Chapter Three
Shayborne needed medicine and he needed water. The darkness would allow her some protection as she moved through the emptying streets of a city settling in for the night.
He was married.
The lump in her throat was thick and real, yet she knew any hope for what she had once thought between them was long, long gone. Better to accept it and move on. Better to have never asked him in the first place, too.
Madame Caroline Debussy appeared to be home as Celeste crept through the dark gardens in the opulent area of Petit Champs for the lights were on in the drawing room. This was an address she had come to for refuge across the years and, opening a large door, she let herself in to find the older woman sitting by an unlit fire.
‘I have been expecting you, my dear, for there are rumours...’
‘Which are all true.’ Celeste had not the time to skirt around the issues and with Madame Debussy she hadn’t the inclination to either.
‘Guy Bernard is dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I am glad for it. He was a bully and a cheat and one day he would have killed you. It is said that Benet is furious and names you as a traitor.’
‘Which on all accounts I am. But it is not for England I did this. It is more personal.’
‘The man you helped escape, the injured English spy?’
‘I knew him once...before...’
‘Merde. Everyone is looking for him. He is an important trophy.’
‘Has Benet been here to see you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then I hope for your sake that he will not. But for my father’s soul, Caroline, I would ask for two things. I need you to take this money and see that the remaining Dubois children and their mother are spirited safely away from here.’ She handed over a heavy silken purse and watched as the woman pocketed it. ‘I also need medical supplies.’
Caroline Debussy did not miss a step. ‘I will have the family moved south and then on to Italy for we have some contacts there. They will like the warmth and beauty of Rome.’ Celeste was glad she asked no more questions. ‘The medical supplies are easy.’ Bending to ring a bell, she waited until her maid came, instructing the girl to find all the bandages and salves that were in the house and bring them back in a bag.
When the servant left and the door had shut she spoke again. ‘If this English major is too ill, you might consider leaving him to fend for himself, for to be hunted hard in the company of such a man in Paris is suicide.’
‘I know.’
‘There is a cordon around the city and men out looking for you, and when they do not find you they will begin a closer search, door to door. Their orders are to kill you on sight, my dear, without even a word.’
‘And Shayborne?’
‘He is to be taken alive for more interrogation. If you can get your Englishman to me here unseen, there is a priest hole and perhaps...’
‘No. It is too perilous.’
Dark eyes flashed as Caroline pushed herself up. Her lack of height was always surprising. ‘I have twists of powders here, Celeste, to be placed upon an open wound.’ She unlocked a drawer and carefully selected a few. ‘Each one is useful. Start with the darkest and proceed to the lightest.’ Her face was lined in worry. ‘Your father told me once that you were careless, but I think you are not that at all. I think you have always known exactly what you are doing and if your morals have been compromised in order to survive, then so be it, for mine have, too.’
Celeste looked down on the diminutive woman. Madame Debussy had never been one to coat the truth with something to make it more palatable. ‘I shall send you word...’
‘Don’t, even when you are safely away. If you are caught, I will know of it. Go to England, to your grandmother.’
Celeste took a deep breath and held it in.
Susan Joyce Faulkner, the matriarch of her mother’s family. Stern, strong and opinionated. Disappointed, too, for how often had she seen that curl of anger in her deep blue eyes directed at her, the hapless and fickle granddaughter who was never quite good enough.
When did it stop, Celeste thought, this disappointment in others? Her father had brought her into the chaos of France with barely a backward glance. Perhaps Caroline Debussy did truly wish her well, but even now Celeste looked around and listened, expecting betrayal, understanding that in every word that was said there lay other meanings. Payment. Remittance. Settlement. She could feel the heavy gold coins of it lining her boots and she remembered her father’s blood running along the floorboards as he had breathed his last before her eyes.
‘If you wait, I will find you the things you have a need of and some food to sustain you on a journey. My brother will be home in half an hour...’ Her glance went to the clock.
‘By which time I shall be gone.’
