Chapter Four
Had Celeste just propositioned him with her body? Did the weight of lust and a quick tumble mean nothing at all to her save for a momentary relief of an all-consuming emptiness? He took a deep drink of red wine. Perhaps he had misheard things in his sickness and read her wrongly in a way he seldom did with people? Usually he was so much more certain than he felt now. Resolving not to make more of it with an answer, he turned and searched through the shelves nearby which were full of artefacts.
‘Is there a razor here? An old one of your father’s?’ August Fournier had been a man who had always presented himself impeccably.
Nodding, she pointed to the room he had seen her come out of when they’d first arrived here. It was a bath chamber and there was a large wicker basket containing an oddment of clothes next to a basin. Looking at himself in the mirror, Shay felt strangely disconnected and scattered, a bloom of red on both cheeks and his eyes bright with fever. He wondered about the properties in the medicines of Caroline Debussy, for his wound and the ache in his leg felt lighter, less distinct.
The harlot’s dress Celeste had been wearing in the torture room of Les Chevaliers lay across the top of the basket. Rummaging through, he found other things that August must have once worn and kept as disguises. He was pleased to see the brown habit of a monk among them.
The razor was old, but it would be sharp enough to do the trick. He wished his hands did not shake from the fever, but he steadied his left elbow against a shelf beneath the mirror and set to work. The corked bottle filled with water nearby was just what he needed.
Ten minutes later he smiled at his reflection. The Pyrenees lay to the south through hundreds of miles of French soil. He could follow the river which would lead him into the hills. The French presence would be less obvious there, caught as they were protecting their interests in northern Spain and Portugal.
And if Celeste Fournier elected to come with him, even with all her nonsense on the freedoms of lust, he would be pleased.
For so very long he had been sad. But since meeting her here in Paris, his melancholy had been lessened and despite such jeopardy there was a new tingling of excitement. The promise of something he could give no name to. He prayed to God that they might escape from the city into freedom and safety.
The knock on the door had him turning as it opened.
‘I thought perhaps you might be...’ She stepped in, her eyes widening at the baldness of his pate.
‘You thought I might be using the razor on my throat instead of my scalp?’
A dance of lightness in blue eyes was the only reply.
‘No matter what happens to me here in France, I would fight for my life, Celeste. I hope you would do the same.’
Her mother’s demise came to mind and he could see she had been thinking along the same lines. He cursed Mary Elizabeth Faulkner Fournier anew.
‘Perhaps when you are ready to leave I will come with you, Major, for it is raining harder than I have heard it do so in a long while and that might make it safer. I can’t bring the medicines, though, for if we are searched...’
‘I’ll change the bandage before we depart and leave it at that. The cheese and bread can come, but leave the pistols behind. Bring your blade only.’
‘I am not sure if I could pass any close inspection, Major.’
‘Then let us pray it will not come to that.’
* * *
His voice was changing even as he spoke into the pious, humble cadence of a servant of the Lord. With his closely shaved head, she could now see the light colour of his hair was back. In the sun it would show blond and the tips of his eyelashes were almost a white-gold.
‘Is there a safe box here? Something no one else would find easily if they were to search the place?’
‘Under the hearth,’ she replied and led him over to the fireplace. A quick catch of stone and a space opened, a space large enough even for a small person.
‘Papa had it fashioned for me.’
‘Did you ever use it?’
‘No.’
God, everything she ever told him of her life communicated other things to him as well. He cursed August and Mary Elizabeth Fournier for their careless guardianship of a daughter who should have been safer.
‘Put the pistols in here along with your harlot’s dress and the white wig.’ He had gathered up the strands of dark hair that he had shorn off himself and placed them in a twist of paper. These would go in there, too.
‘Let them guess who we are now.’ He jammed the medicines in the hole as well, keeping two twists of paper which he stuffed into the bag. The old marked bandage that had been around his thigh was also carefully hidden. Weakness was something he wanted to keep concealed. One sniff of weakness and the dogs of war would be after him with even more tenacity.
Finding a sheet of paper and a quill pen, he laid it on the writing desk.
