Chapter Seven
Celeste woke early the next morning and sat watching the night break into day, the darkness fading to dawn. She tried not to move for she didn’t want to wake Summer. Not yet. She liked the silence here. A bird cooed from somewhere nearby and another answered from further away, but there was no human movement, no sound that broke a natural peace with the cacophony of rush or anger or just plain busyness.
The sky looked as though it might be blue and clear today, the cool of night swiftly being replaced by the growing heat of summer.
‘Good morning.’
The words came from behind and she smiled, the blanket catching the edges of the movement as Summer tucked it about them.
‘I love the peace of this place. In Paris there was always noise.’ Even her voice sounded different this morning.
‘Where did you live there?’
‘Behind the Palais Royale, in one of the small streets to the north.’
‘A safety net?’
‘A trap sometimes. I used to leave items around to make certain that no one had trespassed upon my territory. Dust from the street, a leaf balanced against my door in an exact position. A hair wound around the handle.’
‘Did you ever discover an intruder?’
She laughed. ‘A dove once. She ate the breadcrumbs I had foolishly left on the step. She cost me hours of time in worry and it was only the next day when I re-applied the crumbs and waited to see the result that I understood the culprit.’
‘You were always careful?’
‘Extremely.’ She did not temper this word with tones that might minimalise her reply.
‘The weight of the damned is a hard way to live.’
‘As hard as an English soldier spying in the very heart of an uneasy Paris?’
She had turned now and watched as he tipped his head. ‘How long did you live with Guy Bernard?’
‘A year.’
‘And did he go easily at the end of it?’
‘What do you think?’ She looked straight at him, his shirt ruffled from sleep, his face indistinct in the half dawn. She could smell him, too, a masculine comforting scent that made her want to breathe in more deeply.
‘I think a man like Bernard would not wish to lose any toy that he owned.’
She flinched. ‘How do you do that? How do you see into the heart of a truth so many others would easily miss?’
‘I am trained to notice detail. The pinch of a bruise on your left breast. The way he looked at you in the dungeon. The fury when you speak of him which is underlined in fear. How did you meet him?’
‘By chance. It was not an easy meeting at all because Papa had just been murdered and I was...barely me.’
‘James McPherson said the French soldiers took you...?’
She frowned at that and felt bile rise in her throat, the burn of it making her want to be sick. ‘I don’t speak of my life much. It’s just now, do you understand me? Just here. This second. This moment. This day.’
She felt like striking out at him, hard and fast, a considered blow, a way of stopping more words. But he was turning from her even now, rising, stretching. The muscles on his back rippled with the exertion. Strong, straight and undamaged.
‘Men have the better side of war because they can fight back,’ she added suddenly, surprised by her own admission.
‘As opposed to a woman’s lot?’ The sound of his words was sharpened.
She made herself be quiet, biting down on the anger that hung beneath the shame.
‘It sometimes helps to talk,’ he continued and her restraint broke completely as she scrambled up.
‘About what, Major? You are only spoiling what is between us with your questions.’
‘You don’t wish me to know anything more?’
‘You know enough. You know more than anybody else in the whole world knows about me.’
At that he smiled, his eyes wrinkling into humour. Sometimes his beauty simply took her breath away.
‘When I married Anna I knew that I should not have.’
It was an enormous confession offered without question on her behalf.
‘I was lonely. She was kind and honest and good and, whether it was from years of soldiering in harsh conditions or whether it was simply some lack inside of me, these traits became stultifying and choking quite quickly and I could never find the essence of who she was. In the end I gave up looking.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because no one is as heroic as you think they are and because some of your deepest secrets are probably less damning than my own.’
The gift of his truth floored her and she could only watch him as he gathered his things and dressed, too astonished to allow reply. He had not kept loving his wife in the fierce way that she had imagined he had and he felt guilty for it. There was a gift in his admission that was quietly put and it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her in this way. She respected his honesty and knew that it couldn’t have been easy for him to say such things.
The fight left her in a rush and she grabbed at her own attire and pulled it on. She wished he would step towards her but he didn’t, his confession building a wall somehow, the disclosure shocking them both. Nothing was quite as it seemed, he was saying. Nothing was written in stone.
