French Leave (3 page)

Jacques was not in evidence as Barbary left the inn, and she considered it the happiest of omens that Tibble was no longer green. Without mishap they handed their luggage to the conductor who was responsible for its safety as well as their own. The public diligence carried three passengers outside in front, three in back traveling backward, and seven or eight inside. It was drawn by four horses, one ridden by the postilion in his enormous leather boots and his old-fashioned wig, the other three harnessed abreast in front of him.

The vehicle was already crowded. Barbary and Tibble had the last seats. Barbary was seated across from a prosperous-looking middle-aged gentleman and his companion, a plump expensively dressed female with startlingly yellow hair. The gentleman was perusing a pamphlet, the
Etat des Pastes Generaux;
the lady was sucking on a lemon drop—or so Barbary concluded from the contortions of her face.

The postilion cracked his whip. The diligence lumbered forward in a manner reminiscent of a snail. At a speed of four miles an hour it would take two days to reach their destination. Paris! Barbary could not help but be excited by the prospect of visiting the French capital, despite the unhappy circumstances that took her there. She leaned forward to look at Tibble, who was seated at the far end of the opposite seat. Impossible to carry on a conversation with someone who had his eyes closed. Barbary had no intention of passing two days in silence. She looked at the plump yellow-haired woman across from her. “I beg your pardon, but are you English?” she asked.

“As English as Old Douro himself!” said the lady cheerfully. “Mrs. Sadie Smith I am, and this is my hubby, Sam. Quite the go, ain’t he? A proper jessamy. I know what you’re thinking! Me, I’m an old ewe dressed lamb-fashion. But I feel like a girl again, I do, thanks to Sam.” She winked. “You may have guessed we’re on our honeymoon.”

Mr. Smith looked apologetic. “You’ll excuse the missus, ma’am. Her tongue flaps twelve score to the dozen, but she don’t mean anything by it. Sadie, you shouldn’t run on so.”

“Keep your breath to cool your porridge!” retorted Mrs. Smith genially, around a lemon drop. “Miss here don’t mind. As for us being English, it was a fairly safe assumption.  By the end of April Paris had twelve thousand British visitors, and heaven alone knows how many there are by now.”

Mrs. Smith was quite correct in assuming Barbary didn’t mind her chatter. Here, unlike Tibble, was someone who shared her enthusiasm about France. “Do you know Paris, ma’am?”

“Sadie! You must call me Sadie.” Mrs. Smith offered Barbary a lemon drop, which she declined. “I read the newspapers. For months after the Russians stormed Paris, the valley between Belleville and Montmartre stank with half-buried corpses. I hope they may have cleaned it up by now.”

Barbary had also read the newspapers, although her primary interest had been in tidbits concerning a certain lordship. “Mercy!” she said. “One indeed must hope.”

Sadie shrugged her plump shoulders, which were swathed in a high-necked cambric traveling dress. “What a lark it must have been to see Louis the Gouty’s entrance into Paris. A fête was given in his honor, and he was presented with two of Henri IV’s teeth, and his mustache, and some of the linen that had been wrapped around his corpse. There were more than thirty orchestras in the Champs-Elysées, and jugglers and rope dancers and fireworks, and a man went up in a balloon. The fountains in the Champs-Élysees ran with wine.” She nudged her spouse. “But Sam here had certain matters of business to tend to, and so I missed the fun.” Barbary glanced at Tibble, who was listening to the conversation—as indeed was everyone in the diligence. His expression was appalled.

Mr. Smith gestured with his pamphlet. “Alphabetically arranged,” he said. “Contains all the posts throughout France, the precise distance of every place, and the sums to be paid the post houses and drivers. Makes it impossible for the traveler to be cheated. You should get one for yourself, ma’am.”

“Goose,” Mrs. Smith said fondly. “What would Miss here be wanting with such a thing? She’ll have caught herself a fine husband before you can say Jack Robinson, and then
he
can stand the reckoning!”

Barbary did not confide her marital status to her traveling companions, nor her intention to have no further dealings with the opposite sex. “Thank you for your advice, sir,” she said gravely. “You are very kind.”

