Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (38 page)

He hoped no one would notice.

“My friend inside the walls,” Jacques said softly, as
he nodded toward the Bastille, “said that it would not be
until dawn tomorrow, but one’s friends tend to be forgetful, or they make mistakes. It’s best if we see for ourselves. At least, until Henri returns to us.”

Beth scarcely heard what he was saying. She was watching the procession. It broke her heart to see the opened carts slowly pass on the cobblestones. Some of the people within them sat and cried; others stood, meeting their fate with dignity. Still others looked too weak to stand.

The crowd gathered around each cart as it emerged
from the fortress, shouting and spitting on the occupants who, because of the whims of fate, had been born on a
different side than they.

She thought her heart was breaking.

Beth laid her hand on Duncan’s arm as if to draw strength from him. Strength to endure this horrible scene.

“Oh, Duncan,” she whispered, when she saw a mother within one of the carts holding her child to her breast.

The woman was bedraggled and far removed from any hope. Her eyes were vacant as she looked straight
ahead. It was as if she had already passed on to another
world and knew not of this one, save for the baby that cried pitifully at her breast.

The woman was younger than she, Beth realized.

For one instant, their eyes met, Beth’s full of pity, the woman’s empty.

Beth knew she had looked into the face of death.

Duncan could sense what she was thinking. He leaned over so that only she might hear. “Beth, we can’t save them. If we risk doing something now, we won’t be able to save your father when the times comes.”

She knew he was right, and yet somehow it did not seem right. She turned from the sight before her tears could spill. Her eyes caught Jacques’s.

By his pose and his manner, Jacques appeared unaf
fected. But Beth could see that the feelings within her breast beat in his as well.

But there was nothing any of them could do.

Jacques moved closer to his friends. “It is a page of our history that will be too black to read.”

He turned his back on them and the carts, and pretended for the moment to be so bored that he slept. If his eyes were shut, the tears could not come.

Because of their effort and Jacques’s precautions, they blended in well with the crowd who had gathered to cheer the carts on their way. Looking upon them, no one would have suspected that they were there to stay the hand of the avenging angel from the depths of hell that Robespierre had summoned.

The time passed slowly.

Beth thought she would go mad with the waiting. The carts had ceased departing on their macabre journey and
there was nothing to do except wait for the dawn.

Henri returned to eagerly inform them that there was a point in the journey from the fortress to the guillotine that provided them with a good opportunity to take possession of the cart. Pleased with the information, Jacques instructed Henri to show them.

Henri led them to a desolate part of the city, one that was unsavory and not frequently traversed by citizens who did not wish to risk their lives.

Jacques looked about, satisfied. “I know this place.”

They came from the same background, he and Jacques.
“Somehow, I thought you might,” Duncan commented.

Jacques laughed in response. “The people who live here are the citizens of the damned. They have no care who is on the throne or if it is vacant. All they want is to be left alone. If someone sees us through the win
dow,” he pointed in the distance, “it will not make a dif
ference,” he assured them.

The streets were perfect for a wagon, Beth thought, as she surveyed her surroundings. The houses that were clustered here had the sad-eyed appearance of neglect and despair. Beth blotted out the sense of desolation they created within her.

The pieces came together.

Pierre returned with a wagon, pulled by a sorry-looking horse and filled to the brim with straw.
Sebastian was posted on the western outskirts of the city
with the horse he had “found.” Sebastian returned the
gold to Duncan, who told him to keep it as payment for
finding the horse. Sebastian laughed and did so gladly.

Henri was left to stand watch at the Bastille and alert
them when Philippe Beaulieu was being transported.
Beth had given Henri a detailed description of her father
and had entrusted Jacques’s man with her most cherished possession, a miniature of her parents that had been painted on their wedding day.

Henri had eyed the miniature dubiously as he’d held it in his hand, but swore he would know when he saw the original.

All there was left for them to do was wait.