‘Make up a fictitious name and address. Tell the recipient that you will be leaving for the north coast and that you will be there in two weeks if all goes well. Sign it with the name you are known as here and put as high a note as you can afford inside. I’d give you some, but they took everything in my pockets. The money should distract them. When you finish, date it and hide it in the bookshelf. They will find it.’
He was now circling the room, seeing it from the point of view of an enemy. Emptying the last of the wine into a glass, he wrapped the vessel in fabric along with the cork. Bundling this up he placed it into the bottom of the canvas bag that Caroline Debussy had bequeathed her. He took one of the small silver plates from the mantel and shoved it in, too, before picking a miniature framed portrait off from the wall.
August’s great-grandmother. The woman was dour and frowning, her clothes as dark and sombre as her mood.
‘She will do as the blessed Saint Barbara, one of the patron saints of soldiers,’ he said suddenly. ‘A protector.’
‘For you?’ Celeste could not quite understand what he meant and he shook his head.
‘A sop for all those who will chase us. Offer them up a prayer of guardianship and they will forget their suspicions of us.’
‘You know of such a prayer?’
He raised one hand and touched her on the head, speaking in low tones.
‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust...’
She looked at him in amazement.
‘Psalm Ninety-One,’ he continued. ‘The soldier’s verse. God gives four instructions to quell the sense of fear that rises in the hearts of those who fight.’
Celeste was astonished at his competency. How did he do it? What sort of a mind could keep in its grasp the prayer of aiding those who fought for their country when he had professed himself a disbeliever who did not follow any religion? Even she as a practising Catholic had no rote memory of such an entreaty.
‘Part of my job in Spain was to reassure those around me that what would happen next was hopeful. The first instruction, “you will not be afraid”, was crucial because after that the others would fall into place.’
‘The others?’
‘You will trust, watch, move forward and pray.’
‘And you did that?’
‘I never prayed much. Perhaps that was why they caught me finally, though one of the last human freedoms is to choose how you might react to new and unwanted circumstance.’
‘And you chose to fight?’
In his eyes the humour doused and Celeste was certain there was another story there. With care, she brought her rosary from her pocket. ‘I think you should have this, then. It would be an expected accoutrement of someone so very devout.’
‘It was August’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will give it back to you as soon as this character of a priest is no longer needed.’
She saw him draw the beads through his fingers and place the rosary in one of the pockets in his oversized habit as she nodded, the heavy silver crucifix hanging around his neck bright against brown cloth.
‘If I die, take it to my grandmother. She thinks I am dead already, but...’
‘You’d want her to know the truth?’
‘Yes.’ The word came from some place deep inside, a connection that was not as broken as she had always imagined it to be.
Summer had turned away already, collecting two blankets from the leather sofa and stuffing them into the bag with a ball of rope he had found.
‘I’d like to take more of use along with us, but a Catholic priest would likely have little in the way of earthly possessions.’
Her own persona was forming, too, as she gathered another sharp knife, a set of chisels and a mallet from her father’s workroom. August had taken up working with leather as a way of relaxing and she often watched him at it. Another strength, she thought, and added a punch for any holes needed.
If anyone asked her about her work as a leatherwork apprentice, she could answer with some expertise. It was the best she could hope for because, if not, she would place Summer in danger as well. The weft and warp of circumstance had strange ways of tying one back into the fabric of life.
* * *
They left just after ten o’clock in the morning, the rain having eased, although the wind was high. The marketplace at Boulevard de Clichy was busy, the vendors well into selling their day’s wares.
There were soldiers on the far side of Place Blanche and by the slight turn of head Celeste knew that Summer had seen them, too.
The trick was not to falter or hesitate. That was what the hunters would be looking for, that momentary stoppage or the first change of direction that would be the pointer to complicity. She had done this herself, looked through a crowd for the very same small thing over the years. So she kept her chin firm and walked behind Shayborne. He went slowly, the slight limp less noticeable as he spoke to a man next to him in a jovial way, of the weather and travel and the price of bread. Not just the two of them now, but others, she thought, a family to draw them in.
‘You are a priest who hails from the south, Father?’ Celeste was close enough to hear the conversation between Summer and the man next to him now.
‘Indeed, I am. I have had word that my mother is ill and so...’ He stopped and she could hear the grief in his words.
