by M C Beaton
And in and out her tortured thoughts went the face of Sir George Clarence. If she did not return to London, he would assume she was too ashamed to show her face. A dry sob shook Hannah’s thin body. In a book, he would ride to her rescue on a white charger and pull her up onto his saddle-bow. ‘And very silly and uncomfortable that would be,’ Hannah told herself sternly.
A wave of fury and despair at her own helplessness seized her and she banged her feet on the floor and strained at the cruel bonds that held her.
And then she heard the bolt being shot back. Hannah stiffened. She was sure that Petit would take the Greniers away and leave herself, Benjamin, and the marquis to rot, just as they had threatened to do.
She rolled over and faced the door. It opened very slowly and cautiously.
At first Hannah thought it was a vision – a vision of Sir George Clarence, standing in the sunlight and looking into the darkness of the hut.
And then his voice sounded in her ears. ‘My dear Miss Pym. This is terrible.’ And then he was kneeling beside her, fumbling in his pocket for his penknife. He sawed through her bonds and then removed her gag. Hannah let out a wail of pain and began to rub her wrists and ankles.
‘Gently,’ he said. ‘Where are the men who did this?’
‘Gone,’ croaked Hannah. ‘But they will soon be back. But how …?’
‘In a minute, my dear friend; let me attend to the others.’
He set about cutting the others free, first Yvonne and then the rest. Yvonne crawled to her father’s side, whispering in French, ‘Papa, are you all right?’
Monsieur Grenier’s eyes fluttered open. ‘I will live,’ he said. ‘They gave me a nasty blow on the head when I tried to escape and then tied me up.’
Sir George produced a small flask of brandy and held it to his lips. He drank a little and some colour came to his white cheeks. He was a small man, slight of stature, and with thick brown hair streaked with grey.
‘Introduce us to our rescuer, Miss Pym,’ said the marquis.
‘This,’ said Hannah proudly, ‘is Sir George Clarence.’
‘Of course it is,’ said the marquis. ‘But I could hardly expect to see you in the wilds of Yorkshire, Sir George. Before we have any further explanations, I think we should escape as quickly as possible, although I swear, were the ladies not with us, I would wait here for Petit and Ashton and tear them apart with my bare hands.’
The next moment, Sir George realized why Miss Pym had so many adventures. She said, ‘Why do we not wait for them to return?’
‘My dear Miss Pym,’ cried Yvonne. ‘They are armed and we are not. They took milord’s pistol from him.’
‘I’ll never walk again,’ shrieked Benjamin suddenly, as he tried to stand up. ‘I’ll murder those bastard twats. I’ll—’
‘And I’ll gag you again, you foul-mouthed servant,’ raged the marquis. ‘Never again let me hear you use such language in the presence of ladies.’
‘Rub your wrists and ankles hard, Benjamin,’ ordered Hannah. She looked at Sir George and the marquis. ‘You see, I had little else to do but think of revenge. We could hide in the woods at the back and wait for them to return. When they walk inside the hut, we shall simply bolt the door on them.’
‘And do you think, Miss Pym, that they are going to stroll into an empty hut?’ demanded the marquis testily.
‘We could perhaps make dummies of ourselves and leave them lying on the floor with some of our clothes on them,’ said Hannah eagerly. ‘Then, when Ashton and Petit are inside stooped over the dummies, we can slam and bolt the door and we have them!’
‘But,’ said Sir George patiently, ‘all they have to do is shoot the bolt off the door. They will be armed, you know.’
Hannah looked disappointed.
‘And even if we succeeded,’ said the marquis, obviously restraining himself from shouting at Hannah to take Yvonne away to safety, ‘may I remind you of the risks. Furthermore, to subject Miss Grenier and her poor father to any more danger would be folly.’
Monsieur Grenier found his voice. ‘If there were any way of capturing them,’ he said in good English, ‘then I would be prepared to help you, Miss Pym. I am not so weak as I look. They did feed me. I was being kept in prime condition for my trial.’
