“I think the queen would be interested to know the reason if Louis Charles suffered any harm, don’t you?”
Marguerite’s baleful gaze sidled away from Juliette’s stare. “You’ll soon not be able to hide behind the prince. You never would have gotten so out of hand if your mother hadn’t required my services.”
“I’m not hiding from—”
A horse neighed in agony.
The coach lurched and shuddered to a halt, throwing Juliette to her knees on the floor.
Louis Charles awoke and began to whimper. “Jul…”
“What is it?” Marguerite thrust her head out the window of the carriage. “You fool of a coachman, what—”
The blade of a scythe pierced the wood beside her head, burying its curving length through the side of the coach.
Marguerite shrieked and jerked back from the window.
“What’s happening?” Crouched on the floor of the coach still, Juliette gazed at the blade. She could hear shouts, metal clashing against metal, the screams of the horses.
A bullet suddenly splintered the wooden frame of the door.
“Farmers. Peasants. Hundreds of them. They’re attacking the carriage.” Marguerite’s voice rose in terror. “They’re going to kill me, and it’s all your fault. If you hadn’t insisted on staying with that brat, I’d be safe at Versailles with your mother.”
“Hush.” Juliette had to stem the panic rising in her. She had to think. Stories abounded of carriages and châteaus being attacked by the famine-stricken peasants but never a royal carriage accompanied by the Swiss guard. “We’ll be safe. They can’t overcome the soldiers that—”
“You fool. There arehundredsof them.”
Juliette crept closer to the window and looked for herself. Not hundreds but certainly too many to assess at one glance. The scene was total confusion. Coarselydressed men and women on foot battled the mounted uniformed Swiss guard with scythes and pitchforks. Men on horseback garbed in mesh armor were plunging through the melee, striking with swords at the peasants on either side of them. Two of the four horses pulling the coach were lying dead and bloody on the ground.
Black Velvet.
Her gaze was caught and held by the only still, inviolate figure in this scene of blood and death. A tall, lean man wearing a sable velvet cape and polished black knee-boots sat on his horse at the edge of the crowd. The man’s dark eyes gazed without expression at the battle.
Another bullet exploded in the wood just above the seat where Juliette had been sitting. She ducked lower, her body covering the sobbing child. If they stayed in the carriage, how long before one of those bullets hit Louis Charles, she wondered desperately. She couldn’t stay and wait for it to happen. She had to do something. All the fighting was taking place to the right of the carriage, so the Swiss guard must have kept the mob from surrounding it. The thicket bordering the bluff…
Juliette crawled toward the door, clutching Louis Charles tightly.
“Where are you going?” Marguerite asked.
“I’m trying to escape into the woods bordering the bluff.” Juliette ripped off the linen kerchief from her gown and tied it around the boy’s mouth, muffling his wails. “It’s not safe here for Louis Charles.”
“Are you mad?”
Juliette opened the door a crack and peered out cautiously. The shrubbery started only a few feet away, and there seemed to be no one in sight.
“Don’t go.”
“Be silent or come with us. One or the other.” Juliette clasped Louis Charles’s small body tighter and opened the door wider. She drew a deep breath, leapt from the carriage, and darted across the dusty road and into the shrubbery. Branches lashed her face and clawed at her arms as she pushed through the bushes.
“Come back to the carriage at once! You can’t leave me.”
Juliette muttered an oath as she bolted through the shrubbery. Even in the cacophony of shouts and clatter of sabers Marguerite’s shrill voice carried clearly. If Juliette could hear it, she would be foolish to believe none of the attackers would.
Louis Charles whimpered beneath the gag, and she automatically pressed him closer. Poor baby, he didn’t understand any of this madness. Well, she didn’t either, but she wouldn’t let those murderers harm either the child or herself.
“Stop!”
A sudden chill gripped her and she glanced over her shoulder.
