“But I shall need to keep the letter for the ship’s captain.”
“Indeed,” Malcolm agreed. “Are you wearing a busk?”
Startled at his knowledge of women’s underthings, she nodded.
“Remove it, coil the letter with the bank notes your grandfather gave you to pay the captain, and tuck it all into the space.”
She didn’t mind him watching as she pulled the long, wooden dowel out from the front of her stays. She would forsake her posture for the importance of the documents. Yet even her beloved busk had been a gift from her mother, carved with two linked hearts and her name. Serena had used it ever since the first time she’d worn the proper stays of a woman.
Handing it to Malcolm because she couldn’t bear to toss it into the woods, she watched him slip it into the pocket of his coat. Then he unloaded her trunks, hiding them behind a tree, although she couldn’t imagine why. Surely someone would find them and take her things before the war was over.
Feeling entirely dejected, she tried to shore her spirits up with thoughts of home. They continued on toward the blockade, not far from the docks of Saint-Malo. When two Imperial soldiers stood in the middle of the road, they halted the wagon.
“My husband is mute,” she said as soon as one addressed Malcolm. “We just came to sit and look at the water.”
“This late?” one of the soldiers asked. “In another half hour, you’ll hardly be able to see anything.”
Serena sent him a sly smile. “It is romantic, monsieur. Don’t you think?” She even gave a husky laugh in case he was in any doubt.
But the other soldier was unimpressed by her act. “This isn’t the time to be sightseeing,” he said. “We are about to go to war.”
“Again!” chimed in the other man, sounding none too pleased.
“Is there some reason we cannot go to the sea in our own country?” she asked.
The man turned to Malcolm, looking at him more closely. “Get out of the carriage.”
Without hesitating, Malcolm complied, demonstrating he fully understood the language. “Hop on one foot,” the soldier added.
Malcolm hesitated, and Serena held her breath, hoping he understood.
He hopped on his right foot twice and stopped.
“What madness is this?” she asked, sounding as insulted as she was scared.
“We’re just making sure none of the English stragglers,” the man hesitated so he could spit on the ground, “are trying to escape our grasp.”
“This far south?” Serena asked. “News from Paris,” she added, hoping to impress these men, “is that the English fled weeks ago. They left by way of Le Havre or up north as far as Calais.”
“Bon!”said the soldier.
“Vive l’Empereur,”the first man cheered.
Serena wasn’t sure if she was supposed to respond in kind. Instead, she said what was in her heart.
“We areallFrench. Surely, that’s what’s important,” she insisted, then wished she’d stayed quiet when the soldier moved closer to her side of the wagon, pointed his musket at her, and told her to get down from the seat.
