Émile Dubois: [lounging in his rich dressing robe] Georges, I have news of the most tiresome. And by-the- by, mon ami, we are not alone. We are surveyed – even as we speak, so be discreet.
Georges: [clenching his fists] Merde! Do you mean, them Bow Street Runners has finally guessed who Monsieur Gilles and his Gentlemen of the Road really was and is spying on us? The sneaking –!
Émile Dubois: No, I do not think we need fear the forces of justice closing in upon us.
Georges: Never say that mad vampire inventor is back yet again! [Expresses himself even more coarsely.]
Émile Dubois: I have yet to hear that happy news. No, by news of the most tiresome, I mean that our biographer has delayed in recounting our further adventures, in favour of some story about some fellow in 1821. No, when I say we are surveyed, we are followed in the form of what is known as a ‘web log post’. That is why we’re speaking English, with some French expressions thrown in. That being so, limit your maledictions.
Georges: Merde! What’s maledictions?
Émile Dubois: The low manner in which you and I normally converse, when we are alone, mon vieil ami.
Georges [bristling] What does this fellow have, that we don’t?
And 1821? Le diable, by then we may well have gone to our final account. [uneasily] I hope Madame Sophie still prays for us every day?
Émile Dubois: She prays for us every day, and twice on Sundays. It don’t seem to be doing a whole lot of good, though we try, après tout, and we ain’t ridden out to rob anybody since we met les femmes. I am advised that highway robbery is out of fashion by 1821. You know how difficult it was become for us, with those toll gates and patrols.
Georges: [reminiscently] Monsieur Gilles, you said we must leave Southern England until the hue and cry had settled after that latest brush with the patrols, and we went to visit your cousin Lord Rhuddlan high on that mountain most isolated in the North of the Wales, I did not expect such adventure, or that we would meet such wilful women, eh? Vampires and time snags, and mad inventors.
Émile Dubois: Vraiment, Georges. Neither did I expect to meet in my aunt’s companion one Sophie de Courcy, the lost Anglaise I had encountered when I was living in Paris under the guise of Monsieur Gilles, robber chief. Least of all did I expect her to have no memory of our meeting, because it was yet to happen for her through a journey back in time.
Georges: And then, you were piqued, shall we say, at her attitude, and that sent you straight into the arms of that vampire siren, who changed you. I know when to be discreet; I will not speak of the assignation in which she changed you/ You returned from that encounter most feverish, and (resentfully) spewed upon the most magnificent pair of boots I ever owned. I cut such a dash in them boots that respectable matrons approached me in the road.
Émile: Tais toi, Georges! You have complained at my treatment those boots ever since. I weary of hearing about them.
Georges: And then, my Agnes having decided against me, I sought diversion elsewhere also, so that it ended by that local girl biting me. Such sport as we had in our bloodlust! I remember most vivid jumping out at Agnes from a cupboard, while you would chase your Sophie about the room. Au bon vieux temps, or as they would say in English, ‘the good old days’.
Émile: That is one way of putting it, Georges.
Georges: It were a fine adventure [struts over to the mirror, and regards himself complacently as he rearranges his neck cloth]. I don’t think our biographer wrote enough on how fine looking a man I am. And then, there is the title of that romance: ‘That Scoundrel Émile Dubois’.
Émile Dubois: Are you outraged on behalf of two such morally upright characters as myself and yourself, Georges? It seems an accurate character depiction to me. You recollect those are the very words Lord Dale said, when he recognised me by my eyes when we held up his fine carriage. Perhaps our biographer laid little emphasis on your handsome looks for fear it might pain me.
Georges: Bien sûr, we did right to rob Monsigneur of his gains most ill gotten. He was a scoundrel himself, who stole from the poor to give to the rich. No, it ain’t that I mean. But why wasn’t it called, ‘That Scoundrel Émile Dubois And Handsome Georges Durrrand His Friend of the Most Gallant Renown?’
Émile: Alors, you rascal, do you desire that more was recounted of your part in that adventure?
Georges: No. I am a modest man, and I do not desire to seem boastful.
About Book:
B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree
That Scoundrel Emile Dubois’ is a winner of the B.R.A.G medallion for outstanding fiction.
Plunge into a world of over-the top Gothic adventure and darkly comic happenings and met the wicked Emile Dubois and the determined Sophie, who will not let him turn into a vulpine predator.
Sophie de Courcy, living during the time of the French Revolutionary Wars as the bored companion to a kind elderly countess, dreams of excitement and romance. When she meets her long term hero and grand distant relative, the dashing but wicked Emile Dubois, she has far more adventure than she desires.
Caught up in occult happenings with predatory half vampires and time warps, Sophie finds herself living in true Gothic style in an isolated mansion staffed by Emile’s villainous accomplices.
With the help of her fearless Tarot reading maid, Sophie must somehow help Emile to overcome the sinister changes that are removing his humanity, and to defeat their evil, half-human neighbours who need him to further their occult schemes.
Set largely in the remote countryside of North Wales, UK, this occult adventure is both a spoof of Gothic and a vivid love story.
Half Vampires, time travel, highwaymen, love and dark comedy combine for enthralling adventure as two eighteenth century French scoundrels are incongruously drawn into occult adventure, while their love interests, the romantic Sophie and her loyal ally Agnes stubbornly refuse to allow them to lose their rapidly dwindling humanity.
About Lucinda Elliot
Lucinda Elliot was born in Buckinghamshire, England, and brought up in a series of isolated, rambling old houses which her parents were renovating before that became fashionable. After living and working in london for many years, she now lives in Mid Wales with her family. She is addicted to tea and working out and has a geeky fascination with classical English Literature.
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