Chapter 64
Sixty-Four
Several miles down the road, David turned off down a narrow lane, stopping the carriage by a stream whose banks were largely hidden by a large copse of ash trees.
He lifted the dog down and tied him with sufficient rope to sniff and pee on this new landscape to his heart’s content.
“I’ll water the horses. You all can change.
” He glanced over at Marcus, whose blood-soaked suit was beginning to attract flies.
“And wash. I’ll leave it to you all to decide if you want to unload a bit more furniture and ride inside the Berlin or stay mounted. ”
“Too hot to be cooped up in a carriage,” Andre said, slinging a bundle of clothes over his shoulder and setting off in search of sufficiently dense clump of foliage.
Marguerite and Marcus grabbed their own bundles and began to pick their way upstream.
“This looks good,” Marcus said, nodding in the direction of a spot where the water pooled beneath a small waterfall. Tree branches hung in a green curtain over the rocky bank. He stepped closer to inspect the pool. “Looks deep enough for two? What do you say?”
Marguerite dropped her bundle of clothes and walked towards him. Placing both hands on his back, she gave him a shove that sent him tumbling face first into the water.
“I say that you are a complete and utter ass.”
Marcus came up rolling and sputtering. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“How could you do that to me?”
Shoving his wet hair back from his face, he said, “We’re out of Paris. And the news will quickly spread amongst our network that I’m dead.”
“Dead.” A shudder ran through her. The image of him lying in the dirt, blood spreading beneath him was too recent, too impossibly clear.
“Which is useful if it turns out that our networks are compromised. One less reason for people to be looking for us. No reward for turning me in.”
“Did it ever occur to you to warn me?”
Marcus had the decency to look abashed. “It had to look real. Andre, David, they’ve done this kind of thing before.”
“I escaped from the Conciergerie.”
“I had to be sure you’d keep riding, no matter what.” He looked down. The stains on his waistcoat were beginning to spread in a red film on the surface of water.
Stripping off his ruined waistcoat, shirt, and the bladder that had been strapped to his chest, he dropped the bloody mess into the water.
“This,” he said, “was a backup plan. Something David and I came up with at the last minute. In case the guards pursued you or started shooting. I wasn’t certain we’d need it, and there wasn’t time to…
No.” He stopped himself. “I didn’t take the time to warn you. ”
“Why not?”
He dunked under the water, came up, sluicing away the remnants of blood on his chest and arms, then slid out of his blood-soaked breeches and small clothes.
Marguerite sucked in a breath at the sight of him. She was dry tinder; he was a burning brand. She took a step back.
“I can give you a million reasons why. Because back-up plans are based on all the things that could go wrong and I didn’t want to frighten you, because I’ve seen young soldiers survive their first battle only to freeze up when faced with a second. Because I wanted to protect you…”
“Protect me? I thought you were dead.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Sorry?” She groped for words, trying to express how she’d felt without breaking into little pieces. “Seeing you like that. You say you love me.”
“I do.”
“Then try imagining how you’d feel if it was me. Shot. Falling. Lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the road.”
He closed his eyes, muscles taut, as if against a wave of pain. “I don’t have to imagine it. When I heard that gun go off, even though all my training said keep riding, don’t look back, I did. I had to make sure you hadn’t been hit.”
“I saw you turn,” she swallowed hard. “All that blood. I thought it was my fault you’d been shot.”
“Oh God, mon coeur, no.”
He sprang out of the water, wrapped her in his arms, in his scent of sunshine, spring water, and warm skin.
Brushing a lock of hair back, he kissed her forehead and said unsteadily, “In that moment, when I looked back, I knew that if anything happened to you, I would be lost. There’d be no point in riding on.
No way of climbing out of the pit my world would become without you.
“Can you forgive me?” His grip around her tightened. “Keeping secrets is the way I’ve learned to keep the people I love safe—Andre, David, my son—and now, you.”
“And yourself.”
“Sharing them?” he continued, “the way I did in the quarry, is…”
“Like stepping into the darkness?”
“No, not frightening. Unfamiliar. I can learn. I can do better. But old habits will die hard. Can you give me time?”
When she didn’t answer, his tone became fierce. “Even if you don’t, Marguerite de Joley de Rouvroy, I won’t give up. That’s one thing that won’t change. I swear.”
He released her then and stepped back. Nodding at the bundle of clothes she’d dropped in the grass, he said, “You should wash and change, too. If it’s privacy you require, I can give you that, too.”
She looked at him. At the bruises darkening on his cheek, his shoulder, and his hip; a record of exactly how and where his body had hit the ground. As he moved past her, she mapped the scars on his belly, his arm, and his back.
“Time,” she said softly. “If we get out of here, I will give you exactly that. I don’t want to lose you, Marcus.”
“When we get out of here,” he said, turning back and holding his arms out wide. “Swear.”
Marguerite stepped into them, reveling in the warmth and strength of her battered, but very much alive love. She sealed her promise with a kiss.
A short time later, a modestly attired, if slightly damp and disarrayed couple climbed into the coach, leaving behind a smoldering pile of ashes that were all that remained of a blood-stained brown suit, two national guard uniforms, and a few odd pieces of furniture.
Andre, spying the possessive arm Marcus slid around Marguerite’s waist as he settled into the coach beside her and the way her head came to rest on his shoulder, wisely closed the coach door.
Glancing up at the bench, he debated climbing up to sit beside David.
But the brindle dog, as if sensing his intention, lifted his head from where it had been resting on the big man’s thigh, and growled.
Feeling decidedly like the odd man out, Andre mounted up one of the extra horses, gathered up the reins, and cried out, “Home!”