The Lure of the Moonflower (19 page)

“You think he might have attempted to redeem his honor by coming back for her?”

“Abandoning the rest of the fleet to his second in command? Possibly.”

Jane had never had much respect for Sir Sidney, who had made much of his romantic escape from the Temple prison several years back. As far as Jane was concerned, it wasn’t the escape that counted; it was the fact that he had been caught in the first place. But that was Sir Sidney. Flashy. Showy. Careless of his life and those of others in the pursuit of yet another flattering engraving in the illustrated papers.

Yes, she could imagine Sir Sidney landing at Peniche, sending someone to summon the Queen, and walking right into the teeth of an incoming French garrison.

If the Queen was in Peniche. If this wasn’t all an elaborate trap.

“What do you say, princess?” Jack’s jaws cracked on a yawn. “Do we take the bait and make for Peniche?”

“I think,” said Jane carefully, “that right now you make for bed.”

“I’ve slept in worse than this chair.”

“In a French dungeon?” The chair was angular and unyielding, and Jack was already beginning a slow slide towards the floor. “Come to bed. I promise not to seduce you.”

A slow grin spread across Jack’s sleepy face. “If you put it that way . . . what’s the point?”

Jane yanked down the covers. “For heaven’s sake. You’re too tired to commit any improprieties.”

“Is that a challenge?” said Jack, but he ruined it with yet another massive yawn. He plopped down on top of the coverlet, his head hitting the pillow with an audible thump. “A pillow. How decadent.”

Jane leaned over his prone figure. “You might be even more decadent and try sleeping under the covers instead of over them.”

“And run the risk of getting used to it?” He turned his head on the pillow, looking at Jane with a seriousness that was more disconcerting than any of his banter. “The covers are yours. Enjoy.”

Was he trying to preserve her modesty? Given what he knew of her past, that was as noble as it was foolish.

Or, she realized, with a feeling like lead in her stomach, he might be trying to preserve his own.

Jane’s cheeks flamed with sudden color. “Take your cloak, at least,” she said abruptly, shaking it out over him.

It was silly to feel rejected. Jack had more sense than she. They were colleagues, partners. Anything else would only muddy the waters. And the waters, thought Jane with wry humor, were more than muddy enough already.

It was more comforting to think that than that he didn’t desire her.

The problem had always been quite the opposite. She had never doubted she was beautiful, as society measured beauty. She had been told so again and again, in poetry and prose. She knew how to fend off advances, but when it came to encouraging them, she was remarkably inexperienced.

They had been on the road too long; that was all. She was tired and lonely—and if Jack had wanted to kiss her, he would have. She had certainly provided opportunity enough.

There was only one conclusion. He didn’t want to.
Quod erat demonstrandum
.

There were times when it was deeply unpleasant having a logical mind. One by one, Jane snuffed the candles until all the light that was left in the room was the subdued glow of the fire in the brazier.

As she navigated her way around the edge of the bed in the darkness, she heard Jack’s voice rise sleepily from the depths. “There’s a saying in Portuguese.
Amigos de Peniche
.”

Jane peeled back the coverlet. It felt like heaven sliding into a real bed, on a real mattress, beneath a real blanket. The weight of Jack’s body tipped her towards him, her blanket and his cloak a barrier between them.

“What does it mean?”

She could feel Jack’s exhalation of breath as he shifted, turning on his side, away from her. “False friends.”

“W
akey, wakey, princess.”

Jane blinked blearily up at him. “Is it morning?”

“Almost.”

“Almost” by a rather broad margin. The sky was just beginning to turn from black to gray. The nightingale still sang the last ragged notes of his song.

Jack hadn’t slept well. He found that particularly irritating, given that he prided himself on sleeping anywhere. But anywhere didn’t usually include next to Jane, on a mattress that sagged. A blanket between them wasn’t nearly barrier enough, not when Jack dozed, only to dream of lavender, and woke to the reality of Jane against him.

Jane had slept the sleep of the exhausted, her head pillowed on Jack’s shoulder, her hair tickling his chin. One hand stretched out across Jack’s chest. He had never seen her like that before, all her watchfulness dissolved in sleep, relaxed, trusting.

How can there be love where there is no trust?

It was exhaustion, Jack told himself bluntly. That was all. She was tired past endurance. And this was a real bed, not the makeshift pallet of the previous night.

But Jack had turned all the same, making a cradle for her of his arms. Rest, true rest, was rare in their line of work. It was seldom one could sleep deeply, secure in the knowledge that someone else was on watch. Especially someone like Jane, who took everything on herself.

She could be high-handed. Could be? Ha. She was. Autocratic, dictatorial, domineering. But never beyond reason. That, Jack realized, was what made all the difference. She might be accustomed to acting unilaterally, but she wasn’t beyond explaining her reasoning, or, when it came to it, admitting when she might be in the wrong.

She would never fly into rages like his mother, never retreat someplace he couldn’t reach her.

