“It wouldn’t take long,” Charlotte persisted as the man holding her muscled her over the threshold, out into the stinging night air. “And it would make us all far more comfortable.”

“An excellent attempt, Lady Charlotte. But I refuse to oblige you by loitering here until the cavalry arrives. There will be plenty of time to tend to the King once we are underway.”

“Carriage rides make Lady Henrietta sick,” Charlotte blurted out.

Henrietta, who had never been sick in a carriage in her life, promptly blew out her cheeks in an attempt to look bilious.

The Frenchman was not convinced.

“How very unfortunate for her,” said the Frenchman dryly. “Shall we?”

“Perhaps if you let her sit on the box?” Charlotte pleaded, submitting to being shuffled forward by her captor. “She is seldom as queasy in the open air.”

“And allow her to grapple with my coachman for the reins?” The Frenchman was bearing them inexorably away from church and mausoleum, away from the caves where their cavalry still hunted will o’ the wisps. At the end of the lane, Charlotte could see a carriage, a blur of unrelieved black. It was going to be a very tight fit with all of them in it, even assuming the Frenchman left his locally hired ruffians behind. “Ingenious, but no. I suspect Lady Henrietta suffers from carriage sickness as much as I do.”

“How dreadful for you,” said Charlotte sympathetically.

“No, Lady Charlotte,” said the Frenchman. Although he sounded more amused than otherwise, there was a steely quality behind it that signaled that further discussion on the topic would not be well received.

“I suppose offering you money wouldn’t work, either,” said Henrietta glumly.

“I am lamentably impervious to bribes.”

“And to odor, apparently,” retorted Henrietta.

“There are certain occupational hazards with which one must simply come to terms.”

“What is your occupation precisely?” demanded Henrietta.

“Right now? Seeing you into my carriage.”

Charlotte left them to their bickering. At least, Henrietta was bickering. The Frenchman was baiting. Whatever one chose to call it, it was keeping him nicely occupied. No one was paying the least bit of attention to her, including her own guard, who marched her along with the nonchalance of a groom with a particularly placid old mare. He was undoubtedly thinking about something else, like a warm fire or hot ale or whatever it was that ruffians thought about when they weren’t being ruffianly. His grip had gone decidedly slack.

Knowing she only had one chance, Charlotte stomped down hard on his foot and drove an elbow into his stomach.

His boots were considerably harder than her heel. Surprise more than pain was her ally. In a reflex reaction, he loosed his hold on her wrists. Pulling away, Charlotte flung herself to the ground, rolling beneath his grasping hands. Above her, she could hear shouting and feet slipping on the wet grasses.

Charlotte kept rolling, clawing inelegantly at her skirts as she went, fumbling for the pistol snagged in her garter. Already sagging, the garter snapped, sending her stocking sagging down and releasing the pistol into her grasp. Scooting back on her behind, one arm braced behind her, Charlotte hefted the gun, angling it at the men rushing towards her. They abruptly stopped rushing. Pointing the gun first at one, then another, Charlotte levered herself slowly to her feet, never allowing the point of the pistol to drop, even though the muscles in her forearm and shoulder burned at the strain. Her right stocking flopped around her ankle. It seemed like such a small annoyance under the circumstances, and such a very odd thing of which to be so aware.

There would be no pulling it up now, though. Charlotte picked her target, pointing her pistol in the direction of the man holding the King. “Give me the King,” she said.

The Frenchman regarded her with something very like fraternal annoyance. “Really, Lady Charlotte, must you? Put down the gun.”

“Put down the King,” Charlotte countered, keeping her gaze firmly on her target. “Then I’ll put down the gun.”

The man’s eyes flickered to his master in silent question. He looked as though he would have liked nothing better than to drop his sovereign and run.

That, thought Charlotte giddily, was what you got when you hired help on the cheap.

She gentled her voice, speaking directly to the man with the King, as she might have to an animal in the gardens of Girdings. “If you put down the King, you won’t get hurt.”

“He won’t get hurt, in any event.” The Frenchman’s voice was as urbane as ever, but there was a tinge of annoyance under it. “That gun isn’t loaded.”

Charlotte drew herself up proudly. “Would you be willing to wager a man’s life on that?”

