The Counterfeit Mistress (25 page)

“It was logic then, was it? The two of you had a long, enlightened conversation on the question?”

“Absolutely. Now, I advise you stop smirking.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marielle went to the rail and looked down. “They do not appear too English, I am relieved to see.”

“I am glad you approve.”

Her eyebrows rose at his tight tone. “Won't all the weapons draw attention?”

“We will not all walk together on the roads. We do know what we are about, Marielle.”

“Of course. Well, should we join them in the boat?”

“Not just yet.” He drew her aside. “I am of half a mind to still make you stay here. Should you join us, you will do nothing on your own initiative. Nothing at all. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” She said it in the clipped way Angus and the other men did. He chose not to hear it as mockery.

“I am charging Angus with protecting you. He will fight to the death doing so, so do not make that necessary if it can be avoided.”

“Why Angus? Won't you be there?”

“I may be otherwise engaged at times.”

“Do we go now?” she asked impatiently.

He brought her over to the rail and showed her how to climb down the ladder. She still did not do it correctly, it being her first time. Angus reached up and grabbed her lest she fall into the water. She sat down on one of the plank seats.

Kendale began his own descent, wishing like hell that Marielle were still in that cabin.

“T
his road will circle around to the west, then there is another that joins it and goes northeast.” Mr. Travis explained the roundabout route while drawing with a stick in the crossroad's dirt. Marielle frowned down on the X that marked her town of Savenay, and the other showing the château to the north. “It is longer, of course, but avoids the town completely.”

“Much longer,” Kendale said. “Hours longer.”

Other than Kendale, no one else watched. Angus and the other four men were keeping their eyes on the four roads that joined here, in order to warn if anyone approached.

“We can go across country,” Mr. Travis said. “No roads at all then.”

No roads and no light and slow going, Marielle thought. She looked to the northeast, and a forest in the distance beyond the farmland. She allowed memories to come to her. Some of them she had avoided for six years.

She picked through them until she arrived at the ugly night she had fled to the coast, going the opposite way of what they now attempted. Her guide had known the region well.

“There is a faster way.” She took the stick from Mr. Travis. Retracing her flight the night her mother died, she drew a wavy line through the forest, from the road near the château, then across farmland to that road which they had just walked, only inland a bit more. She pointed to what she had just drawn. “When I left, I came this way. It is not a proper road, just a rough broad path used by these farms along it.”

Mr. Travis scowled at her wavy line. “You are sure of that?”

“As sure as I can be.”

“That is not sure enough for me.”

“I was running for my life. It is not a night I will forget.”

Mr. Travis did not mask his skepticism. “No telling what is in that forest, sir. It could be like Feversham described it was in America, being picked off by muskets firing out of the trees.”

“There is no reason for any muskets to be in this forest,” Kendale said. “There is no way for anyone to know we are here.”

“And if that path is not well marked? It will be dark by the time we get there.”

“If it is used by farmers, their carts and livestock would keep it clear enough for us to follow it.”

Mr. Travis began to say something but a hushed call from twenty feet away cut him off. The man watching east raised his arm in warning. Men flew into ditches and ducked behind brush. Kendale obliterated the drawing with his boot, then grabbed her arm and dragged her off the road and down into the high grasses that edged a stream along the road.

She waited for the telltale signs of horse hooves or bootsteps that said members of the army approached. She knew exactly how they would sound. Another memory flashed through her head, of hiding in the brush before, so terrified of those horses and boots that she silently wept.

The sounds never came. She parted the grass and peered through. A cart rolled into view, pulled by one ox. A man walked alongside the animal. He looked like a young farmer. No one else walked with him or followed.

She scrambled to her feet. Kendale reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her down again. “What do you think you are doing?” he whispered angrily.

“I am going to find out if that path is how I remember. You stay here. There is no danger from this man. He will only see a woman from this region, which is what I am.”

He hesitated, then released her, muttering a curse. She looked back once while she walked up to the road. She saw he had his pistol at the ready, just in case.

M
arielle walked down the road toward the cart, hailing the farmer in her native dialect. Kendale heard the cart stop, then start again. Now as it approached the patter of conversation accompanied it.

While they passed within several feet of his head, the farmer said something to her that caused her to snap a terse response. The fellow laughed and muttered what Kendale translated to “you cannot blame a man for trying.” Marielle rattled off a response so rapidly that he could not make it out. He trusted she put the farmer in his place, but he readied himself for fast movement if necessary.

The cart kept going. The conversation did not. When he heard nothing more, he ventured a look. The cart could be seen in the distance, heading to the coast. Marielle came skipping down the road.

“He says it is as I remembered,” she said.

Mr. Travis, Angus, and the other men joined them on the road.

“The little lane breaks away just around that bend.” She pointed east. “Then it crosses through the fields and snakes through the forest.”

“Did he not think it odd that you needed directions if you live here?” Mr. Travis asked.

“I told him I am on my way to visit my sister, who is in service at the château, and she told me of this faster way but I could not find the road. I told him I am from a farm a day's walk south of here.” She began walking west. “Perhaps we can be through the forest before nightfall.”

The men looked at him. Kendale nodded. “Let us go. Hopefully we can not only avoid curious travelers but also save hours from our mission.” He strode toward Marielle.

She paused and waited for him, then fell into step alongside. A quarter mile beyond the bend they found the unmistakable start of a broad path. It split through the field. Crops rose on either side, and hoofprints and wheel ruts marked the uneven, rough dirt.

Marielle wrapped her knit shawl around her like an ermine cloak, and stepped onto that path as if it were covered in red velvet. She glanced back at him, her eyes alight with triumph. “I told you that you needed me on this mission. Oh, the farmer told me something else. Lamberte is indeed not at the château. That is good news, no?”

