“Oh, you are too stubborn. If you go to France, I go with you.”
“I will not chance your going.”
She sniffed. “Nor will I chance your going without me.”
A long minute passed in which they stared each other down.
“We go together,” he conceded.
“Quickly. La Mère follows me.”
Evan gripped her closer. “Dear God. Since when?”
“A week or more.”
“You did not tell me! Do it now and we will find her!”
“I know so little. I must get to Luc.”
Evan nodded. “We will go to France tomorrow.”
She pushed aside her fears, and knew if he was to take such risks, she would be by his side. “And what is the second reason I cannot do as Vaillancourt commands?”
Evan ran his fingertips over the line of her brows, her nose, her lips and chin. “In the early hours of last night, Prime Minister William Pitt of Great Britain died in his bed. He is gone, my darling. No one can now hurt him.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
North of Le Havre, France
February 11, 1806
Evan took his wife’s arm and helped her down the gangplank of a packet that had landed before dawn in a small port in Normandy.
Jacques Durand, the renowned smuggler who headed Scarlett Hawthorne’s sea-bound operations and who had been their captain, followed. So did a very disgruntled Rafe Durham, who now cursed everything about the sea. After ten days crossing the choppy Channel, all nine aboard swore they’d never sail anywhere ever again.
The smuggler and his crew set foot on the blistered, broken docks and staggered toward wooden crates. Durand, a young man of burnished, seagoing complexion and sun-bleached hair, was as green as his men.
Evan wanted to cast up his accounts for a second time this morning, but his wife amazingly looked as if she had already recovered. Durham confounded him because he had not been ill once, but complained like a barnacled navy man about the terrible sailing they had endured.
The winter storms that had tossed them about were as frightful as the numerous times Durand had sighted French ships in their distance. The French blockade, he’d said, had tightened since Bonaparte lost at Trafalgar.
The British, of course, had retaliated and persistently attacked wherever they found a weakness in French lines. The result was that British ships got through with cargo, and those British goods found excellent prices on a Continent with people starved for cottons, paper, mahogany, and wheat.
“You have been here before?” Evan glanced around at the bedraggled men who worked the port. He spoke French, as he had been warned to do by Durand.
“Many times.” Durand feigned outrage and put up a hand. “Please, no more.” He had observed that Evan’s accent was not good. Evan had tried to improve and taken lessons from Inès, to little avail.
“Count your blessings, sir.” Inès looked at him with a flash of humor in her umber eyes.
He met her order with a quick smirk. “As you wish, madame.”
She giggled, a measure of happiness to be in her own country again, despite the hazards they would soon face. On the voyage, she had been ill more than he, and he could see she had lost weight. Still, although her body was thinner, her skin was pink and wind-kissed. The crossing had agreed with her, storms and French patrols notwithstanding. He knew why, but did not broach the subject. If she thought of the timing, if she understood why she slept like a child, if she noticed her breasts were larger, her nipples gloriously deep rose and sensitive when he kissed them, she had given no indication. She had denied she might be with child that day he confronted her when she planned to leave him. Her mind was obviously full of theirmission here. He would not bring up the delicate subject again until they were successful here, or she brought it up herself.
“Come with me,” Durand told them, and hoisted his satchel over one arm. He glanced back at Rafe and nodded. On board, the four of them had spoken and decided to split here on the coast. Rafe, who had insisted he go to France with Evan and Inès, came as assurance they would be successful and escape. The smuggler promised to set up Rafe in a separate inn and give him the appearance of an old friend of his.
He smiled at Inès and Evan. “I will take you to my favorite auberge.”
The inn was one, he had told them both, where the owner asked no questions. Rafe would wait on the dock for the smuggler to return for him.