* * *
Two hours later, her horse threw a shoe so they had to make a detour into the town of Buc, a small settlement some miles off their route. Once there, the farrier told them he could not see to the animal’s foot until well into the afternoon and gave them directions to the public house where they could wait out the interim and get something to drink.
Summer looked ill at ease as they sat with an ale in the shade of a tree. The grey wig usually had the effect of lightening his eyes, but this afternoon they looked dark and bruised. Perhaps he still thought of his wife and was wishing he had not breathed a word about their relationship. Perhaps he was confused by her anger and wished himself away.
She liked the warmth of his thigh as it ran down the length of her own on the old wooden seat upon which they both perched.
When she had told Summer that he knew more about her than anybody else ever had it was true. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Right now, in the shade of a thick, leafy horse chestnut, a kind of contentment stole across her.
I could do this for ever with him, she thought, and was shocked by the realisation.
If Anna’s sweetness had been a bane for him once upon a time, then just imagine what damage her own violent chequered past might wreak.
Finishing the last of her drink, she stood, excusing herself to use the outhouse that she could see at the very rear of the garden.
It was an old building with a rickety door and she checked for spiders before entering, seeing only a thick web without an occupant. There was no latch at all so she sat perched above the hole with one hand around the handle, keeping the door barred against any new person who might wish to use the amenity.
A moment later it was snatched away and a man stormed into the small space. With her trousers down she was at a definite disadvantage and as she scrambled up she whipped them back in place as best she could, the seconds needed taking away her own instinctive defence.
‘Troy here said he thought you might be a girl?’
‘Get out.’ She said this quietly, imbuing as much menace as she could in the command.
‘You going to make me? The old man you are with don’t look like he could hurt a fly.’
‘I said get out.’
When he did not leave she simply stepped forward and laid her hand upon the side of his throat, pressing hard. He went down quite gracefully, falling through the door with a quiet ease, but then her own problems truly started.
She felt the blow to the back of her head almost with a calmness, a fist she supposed or something heavier, the dizzy unbalance catching her off guard. Two others had her now and they were dragging her into the bush behind the outhouse, one ripping off her jacket, the buttons popping with such force that everything below was exposed.
She tried to get her fingers around the second man’s throat, but he swatted her off and punched her again, this time in the side of the head.
With the last bit of her energy she screamed, a high-pitched cry for help that gave away any last vestiges of her supposed masculine identity. The other man beside her had his hands around her left breast and was scrabbling for more. She bit at his arm with all the force she could muster.
Then Summer was there and he appeared like she had never seen him before. Here was the man legend told of, the soldier and the hero, his face unreadable and indifferent, his eyes almost black with fury.
‘Let the girl go.’ He stepped in front of her and the lad on her right laughed in his face.
‘Who’s going to make us do that?’ he spat out, dirty fingers squeezing the outline of one breast.
‘I am.’ Raising his hand, Summer smashed the fellow in the face, grabbing the other one as he went for a knife. A quick kick to the groin had the miscreant kneeling, a discarded piece of wood lying on the ground doing the rest. Even in Paris Celeste had never seen anyone use such damaging force and so elegantly. She was astonished at the pure violence meted out with such careful precision. No wonder he did not use a knife or a gun, his hands were twice as effective as any conventional weapon. She simply stared at him open-mouthed, seeing in his demeanour a thousand hours of practice. Unstoppable and unmatched. A savage and fierce peril.
All the rumpus had others streaming in and among them were soldiers in uniform.
Within a second, he had assessed the capability of the three men to relate a coherent story and found them wanting. Grabbing her by the arm, he led her away through a gate at the far end of the garden before circling around to reclaim their one remaining horse. A moment later, she was on the animal in front of him and they were galloping down the road.
‘Will anyone follow us?’
‘If they do, we will be ready for them. Are you hurt?’
‘I feel strange.’ The world was blurring in and out of focus, a ringing sound in her ears that made it hard to hear. It was shock probably, she thought, for the shivers were already coming, her hands barely able to hold on to the edge of the saddle. ‘They hit me at the back of the head.’
‘I know. It’s bleeding.’
