Exile for Dreamers (34 page)

“To escape all the commotion?”

“No.” Gabriel looked down at me quizzically and Zeus sidestepped. “Of course not. I wouldn't have argued with the doctor so bitterly if that were the reason.”

“Why, then?” I fancied he might say it was because he missed me, or because he longed to see me, or that he yearned for these few stolen moments we had together.

Instead, he chided me as if I were a dim-witted child. “I should think it is perfectly obvious. There are at least a dozen men encamped on my lawn. You should not be out here alone and unchaperoned.”

I may have sputtered. I know some sort of unladylike noise blew through my lips. “Don't be ridiculous, my lord. I can take care of myself. You should've listened to your physician and stayed in bed.”

He grumbled something I could not quite hear because Zeus danced forward. He reined in his horse and groused, “I detest lying in bed. It is even more intolerable if I imagine you out here, running by yourself, at the mercy of any one of these randy jackanapes who might decide you are fair game.”

Hands on hips, I frowned hard enough that it should've toppled him from his saddle. “Now you're just gammoning me. You know perfectly well there's not a man among them who could outrun me.”

He relented under my ferocious stare. “Very well, there may be something to that. Nevertheless, you are a fairly fine-looking female and far more vulnerable than you think.”

Fairly?

If he'd been standing on the ground instead of sitting all pompous and arrogant atop his big horse, I would've socked him square in his sore shoulder. “Fairly?”

He twitched in his seat and gave me a rascally smirk. “Yes,
fairly.
Didn't I just say so?”

“I'm overcome by your flattery, my lord Silver-Tongue.”

“Yes, well, I worried you might be, so I kept it to a minimum. Wouldn't want to spoil you.”

Zeus had the audacity to whinny and toss his head at that very moment, as if he thought his master's gibe was particularly amusing.

“Oh, no, we wouldn't want that.” I sulked and glared at Zeus, too, the mangy traitor. “And now why don't you and your snickering horse take yourselves off home. As you can see, I am unaccosted. Apart from that, except for the sentries, your troops are all sound asleep at this hour.”

He ignored my request that he leave. “Fortunately for you, I gave those sentries orders not to shoot my fleet-footed neighbor. I don't mind telling you, Tess, it is fairly ticklish trying to explain to these soldiers why there is a young lady running up and down these fields in the wee hours of the morning.”

“
Fairly.
” I brooded at hearing the word again.

“Yes, but it had to be done. Otherwise I worried you might end up with a bullet lodged in your lovely person.”

Lovely?

I stopped walking away from him quite so fast. “Thank you for asking them to hold their fire. I hadn't thought of the fact that I might look like a shadow running between the trees.”

He dismounted then and fell into step beside me, both of us silent. Zeus stopped to graze on an inviting tuft of grass, and as we waited Gabriel broke the uneasy silence between us. “The militia will begin training today. MacDougal was a sergeant in my battalion and, as such, he has agreed to run the men through their drills. He is in high spirits at the prospect. I hired him away when I sold my commission, because I knew I could count on Mac, but I believe he misses the military.”

It made sense, now, Gabriel's gruff Scottish man-of-all-work. “He seems quite devoted to you, my lord.”

“A good man, Mac. Loyal as the day is long.” He paused, and I wondered if he was thinking about his brother, who was so wretchedly disloyal. “I've instructed the men to practice on the grounds nearest Stranje House, which means they'll be marching and practicing their drills and formations as close to Lady Daneska's prison cell as is possible.”

“Excellent,” I said, and skimmed my hand over Zeus's sleek neck.

“Aye, now if I could just settle Mrs. Evans.” He rubbed his neck. “I hired two girls from the village to help her in the kitchens and yet she still carries on as if I've asked her to feed Wellington's entire army. I shall have to hire two more girls or I won't hear the end of it.”

“Serving girls?” I turned to him in alarm. “And village maids at that. Then it is you who needs guarding, my lord, not I.”

