Chapter 9
Wondering the same thing, Giselle set her plate down on a card table, then perched on the edge of one of its chairs.
“Clearly, I didn’t die in Arras.” Sir Percy laid the tray of champagne glasses on the card table and sat down on another of its chairs. “Unless you suspect me of being an impostor.”
“Of course not,” Heath retorted. “But I would certainly like to know how the rumor about your demise got started.”
“It probably began when I didn’t show up in Arras,” Sir Percy said dryly.
That clearly caught Heath off guard, which was surprising, since nothing else today had seemed to do so. He certainly had not seemed rattled by Sir Percy’s comments about his snagging her and sowing his wild oats.
“That one you will definitely have to explain,” Heath said, finally joining them at the table with his plate of food.
“The short version is that on the way to Arras I escaped my captors,” Sir Percy said. “So, I can only assume that the two gendarmes told their superiors I had died. Better that than revealing how they’d managed to lose me.”
Heath’s eyes narrowed. “How had they managed to lose you? Jon, Scovell, Morris, and I didn’t succeed in getting away from Verdun by so much as a mile.”
Sir Percy shook his head. “Yes, I heard that the escape we originally planned for the five of us didn’t work. Throughout my own escape, I imagined you four wending your way to England. I was rather hoping to join you once I got home.”
“When did you find out that they had not reached here?” Giselle asked.
“It took some months, partly because of how long I spent navigating my way through French territory. As so many others who escaped did, I crossed the Rhine into Germany, traveled through Austria, and then through Italy until I reached Trieste, where I could buy passage to England.”
Since this seemed the beginning of a long tale, Giselle started eating.
“But it made more sense to bypass London and go straight up the Channel to Sunderland’s port,” Sir Percy went on. “Once there I wrote my family to have me fetched and brought home to Northumberland. That’s all I wanted—to reach Tindale Castle and my mother.”
“Ah, yes, I forgot.” Heath toyed with a shrimp on his plate. “She was your reason for wanting to escape with us. As I recall, she was desperately ill. How is she now?”
With a heavy sigh, Sir Percy turned his glass of champagne round in his hand, then swallowed some.
“I’m afraid she passed away a month ago.
I couldn’t leave her, of course, so I wrote to the War Office, asking about the four of you, sure that you had arrived here not long after I did.
But they told me their spies said you three had ended up in Bitche Prison.
Bitche, for God’s sake! I’m glad I escaped that fate, at least.”
Heath ate a few walnut meats. “How did you escape that fate, anyway? You said you were en route to Arras? After the gendarmes captured Jon, Scovell, Morris, and me and sent us to Bitche, we were chained like dogs day and night. They were not risking losing us, to be sure.”
Sir Percy shrugged. “Trust me, I was in irons, too. Still, it is far easier to manage an escape involving one man than four. And I was already friendly with one of the gendarmes. I suspect you know the fellow I’m talking about—Gaspard, whom we played cards with occasionally?”
“The scrawny fellow with the gold tooth,” Heath said. “I remember.”
“The man was already predisposed to go easy on me,” Sir Percy went on as she and Heath continued eating.
“He and the other gendarme took an inn room for us along the route, taking turns guarding me. It helped that Gaspard agreed with me how ridiculous it was that I was sent off to Arras just for . . . well . . . you know.”
A smile cracked Heath’s serious expression. “Yes, I know. And so does Giselle.” With a flourish, he popped a shrimp into his mouth and chewed.
When Sir Percy lifted an eyebrow at her, Giselle blushed. “Heath told me.”
“Ah,” Sir Percy said ruefully. “I should have realized that the tale of that particular exploit might have gone round the camp.”
“Along with a few other tales,” Heath said with a grin, and downed a whelk in one bite. “Including the possibility Courcelles shipped you off for cheating at cards.”
“The devil you say!” Sir Percy retorted, clearly insulted.
Heath drank some champagne. “We four knew better than to believe it. Especially me, since I saw your misbehavior firsthand in the theater.”
“Yet you didn’t stop me,” Sir Percy remarked. “Some friend you are.” Drawing off his gloves, he snatched one of Heath’s shrimps and ate it.
Giselle noticed he had a deep scar running from the tip of his thumb down the side of his hand to disappear beneath his shirt cuff.
She was about to ask about it when Heath said, “I generally find that if a chap is determined to show his arse, one should let him do so.”
“Heath!” Giselle chided him. “I may be French, but I know that word is not spoken in front of ladies.”
He grimaced. “You’re right, sweeting. Forgive me. Sometimes I still forget I’m a gentleman.”
