Chapter Six
It was getting lighter.
He’d brought her water and food, and a clean wet cloth. Celeste wondered if she could ever get back to the woman she had been before entering this room.
She felt drugged by pleasure. She felt empowered and helpless, elated and ashamed.
She had not told him. She had said nothing in the dark watches of the night when he had whispered some of his secrets and she had remained so tight-mouthed about her own.
Summer was afraid for his brother. He was worried about the responsibility of a title. He wondered if he could fit in again to the tight strictures of English society.
Small concerns. She knew he had seen her scars. She had awoken at one time to feel the pads of his fingers running across the faded lines at her wrist.
‘We will leave as soon as it is dawn. There is a boat to take us across the river.’
‘The celebrations?’
‘Will buy us a little in the way of time.’
The coming of a new day meant their lovemaking would be consigned to the dark hours with survival their absolute priority.
She wanted the dawn to linger, to hold them in its embrace, to soothe doubt and allay fear. She wished time would stop now, this feeling of safety so final and complete. But true dawn crept in on quiet footfalls and touched all the hidden spaces of the room, and Summer rose to find them some breakfast.
When that was finished, she buttoned her new jacket to the neck and pulled on a hat that she had not seen before.
He was dressed as a gentleman of means today, his bearing a little bent and a greying wig placed across the short growth of his hair. He, too, wore a hat, an imposing specimen that was almost as fine as the ebony and silver cane he carried.
He so easily slipped in and out of personas, his voice carrying the waver of age as he spoke.
‘A carriage will collect us and remove us to the river. We are travelling down the Seine to Les Moulineaux to see my sister who has taken to her bed with an unexplained illness. She is not expected to make a recovery.’ Even the slight catch of worry was masterful as he lifted a small leather case and gave it to her. ‘You are the servant who will see to my luggage. It is as light as I can make it.’
The last remark was said quietly, his eyes soft with something that she could only interpret as worry. For her. Did he not know that the baskets of bread she often carried as the baker boy weighed ten times as much? It was a new experience to feel wrapped in his care and she found she liked it. It was a weakness, though, for such things could never last.
The carriage was substantial and well appointed. Inside there were small bottles of drink and crusted new baked rolls wrapped loose in calico. They touched nothing as the conveyance moved into the street and the driver called the horses on to a faster pace.
She had expected soldiers but they saw none, the way fast and largely empty. At the river, when the carriage stopped, she let go of the breath she hadn’t realised she was even holding because at least in the open there was room to escape.
Then they were on the boat and the ropes were heaved to, the current taking the weight of the small vessel and flinging it south on the Seine out of Paris.
‘We’ll disembark at the river before it turns north.’
‘And go west, maybe? The Americans at Nantes hold a great affinity for the English, despite being a French ally.’
‘There’s two problems I can see in that, Celeste. If we do somehow manage to avoid being blown out of the water by the British blockade standing out to sea, we will undoubtedly then be heading across the Atlantic to the Americas.’
‘It’s Spain, then?’
‘Well, we can’t go north, for odds are they’d think I’d head to England by the quickest route. It’s over a hundred miles to Le Havre or two hundred to Cherbourg. To get to the French–Spanish border is at least five hundred and once in Bayonne there is the problem of crossing the Pyrenees in an oncoming winter.’
‘A long way and dangerous?’
‘It will become safer the further we get from Paris. Time and distance have an effect of weakening the resolve of an enemy. But it is me they are chasing the hardest and if you feel you might do better alone...’
She shook her head. There was nothing between them save the past and that was fractured and difficult. Yet for the first time in a long while she felt she had found a place, even if only for a short while.
‘I won’t come back to England with you, but Spain might do.’
‘To live in?’
She shrugged, such vagueness a way of life. Make no plans. Set no times. Stay in the shadows. Lay low.
‘I have good contacts in Santander,’ he said.
She nodded and when he did not press her for more she was grateful. Everything about their relationship was strange and dislocated. But it was familiar, too, and it was this that pulled her back and made her want to stay.
There were weeks of travel before them, each day holding no certainty. In just three days they had nearly been killed, shot at, knifed and punched. They’d been tracked by experts and helped by other shadowy figures, always contending with the revolution’s atmosphere of lies and double dealing. It was hard to trust anyone in the underbelly of espionage.