“All the same, he’s right.” Mrs. Smith sounded as if this were a novel circumstance for her husband. “You have to keep an eye out for these Frenchies. They’ll cheat you every chance they get. Proper bloodthirsty lot they are, too, with their national razor. Executed a total of twenty-five hundred people in Paris in just nine months.”

Barbary glanced again at Tibble, who appeared even unhappier. “I daresay the French are weary of war and eager for peace now.”

“That don’t mean they’re eager for the Bourbons to be back at the Tuileries,” said Mr. Smith. “Pretending the Revolution and the Empire never happened. Right now the people are pleased enough to be rid of the trouble Buonaparte caused them, but they’re proud as can be of his military glory. The army remains Buonapartist to a man—aye, and also resentful of their return to peacetime footing, and the subsequent reduction in their pay. The manufacturers resent the tariff reductions that leave them open to foreign competition. And everyone watches uneasily as the returning noble
émigrés
try to again impose feudalism on the people Buonaparte had freed.”

Barbary listened to Mr. Smith with growing unease. “Mercy! You don’t think—”

“He don’t think, that’s the trouble!” Mrs. Smith interrupted with a stern glance at her spouse. “Now look what you’ve done with your prittle-prattle. You’ll have Miss here in a fret when the plain truth is that Buonaparte has no more chance of escaping Elba than a cat in hell without claws.”

Mr. Smith looked stubborn. Before he could speak, the diligence gave a particularly sharp lurch, then stopped, causing Mrs. Smith to cease castigating her husband to instead mutter caustic comments about jumblegut lane.

The door of the diligence was flung open, not by the conductor but a masked brigand. With a gesture of his evil-looking pistol he indicated that the passengers were to disembark. Mrs. Smith’s mouth dropped open. “Lawks!” she said. “We’re being robbed!”

The passengers tumbled out of the diligence, to be divested of their valuables by another brigand. There were several ruffians gathered around the coach, all of them heavily armed. Barbary was the last passenger to emerge. She looked around for Tibble and was glad to see him safe. “Perdition!” she muttered, as she recognized the villainous-looking Jacques among the highwaymen.

He’d seen her. Too late now to try to hide behind Mrs. Smith’s broad back. Barbary could only try to put on a brave face so that the brute wouldn’t know she was quaking in her boots.

“You!” she said as he strode toward her. “You should be ashamed of yourself, preying on harmless travelers, sir! If you
must
do so, I would think you would do better to concentrate on private carriages, since those passengers must have a great deal more money than we do. Than I do, at any rate! Oh! What are you doing?” It was a rhetorical question only; Jacques had grasped her arm and was dragging her away from the others. Barbary beat at him with her reticule, which accomplished her nothing at all.

He came to a stop in the midst of the trees.
“Que diable!
You’ve led us a merry chase.”

Barbary contemplated the pistol and decided that Jacques wasn’t going to shoot her outright. “I suppose you wish me to apologize for kicking you in the shin that night at the inn. Very well, I apologize. But you did deserve it, you know.”

Jacques scowled. “Why did you leave so soon?”

Barbary’s arm, where he gripped it, was going numb. “You knew I was in the diligence? Is that why you stopped us? I have said already that I was sorry. You go to great lengths.”

“Chacun à son goût.”
Jacques spat on the ground.

Everyone to his own taste, indeed. Jacques was certainly not to hers. He had seemed to admire her. Did he mean to abduct her now? Barbary did not wish to be abducted, certainly not by Jacques. “You must not think such things!” she said sternly. “I am a married woman, sir!”

“Bah! I do not care for that.”

Barbary could not help but wish Lord Grafton had displayed such single-mindedness. Jacques flashed his strong white teeth. “What game are you playing, English miss?”

“No game, I assure you.” Barbary wondered if she might be dealing with a lunatic. “Shouldn’t we be returning to your friends?”

“Comment?
With great intensity, Jacques began to quote:

“Tis done—but yesterday a King! And arm’d with Kings to strive—”

They were at this again? Best to humor the madman. Barbary countered:

“ ‘And now thou art a nameless thing:

So abject—yet alive!”

Jacques shook his head. “You damn near put paid to our plans. No time for explanations! Here it is.” Roughly he thrust a packet into the bodice of her traveling dress.

