Page 81 of Souvenir of Love

Her eyes were drawn to it, the thin red line like a lash of anger.

“You may call me many things, but you may not call me coward. I promised Lord Grenville I would bring Joley safely out of France, and that is what I intend to do. I made that promise knowing full well the cost might be my life or the lives of the men who travel with me. The only thing I did not know—and the only thing I fear—is that it might cost you yours. You, Elizabeth, were not part of the original bargain.”

“Bargain?”

“Our lives for his. That man sitting out there beside David has the potential to change the course of history, to help bring down the Revolution and restore the monarchy. His life has purpose.”

“So does yours.”

His expression made it clear that he did not believe her.

“It means something to me, and to Anne, and to your father,” she persisted.

“Myfather? My father hasn’t recognized me in three years. Half the time he thinks I’m a Roman centurion.”

“I’m sorry…”

“It’s not important.” He brushed aside her sympathy. “What is important is that you are here and you are my responsibility. And that is why, if Joley is captured, I will swear you had no knowledge of his presence. And if you try and deny me, I will say that I have disgraced you, dragged you against your will on this adventure, forced you to comply.”

His grip on her hands might well have been around her heart. “Must you always make yourself the villain?”

“I am the villain, Elizabeth. A rake, and a rogue, and a spy. But I swear, I will do anything, anything, you understand, to make certain you return safely home to your family.”

The old womanwith the eggs did not know if the blond man with the scar and the young brown-haired woman planned to return for anotherpique-nique, and the merchant did not know where they planned to go after they visited his shop. So, a company of national guardsmen spent the morning searching the old woman’s field for foreigners. After beating the bushes for two hours in the rising heat, they’d received word that they should march, double-quick, down the road and set up a roadblock. The guardsmen had spent the remainder of the day checking the papers of every traveler on the road. Failing to find the pair they sought, they’d spent the night in a nearby hayfield, rising early the next morning to resume their inspections. Tempers were short.

A stout national guardsman, with his tunic unbuttoned and his hat askew, squinted down the dusty, tree-lined road that led out of Rouen. “This is ridiculous, Henri. We’re wasting our time standing out here in this accursed heat.”

“It is never a waste of time to serve the people, Jean,” Henri responded, puffing his thin chest out so that the buttons of his new uniform sparkled like polished gems in the sunlight. “Thisroad leads east to Paris and west to the coast. Who knows what enemies of the Republic might be traveling upon it? The captain said we must be on our guard for foreign spies and fugitives. He said…” Henri added with the air of a man revealing sensitive information hitherto withheld, “that there have been reports.”

“Reports of what?”

“Unusual activity.”

Jean gave a dissatisfied grunt. Henri had volunteered for this job, as had the four other soldiers attempting to find some relief beneath a dusty tree beside the road. He, on the other hand, had been ordered by the captain to join this useless effort. He couldn’t help wondering if the “reports” had to do with his attempt to pass some time with the captain’s mistress. “Unusual activity,” he muttered, shifting his musket on his shoulder. “We’ve stopped an old man and his son hauling firewood, a cart full of chickens, and a merchant with a wagon full of wool. The most unusual thing we’ve seen today was the disgusting boil on that old man’s face.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“How would you know? You weren’t the one who had to stand up close to it.”

“Iwas checking theirpapers,” Henri said smugly, resisting the urge to point out, as he frequently did, that he was the only one in the patrol who could read. “And besides, it’s important to examine such things very carefully. That boil could have been some sort of clever disguise.”

“Clever disguise,mon cul. The thing was plain disgusting.”

The coach rumbleddown the road to Rouen, the ironclad wheels rattling over stones and kicking up dust that drifted like smoke through the open windows. Marcus wiped his brow with a delicate linen handkerchief.

“I’d close the windows,” James offered by way of apology, “but then it would be stifling in here.”

“I almost envy the poor bas…” Andre, sitting across from James, caught sight of Elizabeth and quickly amended, “the poor gentlemen sitting outside.”

All three of them cast their eyes toward the roof as if they might see through it.

“I wonder how Joley is faring.” Marcus, seated beside Andre, gave voice to their common concern.

“Better than he was huddling in that hole.”

Their heads nodded in agreement and in response to the jolting from the poor conditions of the road.

“It’s a good thing that you found him.”