Chapter Eight
London
‘You’ve come back a damned hero, Shay, and with a new title to boot, though I am sorry to hear of the passing of your brother.’
Lytton Staines, the Earl of Thornton, sat in the seat opposite him, his feet propped up on a leather ottoman. It was mid-afternoon at White’s Club and quiet.
‘Miss Smithson thinks you are the most heroic man in all of existence. I heard her say it to my youngest sister yesterday. Her cap is set at you by all accounts.’
‘She barely knows me.’
‘What does that matter? And anyway, your reputation has proceeded you. My advice would be to marry the girl before someone else does, for the Smithson girl is beautiful and kind and the toast of the ton.’
‘All the more reason to shy away.’ He tried to take the harsh edge off his words, but failed. Since being back he’d felt dislocated and splintered. This morning it had taken two hours to be measured for yet another new jacket. He could barely believe the sheer waste of time.
Lian de la Tomber had got him out of Nantes on a fishing boat that had ferried him to one of the British frigates standing just off the coast.
It had been an easy exchange, the reward offered by Wellesley an inducement that the French fisherman and his son had been keen to take advantage of. The captain of the man-of-war lying offshore was known to him and within half an hour of boarding, Shay was heading for England, the French coast receding as he watched from the deck, a cold sea wind against his face.
She would be there somewhere, Celeste Fournier, turning south to look for her own nirvana. Spain, perhaps, or Italy. He could imagine her among the ancient beauty and warmth of such lands, reinventing herself.
Away from espionage, he hoped. Free from the history that had haunted her in Paris. She had tried to give him her father’s rosary in those last moments, but he had refused the stewardship.
The acceptance he’d seen in her blue eyes as she’d spoken her goodbye had almost broken him, but he’d been careful not to show her. He was only a small dalliance in the scheme of things, a convenient tryst. All of these truths had lain in the expression on her face even before he’d made for the port and the waiting de la Tomber.
But he had dreamed of her every night since.
The anger in him bloomed. There was no sense in his yearnings and he had always been a logical man. He needed to get on with rebuilding his own life, changed again on the death of his brother, pinning him to the peerage, to Luxford Manor and to an English court that expected him to be solid.
Jeremy had been more than poorly when he had arrived back in England, his fear of coming home only to see his brother die coming true.
‘Look after everything for me, Shay. Vivienne will need comfort and I entrust you with that. Make sure she wants for nothing.’
‘Your wife will be welcome to stay on at Luxford for as long as she wishes. She will be happy here.’
‘And what of you, Shay?’ His voice quivered. ‘I wish you could be happier.’
‘I was in France, Jem.’ He took his brother’s thin hand and held it tight in his own. ‘I met Celeste Fournier there and she was every bit as beautiful as she always was.’
‘Then why is she not here? Back with you? Back in England?’
‘She could not come. Her father took her into France and chaos and she has been damaged somehow.’
A fit of coughing had ended the conversation and that was the last time his brother had seemed truly coherent. The next day he was dead.
Shay knew that the years of war followed him around like a mantle, too, the myths and legends of battle weaving a story about his endeavours that he barely recognised.
But there was no way to stop them, no way to negate such accolades without exposing the secrets he had always tried to keep safe. The names of other people who had ferried him across a continent sickened by war, the religious affiliates and the less salubrious tittle-tattlers. The blood money of espionage cast a wide net, kept afloat by the endeavours of those who saw in it opportunities for a better way of life.
Morality in a war was nothing like the tepid version of it in peacetime, for more was at stake. He’d felt the breath of death upon his neck many a time as well as the giddy rush of violence. He’d seen men die in all sorts of manners, both slow and quick, and these things could not help but be imprinted on the brain.
He did not fit in here any more for he no longer understood the easy lives of the ton or their predilection for gossip. It was over a year since he had last seen Celeste. The scar on his thigh still ached at times and made him think of her touch.
‘I think I will retire to Sussex, Lytton. The estate needs tending after the last hard years of my brother’s sickness.’ Shay tried to keep grief from his tone.
‘Come to the Hall-Brown ball tonight with me, Shay. I will pick you up at around ten. It would do you good to enjoy the Baron’s stellar wine and some relaxation of spirit.’
Shay had it in mind to refuse, but the look on Lytton’s face was so genuine he found himself accepting such an invite. He just hoped his friend would not use the occasion to try to advance Miss Smithson’s desire to get to know him better.
* * *
Shay spotted Aurelian de la Tomber the second he stepped into the room. He had not expected him to be in London at all and a deep scar across his chin had him frowning.
‘When the hell did you get to London?’