Benjamin, who had slipped outside during this exchange, came dancing back. ‘There’s fallen trees, stacked ready to be chopped at the back,’ he crowed. ‘Lure ’em inside, shut ’em in, pile up the wood against the door, at the back, at the winder, at the weak places, and we got ’em, like rats-in-er-trap,’ he ended, running all his words together in his excitement. ‘We can do it, Miss Pym.’
‘This is stupid folly,’ snapped the marquis. ‘Take Miss Grenier, Miss Pym, and make your way through the trees at the back until you come to a road and get her and her father to safety and let me have no more of your nonsense.’
‘But—’
‘Do as you are told, woman!’
‘How dare you!’ said Sir George. ‘How dare you, sir? It strikes me as a brave and courageous idea and instead of standing there being rude to this excellent lady, why not show correct concern for Miss Grenier by taking her away yourself and relieving us of your singularly insulting and tedious presence.’
‘Oh, I stay with Miss Pym,’ said Yvonne.
‘It is a bold but eminently sensible idea,’ said Monsieur Grenier quietly. ‘I, too, would like to see them caught.’
The marquis felt baffled and humiliated. He wanted to protect Yvonne, to save her from danger, to play the hero he had longed to play while he had lain seething and helpless on the ground.
‘Very well,’ he said suddenly, with a reluctant smile. ‘My apologies, Miss Pym. But do go outside and keep watch with Miss Grenier and leave us gentlemen to do the work.’
Monsieur Grenier said he would start by making the dummies. Yvonne walked outside on Hannah’s arm and took a deep breath of sweet clean air. ‘He came,’ said Hannah in a dazed way.
Yvonne gave her a hug. ‘He must be very fond of you.’
Hannah’s eyes clouded. ‘I fear he cannot have heard the scandal, and now I shall have to tell him. But let us sit down, Miss Grenier, and recover our strength for the ordeal ahead. If we sit down by the river, we will be able to hear the approach of any boat before they see us. We can hide behind that screen of bushes. Perhaps the marquis has the right of it and I should not be putting you at risk.’
Yvonne tossed her head. ‘He is a bully, I think.’
‘Perhaps he is simply very deeply in love.’
She sat down on the grass in the shade of the trees and Yvonne sank gracefully down beside her. ‘I think our lord is a flirt,’ she said.
‘Oh, no,’ said Hannah. ‘He flirts with such as the tiresome Dusty, for that is the polite and social thing to do. He does not flirt with you because his feelings are seriously engaged.’
‘You do not know the half of it. He kissed me.’
‘Well, I would suppose he would want to.’
‘Such a man must have kissed many ladies, but it was a first kiss for me. Besides, what honourable intentions can an English lord have towards a penniless French bourgeoise?’
‘Love is a strange and painful thing,’ said Hannah sadly, for she was thinking of herself. Her initial heady elation at seeing Sir George was ebbing away, bit by hit. When this adventure was over, she would have to tell him what Benjamin had done, and he would grow cold and remote and that would be that.
Monsieur Grenier came out sometime later to say he needed some of their clothes to dress the dummies. Their pelisses, a petticoat each, and a bonnet would be enough. He kept watch on the river while they retreated farther into the trees to take off their petticoats. ‘I have pinned sacking over the window of the hut,’ he said when they emerged. ‘It must be so dark that all they get is an impression of bodies lying on the floor. Perhaps you can help me, Yvonne, and leave Miss Pym to keep watch.’ Yvonne and her father moved off, talking in rapid French. Hannah won
dered what they were saying and whether Monsieur Grenier was asking about the marquis.
The men were working busily. They had a pile of tree trunks and saplings piled at the back of the hut in such a way that they could be moved quickly into place. ‘You may take a rest, sir,’ said the marquis to Sir George. ‘We cannot do anything else until the dummies are finished.’ Sir George had surrendered his coat and hat to Monsieur Grenier, as had Benjamin and the marquis. He reflected, as he walked down to the river to join Hannah, that it was just as well the French gentleman hadn’t thought it necessary to have his breeches as well.
He stopped before he came up to Hannah and stood for a few moments watching her. Her sandy hair was shiny and gleaming in the sun, a soft breeze ruffling the curls that Hannah had so assiduously created by sleeping with her hair in curl-papers.
