Page 82 of Souvenir of Love

“I was beginning to worry he wouldn’t show,” James admitted, “that perhaps he had been discovered. Turns out he was just being cautious.”

“Caution’s a good thing, especially after more than one day at the same meeting spot,” Marcus said.

“What choice did we have? Leave him behind?”

“It was risky. Someone might have seen. You might have allowed me to take a turn. I could have brought my sketchbook.” He lifted the book in his lap to emphasize his point.

“And expose more members of the team? You and Andre are supposed to be business acquaintances, sharing a ride to the coast.” James shrugged. “And if someone did see us, all they would have seen was two besotted lovers trysting in a field.”Elizabeth caught her breath, cut by his mocking tone. Of course, she’d known their romantic picnics were an opportunity to send a signal to the fugitive Joley, but had they truly meant so little to him?

“Besides,” he continued, “the delay gave us more time to expand Grenville’s networks. With the way things are going, Idoubt the comte will be the last aristocrat Whitehall will want us to bring over.”

Elizabeth turned to look at him, aghast. “Surely you don’t mean to come back? To risk your life again?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “This may be a game for you, m’dear. Certainly, a one-time adventure. But this is the path I have chosen.”

She could almost hear his unsaid words,not you. She closed her eyes, sank back against the cushions; she’d been right to remind him they were not man and wife that morning in bed. Would have felt glad of it.If only being right didn’t make her feel so empty.

She must have fallen asleep, because she was jolted awake to the sound of David’s fist pounding on the roof, three sharp raps signaling there were soldiers ahead in the road. Her eyes flew open and she saw James’s eyes cut to Marcus.

This was it. The first test of the papers they had forged and the disguise they had created for the comte.

And if they failed, it would be the last.

The coach juddered to a stop.

“Out, out, and be quick about it.” The coach door swung open and a thin young man in a tightly buttoned uniform peered in at them. He continued to hold the door as they descended, as if they might try and wrest it from him. “This is an official checkpoint for the district of Rouen. Have your papers ready, citizens.” He nodded curtly. “Citizeness.”

In addition to the thin man who seemed to be in charge, Elizabeth spied five other soldiers armed with an assortment of muskets and swords. Two of them grabbed the traces of the horses, ordering Joley and David to come down from atop the coach. The thin soldier was studying their papers carefully, turning them this way and that, holding them up against the sunlight. Either the man couldn’t read, or he was derivingconsiderable pleasure from having them stand in the blazing sun. She suspected it was the latter.

“You are English,” the soldier said accusingly. “Why are you in France?”

Elizabeth glanced at James, Andre, and Marcus out of the corner of her eye. Andre looked bored, Marcus was whistling, and James’s expression was deceptively open.The way it had been the night he’d taken her into the library.Why should she be surprised?Deception came so easily to him.He answered the soldier’s question smoothly, repeating the story they’d been using since they’d arrived in the country.

“Is that so?” The soldier smiled like a wolf about to close his jaws on a hare. “Then why have you and the citizeness spent so much time eating and rolling about in the fields of Rouen?”

Someone had seen them! Sweat trickled down Elizabeth’s ribs.What had they seen? Lovers, she told herself, repeating James’s words. Had they seen Joley? She fought the impulse to glance in the comte’s direction.He is just a servant, she reminded herself.No one looks at servants.

“I am an admirer of your revolution and I come here to learn.” James stepped forward and caught her hand. “But I am also a man. A man newly married and very much in love with his wife.”

His voice was low and warm, and there was an expression in his eyes when they met hers that made her want to believe.Did he mean it?Or was he acting once again?“A revolutionary notion, is it not?”

Elizabeth didn’t know if James was addressing her or the soldier. But it was the soldier who responded, with a derisive hoot. “Search the luggage,” he barked to his companions, “and search the coach, too.”

The soldiers tossed down the trunks, flinging them open and rifling through their contents with purposeful abandon. Linenswere dropped in the dust, powder boxes were emptied, hems and cuffs of dresses and shirts and jackets were fingered and sometimes split. All of Elizabeth’s hatboxes were opened and their contents examined, ribbons and flowers and feathers torn away to see if anything had been concealed beneath them. They climbed up into the coach, pounding their fists against the panels and slashing with their bayonets at the seats.

One of the soldiers leaned out of the door of the carriage and dumped the papers and quills from Marcus’s traveling desk. Elizabeth glanced at Marcus; his face remained expressionless as the soldier said, “Nothing here,” and let the elegantly carved wooden box fall.

“If you are spies,” the thin soldier said, leaning up into James’s face, “you will not slip through my fingers. Search the citizen and his servants,” he commanded over his shoulder.

“The woman, too?” a stout soldier in a rumpled uniform asked.

“Yes,” he snapped. “There’s no telling what she might be hiding under her skirts.”

James and the stout soldier stepped toward her at the same time.

“Is there a problem, citizen?” the thin soldier inquired with mock politeness.

“No.” Elizabeth caught James’s eyes, willing him to step back, to understand that she had put herself in this situation as surely as she’d put herself into the library with him.