by Lisa Chaplin
“Here comes the English whore, off to ply her wares again.”
Every Tuesday and Friday when Lisbeth passed her stall, the woman said the same words, and she was tired of running past. Tossing back her hood, Lisbeth stared at her tormentor. Iron-gray hair, ruddy cheeks in a square face, a sacking dress and mobcap tied beneath her chin. The tricolor ribbon pinned to her breast wasn’t for show. The Revolution had been good to her. The former peasant now held the largest pork stall in Abbeville, and she never tired of crowing over less fortunate neighbors.
The woman’s cheeks darkened at Lisbeth’s unexpected challenge. “Lower your eyes, you haughty bitch.” With the flat of her blade she swatted at a mouse nibbling on a pork slice. With a squeak, it toppled off the stall, landing at her feet. “Your father’s not worth a sou here. Citoyen Delacorte should throw you out of France and wed a decent Frenchwoman to raise his boy.”
Lisbeth only laughed. How she was no longer afraid she didn’t know. “Do you mean yourself, madame? Would you take on the task of living with my husband for my son’s sake, or would you perhaps send your daughter?”
At that the woman murmured something and made a little, stealthy sign of the cross. Though the people of Abbeville clung to the old respect for the Delacorte name, the gentleman her husband could have become had vanished when he was fifteen.
A hereditary knight of noble lineage, Châtelain Edmond Delacorte was one of a hundred thousand victims of Mademoiselle Death. False information had been given to the Committee of Public Safety by a neighbor jealous of Delacorte’s wealth, position, and pretty wife. Two days after his father’s death, Alain came home to find his mother raped and beaten senseless by the same neighbor. Killing the man with his bare hands only fed Alain’s fury and need for vengeance on enemies both visible and invisible.
How can one boy-man take retribution on a nation collapsing in on itself, a voracious people feeding on bloodlust and power, and remain sane? How had Lisbeth not once noticed during the weeks they’d met in secret? How had she not seen the violence and hatred in the romantic, poetic émigré until it was far too late?
Because I was seventeen and stupid, rebelling against Papa’s arranged marriage for me. Because Alain had lived a life of romance, excitement, and danger, and I’d barely left Norfolk.
She couldn’t let pity for his suffering change her determination. Getting her son away from Alain was all. It was everything. Alain was too damaged to raise a child; so he couldn’t frighten her off or isolate her enough to make her go. Until he killed her she’d never stop trying to take Edmond back.
Seeing the mouse creeping away, the stallholder kicked it. Lisbeth crossed in front of her, picked up the wriggling creature, and walked on, ignoring the jeering laughter.
When she reached the southern edge of the square, a lady approached from the western side of the stalls—a housekeeper for a good family judging by her cotton dress, poke bonnet, and the boy trotting beside her, carrying a laden basket. The moment she saw Lisbeth, the lady lifted her skirts and swept past as though she carried a contagion.
Only a year ago, that woman would have curtsied to her. A year ago Lisbeth would also have turned from a woman of ill repute. Now she knew tavern wench didn’t always mean harlot, even in a notorious place like Le Boeuf. Sometimes it just meant hunger and desperation—and Alain was not the gentleman his father had been.
Despite her gentle caresses, the mouse quivered in her hand, its little eyes terrified. It cringed when her finger moved. A kindred soul in her hand: it also understood that a caress could be a prelude to pain.
She crossed the old stone footbridge across the Somme and laid the little creature in the nearest garden. “Be safe, and no more pork from that stall for you,” she whispered as it vanished beneath crunching leaves fallen from the amber tree above.
She walked on, shaking her head and laughing. Reduced to talking to a mouse . . . laughing by herself. If Alain saw her, he’d have her put in an asylum.
Tavern Le Boeuf, Abbeville, France
It was her.
In an overwarm taproom filled with men yelling, singing, and groping the laughing waitresses, Duncan sat at an unpolished table in a corner far from the fire. Snuffing the candle or keeping his hood over his face would only draw attention, so he sat at the farthest corner from its muted light, sprawled across the crude bench seat as if sleeping.
