This Duke is Mine (36 page)

Quin switched pistols and shot the second bottle. “I’m the madman who will have you arrested as a smuggler if you do not send your regiment out to find my fiancée. I don’t care how young your men are. You will find her or I’ll destroy every bottle in the place, and I’ll make sure your cozy smuggling operation dries up as well.”

“And how would you do that, being a benighted Englishman?” But the captain was just blustering. He was a weak and feckless type, who would always choose the path of least resistance. Sure enough, he hauled on a bell cord.

A minute or so later a very young soldier poked his head in the room, wrinkling his nose at the odor. “
Oui, mon capitaine?
”

“Is the regiment out on patrol?”

“No, sir. Everyone is still resting.”

Quin finished reloading and shot a third bottle.

“Get them up and send them down to the shore!” the captain screamed, to the sound of glass tinkling to the floor. “Find this man’s woman.
Une anglaise
.
Mon dieu
, my head is killing me.” He fell back onto his bed.

The young soldier saluted his moribund captain and then looked to Quin. “We’re about to patrol the shore in search of smugglers, as we do every morning and afternoon,” he said, without betraying by the blink of an eyelash the fact that they were standing in a smugglers’ haven. “We will look for your wife, sir.”

“Good,” Quin said, biting the word off. He was aware that he was in a state of barely modulated panic. If these soldiers hadn’t captured Olivia—and obviously they hadn’t—then where in the bloody hell was she?

He started down the stairs. He would check every house in Wissant, and then return here to see if the patrol discovered anything.

The damnable thing was that he knew this particular sensation. It fell on his shoulders like a familiar but loathed garment. He had felt it when he realized that Evangeline had taken Alfie and headed for the Channel. He had tasted it, bitter on his tongue, as he galloped toward Dover, hoping to intercept them on the pier.

It had driven him half-mad once he was there, watching the water. And he felt it now. It wasn’t
safe
to love someone.

His mother was right about that.

But it was too late to avoid the condition.

Thirty

The Princess and the . . .

B
essette, followed by Petit, marched Olivia through a door and down a damp and chilly vaulted brick passage. It went on, wound to the left, its walls broken occasionally by solid doors with barred openings at shoulder level.

“What is this place?” Olivia asked.

“The catacombs,” the young soldier answered. “They built the armory on top of them, and decided to use the catacombs for the kitchen and cells. You’re at the far end. She’s given you the best cell—it’s got a hole in the corner.”

Bessette shoved open a door to reveal a bare stone room with one rickety wooden chair, lying on its side. Sure enough, there was a stinking hole in the far corner. A high, tiny window, also barred, revealed sky and a bit of grass; she was, for all intents and purposes, underground.

“You cannot leave me here,” Olivia said, grabbing his arm. “My fiancé is a duke. And I am a lady.”

“I hate
le ducs
,” Bessette said, grinning at her again. “I’m not fond of Napoleon either, but I really hate you aristos.” He shoved her in and slammed the door. He pulled the key free and handed it to Petit, who had trailed them all the way down the passage. “Don’t let this one seduce you into giving up the key,” he advised. “Madame Fantomas is not a pretty sight when she’s angry. Think about her rolling pin.”

“It won’t matter what Madame thinks by the time my fiancé gets through with you,” Olivia shouted.

The only response was the sound of footsteps receding down the passage.

Olivia took a deep breath, which was a mistake; she nearly gagged at the stench coming from the hole. Presumably she would grow accustomed to the smell in a few minutes. Or perhaps fresh air would blow through the window. Perhaps pigs would fly.

One had to think that by now Rupert had either rallied or . . . not. Which meant that Quin would have returned to shore and must now be looking for her. He would be frantic.

Her situation wasn’t as terrible as the dire possibilities Quin had envisioned. After all, she hadn’t fallen into the hands of a garrison of soldiers thirsting for English blood. A mad breadmaker and a boozy captain didn’t strike fear in her heart; if she died of anything here, it was likely to be the stench.

She turned the chair over and dusted off the seat with the hem of her ruined gown, placing it in such a way that, once seated, she could see out the window. The grass bent at one point and she stood on the chair to see if someone was passing, but it was only a black cat, nosing along in pursuit of a mouse.

By the time the key rasped in the lock again, the light had grown stronger and taken on a yellow hue. The same young soldier, Petit, poked his face around the door. “
Mademoiselle
,” he whispered, “we’ve prepared something better for you. At least until
mon capitaine
wakes. I’m sure he’ll let you go once he realizes you’re here. But no one can go against Madame Fantomas, except for him.”