Where in the devil had that come from? Jack tried to push the thought aside, but once there, it didn’t quite want to go away. Jack could remember slinking up to his mother, never sure if she was going to greet him with a kiss or a cuff. Or, on that final day, with a knife in her breast.

Did she die because I was bad?
Jack had asked his nurse, thinking of the broken clasp on a necklace, of singing too loudly when he had been told to be quiet, of half a dozen other minor infractions.

But she had only held him closer, humming to him.

His father, when cornered, had sighed, and said only,
She wasn’t a happy woman, your mother
.

But all Jack had taken from that was that he might have made her happy—they both might have made her happy—and they had failed. Love was terrifying. It brought with it the uncertainty of trying to please another person, trying to understand another person, the mechanisms of whose mind were, by their very nature, opaque.

In the end, it just wasn’t worth it.

But when he looked down at Jane’s pale profile, serene in sleep, Jack felt some of that old fear leaching away. It was impossible to imagine Jane behaving in any way that wasn’t fundamentally fair.

Stabbing oneself in front of one’s three-year-old son wasn’t fair.

She wasn’t a happy woman.
For the first time, Jack thought he understood some of what his father had meant. There were some so locked in their own minds that they couldn’t get out.

And that hadn’t been his fault, or his father’s, or anybody else’s. It just was.

Jane had stirred in her sleep, burying her head deeper into his chest, and Jack had felt an almost painful feeling of tenderness. In sleep, it seemed rather incredible that a collection of bones and flesh could contain all the things that made her Jane, the sharp mind, the wary humor, those flashes of vulnerability that made her achingly, endearingly human.

What was he going to do next, write sonnets? Jack hastily turned his back, yanking open the curtain. “Time to be back on the road. Our friends of last night are most likely what they seem, but if they’re not—why make it easy for them?”

Jane regarded him blearily. She looked damnably appealing, warm and flushed from the layers of blankets, a crease on her cheek from the pillow, her hair escaping in wisps from last night’s coiffeur. “We’re leaving? Now?”

Jack couldn’t blame her for sounding doubtful. The sky was charcoal gray and distinctly uninviting.

The bed, on the other hand . . .

“As soon as you can dress.” Jack tossed a pair of breeches, a shirt, and a jacket on the coverlet. “I liberated these from the poor box. Don’t worry—I left a donation in return.”

“I wasn’t. Worrying.” Jane rubbed her fingers against her eyes, a gesture Jack found strangely endearing, so different from her usual polished poise. “I take it this means a change of role?”

“Anyone looking for us will be looking for a woman and a man,” said Jack defensively, “not a man and a boy.”

“I wasn’t arguing.” Jane wiggled off the side of the bed, her white satin gown tugging up to reveal a flash of ankle and calf. Jack turned aside as she stepped into the breeches, pulling them up beneath her skirt. “How far to Peniche?”

“Under good conditions? A day.”

The wind rattled the casement window, followed by the ominous clatter of hard-driving rain. “In other words,” said Jane, twisting to try to reach the buttons on the back of the dress’s bodice, “two days.”

Her contortions were doing very interesting things to the already tight bodice of the dress. Jack had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Do you need help with that?”

“These gowns were designed with a maid in mind,” said Jane ruefully, and turned her back to him. The view from that angle was . . . well . . .

“I don’t think it was a maid they had in mind,” Jack muttered.

“What?” Jane turned her head slightly, her hair brushing the backs of his fingers.

“Nothing,” Jack said quickly.

Jack backed up as the dress slid down over Jane’s shoulders. There was just a fleeting flash of bare back as she yanked the rough cambric shirt over her head, but—

“I’ll go see to Marigold,” he said, and fled.

The weather was his ally. The rain was ice-cold, hard where it struck Jack’s face. The winds had risen, making walking difficult and talking harder. There was no energy for anything but pushing against the elements as Jack, Jane, and their donkey struggled through the town and to the west.

From the other side of the donkey, Jane gasped something that sounded like “bath.”

“What?” Jack shouted back.

Jane turned to look at him, the brim of her hat flapping around her face. “I should have had one while I had the chance.”

Jack tugged his hat further down around his ears. “We’re getting one now,” he shouted back.

Jane wrinkled her nose at him, but didn’t retort. She was too busy pushing against the wind, bent nearly double in her attempt to forge forward, her boots making squelching sounds as she dragged one, then the other, out of the mud.

Jack made a quick decision. “We’ll take the main roads. They should be fairly deserted today.”

Jane clutched the donkey’s side, using it for balance. “Because of the weather?” The words came out as a gasp.

“Because it’s Christmas morning.”

She stumbled, catching herself just in time. “I’d forgot.” Jack couldn’t see her face, just her profile beneath the hat. “Everyone will be with their families.”

A family she didn’t have. Because of him.

“Those blisters aren’t healed yet,” Jack said gruffly.

“Won’t it look odd if I’m riding?” It had been one thing when she was posing as a peasant woman; dressed as a boy, she would be expected to bear her share of the load.

