“We have come to ask you a question, Antoine,” he said.
“We?” echoed Antoine, with a sharp glance at Lucette.
“I said ‘we.’ Lucette has need of certain things from Malincourt and would fain go there in quest of them. I told her there would be no difficulty were you and I to escort her there and back.”
“It was very thoughtful of you—but she is my prisoner.”
“She will be nobody’s prisoner the moment the fugitives are brought in from Crevasse.”
“Then she will need no things from Malincourt,” returned Antoine sharply, with a knowing smile. But Lucette struck in at once briskly—
“Do you mean I cannot go? Say so openly, if you do, and I shall know what to think. It is when a poor girl is at such a pass as I am that she can judge her friends. Master Dauban, who knows more of these things in one tiny corner of his brain than you do in your whole body, said there would be no difficulty.”
“Dauban hasn’t been put in charge of you and isn’t responsible to the Governor. I am,” said Antoine sulkily.
“Master Dauban would take some risk to give a poor girl some pleasure, wouldn’t you, Jacques?” Antoine winced at the name thus glibly spoken.
“There is no risk; but if there were I’d run it, readily enough.”