‘Badly?’
‘Scalp injuries always do. If it was bad, you’d be unconscious.’
He stopped her hand as it rose to check out the damage by simply holding on to her fingers and bringing them down inside his own on the reins.
‘I think I am going to be sick.’
He’d left the road now to skirt around a thick stand of trees, tipping his head to listen against the wind.
‘Someone is coming and coming fast.’
After he’d helped her down she threw up in some bushes on the side of the pathway, clammy sweat beading on her top lip as she closed her eyes to try to regain the centre of things.
The next moment, the hooves of galloping horses were right upon them and then past, three of them by her count. Soldiers, she imagined, her identity and his discovered in the most unlikely of circumstances, for no one watching Summerley Shayborne dealing with those men today could have failed to understand that he was not the old gentleman he seemed.
Her head was becoming clearer, though, as the nausea dissipated and, if she was still shaking badly, she at least thought she might well live.
Summer had discarded his wig, the hairpiece lying strangely in the hook of a shrub’s branch. He’d also torn the sleeves off his jacket so that it was a working man’s jerkin he now wore.
‘We probably have fifteen to twenty minutes until they turn around. There is a track through the fields just there. We will use that. Get on the horse, I will walk behind you.’
‘We can’t both ride?’
‘No. There will be observers, I should imagine, even in this unpeopled part of the world. If we gallop through together, they will see us clearly. This way we can find other byways, less used and more out of the way. “From each point one finds oneself there are a thousand other ways to travel.” My father used to say that all the time and he was right. Are you well enough to stay in the saddle?’
‘Yes.’
* * *
An hour later, Shay thought that they were probably safe. For the moment at least, though there was still the worry of identity cards and a cordon which undoubtedly would be erected around any means of escape. It was also a long way off until the darkness, which was another problem. A good tracker dog would be able to find them, even though he had made sure to use any ditches filled with water as a way of masking their scent.
Celeste was as pale as he had ever seen her, the bright red blood at the back of her head still streaming. He’d tried to stem it with his necktie, but the wound would not close with her upright stance and movement and right now there was no alternative to travelling slowly.
They’d need the night as well if they had any chance of escape and they would have to ditch the horse. In the groins of the hills behind them were thickets of forest, and if he used these to climb into the next valley and then the next one, they might elude an enemy hellbent on finding them.
Checking the position of the sun, he determined the time to be just after two in the afternoon. There was a stream up ahead, he could hear the gurgling of the water and it was this he made for. He’d let the horse go on the other side of the river and Celeste and he would strike on along the bed. Two diverging sets of tracks would waste time and he needed as much as he could get.
She looked a little better now, less shaky at least, though her skin was still a deathly white.
‘We will be fine,’ he found himself saying. ‘The countryside here is perfect to disappear into and after it gets dark they will never find us.’
He noticed her hands were red with blood from where she had been touching her injury.
‘The flow is slowing, Celeste, and if you leave it alone, I am sure it will stop altogether.’
She glanced at him, her head nodding up and down. He saw the bravery on her face and in the way she sat up even straighter and was relieved.
At the river, he helped her off the horse and watched as she dipped her head and hands in the water. It was cold but effective. After a moment or two there was barely any sign still of blood.
Tying the reins into the saddle, he faced the horse the way he wanted it to run and slapped its rump hard. Within a moment the steed was lost to their sight.
‘Now we climb,’ he told her and took her arm. He knew how sick she was when she allowed him to help her, for normally she would not have countenanced any such aid.
* * *
‘My father’s journal is gone.’ She felt ill with the realisation. ‘It must have been lost when they pulled at my jacket.’
He stood so still she could almost see his mind ticking. ‘Was there anything in it that could be damaging?’
‘I hope not. It was mostly his thoughts and feelings...’
‘About you?’
‘No. About my mother.’
‘A man who writes confidential things down in a world of secrets is a foolish one. Let us hope no one makes the connection that he was your father for Brigitte Guerin has enough troubles of her own.’
‘Guy Bernard is dead. Apart from him I don’t think anyone else could guess I was someone else, save Caroline Debussy, of course.’
He turned at that, a heavy frown on his forehead as he lifted the bag and gestured her to follow him.