‘Then you must let me send you on your way with some bread and cheese. Maria?’ A woman she had not seen joined the man along with three very young children. ‘Could you give a wedge of cheese to the priest here?’
The soldiers were to their right now and close, but without any hesitation whatsoever Summerley Shayborne stopped to take the offered fare.
The soldiers gestured them on, a family who were travelling together, their gazes lingering on others now, smaller groups, people who loitered alone. And then they were in the wider alleys of Place Clichy, disgorged into space. A tavern full of patrons lay before them and, after offering his farewell to the family group, it was to this that Shayborne led her.
Taking a small seat to one side of the room, she squeezed in beside him as the barmaid came over with two tankards of ale.
‘The fellow over there sends you these with his regards. He hopes he might join you?’
‘I would be honoured,’ Shayborne replied and lifted his glass to a tall man in the corner who ambled over and sat down, too.
‘It’s not a good day out, Father. Is it a room you’d be wanting?’
‘A meal might be more to our liking.’ Summer pulled forth a purse that was thin and light, placing it down on to the seat beside him.
The man was quick, Celeste had to give him that. Before she could blink an eye his hand had slid across the wood and replaced it with another purse almost the same, only this one was far heavier. When Summer lifted it again he gave no sign at all of anything being different as he extracted a few of the coins.
Summerley Shayborne knew this man and he had expected him to be here at this time on this day. As she helped herself to some of the food his eyes caught her own. Trust me, they seemed to say, and her fingers slid back from the knife at her belt.
‘My sister and her husband own a place a few streets west from here. I should imagine they will be pleased to put you up for a few nights for a reasonable price. Do you know Boulevard Malesherbes?’
‘Indeed, I do.’
‘Here is the address, then.’ He pulled paper from the bag at his belt and proceeded to write out his direction, though as the clock on the wall behind them boomed out the hour the man stood. ‘I will leave you to your meal. Bon appetit.’
Then he was gone, out into the street as the noise in the tavern rolled around them again, convivial and loud. She did not speak, though, as she processed the events of the past few moments in silence. The bread was fresh and the beef stew tasty. As she ate she realised it had been two days since she’d had a proper meal of any sorts and she was starving. Shayborne ate, too, his face set into a smile, though the tight white of his knuckles told her that danger was close somewhere. Breathing out, she copied him, relaxing the lines of her shoulders against the wall behind and tipping down her hat.
The two men knew each other, that much at least was plain. How had he set up this meeting before he’d ever had the need to? The barmaid watched them from her place across the room. A new student in the game of intelligence, Celeste supposed, for she herself would not have glanced across once.
Sometimes she felt ancient.
‘We’ll leave Paris tomorrow.’ He said this quietly, the tankard hiding his lips.
When she nodded he turned away as if his words explained everything. And perhaps they did. Even in a foreign city, Shayborne had set up contacts that were in place should he have a need of them. There was a sort of artistry in such forethought, as well as comfort. After six years of existing in the underbelly of Parisian espionage she had not managed to weave a safety net around herself at all and such negligence said as much about her as it did about him.
He was a man who did not operate alone. He trusted others and depended on their integrity, something she had never grasped the knack of. His contacts were solid.
She’d always paid others well, even for questionable loyalty, whilst he garnered his respect merely by being the sort of man that he was. Honourable. Swallowing, she was saddened by the comparisons between them and, when the meat stuck in her throat, she coughed and took a deep sip of the ale.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to accompany him, after all. Perhaps she should have disappeared after saving him in the dungeon of Les Chevaliers when he still thought her...worthy. Such a word made her smile because in truth she was so far from being anything like him.
‘You are enjoying the meal?’
For the first time since their arrival at the tavern she looked straight at Summerley Shayborne. ‘It is always enlightening to see a master at work.’
‘Hardly that.’ The light caught at the new growth on his chin.
‘I have seen your friend before. I cannot quite remember where.’
‘I wondered if you might have. He recognised you.’
‘Is he...safe?’ The last word was whispered though the noise in the room was substantial.
‘We’ll talk of it later. Right now we need to go.’
She saw him glance at the clock in the corner. Half an hour exactly since the man had departed. Further instructions had been given unsaid. He left a silver coin on the table.
