Almost a Lady (21 page)

She wormed her way through the hedge into the garden and then heard the sound of voices. One was Cosimo’s. Swiftly she backed her way through the hedge again, and listened. Another voice spoke in guttural French and then they went into the pigeon shed.

Meg slipped back along the hedge towards the front of the cottage. The wind, it seemed, was dropping, the rain easing. She froze, listening to the sound of galloping hoofbeats along the road that led away from the sea. They were close and coming closer.

She didn’t stop to think any further but flew back to the rear garden. Lamplight came from the shed and she burst in, slamming the door at her back. “Someone’s coming, Cosimo. Horses . . . fast . . .”

Cosimo held a piece of paper in his hand; the man with him was short and stocky and held a pigeon in his palm, caressing its iridescent breast with a fingertip. The two men exchanged one quick glance, then the man extinguished the lamp before opening the pigeon cage to release the birds, shooing them out into the garden with soft encouraging words. Cosimo grabbed Meg’s hand and dragged her outside. “The privy,” he said, and pushed her unceremoniously into the noxious darkness of the outhouse.

Voices sounded, harsh and demanding. Someone banged and kicked at the cottage door. Meg could make out the flicker of torches through the cracks in the privy door, moving now towards the empty pigeon shed.

Cosimo held Meg against him, his hand over her mouth, as if she needed the reminder to keep silent. Not even Cosimo with his armory of knives could deal with these invaders.

An outraged shout came from the cottage, a stream of angry voices. Meg recognized the voice of the man who had been with Cosimo in the shed. He was yelling furiously, clearly giving as good as he was getting. She could make out protestations of innocence, a simple farmer taking care of his own land and minding his own business, demands to know what they thought they were doing, disturbing respectable folk in the middle of a godforsaken night. She peered up at Cosimo in the dim light and saw a faint smile on his lips, which struck her as somewhat inappropriate in the circumstances. At any moment the privy door could burst open and they’d be confronted by a phalanx of armed men while they cowered in these less-than-salubrious surroundings.

Cosimo glanced up over the bench with its three holes and pointed at the small round aperture that offered some kind of ventilation. “Up,” he mouthed, jerking an imperative thumb.

Meg hesitated, wondering how he was going to get through such a small space, but then he gripped her shoulders and gave her a hard shake. He was no longer smiling. She stepped up onto the bench and he seized her around the knees and hoisted her the few inches necessary for her to get her head and shoulders out of the window. She hung there for a second, listening. The noise was still coming from the cottage but from here all she could see was a cabbage patch. She wriggled through with a helping push from behind and dropped to the soft wet earth beneath. But how was Cosimo going to get out?

Knife his way out? No, that was ridiculous. But she reasoned that it would be easier for one person to slip out unnoticed than for two. Particularly if the one person was as skilled at this business as Cosimo . . . she wouldn’t put it past him to make himself invisible.

Before she had time to castigate herself for a misplaced humor that seemed to be catching, Cosimo was suddenly beside her. He didn’t speak, merely took her hand and pulled her after him towards the hedge. She could smell the midden and wondered somewhat hysterically if they were going to bury themselves in dung until the danger had passed. Fortunately they skirted the midden and Cosimo jumped into a deep ditch, pulling her with him.

He lay down, dragging her on top of him, then reached up and tore weeds out of the ground to cover them. Then he held her tight and they lay in immobile silence as the chaos raged above them. Meg could feel his heart beating beneath her own. She could smell the sweat and rain on his skin; the stubble of his nighttime beard was rough against her cheek, but she felt his lips caressing her ear in what she knew was a deliberate kiss, and his hand moved down her back to rest on her bottom, cupping the curve against him. To her astonishment she felt his penis harden beneath her, and she buried her face in his shoulder to stifle her laughter. They were lying covered in weeds in a filthy wet ditch in a gale, the enemy rampaging around them, and Cosimo was capable of arousal.

As was she. Her body, cold and soaked though it was, was alive with lust. She moved slightly against him, lifting her head a little, trying to see his expression, but it was too dark to see anything but the gleam in his eyes. Then his hand tightened on her backside without any lustful intention and his body was still as stone. She could feel that his breathing had almost stopped.

