Scandal's Daughter (33 page)

She watched the gig slither down the side of a wave. That was when she realized that the return to the sloop would take them not just across the choppy lagoon but out among those heaving rollers that dwarfed the little boat.

“We could walk to Calais,” James muttered disconsolately. “From there it’s only three-and-twenty sea miles to Dover.”

“We’d be arrested on the way, for sure.”

“There are worse things than waiting out the war in a comfortable French prison.”

“What makes you think it would be comf—”

Boom!

“Cannon!” James jumped to his feet.

Cordelia looked to her right just in time to see the flash accompanying the second boom. Two frigates flying the French
tricouleur
were swiftly bearing down upon the
Badger
.

The gig swung round and scurried desperately for the sloop. Abandoning the boat, the sailors swarmed up the ship’s side on ropes as white canvas unfurled on all three masts. Like a swan stretching its wings and taking to the skies, the sails billowed in the still-boisterous wind and the
Badger
fled.

“It looks as if we’ll be walking to Calais,” said James philosophically.

“They’ll come back for us!”

“If the French don’t take ‘em or sink ‘em. If they can find this precise spot. We cannot wait to find out. We have nothing.”

“I had no chance to bring my purse but I have my diamonds.” Cordelia glanced around the wilderness of sea and sand, bleak in the twilight. “Not that they are much use to us here.”

“Can’t eat ‘em, can’t burn ‘em—and it’s getting deuced chilly.” James, too, had on his Greek cloak. He pulled it tighter around him. “There’s driftwood, but it’s bound to be damp after the storm and I have no tinderbox.”

“From the ship I saw pine woods inland. At least we’d have shelter from the wind.”

“And at least it’s not snowing.” He grinned at her and offered his arm. “We’ve been in worse spots. Shall we walk, ma’am?”

It was not the sort of decorous stroll where fingertips on a crooked arm provide all necessary support. They hauled each other up the shifting sand of the dunes and slid down the other side. The sea now a muffled murmur behind them, they trudged onward across uneven, scrubby wasteland, skirting a reed-choked pond. As the last light faded, the forest ahead loomed black as pitch.

Noses and ears, more than eyes, told them they had reached the pines. The air breathed an aromatic scent and twigs snapped underfoot. Then Cordelia tripped over a fallen branch.

“Ouch!” she exclaimed, tightening her grip on James’s arm to stop herself falling.

“Are you hurt?”

“I wrenched my ankle.”

“It’s not sprained, is it?” James said in dismay.

“Just ricked, I think, but I’m not walking any further tonight,” she said firmly. “We have no idea where we are or where we’re going. There are no wolves or wild boars in France, are there?”

“I trust not. I refuse to spend the night in a tree. Let us just hope it doesn’t rain.”

Hunger and thirst and the ground for a bed were nothing new. Curled up in their cloaks, they slept.

The hoot of an owl roused James. He listened as it hooted again, farther off. Nearby something rustled the among dry pine needles. A fox, he guessed, or a badger. It didn’t sound big enough to be dangerous.

He was cold. Rolling over, he put his arm around Cordelia’s waist. Without waking, she snuggled back against him.

Astounded, he discovered that he was thoroughly happy.

* * * *

A squirrel woke Cordelia. Four feet from her face, it sat with a pinecone in its paws, chattering angrily at her. She raised her hand to brush away a strand of hair tickling her cheek. The little rust-red creature dropped the cone and scampered off to climb the nearest tree, where it paused for a last burst of scolding before it disappeared into the branches.

Cordelia thought she and James ought to be moving, trying to find some sign of habitation, but she felt quite warm and safe lying there with his arm around her. Besides, he had had a hard day yesterday what with sickness and all. She did not want to wake him. In the gloom beneath the dark green canopy of the pines she could not tell how late it was. If only she was not so hungry and thirsty, like in Captain do Castilho’s cabin...

She drowsed, drifting somewhere between memories and dreams of the peaceful time on the Portuguese ship between James’s recovery from his sickness and the advent of the corsairs. In her dream, once again he put his hand on her breast, caressing, gently squeezing. Every nerve tingled. A fiery glow ignited in the pit of her belly. She turned towards him with a soft moan.

