Chapter 30
Thirty
Elizabeth leaned toward James as the carriage door swung closed. “It doesn’t seem right to have Joley riding as our coachman. He was a confidant of the king, a minister, a nobleman of the highest rank. Shouldn’t he be riding in here, with us?”
“It feels peculiar, but it’s for the best. Think about it—no one looks at a coachman. If we’re stopped, the gendarmes will glance at him, at his papers, and then focus their attention on us. The villainous Englishmen.”
“I suppose.”
“Thanks to everyone’s skillful handiwork, no one will connect Amaury de Joley with our new coachman, Armand Duval. No one even knows Joley’s been in the area.”
“Thinking about him sitting up there after everything he’s been through, living in a hole, stealing to survive—”
“If he’s discovered, you must deny you knew he was a member of our company,” James interrupted gently, covering her hand with his.
“I will not.” She drew her hand back, horrified.
“You will.”
“I won’t. We’ve come to save him, not to throw him to the wolves.”
“Elizabeth.” He gripped her hand again. “If Joley is discovered, there will be little we or anyone can do to save him. And if he’s found riding with us, clearly a member of our company, the revolutionaries will add spy and collaborator with the English to his list of crimes.”
“They’ll add that to his list of crimes whether he’s riding as our guest or our coachman. You’re afraid for yourself.”
His grip tightened. “Look at me, Elizabeth. Look at the scar on my face.”
Her eyes were drawn to it, the thin red line like a lash of anger.
“You may call me many things, but you may not call me coward. I promised Lord Grenville I would bring Joley safely out of France, and that is what I intend to do. I made that promise knowing full well the cost might be my life or the lives of the men who travel with me. The only thing I did not know—and the only thing I fear—is that it might cost you yours. You, Elizabeth, were not part of the original bargain.”
“Bargain?”
“Our lives for his. That man sitting out there beside David has the potential to change the course of history, to help bring down the Revolution and restore the monarchy. His life has purpose.”
“So does yours.”
His expression made it clear that he did not believe her.
“It means something to me, and to Anne, and to your father,” she persisted.
“My father? My father hasn’t recognized me in three years. Half the time he thinks I’m a Roman centurion.”
“I’m sorry…”
“It’s not important.” He brushed aside her sympathy.
“What is important is that you are here and you are my responsibility. And that is why, if Joley is captured, I will swear you had no knowledge of his presence. And if you try and deny me, I will say that I have disgraced you, dragged you against your will on this adventure, forced you to comply.”
His grip on her hands might well have been around her heart. “Must you always make yourself the villain?”
“I am the villain, Elizabeth. A rake, and a rogue, and a spy. But I swear, I will do anything, anything, you understand, to make certain you return safely home to your family.”
The old woman with the eggs did not know if the blond man with the scar and the young brown-haired woman planned to return for another pique-nique, and the merchant did not know where they planned to go after they visited his shop.
So, a company of national guardsmen spent the morning searching the old woman’s field for foreigners.
After beating the bushes for two hours in the rising heat, they’d received word that they should march, double-quick, down the road and set up a roadblock.
The guardsmen had spent the remainder of the day checking the papers of every traveler on the road.
Failing to find the pair they sought, they’d spent the night in a nearby hayfield, rising early the next morning to resume their inspections. Tempers were short.
A stout national guardsman, with his tunic unbuttoned and his hat askew, squinted down the dusty, tree-lined road that led out of Rouen. “This is ridiculous, Henri. We’re wasting our time standing out here in this accursed heat.”
“It is never a waste of time to serve the people, Jean,” Henri responded, puffing his thin chest out so that the buttons of his new uniform sparkled like polished gems in the sunlight.
“This road leads east to Paris and west to the coast. Who knows what enemies of the Republic might be traveling upon it? The captain said we must be on our guard for foreign spies and fugitives. He said…” Henri added with the air of a man revealing sensitive information hitherto withheld, “that there have been reports.”
“Reports of what?”
“Unusual activity.”
Jean gave a dissatisfied grunt. Henri had volunteered for this job, as had the four other soldiers attempting to find some relief beneath a dusty tree beside the road.