Voices came from above. Feet trampled along the edge of the ditch. Torchlight flickered through the rain. And Meg, too, held her breath. Then she heard someone say,
“Allons-y,”
and the feet and the torchlight faded away.

Cosimo began to breathe again, slowly and rhythmically, but he continued to lie still, holding her against him, enjoining her silence and immobility for what seemed an incredibly long time. Finally he stirred, reaching up to push aside the cover of weeds. “Get up carefully,” he whispered against her ear. “Just in case.”

Meg lifted her head above the ditch. The garden was in darkness, the rain still fell, but not as fiercely as before, the cottage was dark, the pigeon shed equally. And she could hear the faint sound of receding hoofbeats. “I think they’ve gone.” She hitched herself out of the ditch and got to her feet, shivering uncontrollably. Whether with simple cold or aftermath, she didn’t know and assumed it didn’t much matter. Either way, lust forgotten, she was miserable as sin.

Cosimo stood beside her, listening. There was no sound but the wind and the rain. He started off along the hedge and Meg followed. She remembered little about the walk back to the cliff head, keeping her head down, watching her boots squelching through the soggy grass as if they belonged to someone else.

At the top of the path, Cosimo said, “This time I’ll go first.” If he was aware of her misery, he offered no comforting concern, which, Meg thought, was exactly as he said it would be. She was in this situation because she had chosen to be so, and the consequences were hers to bear.

She began the trek down the goat track, watching her step, clinging to the scrubby plants that lined the path. Below, the roar of the waves, the crash of the surf, grew louder. She stopped to look for the lights of the
Mary Rose
, but there was no sign of them. Of course the ship would be in darkness, anchored so close off the enemy coast. It would have been nice though to have seen just a twinkle from the yardarm.

Eventually they reached the beach and she drew a deep breath, her lungs aching, as she turned to look back up the cliff.

“Not an easy climb,” Cosimo said calmly. “You should be proud of yourself.”

“I am,” Meg returned. “Is the
Mary Rose
still out there?”

He laughed softly. “Of course.” He walked across the sand to the dinghy. “Get in and I’ll push us off.”

Once they were floating free he said, “Under the thwart you’ll find a pouch with a whistle. Blow three long and one short, and then repeat.”

“I feel like a genuine spy,” Meg observed, feeling for the pouch. “Hiding in privies and ditches and signaling ships.” She blew on the whistle as instructed and they were rewarded almost immediately by a signaling light in the darkness.

Cosimo pulled strongly towards the light that gradually threw a guiding pathway over the black sea. Miles was clinging one-handed to the bottom of the rope ladder as they came up alongside, and grabbed the painter from Meg, pulling the dinghy close in. He jumped into the dinghy and helped Meg onto the ladder. She climbed rapidly upwards, aware that she was using the last dregs of strength as she toppled over the railing onto the deck.

It was David who helped her to her feet. “Dear God, what madness to go out in a night like this. What were you thinking, Cosimo? The poor woman’s a drowned rat.”

“There’s nothing of the poor woman about her,” Cosimo declared as he swung onto the deck beside them. He seemed enviably unaffected by the events of the night. “She’s as strong as a horse . . . Meg, go below,” he continued in the same brusque manner. “Biggins, hot water
now
. And tell Silas to make hot grog and bring it to the cabin. Come, Meg, don’t just stand there. David, if you want to send some prophylactic against chills to my cabin, feel free to do so.”

Meg didn’t resist the helping hand that propelled her towards the companionway. The cabin was lit by a lamp, its wick turned down low. There was no sign of Gus, and Meg assumed the gregarious bird had sought company elsewhere.

“Stand still. Let me unfasten the oilskin.” Cosimo was now all consideration, undoing the wet, stiff buttons and pulling the garment off her. “God, you’re soaked,” he muttered. “You’ll be lucky not to get a chill on the lungs.”

“You’re just as wet,” Meg retorted through chattering teeth, and he shook his head with a tiny laugh.

“I’m a little more accustomed to it, my dear Meg.” He was undressing her as he spoke, and didn’t stop when the door opened to admit Biggins with jugs of hot water. “Fill the bath, Biggins.”