Caroline nodded. ‘I think it is for the best.’
‘Why didn’t you marry him, Caroline? My father, I mean.’
‘Because he never asked me, my dear, and because he loved your mother before—’ She stopped.
‘Before she went mad?’
‘By then I think she understood the journey your father was taking her on was for ever. She knew that he would never settle in England and after the death of your sister...’
‘She gave up?’
‘She tried to kill you and your father both. Twice. I think your grandmother knew of it.’
The shock of the words had Celeste’s heart speeding up. She could feel the heavy beat of it in her throat and a memory of being pushed and falling.
‘People are all different, my dear. What might break one into pieces may only strengthen another, but August set out his pathway and he followed it.’
‘And my grandmother? Did she give him her blessing?’
‘No, she did not. She cursed him to hell and back for taking you.’
The lump in her throat thickened at the knowledge of her father’s choices. Not so easy, after all.
‘After the soldiers came I wrote to your grandmother, anonymously, and told her you were both dead.’
‘In a way we are, Caroline.’
Celeste was surprised at Caroline’s tears. She had never seen Madame Debussy cry, not through all the times they had struggled side by side, not even when her father lay dying at her feet in this very room.
‘It was my fault, all of it. Those who hated your father came here because of me. I was a part of it, don’t you see. They had been watching me. They knew what August wanted. They knew one day he would cross a line and that they would have their revenge.’
‘A line? What line?’
‘Your father assaulted the son of the head of their small faction in a drunken rage because he thought it was the only way to make them stop. By then he was crazy with his hopes for France under Napoleon’s stewardship and would allow nothing to get in his way.’
‘And I was the person in the middle. The daughter? They could not chance what I might say.’
‘You never had a hope, Celeste, not from the moment August set foot in France with his hatred and his zealousness. Mary Elizabeth had wounded his soul somehow and even with my best attempts at loving him I could not bring him back to be the man I’d known as a young girl.’
The penny dropped then. Caroline had watched as they had killed her father here in her house. ‘In the end, you did not try to save him.’
She shook her head. ‘There is as much danger in caring too much as there is in caring too little. August was a lost cause, but I failed you and that is my greatest regret.’
The moment came rushing back to Celeste, the moment the men had taken her, their arms wound around her own, her dress ripped in anger, the blood of her father on her hands where she had tried to stop the bleeding. Slippery with the redness.
She needed to get away and back to Shayborne. This place was like a spider’s web with a hundred sticky threads of deceit mixed strangely with honour—the cutting edge of a politics that demanded the blood of its martyrs. Again and again. Until there was nothing left. Not even grief.
Bundling up the medical supplies the maid had brought, Celeste turned, ignoring Caroline Debussy’s quiet plea for forgiveness.
Outside, she brushed away the tears that fell down her cheeks, angry at her emotions as well as at the reminder of the loss she had suffered. She should be used to it, this treachery, but Caroline Debussy was the last link she’d held to her father and now that was gone, too.
When the light of a streetlamp fell full across her she was brought back abruptly to the danger of exposure and stepped into the shadow, her palms splayed against thick and reassuring stone.
She was like a drop of water in a river that rushed to an endless ocean. She was a leaf on a tree in the deepest of forests in some far-off land not yet discovered.
She was alone and she was lonely, the jeopardy of Paris all around her reaching out and searching. Well, they would never find her. Not alive, at least, she promised herself that.
* * *
Shayborne was barely conscious when she returned, his skin burning with heat, the wine in a glass beside him untouched.
In the bag, she found the water Caroline had insisted on giving her and was infinitely grateful for it. Soaking one of the new bandages, she brought the fabric to his mouth, glad when he began to suck.
‘I thought...you had...gone,’ he said finally, his strength returned enough to be able to hold the water bottle himself.
‘If I leave, you will die.’
He had the grace to smile and the gesture pulled at her heartstrings. Uncomplicated. Sweet and sad. After the evening with Caroline Debussy, such honesty was a relief.