He chuckled, and I wasn't sure in that light, but I thought he might have turned a bit pink. “No, Tess. You're the only lass with enough courage to look at me squarely. The two girls she hired cower like mice against the wall if I so much as walk down a hall. With these scars and this confounded limp”—he swatted at his thigh—“most women find me as frightening as one of those beasts in the Grimm brothers' tales.”

Frighteningly beautiful.

My beast.

“Just as well,” I muttered. “See that they don't find out exactly how beautiful you are, because if one of those cheeky girls dares flirt with you, I will march straight over and throttle her.”

I quite liked it when Gabriel smiled. It was a magnificent thing, not unlike the sun dawning. Which it did just then, in brilliant pink and orange streaks that chased away the gray.

“I must be going in now,” I said quietly. “Miss Stranje's rules.”

“I'm serious about being circumspect while the troops are here.” He tucked my hair behind my ear, letting his fingers graze my cheeks a few moments longer than needed. “Promise you'll guard yourself around them, so that I needn't worry?”

I wanted to tease him, but he looked so very earnest that I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't, not with his fingers barely touching my cheek, just enough to completely muddle my senses and melt my wits down to the wick. All I could do was nod.

*   *   *

After breakfast that morning, Stranje House was as noisy and busy as the troops drilling next door at Ravencross Manor. Fortunately, Lord Ravencross lent us four of his strongest men to help carry the bits and pieces of Mr. Sinclair's warship down to the beach, where the remainder of the construction would take place. Our shoreline is particularly rocky, especially near the caves, so we had to traverse some distance to a sandy outcropping beyond the rocks.

The hike up and down the cliffs was too narrow to carry anything bulkier than one of Lord Ravencross's skiffs, which had been made over into pontoons. They would've been bulky enough if they'd still been skiffs with open hulls. But the mouths of each of these long boats had been tacked over with oilcloth and covered with pitch. Each boat had become a gigantic drum. It took two men, Captain Grey and Lord Wyatt, walking in careful alignment to carry down each pontoon.

Gabriel's men carried down the boiler and the furnace in two pieces. Sinclair and Georgie planned to connect them later. There were several stacks of lumber, that Jane explained would be used to construct a deck across the top of the two pontoons, three long crankshafts, a basket of gears, two flywheels, and the entire conglomeration had to be hauled down a narrow winding path.

Georgie, Lord Wyatt, the captain, and Mr. Sinclair started right away on construction while Lady Jane and Sera took careful notes. I carried down the last of their copper piping and one of the pickling barrels we'd pilfered from our cook, Magda, to use as floats in case the ship sank.

Georgie was ecstatic that our miniature warship so closely resembled Robert Fulton's pontoon warship, the
Demologos.
“Except our steam engine won't fit belowdecks as it will on his, but ours will sit quite tidily suspended between the pontoons where the paddle wheel can turn unimpeded.”

“And we have no cannons,” observed Jane dryly.

Georgie did not like anyone criticizing their creation, not even Jane. “Naturally, our prototype is too small to bear the weight of a cannon. But we have our ballista.”

“Hardly comparable to the thirty-two guns Fulton's ship will hold,” Lord Wyatt teased.

Mr. Sinclair sprang to Georgie's defense. “Last I heard, the
Demologos
won't bear up under the weight of those two hundred-pounders he intended to mount fore and aft. Had to leave 'em off.” He twirled a screwdriver, pensively gazing off in the distance. “Still, with thirty guns she'll be a beauty.”

“I like ours,” muttered Georgie, tightening a fitting.

Unbeknownst to Georgie, Lord Wyatt smiled fondly at the back of her head. “Aye, she's a beauty all right.”

I took my leave, as it was well past time to bring Lady Daneska her breakfast.

Cook filled Daneska's bowl of gruel while I poured the wine for her, and I hurried to carry it down the stone steps to the dungeon. When I opened the door, she seemed startled to see me and quickly pulled the blanket up to her neck. Mercurial as ever, her surprise changed to a pout. “I thought you weren't coming.”

“I'm late, I know. But look, I've brought you a peace offering. A dried plum. I had to slip it out of the pantry without Cook noticing. You know how she watches over every grain of rice.”

