Season of Light by Katharine McMahon Page B

her hand was released she realised that the French woman was also trembling, and who could blame her? Whatever must she think of a village – not to mention a squire’s daughter – that allowed such barbarity?
    The blacksmith was ordered to carry Madame’s bags and they processed back to the house. In Ardleigh’s snug parlour Asa and the French companion faced each other, one on either side of the hearth. The subdued chatter of the servants in the hall faded; there was now just one actuality, Madame. Of her many objections to a companion, Asa had not considered the most significant of all: that Madame de Rusigneux’s arrival would tear open the wound of Asa’s separation from Didier so that it seemed like only yesterday she had left the Hôtel de Montmorency, sniffed the wet-straw stench of the sacking beneath her feet and looked frantically about in case he should come.
    Madame smelt of woodsmoke, the confinement of a long journey, and the profoundly foreign musk of France. But when she smiled it was as if an entirely different person had entered the room; her eyes warmed, a dimple played beside her lip and the severe line of her cheek softened. ‘You showed much courage, mademoiselle.’
    The blood juddered in Asa’s veins. That accent. In a clipped voice she replied: ‘Those boys would not have hurt me. The tailor and his wife were simply the butt of a high-spirited prank.’
    The parlour seemed to shrink away as, in the firelight, Madame became more sharply defined; the exquisitely narrow nose, a little reddened at the tip owing to the wind, brows which rose and fell at an angle above those obsidian eyes. Her figure was so slight it was a wonder she hadn’t been blown away. Asa, by contrast, felt as formless as dough in her housekeeping dress, its woollen skirts kilted up, and the absurdity of her best bonnet.
    Since the talk with her father on the Downs she had planned this first encounter in considerable detail. She would extend the welcome due all strangers, of course, but she would resist the companion’s attempts to groom her into marriage material. She would instead seize the opportunity to practise her French and to hear first hand about the events taking place in France. Meanwhile she would set about finding Madame de Rusigneux a new position with another family.
    What Asa had not anticipated was that behind Madame’s trim little figure would hang a ghostly green and brown screen, crumpled sheets, the scent and touch of a man. Nor had she expected that the new French companion would show no sign of aristocratic snobbery or indeed make any attempt to impose but would instead wait, like a servant, to see what would happen next.
    Having offered tea, which was refused, Asa showed Madame to her bedchamber. In allocating her the lesser of two spare rooms, she had decided to show this new companion, an exiled noblewoman, that at Ardleigh everyone was equal. Now she regretted her choice; the room was mean and dark with its narrow bed and view of the stable-yard. Madame looked about her without comment but received the news that dinner would be eaten unfashionably early, at five, with an incredulous raising of her eyebrows.
    Feeling herself dismissed, Asa stumbled to her own room, stripped to her shift and searched in the closet for something more presentable to wear. It was as if Madame, being French, was a chink through which Didier might enter.
    Madame appeared a few seconds after the gong, as fresh as if she’d taken a scented bath. Her gown proved on closer inspection not to be plain at all, but of some thick, silky fabric, softened with age and embossed with darker swirls. She wore an airy muslin fichu crossed at the bosom and tied in a bow behind her. Candlelight complemented her loose dark hair and naked throat so fetchingly that the squire, who as usual came late to the table, though sporting his best wig, stopped dead and ran his finger under his cravat. In his heavy features Asa read first