Maybe Shayborne did not trust her either. That thought had her swallowing, for why should he? She wanted simply to fold herself in his arms and tell him that she would always keep him safe. But she didn’t, because how could he believe anything at all that she said? His friend Aurelian de la Tomber had taken the true measure of her. She had seen the dislike in his eyes.
She wished she could have gone back to the moments in the Langley barn again, become that young innocent girl who had laid her virginity out for Summer like a gift. She wished the circumstances of their tryst might have been different. She wished her mother hadn’t just tried to kill her and her papa hadn’t threatened to leave England altogether come the light of the morrow.
Thrown out.
Those other words echoed across the kinder ones. When she had finally returned to the house to find her mother was dead, her grandmother had exiled her father and called him every name under the sun, her own grief whipping out to include Celeste as well.
‘At least leave me Mary Elizabeth’s daughter so that I might try to reverse all the damage you have done to her.’
Damaged. Even then.
And here she was again, repeating exactly the same mistakes. Hoping for more.
‘Are you ready to disembark?’
She blinked into the light at the sound of his voice and was once again back in the moment.
‘There will be horses waiting and we will travel south tonight. The more miles we can cover the better. Tomorrow we shall each become someone else again.’
It was a busy wharf, but there were no soldiers anywhere. The ease of having transport made the transition from boat to land simple and within half an hour they were leaving the river behind them.
Celeste had the thought that she might never see this waterway again, but as the outline of the city against the distant horizon faded, she was not sad. Paris had been her father’s home, but it had never been her own. When they turned south it was like shedding another skin, like a cicada, the symbol of a new beginning. She felt immeasurably lighter.
* * *
Shay glanced at the time on his fob watch and calculated that they had at least five hours’ fast riding before they stopped. That should put them somewhere in the vicinity of Versailles, he thought, which was good because it was a town large enough to be invisible and there would be places to find a lodging. The identity cards they carried would suffice, but Lian had warned him that the checks were more rigorous now. Napoleon’s capacity to incite fear, he thought bitterly. Nobody he had ever talked with believed in the wisdom of the Emperor’s mission to strike towards the heart of Russia, particularly given winter in the northern lands was known to be uncompromisingly bitter.
Thoughts of the Battles of Narva and Poltava came to his mind, the failed campaigns of ancient defeats suffered in the snow. It felt like the beginning of the end, Napoleon’s demise hanging on poor choices and grand pretensions, and today he and Celeste had only just escaped the tail end of it. A crumbling dictatorship was always the most perilous, so many losers scrambling for purchase.
She looked exhausted, the dark rings under her eyes easily seen in such a flat light. But they could not afford to relax their guard, and if anyone had observed them closely today, then they might remember more detail tomorrow.
There was no logic or sense in war, but a thousand different possibilities that could be strung together at any time. Relax, and disaster would follow like it had in the north of Spain, as he and Guillermo had ridden through the olive groves, imagining they were safe.
* * *
Four and a half hours later, when they reached Versailles, Shay was more than relieved. It had been a long day after a long and sleepless night and the tavern on the edge of town seemed to suit their purpose exactly.
‘Just the one room?’ The proprietor was an elderly man and hard of hearing.
‘Yes, thank you. The boy can lie on the floor by the door.’
‘I’ll send up an extra blanket, then, sir, with your food.’
The chamber was small and the bed was, too, a single cot with two grey blankets and two pillows stacked at its foot.
* * *
Locking the door, Summer motioned for her to sit, though the movements required to accomplish even such a simple task seemed onerous and difficult. Her bottom stung, her thighs were chafed and every muscle at the back of her neck felt hard and tight.
Celeste prayed to God that they would not be disturbed tonight and that she could just close her eyes and shut out the world until the dawn.
‘Here. Have this.’ Summer passed her his water canister and she drank from it, the cool liquid making her head clear a little.
‘The food will be here soon.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think...I can stay awake...long enough.’
He crossed the floor and kneeled down before her, removing her laced boots with a tug, the hat and jacket following. ‘Lie down, then. I will save you some.’