He still felt naked. A man couldn’t be alone here without people noticing. Almost all the girls had approached him about food or drink, or offering sex. Before long one man pointed at him with a nod, frowning, and then another.
When the next girl approached him, he paid for half an hour with her.
When they reached the room, he said softly, “Take a rest.” The girl, tall and buxom, gave him a half-pouting smile of regret, and he felt his body respond. In other circumstances, he’d have relieved the tension; but after all he’d been through to find her, he wasn’t letting his target out of sight. He climbed out the window, down the ivy, and watched her through a window.
It seemed appropriate.
When the half hour was done, he climbed back up the ivy, paid the sleeping girl, returned downstairs, and asked for ale. Keeping on target. Watching her. Waiting.
The match to the kit-cat Eddie gave him was exact. The porcelain skin was touched by a dusting of freckles on her nose and cheeks, a giveaway to her tomboy childhood in the sun. The unique stripes of blond-and-honey hair were woven into a braid. Eddie said her unusual hair was the bane of her life, but it became a different hue in each light, glossy and changeable, more fascinating than one perfect shade. Skin flushed with hard work highlighted her cheekbones and brightened her slightly slanted green eyes, showing up laughter lines. Though she’d barely smiled beyond a polite stretching of lips, it was the tip-tilted, charming smile of her mother, giving an impression of crookedness that wasn’t in her bone structure. She was by no means a classic beauty, yet he’d remember her face long after the current diamonds of London society became fat, overdressed breeders of the next generation of entitled brats.
He shrugged. What he thought of the girl wasn’t important. He’d found her. He’d talk to her. Then his responsibility ended.
Watching her, he thanked God he wouldn’t have to hide the truth of her occupation from Eddie. Le Boeuf promised willing girls, but she avoided groping hands, wouldn’t sit on anyone’s lap, and returned coins pushed at her by randy men. She wore an apron tied loosely over the tight, red-checkered uniform. A ruff of tucked-in lace hid her cleavage. She used a multitude of pins to push back rebel locks of hair falling in her face. Neat, modest, severe, she worked twice as hard as any girl in the room, never heading upstairs with a happy customer.
He might be relieved, but the men she served were less happy. “Bitch,” one man nearby snarled when he groped her, and she tipped ale into his lap.
“Pardon, Monsieur LeClerc, the jug was overfull,” she said in flawless French, her tone cool. “I will pour you another, on the house.”
“On your wages, Elise,” an older man shouted from the taps, as sulky as his thwarted patron. Duncan frowned. She was called Elise now? Had she become so French in a year?
The girl poured the glass, keeping the jug over the patron’s lap the entire time. The sulky patron didn’t move, didn’t say a word. The girl had spirit, he’d give her that.
Near closing time he made his way out, keeping to the wall, listening as he went. Because of the singing, slapping, rattling of crockery, and general talk, he heard only snatches.
“My daughter’s as ugly as my wife. Le bon Dieu only knows how . . .”
“If Fouchard’s guillotined, his widow . . . the farm . . .”
“Fulton’s new inventions . . . Fouché—” The men stopped talking as Duncan passed; but that they’d seen him at all was the giveaway. Alerted, he slowed as he wove among the tables, now knowing why a subtle excitement had filled him on entering the tavern. Too many of these seeming drunks weren’t drunk
at all, and he’d have known it from the start if finding the girl hadn’t distracted him. Ears honed, he kept moving, weaving a little, a foolish smile on his face. Touching, holding on to tables and chairs as he went, as if for balance.
“. . . October twenty-ninth, near Boulogne-sur-Mer. The Gaillard brothers and O’Keefe—” Again, the speakers stopped on seeing him so close. Little wonder, for the names were puppeteer’s strings jerking him to a halt. A glance gave him further information. He forced out a belch, swayed, and grinned at them all before forcing himself to keep walking toward the exit.