He went forward and sank down onto the grass beside her. ‘So this is what you get up to on your travels,’ he said.
Hannah glanced sideways at him and blushed, because in his shirt-sleeves he seemed very masculine, approachable, no longer the well-tailored god of London days.
‘While we wait, tell me all that has happened,’ he said.
And so Hannah told him all that she knew about Monsieur Petit, Yvonne and her father, and the marquis hardly believing as she spoke that Sir George was here with her, in the middle of an adventure.
‘But you have not yet told me how you came to find me,’ said Hannah, once she had finished the tale of her adventures to date.
Hannah’s strange eyes shone every colour of the rainbow as he told her of finding Mrs Clarence while he was searching York for Miss Hannah Pym.
But the colour gradually went out of Hannah’s eyes and she plucked nervously at a stem of grass.
‘Why did you come to look for me?’ she asked.
‘Because I was bored,’ he said lightly, not wishing to distress her by telling her of the gossip about her that had been circulating society. ‘I could not wait for you to return to hear your latest adventure and so I decided to hunt you down. And now here I am in the thick of it.’
Hannah turned a little pale, squared her shoulders, and said miserably, ‘You … you … would not have come had you known what Benjamin did, what Benjamin had said …’
‘To be honest, that is one of the reasons I did come, Miss Pym. You see, I traced the gossip to its source …’ Magnanimously, Sir George did not want to get Benjamin into trouble, as it was quite obvious that Miss Pym did not know her footman had written to him.
‘I am so ashamed!’ cried Hannah.
She made to jump to her feet but subsided as he laid a hand on her arm. ‘Stay. I did, I think, my best to scotch the rumour, and so here I am.’
Tears welled up in Hannah’s eyes. ‘I did not think you would want to see me again.’
‘My very dear friend, that is really why I came. I could not bear to think of your distress. We shall never refer to this matter again. I do not give up my friends because of tittle-tattle.’
She should have been glad, relieved, but was conscious only of his hand on her arm and how breathless that contact was making her feel, of how she yearned for him while he smiled down on her with simple friendship in his eyes – and nothing else.
Hannah gave herself a mental shake. Her nerves were overset, she told herself severely, because of the excitements of the day. She prided herself on being a strong character, but no character, however strong, could feel other than weak and shaken after being rescued from a lingering death. Had she not prayed and hoped that the old friendship between them would be restored? Had she not told God that was all she wanted?
‘Thank you,’ she said simply, ignoring the seventeen-year-old virgin inside who was crying, Love me. ‘I value your friendship.’
The spry figure of Monsieur Grenier appeared outside the hut, calling to them.
He seemed amazingly recovered from his ordeal and appeared to be taking a childlike delight in the possible capture of his tormentors. But then, reflected Hannah, he was used to danger.
Monsieur Grenier led them to the hut and pointed proudly to the dummies on the floor. In the gloom of the hut they looked remarkably lifelike. Hannah bent down and peered closely. Her pelisse and petticoat had been stuffed with leaves. The ‘head’ was made from scraps of paper and leaves; with the hat on top and the figure lying, as it were, face-down on the floor, it looked real enough.
The marquis, Benjamin, and Yvonne joined them. ‘Now,’ said the marquis, ‘I do not think we should loiter about here any longer. It is time to hide in the woods at the back. The fallen trees are piled round the side of the hut where we can easily roll them to block the door and also the window.’
They followed him out of the gloom of the hut.
‘We will now bolt the door at the front and wait,’ said the marquis. ‘When they are inside, Benjamin will help me with some other stout trees and branches and we will wedge the door closed tight so that even if they shoot the bolt away, they will not be able to escape. Then we will have them, as you so rightly said, Benjamin, like rats in a trap.’
‘What if one of them waits outside?’ asked Yvonne.
‘Then we will need to try to take him.’
‘What do we do now?’ asked Hannah as they walked together into the shelter of the woods at the back of the hut.
