The Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig Page A

“He looks a surly fellow.”
    Jane leaned over confidentially. “I had to hire someone local. My old batman fell ill just north of Lisbon.”
    Moreau nodded as though that were a story he had heard before. “Just watch that he doesn’t cut your throat in your sleep. Some of these local men . . .”
    “He came well recommended,” said Jane quickly. “And he speaks some French. Rodrigo!” she called imperiously. “We travel with Captain Moreau and his dragoons. Fetch my trunks.”
    Reid feigned a look of incomprehension.
“O qué?”
    “Pardon me,” said Jane. “I must see to my arrangements.”
    “Certainly, Lieutenant de Balcourt.” Moreau gave a short bow, one officer to another. “I look forward to the opportunity to improve our acquaintance.”
    “‘The opportunity to improve our acquaintance’?” Reid mimicked, as they moved behind a convenient pile of baggage. “What are you doing? We travel faster alone.”
    “Yes, but we wouldn’t have the same opportunity to gather intelligence along the way,” said Jane coolly. “We can kill two birds with one stone.”
    “This lot,” said Jack Reid, speaking low and quickly, “is a waste of a good stone. That Moreau is about as much use as an arthritic carrier pigeon. If he knows anything the least bit useful, I’ll eat my hat.”
    “One can never tell what might be useful,” said Jane priggishly. “They might have information they don’t know they possess.”
    Reid gave her a look from under the brim of his hat. “Or is it just that you’re not accustomed to sleeping rough?”
    The bolt struck a little too close to home. Her missions, dangerous though they might have been, had all been conducted against the backdrop of drawing rooms and salons.
    But she was country-bred, wasn’t she? She had spent her formative years in Shropshire, surrounded by more sheep than people.
    Jane drew herself up, feeling the seams of her green jacket scratching her sides. “I’m not afraid of hardship.”
    Jack Reid regarded her skeptically. “If you say so—Lieutenant de Balcourt.” He dwelt mockingly on that aristocratic
de
. “You do realize that this means weeks in their company? It’s not a two-day jaunt down the river. What happens if you swill too much port in mess one night and . . . ?”
    He made an eloquent gesture that needed no translation.
    Jane kept a tight rein on her temper. “I do not, as you so eloquently put it, swill. I assure you I can maintain the deception.” Jane didn’t let her voice slide back into its normal alto, but kept it a light tenor.
    Jack Reid watched her, an ironic smile tightening the corners of his lips. “Have you ever marched with an army before?”
    She knew remarkably little of armies on the march. Armies in mess, yes. Officers home in Paris, boasting of their escapades, yes. But she had never had any call before to join an army on the march. “I’ve remained in the field for months at a time.”
    “As a man? Among the French?”
    Jane looked quellingly at him. “It’s always safest to hide in plain sight.” She should know. She had spent years in Paris, right underneath Bonaparte’s nose, dancing at his balls, dining with his stepdaughter, flirting with his marshals. “We can break off at Santarém.”
    Jack Reid wasn’t willing to let it go just yet. He turned back, his brows drawing together. “What happens when they decide to demand your bona fides?”
    “I shall provide them, of course.” Her papers were tucked away in a pocket of her cloak: Jean de Balcourt, scion of an old but now impoverished family, seeking to regain favor under the new regime. Lieutenant de Balcourt had made the odd appearance before, although never at such length as this. “Did you think I would be so unprepared?”
    Jack Reid fixed her with a long, inscrutable look. “You don’t want me to think. You want me to follow.”
    A dozen retorts rose and died on Jane’s lips. That was what he wanted: to draw her into