This diligence upon the river was, to Mary’s mind, more pleasant than the one that went by road. In form it was a long and shallow barge, towed from the riverbank by horses with a driver, while on board another bargeman did the steering with a pole. The covered cabin, pleasantly appointed with long benches for the seating, had glass windows all around that gave a view of the scenery slipping away to each side, which in a better season might have been quite beautiful but now was half-obscured by a thick dewy mist that hung above the riverbank and fields.
The merchant’s servant was at least allowed to sit withindoors for this section of the voyage and was huddled now at his end of the bench across from Madame Roy. He looked a mirror image of her misery, his cough grown deep enough to rattle in his chest alarmingly and make the mother of the daughters look at him with disapproval.
Turning that same disapproving look upon the Scotsman now, the mother said, “It is a most disgraceful vice, to drink for sport. I’m glad I was not there to see it. And I do hope you,” she said to Mary, “did not have to see it either.”
Mary reassured her she’d seen little of the drinking contest beyond its beginning. “I went early to my bed. I had a headache.”
She had claimed that headache first because it had been prearranged within their plan that she should do so, once the contest had begun, to give a proper cause for Thomson to remove himself until the threat from Stevens had been dealt with. And once Thomson had escorted her upstairs and gone along to his own room and she’d been left with Madame Roy, the still-pretended headache had become a way for Mary to avoid the need to enter into conversation.
Mary had not wished to talk to Madame Roy, nor to the others. She had played the part they’d asked of her and wanted to do no more after that but get to Lyon, where she hoped their journey would be at an end and she would be released and then…
And then what? Mary did not know. She had no money and no friends here, and her brother and Sir Redmond having happily abandoned her to such an expedition could now hardly be relied upon to offer her a rescue.
In all the years she’d yearned for an adventure, she had not dreamed that when one finally did arrive, she’d find herself so ill equipped to meet it. In the darkness of her room last night, curled lonely in her bed with Frisque a sleeping weight upon her feet, she’d closed her eyes and felt the slow, despairing tears come anyway.
She’d felt the mattress dip as Madame Roy had sat beside her, and a cool and soothing hand had stroked the hair back from her forehead, lending sympathy. “The best thing for a headache is to sleep,” the older woman had advised, and Mary, mastering her tears, had kept her eyes tight shut and nodded.
Madame Roy, she knew, was one of those involved in keeping secrets from her, and so not deserving of her trust, but while she did not want to like the older woman there was something in that touch upon her forehead that brought comfort.
Mary’s voice had sounded very small when she had said to Madame Roy, “My mother used to do that.”
And the older woman, giving no reply, had gone on stroking Mary’s hair back from her forehead, very gently, till the blissful dark forgetfulness of sleep had finally claimed her.
She had woken to discover that, perhaps in retribution, her pretended headache had become a very real one. It had worsened as the morning had progressed and felt like steady pounding hammers at her temples now.
The Scotsman likely had a headache also, Mary judged from how he kept so still and silent, but she could not muster any thoughts of pity for him. Nor had her own feelings of self-pity long survived the break of day, when they had yielded to a quiet growing anger deep inside her that seemed driven by the cheerful conversation Mr. Thomson had been having with the merchant just as much as by the dull and throbbing pain within her head.
He had no right to be cheerful, Mary thought, no more than any of them had a right to use her thus—not Nicolas, nor yet Sir Redmond, nor the three who traveled with her now. She had no reason to feel sorrowful; no reason to despair or weep. They were the ones who had transgressed, and if she was yet bound to keep their company, she was not bound to pay them any more than common courtesy—to speak when she was spoken to, and play the role assigned to her until they came to Lyon, when she’d find some means to part with them.
She felt a rising confidence in that resolve. She was no child, to be required to always follow orders. She was nearly twenty-two years old, a woman. Mistress Jamieson could not have been her senior by more than a few years, after all, and she had found resourcefulness enough to cross the Channel on her own and in disguise, upon an errand that was certainly as daring as the one that Mary faced, and full as dangerous.
Frisque stirred upon her lap and turned a circle and lay down again, himself a little out of sorts. He wanted room to run, she knew. She patted him and rumpled his soft ears and said, “Be patient.”
At her side the younger of the daughters said, “He’s very well behaved, your dog. I long have wanted one myself, only Maman will not allow it. See, Maman, how sweet he is?”
Her mother said, “Yes, very sweet. But dogs may not be put into a cupboard when you tire of them, with all your other playthings.”
“That is most unfair,” the younger daughter countered. “I am nearly seventeen, and not a child.”
“When you are married and it is your husband’s problem, you may have a dog,” her mother promised.
“I should prefer a dog,” the younger daughter told her, “to a husband.”