The river was deep in parts and cold, but she walked doggedly on into the afternoon, pushing up and up into the hills until she felt a disconnection between her body and her mind.
‘I...think I need...to stop.’ It was the head injury, no doubt, and the loss of blood. She had never been unfit in her life and had traversed the Parisian streets for hours without tiring.
The vortex of darkness surprised her, coming through her vision without warning. One moment she could see and the next she could not, the same roaring in her ears as before. As she fell she reached out to try to hold something, long zigzagged waves broken into light.
* * *
He heard a noise behind him, just a quiet expelling of breath, and as he turned he saw Celeste fall softly into a leafy shrub, the branches catching at her body and holding her up. He reached her in a second, extracting her from the greenness and laying her down on the track. Her head had begun to bleed again and, grabbing Caroline Debussy’s bag, he shoved it beneath her feet, elevating them.
She came to after a few seconds, her eyes fluttering against the light and her hand rising from the dust.
‘I am...fine now.’ She struggled to sit up, but he held her down, his hand splayed across her middle.
‘If you get up too fast, it will happen again, believe me.’
‘This has happened...to you before?’
‘Twice. Once in Madeira with the sickness I told you of and another time in the north of Portugal.’
She nodded, wiping at her face with the dirty fall of sleeve. ‘If you give me a moment...’
She lay back and closed her eyes, her lashes long and dark against her cheeks. No boy had lashes like that, he thought to himself, and found the canister of water.
‘Here. This will help. Take a sip.’
She drank deeply, raising herself on one elbow. The bridge of her nose was badly swollen.
‘Can you breathe properly?’
‘Only through my mouth. I think my nose is broken.’
‘No, it’s only bruised. If it were broken, it would bleed more and hurt like hell, too.’
‘I hope...you are right.’ Her voice was small and flat, her eyes leached of the vivid colour that was so much a part of her.
‘I’ll carry you. We can’t stay here for long.’
She shook her head, but he had her up already, his hands under her knees and behind her back as he lifted her off the ground. She weighed so much less than he might have thought, the thinness of her body disguised by her rounded breasts and bottom.
* * *
His heartbeat was loud but slow as he walked on with her, no sign of fatigue or exhaustion showing anywhere on his body. She felt odd and disconnected, weak and cold. The blood loss, she supposed, and tried to rouse in herself the energy to walk, but couldn’t. She knew of no one else in the whole world who would have done this for her, picked her up and walked her to safety. For so many years she had been on her own, by herself, in a city that festered with greed and violence.
It was a wondrous discovery, this, and made more so because Summer was a man who knew some of the depths to which she had sunk and who had seen revenge in the blood on the sharp edge of her blade in the dungeons of Les Chevaliers.
He’d used the long length of his old habit to tie her to him, in a sling of sorts that was both ingenious and comfortable, and even an hour later he had barely broken into a sweat.
Still, the way was steep and the oncoming rain had begun to make it slippery, too.
‘I can walk if you let me down.’
He shook his head. ‘This way is faster. We need to be as far from the town as we can manage by the nightfall.’
‘You’d get further without me.’
He began to laugh. ‘Are you suggesting I abandon you here, Mademoiselle Fournier, in the middle of nowhere and bleeding?’
‘Anyone else would have long ago. They would have recognised that I was not worth the risk.’
‘Your friends must be a motley group, then, if that is indeed the case.’
She felt she should tell him that she had no friends and never had, but the confession was too sad and too pointed so she stayed silent. Even as a young girl she’d not held anyone truly close, save for Summer, she thought, for the few months at Langley.
* * *
When the light began to fade he finally stopped.
‘We’ll camp here until the first light of dawn and then move on. It’s a site that will let us see if anyone is coming from all directions.’
And it was as he said, the last light scouring steep hills and showing wide valleys in the distance.
‘We can’t make a fire, but at least the weather is clearing up and if we find shelter under the larger trees we should stay dry. How’s the head?’
‘It feels a bit better. The dizziness has eased, at least, and it doesn’t ache as much.’
‘If you eat, you will feel better still. Have some bread and cheese.’
