Promise Me Heaven (27 page)

“I can get much more than that
pauvre
necklace from someone else,” grumbled the driver.

“I have more!” Cat gasped fearfully as she passed her portmanteau up to one of the men in the wagon.

“Now, now, m’dear. Do not concern yourself.” Her savior patted her hand. “Come now, lads, help the lady!”

Three pairs of hands reached over and swung Cat up and over the wagon’s sides. One of the middle-aged women offered a distracted smile. The other ignored her. The little company retreated into silence as the wagon started forward.

Only the man who’d spoken revealed any emotion. His face, Cat surmised, was not red from the cold, but with barely restrained anger. He muttered to himself in sharp, vehement barks before noting Cat’s stare, obscured though it was by the heavy veil.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” He inclined his head in an abrupt, military nod. “Gerald Leades, of His Maj—”

“Gerald!” The woman who’d smiled at Cat gasped.

“Damnation! Am I to skulk about like some whipped cur while that miserable little, trumped-up—”

“Gerald!” the woman implored, laying a restraining hand on his arm. The couple’s eyes locked. Abruptly the rage seeped from Leades’s face, leaving on his florid countenance an odd combination of misery and tenderness.

“For you, Sally. Only for you,” he whispered. He turned back to Cat. “My wife, Sally Leades.”

“Lady Hecuba Montaigne White,” Cat rasped.

“Honored, ma’am,” the older woman said.

The group fell once more into silence. A young English dandy appeared, panting breathlessly at the side of the wagon as he kept up with them. Wordlessly the men reached down to lift him over the side. He shook his head and pointed to several trunks piled on the curb some yards behind. As silently as hands had been offered, they were withdrawn, leaving the youth staring, openmouthed and astonished, in their wake.

“Fool!” said Leades, rage once more coloring his face.

“Lady Montaigne White, how is it you are alone during this crisis?” Sally Leades seemed to ask more to distract her husband than from any real interest.

“My footmen ran away. My maid was French,” Cat answered, aware her words sounded curt, but afraid conversation would give her away. She knew the haute ton, comfortably reviewing her actions in London, would find no situation dire enough to justify an unchaperoned state.

The driver suddenly pulled the horses to a stop, pointing to a huge crowd gathered at the end of the street. “The blockades are up. We go no farther. Get out.”

Stunned, the occupants of the wagon struggled to their feet, fear and uncertainty robbing them of argument. Except for Leades. His jowls quivering, he grated out, “How much?”

The driver shrugged, eager to be off and haul more passengers from one point of entrapment to another.

“There is nothing I can do. See? Blockade. Soldiers.”

Leades pulled a purse from his greatcoat. It swung heavily from its leather thong. The driver watched its hypnotic movement as his hand slowly reached up toward it.

“Not yet,” sneered Leades. “Not until we are past the blockade.”

“You are too many,” whined the driver.

“Take the women, then.”

“Oui, oui! I will take the women.”

“No!” Sally Leades cried out. “I won’t go without you!”

Leades smiled, love and satisfaction equally mingled. “But you must, Sal. I shall be much better use to His Majesty with you safely on your way to England.”

Gently, he brushed his blunt fingertips across her cheek. Unfolding her hand, he placed the purse in it.

“Not until you are past the barricades. If he should try anything, scream for the soldiers. They would not like to be left out of any transaction he’s made. I will see you in London when this situation has been properly resolved.”

Leades heaved himself out of the wagon. Wordlessly the other men followed. Clipping one of the horses on its rump, an expression of anticipation on his solid face, Gerald Leades watched the wagon roll away.

A few minutes later, the driver stopped the wagon on a quiet back street.

“Soon you cover yourselves with straw. Be quiet. Maybe we get you past,” he said, his eyes on the purse Sally Leades was tightly clutching.

“I will not cover myself in these filthy weeds,” the other woman said, the first words Cat had heard her voice.

“Then you get out,” said the driver. “These soldiers will look away from a wagon of hay, but I do not bet my neck they be so forgiving if they see Englishwomen.”

