02 The Grand Tour Read online

  The shotgun discharged, fortunately over the head of our coachman. The blast set the coach horses rearing and plunging in their traces. The gunman struck out at Thomas and wrenched his horse around. "Filons!" he shouted, and galloped off. Kate picked up a large rock and began advancing with a purposeful air toward the highwayman Thomas had downed, who scrambled to his feet and fled. The remaining horseman saw Thomas coming to assist James, and raised his pistols.

  Thomas saw the motion and dodged, but James had just put a hand to the horse's reins. The guns went off; the horse reared; James fell backward on the verge. The highwayman set spurs to his mount and followed his companion.

  I stumbled forward to kneel beside James. He lay on his side, gasping as if the wind had been knocked out of him, and his coat was already wet with blood.

  I do not perfectly recall the next few minutes. The ball appeared to have gone in under his arm, toward the back, and there seemed to be a great deal of blood. I remember Thomas making some comment about stopping the bleeding, and stripping off his cravat for me to use as padding. (It is the greatest piece of folly for romantic novels to advise ladies to rip up their petticoats in such an emergency. Without scissors, even muslin is exceedingly difficult to begin tearing; linen and silk are quite impossible.)

  By the time we had the bleeding under control, the coachman had quieted the horses. After some discussion, Thomas and the coachman lifted James into the carriage (despite his protests; he was apparently under the delusion that he was perfectly capable of walking, though the ball was still lodged). Kate and Lady Sylvia and I crowded together on the opposite seat, while Thomas rode outside with the coachman.

  The remainder of the journey seemed interminable, though we had agreed to travel only as far as the next inn. It was easy to see that James was in considerable pain. The coachman drove slowly, so as to minimize any jostling, but shortly before sunset, the coach wheels rattled against the cobbles of a paved town street. Quite soon after, we came to a stop in an inn yard, and I heard Thomas shouting directions.

  Men came running from the inn, full of questions but willing to help. As they lifted James out of the carriage, I heard Kate ask, "Where are we?"

  "St. Denis," Thomas told her.

  St. Denis

  From the commonplace book of Lady Schofield

  15 August 1817

  St. Denis

  At the Lion d'Or

  If I try to set my thoughts down in order, perhaps they will make some kind of sense. At the very least, I will be out of the way here. The room James and Cecy are in is next to this one. If anyone should need me, I will be able to hear the call. The walls are none too thick. I hear all too much as it is.

  Now. Orderly thoughts.

  It is a great disadvantage to spend one's time worrying about what may go wrong. When things do go wrong, one would think that worry would've prepared one in some way. This is not the case. Instead, the senseless disorder of one's thoughts grows more and more uncontrollable as one rehearses the events that befell, to no good effect since nothing can undo the damage, no amount of muddled thinking can ever result in any other outcome.

  Magic is confusing. Before I met Thomas, when I felt ill, I felt ill, and that was that. Now I cannot be sure when I truly feel ill or not.

  I think the moment of empathy the two of us shared when Thomas focused his magic in my ring must have returned in the coach. When Thomas fell prey to the malaise that overcame Lady Sylvia and, to a lesser extent, Cecy, I felt it, too. I felt his discomfort sharply enough to know when he played the fool by lying to us about it. Yet that discomfort faded before the dreadful apprehension we all felt when James was hurt.

  Cecy has been a miracle of calm and common sense throughout. Thomas and Lady Sylvia issued orders, but it was Cecy who supervised James's arrival at the Lion d'Or. It was Cecy who saw him disposed as comfortably as possible. It was Cecy who looked the local physician in the eye and made it plain without a word spoken in any language whatsoever that she would be the final arbiter of what would be done for James.

  Lady Sylvia was willing to send for physicians from the city, as it was scarcely more than seven miles away, but the local man seemed well trained and capable. I did not attend at the bedside during the surgical procedure that removed the pistol ball from James's side.

  Instead, I was sitting on the staircase with my head in my hands wondering if the cold, unsteady sensation in my midsection was my own nausea or something Thomas was feeling as he held James still so the physician could do his work.

