Chapter 13 #2
He touched Giselle’s arm. “I’m going to go give more detailed directions to my footman and then speak to the ostler and see if he’s encountered Jones. If he has, he can distract the fellow while we climb into the carriage, so he doesn’t realize that we all embarked in the same one.”
“And if he has not encountered him?” Giselle asked.
“Then I’ll see who has. Someone has to have while we were here. And you should probably go inside and get your mother, so you can slip into the landau first.”
“Very well.”
As it turned out, Mrs. Freeman herself had seen Mr. Jones arrive on horseback and had sent him packing since he did not want to pay for food or lodgings. She told Giselle she thought he had gone up to where the inn road met the road to Bath.
“Excellent,” Heath said when he came inside and found out what Giselle had learned.
“That makes everything easier.” He looked at his brothers.
“All right, lads, we are embarking on a sort of adventure. Miss Bernard and her mother are being pursued by a scoundrel, so we’re going to give them the slip.
James is driving the park drag to Bath so the scoundrel will follow him, and all of us are riding in the landau to Longmead. ”
“All of us?” Evan exclaimed. “We won’t fit.”
“Of course we’ll fit,” Heath said.
“It’ll be better if Evan and I ride up top with Tom,” Kit said.
Heath looked at him in surprise. “What an excellent idea, Kit. Are you fine with that, Evan?”
“I prefer that to being in a cramped carriage with Zack and his grousing,” Evan muttered.
Heath shot Zack a look. “Would you rather ride with Kit instead of Evan? Or stay in the landau?”
“I want to stay in the landau with you.” When Heath smiled, clearly touched, Zack then added, “Somebody has to look after Madame Bernard.”
She had to admit that the lad was sweet. He had been so kind to Maman while escorting her to the necessary.
“Great,” Heath said. “That’s what we’ll do then. Assuming that works for Tom, that is.”
Not only did it work for Tom, but he said he was glad of a chance to talk to the lads he had known since they were babes. He did not even mind being cramped on the perch.
As they headed out to the carriages, Giselle told Heath in a low voice, “I suspect that Jones is hoping we will lead him to Beasley and his family. I cannot think of any other reason he would be following me and Maman.”
Heath sighed. “He might be hoping for more than that. If he can prove that your papers truly are suspect and that Beasley did the forgeries, he could have Beasley hanged for it. Then Sarah wouldn’t have a protector.”
“Merde! How awful.” Terror struck her anew. “Could they hang Maman and I, too?”
“No,” he said firmly. “The authorities would probably merely try to send you back.” When she tensed, he added, “I wouldn’t let them, mind you. I wouldn’t let them hang Beasley, either, but I definitely wouldn’t let them harm a hair on your head. I swear.”
Her heart swelled at those words. She tried not to read too much into them, but it was hard. “Do you think that is what Mr. Jones wishes to do?”
“I don’t know, honestly. I wish I did. But we’ll make sure he can’t harm you at least. Or steal your papers to show as proof, if that is his plan.”
She dragged in a heavy breath. “Now I am very glad you invited us to stay at Longmead.”
“I am, too.” Taking her hand in his, he squeezed it hard before releasing it. “Very glad.”
Once Heath had paid the ostler, they sent James off in the park drag and waited a while before they, too, left. Fortunately, their pursuer was nowhere to be seen once they reached the road to Bath. Still, they were all pretty grim until they had turned off on the road to Longmead.
When they stopped about an hour later so the boys could relieve themselves, Heath conferred with Tom and reported back to her that Tom had not seen anyone following them. That was quite reassuring.
This time, Kit and Evan decided to get in with the rest of them. They had apparently discovered that a cramped carriage was preferable to bugs and dust and the like.
As they rumbled down the road, Zack, who’d been chattering for a while about this and that to Maman in his very bad French, suddenly grew quiet.
He glued himself to the window, as if watching for his home, and stayed still for a while, quite a feat for the eleven-year-old. When he finally broke his silence, it was to say, in a fractured voice, “I miss Mother.”
Heath got a tortured expression on his face that made her want to leap across the carriage and soothe his hurt. Then he put his arm about Zack’s shoulders and squeezed. “I miss her, too, lad.”
“Yes, but you didn’t even come home after she died,” Zack said petulantly.