‘There’s only...one bed.’
‘But two blankets and I will be fine on the armchair.’
This close up she saw the shards of gold in his eyes. His hair was growing, too, the light from the window bouncing against the sprouting strands. Gold and white and wheat and cinnamon. No wonder he had dyed it on his journey from the Spanish border for it was so very particularly him.
Her hand reached out and felt the bristles.
‘You were always...too beautiful.’
There was puzzlement in his eyes as she lay back and he spread the blanket across her. Then she was fast asleep.
* * *
Beautiful? God, he hoped she did not remember telling him that come the morning. Once she had been more forthcoming in confiding in him her every thought, but now she was guarded and careful.
The knock on the door had him turning.
‘It’s the food, sir.’
A woman’s voice and young by the sound of it.
‘If you leave it at the door, my boy shall bring it in.’
He did not want anyone to see Celeste asleep in the only bed, for a servant lad had no business at all being there. When the footsteps receded, he retrieved the tray of bread, cold meat and cheese. There was fruit there, too. Fat tomatoes and near-ripe figs.
A thought hit him forcibly that this was the first moment for a very long time that he did not need to be the hero, to act the leader, to order men around or find the perfect and impossible solutions in landscapes full of jeopardy.
No, right now he could eat one of the figs and sit at the window and watch the rising moon for all the hours of the night should he wish it. It was safe here. He knew it was.
Celeste was asleep behind him, cocooned in her blanket, the bruises around her mouth and nose less obvious now and her lip healing. The swell of her breast could be seen above the covering and he pushed down the burst of desire that accompanied such a notice. Tonight she needed to sleep.
It was the soldiers who had unsettled her and sent her to fright and he wondered what that meant in regards to her chequered and difficult history. She had removed the bandage from around the base of her thumb and he could see the healing mark of a blade in the shape of the wound.
A further question.
She’d told him she’d seen her father die and that it was not the English who had done it. Had the French soldiers taken her away at the same time? She had also told him that the world was a chaotic place and if the sky fell in on the spot where you were standing, then so be it. Had the sky fallen in on her?
Once, he had known her almost better than anyone else. And now he didn’t. This woman was far more dangerous and unknowable than she had ever been and she was also scared. Of life and love and of all the usual emotions that were part of a normal existence.
She’d used her body like a sharp weapon, prying out the truth of him minute by minute as they had lain together. He’d told her secret fears that he had never voiced to anyone before and such confidence left him hollow, for she’d given him not one single truth back.
Not in words at least. There were other ways he could read people, though, and he knew she was teetering on the edge of a collapse.
He smiled but without humour. It was what happened when after great hardship and difficulty one was unexpectedly freed of it. She’d had a headache when she had lain down for he could see the way her hands shaded her eyes from the light and her fingers had crept to ease the muscles at the back of her neck. Even now in sleep her fingers lay across her forehead in an unconscious protection, yet she had not mentioned the pain or complained of it once.
* * *
She woke to the sounds of birds and a breaking dawn and was amazed that she should have slept for so very long. The migraine from yesterday had left her with a dull and aching head, but at least she no longer felt nauseous. Summer was in the chair with one of the grey blankets over his knees and he was dozing.
She felt instantly guilty for having taken the bed for the entire night, so in order not to wake him she didn’t move while she took stock of the chamber. It was a plain room but clean. Someone had recently painted it; spots of cream lay on the polished wooden floorboards where the painter had not quite managed a steady hand.
‘I know you are awake.’
At that she pushed herself up and leaned against the bedhead. ‘Did you sleep at all? That chair hardly looks comfortable.’
‘Any soldier learns to take rest where he can and this was more than adequate. How is the headache?’
She was surprised he had known she’d had one when she had been so very careful not to show it. ‘Much better.’
‘Good. We will leave after you’ve eaten.’
Celeste felt ravenous at the mention of food and saw sustenance on a stool near the bed. Setting to, she began to devour a fig while pulling herself off a chunk of the crusty country bread with cheese and tomatoes. It was delicious and with the food and a long sleep behind her, her day was shaping up well. But when she saw him wince as he stood to stretch a few moments later, concern ran through her.