He brought the food from yesterday’s meal out from the bag again. It was delicious.
Afterwards, Celeste lay down on the branches he had broken off to fashion as a bed under a huge tree. The sky had cleared and the first stars were out, the heavens endless and bright out here in the dark.
‘If I had not dropped my father’s journal, then maybe—’
‘No,’ he interrupted her. ‘They knew us anyway, the soldiers. I could see it in their eyes for the reports from Paris will have been sent far and wide.’
‘Would your friend Aurelian de la Tomber hear of this skirmish, do you imagine?’
‘He might and it is certainly a hope. Blois lies to the south on the Loire. If we can get there, I have good contacts and Lian knows of them, too. We could find new identity papers and travel again legally, which would make things so much safer.’
‘Are you always so optimistic?’
‘Certainly—after every setback I have always found a solution that is workable.’
‘How were you caught, then? In Spain?’
‘Unexpectedly and with a lot of good luck on the side of the French patrol that came across us. I lost a good friend in that skirmish, though.’
‘A friend?’ She wished to know more now that he was talking.
‘A patriot. Guillermo Garcia. A good man who did not deserve to die like that.’
This was said with a great feeling of loss. She could hear the grief in his words.
‘When Papa died I felt the same.’
‘You saw August die?’
‘In front of my eyes. A knife to the breast. The man who sunk it through his ribs was at least skilled so I doubt he felt it.’
‘What happened then? To you?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Her pupils were small black pinpoints of wrath and Shay knew she remembered just fine, the same way he could recall every second of Guillermo’s murder.
What he could not understand was how she had been allowed to live herself after it, for the layers of espionage were deep and secret in the underbelly of Napoleon’s empire.
Unless there had been another reason for her prolonged existence? A darker and more heinous truth began to stir in the back of his mind.
The marks around her wrist worried him, as did her reaction to the soldiers and to the two men at the village who had manhandled her.
Perhaps it was not just a loss of blood that had made her dizzy and disorientated? Even now as she bent to pick up another piece of bread, he could see her hands shake in the half-light. He lay down beside her and looked up at the sky, careful not to touch her.
‘Do you know the constellations?’ Anything to take both their minds off the death of her father was welcomed.
‘A few of them. Aquarius. Aries. Orion.’
‘There is Andromeda, the chained lady.’ He pointed and was glad as her gaze followed the direction. ‘She was tethered to a large rock and left out at sea to await the wrath of the great monster Cetus. But Perseus arrived on his winged sandals and, like a true champion, he went to her aid.’
‘Did he save her?’
‘Indeed, he did. The monster was turned to stone by the severed head of Medusa that he’d brought with him and Perseus claimed Andromeda as his beautiful bride and queen.’
‘From tragedy to farce.’
‘You think it so?’
‘No one ever escapes so easily. Who tied her up in the first place?’
‘Her jealous mother. She was reputed to be envious of her daughter’s good looks.’
‘Because once she herself had been the fairest in the land?’
He decided to play her at her own game. ‘You have the drift of it. No one likes losing what they were once fêted for and all families hold secrets that they would rather others not know of.’
‘Mama tried to kill me twice.’
The shock of such words spread through him and Shay measured his response.
‘Mary Elizabeth had always been weak. Not physically, but mentally.’
Her fingers found his as he spoke and wound in.
He struggled to find the right words. ‘I met her by the pond one snowy winter’s day and she was trying to save a kitten who had fallen into the water.’
‘Did she save it?’
‘No, but she tried. She was kind when she wasn’t sick.’
The small laugh heartened him. ‘Papa said that of her, too.’
‘People are never just one thing. They are usually a mix of good and bad.’
‘Even heroes?’
‘Especially them. The expectations of others can be exhausting and there are times that escape is the only way of keeping sane.’
‘Escape?’
‘My uncle wanted me to come home and help Jeremy. He hoped that I would take over some of the responsibility of Luxford, but I couldn’t find it in myself to do that. I feel like if I return, my brother will die sooner than he should because he will simply give up. I know I would.’
‘So you came to Europe and stayed. That was one of the reasons you came north to Paris, too?’
He nodded.
‘And now?’
