Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
The first pale rays of sunrise were filtering through the windows when Marcus walked into the kitchen. He was dressed in shirt sleeves, striped waistcoat, and breeches. His hair was loosely tied back. He had his art box slung over one shoulder and Marguerite’s leather artist’s tube in his hand.
He set both down on the well-worn top of the large wooden table, alongside an earthenware bowl full of beaten eggs, a pile of sliced mushrooms, and a fragrant lump of melting cheese, as well as several small-cloth-covered jars, a pile of plates, assorted forks and spoons.
Andre, kneeling beside a cast iron spyder set atop a pile of glowing embers in the hearth, scowled up at him. “Mind where you put those.”
“I was careful.”
Andre harrumphed as he turned back to the fire.
“Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“Someone else didn’t sleep in a bed.”
“Smells good,” Marcus said hoping to nip that particular conversation in the bud. He peered over Scott’s shoulder to get a better look at what he was preparing in the long-handled pan with four squat legs.
“The homeowners were kind enough to leave us eggs, butter, and a rather fine patê,” Andre said, without looking up from his efforts to test the edge of an omelet with a fork.
Marcus straightened up. “Is David about? I’ve got a plan…”
“Of course you have. Outside.” He cocked his chin in the general direction of a door that led to the courtyard behind the house. “Washing up.”
As if on cue, David walked in, water dripping from his hair onto the shoulders of his half-buttoned cotton shirt.
He was dressed in workman’s clothes, and there was a dusting of sawdust on the rough cloth of his waistcoat and striped trousers.
“Unlike you, I’ve been up for hours. Made some adjustments to the axle arm of the coach. ”
“The axle arm? It hasn’t broken, has it?” If there was any likelihood that a wheel might fall off the coach, they’d need to find a different mode of transportation and he’d have to drastically alter his plans for their escape. “Do you even have the proper tools for a job like that?”
“Not to the actual arm,” David said reassuringly. “I check that regularly. Have to, with the situations you two get into…”
“Get into?” Andre paused to once again poke at the edge of the omelet. “You may be too busy tinkering with your toys to notice, but this country is hosting a bloody revolution, and that one,” he waved a fork at Marcus, “keeps making plans to lead us into the trickiest bits of it.”
“My toys, as you call them, have saved your neck more than once, in case you haven’t noticed. In this case, the adjustments are purely cosmetic. A design feature that occurred to me.” He nodded over at Marcus. “And before you ask, yes, I finished the traveling case for those canvases you gave me.”
He turned his attention to Andre’s efforts to fold a glistening oval of egg over a melted jumble of cheese and roasted mushroom. “You haven’t got any toasted bread to go with that, have you?”
“Only if you toast it yourself. There’s a loaf and a toasting fork on the table.” Andre lifted the pan from the embers, straightened up, and turned towards the table. “A serving plate first, if you please.”
David held one out obediently.
“Give this to Tyns, he’s bound to be a bit tetchy after sleeping in the hallway last night…”
“I am not tetchy.”
“The hallway?”
“Outside Madame de Rouvroy’s room,” Andre added, before upending the omelet onto the serving plate.
“Emphasis on outside,” Marcus interjected, repressing the urge to strangle Andre. At least, until after he finished making omelets.
“Outside?” David repeated carrying the plate over to the table.
“Only because Andre snores like a cart full of rocks.”
“Of course,” David divided the omelet, sliding half onto his own plate. He handed the remainder to Tyns and sat down. “A perfectly sensible reason you’d spend the night on a bare floor. Outside a lady’s bedchamber.”
“I was keeping watch.”
“Expecting an invading troop of guardsmen, were you?” David picked up a fork and began eating.
“I don’t snore,” Andre added.
“Course you do,” Marcus and David replied in unison.
“Seems damnably uncomfortable,” David mused between bites, “though charmingly chivalrous.”
“Looked to be. At least the uncomfortable part. Although,” Andre said thoughtfully as he poured more egg into the spyder, “it appears at some point in the course of the evening, someone provided him with a blanket and a pillow.”
Marcus opened his mouth to point out that it certainly hadn’t been the pillow-and cover-stealing Andre Scott, but stopped himself in time, aware that he’d only be encouraging his companions’ breakfast table entertainment.
Instead, he busied himself with cutting into the cheese-oozing omelet. The pillow had been a surprising, but welcome, kindness. He didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep by Marguerite’s door or when she’d set it there, but he recognized it as belonging to the bedding in her room.
“Have you made coffee as well?” David surveyed the table hopefully. His eyes lit upon a white porcelain pot decorated with roses. “Is that it?”
“Coffee is an abomination,” Andre replied without looking up. “Despite the lack of a proper pot, I’ve made tea. It’s steeping.”
A wave of relief had swept over Marcus when he’d found Marguerite was still in her room, followed by the pain of seeing her on the floor, silently weeping, blank sketch paper in her lap; he’d wanted to push open the door, catch her up in his arms, and whisper soothing words against her hair.
