‘How did you come to have a cart?’

Jane flourished a bow. ‘I am Henri Villeneuve, the consumptive artist. The locals know me for my love of painting their fields en plein air. I had planned for us to—’

She stopped as Vincent held up his hand. ‘Jane, do you know that until this moment I had not noticed that you were in men’s clothing?’

Colouring, Jane ran her hands down the breeches which left her legs so indecorously exposed. She had quite forgotten her state of dress as well. ‘I hope you do not mind.’

‘Mind? Muse, you are a marvel to me.’ He sat down heavily in the rye. ‘Please. Go and fetch this famed dogcart phaeton.’

Jane hurried through the field as fast as she could. Though her heart rejoiced to have freed her husband, she would not rest easy until they were in Brussels. The sun, which had been so necessary to reach Vincent, had now become oppressive. Jane did not understand how men suffered through the summers wearing thick coats and buckskin breeches. Her shirt clung to her back.

In the distance, she heard dogs barking.

Likely a hunter, but if they had decided to use hounds to track Vincent . . . Jane quickened her pace to a run, pressing her hand to a stitch that formed in her side. The tableau she had created had been left quite undisturbed, and for that she thanked providence. She hid the manikin behind a small bush, tossed the easel and paints heedlessly into the back of the phaeton, and untethered the horse, which had cropped a wide circle in the grass.

Jane returned the champagne, now quite warm, to the basket. As she did, the ripe scent of the cheese which she had procured caught her nose, inducing a wave of revulsion. Barely backing away from the phaeton in time, Jane retched in the grass. Gasping, she wiped her mouth with her red-stained pocket handkerchief and dropped it, no longer needing that part of her costume.

The cramp in her side seemed only to have worsened with her upset stomach. Jane gritted her teeth against the pain, set herself in the seat, and directed the horse toward Vincent. She drove west a few minutes before she reached the crossing that led to Brussels.

A heavy tramping sound pulled her attention toward Binché. At the edge of her sight, row upon row of men in blue and white uniforms marched toward her under the tricolour flag of Napoleon’s France. Jane groaned and steered the phaeton toward Brussels.