“Give me the purse, I say,” the driver insisted, his eyes sidling back and forth between Sally Leades and the rough plank he used as a footboard.
“Don’t give it to him, Mrs. Leades,” Cat whispered, burrowing into the hay. “Remember what your husband said.”
The driver’s cruel eyes shifted toward Cat. “Husband gone. Give it to me now or get out!”
Sally, her expression tortured with indecision, looked pleadingly at Cat.
“Mrs. Leades,” Cat said, “listen to me. Give your purse into my keeping.”
With a sigh of gratitude, Sally shoved the bag into Cat’s frozen hands. “Yes, milady.”
“Bah!” The driver swung down from the seat and stomped unhurriedly over to Cat’s side of the wagon. She shrank against the back of the seat. Once more she was struck by the apparent negligence of the guards. There was no possible way they could have failed to notice them.
“Maybe you should give it to him,” Sally said in a quavering voice.
“Give?” Cat said. “He’s going to take it. Look, Mrs. Leades. No muddy tracks exit the far side of the mud. Those guards aren’t blind or deaf. They know we are here. They are simply waiting for their share of what this man robs us of.”
Cat’s mind raced, looking for a way out. “Whatever I do, Mrs. Leades, just hang on to the sides of the wagon.”
“You women, give it to me.” The driver had reached them now, his dirty face twisted with frustration.
“No!” Cat yelled so loudly that even the guards lifted their heads.
“Then I take.”
“Take?” shrieked Cat. “I should say so! You have taken from every person unfortunate enough to have hired you!”
A cruel smile twisted the driver’s face. “So. You discover my little game. Fine. You are one smart old bird. Now…” He held his hand up, and Cat rose, intentionally wobbly, to her feet.
“Guards! I demand you arrest this man!” she shouted.
The guards, roused by her strident screeches, hesitated a moment until finally heading toward them. Sally was staring at Cat with wide eyes. The driver had started to laugh, a wicked, humorless sound.
“She is crazy. A lunatic!” he told the guards.
“Arrest this man!” Cat demanded, forcing her breath to wheeze between her lips, praying her plan would work. Her body needed no encouragement to shake convincingly.
“All right, grand-mère. Get down now,” one of the guards said impatiently.
“You must arrest this villain. You must arrest this—” Suddenly Cat clutched her stomach, doubling up and falling forward over the driver’s seat.
Seizing the plank footboard, she yanked, praying her guess was correct.
It was. As the board was wrenched free, a treasure trove of gems, gold sovereigns, fat purses, and shimmering jewelry met her eyes.
She thrust her arms wrist-deep into the hoard, lifting pearls and pendants, strands of diamonds and gold chains, high above her head. She heard the guards’ indrawn hisses, the driver’s violent swearing.
Using all of her strength, she hurled fistfuls of treasure into the center of the mud hole and reached immediately for more handfuls to fling.
“He’s stealing from you, too!” she yelled as the driver started to scramble up over the side of the wagon. A guard seized him by the collar, dragging him back. The other guard pitched himself into the mud, sifting desperately in the freezing black muck for the riches he knew it contained.
“You hold out on us, Gaston?” The one guard gave the driver a violent shake.
Taking advantage of their momentary distraction, Cat grabbed the reins, snatched up the whip and brought it down with a ringing crack over the heads of the horses. The team reared in fright. The faces of the three men swiveled in the cart’s direction. For one agonizing moment, Cat was sure the beasts would do nothing more than rear and buck in their traces. And then the front quarters of the two horses came crashing down, their haunches gathered, and they bolted straight at the guard half-buried in the mud. With a yelp, he lurched from beneath the wheels of the careening wagon.
“Shoot them!” Cat heard the driver shriek. She squeezed her eyes shut and bent low, waiting for pain to find her.
“Shut up, filthy cheat!” she heard the guard answer. “I could as soon shoot my own grandmother!”
Cat’s legs were cramped with cold. Her fingers in the inadequate leather gloves were numb, scored red from handling the heavy traces. Her teeth chattered with each gust of wind. Long hours had passed since the freezing rain had soaked through her clothing. The raw wind howling at their backs blistered Cat’s neck where the wet veil lashed her skin. Sally had retreated into a miserable lump.