Outside the sun was shining through the rain in that particular way of summer deluges. The small drops of it marked his habit in a darker colour. Celeste liked the coolness on her face.
Five streets to the south-west they came to the Boulevard Malesherbes. The man from the tavern was waiting in the vestibule and beckoned them forward. Three more flights of steps and they were in front of a door that was green, the paint peeling so that a brighter yellow showed through.
Inside, the place was tidy and well furnished.
‘I’ve been waiting for you since the day before yesterday, Shay, for Axel said you had been taken in by Benet and Les Chevaliers for questioning.’ His eyes came across to Celeste, looking her up and down.
‘Brigitte Guerin.’ Summer gave this introduction, the protection of the name telling her a lot. ‘She got me out.’
‘Perhaps only to sell you off to someone else at a higher price?’
Celeste tried to school her annoyance.
‘Brigitte, meet Aurelian de la Tomber.’
Now memory clicked. ‘I know of you. You are one of Clarke’s men and your family owns the most expensive house in Faubourg Saint Honoré. Aristocrats who have survived the reign of Terror virtually intact?’
‘Impressive.’ De la Tomber smiled and she thought then that he was almost as beautiful as Shayborne. She had never met him directly, but she had heard of him. A dangerous man by all accounts, a man who played a game a thousand times more convoluted than her own. Right now he only looked puzzled.
‘You’d be best to stay here for a day or two until the heat dies down. I shan’t come back again until tomorrow morning for it’ll be safer that way. There is food and water in the kitchen and good wine, too. My agency thinks you have already left Paris, but there are others who are not so sure. They know you are wounded. A bullet to the thigh by all accounts and not an easy thing to walk upon?’
‘It is better now. The merest scratch.’
‘I have doubts that the minions of Benet are slipping so badly in their expertise of torture.’ He looked at the habit and at Shayborne’s shaved head. ‘The persona of a devout Catholic priest has a certain power in it. I hope you know your verses.’
‘Napoleon has his detractors in the church, Lian, and there are very many places in which to gain sanctuary and have few questions asked.’
‘Wellesley is offering a substantial reward to anyone who can extract you from the French. He hopes you might simply turn up to claim it yourself if you can make it to the border of Spain...’
Shayborne stopped him. ‘I have not yet decided which route we will travel.’
‘You will stay together, then?’ There was a heavy frown across his brow, but he did not pursue such an insult further. ‘There is more money in the desk and weaponry in the space behind the painting of boats in the hall. If you have need of me, leave a candle in the front window at eight o’clock in the evening and I will come.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Oh, there is one more thing. Madame Debussy said that if I saw you, I was to give you this, Mademoiselle Guerin.’ He turned and lifted a book from the table, handing it to Summer.
So de la Tomber knew of her relationship with Caroline. That fact had her heart racing.
It was her father’s journal. Celeste knew the cover like the back of her hand and it was all she could do not to move forward and snatch it, her teeth digging into the soft flesh at the side of her mouth to prevent herself from speaking.
When he had gone, Shayborne passed the book over and she slipped it inside her jacket, every fibre in her body aching to open it. Not now. She needed time and space to read what her papa had written. At this moment it was enough that it was there, next to her heart. Safe.
* * *
Aurelian did not trust Celeste and Shay wondered what their connection was for the book meant something, too. He could see the pulse in the soft folds of her throat beating at a pace almost twice what it had been before. So many possibilities. He seldom left things to such chance and felt uneasy because of it.
Part of him wanted to flee from Paris now, before the darkness came. If he had been alone, he would have, but Celeste Fournier looked tired, the rings beneath her eyes almost purple in this light. There was grazing on her chin, too, and a cut on the bridge of her nose. The brutal cold-hearted woman who had come into the dungeon of Les Chevaliers and saved him had disappeared completely.
Instead she looked lost and uncertain. And damn young. The smoky bruised blue of her eyes held a thousand thoughts, each one turning through worry before she could hide it.
Had she been anyone else he might have held out his hand in comfort, but too many emotions shimmered between them and he was cautious.
‘You need to sleep. I will take the first watch.’