  Again and again I rehearsed the disastrous events. Again and again I reached the inescapable conclusion that it is all my fault. I am to blame for the fact that James was injured. My folly is to blame, for I persuaded Thomas to invest his magic in my ring. My pride is to blame, for I hesitated after handing over my reticule and taking off my earrings. I could have handed the villain the ring myself and spared James. I could have prevented the terrible gasping sounds that James made as he tried to stifle his pain. I could have prevented the stricken look in Cecy's eyes when she fell to her knees beside her husband.

  The sounds from behind the bedroom door ceased at last. The silence lasted a long time before the door opened. Thomas came out to sit beside me on the splintery wooden stair. He'd taken off his coat, his shirtsleeves were rolled up past his elbows, and his shirt buttons were undone halfway to his waistcoat. His breeches were spattered with mud and blood, not all of it dry. There were smudges of fatigue under his eyes and his whiskers were beginning to show, a dark shadow that made him seem all the paler.

  I looked up at him in silence. I simply couldn't think of anything to say.

  Thomas let out a long breath of pure weariness as he took my left hand in his right, touching my wedding ring. His hand was cold, and when I glanced down I could see his fingers were rosy red, he'd scrubbed so hard. I knew he must have been washing blood away. My stomach lurched at the thought. Thomas tightened his clasp and gave my hand a heartening little shake. "He'll be fine."

  I rested my forehead on his shoulder. "Oh, Thomas."

  "I know. But the doctor says he's going to be right as a trivet. Back on his feet in a few weeks." Thomas let out another, shorter breath that might, under better circumstances, have been a faint chuckle. "A very few weeks, if I know James. Now, in another two minutes, there's going to be more work to do. Fetching and carrying and scrubbing, basins and trays and buckets up and down. You don't want to interfere, do you?"

  "Of course not."

  "Then you'll have to move. The servants are using the back stair for the moment, but you're considerably in the way here. Come along and wash your face." Thomas pulled me to my feet. "We're going to have a council of war."

  It was a very small council we convened. Cecy was with James, naturally, so it was just Lady Sylvia, Thomas, and me seated around the fire in Lady Sylvia's room. Lady Sylvia had a rug over her knees for warmth, but in every other way she was looking much more herself. She was knitting one of her bird's-nest messages as she sat beside the fire. When I asked after her health, she fixed me with a reproving look. "I am perfectly well. Thank you for asking. Really, Kate, I have seen you in difficult circumstances before, but I never realized you were so self-regarding."

  "Mother!" Thomas looked shocked.

  "Then you know," I said. My throat was so tight, the words came out as if I were being strangled.

  "Thomas told me a little and I guessed the rest. Your fault, is it?" Lady Sylvia was relentless. "All your fault and no one else's?"

  I clasped my hands in my lap and tried to will the tears back before they overflowed and disgraced me. "Yes."

  "Gammon," said Lady Sylvia. "Thomas had to invest something with his magic. It was not your fault the ring attracted unfriendly attention. Nor was it your fault that he behaved so impulsively when it was threatened. He could have done the sensible thing and let it go to be recovered later."

  "Oh, no, I couldn't," Thomas retorted. "I'm not losing my focus twice
."

  "Perhaps you couldn't." Lady Sylvia seemed amused by Thomas's vehemence. "Perhaps it wasn't your fault, either, dear boy. Perhaps the blame belongs to the thieves who waylaid us."

  Thomas agreed readily. "Of course it was their fault. Mighty bold thieves they were, too, striking in broad daylight on the main road. Clever of them to incapacitate us first."

  "Extremely clever." Lady Sylvia looked thoughtful. "Not really what one expects of thieves, however bold. I wonder whom they consulted? Or, more realistically, who consulted them."

  "You think someone hired them?" It was Thomas's turn to look thoughtful.

  "I do." Lady Sylvia put a few more loose stitches into the knitting in her lap. "When we discover who sent them, we will know who is truly to blame for this misfortune. Until then, Kate, I want no more of your breast-beating mea culpas, do you understand me?" She eyed me sternly.