What were the odds of two different groups of men being here tonight, discussing people of interest to the British Alien Office, on the exact night and place he’d found the girl? One of the names mentioned was Deville O’Keefe: French mother, Irish father, and a half-rogue operative for the Alien Office. The Gaillard brothers were also Alien Office operatives, but again, their loyalties were always in question. Loose cannons, all three of them.
On passing out into the darkness, Duncan frowned. Something had felt off, not quite right, for days now. Heavily armed soldiers had demanded his credentials to enter Boulogne-sur-Mer, a Channel port fifty miles distant. It seemed he needed written permission from General Soult, Admiral Latouche-Tréville, or First Consul Bonaparte himself. It happened again on every road he’d tried into the town. Semaphore messages from his ship reported the substantial French naval patrols on that part of the Channel, even by night. Soldiers had also challenged his entry on the main road into Abbeville today. They hadn’t been as stringent as at Boulogne, allowing him in after seeing his papers. Yet something about the experience still rankled. Now this.
Something was happening on the Channel Coast. October 29 was only ten weeks off. The White and Red Rose teams in St-Malo and Calais were too well known. His team was new, unknown, so far unnamed (thank God for that; he hated all the classical or romantic code names Zephyr insisted on). His was the only team in the region . . . and the girl was right here at the hub, with every reason to return night after night.
Damp Breeches pushed past him in the night, his friend in his wake. “Haughty English bitch. I’ll show her who’s a man.”
Duncan sighed.
THE MOON WAS A harvester’s sickle hanging low over the west as Lisbeth left the tavern via the servants’ exit, her eyes hot and itchy, her hands rough and hard from scrubbing floors. The stiff night breeze softened the acrid perfume of spilled wine and wood smoke on her clothes, and cooled the sweat beading her face. Even after a pulsing-hot day, when the night Channel wind hit, it felt almost like winter. Drawing her cloak around her, she bid farewell to Elise . . . at least for the walk back to the place that would never be home. Elise lived in a cramped room in a pension, walked to work and back, took the insults and lower wages. Lisbeth was English to the fingertips, with carriages at her disposal, and home was a converted abbey snug in the rolling fields of Norfolk, with Mama in her sitting room reading or embroidering while her renegade daughter escaped on her spirited roan mare, and poor Ralph chased her on his hack. “Give over, Miss Lizzy! Go back to yer ma ’n’ yer lessons. What’d yer da say if he was here?”
That was always the question nobody could answer.
As she reached the shadow of St. Vulfran’s, a church again after years of storing either pigs or ammunition, she heard footsteps behind her. Please, God, not again.
“Elise, you can’t walk home alone. You need protection.”
She pursed her mouth. It seemed LeClerc hadn’t forgiven her for the incident with the beer; the tone was aggressive beneath the persuasiveness. No doubt the second set of footfalls was his ever-present sidekick, Tolbert. Gritting her teeth, she strode on. She’d long ago learned that saying anything to them, even rejection, only encouraged these fools.
“Elise, end this foolishness.” LeClerc’s rough voice was impatient but held a note of would-be tenderness. “We’ve played your game long enough.”
In grim determination she walked even faster.
Tolbert puffed as he trotted behind LeClerc. “You owe Delacorte no loyalty.”
“He deserted you and stole your child—but you need not be alone. We want to be so kind to you.”
Lisbeth closed her eyes for a moment, fighting the rebel ache, longing for a kind word, a gentle touch. Perhaps they would be kind to me . . . at least until I’m not so young or the novelty of my birth and English blood palls.
They hadn’t been kind in mentioning Edmond. That type of ploy was far too clever for these two . . . but Alain knew how she loved her son.
In the precious minutes she’d held her baby she’d forgotten Edmond’s conception, or how she’d prayed to miscarry at the start; she’d even hoped they could become a family. Then Alain took Edmond and disappeared, leaving her with medical debts and the rent.