“I couldn’t,” Heath said. “The French wouldn’t let me. You know that. And I tried, believe me.”
Evan perked up. “What do you mean, you tried?”
When Heath looked bewildered, Giselle said, “He probably does not know about your attempt to escape with your friends.”
“You tried to escape?” Kit cried.
“Did you fight the French?” Zack asked excitedly.
“What happened?” Evan demanded. “Were you caught?”
Scowling, Heath crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, we were caught. Someone told our captors about our plans before we could actually get away. So, after we broke out of the Citadel, the gendarmes surrounded our hiding place before we could get even a mile away from Verdun.”
“Who told?” Evan asked, clearly outraged.
“We never learned,” Heath said.
“Is it the ‘scoundrel’ trying to follow Miss Bernard?” Kit asked.
“Possibly.”
“We should find him and shoot him!” Zack cried.
Heath clearly fought a smile. “Do you even know how to shoot, lad?”
“He doesn’t, but I do,” Kit said hotly.
“No one should shoot anyone,” Giselle said disapprovingly. “I thought that in England the rule of law prevailed.”
That made the boys scowl at her. Then they returned their attention to their brother.
“How did you escape the Citadel?” Kit asked. “Did you fight your way out?”
“Hardly,” Heath said with a shake of his head. “Escapes must be done by stealth, lads, or the armed gendarmerie would have surrounded us at once and cut us down.”
“Or shot you,” Giselle said, with her heart in her throat. She had not heard this part of how they’d escaped. She was not sure she wanted to hear.
But even her mother was listening now, although Giselle doubted she could understand much of the discussion. So, as Heath began to answer Kit’s question, Giselle began translating for her mother.
“Before I explain about the Citadel,” Heath went on, “I should mention that Father had just died. I knew you three had been sent to live with Cousin Yates, and I was desperate to get back to you, so we could be a family . . . such as it was without Mother and Father. So, I had every incentive to escape. I went into it knowing there was a risk, but I thought the risk was worth it.”
The boys were silent, for the first time seeming to understand that he had actually sacrificed to gain custody of them.
“Anyway,” he said, “Jon, Morris, Scovell, Percy, and I made a great deal of preparations for our escape before we even attempted it. Weapons were impossible to obtain, but we could get tools and thin rope and victuals that would keep over time, especially since it was nearing winter. When we were allowed out of the walled town during the day, we would take our items to a copse we’d found and hide them in a tree. ”
“Why didn’t you just escape then?”
Heath laughed mirthlessly. “We wouldn’t have gotten far.
First of all, we had to leave our passports in town to even be allowed into the countryside.
Second, there were gendarmes posted three miles out on every road to keep us from going farther.
Third, the peasantry were told that if there was an escape, they would be given a guinea, about twenty-three francs, for every prisoner they caught.
So, they were all diligent in scouring the countryside and beating the bushes for escapees. ”
“ ‘Escapes must be done by stealth,’ ” Evan quoted him.
“Precisely.” Heath gazed out the window.
“Thus, we always had to return. But the day we planned to escape, we gathered our tools and rope from our supplies in the copse, hiding them on our persons. By then, our friend Percy had already been sent off to Arras, so it was just us four. Then we made sure to be late to roll call, which earned us a trip to the Citadel.”
“Didn’t they search you going in?” Evan asked.
“Never. We were supposed to be gentlemen, remember? Englishmen but also gentlemen, which in itself was strange. Anyway, the Citadel was within the walled town, but parts of it weren’t as fortified as others.
Prisoners, of course, had no access to those, but one of our group, my friend Jon, had been put in the Citadel for a while, so he knew that the chapel was vulnerable. ”
“There was a chapel in the Citadel?” Evan asked.
“There was an old convent in the Citadel. The commandant used it occasionally to house some prisoners. But we knew scarcely anyone was there at the time. So, we got ourselves sent to the Citadel, knowing that Courcelles preferred to put people in the old convent.”
The boys hung on his every word. Even she and Maman, who knew part of the story already, were held rapt by his part of the tale.
“During the day,” Heath went on, “I climbed down the convent stairs to where only a wooden door separated it from the old chapel, which at that time was used for storage. With a gimlet I’d smuggled in, I bore small holes around one panel of the locked door, then plugged them with candlewax and pressed sawdust into it to make it look as it normally did. ”
“Why?” Zack asked.