Tender the Storm (10 page)

"Angers," corrected the captain.

"So far south?
Ah well, when one has only the benefit of an itinerant commissioner, one must make do as best one may. Pity! I shall no doubt meet up with you in an hour or so once I've executed my errand in Coutances. Angers you say? That's a devil of a long ride for my taste. Well, well! Duty is a hard taskmaster." And with a friendly wave from the coach window, Rolfe called to his coachman to get underway.

The cordial manner was not in evidence when Rolfe turned his stormy gray eyes upon Zoë.

In an attempt to forestall him, she blurted, "I'm
not sorry that I gave away your doll.
That little girl?
She was so . . . pathetic.
I . . .
I wanted to do something for her, 'tis all."

The gale in his eyes moderated a little, but there was still enough ice in his voice to freeze live coals. "I warned you once before never to disobey me."

"Oh!" So that was it.

"Have you no sense, little girl? Didn't it occur to you that the last thing I wanted was for you to call attention to yourself?"

"No," said Zoë. "I thought . . ." She glanced down at her clasped hands then looked up quickly before her courage completely deserted her. "I thought you were trying to divert attention from the coachman."

"You thought!" In stunned silence, he stared at her for a full minute, then threw back his head and emitted a low laugh. "Children!" he exclaimed. "They're more acute than we grownups give them credit for
! 'Out of the mouths of babes!'
" He
shook his head and regarded her with a softer, more endearing aspect. His eyes, she noted, were more blue than gray. You did a fine thing, a very fine thing, when you parted with your doll. It was a most generous gesture."

"No, really, it was nothing," answered Zoë, with more honesty than the deputy could possibly have imagined. She was thinking that if he wished to turn the conversation, she had no objection. For a moment there she had feared that she was about to be subjected to another humiliating spanking.

"I promise I'll make it up to you."

"I wish you would not." She did not wish the deputy to be always thinking of her in such terms.

"I know how much the doll meant to you."

"I doubt it." At the look of patent surprise which crossed his face, she hurriedly added, "No other doll could possibly replace Zoë in my affections."

"We shall see."

Zoë absorbed Rolfe's words in unsmiling silence. It was evident to her that the deputy supposed that they would meet up with each other again. She knew better. Once he delivered her to her destination, others would come for her and give her escort to the island of Jersey. She would never set eyes on him again.

Her eyes burned. Her throat hurt. Misery settled in the pit of her stomach with all the weight of a marble tombstone. In the space of an hour, he would be out of her life forever.

As the coach rattled its way slowly uphill, over cobbled streets, towards the Law Courts, Zoë stared blindly at the unwitting object of her bewilderment. The man was an agent of the Convention. He was a bigot. He must be. Commissioners and their deputies were hardened
enrages,
purveyors of the new fanatical religion. It was they who carried the Reign of Terror from the floor of the Convention to the provinces. Sensible folk would shake in their shoes whenever their paths chanced to cross these
representants
en mission,
as evidenced by her own alarm when she'd first set eyes on the deputy. She'd been terrified out of her wits then.

But that was all of three days ago. In that short space of time, there had been a material conversion in her feelings towards the young man. From the moment he had ushered her out of the school and onto the streets of Rouen, she had been vaguely aware of his protection. Subsequent events had confirmed that first impression. She was persuaded that it was more,
on his part, than mere devotion to duty. There was a kindness there which she had not mistaken. It was no act. He really cared about her well-being. He'd looked out for her comfort. And with the best will in the world, he had given her a doll to occupy the long hours of tedium when she was confined to the coach. Even the spanking he had administered was
one more evidence
of his concern. And she could not remember without smiling, his droll dismay when he had suspected that he might have taken advantage of her in his sleep.

He was a strange man, this deputy who cared about people. She could not reconcile his office with what she had observed of him.

In Coutances, at the Law Courts, they parted company with the conscripts. If they wondered why the deputy made no move to join them, they gave no sign of it. The parting, on all sides, was
effected
with nothing but friendliness. They had been in close quarters for three days. For the most part they had rubbed along together tolerably well.

The coach made several sharp turns. Zoë lost her bearings. With a suddenness which surprised her, it drove through the open doors of a livery stable. The doors closed behind them. She was helped to alight. She had barely stepped down from the carriage when the coachmen on the box jumped down and others took their places. A set of doors opposite the ones they had driven through were flung open. The carriage rolled out into the dusk. The doors were swiftly closed behind it.