Daneska's iron bracelets rattled when she snatched it from the tray and tore it in half with her teeth, chewing the leathery fruit while she sneered at me. “I suppose you expect me to thank you for this one measly prune.”

“No. I merely felt bad for my long delay in bringing your food.”

“Oh, yes, you are so very concerned for my welfare.” She held out her manacled wrists. “If that is true, unlock these and let me go.”

I said nothing, but backed away and leaned against the wall.

“But no, you would rather let Ghost slit my throat,
n'est-ce pas
?” She gulped down half the wine and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “
Voilà,
no more trouble from the Lady Daneska. All of you will rejoice.” She lifted her goblet in a toast.

“I offered to help.”

She rolled her eyes at me and guzzled the rest of the wine.

“Tell me where he is and I will end him.”

“You?” She slammed the cup down. “
Fah.
He is not your straw mannequin that he may be so easily slain.” She took the hunk of bread and shoved the tray with the bowl of gruel untouched back to me. The pewter goblet clinked onto its side. “Take it and go.”

“As you wish.”

“Wait.” She leaned and grabbed the edge of the tray, smiling slyly up at me as if she had a secret she wished to share. “Did you think about what I said? Did you think about Napoleon's offer? We could escape, together, you and I. I know where there is a boat. We could return to Paris. Think, Tessika, you would be a national treasure, feted and cosseted. Fine wines. Divine food, not this bland English fare, and—”

I knew what she would say next. “The richest silks…”

“Yes, of course.” She leaned back, realizing that somehow she'd gone too far. She didn't wait for my answer and she shoved the tray again, this time with her foot, sending it slopping across the floor.

“The rats will like that.”

“Go away. I have a headache. All that shouting and thump-thump-thumping of soldiers' feet, that is your doing, I suppose?” she snarled.

“I had nothing to do with that. The Lord Lieutenant called out the militia, not I.”

“But you tricked him into doing it, didn't you?”

“You had more to do with it than I did,” I snapped. “We know why you're here—to prepare the way for Napoleon to attack Britain. Did you think the government wouldn't do anything about it? Of course, they called out the militia. Here, and all along the coast.”

I snatched up the tray and left her cell before she could tell that I was lying.

The next morning, I refused to speak to her. I delivered her tray and said nothing.

“I don't hear any more hammering in the yard,” she said almost cheerfully. When I didn't answer, she conjectured on her own. “Perhaps they have finished work on Mr. Sinclair's project?”

I crossed my arms and pressed my lips together.

“How very clever you all are to help him. What is it? I wonder.” She ate very daintily that morning, dabbing her mouth when it needed to be wiped and, instead of gulping everything down as if it were her last meal, she dawdled. “Could it be his uncle's famous underwater boat … what is it they called it?”

I kept mum and stared at the window, wondering just how much she had seen of Sinclair's warship.

Daneska took her sweet time sipping the wine and soaking little hunks of bread in it. “Or perhaps it is just a copy of one of his uncle's gunships, the one that runs on steam.”

“Are you quite finished?” I snapped up the tray and jerked the cup from her hand.

The next day was worse.

I trudged down the dark stairs into the chilly bowels of Stranje House carrying Daneska her food, thinking I would have to agree to go with her if, according to our plan, I was ever going to help her escape. When I unlocked the door, she didn't look up. She sat holding her knees, staring glumly at the wall across from her. She didn't greet me, didn't say anything, no clever insults, no biting remarks, not even so much as a sneer when I set the tray down.

“Are you ill?” I asked.

“No.” Daneska's listless response was devoid of her normally vibrant accent. Straightway she reached for the port and gulped down half the glass. “I am as good as dead.”

“Don't be silly,” I said. Even though she was my enemy, I hated seeing her like this. “I told you, I won't let Lucien kill you. We've posted a guard. One of us stands watch in the corridor at all times.”

“
Oh, yes, my guards,
” she scoffed. “Ha! Ten men couldn't stop him, let alone one little girl. No, I am doomed.” She slammed down the empty glass and shoved the gruel across the tray. “Take it away. I haven't the stomach for it today.”