What dim light there was bled from the sky as night fell. Still the icy blasts of wind snatched their breath away. Frigid fingers burrowed under their clothes. Their journey seemed at once timeless and as if each moment held its own torturous eternity. She squinted into the darkness, scanning the road ahead, hoping that somehow Thomas would appear.
“Lights!” Sally suddenly yelled. Cat turned. Sally was on her knees, pointing at a pale glow appearing and disappearing behind a stand of wind-lashed trees. “Can we stop?”
Cat snapped the leads on the horses’ rump in answer. Soon they were entering the crowded yard of a ramshackle building where a score of horses huddled together, tethered at a post. A motley assortment of carriages loomed in the shadows to one side. The smell of frying onions, garlic, and unseasoned wood smoke permeated the air. A plump young woman opened the door, tossing out a pail of slop, raucous laughter spilling out behind her. Nothing had ever looked more inviting.
Cat crawled tiredly over the side of the wagon. When her feet touched the ground, her legs buckled. Grimly she clutched the side of the wagon and hauled herself upright.
Sally was faring far worse, unable even to clamber from the bed. A man, a thin cigar clamped between tobacco-stained teeth, strode from around the side of the building and stopped short when he saw them.
“Please. Help her to the door.”
“Of course!” With exclamations of concern, the Englishman leapt forward. Quickly he lifted Sally from the wagon, supporting her round her waist. Cat stumbled gamely after them. The man shouldered the front door open and gently settled Sally on a bench just inside.
Cat looked around the crowded room. Several young Englishmen were seated at a table, their voices raised in a strident attempt at bravado. Others were scattered around the smoky room, conversing in uneasy tones.
“Sally?” a tentative voice asked.
Cat looked up at the thin, middle-aged gentleman approaching them. His brown eyes were filling with tears. He held his arms out.
Sally Leades rose to her feet. “Frank!”
Enfolded in his arms, Sally set her cheek against the man’s chest. Cat could see the concern drain out of Sally as she rested there. And in that moment, Cat knew a greater envy than any she had ever experienced. To be able to put aside all one’s worries, to know that stronger shoulders bore the burden, keener minds solved the riddles. Unfortunate, she thought, that she had always been so damned good at riddles, and that her shoulders were unfashionably strong. Then she thought of Thomas and said a brief prayer, asking only that he be safe. Nothing else.
“Milady?”
Cat blinked up at Sally, exhausted. Water dripped from her veil as the ice melted in the warm room, yet she dared not remove it.
“Lady Montaigne White, may I present my brother Frank Grisham?” Sally said.
“Lady Montaigne White,” the man said, a world of awe in his voice. “You have been a legend since my boyhood. How gratifying to see your resourcefulness and spirit have only grown with age. The story Sally has related is beyond wondrous. Madame, you have my eternal respect and gratitude.”
Grisham was staring fixedly at Cat’s face, avoiding looking at any other part of her person. In confusion, Cat looked down. Her hands! Horrified, she stared at them. The dye from her gloves had bled,
staining her hands a vibrant shade of blue. A wondrous model of aged propriety she must look: soggy, veiled in a soaking rag, and with blue hands.
“Frank has a room,” Sally was saying softly. “He says there might be a carriage leaving for Rouen in the morning.”
The innkeeper scuttled up to them, his hands raised in an expression of failure. “Pardon, monsieur, mesdames,” he said. “I look, but it is no use. There are no rooms available. The English ‘bucks’ have already doubled themselves to accommodate! There is nothing.”
“Then I will give the ladies my room—”
“No,” Cat interrupted, afraid her masquerade would end if she were forced to share lodging with Sally. “I simply will not share a room,” she said, knowing she sounded as absurd and haughty as the woman they had left at the barricades in Paris.
“But, madame! There is no choice!”
“I will stay out here, then.”
“But wait.” The innkeeper touched his fingertips to his temples. “Are you willing to sleep in the loft? That is, if you pay.”