“All right.” The woman stood up, dusting off her sodden skirts. “I will get off.”

“Please,” implored Sally, “you mustn’t. You can’t.”

“Oh, but I can,” the woman retorted, every inch the grande dame. “I shall go back to the hotel. Someone there will, no doubt, procure proper transport to England. One must have standards.”

Cat wanted to laugh. Ridiculous, foolish woman! Acting as though this were some game she no longer wanted to play.

“Sit down!” Cat hissed. “Your misplaced sense of decorum will find you a permanent guest of Napoleon’s!”

The woman sniffed. “I can understand this sort of behavior from a soldier’s wife but would have thought better of you, Lady Montaigne White.”

Than you don’t know Hecuba. “There is a time and place for insisting on purposeless niceties. This is neither.”

The woman sniffed and clambered over the side of the wagon before Cat could restrain her, dragging a jewelry case after her. The driver, obviously eager to leave the troublesome woman behind, snapped the leads on the horses’ rumps, moving them forward into a trot.

“You must stop!” Cat called out.

“She stays,” he said without turning.

Cat stared at the diminishing figure, standing stiff with offended dignity.

“Make it back to the hotel!” she called, the wind sucking the words from her mouth and scattering them in the frozen alley.

“Now, you women give me your purse and cover yourselves with hay” the driver said a few minutes later. He had fetched the wagon up behind a stack of crates, a few yards from the barricade. A couple of shabby soldiers huddled next to a muddy quagmire encompassing most of the street.

“Give me the purse, I say,” the driver insisted, his eyes sidling back and forth between Sally Leades and the rough plank he used as a footboard.

“Don’t give it to him, Mrs. Leades,” Cat whispered, burrowing into the hay. “Remember what your husband said.”

The driver’s cruel eyes shifted toward Cat. “Husband gone. Give it to me now or get out!”

Sally, her expression tortured with indecision, looked pleadingly at Cat.

“Mrs. Leades,” Cat said, “listen to me. Give your purse into my keeping.”

With a sigh of gratitude, Sally shoved the bag into Cat’s frozen hands. “Yes, milady.”

“Bah!” The driver swung down from the seat and stomped unhurriedly over to Cat’s side of the wagon. She shrank against the back of the seat. Once more she was struck by the apparent negligence of the guards. There was no possible way they could have failed to notice them.

“Maybe you should give it to him,” Sally said in a quavering voice.

“
Give?
” Cat said. “He’s going to take it. Look, Mrs. Leades. No muddy tracks exit the far side of the mud. Those guards aren’t blind or deaf. They know we are here. They are simply waiting for their share of what this man robs us of.”

Cat’s mind raced, looking for a way out. “Whatever I do, Mrs. Leades, just hang on to the sides of the wagon.”

“You women, give it to me.” The driver had reached them now, his dirty face twisted with frustration.

“No!” Cat yelled so loudly that even the guards lifted their heads.

“Then I take.”

“Take?” shrieked Cat. “I should say so! You have taken from every person unfortunate enough to have hired you!”

A cruel smile twisted the driver’s face. “So. You discover my little game. Fine. You are one smart old bird. Now…” He held his hand up, and Cat rose, intentionally wobbly, to her feet.

“Guards! I demand you arrest this man!” she shouted.

The guards, roused by her strident screeches, hesitated a moment until finally heading toward them. Sally was staring at Cat with wide eyes. The driver had started to laugh, a wicked, humorless sound.

“She is crazy. A lunatic!” he told the guards.

“Arrest this man!” Cat demanded, forcing her breath to wheeze between her lips, praying her plan would work. Her body needed no encouragement to shake convincingly.

“All right,
grand-mère
. Get down now,” one of the guards said impatiently.

“You must arrest this villain. You must arrest this—” Suddenly Cat clutched her stomach, doubling up and falling forward over the driver’s seat.

Seizing the plank footboard, she yanked, praying her guess was correct.

It was. As the board was wrenched free, a treasure trove of gems, gold sovereigns, fat purses, and shimmering jewelry met her eyes.

