The Lure of the Moonflower (12 page)

When was the last time he had worked with someone? Jack couldn’t remember. The very prospect made him deeply uneasy. But what was the alternative? Turn tail and run?

Jack folded his arms across his chest. “All right. But only for the sake of the mission. And you’ll have to lead the donkey.”

As if it knew they were talking about it, the donkey made an abortive attempt to nip Jack in the backside. Jack swatted at it.

“Good donkey,” said the Carnation serenely, not quite managing to hide a smile. Taking the lead from Jack, she inquired, “Does it have a name?”

There was something about that smile that made him want to smile, too. Jack repressed the urge.

“Donkey,” said Jack shortly.

“Donkey the donkey?” The Carnation fastened her haversack on the donkey’s back. She glanced over her shoulder at Jack. “I have a friend with whom you have a great deal in common. Remind me to tell you about Bunny the bunny.”

“Don’t get too attached,” said Jack. “It’s not a pet.”

“But surely it deserves a name?” She rubbed the donkey behind the ears, and blast him if the contrary animal didn’t follow her, sweet as you please.

Jack shouldered his own pack. “Or possibly just a flower?” he said pointedly.

They walked in silence for a few moments, the donkey ambling amiably along, making great big donkey eyes at the woman without a name. The world was waking up around them, the sun beginning to cut through the clouds, painting rainbows in the mist.

“Jane,” she said suddenly.

“What?” said Jack. He’d been plotting their route, weighing the dangers versus the advantages of trying their luck at an inn.

She glanced at him over her shoulder, the sun turning her pale braids to gold. “My name—it’s Jane.”

“E
smerelda,” suggested Jane.

They were walking, endlessly, endlessly walking. Jane wasn’t sure how many miles and how many potential donkey names they had covered in the past day.

Jack looked back at her over her shoulder. “Do you want him to be laughed out of the pasture? No.”

“Perhaps Petunia?” offered Jane.

Jack’s only response was a snort.

“Don’t restrain yourself,” murmured Jane as she limped along behind him. “Be honest. Tell me how you really feel.”

The track along which they were currently edging their way had clearly been designed for goats rather than men. Jane caught herself on the donkey’s side as she tripped over a large boulder, inconveniently sticking right out of the middle of the track.

She had always considered herself a good walker, country-bred as she was, but she was rapidly learning that a tramp across the Shropshire countryside with tea and a warm fire at the end of it was quite a different matter from scrambling up steep hillsides slippery with ice, the donkey the only warm thing anywhere in sight.

It seemed like longer than twenty-four hours since they had left the French camp, pressing forward, forward, even when Jane’s muscles screamed in protest and the leather of her boot cracked away from the sole. She had never known what a blister could be before; her only blisters had been from dancing the night through in thin slippers. The wet leather of her boot chafed against the irritated skin, and Jane had to exercise all her control to keep from crying out. She wouldn’t be that weak.

“All right, then. Bonaparte. Boney for short. Descriptive and topical.” Talking nonsense was one way to keep her mind off the pain; it was also, Jane realized ruefully, a way of making amends. She had misjudged Jack Reid and she didn’t know how to make it right. Being wrong wasn’t something to which she was accustomed.

Or, at least, not to admitting it.

Jack’s voice floated back along the path. “It’s not fair to taunt him just because he’s short.”

“The man or the mule?” The last word came out as a gasp as the leather of her boot scraped against her heel. Such a stupid, small, foolish thing to cause so much pain.

“Both.” Jack turned, his brows drawing together. “What’s wrong with your foot?”

Both Jane and the donkey stumbled to a halt. “Just a blister,” said Jane, standing on one foot like a stork. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Do you intend to hop all the way to Porto?” Jack seized her around the waist, and before Jane knew what was happening she was on the donkey’s back, her legs dangling down one side. The donkey was so short, her legs nearly touched the ground.

“Really, there’s no need—” Jane made to slide down, but Jack settled a hand on either side of her, holding her in place.

“Why do you think I bought the blasted beast?” The donkey lowered his head, searching for any forgotten grass on the verge. “It wasn’t so that he could feast off the fat of the land.”

To carry the bags, Jane almost said, but swallowed the words. If she were Jack, she would have done the same. If there were a member of her team who was a liability, she would have taken steps to minimize the damage before the damage happened.

It sliced like a knife to know that he had marked her out as a hothouse flower, and even more that he was right.

Jane pressed her eyes shut against sudden, foolish tears. “I can walk.”

“And have you too crippled to curtsy to the Queen?” In a more serious tone, Jack added, “Broken blisters can fester. What would you rather? Your pride or your foot?”

