Page 77 of Souvenir Heart

And for now, that was good enough.

Forty-Eight

The first pale rays of sunrise were filtering through the windows when Marcus walked into the kitchen. He was dressed in shirt sleeves, striped waistcoat, and breeches. His hair was loosely tied back. He had his art box slung over one shoulder and Marguerite’s leather artist’s tube in his hand.

He set both down on the well-worn top of the large wooden table, alongside an earthenware bowl full of beaten eggs, a pile of sliced mushrooms, and a fragrant lump of melting cheese, as well as several small-cloth-covered jars, a pile of plates, assorted forks and spoons.

Andre, kneeling beside a cast iron spyder set atop a pile of glowing embers in the hearth, scowled up at him. “Mind where you put those.”

“I was careful.”

Andre harrumphed as he turned back to the fire.

“Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Someone else didn’t sleep in a bed.”

“Smells good,” Marcus said hoping to nip that particular conversation in the bud. He peered over Scott’s shoulder to get a better look at what he was preparing in the long-handled pan with four squat legs.

“The homeowners were kind enough to leave us eggs, butter, and a rather fine patê,” Andre said, without looking up from his efforts to test the edge of an omelet with a fork.

Marcus straightened up. “Is David about? I’ve got a plan…”

“Of course you have. Outside.” He cocked his chin in the general direction of a door that led to the courtyard behind the house. “Washing up.”

As if on cue, David walked in, water dripping from his hair onto the shoulders of his half-buttoned cotton shirt. He was dressed in workman’s clothes, and there was a dusting of sawdust on the rough cloth of his waistcoat and striped trousers. “Unlike you, I’ve been up for hours. Made some adjustments to the axle arm of the coach.”

“The axle arm? It hasn’t broken, has it?” If there was any likelihood that a wheel might fall off the coach, they’d need to find a different mode of transportation and he’d have to drastically alter his plans for their escape. “Do you even have the proper tools for a job like that?”

“Not to the actual arm,” David said reassuringly. “I check that regularly. Have to, with the situations you two get into…”

“Get into?” Andre paused to once again poke at the edge of the omelet. “You may be too busy tinkering with your toys to notice, but this country is hosting a bloody revolution, and that one,” he waved a fork at Marcus, “keeps making plans to lead us into the trickiest bits of it.”

“My toys, as you call them, have saved your neck more than once, in case you haven’t noticed. In this case, the adjustments are purely cosmetic. A design feature that occurred to me.” He nodded over at Marcus. “And before you ask, yes, I finished the traveling case for those canvases you gave me.”

He turned his attention to Andre’s efforts to fold a glistening oval of egg over a melted jumble of cheese and roasted mushroom. “You haven’t got any toasted bread to go with that, have you?”

“Only if you toast it yourself. There’s a loaf and a toasting fork on the table.” Andre lifted the pan from the embers, straightened up, and turned towards the table. “A serving plate first, if you please.”

David held one out obediently.

“Give this to Tyns, he’s bound to be a bit tetchy after sleeping in the hallway last night…”

“I am not tetchy.”

“The hallway?”

“Outside Madame de Rouvroy’s room,” Andre added, before upending the omelet onto the serving plate.

“Emphasis on outside,” Marcus interjected, repressing the urge to strangle Andre. At least, until after he finished making omelets.

“Outside?” David repeated carrying the plate over to the table.

“Only because Andre snores like a cart full of rocks.”

“Of course,” David divided the omelet, sliding half onto his own plate. He handed the remainder to Tyns and sat down. “A perfectly sensible reason you’d spend the night on a bare floor. Outside a lady’s bedchamber.”

“I was keeping watch.”