Someone called out, “
Mais où vas tu, sot?
”

Where are you going, fool?
In French. In her dream? In all her wanderings she had never dreamt in anything but English!

She was awake.

“Tu vas trop loin.”

At the sound of that voice—
you’re going too far
—James’s hand suddenly stilled, but it rested on her breast. Cordelia tried to sit up. His arm clamped around her, holding her down.

“Don’t move,” he breathed in her ear, his warm breath arousing a last flicker of desire.

“Let me go!” She whispered, though she wanted to shout. “We must catch them before they move on.”

“Do you really want to spend the next few years in a French prison?”

“Do you really want to starve? We could wander round in circles for days!”

“
Il n’y a rien là-bas.”

There’s nothing there.
“I speak excellent French,” Cordelia went on. “We’ll tell them we’re French, we’re shipwrecked...” Drat, what was the word? “...
naufragés
.”

“They must be bandits. What would honest men be doing in this wilderness?”

“What would bandits be doing here? There’s no one to rob.”

“No one but us.”

Cordelia turned her head to look at him and laughed. “Oh James, we hardly look like anyone worth robbing. You have pine needles in your hair.”

“So do you.” He drew his finger tenderly down her cheek. “But you have the diamonds on you, and I have not forgot—if you have—the Greek brigands’ plans for you.”

“I’ve not forgotten,” she said soberly, “but I cannot see any alternative.”

He sighed. “No, you’re right. One does not last long without water, and I wouldn’t care to drink from that marshy pond we passed. And my French is excellent, too. We should at least observe them to see what kind of men they are. With luck they may be on a path we can follow.”

“Then come on. Hurry. I can scarce hear them now.”

Deeper in the woods, the thick layer of old pine-needles deadened their footsteps despite their haste. The voices grew clearer. One said plaintively, “
J’veux mon p’tit déjeuner,”
and Cordelia’s mouth watered at the thought of breakfast.

She and James came to the edge of a sunny clearing, overgrown with pink spires of rosebay willowherb. The sky above was blue, yesterday’s storm vanished without trace. Quite close, three men in tattered, faded smocks and breeches sat on a fallen log. Two were elderly, with lined, leathery faces, greying moustaches, and grey stubble on their chins. The third was a beardless youth with the flat, round, inexpressive face of a halfwit.

All three munched bread and sausage. Cordelia started forward. James grabbed her arm.

“Don’t be a sapskull,” she hissed. “They’re harmless peasants.”

The halfwit heard her. His face turned towards them, eyes and mouth round with alarm. Emitting an inarticulate squawk, he pointed.

James and Cordelia stepped out of the black shadow of the trees and approached, doing their best to look unthreatening. The old men stopped eating to gape, but they appeared more astonished than alarmed.

The youth’s fright turned to wonder as he stared at Cordelia’s fair hair, hanging about her ears since she had lost her hairpins in the night. “
Jolie dame,”
he said in delight. He held out his handful of food, as if coaxing a stray dog. “
Jolie dame veut de mon saucisson?”

Tantalized by a whiff of garlic, the pretty lady certainly did want some of his sausage. However, she restrained herself while the proprieties were observed. As James explained their presence, Cordelia became aware of a pervasive odour underlying the garlic, like an intensification of the piny aroma which she had ceased to notice.

It was soon explained. The bearded peasant politely met James’s shipwreck story with the information that he and his companions were employed in gathering resin from the pines for the manufacture of “
térébenthine.”

“Turpentine, at a guess,” said James.

“
Not’ résine,
it’s the best,” said the halfwit with pride.
“On l’envoie même en Angleterre!”

“Tais-toi, imbécile!
The English are our enemies. One does not trade with the enemy.”

“
À bas les Anglais,”
the youth cried obediently. “
Vive l’Empéreur.”

“Pay no attention to Jean-Marie, m’sieur, ‘dame,” said the old man anxiously. “He is an idiot, not right in the head. If you please, be seated and share our meal.”

James and Cordelia exchanged a significant look. As she ate dry bread and hard sausage, washed down with thin, sour, red wine, Cordelia racked her brains. How could they find out without giving themselves away whether Jean-Marie had indeed been talking nonsense?