Common sense warred with pride. Sense won. Jane wiggled among the packs, missing her saddle. Riding sidesaddle was much easier with stirrups and a pommel, but she’d lost enough dignity already without adding riding astride to the list of humiliations. “I can see that there might be difficulties in remaining stealthy while hopping on one foot.”

Jack cast her a sardonic look. “So long as it’s all for the greater good, then.”

He gave the donkey a slap on the rump before taking up the lead rope, settling his pack once more on his back—the pack the donkey might have been carrying—and trudging ahead, silent and sure-footed.

Did she really sound like such a prig?

Jane sat as straight as she could, but the donkey’s gait was nothing like that of the horses she was accustomed to ride; nor did her haversack make a satisfactory substitute for a pommel. This was no elegant trot through the park, nor yet a spirited canter through enemy territory. It was a dull, painful plod, every step jarring, a constant struggle to keep from sliding sideways. The donkey started up a steep incline and Jane abandoned her pride altogether and clutched at the animal’s neck. There were almost no trees here to break the wind and the sting of a light rain that had turned, the higher they rose, to ice. Only a few twisted olive trees clung to the limestone cliffs, stretching out barren arms as though in supplication.

Ice crunched beneath the donkey’s hooves. Abandoning herself to all modesty, Jane wriggled until she managed to inch her leg over the donkey’s side, thankful for the full skirt that preserved most of her modesty.

The donkey gave a short bray of indignation as Jane accidentally kicked him in the head.

Jack paused, hitching his pack higher on his shoulder. “What are you doing back there? Calisthenics?”

“At least that would be one way to keep from freezing,” Jane retorted, tugging her skirt down over her legs and hoping he hadn’t seen too much. “I had thought Portugal was meant to be warm.”

The path was wider here. Jack fell back to walk beside her, the donkey’s lead looped casually around his wrist. His breath made little patches of white mist in the air. “You’ve been reading Murphy’s
Travels in Portugal
.”

“He made it sound all orange trees and Moorish ruins.” And exotic-looking women in low-cut bodices. Jane could vouch for the bodice, but she had yet to see an orange tree.

“In the south,” said Jack. “And in the summer.”

Midnight gardens scented with orange blossoms, water tinkling through fountains floored in mosaic.

The daydream resolved itself back into stony ground and frost-blasted rocks. Jane hugged her shawl closer around her. “Bonaparte’s invasion was ill-timed.”

“For him as well.” The seriousness of Jack’s tone took Jane by surprise. “He lost a good half of his force in that march to Lisbon. It was poorly done by any account.”

“It’s Bonaparte’s way,” said Jane, “to draw a line on a map and tell his men to march by that route, regardless of what might lie in the way. It has a certain brutal efficiency.”

“More brutal than efficient.” When Jane looked down at him, Jack said, “I shadowed Junot’s forces for part of the way. They were dying by the dozen. Men fell in the mud and were looted by their fellows; officers fought one another for dry lodging or a crust of bread. And what they did to those villages that happened to fall within their path . . .” He glanced up at Jane. “Just be glad you weren’t there, princess. It wasn’t pretty.”

“In Paris, I have no doubt,” said Jane, “they’ll be acclaiming it a triumph.” Particularly if they could parade the Queen of Portugal through Paris like the conquered ruler at a Roman triumph. “How long will your potion discommode the Gardener?”

Jack choked on a laugh that rapidly broadened into a grin. “Given the likelihood of his current location, your choice of words is particularly inapt.”

Jane gave him a look.

Jack adopted a suitably grave expression, but his eyes still danced, reminding Jane forcibly of her younger brother, Ned, when he was plotting something particularly atrocious. “A day, no more. Enough to give us a fair start.”

“I’m not sure ‘fair’ is quite the word,” said Jane.

“No, probably quite foul,” said Jack, enjoying himself immensely. “You learn to find humor where you can in this business. Tonight we jest, because tomorrow we die.”

“Preferably not tomorrow,” said Jane. Once Nicolas knew of her absence, he would move quickly. He liked to give the impression of being a man of leisure, but it was as deceptive as his easy charm. “If both Moreau and the Gardener were ill, they mayn’t have noticed our absence.”

Jack raised a brow at her. “Would you care to put money on that?”

Jane folded her hands primly on the donkey’s neck. “I don’t gamble.”

Jack cast her an oblique look. “Don’t you?”

Jane shifted uncomfortably on the donkey’s back. “I prefer to think of it as a series of calculated risks, rather than a game of chance.”

Jack tugged his hat down around his ears, saying nonchalantly, “I’ve heard the same from hardened gamblers—just before they lost their last coin.”

Admit it. You like the uncertainty of it. The danger. You’re no different from me, Jeanne. . . .

“It’s not the same,” said Jane sharply. “I do what I do for a purpose. For a cause.”