Outside, the day was darkening, more summer rain on the horizon. He was glad she made no answer, but moved away to find the bedroom. Her footfalls were soft and his fingers uncurled from their tight fists as he heard that she was gone.
‘God, help me,’ he prayed under his breath, frowning as he realised that it was the absolution of lust that he asked for. He remembered her scarlet lips and the pink-tipped nipple before the man she had used her knife on had closed his mouth about her breast.
The freedom of lust is a balm for any emptiness, Major, I promise it.
It had been almost three years since he had lain with a woman and Celeste Fournier’s easy offer had set fire to a libido long asleep. It would mean nothing to her, he knew it, a quick toss of passion and a quest for completion, for she had told him so exactly.
Hardly, monsieur. There was a whole world of lovers I was yet to meet.
The anger in him smothered desire. Lian de la Tomber hadn’t liked her. He had seen this in the eyes of his friend.
Celeste thought she had killed the bearded man torturing him in the dungeon, but he did not think she had. He’d seen the twitch of his fingers as they had left the room and the shallow pulse of life still at his throat.
Guy Bernard. Her husband, a brute and a bully. He had seen that himself first-hand, for when she had allowed the thin silk of her bodice to fall away from her shoulders into bareness, he’d noticed other bruises there. Marks of passion or of violence?
She was thin but rounded and the sensuality that he’d seen in her as a girl had only multiplied in womanhood. He shook his head and banished such a line of thought, glad for the shapeless habit that would not show any sign of his body’s response.
* * *
She went to him in the darkest hours of early morning because she heard him call out in some nightmare of the soul.
Pulling back the bed coverings, she slipped in beside him, wearing only her thin camisole. Light. Amorphous. Barely there. She was hot and wanting, her breath sliding across his face as her hands crept lower.
She felt him thick and warm and ready, his dreams translated into engorged flesh and heat as she positioned herself across him. When his eyes opened into wakefulness she saw shock, passion and anger before resistance fled.
Hers.
He was hers in the blink of an eye, filling her, deeper and tighter, the emptiness beaten back, all her shadows in the corner.
She did not want it to be gentle. She did not want a quiet, peaceful joining. She wanted the pain of lust driving them both, squeezing out memory, breathless with feeling. She sucked at the skin on his neck and knew she would mark him, bruise him. Her nails, short as they were, left gouges as she urged him on.
It was the only time she could ever lose herself, the only time she forgot all that was as she reached for rapture, until he turned and rose across her, pumping in, finding her centre in a hard and relentless power.
The muscles on his forearms were veined, his corded throat straining for his own release as hers suddenly beached upon them, wild and strong. She cried out and he covered the sound with his mouth, teeth at her lips as he finished himself.
Like a death.
Certain and for ever, the heart stopping before it made its way back into life.
Unwillingly.
Always the same.
She swiped away tears and got up, leaving him there in the night with the evidence of his desire running down the soft skin of her inner thighs, the smell of sex and oblivion on the air.
Celeste had exited the bed with as much haste as possible, leaving him lying there with his heart pounding and his breath hoarse and ragged.
‘Hell.’ The word slipped from him in a quiet liturgy of disbelief. What happens now, he thought, after this?
He could hear her dressing in the other room, replacing the armour that she had shed in his bed. He’d woken from a dream with her there above him and both worlds of desire had collided into the reality of their joining.
As it was meant to be, a small voice echoed inside him. As he had never felt it before, another voice added, and he turned on his side to look out into the night. Pure lust. Only the physical. He felt the driving force of his want still there, crouched in every fibre of his being. Her scent was there, too. Musky. Undeniable.
His discarded habit and her rosary lay on the chair beside him. A fallen servant of the Lord, lost in the thrall of the flesh. Even the bullet wound in his thigh had ceased to ache momentarily.
Was it only this once that Celeste meant to bed him? She had not uttered a word. That worried him. Sitting up, he leaned against the wall and pushed the sheet away, looking at his body just as she might have regarded it.
Had she enjoyed such lust?
She was pacing now, he could hear the footfalls as they wandered to and fro in the other room. Softening his breath, he sat very still, wishing morning would come and he could dress and they could thrash out what to do about...everything. The quiet turn of paper alerted him to the fact that she was reading the book Lian had given her.
