Chapter 3
Three
Andre had been right. Clean-up had been hell.
They lost precious travel hours wrapping the soldiers’ bodies in tarps, concealing them atop the coach’s roof, in the boot, and in the secret compartments David had designed beneath seats, then finding a place to leave them where they wouldn’t immediately be discovered.
But now the men lay hidden under scattered bales of hay in a field several miles back, waiting for some unlucky farmer to stumble across them.
Yet more casualties in yet another politician’s war.
France’s this time, though no doubt, England’s soon enough.
Which was why Marcus and the rest of the team were in France building up the spy networks and setting in motion the plans that would ensure it was their King and country that came out ahead.
“Scribbler, put your sketchbook down and come eat,” David said.
He didn’t look up from his drawing to where the others were sitting on a red and white blanket spread beneath the gnarled branches of an old tree.
Exhausted and hungry, they’d stopped for a quick repast. Even if the taste of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur wasn’t still bitter on his tongue, Marcus couldn’t bring himself to eat.
“Bread?” Andre’s offer was accompanied by an odd thwang.
Marcus looked up in time to see a chunk hurtling towards him. He caught it in his hand and examined it. Flour was in short supply in France, and the ‘bread’ was a curious shade of brown.
“Eat,” David repeated in a warning tone.
Marcus popped the chunk into his mouth and chewed, noticing three things: it tasted terrible, he was hungry, and Andre was loading a fig into what appeared to be a catapult made out of a spoon.
“Is that your doing?” He nodded at the catapult, then at David.
“Fig’s got significantly more mass than bread, so you’re not going to get as much range with it. Move the launcher up and slide this under it. It’ll give you more of an arc,” David said, addressing Andre.
“Et tu, Brute?” Marcus plucked the flying fig out of the air and ate it. “Must you encourage him?”
The big man shrugged. “If it gets you to eat.”
He knew his friends were right. Fatigue and hunger muddled a man’s mind. And while they were getting closer to the coast and the waiting rescue sloop, now wasn’t the time to get careless. “Hand me a plate, I’ll serve myself.”
“Fairly certain the bread’s made with at least some wheat,” Andre said cutting him a proper slice and putting it on a plate.
“But definitely better if you put a generous amount of cheese on it.” He dropped a glob of pale, melting stuff beside the bread.
“Or paté. The paté is particularly fine.” He added a slice, then glanced around at the collection of plates and the basket spread on the red and white blanket.
“There’s some pigeon and more figs around here somewhere. ”
“No cake?” Marcus said teasingly. The French countryside was plagued by food shortages, but somehow Andre had managed to put together this impromptu feast.
“No m’lord, there is neither pudding nor cake, but there is wine.” Andre lifted a bottle and pointedly topped off David’s glass.
“Good for what ails you.” David raised his glass encouragingly.
“A matter of opinion.” Marcus took a bite of fig, still tasting the lingering sharpness of saltpeter. The three of them had their share of demons and had developed different ways of keeping them at bay. For him, it was the easy flow of line over paper.
He glanced down at the sketch he’d just started; the comte was his focal point; he’d drawn him in the center, facing toward the viewer.
Joley’s hands were outstretched, as if in supplication, drawing the viewer’s eyes toward the rough triangular shape of James and Elizabeth in the foreground.
They were sitting side by side, Dinsmore’s hand stretched protectively behind her back.
He studied his composition. Andre handed him a plate.
He took something off it without looking—it turned out to be bread smeared with cheese—and chewed.
With a few quick strokes of his pencil, he added the hint of a tree trunk at the top of the page, on the right side.
Then, deciding the whole thing was sufficiently balanced, he began adding in detail, starting with the comte’s face; he sketched in the high forehead, hawk’s beak of a nose, and the eyes, smudged with fatigue from weeks on the run.
But his mouth… Marcus looked up frowning at the actual man; Joley kept talking, making it difficult to capture the shape.
“I must go,” he said sharply.
“Go? Where?” Dinsmore gave voice to the question that immediately leapt into Marcus’s head.
“You heard those soldiers? What they said about the Girondins being arrested? My late son-in-law was a leader in the party. I must find out if my daughter, Marguerite, has been taken in his stead. I must go to Paris.”
“But they will kill you!” Elizabeth cried.
She had that right. After everything that had happened on this mission, everything they’d risked, he couldn’t believe the comte was even considering turning back. It was far too late for the Girondins—they’d misplayed their political hand. Their cause—and anyone associated with it, were lost.
“I will make an offer to those monsters.” Joley declared, hand on his heart. “My life in exchange for hers.”
The fool. Only four months ago, the Assembly had voted to execute their own King. If they had her, those madmen in Paris would never release the comte’s daughter; they’d simply add another aristocratic head to the pile.
“News travels slowly to these parts and none too accurately. It’s possible the soldiers were mistaken about the Girondins.”
James’s tone was reassuring and patient, far different than the one Marcus would have taken, which was probably why he wasn’t in charge.
“Ousting all the members of a political party and imprisoning them? Surely, there are laws forbidding such a thing…”
“Laws,” the former minister said scornfully. “You speak of laws in the same breath as you speak of these animals? There were laws against murdering the king—”
“You said your daughter was married to a Girondin,” Elizabeth persisted.
