Thomson, dark with sarcasm, had said, “Another day of this, and I may turn myself in. Would they render me the thousand pounds, do you think, if I so surrendered?”
It had been a foolish question asked in jest and not requiring an answer, and so none of them had offered one. He’d peered out at the dismal rain still beating down in torrents, and remarked, “I feel a new appreciation, Mistress Dundas, for your friend the chevalier. This must be how it felt for him the time he had to shelter in that cave, when he went hunting and was caught out in that tempest. You’ll not have heard that tale,” he’d told MacPherson, as the Scotsman’s head had turned, “for she did tell us it in French aboard the diligence d’eau, but it is really most remarkable.”
He’d urged Mary to tell it again, but she’d shaken her head and declined, not because she was tired—though she was—but because she knew Mr. MacPherson, having read Madame d’Aulnoy’s book of Hypolitus in Lyon, might remember the fairy tale in which the Russian prince had met the West Wind with all of his brothers, and realize it had been her inspiration.
But Thomson, not put off by her reluctance, had retold the tale himself, lending his own flamboyant style to his description of the Chevalier de Vilbray’s encounter with an aged woman and her sons, one of whom had led him on a great adventure overland.
MacPherson, to Mary’s relief, had appeared to be only half listening. And when Thomson had ended his story by praising the chevalier’s brave resourcefulness, the Scotsman had but shrugged and said, “He sounds a fool, to me.”
Mary had stirred to defend her creation. “And why is that?”
“None but a fool,” he’d replied, “trusts a stranger he meets in a cave.”
She’d have argued the point with him, but she’d been simply too tired from the day’s walk—indeed from the nearly a week’s worth of walking that had come before it—and so she had leaned her head back on the cold stone and let her eyes close. When she’d opened them, he had been watching her.
She’d felt him watching her a few times after that, when they had ventured out again into the rain, but she had kept her head down and her own gaze on the ground, to keep from stumbling. It had not been till that ground had changed from rough stones into squared ones that she’d noticed they were climbing a steep winding street into a town.
And when MacPherson had conducted them into a proper guesthouse where they’d found themselves with rooms and fires and beds with pillows, Mary had been too amazed to speak at all, much less to thank him.
Madame Roy had set out Mary’s gown to dry before the fire, and had a copper tub filled with hot water for a bath. “You’ve been a fine, strong lass so far, but walking in the wet can raise a fever in those not accustomed to it.”
Mary had obediently bathed without a protest, feeling all the aches and soreness of her body swirl away within that blissful, steaming water. She had even let Madame Roy wash her hair—a rare indulgence that stirred memories of her childhood and made Mary close her eyes. It was the second time Madame Roy had done something Mary’s mother used to do. The evocation of those memories had grown even stronger when Madame Roy, having combed out Mary’s hair before the fire, had tucked her warm and snug beneath the sheets and blankets of her bed, with Frisque a softly breathing weight beside her feet.
And Mary’s thoughts had drifted sleepily to Saint-Germain-en-Laye—to happy days and happy evenings, and the voices that surrounded her: the lilting Scottish voices that were strange and yet familiar. Madame Roy’s voice, then, had seemed to fit so well with them that Mary of a sudden had decided that a French name did not suit the older woman near as well as that by which their hostess in Lyon had called her. And so, drowsily, her face half buried in the softness of her pillow, she’d asked, “May I call you Effie?”
For a moment there’d been silence, then the other woman’s hand had gently stroked the hair from Mary’s face. The Scottish woman had said, just as gently, “Aye.”
And Effie she had been, to Mary, from that moment on.
They had set out this morning, Monday morning, fresher in their minds and in their steps, though Thomson soon fell back to grumbling.
“You do know,” he said to Mary, with a nod ahead to where MacPherson walked now with his long gun in his hand, “why he’s been carrying that gun today? This region, so they told me in the town, is rife with bands of thieves and brigands, who will boldly strike by day to rob and plunder the unwary.”
“Then it’s a good thing,” she told him, “that Mr. MacPherson is never unwary.”
It was, she thought, perfectly true. Though his attitude seemed to imply he was merely ignoring them, Mary felt certain he heard and marked well every word that was said, and with her spirits rising today she had found it diverting to try to provoke him to break his unwavering silence. She hadn’t succeeded, though it had been just as diverting to watch that same silence push Thomson to greater impatience.
When they came to a place where MacPherson desired them to keep to the right, he merely gestured with his hand that gripped the long gun to an outcropping of rock in that direction, causing Thomson—who’d been asking why they hadn’t thought to hire a mule this morning—to stop long enough to ask, “And what is that supposed to mean?”
Mary quipped it was obvious. “He’s saying we might as well speak to that stone as to him, for in truth it would give us as lively an answer.”