‘There is nothing we can do but wait,’ said the marquis. ‘Fortunately, the weather is warm,’ he added, looking at the ladies without their pelisses and the men without their coats. ‘I must apologize to you again, Miss Pym. What a sad, unadventurous fellow I must seem to you. But my fear was all for Miss Grenier, not for myself.’
They chose a spot in a little glade. Benjamin was told to climb up one of the trees to where he could see the river.
The rest sat down on the grass. The marquis looked at Monsieur Grenier. ‘Now we have a moment’s peace and quiet, can you tell me why they ransacked your room? We thought you had escaped them, for your toilet-case was gone.’
‘I kept it by me at work with a few personal belongings,’ said Monsieur Grenier. ‘Just in case I had to make a quick escape. But they came for me. They told me they had Yvonne. They were able to describe her and which stage-coach she had been travelling on. I did not think it a trick. I went meekly with them.’
‘But why search your papers?’
‘A friend of mine escaped from France recently. He brought with him an interesting packet of papers. In it, there is proof that Petit was playing both sides of the fence before the Revolution, acting as a spy for the government for one group and spying against them for the other. He has been searching the papers of all us old collaborators, trying to get them back. He may have suspected that I have them.’
‘And do you?’ asked Hannah.
‘I have them in a pocket on the inside of my breeches. They did not search me, apart from making sure I was not armed.’
‘Why did you not send them back to France?’ asked the marquis. ‘He would have been executed by his own tribunal.’
‘I waited too long. I was wondering who to send them to. Many on the tribunal were appointed by Petit and might conceal the evidence. What is your part in all this, milord?’ asked Monsieur Grenier curiously.
Hannah listened eagerly, hoping he would say something about caring for Yvonne.
‘I think I trust you all now enough to tell you the truth,’ said the marquis. ‘I was asked by the War Office to follow Monsieur Petit and find out what he was up to. That seemed a more interesting plan than picking him up right away. And so I met your daughter. I had to see you too, Monsieur Grenier, to make sure that you really had turned against the Revolution. You worked for it once.’
‘Cannot you understand why?’ pleaded Monsieur Grenier.
‘Oh, yes, there are many in this country that are seduced by the idea of equality. It is not the ideals which are wrong but the uses of them. The bloodshed still goes on, I gather.’
‘From what I hear, yes.’ Monsieur Grenier gave
a shudder. ‘Not the mass executions, not the crowds, but still enough to frighten and horrify.’
‘And will you continue to live in York?’
‘With my daughter, yes. I can make a good living as a carpenter. So useful to have a second trade.’
Sir George saw the disappointed look on Hannah’s face and the way she looked from the marquis to Yvonne and thought with wry amusement that the travelling matchmaker could not for one moment give up her favourite pastime, even when she was sitting on the grass, minus hat, pelisse, and petticoat and waiting for the return of armed French spies.
Yvonne sat quietly, her hands folded, sunlight glinting in her hair and her long lashes shielding her eyes. When she had lain there, bound and gagged, she had been glad, yes, glad, that he had kissed her. That would be one memory to keep her warm as she mounted the scaffold with her father after some farce of a trial in Paris. She wished now that she had not supported Hannah in this folly of trying to trap Petit and Ashton. She wanted to get away and forget the marquis as soon as possible, begin a new life as a carpenter’s daughter, and perhaps she would marry a carpenter’s son, someone very worthy and honest and decent, who never would make her burn and sigh under the pressure of his lips.
There came a rustle in the leaves above her head and Benjamin dropped lightly out of the tree onto the grass. ‘There’s four of ’em this time,’ he said, his clever, mobile cockney face almost ludicrous in its dismay.
‘Damn,’ muttered the marquis. He looked Benjamin up and down. ‘Care for a mill?’
‘Would I ever,’ said Benjamin with a grin.
‘Stay here, the rest of you. Benjamin, come quickly. Let’s hope they all go inside, but we will have to try to ambush perhaps two of them and get their weapons off them. Sir George, come with us as well. Shut and bolt the door as soon as you see the opportunity.’
When they had gone, Hannah took Yvonne’s hand. ‘We will creep to the edge of the woods, Yvonne. We may be able to be of help.’