  I nodded and sniffed. Fortunately, I had one of Aunt Charlotte's handkerchiefs ready to hand, and I used it. "How will we find out who they were?"

  "I intended to enlist help the moment we reached Paris," Lady Sylvia replied. She held up the knitting. "I'll have to send a message, that's all. It's unfortunate that word of the recovery of the Sainte Ampoule must be accompanied by word of its subsequent loss, but so it must be. Things might have been much worse." She held up another object, almost as shapeless as her knitting. It was a black woolen cap. "Our footpad was careless enough to leave this behind when he took to his heels to escape you, Kate. I have handled it as little as possible. The friends I intend to send this to should be able to determine a great many things from their study of it. Possibly some of that information may be of use to us."

  Thomas looked grim. "Indeed, things might have been a great deal worse. While we wait for your friends to reply, what shall we do?"

  Lady Sylvia looked from Thomas to me. "We must do precisely as we have done. Protect James. Help Cecy. Behave as if we are all as blameless and bewildered as we actually are. Above all, be very, very careful."

  From the deposition of Mrs. James Tarleton, &c.

  As might be expected, James was the worst patient imaginable. The French medical man was, fortunately, quite competent, but the ball had lodged against bone, and extracting it was a difficult business. It was not at all surprising that James came down with some slight fever the following day due to having been "pulled about" (as he put it), but he refused to acknowledge it and put considerable effort into attempting to demonstrate his alleged fitness for duty. Eventually I convinced him that his only duty was to remain abed, but I was much relieved when his valet arrived, late in the day, to reinforce my efforts.

  The weather, too, cooperated. "Not even you can think it advisable to travel in a cold downpour," I told him when he began complaining again on the second day. "And there's nothing else to do here, so you may as well stay in bed."

  "Nonsense," James said. "You act as if I've never been shot before."

  "You haven't been shot in front of me before," I pointed out. "And if you dare try to say, 'It's just a scratch,' I warn you, I shall have strong hysterics. I saw what that surgeon had to do, remember?"

  "Cecy—" James tried to sit up, and winced involuntarily.

  "There, you see?" I moved one of the pillows to make him more comfortable.

  "You shouldn't have been there," he said fretfully.

  "When the surgeon dug the ball out, you mean? I most certainly should. If you are going to continue making a habit of getting shot—which, I own, I would rather you didn't— then I think it only sensible for me to learn what is best to do under such circumstances."

  "I don't make a habit of it," James said.

  "Don't you?" I was not altogether sure I ought to argue with him; the physician had (so far as I understood his French) stressed the importance of keeping James calm. However, as long as he was arguing, he was unlikely to do anything utterly cockle-headed, such as attempt to get up.

  "Of course not!" His tone lacked conviction, and he looked decidedly uncomfortable—and, I thought, not only because he had recently had a ball dug out of him.

  "James," I said, "just how many times have you been shot?"

  "That has nothing to do with the matter!"

  "Very well, if you insist on being mulish, I shall ask Thomas."

  James glared at me. I returned my sweetest smile, and made as if to rise from the chair. "Four," he growled.

  "Counting this one?"

  "All right, five. But three of them were in battles. Being aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington was no sinecure— they don't call him the Iron Duke for nothing. And the other time was Thomas's fault, too."

  "Really?" I sat back down in the chair, all polite attention. "And how did that happen? It can't have been anybody being unpleasant to Kate. She'd have told me, and, anyway, you were at Tarleton Hall the whole time she was in London meeting Thomas."

  James stared at me for a moment, then laughed ruefully. "You've done it again, haven't you?"

  "Done what?"

  He shook his head. "Never, mind. It's a pity old Carmichael couldn't have put you on the secret payroll when we were in Spain. You'd have collected more information than any six of the fellows he did have. With the possible exception of Thomas, of course."

  "You were going to tell me about Thomas," I reminded him.

  "The things I could tell you about Thomas...," James murmured.

  I frowned. It wasn't like James to lose the thread of a discussion. "Perhaps you ought to rest now. We'll have plenty of time to talk later."

