this little problem, hadn't we a grand time? Well, fairly a good time, in the main?'
Her answer was a tearful snort and a closer snuggling.
'Mean t'say, it's been me, traipsin' halfway round the world, havin' all the adventures,' he cajoled, 'and gettin' paid main-well by King George for it, too. You haven't had a whiff o' danger since you whipped Harry Embleton with yer reins… or came nigh t'shootin' Calico Jack Finney's 'nutmegs' off when he burst in on ye and Sewallis when he was a baby. We get back t'England with our scalps, why… we could dine out on this for years!'
Caroline uttered another snort, this one tinged with amusement. Lewrie gently tilted her face up to his and kissed her for reassurance, though, to his surprise, that kiss quickly turned to a warm and musky one of passion.
'That's my darlin' lass,' Lewrie told her, grinning. 'Here now… ever do it in a carriage?' he added, to jolly her further.
She punched him in the ribs, almost hard enough to hurt, but… she smiled at last; she laughed, even in 'gallows humour,' and said, 'And I suppose that you have? Don't answer! Your lewd suggestion is clue enough to your past, you… wretch.'
'Well, later perhaps…,' Lewrie allowed with an easy chuckle.
'Uhm, Alan…,' Caroline said, snuggling up to him. 'Do you imagine that Sir Pulteney is that capable? Mean t'say, he seems as if he's done this sort of thing before, he seems to have the connexions, but… might he be in league with the French, too? Are we to be his victims? His wife's French-Lady Imogene was a famous actress during the Terror, and she'd have known a lot of the brutal revolutionaries, and… '
'Don't think we've anything t'fear on that score, Caroline,' Lewrie quickly dismissed. 'At first, I took him for a 'Captain Sharp' who plays on unwary travellers, lookin' t'skin us broke, but… look at all they've spent on us. Suppers? Theatre? And if he meant to lay hands on our goods we sent off to Calais, then that'd be a damned bad trade. No, all these matchin' coaches and horse teams, the clothes the Plumbs came up with at the drop of a hat, and people who somewhat resemble us at short notice? Puttin' themselves to as much risk as us if they're exposed? No, I'm beginnin' t'think he's the genuine article… even if he is daft as bats half the time. We get home, we could look him up in Debrett's… see if he's authentic.'
The coach began to slow, and Lewrie turned his attention to the environs as they drew up into a line of dray waggons, coaches, and farm carts at the Porte d'Argenteuil.
During the Reign of Terror, under the hideously mis-named Committee for Public Safety, then even later under the Directory of Five, France had become a suspicious police state, fearful of counter-revolutionaries and spies, of saboteurs and each other. Paris, and the great cities, had closed and barricaded their medieval gates completely at night, and only the market carts that fetched fresh produce from the countryside were let out. Travellers not known to locals were instantly suspect, and soldiers of the Garde Nationale or Police Nationale inspected every basket or valise for contraband, bombs, smuggled weapons, or coded messages.
Even now, in the autumn of 1802, the city gates were manned by policemen or soldiers, though passage was usually much easier, even for foreigners, and thorough questionings and searches were a thing of the past. At least Lewrie hoped!
'Buck up, now, Caroline,' he told her. 'It's time to play the snooty English tourists. Bland, serene, stupid… '
A Garde Nationale soldier with a musket slung on his shoulder, a sabre-briquet on his hip, and a cockaded shako tipped far back atop his head, rapped on the left-hand coach door, demanding papers.
Lewrie handed them over in a languid, limply bored hand through the lowered window, and the guard, a Sergeant by the tassel hung from one shoulder, moved his stubby pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other, tugged at a corner of his impressively long and thick mustachios, and gave out a grunt. He looked up, locking eyes with Lewrie for a second, then peered into the coach to assure himself that it contained only the two people declared by their laisser-passers.
'Anglais, m'sieur?' he gruffly asked.
'Oui,' Lewrie replied.
'Et vous retournez en Angleterre?'
'Retourn… yes, we're going home,' Lewrie replied pretending even poorer command of French. 'Back to Jolly Old England, what? Mean t'say… oui.'
'Au revoir, m'sieur… madame' the guard said, handing back their laisser-passers and sketching out a salute before waving to the coachmen and his compatriots to signal that they were allowed to exit Paris.
'No worse than any other day-coach jaunt we made,' Lewrie told Caroline. 'We're on our way, one way or the other.'
Matthieu Fourchette had placed three covert watchers in close vicinity to the lodging house in the Rue Honorй; feeding pigeons, taking a stroll, sullenly sweeping horse dung. As the first coach came to a stop by the doors, the senior man tipped an underling the wink, and he was off, quick as his legs could carry him, to alert the band waiting for his news in the place du Carrousel.
The second coach, then a third, bollixed everything, throwing the remaining two watchers into feetful confusion. The departure of those three coaches, with three pairs of Lewries, less than a minute apart, threw those two agents into a panic. Try to pursue them? Try to catch up with Fourchette and his men, who had most likely started off for the Porte St. Denis, the logical exit for the Calais road, or raise a hue and cry? The senior man decided that his best choice, if he wished to continue his employment, was to run to the headquarters of the Police Nationale on the south side of the Tuileries Palace to pass the burden on to Director Fouchй- well, not directly to his face!-and let him despatch riders to sort it out.
If Director Joseph Fouchй had had a single hair on his head he would have been sorely tempted to yank it out in frustration as contradictory news came in in mystifying dribs and drabs.
Horsemen from three of the portes had come to report the departure of the Anglais couple the guards had been ordered to be on alert for? Another horseman had to be sent off to catch up with Fourchette and his party to warn them that a massive charade was being played on them. Of a sudden, Fouchй needed two more parties of pursuers, with no time to brief them on the purpose of their urgent missions or to scrounge up the proper men who could manage the elimination of those perfidiously clever Anglais! All their plans had put that task into the hands of Fourchette, that salope de Guilleri, and that foul fiend, Choundas.
'Damn, damn, damn!' Fouchй roared, flinging an ink-pot at the nearest wall. 'Even if they catch them, they won't know them from Adam! Their papers give nothing away! Merde alors! Merde, merde!'
'Citoyen?' his meek clerk timorously asked, cringing a little. 'You have orders?' he dared to pose.
'Another rider!' Fouchй demanded, grabbing for pen and paper and realising he no longer had any ink with which to write new orders. 'Putain!' he roared in even greater frustration. 'Ink, fool! Bring me more ink, ballot, vite, vite!'
He took a deep breath to calm himself as the clerk scrambled to fetch a fresh ink-pot. Fourchette could sort it out; he'd better, or it would be his neck! Three coaches to pursue, so… he would split his party, of course, and make haste, Fouchй assumed. The girl, with a few agents to help her; thank God she'd talked him into including her Chasseur, Clary, who could chase after the second with a few more men… though he'd been included to identify them, to trail them, and had not been in on the conclusion of the plan. Would he balk? Fourchette and that beast Choundas could chase after the first coach… before all three of them got too far away from Paris,