‘Yesterday evening. I thought to call in to see you on the morrow.’
‘I hope it was not your role in my freedom at Nantes that caused you such a wound, Lian.’
‘God, you don’t know, do you? You do not know of the roiling cesspit your beautiful travelling companion created back in Paris after you left?’
‘What the hell are you talking of?’
‘This.’ He held out his hand and Shay saw half his ring finger was missing, too. ‘And this.’ The light finally rested on the ruined flesh of his face. ‘She came back to Paris and accused the head of Les Chevaliers and me of treason. Surely you had heard? Benet was convicted and he hanged. He was made an example of for the death of the Dubois family.’
‘He ordered them dead?’
‘For his own benefit, apparently. He was due a good deal of money on the death of Dubois and had seen fit to collect early. Even Napoleon has his limits of depravity, I expect, and with the deepening political crisis in the Empire, there is little leeway to absolve those who break the rules. Henri Clarke vouched for me, though an agent from Benet’s coven took matters into his own hands when I was first accused and hence the damage. Les Chevaliers was disbanded subsequently, as were four other deep-level intelligence agencies, so the results of these allegations were far-reaching. The Ministries of War and Police were both well-suited by the total destruction of their competition.’
Such unsettling news left Shay reeling, his breath hitching in shock. Yet Aurelian was still not quite finished.
‘When your companion opened her mouth to anyone who would listen, I had a feeling she did not care much about her longevity, so perhaps for her it was a way out, too.’
‘And she died because of it?’ He could barely ask the question.
‘She disappeared, but she is most likely dead. An unmarked grave on the edge of town and the problem of her existence solved. Breaking silence on your superiors is hardly a wise personal choice and the stigma of betrayal is never forgotten, especially if you are a member of the underground groups with their strict codes of loyalty and silence.’
All around the music played, something by the German composer Bach, he was to think later, though at the time he could take nothing extra in. He hadn’t left Celeste. She had left him. She had not quit Paris at all, but had returned to it immediately after Nantes to shake up the very basis of the agency she’d worked for. There was no sense in such an action and his anger grew.
‘You were in Celeste Fournier’s company for a good few weeks, Shay. You must have seen the danger in her?’
Celeste’s true name given so carelessly shocked him. ‘You knew who she was?’
De la Tomber laughed. ‘Her father was a friend of my father’s and I met her years ago. I do not think she remembered me, which was just as well, though she slipped me a blade to use when I spoke with her once after she had made her accusations.’
‘What do you know of her father’s death?’
‘August Fournier? He was killed with a knife to the heart by those whose opinions were different to his own concerning the political future of France.’
‘And the daughter?’
‘Nothing is known for sure, but it was said that men in uniform took her from the house of Madame Caroline Debussy. The bodies of all five were found a day later, but of the youngest Fournier there was no sign at all.’
‘You think she killed them?’
‘Perhaps that.’
There was a tone used that made Shay wary. ‘Who else, then?’
‘She married Guy Bernard a month later. He was a man to whom murder was second nature.’
Shay did not want to take such a conversation further because he could guess all of a sudden what might have happened to the gently brought up young daughter of August Fournier.
‘And after she made her accusations, Lian, did you see her again?’
‘Twice. She looked sick and thin and broken. But I was hardly offering her my condolences, for her accusations were the sole reason I was hauled up before the council in the first place.’
‘God.’
‘Who is she to you, Shay? This woman?’
‘A friend.’
‘A lover, too?’
‘Once upon a time.’
The music stopped and a group of people walked over to join them, their laughter so at odds with everything they were speaking of that the moment felt unreal. Lytton’s sister, Lady Prudence Staines, was among them and she took Shay’s arm and turned him to face Miss Smithson.
‘Lord Luxford, may I introduce Miss Crystal Smithson. This is her first Season at court and she has expressed her desire to meet you.’
The girl coloured at such an introduction, but there was no stopping Lytton’s sister.
‘Luxford needs to learn the art of dancing again. Perhaps he might agree to be your partner?’
Short of rudeness, Shay could do little but smile.
‘I have a waltz free towards the end of the evening, Lord Luxford? Could I pencil you in?’
‘I would be honoured, Miss Smithson.’
His tone sounded mellow, though he felt only numbness as he watched the girl write his name on a card.
‘If you would rather another time, my lord, I would also understand...?’
Having been given an out so prettily and sincerely, Shay shook his head and deep dimples rose from each of her cheeks.
She was as beautiful as Anna had once been, but his jaw tightened as he realised that it was another sort of woman he was seeking, one far from England, far from safety and lost to him in a way he could barely fathom.
