Chapter 26 #2
“He swears,” she repeated, trying to keep the sudden jangle of her nerves out of her voice, “that it enhances his manly vigor.” She took another step closer to the trunk. Fluttered her eyelashes at the young gendarme holding the bottle of cologne. “Might you like to keep it for yourself, citizen?”
The gendarme made a choking noise. A few more drops of cologne splashed across the trunk’s open lid.
Elizabeth fanned the air. “Or accidentally spill it out?” It took everything she had not to look down at the trunk, not to see if the writing was coming clearer with each passing moment. For if she looked down, sure he would, too.
“Citizen?” she prompted, holding out her hand when the soldier made no move to return the cologne. “As a favor to a lady?”
“In case you haven’t heard, citizeness, this is a Republic. We don’t grant favors to ladies anymore.” Jamming the cork into the bottle, the gendarme dropped it into the trunk, and kicked the lid shut.
When they were finally back on the road, James turned to her, fuming. “I thought I’d told you to stay silent, do nothing, and let me do all the talk—”
“So you would have preferred that I let those men discover the writing on the inside of the lid?”
“I would have handled it.” A muscle in his jaw tensed. “You unnecessarily put yourself at risk…”
“I put myself at risk?” She stared at him in disbelief. “If the soldiers had been paying attention to the trunk rather than your cologne, we all would have been at risk. We might have been dragged off to prison, or more likely shot.”
“And they might well have shot you on the spot if they had taken your…” Desperately he searched for a word to describe her outrageous behavior. “Your flirtation amiss.”
“Flirtation?” She was nearly speechless.
“Flirtation! I should have let them shoot you! You’ve been hiding things from me throughout this venture.
Tell me what else might miraculously appear in your luggage, or fall out of the panels of the coach, or…
” She glared at him. “Unexpectedly walk through a library door.”
“I didn’t ask you to come along on this venture.” He flushed. “I don’t owe you any explanations.”
“You’re right.” She inhaled sharply. “You don’t.”
“She’ll drive me to madness,” James muttered to Marcus later that evening after they’d stopped for the night at an inn on the outskirts of Rouen. “Did you see how she approached those soldiers?”
“Quite the timely distraction,” Marcus observed, taking an olive from an earthenware bowl on the table.
“After I expressly told her not to say anything—to anyone.”
“Clever how she provoked them into closing the lid of the trunk.”
“Provoking. Everything about Elizabeth Harcrest is provoking. She never does what she’s told, never does what’s expected of her.
I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think she didn’t slip away unnoticed, but that Moreham packed her off with his blessing.
It’s his revenge—that’s what it is. I ruined his sister’s reputation, and now he’s ruining my life. ”
“One might say she saved all of ours today.” Marcus popped an olive into his mouth.
“Are you saying I should thank her?”
Marcus shrugged.
“Next you’ll be proposing I should bring her into our confidence, explain what we are about.
” I don’t owe you an explanation, he’d said.
And he didn’t. So why the bloody hell did he feel that he did?
“I’m traveling with a party full of lunatics.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Grenville recruited you all straight out of bedlam. ”
“And he put you in charge...” Marcus consumed another olive.
“Are you suggesting”—James’s eyes narrowed—“I’m as mad as the rest of you?”
“Rather obsessed with madness, aren’t you, Dinsmore?”
“Are you referring to His Grace, my father?”
Marcus continued as if he hadn’t heard the warning note in James’s voice. “I’m suggesting that like the rest of us, you were looking to make a change in your life, to do something different…save some lives, rather than wasting your own.”
“Tell me, Marcus, is that why you’re here?”
Marcus evaded the question. “You did well in Amiens. I wasn’t at all certain that last merchant was going to agree to help us. You played him most skillfully. Grenville will be pleased.”
“It wasn’t easy. There’s talk that the Girondins may be losing power in Paris.
There are a number of aristocrats amongst them, expatriates, too, and they’re the ones who’ve been encouraging maintaining relations with England.
If the Jacobins tighten their grip, I suspect there’ll be a crackdown on anyone in France suspected of having foreign contacts. ”
“All the more reason to finish up our work in Rouen, find Amaury de Joley, and carry him safely back to England.”
“Elizabeth Harcrest as well,” James added, without thinking.
“I see that all my talk of business has done little to distract your thoughts from the lady. Understandable.” The concern in Marcus’s eyes was at odds with the lightness of his tone. “Do you think you shall have trouble returning her to Moreham Hall?”
James ran his hand through his hair, resisting the urge to retort, No more trouble than I already have.