A journal, he thought, for in the second he had held it he had seen the name of the edge on the spine.
August Fournier.
Her father’s thoughts. That would not be easy reading. August had been a man ill at peace with his world or with his place in it. He wished Celeste would wander in to talk with him, to discuss such ramblings. But she did not, the candle blown out after half an hour and the dark descending.
He made himself think about the morrow, the routes they might travel, the dangers they could encounter. Part of him wanted to turn east on exiting the city simply because it was the last direction anyone would look for him. But he had more contacts in the west and south and he knew he would need them. He also had a good deal of money now and Lian’s help would make the passage from Paris so much safer.
He wished they were already out of the city and away on the rural roads. It was easier to hide in the country than it ever would be in a town filled with soldiers. Easier to be alone with Celeste, too, but he pushed that consideration back.
A sniff alerted him to something not being quite right. Then another one came, muffled by cloth. She was crying. He hoped it was the book that had incited such strong emotion and not the regret of lying with him.
After a few moments, the sound stopped altogether and then there was only silence.
* * *
I am at my wits’ end to know what to do about Mary Elizabeth. I think she is mad and her mother knows this, too, for she watches her daughter like a hawk.
Last week she tried to kill us. She fed us meat that was laced with a poison and it was only after a few bites that the Dowager dashed away the plates so that they crashed upon the floor, tablecloth and all.
We were sick for days with a fever and Mary Elizabeth was locked in the West Wing and attended to by a series of physicians.
She tried to kill us again this morning on the rooftop of Langley...
Celeste closed the journal. She remembered this. Her mother shoving them hard from behind with a large piece of wood so they slipped down on to the icy tiles and slid a good ten yards before fetching up against a gutter post that protruded upwards. When she had looked back, her mama was gone and she and her papa had finally found purchase to crawl their way back to safety.
She’d visited Summer in the early afternoon of that same day, offering her body to the only true friend she had ever had, in gratitude and in shock. The white and blue garter she’d worn had been a symbol of all that she would forfeit in the gesture: marriage, domesticity, a future. She’d held on to him like a lifeline in a shifting sea and felt in such sacrifice the first stirrings of grace.
Long gone now, of course, such decency and mercy. She was everything these days that her mother had cursed her to be, half-dead and coldly detached. Broken save for this night in Summer’s arms.
That thought had her biting down on her bottom lip, gnawing at the shock of it. She’d begun to feel again in the deep thrust of his returned ardour, in the warmth of his skin and in the goodness of his soul. He’d leached out some of her coldness and replaced it with hope. Stupid, foolish, inane, nonsensical hope. The misguided desire for a second chance or another destiny that could never come to fruition for people like her.
When Summer had offered her marriage and the protection of his name, as they had both regained their breath after that first time in the barn at Langley, she’d laughed at him. She was tainted with the brush of her mother’s madness and not even marriage to Summer would save her from that. It could never have worked between them—demons and angels, after all, were a poor mix.
She’d wished her mother dead then and had returned to the house to find that she had killed herself, the windows being cloaked with dark fabric and the faces of the servants sombre.
She and her father had left Langley early the following morning, running for the English coast and France with all the haste of travellers who had chaos snapping at their heels.
And now here she was again, dancing in the arms of passion and trying to believe it could be more. Until the wedding ring had caught the light of the moon and slashed away any kind of a future.
The saint and the sinner.
There was a truth to the phrase that caught at her last vestige of honour and shattered it into pieces.
Lust required no invested emotion. She saw it merely as a physical process, a necessary action to soothe the mind and the body. Animals did it. Insects, too.
She shut the journal with a thud, wiped her eyes and lay down to sleep. No more. She must expect only the scraps of intimacy and be happy with it.
She was Brigitte Guerin, murderer, whore and thief, and a woman with the sort of past that meant she could never be more than a ghost on the very edge of a proper society.
Grinding her teeth together, she prayed that she would not dream tonight of the blood of her father’s death or of her own shame, so when the touch of Summer Shayborne came into her mind she smiled and relaxed into the warmth of memory. Take this little comfort, she thought, and savour it. Take tonight as a gift, the last joy of intimacy before she walked into the empty wasteland of her future.