* * *
He saw the flicker of something in her eyes, the choice she had made, he supposed, or the lack of it.
The wound in his thigh throbbed badly and he felt shaky and sick. Once in Spain he’d had the same sort of malady and it had taken him weeks to recover. Here he had a matter of hours before they must move.
Celeste had brought a bag from wherever it was she had ventured and he saw her pull a number of medical items from the canvas. Perhaps it would be enough...?
He winced as she removed the muslin from the wound she’d fastened earlier and winced again as the wine he had not drunk was used to sluice out the open injury. He could smell his sweat and his fear in the small space and knew she would be able to as well. But it could not be helped.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No.’
‘I like you better when you are honest, Major, and if this does not pain you, you must already be dead. This needs to soak for at least ten minutes.’
‘Thank you.’ He tried to keep the shaking from his voice. And the pleading. It would not do for her to feel she could not go at all. He needed to leave the choice of it in her hands.
‘Once upon a time we were friends. It should mean something?’ Her voice held question.
Once upon a time we were lovers, too.
He turned away so she would not see that thought in his eyes.
‘Tell me about your wife.’
He had forgotten how direct she could be, how unguarded.
‘She was beautiful and kind and sweet. We were married for three years before she took a fever and died within hours.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Anna.’
He swallowed as he said it because the pain of loss was still raw.
‘And you loved her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I am sorry for your bereavement. Do you hold strong religious beliefs?’
‘No.’
She brought forth her rosary. ‘Would you mind if I recited a prayer for her.’
‘A Catholic prayer?’
‘’Tis the same God. I think our Lord will not mind the difference.’
‘Your father was Catholic?’
‘In England he had no faith in anything. It was only after coming back to France he decided we needed some extra assistance.’
‘Because his political opinions were...extreme, to say the least, as well as foolhardy?’
‘There are those here who would tar your actions in Spain with the same brush, Major. A spy is hardly easy company, I should imagine, especially one with the reputation you have garnered.’
At that he laughed, surprising himself with the sound. ‘It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose. The French may hate me, but the Spanish do not.’
‘But you think Wellesley will win against Soult in Spain?’
‘I am sure of it. Already he is on the march towards Santander.’
‘And you imagine he might come into France itself?’
‘I do.’
‘So it will have been for nothing in the end. All these lives lost?’
‘I think your father might have said his death was a means to an end. After every tragedy there is reflection and learning. And growth if you know where to look for it.’
‘You went to Spain after your wife died?’
‘I did.’
‘And you thought it did not matter if you were killed because your heart was lost?’
He countered with his own query. ‘Is that how you felt after your father died?’
‘Papa knew the risks.’ Her tone was harsh, the truth leaking out beneath the falsities. ‘My father made his bed and everyone he cared for had to lie in it with him.’
‘It was uncomfortable?’
‘As uncomfortable as anyone else’s barbs of conviction can be. He wanted the greater good and forgot about the smaller one. If he’d been satisfied with less...’ She did not finish, but grabbed a new bottle of wine, uncorked it and took a generous swig. Then she brought a polished jet rosary from her pocket, her fingers sliding across the beads with both familiarity and grace.
* * *
She made the sign of the cross and started on the Apostle’s Creed. ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty...’ The complexity of religion had helped her recover. A salve. A balm. A way of handing her problems over to a deity who could help shoulder the burden.
Shayborne lay quietly as she recited the Our Father and the Hail Marys, the Glory Be and the First Mystery and when, finally, she had finished, she lay the rosary down beside his leg and found salve and sprigs of garlic in the bag Caroline had given her. There was oregano there, too, and the other more potent powders in twists of paper. She began by using the darkest shade, sprinkling it into the red swollen flesh with care. Celeste knew Madame Debussy well enough to know that she swore by these remedies and that they were highly effective. She said her own private prayer of the Guardian Angel under her breath as she rebandaged the wound and tied the ends of soft linen.
