“I will take it,” André said at once.
“Reflect, my friend,” she answered. “If that despatch is found on your person, or stolen, it reveals an intrigue with the Jacobites in defiance of the King’s public promise and the policy of his ministers, and you will go to the Bastille as a traitor. It is in my handwriting, sealed with my seal, and the King will disavow us both; therefore, I shall follow you to prison and death. This is a more dangerous errand than my commission at Fontenoy. You can risk it and will, but is it fair?”
“Madame, if you were not involved, I should welcome the Bastille and the scaffold,” he replied.
She flashed a swift look, piercing to the marrow, and she read how the iron of some unknown fate had entered into his soul; but with marvellous self-restraint she suppressed her curiosity.
“I thank you,” she said; “no, I cannot thank you, but some day I will.”
It is not given to many men to see in such a woman’s eyes what André saw then. He wrenched himself into asking an obvious question.
“The agent of the Jacobites will be at midnight at ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold,’” she answered. “Do not be surprised; it is not I who have chosen that place; it is the King, and we must obey. Paris is too far off; the road and the city are as we know only too full of dangers. Remember that before you deliver the despatch the agent will give you the password, ‘Discret et fidèle,’ and show you a seal like this. Yes, keep it.” She handed him an impression of the private royal seal. “And now I will sew the paper into your inside pocket; it is the safest way I can think of.”
For a couple of minutes she stitched in the most businesslike way, but neither he nor she could make the operation other than it was.
What a beautiful woman! André was only human, indeed more susceptible than most to physical charm. The flutter of her eyelids, the lights that unconsciously came and went in her eyes, the dimple in the cheek, the rounded curve of neck, shoulder, and arm—veritably a morceau de roi.
“They say,” she whispered, with a roguish laugh, “that poor fool of a messenger was cajoled off his errand by a petticoat. Women, you know, are often surprised at the extraordinary weakness of even strong men. I wonder if any woman could make you, Vicomte, betray yourself. Perhaps?”