With a heavy sigh, Sir Percy turned his glass of champagne round in his hand, then swallowed some. “I’m afraid she passed away a month ago. I couldn’t leave her, of course, so I wrote to the War Office, asking about the four of you, sure that you had arrived here not long after I did. But they told me their spies said you three had ended up in Bitche Prison. Bitche, for God’s sake! I’m glad I escaped that fate, at least.”
Heath ate a few walnut meats. “Howdidyou escape that fate, anyway? You said you were en route to Arras? After the gendarmes captured Jon, Scovell, Morris, and me and sent us to Bitche, we were chained like dogs day and night. They were not risking losingus, to be sure.”
Sir Percy shrugged. “Trust me, I was in irons, too. Still, it is far easier to manage an escape involving one man than four. And I wasalready friendly with one of the gendarmes. I suspect you know the fellow I’m talking about—Gaspard, whom we played cards with occasionally?”
“The scrawny fellow with the gold tooth,” Heath said. “I remember.”
“The man was already predisposed to go easy on me,” Sir Percy went on as she and Heath continued eating. “He and the other gendarme took an inn room for us along the route, taking turns guarding me. It helped that Gaspard agreed with me how ridiculous it was that I was sent off to Arras just for … well … you know.”
A smile cracked Heath’s serious expression. “Yes, I know. And so does Giselle.” With a flourish, he popped a shrimp into his mouth and chewed.
When Sir Percy lifted an eyebrow at her, Giselle blushed. “Heath told me.”
“Ah,” Sir Percy said ruefully. “I should have realized that the tale ofthatparticular exploit might have gone round the camp.”
“Along with a few other tales,” Heath said with a grin, and downed a whelk in one bite. “Including the possibility Courcelles shipped you off for cheating at cards.”
“The devil you say!” Sir Percy retorted, clearly insulted.
Heath drank some champagne. “We four knew better than to believe it. Especially me, since I saw your misbehavior firsthand in the theater.”
“Yet you didn’t stop me,” Sir Percy remarked. “Some friend you are.” Drawing off his gloves, he snatched one of Heath’s shrimps and ate it.
Giselle noticed he had a deep scar running from the tip of his thumb down the side of his hand to disappear beneath his shirt cuff.
She was about to ask about it when Heath said, “I generally find that if a chap is determined to show his arse, one should let him do so.”
“Heath!” Giselle chided him. “I may be French, but I know that word is not spoken in front of ladies.”
He grimaced. “You’re right, sweeting. Forgive me. Sometimes I still forget I’m a gentleman.”
“Sometimes?” She sniffed. “I fear your memory is much more unreliable than that.”
“Ah, a hit direct,” Sir Percy drawled. “Good show, mademoiselle.”
“I do try,” she said. “Even if my English is not always so perfect.”
“I hadn’t noticed any such thing,” Sir Percy said. “And what red-blooded chap would notice the occasional slip when it’s spoken in such a delightful accent?”
“In any case,” Heath said, sounding suddenly disgruntled for no reason she could see, “how did you manage to get out of the irons?”
“It wasn’t easy, I promise you. Fortunately, on our way, I saw Gaspard using laudanum, and that’s when I hatched my plan.” He frowned. “Earlier in our trip, I had reached for some meat, and Gaspard’s fellow gendarme had sliced my hand with a knife, saying I did not deserve meat.”
“Bastard,” Heath muttered.
“Is that where you got that scar?” Giselle asked, pointing to his hand.
He nodded, then self-consciously drew his gloves back on. It made her wonder if Heath had hidden scars. Jon certainly had some.
“Anyway,” Sir Percy went on, “I asked him for a swig to ease my pain from the wound. I may have … er … hinted that laudanum unfortunately made me a bad card player, so he agreed. I took a larger swig than I let on, held it in my mouth, and when his back was turned, spit it into an empty bottle I’d dug out of the garbage one night, hoping to get to use it for just such a purpose.”
Giselle put down the roll she was eating, sickened by the thought of him digging a dirty bottle out of the garbage and then spitting laudanum into it.
“That night when we were playing cards, I used my meager coin to buy two bottles of cheap wine from the innkeeper, plied the two gendarmes with drink, which I had laced with the laudanum, then waited until they were slumped over at the table. I then lifted the keys off one of them. All that remained was to make sure everyoneelse in the place had retired before I unlocked my irons and walked out the door.”
Heath gave a low whistle. “That was some feat. But your knowing one of the fellows was a stroke of luck.Andyou only had two guards. That wouldn’t have worked for us. We had an entire squad of gendarmerie accompanying us to Bitche, and we were housed in prisons in every town where we stayed overnight.”
“Speaking of that,” Sir Percy said, “I want to hear what happened with your own escape. I thought we had a solid plan. What went wrong?”