘Please stay. There are people here who can look after him and we have all come to love you. There is no need for you to go. Jay did not bring you to England to cast you out.’
‘I know.’ It was her growing feelings for Jay which were causing most of her unease. He remained the same as he always had been, chivalrous but distant. If she had not broken through his armour by now, she never would.
‘Then we will not speak of it again.’
Slowly the days slipped by, one after another. Lisette gave her lessons, translated letters and legal documents and listened to the gossip of fellow émigrés. It was the more recent of these who brought news from her homeland, which was worrying if for no other reason than Michel might be involved. An armed Parisian mob had stormed the Tuileries, massacred the Swiss Guard and demanded the abolition of the monarchy. The royal family had fled through the gardens to the protection of the Legislative Assembly. What that body had done was to arrest the whole family and send them to the Temple, an old fortress on the right bank of the Seine, now being used as a prison. The émigré armies, who would have freed him if they could, were suffering from a lack of money and many had been disbanded. Their leaders had either been arrested and executed or driven abroad, including the man who had come to see her. ‘The Legislative Assembly was dissolved and a new National Convention elected,’ he told her. ‘It sat for the first time in September and the following day abolished the monarchy and declared France a republic. France no longer has a King; it is ruled by a rabble.’ He was in tears as he spoke.
