Escape with A Rogue (2 page)

There seemed to be hundreds of them, some in the ragged remnants of French uniforms, some in tattered white shirts.

Where was Jack? All Madeline could see beyond the gates was a sea of broad shoulders and lanky bodies; dark heads, blond heads, bald heads . . . and so many male faces that she began to panic again.

The gates opened and all those men surged out, spilling over each other like water pouring out of a burst dam.

“Tell me what your lad looks like.” Tom awkwardly clasped her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll help you find him.”

“He—” How to describe Jack? The last time she’d seen him, he had not looked at her. He had been in chains, being taken from the courtroom in Exeter, his head thrown back, his eyes looking everywhere but at her, and his face had held a harsh fury that she’d never seen in him before—

Of course he was angry. He was
innocent
. He thought he was going to lose his life for a crime he didn’t commit.

“B—brown hair,” Madeline said. “It used to be long—to his shoulders almost. In the sun, there was red in it. Mahogany was the word I’d use to describe it.” Her words tumbled out. “Green eyes. He was . . . tall . . . taller than many men. And—”

In the crowd of sweaty, smelly prisoners, she could not see green eyes. Some of the men were remarkably tall, but it was hard to distinguish whether any were Jack’s height. In her mind’s eye, she saw Jack perfectly. He usually wore breeches and a loose white shirt, open at the throat, along with a cap that shaded a startlingly handsome face. He had worked as a groom at her home—he was always smoothing the coat of a horse with a brush or currycomb, or training a young animal with firm hands on the reins.

She used to stand by a fence near him, stealing surreptitious glances at his wide shoulders or his muscular legs. One hot August afternoon, she’d been staring at his forearms—he always rolled up his sleeves. She had been twenty-three but had been acting like a silly schoolgirl, tracing the lines of the veins in his arm with her eyes, wondering what his muscles would feel like if she stroked them. Then her gaze had gone up, guiltily, because he’d said her name, and she’d met his green eyes—green as clover when it was richly fed by spring rain—and she had completely forgotten how to breathe . . .

“I . . . I will know him once I see him,” she managed to say.

Which meant Tom couldn’t help her. “Jack Travers is his name?” he asked.

“Yes, but don’t use it. You must be—”

Careful
died on her lips. A group of men were coming to Tom Delve’s cart, one flipping a coin up and down in his hand. From their dark eyes, black hair, and the way they stopped to hug other compatriots, Madeline was certain these men were French. It astonished her they had money, but she’d learned that even prisoners of war were not to be treated as slave labor—one of the rules drawn up in treaties between England and France. They were paid to break up granite blocks in the quarry and to dig peat in the bogs.

The French had fired on British ships, had killed young men whom she knew, and she should feel anger, but they looked like normal men, and they were suffering, too.

Madeline glanced from the boisterous Frenchmen to the large, granite buildings that housed them. Thousands of men were crammed inside, with only small, high windows for ventilation. They strung their hammocks one atop the other, except for those who had to sleep on the hard, damp floor—freezing in the winter, almost suffocating with heat in summer.

Jack lived like this. And he was completely innocent.

Please, let me find him. I owe him this. It is all my fault that he’s been living in hell—

“I’ll trade this, love, for some of your potatoes and your plump-looking onions.”

An Englishman’s voice, almost right by her ear. Madeline jumped, then spun around. Hope shimmered deep inside her. And fear, too. What was going to happen the first time he looked at her, after two years of—?

It wasn’t Jack. The man standing in front of her had pale blond hair. His eyes were vivid blue, flashing and roguish as he took in her brassy blonde wig and her breasts raised high beneath the country bodice.

Tom had moved away to barter with the group of Frenchmen.

Since she hadn’t said a word—her tongue was thick with disappointment and her heartbeat only just dropping back to normal—the blond man went on, “Potatoes and onions, for this . . .”

With care, he set a brown wool bag on the edge of the cart. He stood in front of her and blocked her view.

What was she going to do? She didn’t have time to waste. Could she shoo him away?

He undid the drawstring and the bag slithered down to reveal a carving. A knight with up-tilted lance, seated atop a rearing charger. “It’s bone,” he explained.

