Chapter 2 #2
Marcus took the box, muscles he hadn’t even realized were tensed, relaxing slightly upon discovering that while many of the pastels were broken, the drawers and the secret compartments David had designed to conceal his forging tools were intact.
He glanced around for his sketchbook but didn’t see it.
“Don’t forget this.” A guardsman in a red tunic was dangling a lace shirt from his right hand. He was leaning on his musket, his left hand wrapped around the barrel—Marcus noticed the lock was filthy, and the firing pan was askew.
“Amateurs,” Marcus murmured, ignoring the guard’s offering. He scanned the positions of the other soldiers, memorizing them, before turning towards the coach. It sat door ajar and stairs unfolded.
“Amateurs with guns.” Andre, who was following close on his heels, amended softly.
“Can’t even mount a guard properly. They’re more interested in Elizabeth than us.”
Andre glanced over his shoulder at the slender young woman. “In fairness, she is a proper distraction…”
Marcus slipped the fake spectacles into his pocket. His focus, as he bent to fold up the coach steps, remained on the men. “Six of them. Three of us. Two each?”
“I’ll do my best, but I’m going to have to keep an eye on them.” David nodded at the four massive grays. The left lead horse had snagged the branches of a nearby bush and was happily chewing. The right was tossing his head and the back two were standing with their rear hooves cocked.
“Hostelry horses,” he murmured, “calm enough now, but there’s no way of knowing how they’ll react when the fighting starts.” He flicked his eyes in the direction of the stick-like figure of the comte. “Or him.”
Marcus shifted his gaze to the comte. “Do you think he’ll be of any help?”
David shook his head.
Marcus watched as Aylesworth retook his seat next to the comte on the coach box. “Three each,” he said softly to Andre as he followed him up the steps into the coach.
Closing the coach door, they both surveyed the mess the soldiers had made of the coach’s interior, shaking his head. “David is not going to be happy when he sees what they’ve done to his baby. Did they have to slash the seats?” He shook his head in disgust.
“As if David would have designed such an obvious hiding place.” Reaching up, Marcus slid open a secret panel in the roof and began pulling out muskets and pouches filled with cartridges.
Setting two guns down on the rear seat, he slung a pouch over his shoulder, snugged it against his left hip, and pulled out a cartridge.
He tore it open with his teeth, spat the paper out, cocked the gun, primed the pan with powder, shut it, turned the gun upright, stuffed the remaining shot down the barrel, slid the rod from out of the braces that housed it beneath the barrel, rammed the shot home, and returned the rod to its holder.
“What do you see?” he asked as he handed the loaded weapon to Andre. He had a picture of the French soldier’s positions in his head, but he needed to know if they were shifting.
Andre peered through the half-drawn canvas shade in the coach’s door.
“Two in red tunics look like they’re taking up positions in front of the coach.
One red, one blue standing around watching Elizabeth and James.
Captain’s directing things and there’s one in blue with a red cap tying Elizabeth’s wrists.
” Andre’s voice took on a dangerous tone.
“Bastard looks like he’s enjoying it far too much. ”
“James is not going to like that.” Marcus said, slinging a cartridge pouch over Andre’s shoulder. Did you see his face when they were searching her?”
“If looks could kill…”
Marcus spat out the paper from the cartridge he’d just torn open with his teeth. “We wouldn’t need these.”
“Still…” Andre, who was holding his musket in his right hand, adjusted the cartridge pouch against his hip with his left. “Are you certain this is the only way?
Marcus didn’t bother to answer; he’d completed his risk assessment.
“Because cleanup is going to be hell…”
Having primed the musket, Marcus righted it, poured the remaining powder and shot down the barrel and rammed it home. “You’d prefer to tell our beloved spymaster, Grenville, that we rescued the comte but left a duke’s son and an unmarried earl’s sister in the hands of the French?”
“An earl who doesn’t know his sister’s with us in the first place?” Andre gave a mock shudder. “Oh hell, no. That’s James’s job.” Straightening suddenly, he shouldered his musket. “Speaking of which, he’s just grabbed the captain’s sword…”
“Then that captain’s a dead man.” Marcus slid the ramrod back into place. “I’ll take the one in blue with Elizabeth.”
“The one with the rope? I’ll take the red one to the right.”
Marcus raised his voice so that David and the comte could hear, “Move. In three, two, one…”
David shouted to the team and cracked the reins.
With a kick that sent the door flying open and slamming against the side of the coach, Marcus jumped out.
He registered a thunk as Andre landed beside him.
Both men rose with practice skill, turned, and took up battle positions as the carriage rolled forward.
Marcus heard the two soldiers who’d been set to guard it scream as they struggled to get out of the way of the horses and the coach’s massive wheels.
He found his target—the guard who’d been tying Elizabeth’s hands.
He leveled his sight on the man’s red cap; the guard had dropped the rope and was frantically reaching for the musket strapped behind his back.
Snugging his cheek against the small of the stock, Marcus braced himself for the recoil and fired his own weapon.
For the briefest moment, the blast, the acrid smell, and the taste of gunpowder on his tongue propelled him back to Saratoga in the fall of 1777. He’d been a scared 17-year-old desperate to survive, and desperate to return home to the girl of his dreams.
The guardsman’s face exploded in a geyser of blood and bone as he flew backward.
Reaching for another cartridge, Marcus ripped, spat, and poured, his hands steady.
Now a battle-hardened veteran of thirty-three, he was neither scared, nor desperate, nor plagued by romantic delusions.
Ramming the shot home, he shouldered his musket and aimed the barrel in the direction of his next target.
He saw Elizabeth swing the flat of a musket butt at the man’s head.
Where had she gotten that? The soldier flew sideways, landing beside his captain, who lay sprawled, his rabbit face slack, his gut slashed open with the sword James had wrenched from him.
“On your right,” Andre shouted. Swinging his musket to the right, Marcus saw a soldier in a red tunic aiming an ancient blunderbuss at him. Sighting his barrel on the buttons of the man’s tunic, he fired.
The soldier dropped his gun, clutched his chest, and collapsed sideways.
Marcus reached for another cartridge, ripped, spat, primed, poured, rammed, shouldered the musket, and peered through a sulfurous cloud of burnt powder, searching for another target.
Four down. How many had Andre taken down?
Where were the two who’d run from the horses’ hooves?
His ears ringing with the echoing shot, his vision obscured by powder, it took a moment to register that Andre was shouting.
Another to comprehend what he was saying.
“Got my two. And you?”
“Done,” Marcus wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
Surveyed the scene. Elizabeth cradled in James’s arms. Andre wiping down his musket.
The coach a short distance away, the comte clutching the slack reins.
David beside the team, rubbing the cheek of the lead gray.
The broken bodies of the French soldiers scattered alongside with the luggage they’d been searching only moments earlier.
He spotted his sketchbook, splayed in page down in the dirt between the gouges left by the Berlin’s great wheels.
He bent to retrieve it. Turning it over, he saw his sketch of their rendezvous had been torn in half; there was no hope of salvaging it now.
“Forget your battered sketchbook, scribbler,” Andre said, “we’ve six bigger problems to clean up now.”