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By the fourteenth they had begun to hear cannon fire. At first it was so distant and irregular that she thought it was thunder out of a clear blue sky, but Jack shook his head. ‘There’s fighting up ahead, border skirmishes as they all sort themselves out, I expect. Now we begin to take great care.’
Dodging small groups of French troops became routine. Jack seemed to know the uniforms, jotting notes whenever they sighted them. Sometimes they were seen themselves, but Jack would let the horses walk, wandering along, doing nothing to raise suspicions that they were anything but innocent local riders. No one challenged them.
Making love by starlight in owl-haunted woods, or in meadows so soft and sweet you could almost taste the goodness of them, became completely natural. They had never made love inside, on a bed, and somehow that did not seem a loss to her, so it was a surprise when Jack sat studying the sky in the late afternoon.
‘It is going to rain,’ he said, taking the notebook out of his pocket and studying one of his meticulous maps.
‘Is it?’ Eva looked round, puzzled. ‘I am no weather expert, but it looks just the same as yesterday afternoon to me.’
‘No. It will rain.’ Jack gathered up the reins and turned his horse’s head down the fork in the track through the woods. Ahead, across fields, a church spire punctuated the low hills. ‘Or there will be a heavy dew in the morning. Or a thunderstorm.’
‘Or a plague of locusts?’ Eva enquired, beginning to see where this was going. ‘You are looking for an excuse to find an inn. Why not say so? Do you think I am going to accuse you of becoming soft because you want to bathe in a tub instead of a cold stream?’
‘I think you might be alarmed if you guess the things I would like to do when I get you alone in the Poisson d’Or’s best bedchamber with its big goose-feather bed.’ Jack grinned, managing to look nearer twenty than thirty.
‘Indeed?’ Eva attempted a severe expression. She appeared to have forgotten how. ‘What a very depraved imagination you have, Mr Ryder.’
‘I am shocked you can know of such things,’ he teased back. ‘Tell me, what would you like to do in that big feather bed?’
‘Ooh…’ Eva pouted provocatively. ‘I would like to take all my clothes off—very, very slowly. Then I’d brush out my hair, bathe in a deep hot tub with scented soap, climb out, dripping wet…’ Jack’s eyes were glazing in a very satisfactory manner. ‘Dry myself, then climb into bed. And—go to sleep.’
Laughing at his expression, she urged her horse on, cantering down the track. It curved, perhaps fifty feet above the main road that cut across the country between them and the village. Some instinct made her glance to her left. Dust was rising above the scrub and spindly trees that covered the slope. Eva reined in, holding up her hand to halt Jack, who was rapidly catching her up. They moved into the shelter of a coppice and waited.
‘Soldiers,’ Jack breathed as the sound of tramping feet reached them, drowning out the song of skylarks over the wheat field. ‘French soldiers heading towards Charleroi. A lot of them—this is different from what we have seen so far. I thought our luck would not last much longer.’
‘Are we in danger from them?’ Eva shaded her eyes and tried to make out uniforms, but her knowledge was not good enough.
‘No, probably not. There is nothing about a pair of apparently unarmed riders to cause them any concern, provided we merely cross their path and do not appear to be shadowing them.’
He sat watching the slowly vanishing column of infantry through narrowed eyes. ‘Wellington is assembling an Anglo-German army around Brussels, but our agents along the way so far have not known what the weight of troops were on either side, and they were very vague about where Bonaparte is heading. That is Fontaine l’Eveque ahead. I’m going to strike north-east tomorrow and aim for Nivelles.’
‘You haven’t been talking to me about all this,’ Eva accused. ‘I should have worked it out for myself—my brain must be turning to porridge. I suppose I have just been so focused on our own adventure I haven’t been thinking about the wide world. Of course Bonaparte isn’t just going to sit there in Paris, sending out a few scouting parties, and the Allies certainly aren’t going to let him.’
‘No.’ Jack was scrutinising the plain. ‘You know, that cannon fire is a fair way off to the north and east, but it is almost continuous now. I think there is a battle going on.’
‘And by making for Brussels we are riding right into the middle of it.’
‘Maybe. If we do not take care.’
‘Jack,’ Eva asked with a calm she was far from feeling, ‘have you been keeping quiet about this so as not to worry me?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted ruefully, surprising her by his frankness. ‘My orders were to bring you back overland to Brussels; it seemed faster and safer than risking the sea route. It probably still is the right thing to be doing; we just need to avoid wandering into Napoleon’s HQ or the no man’s land between the two front lines by mistake.’
He dug his heels in and sent the black gelding and the packhorse trotting down to cross the main road. ‘After today we ride hard and fast for Brussels and skirt round any trouble we see. I’ll dump the pack and we can rotate between the three horses—it will keep them fresher. We’ll do it in the day that way.’
‘Have we been going too slowly up to now?’ Eva asked, suddenly feeling guilty again. ‘Have I been holding you up?’
‘No, and, no you haven’t.’ Jack reined back to a walk. ‘We were right to take to the horses—Henry’s encounter with Antoine proved that. And I could see no merit in flogging the horses at such a speed that we would have had to be changing them as we went. It draws attention to us, and it was no part of my instructions to deliver you bruised and exhausted. We can make it to Brussels tomorrow, even if we arrive after dark.’
‘So tonight is our last night on the road.’ The last one alone with Jack. Things would be different in Brussels, she would become the Grand Duchess again then. Even if Jack was still her escort, that was all he could be. Did he realise? Had he thought about that? Probably not—he had a job to do and personal considerations would always come second. ‘What is the date?’ she asked, wanting to fix this night in her memory for ever.
‘June 16th,’ Jack said. ‘Look, there is the Poisson d’Or.’
‘What about my clothes?’ she asked, suddenly recalling the way she looked. ‘It hasn’t been a problem because I have not been close to anyone yet, but I cannot hope to fool people close up.’
Jack seemed unconcerned. ‘I will speak quite frankly to the landlord, and anyone else who stares, and say that I do not like my wife riding about the countryside with all these troops about. Of course, if we did not have to hurry to the bedside of your ailing grandmother in Celles it wouldn’t arise, but you insisted, so here we are.’
Eva nodded—that was a good tactic, to confront the issue, not to try to keep her sex a secret and arouse suspicion. Jack rubbed his chin, rasping the stubble as though in anticipation of a shave in ample hot water. ‘We will have a good dinner to celebrate our last night on French soil. Shall I order champagne so we can drink to the confusion of our enemies?’
