Page 16 of Souvenir Heart

He put the chicken in his mouth and chewed, recalling how Joley had grabbed his sketchbook.

His sketchbook. Not some costume prop supplied by Andre, nor some curious invention of David’s. He’d specially commissioned it, carefully selecting the quality of the paper and leather of the cover—soft yet durable, sized to fit perfectly in the pocket of his jackets. He was rarely without it. Had covered the first half of its pages with whatever images caught his eye, captured his imagination, or kept his restless demons at bay.

Joley had scrawled ‘twenty thousand pounds for her safe return’ in the middle of a blank page, then initialed it as if his sketchbook were nothing more than a grubby account book.

Marcus speared a piece of chicken so sharply the tines of his fork scraped the earthenware plate.

What kind of man puts a price on his child? Then insults her would-be rescuer?

He set down his fork. Redemption was the reason he’d given Dinsmore for his decision to rescue Marguerite de Rouvroy, but Marcus did not believe his past mistakes could ever be redeemed. He picked up his glass of wine and drank deeply.

Indeed, he was having the devil’s own time not racking up more.

Eleven

James Dinsmore announced his plan to leave the coach and all its baggage behind with David and Andre, as the three men stood on the cliffs looking down at the sloop that was waiting to carry the team and their rescued fugitive to England. David was still marveling at this unexpected and very generous change of heart when he steered the coach into a farmyard, several hours later. The evening sky had darkened to a shade of blue that matched the Berlin’s, making it necessary for him to stop and light a lantern before steering the team behind the barn.

The farmer, who was part of the network they’d been working so hard to set up in France, helped unharness the horses and stable them. Then, after providing David and Andre with more lanterns, a set of chisels, a meal of cold meat, fruit, and bread, he made himself scarce.

The remains of that repast, a plate holding a few pits, a heel of bread, and a pile of chicken bones now sat on a wooden bench a few feet away from the Berlin. Beside the bench lay two thin wood panels, their blue and gold paint barely visible in the flickering lantern’s light. David and Andre had begun removing the panels, after shifting whatever luggage might be of use into the hiding spaces beneath the coach’s seats.

Andre, who was using one of the chisels to pry a panel off the carriage’s door, cursed as a splinter slid under his thumbnail.

David looked up from where he was working on the front of the coach. “You all right?”

“How do you manage to make working with wood and tools look so bloody easy?

“Practice. And patience. The latter a skill, no doubt a challenge nigh impossible for you….”

“I prefer to rely on my blinding flashes of astonishing creativity.”

David snorted. “I’m almost done here. I’ll bring you another lantern. The light should tide you over in between the blinding flashes.”

“No.” Andre shook his head. “We can’t risk too many lights attracting attention.”

“But if you could pull the bench closer, I’ll set my lantern on it. Should give me a bit more light than where it is now.”

There was a screech and a pop as the curved veneer panel in front of the coach came free. David stumbled back a step, then righted himself. Keeping hold of the panel with both hands, he bent it over his knee and broke it into pieces. Then he carried them over to the pile beside the bench, dropped them atop it, and crushed the lot with his booted foot.

“What are you doing that for?”

“They’ll burn faster if we break them up first,” he replied. “Don’t want to leave any traces of our stay here behind if we can help it.”

Dumping the remains of their meal onto the pile, he set the plate on the ground, dragged the bench closer to Andre and put the lantern on it.

“That’s better.”

There was another scrape and pop as Andre finished removing the panel on the door.

David took it from him, broke it, too, into pieces, and tossed it on the pile. He stepped back to study the progress they’d made so far. In the now slightly larger pool of lantern light, he could see that one side of the coach, once marine blue with gold trim, was pea-green with a reddish-brown trim.

“Not bad,” he said, more to himself than to Andre. “Though I wish there was more I could do to change this beast’s profile—maybe add some moldings onto the roof. And the wheels…” He frowned at them. “I’d like to change out that yellow.”

“No time. We lost too much tangling with those soldiers. It’s a miracle we were able to meet the sloop.”

“And that the tides were in our favor.”

“And the seas weren’t too rough.” Andre gave a dramatic shudder. “Have I mentioned that I hate sailing?”