Madeline stared. Bone? Peering closely, she could see it was indeed made of pieces of smoothly polished bones.

“From the meals. We save them.” The blond man lifted his sculpture. “You can touch it. Examine it as carefully as you wish.”

Shakily, she stroked the horse’s back. “I—It is exquisite.”

Beneath the unruly hair, blue eyes narrowed. “You’ve got a lovely voice for a farmer’s daughter. You sound like a lady.”

She started at that, bumped the cart, and sent a turnip to its grave beneath a militiaman’s boot.

Mistake, mistake.
The unbelievable beauty of the carving had made her slip up. Now she lifted a brow like a girl accustomed to men with one thing on their minds. “Flattery’ll get you nowt extra, sirrah.”

A dazzling smile lit up the man’s face. “Beausoleil,
ma belle
.”

“You don’t sound French.”

“I’m not here as a prisoner of war,
belle
. In fact, I’m not supposed to be out here at all. Once the soldiers find out I’ve got out of my cell, I’ll end up over there—” He pointed with a jerk of his chin.

He’d indicated a length of granite wall with a small gray roof above it. She’d thought the building a shed, but the roof was made of stone slabs. No shed would be so impenetrable.

“The French call it the
cachot
,” Beausoleil continued, “but despite my French name, I’m an Englishman born and bred, so I term it the ‘Black Hole.’”

An Englishman like Jack. Locked up in a prison that was now supposed to hold only French captives. That was the mystery of this. Why was Jack, an Englishman convicted of murder—a criminal and not a prisoner of war—here, in the Dartmoor War Prison?

When Napoleon had escaped from Elba, Madeline had barely registered the gruesome reality of being plunged back into war. Grandfather’s letters had distracted her. Confined to his bed, he’d trusted her to tackle some sensitive matters. During her work, she’d uncovered a bundle of letters in an oilcloth wrap, wedged in the back of a drawer in his desk.

Jack Travers
had been written on the wrap. There’d been no excuse to read them, and it was unforgivable to pry. But what she’d found—

Jack had not been hanged. For two years, Grandfather had let her believe she’d sent Jack to the noose, yet he’d known Jack’s death sentence had been commuted. He knew Jack had spent over a year on a prison hulk on the Tamar River. And that in January, Jack had been marched to Dartmoor War Prison.

Grandfather had told her Jack was innocent. But then her grandfather had died, and no one, not one magistrate or peer, had listened to her about Jack.

“Do you know what the Black Hole is?”

She’d been staring at the building and Beausoleil must have taken her blank look to be fascination, for he leaned close. He smelled sweaty. “It’s built of granite blocks and inside is a dark, dank chamber about twenty feet square. The door is reinforced with metal plate, making it a prison from which no man can escape. Air and a bit of light come in a small iron grating, and the door closes with a thundering clang that reverberates through the cell—and through a man’s soul. They cram up to sixty men in there, in the dark, for punishment.”

“Sixty men?” She could hardly imagine it.

“In the summer, the place is sweltering. The heat builds up and can’t escape.”

“Good heavens. Is anyone in there now?”

“There’s one man in there now. One of the other Englishmen.”

Rooks set up furious calls that rang over the din in the yard. The summer sun beat down now, but Madeline felt impossibly cold. “There’s not supposed to be Englishmen in here. Ye’re all prisoners of war.” She tried to make her accent rougher.

The blond man watched her carefully. “Some of us are not.”

“I don’t believe you.” She did, but she wanted to make him talk. “What are ye then? Traitors? Did ye refuse to fight?”

“No. Not traitors. We’re criminals—” Beausoleil broke off.

Madeline followed his gaze. A door had opened along the wall, near the Black Hole, and an armed soldier marched out into the market. His rifle was slung over his shoulder. He gripped a prisoner by the arm and shoved him forward. A second soldier followed, pointing the muzzle of his weapon at the prisoner.

The prisoner wore a dirt-streaked shirt that might once have been white. He stood a half-head taller than the soldiers. Broad-shouldered but gaunt, his body was stooped as though he was too tired to hold up his own frame. If an artist had wanted to craft a man without hope, he could find no better pose.

