Lady Scandal (15 page)

She smiled at once, but with her cheeks
flushed.
"Good morning, dear, I trust you slept well?
I believe Mr.
Marsett has gone to fetch us water.
Do we have any apples left for
breakfast?"

They had no apples.
Nor much of anything
else to eat.
Paxten advised them to drink a good deal of water.
"It
fills the belly," he said, and gave Diana a wink.

She frowned at him.

By the time the sun had risen high, she had
forgotten to disapprove of him and instead begged, "Can we not stop
somewhere for a meal?
I am famished!"

Alexandria gave her niece a smile, but her
empty stomach echoed the sentiments.
The cart rumbled along under
them, Paxten's hands loose on the rein and the donkey proving
remarkably quick in its walk.
They had seen nothing more of
anything resembling soldiers, but then they had avoided anything
but open countryside.

Abruptly, Alexandria straightened.
"Look.
There must be a farmhouse or village ahead—you can see the smoke
there above the trees.
Paxten, do let us stop.
After all, we cannot
not eat again until we reach England."

He argued against stopping, but agreed
finally when both Alexandria and Diana protested to halt should the
smoke prove to come from only a farmhouse.
"But, mind, I should do
the talking for us.
Now do your best to look poor peasants."

"We have the starving part down quite well,"
Diana answered, her tone pert.

Alexandria smiled.
Despite her hunger,
despite the sore muscles from having slept on the ground, she had
never felt so happy.
So lighthearted.
Was it that she had at last
been able to tell Paxten everything?
Or was it just having slept in
his arms?

Her face warmed at that, but she could
summon no guilt.
Not when she had enjoyed it so much.
But she knew
better than to take it as anything other than what it was—a
pleasant memory now, and nothing to indicate any hope for the
future.

Remember that only a few days ago he had someone
else in his arms.

But had he really called another woman by her
name?

Satisfaction curled inside her.
She could not stop it.
However, she knew enough to recognize the
danger of pride in such a dubious accomplishment.
Still, how nice
that he had not been able to forget her.

The smoke she had glimpsed came indeed from
a rough farmhouse.
The thatched roof needed repair.
The stained
walls had yellowed from mud and rain and needed whitewash.
The gray
stone fence around a pen of recently shorn sheep had rocks missing
from its jagged top.

In the yard, a dark-haired
woman dressed in black scowled at them as Paxten drew the cart to a
halt.
Four thin, black chickens clucked and scratched the dirt
around her, heads bobbing down to peck at the dirt.
With weathered
skin and her lined face, the woman might have been seventy or a
badly-aged fifty.
Her mouth pulled down and black eyes glared at
them as Paxten gave her a cheerful
bonjour
.

Easing himself from the cart,
Paxten handed the reins to Alexandria and strode across the dirt
yard to converse with the woman.
Alexandria quickly lost track of
his rapid French.
She started to look about her, but straightened
and looked back when the woman burst out with an angry tirade of
words.

Leaning close to her niece, Alexandria
asked, "What is it?
Did he offend her?"

"I...well, she seems to be insulted by his
offer to pay for food.
She is going on and on that even with her
husband and sons away in the army she needs no such charity."

"Oh, dear.
She is proud." Alexandria glanced
at the chickens, thinking longingly of how good an omelet would
taste.
Such a delicacy seemed unlikely, unless....

She turned to Diana.
"Perhaps there is
something we can do here?"

Her niece smiled, and
Alexandria swung out of the cart, calling in her awkward French,
"
Pardon, Madam.
"

Her words stopped the tirade and
the woman stared at her, eyes narrowed.
Paxten also shot her a
warning frown and started towards her, his French too quick for her
but his gestures unmistakable.
He wanted her back in the cart and
to stay out of this.

Folding her arms, she
smiled, and said, "
Non
!"

That stopped him.
He stared at her,
blinking.
Turning, Alexandria urged Diana out of the cart.
She
whispered a few words to her niece.

With his tone low to hide his English,
Paxten muttered, "What are you doing?"

Alexandria replied in her halting French,
"Getting us breakfast." She urged Diana forward and the girl
approached the old woman, her French low and hesitant.
The woman's
suspicious expression softened a fraction.

"What did you tell her to say?" he
asked.

Leaning close to him, Alexandria switched
back to English, "She is explaining how you are returned yourself
from the army because of a wound.
And that you hate to talk about
such things, but that you are a war hero."

The woman began to smile, showing crooked
teeth.
She grumbled something that seemed to be a question as to
why did they not say so at once, and invited them into the Lafeu
household.

Paxten glanced down at Alexandria.
"How did
you know such an approach would work with her?"

She tucked her arm into his.
"I did not.
But
I understand how it is easier to give charity than to be given it."
She thought of all the dreadful pity that others had tried to
shower on her.
For Paxten’s leaving, when the whispers had wanted
to make her into a broken, abandoned lover.
And then after Bertram
had died.
She had learned very quickly to avoid those who seemed
determined to make her into something tragic, for it had only fed
her own wish to indulge self-pity and she would not do that.

