A Desperate Fortune by Kearsley Susanna

Author:Kearsley, Susanna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2015-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Ye sons of the chace, stand far distant…

—Macpherson, “The War of Inis-Thona”

Chalon-sur-Saône

February 18, 1732

“I must confess I know not what to do with him,” said Thomson.

He was speaking to the Scotsman, who was walking at his side in front of Mary and Madame Roy as they climbed the sloping road towards the citadel. Their travel in the diligence had been disrupted on the day before by one horse falling lame and forcing them to slow their pace, so when they had been meant to dine at Beaune they had not reached that place till after nightfall, and instead of reaching Chalon on the river Saône last night, they had arrived here late this morning and were now faced with the prospect of a full day’s wait before they would be able to change over to the river barge—the diligence d’eau—that would convey them the remaining way to Lyon.

Mr. Stevens had seemed little inconvenienced by the change of plan. When he had joined them at Auxerre he clearly had not known that he was traveling alongside the same man he had been following, for otherwise he would have been a fool to speak so freely of his plans to them, but Mary felt quite certain that before that day was done he’d grown suspicious, and the comment he had made to her about the wolves at Saulieu had been proof. He’d dogged their steps all yesterday and kept close by all evening, watching them with an increasing interest Mary did not like. Which was the reason she was outdoors in the open air now, climbing to the citadel, instead of sitting with the mother and her daughters in the comfort of the new inn’s parlor, by a pleasant warming fire—because both Mr. Stevens and the merchant were within the parlor also, talking politics as usual. And hunting.

Madame Roy, even fatigued from travel and the days of sickness and poor eating, climbed more strongly than did Mary and was not the least bit winded, as though she’d been bred to steep terrain. The four of them were now above the main part of the houses of the lower town, and being where they were no longer likely to be overheard so long as they spoke low, they were now briefly able to converse in English.

Thomson said, “If, as you say, he knows—”

“He knows.”

“—then he does not yet feel so certain of that knowledge in his mind to rouse himself to action, else he would by now have taken me.”

MacPherson merely cast a sideways look at him as though he felt it hardly needed saying that there was another reason why the Englishman had not yet tried to lay a hand on Thomson. A tall, ill-tempered, very Scottish reason.

Thomson said, “I know how you would wish to deal with him, but surely there are other ways. You cannot simply kill the man.”

He fell to silence, thinking.

Madame Roy glanced sideways at the little dog in Mary’s arms and smiled and said in French, “You’ve spoiled that beast.

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