The Duke Is Mine

Page 71

“You are brilliant,” Olivia said, sincerely. “If there are any coins to be given out, I shall make sure that they come in your direction.”
He grinned. “It was my idea, but we did it, all of us. So, is it comfortable up there, my lady? The mattress is . . . smooth?”
“Of course,” Olivia said, rather less than truthfully. She hesitated and then asked, “Aren’t you rather young to be a soldier?”
“I’m almost sixteen,” he said stoutly. But then he added, with a little droop to his lips, “Nothing ever happens in this garrison, because Le Capitaine is interested only in brandy. My mother forced me to be here rather than join a proper regiment.” He looked disgusted.
Olivia smiled at him. “I think your mother is very wise.”
“Petit! Time for review!” The words echoed down the long stone corridor.
“What is needed is a distraction that might cause Madame to leave her kitchen,” he said, his brown eyes now sparkling. “Something that will disrupt the garrison before your duke hands Bessette those guineas he is demanding.” He grinned. “I shall think on it.”
He disappeared, slamming the door behind him. Olivia heard the lock slide into place.
A distraction? What good would that do, unless she could escape from this cell? She ran her hand over the uneven mattress, thinking about the light in Petit’s eyes. One could almost think that he had tried to drop a hint about her mattresses.
Carefully, she slid her legs over the side and stood on the stepladder. She slipped her hand between the first two mattresses, but she could still feel the lump beneath her fingers. She tried the next two, and the two before that . . .
It was a key.
A key tucked between the mattresses, a big iron key that looked exactly like the one the young soldier had used to enter her cell. A smile spread across her face. She would wait for Petit to create the distraction he had promised, and then walk straight out of the building and into Quin’s arms. And if Madame Fantomas tried to stop her on the way through the kitchen, she’d thump her on the head with a rolling pin.
A bellow sounded down the corridor. “Spy, what do you think of my bread?”
Olivia grinned. “I’ve had better,” she shouted back.
“Putain!”
Thirty-one
The Bark of Cerberus
Quin was murderous, exhausted, and on the verge of sheer panic by the time he reached the village of Wissant. Lucy was as tired as he was, so he was carrying her tucked inside his jacket, which wasn’t comfortable for either of them. And then it transpired that no one had heard anything of une anglaise, though they knew that some English soldiers, one of them gravely wounded, had been living in Père Blanchard’s hut.
“The soldiers were not hurting anyone,” the smith told Quin, arms folded over his formidable chest. “Yes, they were English.” He shrugged. “So are you. I would guess that Bessette scooped up your woman.”
Quin’s eyes narrowed. “Bessette?”
“A warthog of a schemer. He’ll have handed her over to Madame Fantomas, and he’ll want a reward.”
“Where will I find this Madame Fantomas?”
He snorted. “Where else? The garrison, right under the nose of that drunken sot.”
“Don’t you speak against Le Capitaine,” the smith’s wife said, suddenly appearing in the door behind him. “He’s keeping our boys safe.” She eyed the shock of white hair falling over Quin’s brow. “Touched by an angel, were you?”
“By the devil, more like,” he answered.
He headed back to the garrison, a few furlongs up the road from the village. He didn’t think he’d ever been so fatigued, or so filthy, in his life. His hair ribbon was long lost. Every inch of his clothing was caked with dust or worse.
But when questioning the villagers, all that dirt had worked to his advantage: he’d had the distinct impression that while they might not have been eager to help a member of the aristocracy—no matter the nationality—the look and dress of a madman had fit right in.
When he reached the garrison, the sentry had woken up.
“I want my fiancée,” Quin said, dispensing with the preliminaries.
“I can tell you who has her, but I should have something for my pains.” He pulled nervously at his mustache.
Quin leaned toward the man and spoke in a voice that was calm, but lethal. “I’ve had a long day. Your pains? I would be happy to rip your head from your shoulders, and then you will forget your pains.”
“Bessette is waiting for you around the building,” the sentry blurted out, jerking back.
Transaction concluded, Quin walked around the side of the garrison, one pistol at the ready and the other stuck in his waistband.
“Here!” A low voice called to him from the trees.
Lucy was sniffing at one of the windows, set close to the ground. “Come!” he called to her, walking toward the woods.
She ignored him, barking at some invisible quarry. A rat, no doubt. He started toward her, but a burly man stepped from the shade of the wood. The smith was right: warthog suited him.
“You have my fiancée,” Quin growled, leaving Lucy to her rat and striding over to him.
Something about the look in Quin’s eye must have unnerved him, because he stopped grinning and rubbed his hands together. “You’ll need to pay me fifty guineas for my protection,” he said briskly. “She was waiting around Père Blanchard’s hut. We always receive a share when we pick a woman up wandering about where she doesn’t belong. Between men. That’s not even to mention the fact that no English are allowed on these shores, as I hope you know.”
Quin let his hand draft back to the butt of his pistol. “I don’t have it.”
Bessette shifted his stance, just enough to show that he too was armed. His little warthog eyes glinted. “I’ll ask you to fetch the sum before I hand over your woman.”
“If I return to England to raise that sum, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to come back immediately,” Quin pointed out. “Nations at war tend not to have regular ferry service.”
Bessette spat out his soggy cigar at Quin’s feet, narrowly missing. “Boats go back and forth every day, so you’ll be back by morning. If you give something toward her keep, we won’t introduce her to the pleasures that only French—”
Quin’s left hand shot out and he twisted Bessette’s scarf around his throat, so quickly that the man didn’t have a chance to gasp. He watched dispassionately as Bessette’s bulbous face reddened to a beet color; there was some sort of hubbub going on behind him, but he didn’t want to risk turning his head. Instead he watched Bessette’s face for a slackness that would indicate he was near expiration for lack of air.
When it came, he eased his grip. “My fiancée. Now.”
Bessette gargled. Quin couldn’t make out what he was saying. For one thing, strangled French was none too easy to understand, and for another Lucy was barking furiously somewhere behind him. Likely the soldiers had returned from their useless patrol.
With his free hand, he pulled the pistol from Bessette’s breeches and threw it to the ground, shoving his own into the soft folds of the man’s stomach. “You’re a petty blackmailer, if not worse, and I’m convinced the village would be better off without you.” He tightened the scarf again. He waited for a bit and then relaxed his grip just enough so that Bessette could make pleading noises. “Where is she?”