But he’d doubted she’d appreciate the intrusion of a stranger on her private suffering.
Resisting that urge had sapped his remaining strength, and he’d fallen into an exhausted sleep.
“Who knew Tyns had a chivalrous side?” David said, reaching for the tea with a resigned sigh.
“Must be the side that smells like sunshine and leather.” Andre put a pat of butter in the spyder, set the pan back over the coals, then retrieved the earthenware bowl of eggs. He poured a generous measure into the pan. “So many new things we’re learning about our boon companion on this trip.”
“Indeed. It’s a bit like reading a new page in a nearly impossible to open book.”
“Of course, it might not have been chivalry at all. He might have been afraid of losing her again.”
“I did not lose Madame de Rouvroy,” Marcus growled. “She was briefly out of my sight. A misstep, I own, and one I have no intention of repeating.” He took a bite of omelet. It was predictably delicious. “Your cooking, by the way, is the only reason I didn’t clock you harder in that alley.”
“Speaking of which, you might have warned me.”
“I did.”
“Before you hit me, not when you laid out the plan two days earlier.”
“Couldn’t risk you deciding to duck at the last moment…A perfect bruise like that, without breaking your jaw or knocking out a tooth, takes precision.”
“And yet, I confess to feeling less than grateful for your tender care.”
“Speaking of disguises,” Marcus said, “I want to recheck the security at the Pont du Jour and discover whether there’s any sign that the Conciergerie has sounded an alarm or sent out search parties.”
“You mean other than the ones searching for fugitive Girondins and for you—the mysterious man in brown from Rouen?”
“I need to know what the prison’s reaction to the escape is.
If they haven’t discovered it yet, they will very soon.
And I need to know if the papers we’ve got will be sufficient.
If I need to craft new ones. Not to mention the pocket litter,” he added, thinking of the random objects and scraps of paper they carried to support the identity they were assuming.
“Let me know if there’s anything particular you need,” Andre said, waggling his agile fingers for emphasis.
“Will you have sufficient time?” David asked.
“I’m not sure. If I can’t come up with a convincing story to match our papers, I may have to figure out another means of getting us out of the city.”
“Do you want me to go back to the prison? I can say I’m looking to discuss the case with Citizeness Rouvroy,” Andre said.
Marcus shook his head. “Too risky. Might raise unwanted questions. Better if we pop round to the tavern where you met Allard, the one the guards frequent.”
“The Cock’s Roost?”
“We?” David repeated, his tone making it clear he had reservations about this suggestion.
“You and me. I don’t want to take the chance of anyone remembering that Andre was there with Allard and asking uncomfortable questions about the night our guard friend had his unfortunate accident.”
“Andre, I want you to surveil the gate at the Pont du Jour. Report back to me on their procedures, the level of traffic, the level of the guards’ attention. I know you’ve been keeping an ear to the ground on this, but I want to make sure there haven’t been any changes since the escape.”
“Might it be better—faster, to ride? Leave the carriage behind?”
David looked as if Andre was suggesting leaving his child behind.
“Riding would be faster, but we can sleep in the coach if need be. And most of the supplies we’ll need are concealed in it. Given all the changes David’s made to it, it’s unlikely the guards around Rouen will recognize it.”
“The documents you created and the story you came up with, also seem to be working a charm,” David said “Indeed, the more often I appear at the gate, the less attention the guards pay me.”
“It’s going to take time for rumors about the escape to filter out of the prison, but if there’s a place where they’re most likely to spread, it’s the Cock’s Roost.”
“And while we’re out conducting surveillance and collecting rumors, how do you plan to keep Lady Walks About occupied?
“If you’re asking how I plan to keep her from leaving the premises?” Marcus tapped his plate with his fork. “The lady’s many things, but none of them a fool.”
“I’m delighted to discover you hold me in such high regard,” the lady in question said, as she swept into the room.
Marguerite was wearing a floral-printed round gown and her hair was tied back in a braid with loose curls framing her face.
To Marcus’s critical eye, she looked too pale, the smudges under her eyes too dark.
As his gaze lingered on her face, the sealed cabinet of emotions in his chest began to rattle. He forced himself to look away.
“Omelet! How lovely,” she declared, picking up a plate and fork. “I’m assuming you’re about to inform me that I should just stay here and wait…“
Her tone sounded much like the one she’d used when she’d said, “The fake names—is Marcus Tyndale really your name, or just your name for now? The disguises; the I-can’t-tell-you-just-wait-for-my-instructions secrecy.”
“And waste your considerable talents?”
“My what?” She turned to look at him, eyes narrowed.
Marcus gestured with his fork at the art box he’d set on the edge of the table and said, “My dear Madame de Rouvroy, have you ever considered learning the fine art of forgery?”