He, on the other hand, had been ordered by the captain to join this useless effort.
He couldn’t help wondering if the “reports” had to do with his attempt to pass some time with the captain’s mistress.
“Unusual activity,” he muttered, shifting his musket on his shoulder.
“We’ve stopped an old man and his son hauling firewood, a cart full of chickens, and a merchant with a wagon full of wool.
The most unusual thing we’ve seen today was the disgusting boil on that old man’s face. ”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“How would you know? You weren’t the one who had to stand up close to it.”
“I was checking their papers,” Henri said smugly, resisting the urge to point out, as he frequently did, that he was the only one in the patrol who could read. “And besides, it’s important to examine such things very carefully. That boil could have been some sort of clever disguise.”
“Clever disguise, mon cul. The thing was plain disgusting.”
The coach rumbled down the road to Rouen, the ironclad wheels rattling over stones and kicking up dust that drifted like smoke through the open windows. Marcus wiped his brow with a delicate linen handkerchief.
“I’d close the windows,” James offered by way of apology, “but then it would be stifling in here.”
“I almost envy the poor bas…” Andre, sitting across from James, caught sight of Elizabeth and quickly amended, “the poor gentlemen sitting outside.”
All three of them cast their eyes toward the roof as if they might see through it.
“I wonder how Joley is faring.” Marcus, seated beside Andre, gave voice to their common concern.
“Better than he was huddling in that hole.”
Their heads nodded in agreement and in response to the jolting from the poor conditions of the road.
“It’s a good thing that you found him.”
“I was beginning to worry he wouldn’t show,” James admitted, “that perhaps he had been discovered. Turns out he was just being cautious.”
“Caution’s a good thing, especially after more than one day at the same meeting spot,” Marcus said.
“What choice did we have? Leave him behind?”
“It was risky. Someone might have seen. You might have allowed me to take a turn. I could have brought my sketchbook.” He lifted the book in his lap to emphasize his point.
“And expose more members of the team? You and Andre are supposed to be business acquaintances, sharing a ride to the coast.” James shrugged.
“And if someone did see us, all they would have seen was two besotted lovers trysting in a field.”Elizabeth caught her breath, cut by his mocking tone.
Of course, she’d known their romantic picnics were an opportunity to send a signal to the fugitive Joley, but had they truly meant so little to him?
“Besides,” he continued, “the delay gave us more time to expand Grenville’s networks. With the way things are going, I doubt the comte will be the last aristocrat Whitehall will want us to bring over.”
Elizabeth turned to look at him, aghast. “Surely you don’t mean to come back? To risk your life again?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “This may be a game for you, m’dear. Certainly, a one-time adventure. But this is the path I have chosen.”
She could almost hear his unsaid words, not you. She closed her eyes, sank back against the cushions; she’d been right to remind him they were not man and wife that morning in bed. Would have felt glad of it. If only being right didn’t make her feel so empty.
She must have fallen asleep, because she was jolted awake to the sound of David’s fist pounding on the roof, three sharp raps signaling there were soldiers ahead in the road. Her eyes flew open and she saw James’s eyes cut to Marcus.
This was it. The first test of the papers they had forged and the disguise they had created for the comte.
And if they failed, it would be the last.
The coach juddered to a stop.
“Out, out, and be quick about it.” The coach door swung open and a thin young man in a tightly buttoned uniform peered in at them.
He continued to hold the door as they descended, as if they might try and wrest it from him.
“This is an official checkpoint for the district of Rouen. Have your papers ready, citizens.” He nodded curtly. “Citizeness.”
In addition to the thin man who seemed to be in charge, Elizabeth spied five other soldiers armed with an assortment of muskets and swords.
Two of them grabbed the traces of the horses, ordering Joley and David to come down from atop the coach.
The thin soldier was studying their papers carefully, turning them this way and that, holding them up against the sunlight.
Either the man couldn’t read, or he was deriving considerable pleasure from having them stand in the blazing sun. She suspected it was the latter.
“You are English,” the soldier said accusingly. “Why are you in France?”