“I would appreciate anywhere that doesn’t include a hole,” Olivia told him.

Petit was probably about sixteen, though he seemed even younger. His eyes were the color of robins’ eggs. “We decided that French honor would not allow us to leave a lady in a room such as this, even if you are a spy.”

She laughed. “I promise you that I’m not.”

“As you have seen, Madame is rabid,” he said, holding open the door. “We don’t cross her because there’s no point to it, and besides, she weighs twice as much as any of us. A man named Oboe pinched her once and she struck him on the side of his head with a rolling pin. He never recovered his hearing in that ear.”

He escorted her a short way to another cell, which had no hole, and therefore no stench. But the more salient distinction from the first cell was that against the wall under the window there was a stack of mattresses—each covered in a different rough linen ticking. The covers were striped and flowered, which made them look absurdly incongruous in the dank cell, and the stack actually reached as high as her head. A little stepladder leaned against it.

“We each brought our mattress down here for you,” Petit said, waving at the stack. “There’s twenty of us, and we hauled down fourteen. We thought that was enough to keep the damp off.”

“That was astonishingly nice of you!” Olivia exclaimed. “In truth, I was beginning to be very fatigued.”

“Ladies don’t belong on the ground.
Maman
would have killed me. May I help you?” He moved next to the stepladder.

“
Merci beaucoup
,” she said. She took his hand and climbed the ladder, toppling onto the highest mattress when she reached it. She came onto her knees and looked over the side. Petit’s nose was level with her perch, and all of a sudden it felt rather precarious.

“You’d better lie down,” he said, frowning. “You could crack your head like an egg if you fell off.”

She nodded in agreement. “Do you happen to know whether my fiancé, the Duke of Sconce, has come looking for me?”

“We’re not allowed outdoors at this hour. I can find out at four in the afternoon when we go out for patrol.”

“
Merci
,” she said, but there was a noise down the passage and he backed out, slamming the barred door firmly behind him.

For a moment she just sat, her head close to the stone ceiling. She was so weary that she felt dizzy. The mattresses were lumpy and uneven. But they put her on a level with the small window, which in turn was level with a patch of bright grass outside.

Finally she lay down, facing the window, and watched the grass sway. Despite the fact that there were so many mattresses, they were remarkably uncomfortable. It felt as if there was a lump at her back, as if somehow a rock had gotten mixed into the stuffing.

She turned this way and that, trying to find a comfortable position that avoided the lump and would allow her to fall asleep. In the end, she curled around it, willing herself to lie very still. In her sleep, she relaxed and so woke, hours later, with something hard poking painfully into the middle of her back.

She shifted off the hard thing—it was not merely a knot of straw. It was too hard for straw. And she saw that the sun had moved all the way across the room and was now striking the opposite wall.

Just then Petit pushed open the door. “Hello,” she called down softly.

“Good afternoon,
Mademoiselle
.” He held a tray. “I have brought you something to eat. Madame takes a sleep in the afternoon, though unfortunately she does not leave her kitchen.”

He climbed up a step and handed over the tray. “That’s her bread,” he said, nodding at it. “Even though Madame is completely mad, there are bakers in Paris who would love to know what she puts in her
putain
.”

“Goodness,” Olivia said, adding anxiously, “Do you know if the duke has asked for me?”

Petit nodded. His eyes were twinkling. “
Mon capitaine
was forced out of bed by him, and he never rises before evening. Your duke fairly tore the place apart. Unfortunately,
Le Capitaine
had no idea you were here.”

Olivia groaned. “Did the duke leave?”

“Yes, but he will return in an hour or so.
Le Capitaine
promised to send out the patrol to try to find you before he went back to bed. Bessette plans to demand fifty guineas of your duke, but Madame says you might be worth a hundred.”

“In that case, I’ll be out by nightfall.”

“How is your mattress?” Petit asked, a quizzical look on his face.

“While I wouldn’t wish to seem ungrateful, I’m a bit afraid of falling off. May I ask why you put quite so many on top of each other?”

He turned red, and suddenly looked even younger. “We thought that it looked too much like a bed with just one or two mattresses.”

“It
is
a bed.”

“Yes, but if it looked like a bed, there was the chance that Bessette might decide to . . .” He waved his hand, embarrassed. “You’d be there, you see, on a bed. But this way it is difficult to reach you.”

“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

Q
uin 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.