“It is, assuming the gossip this farmer heard is not two months old.”

Her expression fell. “I suppose we will not be sure until we enter the gate.”

“That is the unfortunate sum of it. In the meantime, I will hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.”

“M
ark this spot, gentlemen.” Kendale stood in the deepening twilight on a low rise of land several hundred yards behind the road that passed the château. From up here they could see that manor house. Its high-pitched roofs marked its French pedigree, as did its fine-boned classical details mixed with medieval turrets and long windows. English country houses did not look like this.

Marielle stood near the crest of the hill, out of hearing distance. She gazed at the château as if it were not quite real. He wondered what thoughts and memories worked in her mind. From the dull lights in her eyes, he guessed they were not good ones.

Angus and the others studied the terrain, noting landmarks that only each one would notice or remember.

“I have it,” Angus said. The others nodded.

“If we are separated, this is where we meet. If things go badly, you get out and come here if you can. Wait one hour at most, then go back. Make your way to the coast and the ship. Mr. Stanton has orders to sail at dawn, no matter who is or is not there, so do not delay.”

Mr. Travis looked down at the château. “How do you plan to get in there? I see no subtle approach. We have to walk up that lane and there are two men at the end of it. They are sure to see us coming.”

Kendale looked over at Marielle. He hated to admit it, but she had been right. They did need her. “The lady will help us to get in. You will keep the others beyond the lane, out of sight. Angus and I will accompany Miss Lyon to the door.”

Mr. Travis laughed and shook his head. “Did you bring your calling cards?”

“Just be watching, Travis. When those two men are gone, bring the others up.” He left the men and joined Marielle. “We will go down shortly. It will be as we planned while we walked here. Are you ready?”

She did not respond at first. Then she shook off her reverie. “Of course.”

He slid his arm around her back and pulled her to his side. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “To be here again. To see that building. It all comes back, very clearly.” She paused. “Everything.”

He wished he could erase the worst of the everything. He wondered if tonight would at least allow it to dim again.

“Thank you for allowing me to come,” she said. “Thank you for allowing me to do what I could.”

He could think of nothing to say to that. He took her hand. “Let us go.”

M
r. Travis kept the men hidden in the night beyond the lamps that lit the lane. Kendale and Marielle began the long walk to the door, with Angus in their wake like a servant.

He looked over at her. She did not hide the airs that her girlhood hours in this château had given her. She walked with the elegance that had long ago become second nature. She had released her hair from its plait and removed the cap so her hair fell in fashionable abandon. The knit shawl might have been made out of silk from the way it fell around her lithe form and flowed with her steps.

The two men saw them coming. On alert at once, but curious, they came together and walked down the steps of the château and into the circle where carriages would stop. The flames in the lamps around that circle showed their consternation that three strangers approached so boldly in the late evening hours.

Marielle walked right up to them. She gave each a good, long look, then smiled one of her devastating smiles. Both men immediately appeared taken aback. She spoke in French to them. Parisian French.

“I am Marielle de Lyon. I must see Monsieur Lamberte on a matter of great importance to him. Take me to him at once.”

“He is not here. You must leave, madame.”

“He is here. He must be. I have traveled a great distance in very rude circumstances. Send word to him that I am here. I promise you that he will want to see me.”

They looked at each other, confused by her insistence. One, presumably the leader, sighed with exasperation and explained yet again that Lamberte was not at the château.

“Then let me in so I can leave something for him. It is a document most important that he will certainly want to have.”

“That is impossible. We cannot allow a stranger—”

“I am not a stranger. He knows me well. I can see, however, that you will not help me to help him unless—” She held out her hand to Kendale. He placed four gold coins in her palm. Their value probably exceeded what these men earned guarding this door in a year.

She held it out. “Allow me in. A half hour at most, and I will be gone. I only need to leave the document where I know he will find it, but others will not.”

The second man only had eyes for the gold. The leader also gazed at it longingly. While both men contemplated their duty, Angus moved until he stood by Marielle's other shoulder.

“No,” the leader said gruffly, shaking his hand and all but pushing the gold away. “You must go now. Leave, madame, before I wonder too much why you are even here.”

“Now, sir?” Angus asked Kendale.

“Yes.”

In one instant the guards were peering at gold and lovely Marielle. In the next they were peering into the ends of Angus's two pistols. Angus made sure those ends were very close to the spots between their eyes.

“You should have taken the gold,” Marielle said while Kendale relieved both men of their own weapons.

Angus stepped forward. The guards stepped back. They kept at that until they were out of the light in the carriage drive and under the eaves of the entrance. Angus placed the pistol right on the forehead of the second guard. “Ask him how many like him are inside.”

Marielle translated. The leader cursed at his comrade to keep silent, but the pistol spoke louder. Two more guards manned the donjon, they were told.

The shuffles and sounds of boots grew louder on the lane as Travis and the others hurried forward. They set about tying the guards up.

“Went sweetly, sir,” Angus said. “Not a shot and barely a sound. There's light above, but no one looked out.”

Marielle came over to him. The excitement in her eyes glinted like stars in the night. “Only two more, too. That should not be hard.”

“So he says. He could have lied.”

“Do you think he did?”

“I think there are more than two of Lamberte's men in this house. Perhaps not guards. They could be footmen or retainers or even relatives, but they will not allow an invasion without a fight. I do not anticipate strolling in and out without being challenged.”

The guards now sat on the ground, trussed and gagged. With a gesture Kendale told Angus to move them out of sight and away from the entrance.