In the Commodore's Hands Page 12

  ‘No, I was too cold and hungry and the floor was hard.’

  ‘Serves you right.’ But he was smiling. Was he enjoying a joke at her expense? Did he know the effect he had on her? She had better take care in the future to remain aloof.

  He escorted her down, opened her cabin door and bowed her in before returning to the deck where Sam joined him.

  ‘What now, Commodore?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. Miss Giradet will be left on board when we drop anchor at Calais. I can’t have her muddying the waters.’

  ‘She might be right, you know. You might need someone who knows her way about France and can help with the language and customs.’

  ‘My French is more than adequate for a British diplomat. And how could I explain the presence of a single woman at my side? Do I travel with a mistress?’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Unless you fancy taking her on.’

  ‘Not on your life.’ Sam was indignant. ‘I am a happily married man, have been this last thirty-eight years. Susan would slay me alive. Anyway, Miss Giradet would not agree.’

  ‘I am sure she would not. We will say no more on the subject. Go and put out my clothes for this evening.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Jay paced the deck. He had laughed as if making a joke when he suggested Sam should take Lisette as a mistress, but the feelings that had raised were horribly akin to jealousy and that made him annoyed with himself. His emotions were in turmoil. His head told him the last thing he wanted was entanglement with a woman, any woman, but his heart was contradicting that. In order to still it, he kept telling himself she was Wentworth’s niece and none of that family could be trusted.

  They dropped anchor outside Calais in the afternoon three days later, there to await permission to enter the busy harbour. It was late when they docked and Jay decided to stay on board until the morning, when he intended to hire a coach to take him and Sam to Paris.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Lisette told him as they ate breakfast together next morning. Sam had gone ashore to acquire a carriage.

  ‘You, madam, are staying on board.’

  ‘Jay, please let me come. I cannot bear to stay here doing nothing when I could be a help. I’ll be good, I promise.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘I need to see and talk to Michel.’

  ‘You may do that when we return with him.’

  ‘Supposing he doesn’t want to come and wishes to stay by the King? I will have to persuade him for Papa’s sake. Please, Jay. I will not ask another thing of you, if you grant this request.’

  ‘You have no chaperon.’

  ‘Pah to that! We are too far from England for it to matter there, and the ordinary women of France don’t bother with chaperons.’

  ‘Let her come, sir.’ Sam had returned from his errand unheard by either of them. ‘After all, if you let her out of your sight, God knows what mischief she will get up to.’

  Jay laughed. ‘There is that. Oh, very well, madam, you may come, but I have a feeling I am going to regret it.’

  Lisette scrambled to her feet and raced down to her cabin to fetch the bag containing her spare clothes before he could change his mind.

  Sam had not hired a driver, preferring to drive the carriage himself. ‘Can’t have too many people knowing our business, can we, sir?’ he explained.

  Thus it was that Jay and Lisette travelled in the coach without the benefit of a third person. Determined not to be contentious, they talked intermittently about safe subjects, like their childhood, their likes and dislikes, and when they ran out of things to say and ask, sat side by side in companionable silence.

  The first sign that the journey would not be easy was their failure to find replacement horses. They were obliged to continue with the animals they had, which slowed them to a walking pace with frequent stops to rest. It gave the travellers the opportunity to observe the countryside. Everywhere was run down: plaster was falling off the buildings, window frames needed painting and often the glass was missing. The fields were overgrown and the cattle skinny. Most of the men they saw wore cut-off trousers, striped waistcoats and threadbare coats, earning them the name of sans culottes, and the women were in skirts and ragged shawls. Almost all wore the red caps of the Revolution. There were some more prosperous, who rode horses or travelled in carriages, whipping up their horses to pass the slow-moving coach, spattering it with mud.

  Sam drove past several inns where they could have stopped for the night, saying they were hovels and he would find somewhere better. Jay, who would happily have stopped had he been alone, agreed to go on for Lisette’s sake. She had long since ceased to chatter and was asleep with her head lolling on his shoulder. She needed a bed, not a flea pit.