“Payment isn’t the problem,” said Frank Grisham. “There is no loft, Lady Montaigne White. It is likely a filthy attic corner, no doubt where the scullery maid sleeps.”
“Mr. Grisham, would you be so kind as to make a loan to me?”
“Of course. But, Lady Montaigne White—”
“How kind. And now, innkeeper, if you would show me to my quarters?” Cat said with as regal an air as she could muster. It was hard, draped as she was in a freezing cold, soaking wet dress, the bust improvers slipping down toward her already soggily bulging waist and her blue hands shaking on the handle of her portmanteau.
It was hard, but necessary.
Chapter 23
The jackals were in Paris. As in during all political upheavals, human scavengers masquerading as patriots took the opportunity to roam the city, hunting in packs. Thomas, protected by his great size, camouflaged by his perfect French accent, traversed the twisting corridors of the great, dark city unchallenged.
At the Fontaine, the harassed manager had sworn to him that Hecuba Montaigne White had left the hotel by herself before noon. Lady Catherine had breakfasted earlier and disappeared upstairs. Thomas raced up to the suite and tore open the door. Empty. The room looked as though she might return at any moment; even her undergarments were still neatly folded between scented sheets of tissue in the drawers. He went through the adjoining door to Hecuba’s apartment.
These rooms bespoke a hasty and tumultuous departure. It was a shambles of clothing, powders, and personal belongings. A few huge trunks were the only traveling equipages left behind. Hecuba was gone.
As was Cat.
Thomas hammered on the door of every room in the hotel, asking the few remaining guests for any information about Cat’s whereabouts. No one knew where she was.
He left the hotel and headed north, knowing Hecuba and Cat were most likely to follow the steady stream of English trying to escape to the Channel. Too often during the long search, Thomas saw aristocrats paying the price for their self-satisfied superiority. Stripped of their belongings, in many cases their very coats, they were sometimes beaten, sometimes merely driven in front of jeering crowds, always humiliated.
One young beauty was being thrust from the filthy embrace of one guard into the waiting arms of the next and back again as her parents stood at bayonet point, rage and terror indelibly printed on their faces. A harsh, barked command in French military cant ended the sordid scene, but Thomas knew similar scenes were being enacted throughout Paris. Perhaps with Cat as the victim.
His pulse pounded in his throat. He would find her. He must.
In a little-used side street, a battered Frenchman staggered across the cobblestones, looking back over his shoulders as he stumbled along.
“Lady Montaigne White! Lady Catherine Sinclair!” Thomas called to him.
The man stopped, squinting through one puffy eye up at Thomas.
“The army is very eager to find these two,” Thomas said, hopelessness washing over him. The man could tell him nothing. He was probably some pathetic traitor escaping from a mob.
“What is in it for me?”
“A reward.”
“Bah!” The man suddenly spat, a thin stream of saliva and blood. “I do it for nothing. The bitch has gone north, through the Rue Ange barricade.”
Thomas tensed. “Which one?”
“The old lady. The one responsible for this.” The man pointed at his bruised and broken face.
“And the other?” Thomas asked, holding his breath.
“I do not know that one’s name. It might have been said, but her name, I did not hear. Timid little rabbit.”
“They escaped?”
“Yes, curse them!”
“Unharmed? Untouched?”
The man eyed Thomas suspiciously before shrugging. “Yes. Who would want anything more from those hags besides the coin they carry? Now, Monsieur, about that reward—”
“When?”
“This morning. This noon. Now, I have rethought this reward—” The man looked up but Thomas had already gone.
Blessedly, there were only a few main thoroughfares the departing English could take north to the coast from here. Thomas stopped at each coaching house, each inn, each farm along the way, looking for them.
In a career rife with frightening situations, he had never felt such terror. Images of Cat tortured him, spurring him on. Everywhere his tense query met with the same answer. No old lady traveling alone. No young lady. The sky was black, empty. No stars or moon offered the slightest illumination; the wind and cold were his only companions on his search. He was tireless, the lengthening of the evening hours bringing no sense of imminent exhaustion, only a terrible impetus; he had to find her.
