The Disdainful Marquis (24 page)

Catherine looked from Rose's shocked face to James's frankly admiring one, and then looked down at herself again.

“Don't I look right?” she asked.

James started to laugh, and laughed till he had to hold on to the side of the dresser for support.

“Oh girl,” he sputtered, “you do look right. But not in the way you could wish.”

Rose tittered as well. But then a considering look came into her eyes. “Oh, Catherine,” she finally sighed, “you could have made a fortune. You could have had such a career.”

“Here, Catherine,” James finally said, steering her toward his dresser, where he had a small faded-looking glass in the corner. “See for yourself.”

Catherine felt the color flooding her face as she stared at the image in the gray speckled glass. She might as well have been nude, she thought with shock, the blood roaring in her ears. The white shirt strained its buttons over her high breasts and emphasized them. And the pantaloons clung to her hips and legs like another skin. She was, she thought, in confusion, seeing her body's slim but rounded outline—the most indecent-looking female she had ever seen,

Desperate, she turned and blurted, “If I bound myself…here. And if there were another pair of pantaloons, but perhaps larger.…
”

“No, Catherine,” James said kindly, “for it wouldn't do. There's not a portion of you that don't look like just what you are, a full-blown woman.”

“But,” Catherine protested, “I've heard about it being done. I've read about it as well. Women can disguise as young men.”

“Some women, maybe,” James chuckled, never taking his eyes from her frame, “but you, Catherine, never.”

“But you do look a treat,” Rose said helpfully. “Ever so gay. Such a nice figure of a woman, Catherine. It's very flattering in its way, dear.”

“Don't be a bufflehead, Rosie,” James put in, wrapping one arm about Rose's shoulders as Catherine sat down wretchedly upon his bed. “She don't have to look good—she has to look different.”

“All I look like,” Catherine grieved, “is a fool. Which I undoubtedly am. I've landed myself in this wretched state because I have been a fool. So it's only right that I look like one. Like a fool, like a zany.”

James's eyes narrowed as she sat there hanging her head and crossing her arms in front of her breasts.

“Now you've hit upon it, lass,” he said unexpectedly, causing Rose to turn to round upon him for his unkindness. But before she could assault him for his cruelty, he was gone, out the door.

“Don't despair, Catherine,” Rose said, sitting beside her and patting her shoulder. “I told you Ferdie is clever. He's not beaten yet. All he has to do is to get you out of this hotel and you'll be safe as may be. And I know he'll do it.”

But Catherine only shook her head and did not try to restrain the tracks of tears that were slowly coursing down her face. She could not grasp the enormity of her failure. She could not imagine what she could do if M. Beaumont actually came to claim her for his friend. She now knew that she had never really accepted that he would, or could. There had always been the possibility of escape in the back of her mind. Now, she felt, that was impossible. And now, for the first time, she had to face defeat. How, she thought frantically, ignoring Rose's murmured assurances, could she go on? It was one thing to bear the insult of being thought of as a prostitute. But she knew she could not actually be one. Her thoughts raced each other around in her mind, and she felt a despair such as she had never known.

“Here,” James said triumphantly, suddenly appearing in the door and swinging it closed with his foot.

“Mop up, girl,” he said, busily separating the garments-in his arms. “Stand up, put out your arms. Come on, Catherine, buck up. Time's running. We have to be off now. We have a chance while it's yet early. Once morning comes up full and the light's better, we cut our chances in half. Now turn. No,” he said, pulling off the jacket he had put on her and trying another. “Here, Rosie, you help. She's like a dummy. Get her arms into this. Aye, it's the very thing.”

Catherine stood and let them push her about, buttoning up the jacket they had forced her arms into. She tried to wipe her eyes, but Rose was busily adjusting her sleeve. As she began to collect herself, James wheeled her round again and began to adjust a large battered hat upon her head.

“There,” he said, standing back a pace and peering at her. “No, not quite. Half a tick,” he said, and slipped out the door again. By the time he returned, Catherine had managed to slow her labored breaths and wipe her streaming face on the sleeve of the jacket they had put on her.

“Hold still,” James ordered, and while Catherine stood dumbly, he, to her dazed horror, took some of the dirt from the handful he had acquired in the stable yard, streaked it across her cheeks, and added a dab to her nose. Then he pulled the brim of her hat further over her forehead.

“Perfect,” he exclaimed, and then he steered her to the glass again. “Now look, Catherine, that's the ticket.”

Catherine saw a bizarre vision facing her in the looking glass. It was small and woebegone. It wore a battered sloping hat down over its eyes. Its face, the part that was visible, was streaked with tears and mud. The patched and misshapen jacket that it wore hung to its knees. Its sleeves ended inches below its hands. Just the bottoms of the pantaloons showed, and bare feet completed the vision.

“A zany,” James breathed. “A want-wit lad. Just a scruffy little lack-brain French boy.”

Rose gave out a long satisfied sigh.

“There was a lad like that in the town where I grew up,” she said with amazement. “He had a good heart, but he was a simpleton. You look just like him, Catherine. Oh Ferdie, you are a one!”

“They'll be looking for a desperate lovely young beauty. They won't cast an eye at a little simpleton wheeling along with a coachman. We'll walk right out of here, under their noses. And we'll go by foot to my friend Jacques, the other side of town. He's a Frenchie, but he's all right. We can't take any of the horses from here—they'll know them. But Jacques owes me a few favors,” he smiled reminiscently, “and he'll lend us the nags. He works for some jumped-up tradesman. I'll get you to Saint-Denis right and tight. Then you board the diligence and you're off!”

“Shall I use this voice?” Catherine said in gruff tones, her spirits rising by the moment, infected by James's enthusiastic confidence.

“Oh, Lord,” James said, “you still sound a female. And your French ain't too good, is it?”