  It was very late when Sam drew up in the yard of what had once been a substantial posting inn in Amiens and jumped down to open the door for them. ‘I’m afraid this will have to do,’ he said. ‘The horses are done for and we cannot keep going all night. I’ll go in and bespeak beds.’

  Jay roused Lisette. ‘Wake up, Lisette. We have stopped.’

  She opened her eyes, mortified to realise that she was in Jay’s arms again. So much for aloofness; it was impossible with this man. She sat up. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Amiens, still over a hundred kilometres from Paris. We need food and drink and somewhere to sleep.’

  Sam returned followed by the innkeeper. He was enormously fat, the first fat man they had seen since leaving Calais. ‘Bonsoir, monsieur, madame,’ he said, rubbing his hands in his sacking apron while endeavouring to bow to them. ‘We have a room all ready for you. Your servant will have to share with others, I am afraid.’

  ‘But…’ Jay began, then stopped. How could he explain that Lisette was not his wife without compromising her? His conversation with Sam about mistresses came back to him. Lisette was not mistress material. How he wished he had not agreed to bring her, but he had and now he had to deal with the consequences. ‘Thank you,’ he said, leaving the coach and turning to help Lisette down. She was still drowsy and had not heard the conversation. ‘Come, my dear, you will soon be comfortable,’ he said in French and then murmured in English, ‘Trust me.’

  They were escorted indoors and up to a bedchamber with much bowing and scraping and a promise that food and drink and washing water would be brought up to them. Sam took their portmanteaux and put them on a table at the foot of the big four-poster bed and went to leave them. ‘I will meet you downstairs in the parlour in ten minutes,’ Jay told him.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  As soon as he had gone Jay turned to Lisette. She was sitting on the bed, her hands in her lap. ‘They have brought your bag in here,’ she said dully.

  ‘Yes. I am sorry, Lisette, there has been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘There certainly has. When I begged to come with you, I did not mean this. And if you think…’

  ‘I don’t. Nothing was further from my thoughts. The innkeeper misunderstood.’

  ‘You were quick enough to take advantage.’

  ‘Only of the room, madam, not of you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I am going downstairs. I suggest you go to bed.’

  He left her to go in search of Sam, who was enjoying a bowl of onion soup in the deserted dining room. ‘What did You tell the innkeeper about us?’

  ‘Only that we required rooms. You know my French. He must have jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

  ‘And left me in a fix. I shall have to explain she is not my wife and ask for another room…’

  ‘There isn’t one. I’m sharing with four others. Do you want to make a sixth?’

  ‘So you expect me to share a room with Miss Giradet, do you?’

  Sam grinned. ‘Why not? What you do with it is your affair.’

  ‘Anyone but you would have been knocked down for his impertinence,’ Jay said. ‘Be thankful I need you to drive the carriage or you would be on your way back.’

  ‘Aside from that,’ Sam said, suddenly ser
ious, ‘when we get to Paris, you will not be able to keep her presence a secret without locking her up and I doubt she’d stand for it.’

  Jay admitted the truth of that. ‘So?’

  ‘Diplomats usually have wives. If you do not want to claim her as a mistress, then she could be Mrs Drymore.’

  ‘Impossible. I have no intention of marrying again.’

  ‘I was not suggesting you go through a marriage ceremony, but in Paris, who’s to know you have not? And it will be easier to protect her—no one would dare molest the wife of a British envoy.’

  Jay was thoughtful; Sam did have a point and he wondered why he had not thought of it himself. Lisette Giradet seemed to drive rational thought from him, but it was time he took command of the situation again. The innkeeper went to pass them with a heavily loaded tray. ‘Is that for us?’ he asked, nodding at it.

  ‘Oui, monsieur.’

  ‘I’ll take it.’ He stood up and relieved the man of the tray. ‘Sam, we will make an early start in the morning,’ he said, and took the tray up to the bedchamber he was to share with Lisette.