‘Is it your thigh?’
‘It’s fine.’
She ignored that and struck on. ‘We still have some medicines from Caroline Debussy so I could dress it before we go.’
He hesitated and by doing so she knew that it was far worse than he made out. A sort of unbridled panic made her feel dizzy.
‘If you get sicker, we will both be at risk.’ Bringing the bag up on the bed, she rifled through the contents for the twists of paper. ‘It will be easier to tend to you here than on the road.’
Loosening his trousers, he sat down in front of her, the leg a lot more swollen than she remembered it to be. When she removed the bandage she saw the full extent of the red and angry wound.
‘Did they bring salt with the meal?’
‘There.’
He pointed to a small dish that she had not seen and she lifted it up to place it on the grey blanket next to him. Water was easy. Mixing them both together in the plate, she poured it across his wound, seeing him tense and grimace as the pain of it set in.
‘You need to be staying off your feet with such an injury...’
‘Lying around waiting to be discovered? Hardly.’
‘If this had happened anywhere else, you would have been in bed for a week keeping it still.’ She could hear the irritation in her words, not aimed at him but at the situation they found themselves in.
‘The powders helped last time.’
‘But I am not a healer like Caroline Debussy. I’m not certain of the mixes.’
‘Choose one and dress it with that. Anything is probably better than nothing.’
Celeste looked at the twists of paper and chose the next shade up from the last one she had applied. This she mixed into a paste with the final dregs of the wine and spread it across his leg, waiting for a moment while the poultice dried before binding it again with a clean roll of fabric.
‘I think we need to make for the coast, Major. Six hundred miles of travelling south on that leg no longer seems feasible.’
When he smiled, her irritation melted, the goodness within him as much a salve for her heart as the powders had been for his leg.
‘I missed you for a long time after I left Sussex.’
‘Between your other lovers?’ There was no gentleness in his retort, but she could not be angry. They were her own words to him repeated back, after all.
‘And spouses.’ She made much of tidying away the powders. She was rarely as forthcoming as she was with him, but the years of distance between them had left a mark that was not easily discarded and lust had only a certain timeframe before its golden edges dulled. Anna was good and sweet and kind and had been his wife for three years. Her few months of friendship culminating in her prickly gift of virginity seemed like nothing in comparison.
A man like him would not be falling at her feet and offering his heart, even should she want him to. And she didn’t. There were too many dangers in it, too many unknowns.
‘Tonight we will camp in the woods. It will be safer than being in a town.’
Her body warmed at the words. She wished they were there now, in some secret glade with the stars overhead and hours before them. That thought worried her because sex had always been about gain and business, and this pleasure she had glimpsed was dangerous.
* * *
The day outside was a fine one and Summer was as watchful as ever. It was such a welcome change to allow someone else to be vigilant whilst she was lost in the sheer delight of air that smelt of trees and earth and honesty. There was a freedom here that she had not felt in years, a wide and open horizon holding an energy that made her breathe in deeply. Other ghosts of the past slid back, further distanced, less immediate. The aching anger in her bones was weakened by the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the world all around.
‘You look happy.’ Summer was close now, his horse reined in to walk next to her own on the wider pathway.
‘I used to ride in England, but I haven’t here. It’s nice to be on a horse again. I’d forgotten just how nice.’
‘Life makes one forget a lot of things. Remember how we used to race across Langley to see who could reach the river first? I couldn’t believe that a mere slip of a girl could sometimes beat me.’
Her laughter floated between them, the audible embodiment of her feelings. ‘I seldom did and that was the trouble. Your horse was so much bigger and stronger than mine.’
‘But Mirabelle was agile and she could skirt under the trees in a way my mount never could.’
‘You even remember her name? My God, I can hardly do that.’
‘I remember a lot about those times. The spill you had on the road just before the village comes to mind...’
‘Because I bled all over your new jacket?’
‘No. Because you were brave and calm even in the face of such an injury. Most other girls would have made more of a fuss.’
‘I still have the scar to prove just how brave,’ she gave him back, laughter in her words.
‘I know, I see it every time we make love.’
Her heart missed a beat and thudded oddly.
History. It both bound them together and split them asunder.