“He died last year.”
“Then she may be safe.” Elizabeth hesitated, “Unless…is she a Girondin?”
“I don’t know her political views, or how publicly she’s expressed them.” The comte admitted stiffly. “We have not been on the best of terms in recent years.”
Estranged, then. Which would explain why he hadn’t taken her on the run with him.
“They will begin with the politicians, just as they began with the king and his loyal servants, such as I. But the lust for revenge, for blood, inflames them, and soon enough they’ll move on to the innocent…
. I have seen it happen before.” The comte’s voice was full of remembered horror.
“I should never have left her; I should have known—”
“You could not have foreseen this,” James said.
Of course he could have. Marcus’s fingers tightened around the stick of graphite in his hand. What kind of father was he? How was it that he was only thinking of his daughter’s welfare now?
“I was a fool to think she would be safe! And now…” The comte’s hands curled into fists. “Now, I must go back.” He bowed towards the company on the blanket as if he were exiting a drawing room. “Gentlemen, I am sorry to have put your lives at risk on my behalf, but I must do this.”
The graphite in Marcus’s hand snapped.
“M’sieur le Comte, if your daughter is in danger, may I ask how you intend to save her?
Paris is a long way from here and there are many checkpoints.
Are you certain your disguise will suffice?
A coachman from Rouen, without a coach, walking to Paris?
This will certainly raise questions. And you are not in the best of health,” James said coldly, his polite patience abandoned.
De Joley’s knuckles whitened.
“And if you are discovered attempting to reach your daughter,” James continued, “what then? The estrangement between you, that may still protect her, will be obliterated. She will be tarred with a brush far blacker than association with the Girondins.”
Joley unclenched his hands, he spread them beseechingly. “What else can I do?”
“Continue on with us. Think, m’sieur. It’s only a matter of days before we reach London.
By the time we arrive, Grenville’s networks will have a clearer idea of what has occurred in Paris.
They may even have word of your daughter’s whereabouts.
You will be safe, and you will have access to the resources and to the people who can help bring your daughter safely out of France. ”
“But aren’t you those people? I know you are rescuing me for the sake of your government, and I know her life means nothing to your master.
But…I can pay. Enough to make any one of you—all of you—wealthy men.
” His hooded gaze swept over the faces of the men arrayed on the picnic blanket.
“I have a fortune waiting for me when I reach England.”
When his gaze landed on James, Marcus saw the man stiffen.
Was he bracing himself against temptation?
Dinsmore was a notorious rake, the son of a mad duke, traveling with a woman he’d ruined—the sister of an earl.
While this mission, if successful, might repair his reputation, a fortune would lift his family out of debt and might convince Elizabeth’s brother to allow them to marry.
Joley named an outrageous sum.
“Might I remind you, monsieur,” James said coolly, “that you will only have access to the monies you offer so freely if you reach England.”
“A written promise then.” Joley pointed at Marcus. “You there. You are never without paper and writing implements. Write down that I, Amaury de Joley, Comte Verignac, swear upon my honor that I will reward the man who saves my daughter with a fortune.”
“A fortune.” He repeated, when none of the men responded. “Surely there is one amongst you who has need of a fortune? You?” his gaze fell on Andre.
Marcus’s lip curled in a mixture of amusement and contempt.
Andre, the third son of a wealthy aristocratic family, was, as he liked to joke, the ‘don’t care who followed the heir, the spare, and a gaggle of sisters.’ He preferred a life of adventure with no strings attached.
“You?” Joley turned to look at David. David’s family was less prominent than Andre’s, but he’d inherited more money than Croesus. Although the only thing he seemed to spend it on was equipment for his laboratory and materials for his gadgets.
“You?”
Marcus felt the weight of the comte’s gaze fall on him.
Half-French and half-English, Marcus had grown up in both cultures but had never been truly at home in either. There’d been a time when he’d longed to put down roots, indeed, thought he’d found the woman with whom he could do so. But now?
He had an empty house he didn’t consider a home—a bloody great pile in the middle of nowhere that he rarely visited and could barely keep up, even if he cared to.
“A fortune,” the comte persisted.
Marcus didn’t have a fortune; what would he do with one?
He could level the warped floors of the great hall he used as his studio and rebuild the massive fireplace so the room would be kept warm year-round. For the briefest moment he imagined a large, light-filled space filled with canvases, and redolent of oil paint and linseed oil.
Like the Parisian studios he’d wandered through after the war in the colonies.
The studios where he’d learned to sketch and paint but also come to understand that no matter how hard he worked, he’d never have the talent to create the masterpieces he so admired.
He shook his head. Drafty halls and uneven floors were sufficient for a forger and artistic dabbler, such as he.
“She’s my child.” Joley’s voice was close to breaking. “She’s alone in Paris. Surrounded by madmen. My only child.”
It was the word ‘child’ that moved him. The thought of an innocent, caught up in machinations that had nothing to do with her; her life destroyed in pursuit of someone else’s cause.
As if it didn’t matter. Marcus knew what that felt like.
Releasing the shards of graphite in his hand, he rose. “I’ll go.”