‘We will leave tomorrow night. I do not think we can wait longer.’
He nodded, but she could tell all this ministering had cost him much and that he needed to rest.
‘If I die—’
She did not let him finish.
‘You won’t.’
The corners of his mouth came up and then he was asleep, his hands beneath his face as a pillow as he turned on his side.
She would have liked to have lain down beside him and felt his solid bulk against her own increasingly waiflike state, but instead she crossed the room and found a space at the window seat. The night was neither cold nor warm and she was glad for Shayborne’s company here in the silence.
Her papa felt closer than he had for a long time. Once, her mother and father had meant everything to her, until she had seen the truth of them both in the worst of circumstance.
Shayborne had had his share of tragedy, too. Anna. Beautiful. Kind. Sweet. Her last thoughts before slumber were of herself dancing in a London ballroom in the arms of the English Major and laughing as though she really meant it.
* * *
The morning brought heavy rain. She could hear it against the glass at the window and feel it in the air.
Shayborne was awake. He was sitting up against the wall, smoking.
She didn’t know how long he’d been there—her own slumber had been deep and uninterrupted after the drama of the last few days. She hoped he hadn’t been watching her.
‘You are feeling better?’
‘Much,’ he returned, the flash of his teeth white against the gloom of the early dawn. ‘This rain will help us, for what man wants to brave such weather, even for the sake of his country. It was the same in Spain; armies hunker down when it pours.’
‘Perhaps you give yourself too little credit, Major. It would be considered a triumph for any of the intelligence factions in Paris to bring you in and bad weather won’t stop that. The woman I got the medical supplies from yesterday said that if you were caught, their orders were to make certain you were left well enough to be interrogated. Again.’
‘And you?’
She shrugged and looked away, feeling as though a ghost had run across her skin, dancing slowly. ‘I am as replaceable as the next agent. They will kill me on sight, though I don’t plan to make it easy.’
‘Then we will have to make certain that they don’t recognise us at all.’
‘If I come with you.’
‘You will.’
She liked his certainty and smiled. To place, even for a small while, the responsibility of her safety into someone else’s hands was a liberating—and terrifying—thing.
‘Did you tell the person you met last night where you were staying?’
‘No.’
‘Good. When everyone is scrambling to guard their back it always pays to keep your counsel. Even with friends.’
‘You’ve done that?’
‘For years,’ he returned. ‘The quality of good intelligence is too important to squander on some personal vanity.’
When his eyes met her own, Celeste felt something shift inside her, some primal lurch of desire. Today his irises were a dark amber, soaked in pain, but beneath that lay other emotions, deep and quiet but ready to strike.
He had been hurt like her, she could see that, a hidden sadness that spawned from inside and set the edges of his eyes burning into her own.
He was a different man now from the one she had known.
The innocence they’d both lost made her turn away. It was said that he had that particular ability to read people’s faces like books and she did not want him to know anything more of her story.
If she had any sense, she would get up and leave him now. He was stronger than he had been and the fever had waned. Perhaps the inflammation had subsided, too. She did not offer to look at his leg again, because tending to the wounds of a former lover brought up thoughts she had no right to be thinking.
And therein lay all the trouble, a familiarity that was both welcome and dangerous.
It was dangerous to cross a line again that she had still barely recovered from the last time. Through all the years of not seeing him, she had nevertheless kept a firm grip on his movements and successes. He had been so very heroic, his bravery spoken of from one edge of Europe to the other.
Wellesley’s magical master of intelligence who could escape from any trap set for him, the wily cleverness and the ability to camouflage himself leading even the most jaded of partisans to offer him help as he passed between armies and through towns and cities ransacked by his enemies.
An unrivalled chameleon. It would be wise to tread carefully around a man who was this sort of legend.
Leaning forward, she dragged out a small pistol from her bag. She had two of them and knew that whatever weapons he must have carried before meeting Guy Bernard would be long disposed of.
