Chapter 30 #2
Elizabeth glanced at James, Andre, and Marcus out of the corner of her eye.
Andre looked bored, Marcus was whistling, and James’s expression was deceptively open.
The way it had been the night he’d taken her into the library.
Why should she be surprised? Deception came so easily to him.
He answered the soldier’s question smoothly, repeating the story they’d been using since they’d arrived in the country.
“Is that so?” The soldier smiled like a wolf about to close his jaws on a hare. “Then why have you and the citizeness spent so much time eating and rolling about in the fields of Rouen?”
Someone had seen them! Sweat trickled down Elizabeth’s ribs. What had they seen? Lovers, she told herself, repeating James’s words. Had they seen Joley? She fought the impulse to glance in the comte’s direction. He is just a servant, she reminded herself. No one looks at servants.
“I am an admirer of your revolution and I come here to learn.” James stepped forward and caught her hand. “But I am also a man. A man newly married and very much in love with his wife.”
His voice was low and warm, and there was an expression in his eyes when they met hers that made her want to believe. Did he mean it? Or was he acting once again? “A revolutionary notion, is it not?”
Elizabeth didn’t know if James was addressing her or the soldier. But it was the soldier who responded, with a derisive hoot. “Search the luggage,” he barked to his companions, “and search the coach, too.”
The soldiers tossed down the trunks, flinging them open and rifling through their contents with purposeful abandon.
Linens were dropped in the dust, powder boxes were emptied, hems and cuffs of dresses and shirts and jackets were fingered and sometimes split.
All of Elizabeth’s hatboxes were opened and their contents examined, ribbons and flowers and feathers torn away to see if anything had been concealed beneath them.
They climbed up into the coach, pounding their fists against the panels and slashing with their bayonets at the seats.
One of the soldiers leaned out of the door of the carriage and dumped the papers and quills from Marcus’s traveling desk. Elizabeth glanced at Marcus; his face remained expressionless as the soldier said, “Nothing here,” and let the elegantly carved wooden box fall.
“If you are spies,” the thin soldier said, leaning up into James’s face, “you will not slip through my fingers. Search the citizen and his servants,” he commanded over his shoulder.
“The woman, too?” a stout soldier in a rumpled uniform asked.
“Yes,” he snapped. “There’s no telling what she might be hiding under her skirts.”
James and the stout soldier stepped toward her at the same time.
“Is there a problem, citizen?” the thin soldier inquired with mock politeness.
“No.” Elizabeth caught James’s eyes, willing him to step back, to understand that she had put herself in this situation as surely as she’d put herself into the library with him.
The soldier lifted her skirts. She kept her eyes locked on James’s and saw anger flash in their blue depths, hot and raw; she put her hand to her cheek, as if tracing the scar on his face. Her actions as much as her brother’s sword had put it there. She wouldn’t endanger his life again.
The soldier’s hands poked and probed and lingered too long, and when she winced, he laughed.
James took a step forward.
“No,” Elizabeth cried again, more sharply.
Marcus grabbed his arm, pulling him back.
The soldier laughed again. “Perhaps the citizeness is not so much in love with you, citizen. Perhaps she would prefer to roll around in the grass with us.” Elizabeth saw James’s body tense. His blue eyes were hot, like the center of a flame, but Marcus held him fast.
Unable to provoke the Englishmen into a fight, and failing to discover anything to support their suspicions, the guardsmen circled the party, shifting like a pack of feral dogs.
The thin soldier, in particular, seemed reluctant to let them go.
He held on to their papers, examining and reexamining the signatures and seals, glancing over to match the descriptions in the identity papers with the people standing before him.
“Which one of you is the coachman Duval?” he demanded abruptly.
Joley shuffled forward, tugging at his brown-dyed forelock with a dirty hand. “I am, monsieur.”
“We are all equals here,” the soldier said sharply. “You must address me as citizen.”
“Citizen,” Joley repeated.
“Have you searched this man?” the soldier demanded of his companions.
“I have, citizen,” one of the soldiers volunteered. “I found nothing suspicious.”
“Nothing suspicious? A free Frenchman enslaves himself to English aristocrats and you find nothing suspicious in that?”
“It’s not that uncommon for the locals to hire themselves out as guides to foreigners,” the soldier offered defensively.
The thin soldier squinted at Joley. “Lived here long have you, Duval?”
Joley tugged his forelock again. “Yes, citizen.”
“How’d you lose your eye?”
Joley’s hand fluttered instinctively to the leather patch. “It’s not gone, citizen. But a splinter of rock flew into it a while back, tore my eye up a bit, and the wound won’t seem to heal.”
“You wear the patch to protect your eye, then?”
“Mine and other folks.” Joley inclined his head toward Elizabeth and James, lowering his voice as if sharing a confidence. “It’s none too pretty. Frightens the gentry.”
“They should be frightened.” The thin soldier smiled with satisfaction.
Elizabeth flashed back to the picnic with James, to her complaint that their rescue of Joley was undramatic. What a fool she’d been. She recalled his response, his toast: To a smooth, uneventful, and entirely boring rescue. There seemed little chance of that now.
“Jean.” The thin soldier beckoned to the stout soldier who’d searched Elizabeth. “Come lift this man’s patch.”