  "What?" James looked at me and shook his head. "No, no, it's all right, Cecy. I was trying to tease you, that's all."

  "In that case, about Thomas...?"

  "Bulldogs aren't in it," James muttered. "All right, about Thomas. He was one of Carmichael's fellows, and quite good at it—kept being told off for 'long reconnaissance,' and everyone knew what that meant."

  "Well, I don't."

  "Slipping into French-held territory to find out where Soult's men were and, more important, where Napoleon had told them to turn up next. It wasn't too difficult when we were in Spain—the Spaniards hated the French. They used to ambush couriers just for fun, and send us Napoleon's dispatches. Sometimes it seemed as if we knew more about what the French were supposed to be doing than their generals did."

  "That sounds useful," I said.

  "It was. Sometimes we needed to know more, though, and then we sent out people like Thomas to fill in the gaps. He'd get himself up in some unlikely fashion and vanish, then turn up a few days later with just the information we needed. Until San Sebastian."

  "San Sebastian?"

  James didn't seem to hear me. "After we took the port, Soult retreated into the Pyrenees. Thomas went off for a look at the defenses of the star fort on the Bidassoa River, by the Pass of Vera. He was gone nearly two weeks. Then a fellow showed up—a thoroughly disreputable-looking cutthroat of a Spaniard—claiming to be a courier from Thomas. With a lot of information and a note saying the French had taken him for a local and pressed him into their army, but that—"

  "—nobody was to worry, he would manage it all himself," I finished. James gave me a startled look. "Kate has told me all about Thomas's appalling tendency to overconfidence."

  James snorted. "It's not overconfidence, my girl; it's a dislike of making fusses. And of being caught at a disadvantage."

  "Yes, that does sound like him," I said, nodding. "And knowing that, of course you went after him."

  "Somebody had to," James said. "As soon as he left the French army, they'd consider him a deserter, and they shot deserters on sight. So I waxed persuasive and got leave to track him down.

  "It was easier than I'd expected. He'd dropped enough hints, one way and another. He'd gone to ground with a supposedly respectable French widow in Bayonne. I'd thought she was a friend of his mother's, so I was expecting someone older and... more sedate. But I hadn't met Lady Sylvia then, of course."

  "The Lady in Blu
e!" I said. "That's who it was, wasn't it?"

  James nodded. "I never did find out her real name. She didn't tell me then, of course, in case the Frenchies caught us on the way back. She'd managed to hide Thomas, but she was low on funds. Naturally, Thomas had had to abandon most of what he'd taken with him when he realized he was about to be caught in the press sweep. I gave her most of what I'd brought, and slipped Thomas out the back ahead of the search party, so she could safely let them search the house and wax indignant over their suspicions."

  "James, are you telling me that you managed to sneak past the French?" I demanded. For James is terrible at sneaking; I've seen him try.

  "Not exactly." James looked embarrassed. "I, er, borrowed a coat from a French officer we'd taken prisoner. I thought nobody would question a wounded officer with a dispatch case, so I put my left arm in a sling. And limped. Well, when I remembered. I think that's what gave us away in the end, actually."

  "You should have put a pebble in your boot," I said severely. "Then you wouldn't have forgotten to limp, and you wouldn't have been shot."

  "Oh, that wasn't when I was shot," James said with revolting cheerfulness. "That was just when Thomas and I had to run for it. I didn't get shot until we were back in Spain. I was still wearing the officer's coat, and with Thomas in tow... well, a Spanish guerrilla took me for just what I'd been playing, a French courier escorting a prisoner, and he took a couple of potshots at us. We rode for it, but I took a ball in the thigh. Nearly spent, fortunately; it didn't take much to dig it out. But it was three weeks before the sawbones would certify me fit for duty, and I missed taking the fort at the Bidassoa."

  Men are extremely odd. I hope I am properly conscious of my duty to my country, but I do not think that in similar circumstances I would have been at all sorry to have missed the chance of being shot at for several hours together.

  "And it was all Thomas's fault," James finished, smothering a yawn.

  "Are you too tired to continue talking?" I asked carefully.