Even the pungent garlic sausage was faintly tainted with a tang of pine. “Might as well be drinking Greek retsina,” James muttered, “and we can’t be more than a few miles from the best claret vineyards!”

The wine made Cordelia feel delightfully carefree. Heedless of discretion, she said to the old peasant, “We want to go to England. Can you help us find someone to take us there?”

The horrified shock on James’s face mirrored that of the two old men. It made her giggle.

James seized the leather bottle from her hand. “
Petite ivrogne!”

“I’m not a drunkard,” she protested, pleased that the buzz in her head had no affect on her ability to speak French.

“The wine has risen to my sister’s head. She is accustomed to drink coffee in the morning. Jean-Marie’s words have muddled her. Please excuse her and don’t take any notice of what she says.”

Cordelia reached for the bottle. “I’m thirsty.”

“This will only make you thirstier.”

“We must conduct mam’selle to the village,” the greybeard decided. He gave James a shrewd look. “And after, where is it that m’sieur desires to go?”

“To England,” said Jean-Marie eagerly. “
Jolie dame
wants to go to England, like our resin, on the big boat. The
Alouette
will take her.”

In silence the two old peasants looked at each other. The taciturn one turned his head and spat. They looked at James. All three shrugged.

“The
Alouette
?” said James cautiously.

“You see, m’sieur, we are Gascons. The king, the emperor, pah!” He too spat. “What do those
gros bonnets
in Paris know of our lives? Since forever the English are the best customers for our wines, our brandy. Shall we stop selling because a Corsican corporal says so?”

“The
Alouette
is a smuggling vessel?” James grinned. “Lead us to her!”

* * * *

Of course it was not quite that easy. After a long walk in the shade of the pines, they came to a tiny, poverty-stricken hamlet inhabited by resin gatherers and charcoal burners. For several days they were hidden in an excessively smelly cowshed, until a wagon arrived from Bordeaux to fetch a load of resin and charcoal. The badly sealed kegs of resin among which they sat were even smellier than the cowshed. At first the odour seemed more acceptable, but soon the fumes made their heads swim. And the wagon—James was prepared to take his oath on it—moved even slower along the sandy tracks than that long-ago Greek oxcart on its stony road.

“We could walk faster,” said Cordelia.

“But we’d be much more conspicuous. If we meet a troop of soldiers, they won’t even glance at a couple of peasants in the back of a cart.”

They had exchanged their comparatively fine dress for pale blue peasant homespun. An unnecessary precaution, it turned out. Not a sign of a uniform did they see.

As the sun sank behind them, they came to the bank of the Gironde, the estuary of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers. In the shelter of a spinney, their incurious driver stopped the wagon and told them to get down. He unloaded half a dozen kegs of resin. James helped him roll them into a thicket of bushes, briars, and brambles which miraculously gave way before them. The cleared centre was already stacked with dozens of barrels.

“You wait here,” said the driver.

“When will the
Alouette
come?” Cordelia asked.

His shoulders rose and fell. “Me, I know nothing. I just follow orders.” Without another word he plodded back to his wagon and drove sluggishly off.

They stared after him.

“We could easily run and catch him up,” James suggested.

“We don’t want to go to Bordeaux if we can help it. At least those barrels prove the smugglers really exist.”

“You had your doubts? And I was carefully concealing mine!”

Cordelia smiled briefly. “They exist, but we have no idea when they are going to turn up.”

“I doubt they leave their goods hidden here longer than they need, for fear of discovery.”

“No, I daresay not,” she said with relief. “All the same, let’s eat just a bit of the bread and cheese the peasants gave us and save the rest for tomorrow. We may yet be glad the smell of turpentine in the wagon destroyed our appetites for luncheon.”

They picnicked on the edge of the spinney, near a bank of sweet-smelling wild roses. The setting sun tinted the waters of the estuary as pink as the roses. Sails were few and far between, Bordeaux’s once thriving trade destroyed by Napoleon’s Continental System and the English blockade. Assuming that the
Alouette
would come from the great port city, Cordelia watched hopefully each vessel approaching from their right, but all stayed far out in the channel.

As darkness fell, they returned to the thicket. Finding their way to the centre was more difficult without the wagon driver to guide them, but at last, briar-scratched, they came to the secret clearing.