“To whom?” said Jack, and Jane had to admit he had a point. There was no one in either direction. Unless . . . No. That flash of black was a crow’s wing, not someone lurking by the side of the road. She was fairly sure. “There’s no point in your crippling yourself. We’ll make better time if you ride.”

He was lying, she knew, but it was a kind lie. Jane accepted Jack’s hand as he helped boost her, again, onto the donkey’s back.

“Thank you,” she said.

And that was a lie, too. She would rather walk. At least the pain in her heel, the struggle against the elements, provided a distraction. Clinging grimly to the donkey’s back, the rain dripping down her face like tears, there was nothing to do but think.

Right now, back at home, they were probably walking from the house to the church in the village, Agnes squealing while Ned menaced her with mistletoe, her mother peering myopically back at them and murmuring something about not muddying her slippers, her father too busy reciting the reading to himself to notice.

There had been the year that Ned had decked the sheep, and her father had been so furious. And the year that Jane’s cousin Amy had accidentally set fire to her frock poking at the Yule log. Miss Gwen in church, glowering through the gospels and singing louder than anyone else during the hymns.

But that wasn’t now. Jane caught herself up short before she could tumble too far down that particular path. What was the word Jack had taught her the other day?
Saudade
. A kind of nostalgia. Nostalgia was, by its very nature, about something that no longer was.

It was a pleasant sort of pain to imagine that everything meandered on exactly as it had been, to jumble together a decade’s worth of memories and paint them into the definitive picture of Life as It Had Been. But it was as much a fiction as any other fairy story. They weren’t all there in Lower Wooley’s Town. Amy was married and living in Sussex; the last Christmas that Jane had spent home in England hadn’t been in Shropshire at all, but in Kent, at the principal seat of Amy’s husband’s parents, the Marquis and Marchioness of Uppington. There had been a spot of bother with spies getting into the mince pies, but Amy had dealt with the matter in her usual, inimitable fashion. In other words, with a great deal of difficulty with a side of French farce.

Everyone had scattered. Jane’s older sister, Sophia, was long since married, with four children in Gloucestershire. Miss Gwen had her Colonel Reid and little Plumeria. The church in Lower Wooley’s Town had been spared Miss Gwen’s insistent descant for some time now.

The world moved on. When Jane had left for France all those years ago, the words “home” and “family” had had a very specific meaning; they were constants. But they weren’t, not really. Homes changed; families changed. The house where she had been raised wasn’t her home anymore, and hadn’t been since early 1803. Jane wouldn’t know what to do with herself there, any more than they would know what to do with her.

Was that better or worse? Jane didn’t know.

What she did know was that she heard the sound of hoofbeats on the road behind them. Not the plodding footsteps of the mules usually employed to lead travelers down these roads, but a horse, moving rapidly.

She was off the donkey in an instant and at Jack’s side, aching heels forgotten. “Someone—”

“On the road behind us.” Jack finished for her. He was already urging the donkey off the road, onto the verge, into a scrum of fallen rock and low shrubs.

As a hiding place, it was distinctly inadequate, but to try to lead the donkey up the hill would render them even more conspicuous. Jane frowned at the road, saying urgently, “He’ll see our tracks.”

It wasn’t the sort of thing she had ever had to worry about in Paris; there were too many people muddling about the streets for one set of footprints to stand out.

Jack hunkered down behind a shrub, one hand on the donkey’s lead. “There’s nothing for it.” He glanced quickly at Jane. “If someone was following us, he’d be stealthier.”

Jane wasn’t reassured. “Unless his orders were to sweep in and shoot.” To shoot Jack, that was.

It would be a brutal but effective strategy. Take them by surprise. Shoot Jack. Grab her.

“If so,” said Jack grimly, extracting a pistol from his belt, “he’s in for a surprise of his own.”

He cocked his pistol, training it on the stretch of road ahead of them. Jane turned a wary eye to the slope on their other side. It would be a classic distraction: a lone rider on the road, while others slithered down the slope behind them.

The hoofbeats were louder now. The rider was almost upon them. Jane glanced at Jack’s profile, his face alert, his hands steady on the pistol.

There was no reason for the Gardener to come after them, she told herself. No real reason. His goal was the Queen.

The Pink Carnation would be a prize worth bearing back to Bonaparte
. Jack had said it, and he was right.

She and the Gardener had a truce. Noninterference on neutral ground. But Jack’s words gnawed at her all the same, making her jumpy, making her glance over her shoulder. How long would Nicolas maintain their truce if he decided it no longer suited him to keep it?

The horse’s rapid hoofbeats slowed as the rider approached, falling from a canter to a trot, from a trot to a walk. He was nearly level with them now.

The horse slowed and stopped, and the rider swung down from the saddle.

Jane didn’t need to hear Jack’s quick, indrawn breath to know that he had recognized the rider, too. She didn’t dare turn to look at Jack—couldn’t do anything but wait, like a rabbit in the field as the dogs drew near.