It felt to Beth as if she was lying beneath a boulder,
watching it totter precariously overhead, waiting for it to fall.

Duncan felt her tension as they stood there in the pre
dawn hours. It matched his own. “I would rather that you had remained near the Bastille to confirm your father’s appearance for us, or better yet, waited for us at the inn.”

He knew it was futile to mention it, but he had to voice his thoughts.

She looked at him as she blew out an impatient breath. Her impatience was with time, not with him.

“There will be no opportunity to return to the inn,”
she pointed out. “Once we have him, there is no turning
back for us.”

She wondered if Jacques knew how much he might be risking, helping them.

Jacques broke the tension. “So tell me, my friend,
how did someone as ugly as you wind up with such a
beautiful companion?” He smiled at Beth, hoping to set her at ease in this death watch in which they were engaged.

It seemed as if it had happened in another lifetime.

“I rescued her from a highwayman and got shot in the process.” He glanced at his shoulder, remembering
the way she had ministered to him, and the way she had
looked that night he’d thought he dreamed her.

What kind of fool was he for allowing her to endanger herself this way? But then, he knew she had no choice in the matter.

The look Jacques gave Beth was full of appreciation. “It would seem that your wound was well worth it.”

“I have my own opinion about that,” Duncan replied.

It was an oddly closed-mouth comment for him, and
Jacques looked at the man he saw rarely but would regard as a friend years from now with his last breath.

He saw in his eyes what Duncan was not yet consciously aware of. Jacques smiled to himself.

Well, well well. It would seem that the falcon has been tethered . . .

The sound of pounding hooves broke the stillness in the early morning air. The four looked at one another,
immediately alerted. A moment later, Henri came riding
up, his horse in a dead run.

He slid off the animal before it had come to a full stop.

“I saw him.” Henri held up the miniature. “I saw the old man she described. They are coming this way. Ten, perhaps fifteen minutes behind. He is in the very first cart. The second one has not been dispatched yet. They will arrive some time apart, to facilitate the executions.”

Beth took her miniature from Henri and quickly slipped it into her pouch. She would never forgive herself if she lost it.

“Good work.” Jacques nodded. “Positions, everyone.”

The wagon was led out into the street, directly in what would be the path of the oncoming cart. Jacob, purposely slouched shoulder and sleepy-eyed, sat on the seat with the reins in his hand. The worn animal that Pierre had brought with the wagon had been replaced with Jacob’s bay, Megan. Megan was as fleet-footed as she was strong.

There would be a need to flee almost instantly.

Beth, still dressed in her peasant garb, stood to the rear of the wagon, prepared to stop the cart’s driver and plead for help in moving the stubborn animal attached to her wagon.

Jacques and his men, as well as Duncan were hidden from view for the moment, ready to spring out once the
driver was distracted.

Duncan took one moment to hug Beth to him. “Take
care,” he whispered to her, then brushed his lips over hers.

“You needn’t worry.” But in her heart, she was glad that he did.

She pushed him away when she heard the sound of the cart approaching. The mournful wailing that preceded it froze her heart. One of the occupants of the cart was keening. She could not distinguish whether it was a man or a woman.

Dear God, what if it was her father?

Beth swallowed her fear.

As the cart with its doomed cargo approached, a guard at its side, Beth ran out before them. Her hands were raised in supplication.

“Help, oh help me, messieurs,” she begged tearfully.
“My horse has gone lame, and it cannot pull my
wagon.” She pointed toward it. “My brother knows not
what to do to get her to move out of the way.”

The man raised his whip, ready to strike Beth. “Stupid girl, do I look as if I had the time to help you? I’m
on official business.” He turned to the guard. “Shoot the
horse and get them out of the way,” he ordered. “If they give you any trouble, shoot them as well. We cannot keep Robespierre waiting.”

“No, please, sir, you can’t—“

“Oh, can’t I?” The driver stood up in his seat, his whip raised high.

He never had the opportunity to strike.