‘I am living all these minutes for what they are and trying not to think of going back.’
* * *
She turned and her gaze met his. She was perfectly still as she looked at him. He traced the shape of her nose with his first finger and then the outline of her mouth. She had a small scar on the lid of her left eye under the brow that creased when she smiled and he ran the pad of his finger over it in silent question.
‘I fell against a wardrobe and split it open.’
‘You don’t strike me as a clumsy person.’
‘Being a wife blurred the lines. My marriage was one of convenience, though my husband, unfortunately, wished for more.’
‘He wanted love?’
‘And what is that in a city where each moment could be your last?’
‘Futile and impossible?’
Like here and now?
This thought made him falter, but he pushed it away and concentrated instead on the lingering want that burned inside him every time he touched her.
‘Why did you not run? Leave the city? Find safety when you had the chance after warning me?’
‘Have you ever wanted something so badly that it hurt to think about it?’
‘No.’
‘Then you are lucky.’
‘What was it you wanted?’
She smiled. ‘Make love to me, Summer, quietly and carefully and slowly. It will help me to forget.’
A single tear traced its way down her cheek from the corner of one eye and he wiped it away.
‘Please?’
This time when they came together it was different from anything that had come before. Sweeter. Slower. More real because she allowed him to see her shadows, crouched in the passion, hidden under lust.
Tonight she was not the dangerous Brigitte Guerin or the arrogant young Mademoiselle Celeste Fournier from Sussex or even the woman who had come to his bed that first night in Paris, hungry and demanding of body. Tonight in the darkness she was muted and mellow and deep and she was his in a way she had not been before.
Tonight he understood her pain because it was there in the kiss they shared. He also understood a sadness that was usually cloaked. He wished he might ask her of it, but knew that he would not.
Taking her in his arms, they watched each other as they made love, slowly and with a quiet gentleness that felt just right.
He didn’t hurry, but lingered in the moment, a deep contentment settling, for the gift of closeness and contentment was wrapped in an intimacy that was startling. Shay felt that he could see into her very soul just as she was probably seeing into his own.
They would turn for Nantes after they left the hills of this place and make for the coast. Celeste was right that his injury would prevent the longer journey to Spain. He would have to take his chances with the port of St Nazaire and hope that he could find a passage to England.
She would not follow him. He knew that as well.
His hands tightened across hers under the clearing sky, the stars bright in the oncoming darkness, and then he forgot to think altogether.
* * *
The port of Nantes was teeming with sailors and tradesmen and passengers. Fishermen were there, too, singing out their catch and hoping for buyers.
They’d come into the town yesterday after catching a barge down the Loire from Blois. It had been an easy journey compared to what had come before. They had slept together every night for almost three weeks under their new disguise of husband and wife. Shay could not remember a time in his life when he had felt so whole and happy.
Last night they had barely slept, holding each other in the darkness with a desperation that was indescribable.
‘Come with me, Celeste. To England.’
The small shake of her head had him turning.
‘Whatever secrets you keep are nothing to me. You will be safe there.’
He did not mention anything of love because he knew she would not want it.
‘One day you will be Viscount, Summer, and a lord. That is your destiny.’
‘Then come home with me and be my—’
* * *
She placed her fingers across his mouth to stop him saying more, to halt the words that she knew were impossible.
My mistress? My friend? My lover?
She was ruined for anything other than what she was. When he understood that, everything would be easier, but it was becoming more and more difficult to distance herself from the shard of hope that had lodged in her breast. She would never tell him what had happened to her after her father was taken.
Never.
The word sat in her heart like a stone.
Strengthening resolve, firming intentions. She was glad of it, with the feel of his skin beside her and the warmth of his body; magnets which drew her in a direction she could not go.
She had nothing to give him to remember her by, no sentimental piece of jewellery, no keepsake that spoke only of her. It was better this way. A clean break. Another life for him and for her. Memories that were not broken by yearnings. Nothing to tie them. No regrets.
Only a goodbye.
I love you.
The words were there inside her, desperate to be spoken.
I have loved you ever since I can remember. Always.
But she shook her head and remained silent because it was kinder for him and easier for them. Her muteness was the gift he would never know she had given him.