Catherine nodded sadly.

“Never mind,” James said briskly, “we'll get us a note. In French. From your folks saying as how you're just a poor simple lad going to visit your grandparents in Dieppe, and would any stranger kindly direct you right. Then you don't have to speak at all. Just be mute. You can show the note, and your fare, to the coachman on the diligence. Then when you get to Dieppe, you board the packet. Get out of your disguise. Then get the captain aside and tell him the story. Tell him all. He's bound to be an Englishman and he'll see you safely through.”

“I can't write French too well, but if someone dictates it…Catherine said doubtfully.

“Never mind,” James said dismissively. “Your hand's probably too good. Our simpleton's not from an educated lot. We'll get Jacques to pen it. It will look better if it ain't spelled or written too fine. All set?”

“But she has no shoes!” Rose cried, aghast.

“Now I'm thinking like a noddy,” James groaned. He went out the door again swiftly, mumbling that time was wasting.

“I told you,” Rose sighed happily, “didn't I? He's a caution. And he's right. For you do look a fright. Nothing like the pretty lady they're on the catch for.”

Catherine peered at herself from under the worn brim of the hat and laughed merrily.

“Thank you, Rose. That's the finest compliment and the most welcome one that I've heard since I came to France.”

She amused Rose by striking foolish poses in front of the glass and flapping the long arms of her jacket. She looked, she giggled to Rose, like a ninny, there was no doubt of that. The worn jacket must have belonged to a giant, she opined, and its threadbare shape could have accommodated both herself and Rose. With the hat pulled over her eyes, she cavorted for Rose's delighted applause, looking, they both agreed, a veritable model of a fool. James returned carrying a pair of scruffy well-worn boots in his hand.

“Boots is the one thing they never leave behind unless they're dead,” he grumbled, “'cause they cost the earth. But here's a pair someone must have outgrown and then couldn't flog to anyone before they left. They're in sad shape, but that's all to the good. Put them on quick, girl, for folks is beginning to stir already.”

Catherine straggled to fit the boots to her feet.

“I can't get them on,” she cried in anguish. “My feet are not so large, but these must have been a child's, for I can't fit into them.”

“Here,” James said, bending and helping her to tug them on, “it just needs some force.”

With concerted effort, Catherine and James managed to pull the left boot on. When she stood, Catherine stifled a cry of pain.

“Oh, Ferdie,” Rose complained, “you never are going to send her off squeezed into those. Why, she doesn't even have stockings. She'll be in agony.”

“There's no stockings about,” he said sternly, “and the agony will be worse if Beaumont finds her.”

Catherine bit her lip. If these were the only boots available, she would not quibble. She would wear them if they had hot coals in them. It would be poor spirited to lose all for the sake of momentary comforts. She reached down for the right boot, but James stayed her hand.

“Where's the blunt you've got?” he asked.

“In my portmanteau,” she answered, puzzled.

“Get it out, Rosie,” he said.

Rose looked at him with consternation, but obeyed. She handed Catherine's purse to him with a questioning look.

He spilled the coins and scrip into his hand.

“Here,” he said, wrapping the coins in a square handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

“Frenchie scrip won't be worth beans in England. Take the gold, wrap it like this, and keep it for home. There's pickpockets,” he said, wrapping the little parcel tighter and tighter, “and thieves, and portmanteaus can be lifted too. You use the poor man's safe, Catherine, and you'll be right and tight. Here,” he said, “stow it in your boot.”

“But there's hardly room for her foot,” Rose protested.

“Then she can swim to England,” James thundered, “for if someone lifts her good British gold, she's a beggar.”

“But,” Catherine said, “if someone robs me, they'll discover what I am.”

“Even it they do,” James said grimly, “with your money safe in your boot, you can still go home.”

Seeing her sudden stillness, he went on more slowly, “So you don't speak to a soul, and you just nod and show them the note. And even if worse comes to worse, you'll always be able to get home. For whatever else they may take off, it won't be your feet they're interested in. But if you're clever, they won't go near you, for you look poor as any beggar boy in Paris. So calm yourself. And hurry.”

Catherine took the little cloth-wrapped parcel from James and firmly laid it in the bottom of the right boot.

“Lay on, Macduff,” she said bravely, as James helped her tug up the boot.

“Talking warm don't suit you, Catherine,” Rose sniffed.

Catherine laughed shakily and stood. When she began to walk to the door in response to James's hurried admonitions, she had to limp.

“All to the good,” James commented, seeing her altered gait. “It completes the picture.”

Catherine and Rose waited in the darkened entry of the stable while James sauntered out casually to get the “lay of the land.”

“Rose,” Catherine said, clasping the other woman's hand, “I shall never forget you. You have been more than good to me. I do not know if we will meet again. I hope not in France, at any event. But I shall never forget you.”

Rose clasped Catherine to her and hugged her tightly. As Catherine returned her embrace, Rose gasped a little, and, drawing back, Catherine again saw the fresh red bruises on Rose's shoulder.

The older woman looked down ruefully at the angry marks on her shoulder.

“You see, Catherine,” she shrugged, “it's not a good life. And not one that I wanted for you. I choose it, so it's not the same for me. But not for you, love, for you are a lady. Anyway”—she smiled seeing Catherine's eyes glitter suspiciously beneath the downturned hat brim—“I'll be leaving it. We're to start that inn, Ferdie and I. So do you look for it one day. On the road to London. With a stable, and fine food, and flowers in the back. And Ferdie says he'll call it The Rose and the Bear, after us two. Now you go on, dear, and never look back.”

James came back to the door of the stable.

“Say your good-byes, girls, for we're off, my simple lad and I. It's a lovely clear cold morning. Get back to your rooms, Rosie, and sleep the day away. You don't know a thing, Rosie, you don't know a thing.”