The deputy guided her through a door and down a dimly lit corridor. They passed through another door and entered a room where there were two men and a
woman seated around a table. At sight of the deputy and his companions, the men shouted a greeting and came forward. Zoë was taken in charge by the round- faced, motherly woman and pushed onto a stool close to the hearth. Within minutes, a bowl of hot pea soup was warming her cold hands and nourishing the ache of hunger she had scarcely remarked until that moment.

Snatches of conversation registered in Zoë's brain. She and Housard were to be conveyed to a safe house on the coast within the hour. The deputy was bound for Paris and one more run. They spoke of letters and packages as if they were couriers delivering the post. There were jests and back slapping and the occasional glance in the direction of the coachman. The mood was one of jubilation and self-congratulation. The deputy had smuggled their "package" through the roadblock, right under the noses of Robespierre's agents, Zoë heard them say. And then the deputy, with a meaningful look at Zoë, said something to make his companions guard their tongues.

Zoë pretended an interest in the soup she was spooning into her mouth, but behind her carefully blank expression she calculated that the deputy's coachman could be no other than the spy the soldiers were hunting. It wasn't until the deputy tore the red cap from his head and threw it in the grate, however, that everything became clear to her.

When the flames licked round it, a cheer went up. And then the deputy went down on his haunches before her and smiled into her somber eyes.

As from a great distance, Zoë heard those deep, resonant tones as he made his adieux. Her eyes huge in her face, she drank in the sight of him, taking his
impression as if she were afraid that, in time, he would fade from her memory. But she would only have to close her eyes, she decided, and she would see Deputy Rolfe's gray eyes darken to blue as they crinkled with mirth, and his slow smile, just so, half-tilted at the corners. Her gaze carefully traced over each feature, from the gilded cap of disheveled hair to the laughter lines slashing deeply into his face.

He kissed her on both hands and then, with one last lingering look, he was gone.

No. She would never forget him. Not till her dying day. And in that moment, she realized with shattering clarity that her heart had been given irrevocably to a man whose identity she did not even know.

In various quarters in the city of London, grand houses, some rented, some purchased outright, had been made ready as a temporary shelter for those French refugees who were arriving in England, friendless and without a
sou
to their names. In the Gloucester Road area, in the district of Marylebone, a whole row of Georgian houses was turned over for this purpose. It was to one of these residences that Zoë came on the first day of her arrival in London. She was taken in hand by a member of the reception committee whose purpose it was to interview these new émigrés and help them get settled.

Madame Bertaut was not herself French, but the widow of a French diplomat. She was an affable lady in late middle age. Her friendly manner and unfailing tact inspired confidence. With many encouraging smiles and long, patient silences, she gradually jogged Zoë into revealing the salient details of her background and circumstances.

"Leon Devereux? That name rings a bell."

"My father was a banker."

"Good heavens! Those Devereux?" exclaimed Madame Bertaut. She looked at Zoë more closely. "My late husband mentioned your father quite frequently.
Before the war, his financial empire spanned the English Channel, I was given to understand."

Zoë remained silent. She knew nothing about her father's business.

After a moment, Madame Bertaut continued, "Your parents were arrested, you said?"

Zoë had to search to find her voice. Without elaboration she told of her parents' arrest and subsequent removal to Carnes.

Madame Bertaut made notations on a piece of paper as Zoë gave her explanation.

"And your brother and sister?
What happened to them?"

"We became separated," answered Zoë. To reveal the assumed names and identities of her siblings was to place them in jeopardy. Claire had been very firm on that point before Zoë left Rouen. Until they were all safely together in England, she must employ the greatest circumspection. It was no secret in France that her parents were awaiting trial. It was perfectly safe to reveal as much as she knew about their circumstances. With respect to her brother and sister, she must remain obstinately vague.

"How old are you?" asked Madame Bertaut.

"Seventeen."

The pencil stopped scratching. Madame
Bertaut's
head tilted inquiringly.
"Seventeen?"

Warm color heated Zoë's cheeks. "This is merely a disguise."

"You don't have to explain to me, my dear. I understand perfectly. I've seen young women dressed as boys, men dressed as old women, and . . . well, you know what I mean.
Best to keep these things to ourselves.
A loose tongue might very easily prove disastrous for those who are risking their lives to bring others out of France. Do you take my meaning?"

Zoë signified that she did. She had been enjoined to secrecy in the livery stable at Coutances. Wild horses could not drag from her either the name of her savior or the means he had employed to get her safely to England.