Across the room he noticed others observe them and felt a slide of anxiety.
He had changed from a man who saw the best in people to one who only saw the worst. Inside himself now was darkness and a yawning empty desolation. Aurelian’s eyes held the same shadows.
He moved aside as Prudence Staines and Crystal Smithson walked away.
‘You look preoccupied, Lian.’
‘Celeste Fournier, for all her dangerous ways, suits you better than any of these society butterflies. Your past would clip their wings before a month was gone and you would be bored.’
For the first time that evening Shay smiled.
‘Join me for a brandy, Lian. In the card room.’
Without further ado, they wound their way across the crowded assembly and made for the quieter quarters to one side.
* * *
When Shay left three hours later, the night was full of stars scattered across a clear London sky in the way they seldom were. Endless and uncountable. He wondered if Celeste Fournier might be watching the same sky from somewhere, or whether she had been killed for accusations which had shaken the very fabric of Napoleonic espionage. ‘Please Lord, let her have lived.’ The refrain caught him by surprise, as did the zealousness of the entreaty.
* * *
Celeste made her way north after leaving Paris, travelling on her own and watchful. She did not speak with anyone as she went, dressed as a lad of the land, her shoes worn and her clothes unremarkable. She had found food as she passed through, root vegetables in farmers’ fields, juicier fare on the cottage vines of small landholders. She had exchanged her rosary for fish in Beauvais and her crucifix for a gold coin in Amiens. Such trappings of the Lord were well-received and easily pawned. She’d wondered if the sickness she was cursed with would ever go, the nausea and the weakness, the fatigue that ate at her until the thinness made her bones jut out from her body.
She slept in the hedges by day, tucked in under leaves and branches well away from the sight of anyone. She washed in rivers and allowed her hair to grow again, the clipped shortness changing into a length she was able to tie back en queue.
She had given Legrand her promise to remain in the rooms he had found for her in Paris after the trial of Benet, but had bolted the first moment his back was turned. She knew what he wanted. She had smelt it on his breath and seen it in his eyes. An easy target, given her accusations. ‘I can protect you, my dear,’ he had said and she’d known exactly what that meant. She had let nobody near her since Summerley Shayborne and was prepared to kill herself if any man took liberties.
Summer. The name shimmered above everything. He was safe, she was sure of it. Even before she had left Paris rumours were beginning to filter back with the information that Wellesley’s greatest spy had returned to his homeland of England. Unscathed. Newly titled.
He would be Lord Luxford now. Aurelian de la Tomber had spoken the name to her the second time she had seen him, his chin split open like a ripe peach.
‘It is just as well that Luxford escaped your clutches when he did, Mademoiselle Guerin.’ There’d been no kindness at all in the observation.
‘He is a good man with strong moral courage. I wish him well.’
‘Unlike you, mademoiselle. A woman who might sell her very soul to the Devil if he was paying well.’
‘It takes one to know one, I would suppose.’ She allowed no hint of softness to be on show. De la Tomber was a friend of Summerley Shayborne’s. The two men would meet again some time, she was sure of it, and Celeste wanted no uncertainty of motive concerning her emotions to permeate that conversation.
‘Your accusations have made the sort of impact I’d imagine even you have been surprised by.’
‘The rot in an apple is never skin deep.’
He had laughed at that and she had seen again a marked resemblance to Summer.
‘And you will stay safe?’ She had not wanted to utter this, but she had to know. If he died because of her, there would be a new darkness settling around her heart.
‘I am a wounded chameleon, but a dangerous one. Do not worry for me. My hands are clean of the Dubois scandal, merely an interested observer for the Ministry of War.’
They had had only these two minutes alone and she had passed him a blade which he had secreted into his pocket in the blink of an eye. Then the Frenchman had been taken away and she had not met him again.
Benet was dead, the small Dubois children’s death avenged along with their father and uncle. She hoped Caroline Debussy had been honest in her pledge to help the rest of the family.
Caroline. She had made certain not to visit her, but a letter had come nevertheless, delivered by a street child.
Go to Rome.
Find Monsieur Christian Blanchard in the Piazza Navona.
But she had not imagined she could even complete such a journey with the nausea and weakness she was now afflicted with and so had turned north instead. She had marked a small sheet of paper to keep track of the days as she travelled for time seemed inconsequential and nebulous. Only sunset and sunrise.
Sometimes, though, when she’d lain down to rest she’d had the quiet feeling that she was no longer alone. Sometimes she imagined Summer Shayborne’s hand in hers, solid, strong and warm. Almost as though he was there with her.