He rode up to the little tavern, already begrudging his mount a much needed rest, a mouthful of grain. If Cat was not there, he had to give the mare a brief rest before she dropped beneath him. Sliding from the back of the rawboned horse, Thomas unbuckled the bridle and looped it around her neck, leading her beneath the open side of the stable. He scooped up a cupful of oats and set it on the ground before her. Then, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes, he headed to the tavern. Half an hour. No more.
Though it was well past midnight, the public rooms were still crowded. Many were sleeping propped up on benches, their heads fallen forward on their chests. Still more were awake, calling for the owner to refill their cups.
“An older Englishwoman and a young lady,” Thomas said in French to the innkeeper when he finally found him.
The short, rotund man, harassed by the calls of several others, flung up his hands. “Old, young, man, woman! There are many English here. Look yourself.”
“What do you want with an elderly gentlewoman?” a quiet voice asked.
Thomas was beside the man who’d framed the query in an instant, towering over the thin, middle-aged man. “Do you know where she is?”
“Where who is? What is the name of this woman? And why does a Frenchman seek an English lady?” the man asked suspiciously.
Thomas had to restrain himself from pulling him to his feet and choking the information from him. In English he said, “I’m English and I am looking for one of two women. Lady Hecuba Montaigne White or Lady Catherine Sinclair.”
“You are a friend?”
“Yes. Do you know where either of them is?”
The man studied him. “Distressing times, most distressing, and I strongly disagreed with her insistence on staying in that garret alone, but she would have none of it.”
“Who would have none of it? What garret?”
“Lady Montaigne White. She and my sister managed to escape here together. Lady Montaigne White insisted on sleeping in the maid’s quarters by herself.”
“And the younger woman?” Thomas asked, his desperation clear in his voice.
The older man shook his head. “There were only the Lady Montaigne White and my sister.�
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Thomas’s heart pounded in a thick, dread-drugged rhythm. The man was pointing to a rackety flight of stairs rising from the corner of the small room. Thomas ascended quickly. Another flight of stairs, no more than a steep, encased ladder, rose from the end of the hall. He flew up them and heaved open the trapdoor at the top.
It was dark inside. Only a candle, guttering in a cold draft, danced light on the low ceiling. A small cot stood on the floor, a chair draped with a dripping gown at its head. The slow cadence of deep, exhausted breathing reached Thomas’s ears.
He crossed the room, his head bent beneath the low ceiling. Kneeling beside the cot, he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, sorry to have to wake her; unable to waste valuable time. She moaned and shifted restlessly.
“Wake up. Hecuba, you must—”
She turned. The dim light revealed Cat’s face. Her cheeks were blotched with runnels of pasty-looking mud. Her hair was a tangled mat of gingery gloss. Her eyes were pressed shut, her lashes a golden sweep on the high curve of her dirty cheek.
“Dear lord,” Thomas breathed.
He slid his arms under her, lifting her tenderly up against his chest, careful not to wake her, powerless to deny himself. He leaned his back against the wall, settling her across his lap, her head tucked beneath his chin. He raised his head high, squeezing his eyes shut, opening his mouth in a wordless expression of agonized relief. Only now did the terror that had ridden with him from Paris find voice, and his legs and arms shook uncontrollably as he cradled her.
She shifted restlessly in his arms and he stroked the long, disheveled locks away from her face, brushing his fingertips gently over the contours of her face. Like a blind man, he read the shallow indentation of her vulnerable temple, the silky flare of her brow, the delicate jaw, the slender throat. Breathing in the warm exhalation of her breath, he counted the beats of her heart. And he knew, with unwavering certainty, that he was bound to her as inexorably as the tides to the moon.
He reviewed his actions, the flight to France, the desperate search, the agony of fear, and came to an unassailable conclusion. Where Cat was concerned, he had no choice. His heart was constant, immutable. It didn’t matter how many scapegraces she chose to charm, how many husbands she ultimately had. If he perceived her needs, he would meet them. No other union, sanctioned by church or state, would supersede his heart’s obstinate claim.
Promise Me Heaven Page 19