“Winning isn’t a purpose?” Jack held up his hands. “All right. All right. Hold your fire.”

They trudged on in silence for a few moments, the early winter dusk settling around them, Jack walking uncomplainingly ahead, his pack on his back, his hat jammed low on his head. Annoyance warred with guilt as Jane stared at the back of Jack’s head, restless and frustrated. How many times was she required to humble herself? How often did she have to say she was sorry? Somehow, with Jack Reid, she seemed to be always in the wrong.

But she hated, hated, hated beyond reason being so entirely dependent upon him, so painfully aware of her own frailty. She hated that he had to provide her a donkey; she hated that she was, even now, longing for a hot dinner and a warm bed. She had always thought herself strong, but it seemed her strength had been a fragile thing, no match at all for the basic discomforts that the people of these hills dealt with as a matter of course.

Jane patted the donkey’s neck. “I imagine Morag will need to rest soon.”

At least, she hoped the donkey would need to rest soon. Unfortunately, the animal seemed largely indefatigable.

Jack quirked a brow. “Morag?”

“The landscape,” Jane said, the words jolting out as the donkey stumbled over a rough piece of terrain. “It reminds me a great deal of Scotland. The Highlands, that is.”

Majestic, and more than a little daunting.

They trudged in silence for a moment. Meditatively, Jack said, “My father’s family came from the Highlands. He’d never seen it himself—he was born in the Americas—but he spoke of it as though it were his home.”

Jane had heard Colonel Reid singing the old ballads to his baby daughter, Jane’s goddaughter. Scotland might have been in the past, but the faint lilt lingered in Colonel Reid’s speech and occasionally, disconcertingly, in Jack’s.

Carefully, Jane said, “I’ve heard many exiles speak so. Home becomes sweeter with time and distance.”

She had wanted nothing more than to get away from home, to try her wings in the world. It was only once home was barred to her that she found herself longing for it.

Foolish, Jane knew. Even were matters otherwise, she couldn’t see herself settling in Shropshire, going demurely to church on Sundays, listening to her father’s lectures on animal husbandry, the greatest excitement an assembly in the nearest town.

But it would have been nice to have the option.

Jack glanced back over his shoulder, his amber eyes unreadable in the twilight. “There’s a word for that in Portuguese.
Saudade
. It means . . . something like nostalgia. Missing one’s home and friends.”

“Do you?” The question came out before Jane could take it back. “Would you go back to India if you could?”

Jack turned away. “Don’t delude yourself, princess. I’m no Odysseus. Ithaca can sink into the sea and be damned.”

“Your family must miss you, surely.”

All she could see was his back as he shrugged, stoically leading the donkey through the narrow pass. “They do well enough without me.”

But they didn’t. They wanted him back.

She ought, Jane knew, to tell him she knew his family, to tell him that she had been charged with messages for him. But they were, she suspected, not messages he would want to hear. And right now, cravenly, selfishly, she needed Jack Reid’s goodwill. Not just for Queen Maria’s sake, but for her own survival.

It was a very disconcerting thought.

Jane coughed as a low fug of smoke teased her nose. She seized on the change of subject with relief. “Is something burning?”

“Peat,” said Jack, without turning. The smell was strong and very different from the acrid scent of coal to which Jane was accustomed. “It will be dark soon. I know a place where we can stop for the night.”

Jane unclasped her frozen hands from the donkey’s neck. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for an inn?”

She’d meant it as a joke, but it didn’t come out that way.

Jack cast her an oblique look. “I doubt it would be what you’re expecting.”

Jane bit her lip, trying to gather what remained of her wits, feeling as though she had backed herself into a corner and not sure how to climb out of it. “I’m not such a hothouse flower as that.” Her voice was hoarse with cold. “Most of the time.”

“The inns here are generally just houses with a spare room—or a spare bench.” Jack urged the donkey forward, saying conversationally, “An acquaintance of mine secured lodging once, only to discover a corpse in his bed.”

“Murder?” Jane did her best to keep her teeth from chattering.

“No, absentmindedness,” said Jack. “It turned out that the innkeeper was also the local undertaker. He’d forgotten that he’d left the body in there.”

Jane choked on a laugh. “I shouldn’t laugh. It’s quite dreadful.”

“Not as dreadful as a place I stayed once,” said Jack blandly, “where the host was also the local highwayman. He held me up on the road—and then attempted to charge me for my lodging.”

“Wouldn’t it be more efficient to do that the other way around?” They were descending now into a valley, and Jane held tight to the donkey’s neck as the animal found its way in the dusk down the narrow path.

“That’s what I told him. After I took my money back.” Jack led the donkey safely into the valley. “He didn’t seem to appreciate my professional advice.”