Minuet Read Free Page A

agreed.
    The slight frame, draped in hanging shreds of gray, arose and walked jauntily out the door. “Hein, citoyen,” she called to the butler. “Where is my room?”
    She was gone, and Degan and Harlock exchanged incredulous glances, tinged almost with fright.
    “What do you make of that?” Degan asked, the first to recover speech.
    Harlock sat silent a moment, then put back his head and laughed. “What do I make of it, sir? I’ll tell you what I make of it. I make it I am no longer a childless father. Funny there’s no word for it. A fatherless child is an orphan but a childless father is nothing.”
    “You can’t accept that fellow’s word—”
    “The eyes have it. Marie’s eyes, down to the long lashes and feline slant. My little Sal had just such an eye. She is my daughter.”
    “I don’t believe it was even a female. He wore trousers.”
    “Damme, Rob, if you wore a skirt it wouldn’t make you a woman! We’ll have to take her word for it, won’t we? Unless you want to check it out for yourself.”
    Degan scowled in disapproval of such a statement. To imply that a skirt hid something different from a pair of trousers was already more ribaldry than he liked. “She must be examined by a doctor for contagious diseases, certainly. And another thing, John—this might very well be some trick to get money out of you. Some damned Frenchie who has got ashore with a half-baked story of being able to free Marie for a price—a high price, you may be sure.”
    “No, sir, those are the eyes of an Augé. If she ain’t Sal, she’s a double. I’ll hear what she has to say.”
    He soon heard milady’s first command. An upstairs maid came with a curtsy to inquire what Lady Céleste was to wear, as she had brought no gowns with her. “She says she’d like to wear one of her mother’s gowns, sir,” the maid suggested uncertainly.
    “Impossible. They’re all put away in camphor. Lend her a servant’s dress for the present. It will do well enough.”
    The maid bobbed and left, to return not three minutes later with the word that Lady Céleste would prefer not to wear a servant’s dress, if it pleased his lordship.
    “Damme, it don’t please me!” he shouted. “Get her into a dress and send her down here at once. I want to talk to her.”
    The harried servant remounted the grand staircase once more, to have a bar of soap hurled at her head, though in truth Minou missed her target on purpose, and did it only to show that she meant to be taken seriously. “Long enough I have worn rags!” she said imperiously. “Get me one of my mama’s gowns, tout de suite.” Though she sat to her shoulders in water and had her hair covered in suds, she emanated an air of authority.
    The servant said apologetically, “They’ll smell, milady. And be all wrinkled as well.”
    “Press it, and bring me perfume.”
    “There’s no perfume in the house, milady, and the attics are all dark, with bats.”
    “Qu’est-ce que c’est que bats?” she demanded.
    The servant flapped her arms, saying, “Black bird, bad.”
    “Ah, chauue-souris,” Minou said with a shudder. She then looked all around the room, at the brocade hangings of the canopied bed, the gold satin window draperies, a rather pretty Chinese scarf with a flowered pattern and a long fringe that decorated a mahogany bureau in the corner. “Très bien. Some pins, a needle and filet.”
    “Feelay, mum?”
    “Thread, vaurienne .”
    The requested items were brought while her hair was rinsed, her body scrubbed, her nails nearly rubbed from her fingers in an effort to remove the grime, till at last she emerged from the tub with a large towel encasing her from head to ankles. It was necessary to sink to servants’ undergarments, but it was soon clear to the astonished group of servants attending Lady Céleste that these ignominious cotton undergarments were to be the only decent stitch on her body.
    They were commanded to yank the draperies from the windows