When their horses drew closer she felt his leg against her own and did not pull away, the air between them charged with intention.
It had been like this ever since leaving the tavern, a give and a take, a simmering attraction, another truth under the reality of a simple and desperate desire.
It was as though they lived in a bubble devoid of anyone else where the air was rarefied and thin. All she wanted was to feel him inside her, moving, wanting, needing. All she wanted was for them to stop and make camp and fall into the night.
* * *
When the sun finally dropped and the woods became thicker, Summer led her off into the forest. He stopped on the banks of a small stream where the rocks were warm.
‘We can bathe here.’
She dismounted and felt her heartbeat quicken.
Her clothes were discarded in a second, a pile at her feet, and her boots joined them. She had never been a woman who was ashamed of her body and the cool water felt wonderful on her skin as she waded in.
‘Hell.’ She had not heard Summer swear like this before and turned towards him from her place a few yards out from the bank with question.
‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, Celeste, and the least bashful.’
She was glad he did not comment on the bruises that covered her stomach and back or ask how she had come by them.
This evening was theirs. The bed of nature, the sky, the river, the last birdsong before silence.
‘Come in for a swim.’
But he did not, merely taking off his jacket before laying out the bedrolls tied to the horses. There was a stiffness in him that had not been there a moment ago and she wondered at it as she came out of the water, slapping at the midges that had arrived in a cloud with the evening light.
‘Your thigh is still aching?’
‘Only a little. The powders helped.’
‘I will dress it again.’
‘Later.’
He moved back, untying other necessities from his horse, tidying things. With the last wisps of the afternoon upon her nakedness she felt altered and powerful as she came across to him.
‘It has been a long time since I was out in the countryside and it feels...so very free.’ The water from the river had cooled her down and she sensed the regeneration of her soul like a physical thing. The last of the sunbeams warmed her and soft winds whispered. She was like Eve standing before Adam, the forbidden tree allowing them the knowledge of good and evil still far from this moment. In limbo. Caught between time. An exile into isolation and one she wanted with all her heart.
The weariness in him was also apparent, a man who had led her through danger and jeopardy and thought little of his own discomfort. The lines at the side of his mouth were deeper today, more obvious.
With care, she took his free hand and cupped it in the space between her thighs.
‘Let everything else go, Summer, for I am right here.’
Opening her legs, she arched her neck, wishing that her hair was still long and falling to the small of her back, wishing that she wore jewellery or perfume or that her face was not marked above her right eye.
He came to her with a frown. She could see the battle he fought to resist her in his eyes, deep amber in the sunset, his golden glance meeting her own. Aroused, rankled and vexed.
Then her nipple was in his mouth, hard and sweet, a lover sustained by her body and fed by want. She could smell herself as he moved, the musk of womanhood, the fresh scent of water.
Basic. Honest. The waves were mounting now, all the parts of her joined in need, pressing for the relief that did not come as he stopped and withdrew.
She felt like falling down to the sun-warmed rocks and was pleased to see him take off his clothes. In the dying day he was unmatched, an Adonis presented to her in the glory of light.
The garden of Eden. The rightness of being here was all-encompassing and as he came against her she knew his urge flamed just as her own did, the hardness of his manhood sliding into the soft wet centre of her femininity. Riding him. Gloriously. Onwards and upwards into the place where the heat burst in upon them both, breathless and shocking, building with wonder before exploding into fragments, the release so acute.
As their breathing finally slowed, he lifted her up and took her back into the river, the cleansing water running across them, soothing their aches.
The night was here now, the birdsong silenced, the small sounds of insects loud in the dark.
When she shivered, he wrapped her in a blanket and lay another on a grassy bank a few yards away.
He did not dress himself, but brought food from his saddlebag, placing it before her as a gift before seeing to the horses, hobbling them so that they would not wander.
When he rejoined her, he had on his shirt and trousers, though his feet were bare.
‘I’ve refilled the water bottle.’ He handed it to her, the tiny contact bringing a flush to her cheeks, but it was now so dark she knew it would pass unnoticed.
‘I can’t light a fire in case it is seen.’
‘You think others are close?’
‘No. It’s just a precaution.’