  Lisette had used the warm water that had been brought to her to wash off the grime of travel and undressed for bed. She was sitting up against the pillows when there was a knock at the door. Thinking it was a waiter, she pulled the curtains about the bed and bade him come in. ‘Leave it on the table,’ she said.

  She heard him put the tray down and go to the door. Opening the curtains, intending to go to the table and eat something, she was shocked to find Jay, who had simply gone to shut and lock the door, taking off his coat.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I am going to have supper. It smells good.’ He hung his coat over the back of a chair and pulled another out for her. ‘Come, you must be hungry.’

  ‘You can’t stay in here.’

  ‘I’ve nowhere else to go. You would not turn me out, would you?’

  ‘But it is unseemly.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you stowed away. The whole adventure is unseemly, as you must have known.’

  ‘Yes, but I did not think…’

  ‘That is your trouble, Miss Giradet, you do not think. I recall you promised to be good if I brought you.’

  ‘Good, yes, wanton, no.’

  ‘Touche!’ He laughed. ‘Come and eat. You may trust me not to pounce on you.’

  She eyed the tray with its gently steaming dishes, smelled the delicious aroma coming from them and hunger won. She wrapped one of the blankets about her and padded in bare feet to join him at the table.

  ‘This innkeeper seems able to keep a good table in hard times,’ she said. ‘The food at the places we had meals before were most unappetising.’

  ‘No doubt he has a hidden source of supplies and we will be charged accordingly. Let us be thankful for it and eat our fill.’ He ladled food on to a plate for her and then helped himself. ‘We have a long day ahead of us again tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she repeated. Before tomorrow came they had to spend the night in this room. Could she trust him to keep his promise? She had been in scrapes before, but nothing like this. If he did pounce on her, as he so inelegantly put it, would she fight him off? Did she even want to? If he loved her, she might welcome his advances, but to him she was an encumbrance, a hoyden, he had told her so. He still mourned a dead wife and was true to his vow not to marry again. But that did not mean he would not take a mistress, did it? Oh, she had no one but herself to blame for the pickle she was in.

  ‘Now let us have done with this cat-and-mouse bickering and make some serious decisions,’ he said when they had eaten and drunk their fill. ‘It is clear the innkeeper thinks you are my wife.’

  ‘You could have told him I was not.’

  ‘I could, but then he would have drawn his own conclusions to your detriment. Besides, I could see the advantages…’

  ‘I’ll wager you could.’

  ‘Do not be so waspish. Let me finish. If we pretend to be man and wife, you will, as a British citizen by way of marriage, be safe from arrest, even if it is discovered who you really are—or were before you married me. You will be able to go out and about openly. Otherwise you will have to stay in hiding. You may not care for your reputation, but I certainly care for mine.’

  ‘I see.’ She paused. ‘But we don’t really marry.’

  ‘No, of course not. It is only a pretence for the duration of our stay.’

  She could have wept. Torn between the disappointment of his rejection and thankfulness that he was thinking of her good name did not help her confusion. ‘So what happens tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘If you let me have one of your blankets, I will be quite comfortable on the floor.’

  She took off the blanket she was wearing and gave it to him before retiring behind the bed curtain.

  She could not sleep. He was fidgeting about on the other side of the curtain, trying to make himself comfortable, and it was a cold night; one blanket would not keep him warm. She lay there, wrestling with her conscience. He was uncomfortable because of her; he could be at home in his own bed on a soft mattress with as many blankets as he needed, if he had not offered to help her. And even if he had come to France alone, he could have had this bed to himself.

  ‘Jay,’ she called softly. ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come here. There is plenty of room in this bed for two.’ She opened the curtains. A shaft of moonlight from the uncurtained window showed him sitting on the floor leaning against the wall, only partially covered by the blanket. He had not undressed beyond taking off his coat, waistcoat, neckcloth and shoes. ‘Come and get warm.’

  ‘Do you mean it?’

  ‘I would not have said it otherwise.’

