The Barbed Crown Read Free Page A

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 common people did, apparently.
    “Then keep her from drowning, Gage. The beach is steep, and I’ll get you within yards of the shingle.”
    “Captain, you can’t be serious,” she protested.
    “Maybe we should take time to patch the launch,” I said.
    “With rockets lifting up?” Johnstone’s sloop slid in under the cliffs, came about, and anchored into the wind, its stern paid off into surf. His crew pushed us to the back rail, muttering about the reforming benefits of a chill dunking for a cardsharp and female curse.
    “Smith isn’t paying you to drown me!” the comtesse warned.
    “One man has died, mademoiselle,” a mate said. “Another wounded by splinters. Someone has obviously betrayed you, and we’ve paid the price. The least you can do is plunge.” He pushed us, with Catherine shrieking, into the sea.
    I grabbed her as we fell, the cold water knocking my breath away and my heavy belt of gold pieces dragging us to the bottom. Fortunately, the water was so shallow that Johnstone must have scraped his rudder. I felt a mix of stone and sand, shoved off with one arm clutching my struggling companion, and surfaced with a whoosh . Bloody hell, the water was bracing! A wave pushed us toward shore and then broke over us, making us sputter. But my legs got a better grip, I held against the suck, and we staggered ashore, half frozen