The Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig

I fear.”
    “That won’t do.” Jane mimed youthful distress. She didn’t have to work very hard at the distress. Jack Reid slouched behind her in his role as her servant, and, even if he couldn’t currently say,
I told you so
, she knew he was thinking it. “I’m to join General Thomières at the fortress of Peniche. I’m his new aide-de-camp.”
    “Thomières?” Captain Moreau looked at her in confusion. “Isn’t he still in Lisbon? Thought I saw him at Madame Pinto’s card party last night.”
    “He’s had his orders,” Jane said glibly. And so he had, in the pouch she had lifted off Junot the day before, in Rossio Square. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Thomières had been ordered to Peniche. He just didn’t know it yet. “I’m to go ahead and secure comfortable lodgings for him—he’ll have my head if there’s not a feather bed waiting for him by the time he arrives.”
    Captain Moreau grimaced in sympathy. “There’s nothing for it, I’m afraid. Unless you want to wait a week.”
    “We’ll have to go by land then.” A rain had begun to fall, not the gentle misty rain of a Shropshire summer, but sharp and stinging. Jane turned up the neck of her cloak. “Thank you, Captain.”
    “Wait!” said Moreau, looking genuinely alarmed on her behalf. “You don’t want to travel alone. The roads are teeming with bandits. They aren’t terribly friendly.”
    “Bandits tend not to be,” agreed Jane gravely.
    “You wouldn’t be friendly either under the circumstances,” muttered Jack Reid behind her.
    “What was that?” inquired Moreau.
    “Nothing,” said Jane quickly. “Just my servant. He has a horror of highwaymen.”
    Captain Moreau glanced dubiously back at the milling men, who appeared to be attempting to move themselves into some sort of formation. Most were without full kit; several had mismatched boots or none at all. Jane had heard that the march into Portugal had wreaked havoc on Junot’s forces, but she had had no idea, until now, just how much. Captain Moreau was considerably short of a company. And also possibly a few beans short of a barrel. He reminded her a great deal of an acquaintance back in England who tended, generally affectionately, to be compared to a root vegetable.
    “You’re welcome to march with us,” Moreau offered. “Always room in the mess tent for one more.”
    In this case, because about half the company appeared to have been lost somewhere en route.
    Jane did a quick calculus. They would travel slowly with Moreau. But she couldn’t travel as a French officer alone with a servant. Moreau was right; the French had done little to endear themselves on their march from Spain. They would be dead within days. But to adopt any other disguise would be to place herself entirely within Jack Reid’s hands.
    Reid knew the back roads; he knew the language. Once they veered off the road, away from the familiar, Jane would be at his mercy.
    Contact or not, she didn’t trust him enough for that. This was, after all, the man who had betrayed his own people and then, having done so, betrayed the betrayers. He might be in Wickham’s pay at the moment, but who knew what he would do should someone on the other side offer more?
    “If you’re quite certain . . .” Jane shifted aside as Jack made an attempt to kick her in the ankle. Fortunately she had been trained by Miss Gwendolyn Meadows, whose parasol was the opposite of the windmills of the gods. It moved exceedingly swiftly, and Jane had long since learned to get out of the way of it.
    There was a muffled yelp as Reid’s foot connected with the mule instead.
    Jane smiled brilliantly at Moreau. “I would be delighted to accept your kind offer. My servant has my baggage on the mule.”
    Moreau looked doubtfully at Reid, who was garbed in a rough brown jacket, yet another dilapidated hat pulled low over his head. Reid had abandoned the horsehair, though. His hair was his own, clubbed back in an old-fashioned queue.