  He came to the bed, bringing his blanket with him. If he thought he was going to sleep next to her, she disabused him of that idea by putting a bolster down the bed between them. Thus, suitably separated, with three blankets covering them, they settled down for what was left of the night.

  ‘No one would ever believe this,’ he murmured as he fell asleep.

  Lisette watched him, knowing she had irredeemably condemned herself in his eyes. The worst of it was, she knew he did not want her, was not even tempted, and that was how it was going to be the whole time they were in France. She leaned over and gently kissed his cheek. ‘No, they wouldn’t,’ she whispered, then lay back with a sigh and closed her eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  The journey continued, each day the same as the one before. Day by day they looked out of the carriage windows on a landscape from which all crops, if there had ever been any, had been gathered, where the people shuffled rather than walked and often spat on the carriage as it passed, shouting, ‘À bas les aristos!’

  Now and again they were able to find fresh horses and at the end of each day they ate in the dining room of whatever inn could accommodate them, sleeping in the same room, sometimes in the same bed, though more often Jay chose a chair and a footstool and woke with a stiff neck. It seemed to Lisette that this journey would never end, that they were destined to plod through France for ever, so close and yet so far apart. Superficially they had come to know each other well, but on a deeper level he was as much of an enigma as ever.

  The coach was prone to breaking down and it took all Sam’s ingenuity to find tools and materials to repair it, but repair it he did, and on they went. By now Jay and Lisette had little to say to each other—both were weary and disinclined to put into words what they expected, what they hoped, would happen at the end of the journey. Pontoise had been their last night stop before entering Paris and they set off next morning knowing that for good or ill their adventure was reaching another stage.

  They knew they had arrived in Paris when they were stopped by a long queue at a barrier. Rather than make another stop so near their destination, they had elected to drive through the night and were tired and grubby. Lisette longed for a bath and a comfortable bed, one
in which she was not haunted by the sound of Jay fidgeting a few feet away, but here they waited while everyone was questioned and searched by armed men in makeshift uniforms. Some were let through, others taken off screaming because contraband had been found in their possession. Gradually Sam drew the coach to a stop at the pole which had been placed across the road to prevent them advancing.

  Jay had his papers ready. ‘Commodore John Drymore and Mrs Drymore,’ he said. ‘British Envoy to the National Convention.’ He had been saying it all along their route and had become so used to it, the lie slipped easily from his tongue.

  His papers were inspected and puzzled over for several minutes before the guard decided it would be prudent to let him through. The barrier was lifted and Sam drove the tired horses into the city. They arrived in the middle of a riot.

  It was some time since Jay had been in the city and he was appalled by the change which had taken place. Once-grand mansions and palaces, standing cheek by jowl with tumbledown hovels, had been deserted by their noble occupants and were already showing signs of neglect. The streets were filthy and kennels running down their middles ran slowly with their load of detritus. Paris, which had once been beautiful, the centre of fashion and manners, had been changed into a melting pot, a noisome stew of discontent.

  Crowds of people of both sexes and all ages rushed through the streets, brandishing whatever weapons they could find: stolen muskets and picks, lumps of wood and stones torn up from the cobbles. They were breaking into food stores and helping themselves to whatever they could find. A contingent of National Guard was helpless against them and did not even try. Carts containing produce for the market were overturned and their contents looted. Sam used his whip freely to left and right to force a way through as the carriage was rocked by the press of bodies. Lisette, thoroughly frightened, clung to Jay, who put his arm protectively round her.

  They made their way through at last and made for what had been the residence of the British Ambassador. There was no one to greet them but a housekeeper by the name of Madame Gilbert, who told them she could also cook for them, and an oddjob man called Albert Mouchon. The wages of both were being paid by the British Government and, as they were generous, the pair had chosen to stay where they felt safe. Jay took possession and sent Sam out with madame to buy provisions and ordered the man to light fires in the salon, the dining room and three bedrooms. Outside they could still hear the tumult, but it was far enough away not to bother them.