Page 67 of Souvenir of Love

“Such a romantic tale.” Anne snapped open the fan that hung at her wrist. “I believe it is your move, Sir Edmund.”

His eyes shifted from her to the board. “Yes, it is.” He moved his piece. “She is with child.”

“Your nephew’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations.”

“She is lying in at her mother’s. A bit peculiar if you ask me, but then I imagine most women like to be with their mothers at such a delicate and emotional time.”

She nodded absently. Anne rarely allowed herself to think about what daughters did with their mothers. She didn’t need a mother; she didn’t need a father. They managed quite well by themselves, she and James.

“Hartsdale,” he continued. “It is near your estates in the country, I believe.”

“A ride of a day or two, depending on whether you go by carriage or by horseback, and the weather, of course.”

“Mrs. Norcroft has invited most of the family to visit, to keep the young lady company, while she awaits the big event. First grandchild, you know. She’s certain it will be a boy.”

Anne smiled politely, wondering how she could steer the conversation back to Moreham and his doings in France. She found it difficult to imagine Moreham involved in trade, and yet his fortune had taken an extraordinary turn for the better since he’d inherited what little had remained of it from his sot of a brother, George.

“With the season coming to an end, you and your father and your cousin will, no doubt, be planning to return to the country soon. And since my family will all be gathered so nearby, I was wondering, Lady Anne, if you and Miss Agatha might honor us with a visit. Of course, your father, His Grace, is welcome, too, if his health and interests permit.”

Her mind on Moreham, she’d lost the thread of whatever it was Bogglesworth was rambling on about. While the man had glimmers of intelligent conversation, most of the time he was interminably long-winded. Anne glanced up at him, smiling prettily. “I’m so very sorry, Sir Edmund, but my mind was on the game. Would you be so kind as to repeat yourself?”

“I was wondering, Lady Anne, if you would honor me, honor my family, by paying a call upon the home of my cousin, your neighbor, Mrs. Frederick Norcroft.”

Twenty-Four

Elizabeth was no longer worried about how she’d manage to spend a night in a bed with James Dinsmore. She’d have happily stripped off her clothes and slept with a cow, if only they’d stop traveling. She was exhausted. She felt as if every bone had been rattled loose and her skirts were as sodden as if she’d been sitting atop the carriage instead of inside it.

It was all the checkpoints. There seemed to be one in every town: Ardes, St. Omer, Aires. She’d lost count after Lilliers. National guards, local officials, grubby gangs with woolen caps, all of them armed, all of them demanding that they get out of the coach and show their papers. She’d been terrified at first, standing in the pouring rain, watching as the men searched the coach. She’d been frightened at the second stop. By the third, she was nearly as calm as James appeared to be. And by the fourth, the inspections began to blur into a miserable ritual.

And there had been the stream they’d crossed. Swollen by the rain, it was more like a river. Halfway across, water had begun to trickle through the cracks of the carriage door. The trickle had quickly become a flood, and Elizabeth, kneeling on the seat, with her skirts gathered up in her arms, found herself immensely grateful James’s coach had been built with its unusually raisedseats. When she’d commented on them, James said she should thank David; the seats were among the modifications he’d designed. She’d meant to ask him if he’d taken David on because of his design talents and his fluency in French, because otherwise the man seemed less than skilled as a coachman. But then the coach had lurched, she’d grabbed the door handle to keep her balance, and she’d forgotten.

The berlin slowed. “Please, Lord, I promise to repent of every last sin, if only that’s the inn and not another checkpoint.”

“Every last sin? I’m afraid we haven’t got that much time. We’ll need to be off early in the morning.”

Elizabeth hadn’t thought she’d spoken loudly enough for him to hear, but she found she didn’t care. “James, is this it? Is this the inn?”

He smiled at the excitement in her voice. “Yes, indeed, Citizeness Dinsmore, this is where we shall be stopping for the night.”

She arranged her sodden hat on her head and smoothed her skirts. They were stopping. Finally stopping. And there would be a warm fire, and warm food, and warm sheets. Perhaps even warm water with which to wash. She leaned forward expectantly. The carriage door swung open. She saw Marcus holding a lantern. Beyond him, across a muddy yard, she could see a low building with plaster-daubed walls and a tiled roof. It looked like heaven.

The problemwith living in a tunnel that was once part of an underground plumbing system is that while it keeps the rain off one’s head, it doesn’t keep it from running in a steady stream beneath one’s feet. Amaury de Joley braced his back against one side of the tunnel and stretched his legs across to the other. It was uncomfortable, but it kept his shoes dry. He wonderedwhere the Englishmen were. They were to meet him in two weeks’ time; that was what the note in the tree stump had said. Amaury didn’t know the identities of the Englishmen, any more than he knew the identity of the individual who was helping him hide in the tunnel, or the individual who left rocks on the stump to let him know there was a letter or a bit of food hidden inside. It was better this way. There’d be no one to betray if he was discovered and tortured. But it made him feel oddly abandoned.Écoeurant,mawkishness, he chided himself. It was simply that he was unaccustomed to being alone. He’d been a courtier. Most of his life he’d been attended by servants or surrounded by companions. Even his private moments had been shared, with his wife, or his mistresses, or his daughter, Marguerite.

Marguerite, with her dark eyes and dark curls, so like her mother’s, and the funny little overbite that made her plump mouth look like she was pouting. But she didn’t pout, not his daughter; when she didn’t get her way she’d laugh or simply change the subject. He imagined her sitting in some well-appointed salon in Paris, engaged in witty banter, probably about art—Marguerite imagined herself an artist. In his mind’s eye, he saw the candles guttering down into pools of wax as the food grew cold on the plates.

At the thought of food, his stomach gurgled nearly as loudly as the water running beneath his outstretched legs. It had been two days since there was food in the stump, three since his last visit to the old woman’s chicken coop. As soon as the rain stopped and the ground dried enough so it wouldn’t leave a record of his tracks, he’d risk another trip. Amaury thought of the rows of hens on their nests, imagining them roasted with potatoes on rows of plates…

James Dinsmore looked downupon the sleeping form of Elizabeth Harcrest. While he’d been downstairs talking with Marcus, David, and Andre, she’d cleaned up and climbed in. Made herself comfortable. She was lying on her stomach, face buried in the pillows, hands fisted in the sheets, which were drawn tightly around her chin. A light spluttering sound issued from her, a sound that, had he not been a gentleman, he might have considered a snore. She’d taken most of the pillows, he noticed, and more than her share of the covers. And while she might claim to favor the right side of the bed, tonight she was sleeping dead center.

He ought to wake her. He was damn tired, too. And yet, he found himself oddly reluctant to do so. It had been rough traveling today, and there’d be more of the same tomorrow. She’d foisted herself on their company, he reminded himself; she should be grateful she wasn’t sleeping on the floor or on the tables in the common room, with the rest of the company. He reached out to shake her, but his hand stayed. She’d stood the traveling well. She hadn’t complained about the roads, or the rain, or the food. She hadn’t swooned, or wept, or made a goose of herself at the sight of the rough gendarmes and their weapons.

In fact, her presence at their frequent stops had actually been rather helpful—not that he’d ever tell her. Quite a number of the guards had spent more time inspecting her face and figure than their coach and papers. James didn’t think there was much chance the false panels in the sides of the coach where they’d hidden their cache of counterfeit assignats or the panels behind the seats where they’d stored old clothes, wigs, jars of hair dye, and pots of face paint would be discovered. Still, it didn’t hurt to have her as a distraction.

“Elizabeth,” he said softly, hoping the insistence in his voice would encourage her to move.