“Aye, sir.”

Meg was too cold to care who saw her at this stage. Her skin was a mass of pimply goose bumps, like a plucked chicken, and her breasts seemed to have shrunk to the size of walnuts. Cosimo passed her the paisley shawl and she wrapped herself up while Biggins continued to fill the tub.

“Get out of your own clothes,” she insisted to the privateer when he’d made no attempt even to divest himself of the oilskin.

“Get into the hot water and then I will.” He pointed towards the head. “There should be enough to be going on with and I’ll pour in more when Biggins brings it.”

Meg didn’t argue. She slid beneath the water and felt the convulsive shivering ease. Cosimo came in naked with two more jugs and poured them over her. “Move up a little, I have to get in.”

She scrunched up to the end as he stepped carefully in opposite her, and then he slid down, shoving his icy feet beneath her backside as he dipped his head beneath the hot water.

“That’s better,” he muttered, coming up for air. “How about you?”

“Getting better,” she said, wriggling against his feet in an effort to warm them up. “Did you get the message you went for?”

He squinted a little through the drops of water that clung to his eyelashes. “Yes.”

“So it was worth it?” Meg splashed water on her shoulders as her body chilled.

“It was. And now you need to get out and get dry.”

“Was it a message from Ana?” Meg asked, standing up in a shower of drops. “Am I entitled to ask that?”

Cosimo dipped below the water again. He had no desire to tell her anything about the message, anything at all about Ana, not until he’d absorbed all the implications and come to terms with his own emotions. They were too raw at present to be explored, and he certainly didn’t want to do it in company. And yet Meg
was
entitled to something, and more to the point, he suspected that if he didn’t attempt to satisfy her curiosity, she would go on digging. Better to cut her off at the pass. When he raised his head he said, “Yes, it was.”

“Did I do as well as Ana would have?” She wrapped herself in a towel as she asked a question that she didn’t know why she was asking. Why did she feel in some kind of competition with this unknown woman?

Trust Meg to go straight to the heart of the matter. She was unfailingly straightforward. “Ana shouldn’t concern you,” he said dismissively, reaching for a towel as he stood up, hoping that would be the end of it.

“She doesn’t,” Meg said. “She interests me. They’re two very different things.” She walked back into the cabin, toweling her hair and wondering whether they really were.

Cosimo dried himself and followed her into the cabin. Biggins had set a steaming jug of hot spiced rum on the table with two beakers, and the privateer poured the fragrant grog and handed Meg a beaker. “Are you hungry?”

She considered this as she cupped her hands around the comforting heat of the mug. “I don’t think so.” She took an appreciative sip and then set down the beaker and went to get her nightgown. Once more decently clad, and warmly wrapped in the paisley shawl, she took up the mug again. “So, what did the message say?”

Cosimo, dressed again in shirt and britches, accepted that delaying tactics were getting him nowhere. “You know that I’ve been trying to discover what happened to Ana in Folkestone.” He chose his words carefully; there was much he had no intention of telling her, but he needed to give her just enough to satisfy her. “I was hoping for a message at Quiberon. When that didn’t come, La Rochelle was the last opportunity before Bordeaux.”

“So Ana is a spy, or whatever it is you are?”

“Among other things,” he said evasively. “Anyway, I discovered tonight that she is now safe and well. So there you have it.”

“So she told you what had happened in the message?”

The message had not been from Ana, but from one of his agents. They had found Ana and sprung her loose, but she was far from well. The message had been terse, as it had to be, but Cosimo had had no difficulty reading between the lines. The French had not been gentle with her. She had certainly been forced to give up the location of the outpost at Quiberon and he wondered if the raid tonight had been the result of interrogation. It was highly likely. The only saving grace was that Ana had not known the details of their mission. She had known they would make landfall at Brest and would be making an overland journey, and that much she would have been compelled to reveal, but as was customary she would not have known the detailed object of the endeavor until she was safely aboard. So, while she could have given away much that would endanger him and others, she could not have spilled the ultimate secret of his mission. They would be on the lookout for the
Mary Rose
, but he was leaving the ship at Bordeaux, something Ana had not known. The mission was still feasible.