"Do you think," she asked, "that we could
perhaps stay an hour or two to help her just a little in exchange
for her hospitality.
She might not want our coin, but she may take
some assistance."

He frowned but lifted one shoulder.
"Just
remember, we could use some of that ourselves.
And the longer we
stay, the more time we give others to find us."

His concern did not touch her.
She glanced
around at the bright sky, the sheltering trees around the
farmhouse, the deep peace of the place.
She thought of all that he
had done to hide them—selling the horses, changing their clothing,
keeping them from even so much as the sight of a city.

For once, she found herself able to be the
flippant, carefree one.
She gave him a grin, and said, her words
light, "Nonsense.
It would take an expert pack of hounds to follow
our donkey cart!
Now, come and see if Madam Lafeu can be talked
into making an omelet."

#

Patience.
Practice and patience.
Drills had
taught him that.
And now Taliaris told himself again those were the
qualities a soldier needed.
Was not this matter of stopping at
every village and asking the same questions like a saber drill?
So
why did it not feel a task worth a man's time?
Because this endless
asking never gave him the answers he wanted?
But going through the
pattern of slashes and lunges honed precision.

This honed boredom.

If only someone else had
been on duty that night
, Taliaris thought,
weary in the saddle, though he had had longer days under campaign
marches.
Shaking his head, he thought of the letter from the
general that had reached him this morning.
General D'Aeth had been
ordered to Santo Domingo by the First Consul himself to control
that rebellious island.
Taliaris knew what that meant.
A long ocean
voyage, and at the end of it an island in the Caribbean where death
came more often from yellow fever than from any battle.
D'Aeth had
placed the redemption of Madam D'Aeth's honor into Taliaris's
hands.

Taliaris straightened.
That letter had been
a good reminder of his duty.

At the sound of galloping hooves
approaching, Taliaris reined in his mount.
Lieutenant Paulin called
for the column of twelve men to halt.

A horseman rounded a bend in the road,
sunlight glinting off the brass buttons on his uniform cuffs.
The
man bent low over the saddle, his red dolman jacket flying behind
him and the plume on his shako bent with the wind.
White sweat
flecked his horse's dark brown chest.
Even before the man slid his
mount to a halt, Taliaris could see the hard breathing of both
rider and horse.
Dust caked the man's face and streaked his blue
hussar uniform.

With his horse fretting from the gallop and
on a tight rein, the man saluted, and said, breath ragged,
"Sir,...as you expected, the women...in the coach...they were not
the English we seek."

Taliaris nodded.
He had anticipated nothing
else, but he had needed to check the innkeeper's story.
There had
been a possibility—a slim one—that the innkeeper had been paid to
lie that the coach carried only his cousin and her daughters.
It
seemed, however, that a few threats had persuaded the man to give
the truth.

"You detained everyone?" Taliaris asked.

The messenger nodded.
"Yes, sir.
As
ordered."

"Good.
We will see to them later." Taliaris
frowned, and glanced behind him.
He had split his forces to send a
detachment after the coach.
They would return with less speed than
this messenger.
And he had split his forces again to more
thoroughly search for their quarry—now he had men spread across the
main roads in North France.

They had also lost time going through that
inn, and the village.
Eventually, however, Lieutenant Paulin had
ferreted out that the blacksmith had seen his neighbor, one
Monsieur Degau, talking to a stranger.
After that, to pull out the
rest of the story from Degau, of how he had sold his horses and
carriage, came easily.

This Marsett must have the devil's tongue,
for he seemed to have not just the Englishwomen willingly with him.
He seemed able to charm almost everyone he met.
Degau, fearful as
he was, kept repeating what a gentleman Marsett had seemed, despite
his unkempt dress.
And how polite he had been.

Taliaris glanced at the dusty messenger and
his tired horse.
He gave a nod to his lieutenant, and Paulin
ordered the man to fall in.
The messenger saluted again, mounted,
wheeled his horse and trotted to the end of the column.

Frowning, Taliaris scanned the horizon.
Somewhere out there in the French countryside was Marsett.
He could
not have gone that far—not in a farmer's decrepit carriage.

They would find him.

And Marsett would not only pay for his
crimes.
He would suffer also for causing so much trouble!

#

Two days later, Taliaris found himself
wishing again that he was back at the barracks in Paris for saber
drills.
The trail had seemed so promising, but now....

Taliaris glanced at Paulin, standing stiff
before him in the temporary headquarters they had established in
Clermont.
Marsett had passed through here.
And then—nothing.
Taliaris frowned.
"Two women and a man travel in a gig pulled by a
pair of farm horses—one brown, one a red roan.
They must be making
for the coast, and yet they slip through our hands.
How is this
so?"

Paulin shifted on his feet as if
his boots had shrunk.
"Perhaps they make for Belgium or
Germany?"

Taliaris picked up his wineglass and stared
into the deep burgundy.
"Why?
They are English.
Why would they not
think of home?
That means the English Channel."