‘This is for you. It’s loaded and there are more bullets and dry powder in the double-leather pouch.’
He looked at what she was offering him, but did not reach out. ‘I seldom carry a weapon. But thank you, anyway.’
The shocking truth of what he had just admitted sunk in. He would use his wits instead of a bullet.
‘Another difference between us, then, Major?’
He frowned.
‘A stranger’s blood on one’s hands has a stench to it. It is a dividing line. Even the most slow-witted might know it as such.’
He took her fingers into his own at the words, uncurling the anger and tracing the marks on her palm. Such a touch kept her silent, the heat of him burning into desire.
‘Then write a kinder story across what has been, Celeste,’ he said finally.
‘Fairy tales have that certain ring of untruth to them. A sleeping beauty. A poisoned apple. An unstable mama who loved one daughter a lot more than she did the other.’
The words came from the pit of her stomach, unexpected, furious, desolate. She’d never disclosed such a grief to anyone before.
‘Then that was Mary Elizabeth’s problem and not yours. Taken to its full conclusion, your philosophy would expound that I should be held responsible for the death of my own mother. She caught the same sickness I had just recovered from and it killed her.’
She had forgotten the sorrowful story of the Shaybornes. Two young children left motherless after the Viscountess had been taken by fever.
For a moment, reason usurped guilt and the anger in her heart lightened. He had been good at words, even back then. It was what had drawn her to him in the first place, this wisdom, for in the Fournier family there had been a decided dearth of it.
She stiffened at the thought here in the dawn light, only one step ahead of the clutches of peril. The sun had not even risen fully yet, but the day felt hot and worrying, a dozen agencies on their tails and nowhere safe to run.
If he dies, then the last piece that is good in me will go, too.
His eyes were of gold edged in bronze. She wondered what Anna had seen in them when she had stood before him, the kind, sweet wife of a thousand days.
Love, assuredly, and strength. Bravery, too, and cleverness. Such perfection worried her.
If he was not so sick, she might have kissed him full on the mouth, just to see if there were other things in him that were baser, less fine, but a shout from below had her tensing.
Shayborne tilted his head to listen. ‘It’s a drunk, a soldier who wants to forget what has been and live only for this moment.’
‘You can hear that in his voice?’
He looked up. ‘The sky is lightening on the Sabbath and he is far from home. There is a loneliness that is easily felt.’
‘Have you? Felt it, I mean?’
He shifted his position and she saw the truth in his face. ‘Many a time and in many a place.’
‘How did you begin, then? What led you to become a spy?’
‘A few years ago I brought corn, sheep and cattle through the French lines in Portugal to Wellesley’s troops. The arrival of transports bringing rations had been delayed, you see, and there was a serious supply problem of food around Torres Vedras.’
‘You led live animals back through the ranks of a starving enemy?’ She could not believe his explanation.
‘Well, the French fear of the guerrilla bands helped me. Napoleon’s troops were reluctant to venture into the darkness looking for trouble if they heard noises in the night and so there were wide, unpatrolled gaps.’
‘Which you found?’
He laughed. ‘I’d already reconnoitred routes and arranged passwords.’
‘Not all luck, then?’
He ignored that and carried on. ‘The whole enterprise was remarkably successful and gained me the confidence of General Wellesley. After that I found further employment in watching for the movements of the enemy and reporting back.’
‘Still in your uniform? It’s what we had heard here in Paris. That you danced through the lines of Frenchmen in your scarlet red.’
‘I was a professional soldier who wore a wide and sombre cloak.’
‘Because in disguise you would have been summarily hanged? Like John André was in the Americas when he was discovered out of his uniform and stranded.’
‘That, too,’ he said quietly and reached for the bottle of wine beside him.
He remembered this. This sort of conversation. Her wide knowledge of historical events. It had been the same all those years before as they had sat outdoors in Sussex and talked for hours. She never faltered or became boring. She kept him on his toes both then and now. Even with Anna he had not felt this shock of connection.