He had risen after this exchange, leaving her there in the bed above the water, and gone up on to the deck. She had not seen him again until the morning when they had disembarked and come into the town proper. He looked tired and tense and sad.
‘Lian will be here somewhere.’
‘How could he know we are here?’ She could not believe in such a coincidence and the cold dread of it shivered across her.
‘Because it always pays to have more than one plan in place.’
Different contacts. Other webs. He never ceased to surprise her with the extent of his agents, even in a land that would kill him if the chance presented itself.
De la Tomber had also been there on the day of the Dubois murders. She remembered Guy telling her so.
The threads were twisting again and she hadn’t the means to stop it, save in the sacrifice of herself.
‘You look pale. What is it?’
‘Tiredness. You have kept me awake at night.’ The lightness in her tone was as carefree as she could make it and his smile lit the world.
‘That is one thing I shall not apologise for, Celeste.’
‘Good.’
‘You are leaving, aren’t you? Now?’
He never missed a beat, she thought. Not even one.
‘I am.’
‘To go where?’
‘Away. A long way away.’
‘From me.’
She could not quite voice the lie, so she nodded instead.
‘I see.’
Behind him, in the shadow of the town walls, she could see Nolan Legrand and Noah Muller, two of the right-hand men of Mattieu Benet. She knew that there would be others, too, somewhere close. She had spoken to the first two an hour ago when Summer had left her at the tavern and had gone to find Aurelian de la Tomber in order to ascertain which boat he might rely on for a passage to England. When she had met the Les Chevalier agents by the crossroads at the edge of the town, she had given them her troth.
‘Take me back to Paris and let the English Major go.’
‘Why should we do that?’
‘Because I killed Guy Bernard and must answer for it, and because it was Benet himself who ordered the death of the Dubois family. Felix Dubois had been his partner in a business and his death would see great sums of money being transferred back into Benet’s accounts. Politics was a cover for greed and one that Mattieu Benet has used many a time. He is out of control and a murderer and needs to be stopped.’
‘Liar.’
‘Ask Aurelian de la Tomber. He was there. Ask him what was known by Clarke’s men and the Ministry of War.’
Muller and Legrand had looked at each other, measuring the weight of the words she had thrown into the ring.
Benet. De la Tomber. Treason. Such allegations, if found to be true, could change the face of the Parisian spy nests for ever and she knew the two men before her were both ready for the chance to lead Les Chevaliers. She had heard them talk. She had noted their ambition. Even Shayborne would be a reasonable exchange for the sort of secrets of which she spoke and the hunger for power was an easy thing to feed.
‘I will give myself up without a fight if you pretend you never saw Major Shayborne. He will be gone by nightfall, spirited out of France by magic. Nobody will ever know he was here. You have nothing to lose by it and everything to gain.’
‘God!’ It was Nolan Legrand who stated this and she knew that she had them.
‘But I need to say goodbye to the English Major or he will not go. Then I will return to you.’
‘Your farewell shall be in a public place within our sight.’
She turned to look across the square. ‘There. Over by those seats and well in range of a bullet.’
‘Why would you do this? Why should we trust you?’
‘Because I want revenge for the deaths of the Dubois children and I am tired of being ashamed.’
The present moment again returned with a force, the sound of voices, the slap of water, the smell of fish. When Summer reached over and took her hand she held on with a grief that made her feel dizzy. Their last seconds together. Their final goodbye.
‘If you ever need me, Celeste...’
‘I will know where to find you.’ Unlacing her fingers, she stepped away.
‘If you would trust me...’
‘I have.’ She didn’t let him finish, for she knew exactly what he would say.
Fumbling in his pocket for his purse, he held it out, but she did not reach for it. Instead, she turned and walked, one step and then two. When she looked around on the count of thirty he was gone.
She watched the boat leave as she followed Legrand and Muller out of the port on horseback. They had tied her hands to the pommel and Muller led the animal with a care that she appreciated. Not too fast. Not too slow. The white sails of the fishing vessel unfurled against the blue sky, turning in the wind for England, the noise of them lost in distance.
‘Please God let him be safe,’ she whispered. ‘Please let Summer live.’