The captain finally slammed his heavy bulk against the other side of the tiller, and our bow swung just slightly. “Nicely timed, Gage, but allow for drift. Steer for the windward rock until the last moment.”
We pointed straight at destruction. But no, we were pushed sideways and sailed neatly into the gap, our boom scraping stone on one side and our hull the bottom on the other. No normal skipper would try pinching through, but Captain Tom had studied the intricacy of this coast for years. The hull shuddered, and suddenly, Comtesse Marceau clutched my arm.
“Lantern ashore!”
And as the surf sucked and thundered, the faintest green light shone.
CHAPTER 2
The French cutter chased us to disaster. It followed through the gap and grounded so violently that its mast snapped, its sails collapsing like an unpegged tent. There were oaths, yells, and a final frustrated cannon shot that passed a good fifty yards off our stern. Captain Johnstone gave a satisfied cackle. Comtesse Marceau balanced to peer backward with a slight smile of triumph. My hand on the tiller was sore and sweaty.
“Will Lacasse sink?” the comtesse asked our captain.
“More likely left dry when the tide drops. Companions will take them off tomorrow, and their government will get them another ship.”
She clutched her pistol, a silk reticule with her purse and necessaries tied with a silver cord to her wrist. “The French navy has been helpless since the officers of the aristocracy were driven from the kingdom. It’s one more way the revolutionaries have betrayed France.”
“A more prudent commander might have rounded up and given a parting broadside,” Johnstone agreed. “Better to lose us than your own vessel.”
“Curious luck for them to stumble on us like that,” I said.
“If it was luck.”
We sailed on toward shore. High gray cliffs materialized in the murk. Surf pounded their base. It looked like the devil’s worst place to go ashore.
“You promise a way off such a bleak beach?” I asked.
“A smuggler’s path,” said Johnstone.
Behind us, red light flared. The wrecked cutter had sent up a rocket.
“Be quick,” Johnstone added. “Foot patrols may see that commotion and come looking.”
“You’re very brave, Comtesse,” I said, even though she hadn’t done anything of note yet. Men make pointless compliments to attractive women out of instinct and vague hope.
“I’ve no life except France and was dead in England,” she replied. “I’m risking nothing except resurrection.”
“I suppose we’ll have to share quarters in Paris to pose as a couple. More convincing, don’t you think?”
“Indeed not, monsieur. You will install me in fine apartments befitting a highborn consort, and I will receive you at my whim. Our friendship is solely political, and we’re both mere soldiers in a great royalist army of conspirators already two thousand strong.”
“Maybe just arm in arm to the opera, then,” I persisted, wondering if we could afford two places. “And elbow to elbow in that new Parisian invention, the dining restaurant. Smarter than an inn, using chefs unemployed by the revolution to make their best for a roomful of strangers. I’m told the Véry offers eight choices of soup, ninety-five main courses, and twenty-five desserts.”
“Mercenary, impersonal, and common,” she judged. “The modern world is a tasteless porridge of coarseness and mediocrity. We go ashore not just for restoration, Monsieur Gage, but to save civilization from the mob. I will pretend to accompany you, but never forget that birth made us different beings.”
Well, her message was clear enough. The truth is that I was less than comfortable throwing in with a bunch of royalists, whatever the excesses of Napoleon. They were a self-satisfied yet needy bunch, and though I’m a bit of a climber, I get tired of their pretensions. Catherine Marceau’s snobbery was only reinforcing my longing for commonsensical Astiza. But if I was going to give payback to Bonaparte for destroying my family, these blue bloods were the only chance I had. War makes strange alliances.
“Captain, they holed our tender,” a seaman reported to Johnstone, looking at the dinghy lashed amidships.
“Say what? Damaged our gig? The frogs usually can’t hit a thing, and tonight we’re cursed with a marksman?”
“We’ve no means to get these two ashore.” The mate looked at us unhappily, clearly not eager to lug us back to England.
“Then they’ll get themselves. I haven’t come all this way not to get my promised fare from Sidney Smith. Do you swim?” The question was addressed to both of us.
“With reluctance,” I said.
“Certainly not,” Catherine added. Swimming is what