The thought made him swallow hard. His wife had been kind and sweet, but she had not been...exciting. Hell, that was an even worse thought than the previous one, the betrayal of a woman he had loved crawling under his skin.
Celeste’s hair stuck out from under the cap, cropped unattractively. She had probably cut it herself as the back was longer and less mauled. Her eyes were smoky, distrust written across them. But even after years of fear and danger she was still beautiful. So beautiful he turned away.
‘You’ll have to bulk up your shoulders if you are to be believable as a lad.’
The change in topic had her standing, a full frown on her brow. ‘I don’t need tutelage from you in how to be convincing, Major Shayborne. I have existed as a variety of “lads” without problem in Paris for years.’
‘Without problem?’ When he stood he put pressure lightly on his wounded leg and was glad when it held. ‘You are known as the White Dove in the circles of espionage. A woman of mystery, McPherson says. A woman who has served many masters.’
‘Mystery is one of those imprecise words that holds a lot of different meanings.’
‘Why did you risk everything to save me?’
‘I was dead even before I warned you, Major, and it seemed pointless to die for nothing. So I thought to make it count.’
‘Count?’
‘You are a saviour to the world who despises Napoleon and his ruthless tactics. There are many here who hold no sway to vent their voice for dissent and yet by your actions you gave them hope.’
‘People like you?’
* * *
She watched the words form on his lips and saw the truth of them.
‘My father believed so strongly in Napoleon’s ideas that he died for them, six years ago in the house of the woman I met last night. Madame Caroline Debussy. Perhaps you have heard of her?’
‘The daughter of the Mayor of Léon?’
‘You are well informed, Major, but then of course you would be. Papa was murdered after she betrayed him. She told me that herself yesterday.’
‘A hard truth.’
‘And there are so very many more of them.’ Her hand came forward by its own accord to stroke down the line of his cheek. ‘I never forgot you. At least know that.’
The flint in his eyes made her swallow for she wanted him to feel as she did, even if nothing at all could be done about it. She wanted such a power between them, pulling them back to a time that was more innocent, a time when she was still in control of her own fate.
She felt the heat of him rise against her skin, saw the heavy beat of his heart in his throat and heard the shallowness of breath. And just for a moment, in the new dawn of a breaking day, Celeste felt less broken in the intimacy of his company. Then he moved, the anger in him palpable.
‘If they identify me on the road, you are to leave without a word.’ This order fell into the space between them, unpolished and harsh.
Clasping her fingers behind her back, Celeste wished she might have been braver. It was easy to play the siren when the mark was a man who meant nothing at all to you. But with Summer Shayborne such a charade would not have been a lie.
He did not want her and she was too afraid to demand to know why not.
‘You are a slut, Brigitte. You use men to gain only what you want.’
Guy Bernard’s words came back to her, whispered in hate.
‘Your father told me once that you were careless, but I think you are not that at all. I think you have always known exactly what you were doing.’
Caroline Debussy’s summary of her character was closer to the truth. She had known, for behind the slaughter of her morals there lay an attempt to protect herself against the nothingness that crouched inside, the ennui that made her sell herself cheaply and without any care whatsoever. The dissolution of responsibility, she supposed, the final acceptance of chaos.
She was her mother’s daughter in more ways than she knew, after all—shattered inside, irreparably broken. Too scared to jump, too ruined to settle. The props of a husband and a social position that had kept Mary Elizabeth going were missing in her own existence and yet she could not quite give up. Not when this one last chance had been provided so unexpectedly.
‘The freedom of lust is a balm for any emptiness, Major, I promise it.’
The tick at the side of his jaw was the only movement in a face set in cast stone.
Why had she touched him like that and showed herself so blindly when until now she had only lived in lies? He did not even want such honesty; she could see he did not in the stiffened lines of his body and in the quick sorrow across his face.
Pity.
The one emotion she hated more than any other.