The next moment, Duncan and the others charged the cart from both sides as well as the rear. The guard was
immediately engulfed and pulled from his horse. He was dead before he could reach for his musket.

The driver tried to urge his horse on, ready to trample Beth in his path, but Duncan fired and the man pitched
forward, dead. The horse reared, his nostrils flaring as
he pawed the air wildly. Jacob jumped from the wagon.
Running, he grabbed for the reins, stopping the animal before it collided with the wagon.

The three people in the cart appeared dazed and almost beyond comprehending what was happening around them. Beth was the first to climb into the cart. She threw her arms around the battered body of her father. He was so pitifully thin, she could have cried.

But he was alive. Still alive.

“Father,” Beth cried. “Father, don’t you know me?”

Eyes that had lived so long in the dark and could now barely focus squinted at her face.

“Beth?” He whispered the name in disbelief. “Elizabeth?”

“Yes, Father, it’s me.”

Only then did she realize that his hands were tied behind his back. As if he could use them to harm anyone, she thought with hot indignation. She tried to pull the ropes loose.

Duncan was in the wagon now. “There’s no time, Beth, we have to move quickly.” Even now, he thought the others might be coming.

If not now, then soon.

Even so, Beth took a moment to pull the dagger from her boot and sliced the ropes from her father’s hands.
“Yes, we have to hurry, Father.” She began to usher him
from the cart.

But he resisted. “Wait, the boy.” Philippe pointed to the fragile body next to him. “I cannot leave without Andre.”

Beth looked down at the boy, not more than sixteen, lying in the straw, too weak to stand. She looked toward Duncan. “Duncan.”

There was no need to say more. Duncan scooped the boy up in his arms. He was hardly more than skin and bones. “I have him.”

“And Violet,” Dr. Beaulieu urged.

Jacques shook his head as he raised the woman’s limp hand in his. “This one is dead. It is as if her heart gave out. Such a pity.” She couldn’t have been more than thirty, he estimated.

The next moment, Jacques buried his feelings and looked around at the people surrounding him. “Hurry, my friends, hurry. There will be others following them, and soon, I assure you.”

Duncan carried the boy to the wagon as Philippe
Beaulieu leaned on Jacques and Beth, trying to make his
battered legs move. With their arms around his waist, they managed to get him to the wagon.

The two were quickly covered with straw and cautioned against making noise. Jacob clutched the reins of the wagon in his hands, more than ready to leave.

“Not too quickly,” Jacques warned him, as Beth
scrambled up on the seat beside Jacob. “We want no suspicions aroused.” He mounted his horse and fell into
step beside the wagon for a moment. “I shall ride with you until the outskirts of town. Sebastian has extra horses waiting there.”

Even as they left, they heard the approach of another cart.

Beth looked at Jacob. “If they see the empty cart and dead driver, they’ll be on our trail in an instant. Drive quickly.”

Jacob looked over his shoulder at Jacques. “But he said—“

“Jacob, drive,” Beth ordered.

Jacob needed no other entreaty. He snapped the reins in his hands, sending a message to the horse he had trained from a foal. “Run, Megan, run.”

The bay seemed to come to life. Pulling the cart, she trotted quickly from the heart of the city.

Beth’s heart beat fast as they managed to go unnoticed by the patrols that were in the city. No one seemed
to care about a sleepy-eyed driver and the tired-looking,
dirty woman beside him.

Duncan and Jacques matched the path of the wagon, step for step a few yards away, watching for any signs of trouble.

For once, the gods were with them and the winds were clean, Duncan thought. They reached the edge of Paris without incident.

Chapter Thirty-nine

As promised, Sebastian was waiting for them on the outskirts of town. He had with him two horses instead of just the one, as if some instinct had prompted him to “find” another along the way.

It was a fortuitous instinct.

Like a man with the devil snapping at his heels, Jacob pulled the wagon to a halt and leaped from the driver’s seat. Working swiftly, he removed the harness from his horse.