The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [121]
Olivia groaned. “Did the duke leave?”
“Yes, but he will return in an hour or so. Le Capitaine promised to send out the patrol to try to find you before he went back to bed. Bessette plans to demand fifty guineas of your duke, but Madame says you might be worth a hundred.”
“In that case, I’ll be out by nightfall.”
“How is your mattress?” Petit asked, a quizzical look on his face.
“While I wouldn’t wish to seem ungrateful, I’m a bit afraid of falling off. May I ask why you put quite so many on top of each other?”
He turned red, and suddenly looked even younger. “We thought that it looked too much like a bed with just one or two mattresses.”
“It is a bed.”
“Yes, but if it looked like a bed, there was the chance that Bessette might decide to . . .” He waved his hand, embarrassed. “You’d be there, you see, on a bed. But this way it is difficult to reach you.”
“You are brilliant,” Olivia said, sincerely. “If there are any coins to be given out, I shall make sure that they come in your direction.”
He grinned. “It was my idea, but we did it, all of us. So, is it comfortable up there, my lady? The mattress is . . . smooth?”
“Of course,” Olivia said, rather less than truthfully. She hesitated and then asked, “Aren’t you rather young to be a soldier?”
“I’m almost sixteen,” he said stoutly. But then he added, with a little droop to his lips, “Nothing ever happens in this garrison, because Le Capitaine is interested only in brandy. My mother forced me to be here rather than join a proper regiment.” He looked disgusted.
Olivia smiled at him. “I think your mother is very wise.”
“Petit! Time for review!” The words echoed down the long stone corridor.
“What is needed is a distraction that might cause Madame to leave her kitchen,” he said, his brown eyes now sparkling. “Something that will disrupt the garrison before your duke hands Bessette those guineas he is demanding.” He grinned. “I shall think on it.”
He disappeared, slamming the door behind him. Olivia heard the lock slide into place.
A distraction? What good would that do, unless she could escape from this cell? She ran her hand over the uneven mattress, thinking about the light in Petit’s eyes. One could almost think that he had tried to drop a hint about her mattresses.
Carefully, she slid her legs over the side and stood on the stepladder. She slipped her hand between the first two mattresses, but she could still feel the lump beneath her fingers. She tried the next two, and the two before that . . .
It was a key.
A key tucked between the mattresses, a big iron key that looked exactly like the one the young soldier had used to enter her cell. A smile spread across her face. She would wait for Petit to create the distraction he had promised, and then walk straight out of the building and into Quin’s arms. And if Madame Fantomas tried to stop her on the way through the kitchen, she’d thump her on the head with a rolling pin.
A bellow sounded down the corridor. “Spy, what do you think of my bread?”
Olivia grinned. “I’ve had better,” she shouted back.
“Putain!”
Thirty-one
The Bark of Cerberus
Quin was murderous, exhausted, and on the verge of sheer panic by the time he reached the village of Wissant. Lucy was as tired as he was, so he was carrying her tucked inside his jacket, which wasn’t comfortable for either of them. And then it transpired that no one had heard anything of une anglaise, though they knew that some English soldiers, one of them gravely wounded, had been living in Père Blanchard’s hut.
“The soldiers were not hurting anyone,” the smith told Quin, arms folded over his formidable chest. “Yes, they were English.” He shrugged. “So are you. I would guess that Bessette scooped up your woman.”
Quin’s eyes narrowed. “Bessette?”
“A warthog of a schemer. He’ll have handed her over to Madame Fantomas, and he’ll want a reward.”
“Where