His glance took in the bodice she now had on, the heavier shirt unworn. She felt her nipples harden even at his notice.
‘I can’t stop...needing you.’ His words were broken and hoarse, like an apology. They had seldom spoken in the heat of their lust, any words unsuited and out of place. What could they promise each other, after all?
‘Then don’t stop.’
‘And what then?’
It was as if he had read her mind.
‘I do not know. I honestly don’t.’
* * *
An hour later she lay in his arms, the blanket across their shared nakedness as she listened to his heartbeat under her hand. Steady. Solid. Like him.
‘I heard once you were in Madeira with your regiment. I could not imagine what it was like there.’
‘Hot and colourful. I got sick for a couple of months and spent a good few weeks in bed. The water I think it was and after that I stuck to whisky.’
‘And when you got back to England you married Anna?’
‘I did. I was lonely, I suppose, and she was kind.’
‘Kind and gentle and sweet?’
‘All those things,’ he gave her back, refusing to be drawn in further.
‘Things you liked.’ She could not just leave it there.
‘Celeste?’
‘Yes?’
‘There are other things I like, too.’
She smiled as he came in closer, bringing his warmth with him. She needed to go to sleep, but she couldn’t. Everything here had been too wonderful.
‘I sent you a letter from Paris. Did you receive it?’
She felt him shake his head. ‘Did you send it to Sussex?’
‘No. I sent it to your military school in London.’
‘You knew I had gone there?’
‘Papa said your uncle had told him that you were to attend. I found the address when we were in the city.’
‘It never came. What did you say?’
‘That I was sorry. That I hoped you would be happy. That I was leaving for France with my father.’
‘A goodbye missive, then?’
‘It ended with an endearment. I sent you my love.’
She felt him turn as if he were trying to see her in the darkness.
‘Whilst fleeing with August?’
‘You were always going to be a hero. I knew that even then. Your uncle took me aside one day and told me that you were promised to the young daughter of a friend of the family’s and he was hoping for the union. Your parents had spoken of it years before.’
‘Anna.’
He said her name in a way that was sad, a catch of resignation there, but he was too much of the gentleman ever to explain it further.
‘Word was sent to your grandmother at Langley that you had died alongside your father.’
‘It was Caroline Debussy who wrote the letter. She thought it wise.’
‘Why?’
* * *
When she turned into him he felt her breath against his chest and her fingers tightened around him.
‘Because sometimes people just cannot return to the lives they once lived and it is kinder to give those who wait some closure.’
‘The candles burning each and every day and night for you at Langley did not look much like closure to me.’
‘My grandmother said that I was as wild as my father and as damaged as my mother. We left before the funeral because she did not wish for us to be there. She said that she could never forgive my father because he didn’t love my mother as much as he loved his country.’ She stopped for a moment before she whispered, ‘And perhaps she was right.’
‘Families sometimes tear each other to pieces only out of love.’
‘Before Mama jumped she left a note. She wrote to say that I would follow my father and be damned because of it. She said that there was no hope for my future and she could not be there to watch such a tragedy unfold. She said I was wild and selfish and unrestrained. I think my grandmother felt the same.’
‘And therein lies the devastation of miscommunication.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your grandmother sent investigators after you a number of times. She had given up on your father, but she paid out handsomely for any word of her granddaughter. The trail went cold in the month of July in 1806 when August wrote and said you wanted nothing more to do with your mother’s family. She was desolate.’
Now Celeste turned over so that her back was to him, but he could tell that she was stiff and resistant. Lifting the blanket, he drew his fingers across her shoulders above the flimsy bodice, making circles and letters on her bare skin. He felt the moment she relaxed and was grateful.
‘Love sometimes isn’t what you say, it’s what you do, and Lady Faulkner did do a lot to try and find you again.’
‘You like her, then? My grandmother?’
‘She is strong and she is a survivor. Does that remind you of anyone?’
Her shoulders shook and he smiled. Reaching into the bag beside him, he extracted the rosary she had given him.
‘I won’t be needing this again, but perhaps you might. I think your grandmother would be very happy to see you at her doorstep when you are ready.’
‘Summer?’ He stiffened at her use of his old name. She was the only person who had ever called him that.
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you.’