Fourteen
“ANNIQUE.” GREY SHOOK HER. “WE’RE IN TROUBLE. Wake up.”
She clawed through feathery blackness and came alert. She was afraid, instantly. Something bad had happened. Very bad. She heard it in his voice. The coach had begun lurching in the ruts and gullies, going fast.
“There’s a troop of men behind us,” Grey said. “Seven or eight at least. They’re keeping their distance, but it’s just a matter of time. We can’t outrun them.”
On the opposite seat, Adrian moved back and forth, quietly and swiftly. “I’m done.” He clicked something. The catch of a bag, she thought.
“They’re in mufti. They don’t ride like army. They don’t act like customs. They’re Leblanc’s,” Grey told her.
“He has tracked us?” She rubbed her face.
“Just bad luck, I think. Leblanc’s flung a net along the coast and caught us in it. We knew this might happen.” Grey was busy with small metallic sounds. She could smell gunpowder.
They would fight. They were three men, against so many.
A muffling of trees on either side caught and held the echo of the horses’ hooves. They were in deep woods then. Horsemen could not make a concerted rush upon them on a narrow path in the woods. One or two would approach from the back. Doyle, outside, would die almost immediately, with the first shots. Grey and Adrian would fight for a time, and then die. The thin panels of a coach are no defense against bullets.
She would huddle like a dog on the floor of the coach. In the end, if she was not killed by a stray bullet, they would find her and take her to Leblanc.
To cower on her knees, with so little dignity. Anger and fear congealed in her throat. Never, never had she hated her blindness more than at this minute when she was so helpless and so useless.
Grey put his hands upon her shoulders, squeezing, as if he tested her strength. He must feel her shaking. He would know how little it meant. “You’ll do.”
A brief, impersonal touch to her arm. That was Adrian. “Listen, Cub. We’re liabilities, you and I. There’s an old monastery a quarter mile ahead. We get off there.”
“We’ll deal with the men and come back for you.” Grey’s voice went stern. “Annique, don’t make a mistake. You don’t want to meet whoever’s following us.”
“You are right.” She had no friends in France who rode in packs on horseback. Only her enemies were so strong.
“There’s nothing in any direction but miles of woods and barrens and the sand. No houses and no help for you. Stay with Adrian. Don’t try to go off on your own.”
He was protecting her, even though she was an enemy agent. That was the core of Grey of the British Service. To protect. She said simply, “I will go with Adrian and take care of him as best I can. You have my promise.”
Adrian and Grey were both silent at that. They smiled to themselves, she thought. Men could be such idiots.
“You can take care of each other,” Grey said. “Here’s your monk house coming. We won’t stop. Adrian?”
“Ready.”
Adrian crouched, holding the door open. The valise he held bumped at her legs.
Grey had such strength. Without effort, he braced his legs between the two seats, to lean above her. “I want you alive. Don’t do anything stupid.
“I am not a stupid woman.”
“If you run, I’ll track you down. I’ll be damn annoyed when I find you.” He tightened his hold. “There’s been no time. Whatever you’ve done…Oh hell.” His mouth was brutal as it closed over hers. “We’ll talk about this later.”
But she did not try to talk. She went mad for him. She found his hair, laced into it, and dragged him to her. She consumed him, mouth to mouth. She fought the awkward angles of their bodies, the lurching of the carriage, and went to him. She could not get close enough.
She had one minute. Then he took her head between his hands, hard, and set the last kiss on her forehead. “That’s settled, then. I’ll be back. We’ll finish this. I’m not letting you go.”
She had wondered what it would be like if Grey once let himself reach out to take her. Now she knew. He would be vehement and direct and very certain of himself.
The carriage slowed. “Now!” Adrian called and jumped. She heard him hit the ground.
“Grey…” she said.
“Be careful.” He swung her through the open door. She tumbled into the sickening drop before she had time to feel afraid.
The road slapped her. She kept the cry of pain inside and spun, over and over. She stopped, dizzy and hurt, on slimy, cold ground. Rocks and slick mud were under her. Before she could move, Adrian’s fist tangled in her clothing. He pulled her, fast, into scratchy bushes and pushed her underneath him and collapsed on top of her.
The coach rolled away, speeding up. The sound of wheels was eaten by the trees.
“Your shoulder?” She made the smallest whisper. Had he torn his wound open?
“Good.” The words fell into her ear almost without sound.
She pressed close to the ground and lay her face into the dirt so the white of her flesh would not give them away. Adrian had also lived through battles. She heard him breathing beside her, face down, hidden.
Silence. Then the jingling of harness and the beat of hooves rose in the distance. Came closer. She could disentangle the sound of six horses, trotting one by one, in a line. After a space, three more followed. She held her breath, pretending to be soil, pretending to be rocks and bushes, until they passed.
When they were gone, she pressed her ear to the ground and waited till even the faintest thud of hooves had faded. Then she waited longer. The hum of insects returned, and the birds singing among the scrubby branches of the pine woods, and she still waited. She wished Adrian had chosen a place less inhabited by sharp sticks. And little bugs.
Nine men. Even Grey could not overcome so very many. He was going to meet his death in these cold woods.
She set her forehead against the cold earth and squeezed her eyes shut tight, for she was crying. It was over, this incident in her journey, and this man, who had torn the heart from her body. She would not meet him again or struggle with the feelings he aroused in her. She knew what Grey had said with that kiss. What he said was farewell.
The mist condensed into a cold drizzle. There was nothing to be gained by staying where she was. She had Adrian to care for, sick and weak, and as much a fool as most men, for all he was very deadly. If she did not stay with him, he would probably die. She said, “It is time to move. I am cold.”
“Me, too.”
“Can you walk? No, give me that. Are you bleeding?”
“Not much.”
She touched his shirt. He told the truth. “Which way? Can you walk?”
“I can walk as far as I have to.”
She took the bag from him. It was heavy enough to contain half a dozen weapons and no doubt did. These English went about armed to the teeth. Adrian put his arm across her shoulder to guide her around the many ruts and to steady himself. It was smoother going when they left the road and entered the old courtyard of the monastery. Their coming disturbed birds and sent them upward in a flurry of wings. That would be uncomfortable for these small birds in this rain.
“The chapel still has a roof on it. We’ll go there,” Adrian said. “Straight ahead.”
The odor of fire clung to this place. Perhaps the Revolutionaries had burned the monks out a decade ago. Or the monastery might have been destroyed in the War of the Vendée, by one side or the other. Once the soldiers were gone, it was not easy to tell which side had burned what.
But no one had bothered to torch the chapel. She pushed the door open and heard the echoes of an enclosure within, with no rain falling. The windows must be broken, though, from the draft of cold air that blew in her face. When she walked forward, her feet kicked aside rubble, dry pieces of wood that had probably been chairs and carved statues. That would make tinder to start the fire.