She thrust her arms wrist-deep into the hoard, lifting pearls and pendants, strands of diamonds and gold chains, high above her head. She heard the guards’ indrawn hisses, the driver’s violent swearing.

Using all of her strength, she hurled fistfuls of treasure into the center of the mud hole and reached immediately for more handfuls to fling.

“He’s stealing from you, too!” she yelled as the driver started to scramble up over the side of the wagon. A guard seized him by the collar, dragging him back. The other guard pitched himself into the mud, sifting desperately in the freezing black muck for the riches he knew it contained.

“You hold out on us, Gaston?” The one guard gave the driver a violent shake.

Taking advantage of their momentary distraction, Cat grabbed the reins, snatched up the whip and brought it down with a ringing crack over the heads of the horses. The team reared in fright. The faces of the three men swiveled in the cart’s direction. For one agonizing moment, Cat was sure the beasts would do nothing more than rear and buck in their traces. And then the front quarters of the two horses came crashing down, their haunches gathered, and they bolted straight at the guard half-buried in the mud. With a yelp, he lurched from beneath the wheels of the careening wagon.

“Shoot them!” Cat heard the driver shriek. She squeezed her eyes shut and bent low, waiting for pain to find her.

“Shut up, filthy cheat!” she heard the guard answer. “I could as soon shoot my own grandmother!”

Cat’s legs were cramped with cold. Her fingers in the inadequate leather gloves were numb, scored red from handling the heavy traces. Her teeth chattered with each gust of wind. Long hours had passed since the freezing rain had soaked through her clothing. The raw wind howling at their backs blistered Cat’s neck where the wet veil lashed her skin. Sally had retreated into a miserable lump.

What dim light there was bled from the sky as night fell. Still the icy blasts of wind snatched their breath away. Frigid fingers burrowed under their clothes. Their journey seemed at once timeless and as if each moment held its own torturous eternity. She squinted into the darkness, scanning the road ahead, hoping that somehow Thomas would appear.

“Lights!” Sally suddenly yelled. Cat turned. Sally was on her knees, pointing at a pale glow appearing and disappearing behind a stand of wind-lashed trees. “Can we stop?”

Cat snapped the leads on the horses’ rump in answer. Soon they were entering the crowded yard of a ramshackle building where a score of horses huddled together, tethered at a post. A motley assortment of carriages loomed in the shadows to one side. The smell of frying onions, garlic, and unseasoned wood smoke permeated the air. A plump young woman opened the door, tossing out a pail of slop, raucous laughter spilling out behind her. Nothing had ever looked more inviting.

Cat crawled tiredly over the side of the wagon. When her feet touched the ground, her legs buckled. Grimly she clutched the side of the wagon and hauled herself upright.

Sally was faring far worse, unable even to clamber from the bed. A man, a thin cigar clamped between tobacco-stained teeth, strode from around the side of the building and stopped short when he saw them.

“Please. Help her to the door.”

“Of course!” With exclamations of concern, the Englishman leapt forward. Quickly he lifted Sally from the wagon, supporting her round her waist. Cat stumbled gamely after them. The man shouldered the front door open and gently settled Sally on a bench just inside.

Cat looked around the crowded room. Several young Englishmen were seated at a table, their voices raised in a strident attempt at bravado. Others were scattered around the smoky room, conversing in uneasy tones.

“Sally?” a tentative voice asked.

Cat looked up at the thin, middle-aged gentleman approaching them. His brown eyes were filling with tears. He held his arms out.

Sally Leades rose to her feet. “Frank!”

Enfolded in his arms, Sally set her cheek against the man’s chest. Cat could see the concern drain out of Sally as she rested there. And in that moment, Cat knew a greater envy than any she had ever experienced. To be able to put aside all one’s worries, to know that stronger shoulders bore the burden, keener minds solved the riddles. Unfortunate, she thought, that she had always been so damned good at riddles, and that her shoulders were unfashionably strong. Then she thought of Thomas and said a brief prayer, asking only that he be safe. Nothing else.