Barbary clutched her bosom. “What--”

“You know what to do with it.”  Jacques whistled so shrilly that Barbary winced. Then he grasped her reticule and yanked it off her wrist. “We wouldn’t want anyone to get suspicious, would we? Go on, back to your friends.”

Barbary needed no further urging. She fled.

She supposed she should be grateful that she’d suffered no greater harm at the villain’s hands. But to lose what little bit of money she possessed—and it was not even her own money, but the remainder of the proceeds from Lord Grafton’s watch—sometimes life was almost too hard to be borne. What the deuce was in this packet that pressed so uncomfortably against her skin? What did Jacques mean when he said she would know what to do with it?

“There you are!” cried Mrs. Smith as Barbary returned to the diligence. “I tell you, dearie, it made me palpitate to see that devil drag you off. Mark my words, I said to Sam, the rogue means to have his way with Miss! But here, you look none the worse for wear. Unlike that servant of yours, who fainted dead away. What did the rogue want? What did he say?”

“Little enough.” Barbary removed the vinaigrette from Tibble’s pocket, uncorked it, and thrust it under his nose. “He stole my purse.”

Tibble recovered in time to hear this last. “Oh, Miss Barbary!” he moaned.

“Never mind, Tibble. We’re not done for yet.” Barbary helped the manservant to his feet.

The conductor interrupted then, begging the passengers to resume their seats. There was little conversation between them as they resumed their journey; even Mrs. Smith seemed subdued. Barbary avoided the woman’s curious glances and stared out the window at the passing countryside.

She dared not examine the uncomfortable packet. Perhaps it contained money? At the rate her luck was running, it was more likely some illegal contraband that could land her in a French jail. Yes, and how was she to make good her promise to Tibble? Having uprooted him from his homeland, Barbary must somehow see that he was provided for.

She racked her brain. Barbary was qualified neither by education nor temperament to take up a profession. Her parents had been horrified to hear of her separation from her husband; they would disown her altogether if they learned of this further disgrace.

The diligence inched along the road to Paris. The gentlemen dismounted and walked up the steeper of the hills so that the horses might be eased. The coach passed by white-capped women working in the fields, and soldiers returning home from the long war. Barbary saw great-coated Cossacks, stiff-shakoed Prussians, red-jacketed British troops making their way toward the Channel; ragged Frenchmen in patched breeches and big cocked hats. The soldiers all had one thing in common. Each had Conor’s mocking black-browed face.

Barbary did not wish to think of her husband. She leaned her head back against the seat, closed her eyes. There was no other solution. Upon their arrival in Paris she must humbly beg the assistance of her cousin Mab.

Chapter Four

Ma’mselle Amabel Foliot, conversely, had no thought of her cousin Barbary. She was concentrating very hard on holding her pose. In this she had some assistance from ropes that hung from the ceiling on a bar along the wall.

It was very quiet in the studio. The students bent diligently over the drawing boards resting on their knees, sketching their subject with grease crayons, lead pencils, charcoal, or chalk. There would be no bursts of silly songs, no
mêlées
that resulted in damage to the furniture today, and certainly no buckets of water propped above the door to surprise the next unwary arrival. The master was present, and all was businesslike. Maurice had not come unaccompanied to his studio, and Mab regretted that circumstance very much indeed.

The studio was a large rectangular room with a high ceiling, lit by a row of tall windows along one wall. An awning was draped across them as protection against the summer heat. The walls were haphazardly hung with canvases and sketches, and messages scribbled in charcoal and chalk. Palette scrapings and daubings splattered both walls and wooden floors. In one corner were stacked new canvases.

Mab was posed on a platform against one of the walls. The students studied her through half-closed eyes, stumped in half-tones, indicated shadows by hatching or cross-hatching, as they attempted to portray Mab not as an attractive young woman clad in a minimum amount of gauzy draperies, but to transform her into a representation of the classic ideal. Maurice moved among them, murmuring comments. He had kept on his gloves in an attempt to avoid the temptation of snatching up crayon or charcoal or pencil to amend a student’s work.

All this was very ordinary. What was not ordinary was the gentleman who had come with Maurice to his studio this day, and whose presence was at least partially responsible for the diligence that the students displayed. Maurice’s students all knew that the Duc de Gascoigne had a considerable degree of influence upon their master’s splendid career.