The Frenchman looked her up and down. He smiled with disarming humor. “Frankly, yes.” He had a dimple in his left cheek. Who had ever heard of a spy with a dimple? Charlotte disapproved. “If it is loaded — which I very much doubt — you wouldn’t fire it. You would never risk hitting the King. Unless you are, much to my surprise, a crack shot, you run a very good chance of doing so.”

“I was raised in the country,” said Charlotte defiantly. He didn’t need to know that her version of country pursuits had been sitting in the garden with a book.

Or perhaps he did know. It might be the way the gun was making her hands tremble, or the fact that she was holding it a full foot away from her body.

The Frenchman sighed. “Put the gun down, Lady Charlotte, and come along like a good girl. Peter?”

That was the outer end of enough. Unfortunately, Charlotte didn’t quite know what to do with a gun. She knew that there was something called priming that had to be accomplished before the weapon could be fired, and she believed it involved powder, but whether that powder was already there or needed to be added remained a mystery to her. And there was no time to find out. Obedient to his master, Peter lunged for her arm. So Charlotte did the only thing she could do. She threw the gun at the Frenchman’s head.

Her throw went wild, of course.

So did Charlotte’s foot. The force of the motion sent her skidding on the wet grass, flinging her backwards into her would-be captor, who went sprawling backwards beneath her onto the ground, all tangled up with Charlotte’s skirts. He broke the fall rather nicely.

Over the steady cursing of her unwilling human mattress, Charlotte could hear Robert’s voice, shouting, “There! That way! Follow the noise!”

Charlotte scrambled off her assailant, kicking him as he grabbed at her. In the confusion, Henrietta had also broken free of her captor. She dealt him a blow to his nose with the flat of her hand that sent him reeling backwards into the trunk of a tree.

Even in the dark, the Frenchman’s distorted face was a glorious thing to behold. Ha! He had never expected that, had he? To be fair, neither had she. She had been aiming at the Frenchman’s head. Instead, the gun had landed on his foot. Apparently, a falling gun could hurt rather a lot. Hopping on one foot, he was cursing far more inventively than the other men, in a selection of modern and classical languages.

Into the midst of it all charged Robert, Miles, and Lieutenant Fluellen. Nothing had ever sounded more welcome to Charlotte’s ears than the thunder of feet as the cavalry charged down the hill, hooting and yelling and not really saying anything in particular but making a great deal of very martial-sounding noise. They were literally steaming in the cold night air, like a whole troupe of fire-breathing dragons, steam rising off their skin and their breath showing in ragged puffs. Two of the Frenchman’s band broke and fled at the sight. At least, they tried to flee. Like a terrier on the scent, Miles set out in hot pursuit. Tommy dispatched Henrietta’s staggering assailant with a swift punch that sent him reeling into a tree.

Robert charged towards Charlotte, breathing fire at the man who was trying, rather halfheartedly, to grab her arms. Charlotte suspected the Frenchman hadn’t paid him terribly well. At the sight of Robert, he gave up altogether, breaking and running in the direction of the woods.

“The King!” Charlotte shouted, jumping and pointing. “Robert, the King!”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Neither did the man holding the King. Making a quick assessment of his options, he shoved the King at Robert. Robert’s arms closed around the bundle in a reflex reaction.

“Take him! He’s yours!” the man gabbled, and scrabbled off into the woods, following his fleeing colleagues.

“What in the — ?” began Robert.

“Hired help,” explained Charlotte breathlessly. “The real culprit is — oh, drat.”

While they were otherwise occupied, the Frenchman had made his own somewhat lopsided run for it, hitching and hopping his way towards his carriage at a surprisingly impressive speed for a man who appeared to have the use of only one foot. Charlotte wondered if she had broken his toe. With an arrogant wave, the Frenchman swung himself through the open door, snapping his fingers at his coachman. The coachman cracked the reins even before the door was fully closed. Charlotte could see the Frenchman’s disembodied arm sticking out of the compartment, yanking the swaying door closed as the carriage lurched into movement.

Robert took two long strides forward, remembered he was holding the King, and skittered to a halt, looking miffed. Miles dropped the man he was punching and gave chase, but it was too late; the horses were picking up speed.

As the carriage drew away, the Frenchman leaned head and shoulders through the window. In the light of the carriage lamps, Charlotte could see the white of his teeth as he grinned at them, a rogue’s grin, unrepentant and entirely infectious. Despite herself, Charlotte could feel herself grinning back. And why not? Even if he had escaped, they had won. They had the King.