“Sometimes?” She sniffed. “I fear your memory is much more unreliable than that.”
“Ah, a hit direct,” Sir Percy drawled. “Good show, mademoiselle.”
“I do try,” she said. “Even if my English is not always so perfect.”
“I hadn’t noticed any such thing,” Sir Percy said. “And what red-blooded chap would notice the occasional slip when it’s spoken in such a delightful accent?”
“In any case,” Heath said, sounding suddenly disgruntled for no reason she could see, “how did you manage to get out of the irons?”
“It wasn’t easy, I promise you. Fortunately, on our way, I saw Gaspard using laudanum, and that’s when I hatched my plan.” He frowned. “Earlier in our trip, I had reached for some meat, and Gaspard’s fellow gendarme had sliced my hand with a knife, saying I did not deserve meat.”
“Bastard,” Heath muttered.
“Is that where you got that scar?” Giselle asked, pointing to his hand.
He nodded, then self-consciously drew his gloves back on. It made her wonder if Heath had hidden scars. Jon certainly had some.
“Anyway,” Sir Percy went on, “I asked him for a swig to ease my pain from the wound. I may have . . . er . . . hinted that laudanum unfortunately made me a bad card player, so he agreed. I took a larger swig than I let on, held it in my mouth, and when his back was turned, spit it into an empty bottle I’d dug out of the garbage one night, hoping to get to use it for just such a purpose. ”
Giselle put down the roll she was eating, sickened by the thought of him digging a dirty bottle out of the garbage and then spitting laudanum into it.
“That night when we were playing cards, I used my meager coin to buy two bottles of cheap wine from the innkeeper, plied the two gendarmes with drink, which I had laced with the laudanum, then waited until they were slumped over at the table. I then lifted the keys off one of them. All that remained was to make sure everyone else in the place had retired before I unlocked my irons and walked out the door.”
Heath gave a low whistle. “That was some feat. But your knowing one of the fellows was a stroke of luck. And you only had two guards. That wouldn’t have worked for us.
We had an entire squad of gendarmerie accompanying us to Bitche, and we were housed in prisons in every town where we stayed overnight. ”
“Speaking of that,” Sir Percy said, “I want to hear what happened with your own escape. I thought we had a solid plan. What went wrong?”
“The gendarmes caught us just as we were leaving the copse of trees where we’d been hiding. Apparently, someone told Courcelles about our ‘solid plan.’ ”
“How can that be?” Sir Percy exclaimed. “Who would do such a thing?”
Heath scowled as he finished off his seafood. “That’s what the lads and I have been trying to determine. But so far we have no idea how or where to begin looking for the scoundrel without returning to France, which I, for one, am never doing again.”
Giselle did not know how she felt about that. What if she and Maman were forced to leave England? Would he never visit her, never think twice about her?
She sighed. Of course he wouldn’t. She was nothing more than a means to an end to him, however much he might flirt with her. Or kiss and caress her and spout such sweet sentiments to her, as he did that day in the park.
Then again, he had done all of that to make sure she continued to do his bidding. She doubted he had meant a word of it.
“I am certainly making no plans to return,” Sir Percy drawled. “So, tell me, what has happened to everyone else? You couldn’t have had an easy time of it in Bitche.”
“Monsieur Morris did not survive it,” Giselle said. “He died there.”
Sir Percy sighed. “I am gravely sorry to hear it. He was a good chap.”
“He was,” Heath agreed. “But the rest of us managed to come out of it relatively unscathed. Lord Jonathan actually inherited the dukedom, so he’s now the Duke of Falconridge.
I inherited from my father, but you knew that, since it happened before you left Verdun.
And Scovell was promoted to captain, although he’s now the heir presumptive to his brother, and his brother is very ill. ”
“That’s a shame. I did hear in the papers about Jon. He got married, right?”
“He did indeed,” Heath said. “If he’d known you were in England, I’m sure he would have invited you.”
“I couldn’t have come, anyway,” Sir Percy said.
“Mother was so ill toward the last that she couldn’t bear to have me leave her.
And after her death, I stayed a while longer at Tindale Castle to take care of matters involving my properties, then came to London, hoping to find you chaps.
Is that why you’re here, Heath, and not at Longmead? ”
“I’m here to gain custody of my brothers.” When Sir Percy looked confused by that, Heath added, “It’s a long story for another day.”
“Can’t wait to hear it.” Sir Percy then turned to her. “And what has brought you to our fair country, mademoiselle?”