Minuet Read Free

him.
    “Ah, just so. I wish you will speak English, Sal. This is your cousin, Lord Degan.”
    “On ne doit pas...” She stopped and took a deep breath, preparatory to expressing herself in English. “Better to call him Citoyen Degan, hein?” she asked with a wise and cautious light in her eyes.
    “Better not if you know what’s good for you,” her father replied with a laugh. “You ain’t in France now, gel. We still hang onto our handles, and our heads.”
    “If you have any words to address to me, you will pray call me Lord Degan,” Degan said with a toplofty examination of the creature.
    “C’est à vous,” she replied with a thoroughly Gallic shrug of her disheveled shoulders.
    “Speak English if you can,” he added, thoroughly angered at such impertinence. Even if this walking rag bag turned out to be Lady Céleste, which he doubted very much, she was but a child, and ought to be taught to address her elders with respect.
    A loud sneeze shattered the air. Degan was quite sure he saw some flying insect leave the area of the person’s head, and took a step backward. Unconcerned, the child pulled an extremely long and extraordinarily dirty piece of material from around her neck. It had once been red, but was now a spotted sooty shade of uncertain hue. She applied it to her nose, then tossed it to the floor. “Mon bonnet rouge,” she explained, giving it a kick with a foot shod in crumbling black leather.
    “What does she say?” Harlock asked Degan.
    “Her red bonnet, I believe,” he answered, regarding the piece of dirty material for traces of its being either red or a bonnet.
    “Mais oui. What we call in France a liberty cap. Depuis...” She frowned with the nuisance of translating her every thought, but braced her shoulders for the task. “Since the Revolution, you know, one must wear the red liberty cap, or risk being taken for an enemy of the Republic.”
    “You never had that filthy rag on your hair!” her father demanded, though as his eyes flew to her head, he saw it was not likely to suffer from the cap. The hair was probably the worst part of the child. It was gray with dust, which had become congealed to a darker mat of tangles on top by the falling rain. It also bore the traces of excessively poor barbering, sticking out in points all over her head.
    “No, I required it for a scarf. The neck, he was very cold,” she replied calmly. “May I eat, Papa? I am very hungry.”
    “Send her to the kitchen. I’ll call the Runners,” Degan suggested.
    Harlock took one last, long lingering look at the child. The eyes did the trick. Marie had such eyes as that. Cat eyes. He beckoned to the goggling butler and asked him to see Lady Sally to a chamber, to bring her hot water, a maid, and clean clothing.
    “But what of food? J’ai la grande faim,” she protested vociferously.
    “You’ll want to scrub up first,” Harlock pointed out. He began scratching at his neck as he spoke. Degan looked at him in alarm, and stepped farther back.
    “Mais non! First I want to eat! I die of hunger! V raiment.”
    “You can’t eat in that condition. You’ll catch hydrophobia,” Degan said sternly.
    “Ah, mon Dieu,” the child said weakly, and sank carefully to the floor in a dead faint. Or a good imitation of one. As the butler darted forward, one large yellow eye opened a fraction to observe him.
    There was an excited shouting for wine, brandy, water, feathers to be burned and a vinaigrette, which last two items were not to be found in a gentleman’s establishment. The bundle of rags was lifted to the sofa, a glass of brandy was held to the lips, and she gulped greedily, without even the customary fit of coughing expected from a female.
    “C’est une bonne eau-de-vie, ça,” she complimented Lord Harlock as she drained the glass, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. Then she sat up straight. “Now I have the bath, while you command food, yes?”
    “Certainly, my dear,” the stunned lord