She stared at the man’s hair, which was darkened with sweat, but still had glints of red-brown and gold. Dark-brown stubble shadowed his jaw. His cheekbones rose, high and sharp. Black shadows and bruising ringed his eyes. His face was thin and hard. It looked different, but also heart-wrenchingly the same as her memories. There was no mistaking his eyes—they gleamed like brilliant emeralds across the yard.

It was definitely Jack Travers.

Madeline’s heart soared for one brief second—like Icarus reaching for the sun—then plunged. How could she make contact with him? The soldiers were dragging him across the yard toward the ominous gray buildings that held the prisoners.

As though her stare had prodded him in the chest, he stopped. Despite two armed men urging him forward, Jack Travers stood stock-still and stared at her.

One soldier shoved him ahead, but Jack resisted. Her throat went both dry and numb as she saw the other guard lift his rifle.

Go, Jack. Go. Go. Keep going.

He gave his head a sharp shake, dropped his chin in a pose of obedience, and followed the guards. But then his head cocked and he watched her beneath the dark, tousled mess of his hair.

Madeline’s breath left her chest so quickly she had to grasp the cart.

Jack couldn’t have recognized her. Not with her wig and her tattered clothes. But the way he’d stared at her . . . his gaze had bored into her soul.

She took a shaky breath. With an armed escort, there was no way Jack could approach her, even if he knew who she was.

Naively, she’d thought once she used market day to get inside the prison, she would be able to talk to Jack.

“Know him, sweetheart?” Beausoleil was leaning on her cart and his elbow knocked over two potatoes. He fixed her with a perceptive stare that made her quiver.

How ironic, after everyone said she never showed emotion, that her face would reveal too much now, when she should be circumspect. “No, but ’e looked awful. Didn’t ’e? ’E had been punished.”

“Yes, love. For trying to escape.”

She fixed a daft look on her face, hoping this man would not see her gut reaction to his words. She knew what was at stake. If she were caught helping Jack, it would not be pretty. She was an earl’s daughter, but she doubted she’d escape punishment. Escapees were whipped . . . imprisoned on prison hulks . . . shot.

She had been determined to see this through, but fear was making her sweat and tremble. It was too late to turn back. She was so very close. She couldn’t lose her courage now—

Shouts came from somewhere in the crowd. A flurry of movement seemed to ripple through the men, rushing toward her. Then a group of Frenchmen parted, and that tall, familiar, distressing figure stepped out between them.

Somehow he had known. He had seen through her disguise.

After two years of thinking him dead at the end of a gibbet, she was looking up at his green eyes. And at his mouth that had never done anything but smile for her when she’d seen him at the stables.

No smile for her now. Lines framed his tense lips, which were horribly swollen, cracked and bruised.

He studied her, not saying a word. The rooks went off again, crying stridently as they soared over the walls. Jack jerked up the torn tails of his shirt. Shuddering, she realized he was barefoot, his lower legs dusty.

 His fingers closed around something at his waist—tucked into his trousers.

Madeline opened both hands to accept what he dropped in them. She’d not worn gloves and her palms stung from gripping the handles of the cart. Something smooth and warm pressed against her abraded skin.

She cradled a statue of a woman, one formed of ivory-white bone. She let her thumb run along the curve of the woman’s skirt. Each fold of cloth had been beautifully rendered. The woman held a basket of flowers, her face tipped upward as though she was savoring a ray of the sun—a forbidden pleasure for a lady who should be beneath her parasol.

Madeline knew she used to sit in this exact pose as she perched on the fence beside the paddock on her father’s estate and watched Jack, the head groom, deftly tame a feisty horse.

The figurine was small, so it was terribly hard to tell, but she thought the delicate face was hers. Jack had carved a statue of her while locked up in prison. And he kept it—her likeness—in the waistband of his trousers.

She jerked her gaze from the figurine to his unsmiling face. Why wouldn’t he
speak
to her?

Because you were the one to ensure he was found guilty. Your words, your convictions, sent him to a prison hulk and now to this forbidding, awful place. You sent him to a living hell. You learned the truth, but it was too late.

Perhaps she was fortunate he was not saying a word to her. No doubt the ones he was thinking would burn her ears off.