What had she done to make Alain hate her so? She’d told him Papa didn’t love her, yet Alain had been furious when Sir Edward Sunderland refused to allow either of them in the door after she’d eloped. By the time she’d discovered the reason Papa would never allow his new son-in-law into his home, it was far too late.
“That’s it, chérie,” LeClerc said in an exulting tone, far too close. She must have slowed. Like a fox with hounds on her scent, she hitched up her skirts and bolted.
Booted feet pounded behind her. Jerked back by the hem of her cloak, she fell on the cobblestoned road. A jolt of pain shot up her spine. She couldn’t breathe.
In the muted light of his lantern, LeClerc’s thin, ordinary face came into view, his eyes red rimmed with drink and blazing with excitement. “Come, chérie, it’s over now. Be sweet to us, and you’ll see how good we’ll be in return.”
Oh, yes, Alain had taught her all about the goodness of men. She screamed as loud as she could. Not one light went up in response. When LeClerc reached for her, she head-butted him.
“Salope!” LeClerc hauled her over his shoulder and carried her, kicking and screaming, to a mossy mound between the cemetery and the church wall. “Arrogant chatte, you’ll pay for that, and the ale you threw on me. So you think you’re above us? Here you’re the same as any other girl in the tavern. Liberté, egalité, fraternité. Vive le France!”
The bitter irony tasted like gall. Yes, in post-revolutionary France there was equality and fraternity if you were rich, talented, or French. Liberty was yours if your neighbors didn’t report you to the latest committee or paranoid leader, if you didn’t work with whores by necessity, or—
LeClerc pushed her on her back, and the memory of her last birthday flashed into her brain. Not again, never again! She twisted and kicked, arms flailing. “Help me! Rape!”
No candle lit in all the row houses across the road. No sound from the presbytery she’d just passed. Echoes of the night at The White Goose were screaming from the abyss of memory.
She’d known all along these idiots worked for Alain, but this was cruel, even for him.
The knife! She pulled it from her cloak, but with a blow to her wrist, LeClerc sent it spinning. With an exasperated huff, he put a cupped hand over her mouth, the other hand pressing his fingers into her throat until she choked, fighting for air. “No more tricks, or I’ll really hurt you.”
She bunched her hand into a fist, gathering dirt and grass, and threw it in his face.
LeClerc’s blow to her temple sent broken gravestones spinning behind her eyes. “Hold her.” Tolbert grabbed her arms. LeClerc hitched up her skirts and loosened the tie at his breeches.
“Release the lady if you want to live.”
CHAPTER 3
Abbeville, France
August 18, 1802
THE GROWLING VOICE CAME from the darkness close by. The unmistakable noise of pistols cocking followed. Tolbert and LeClerc gasped and released their grip on her.
Lisbeth’s eyes snapped open. Was he a figment of her desperate imagining? But Tolbert’s low-lit lantern and the uncertain moonlight illuminated a tall man swathed in a cloak, aiming two
pistols at her attackers.
“I shoot with both hands equally well.” With a subtle Spanish accent, he made her think of the banditti, professional killers. “But I don’t have a shovel to bury you. So start running.”
Tolbert bolted, tripping over crumbled gravestones, taking the low outer wall at a leap, arms windmilling in an attempt to go faster. LeClerc ran after him, holding his undone breeches with one hand while the other flapped, like a one-winged bird.
The stranger returned his pistols to his cloak pockets. “Did they hurt you, madame?”
The words barely penetrated the fog in her mind. She couldn’t stop shaking. All she knew was that her bunched-up clothes exposed her to the waist like a harlot. If she still had her pantalets, as a lady of breeding . . .
Pull down your skirts! But her arms remained above her head, refusing to obey her will.
He stooped down. Energized by panic she scrambled back, but he only pulled her dress and her cloak over her. “May I see you home?”
She stared at him. Beautiful manners. Pure Picardy-Norman French now, with no accent.
Looming over her in the darkest hour of night, he was so big. With the hood pulled down, she couldn’t see his face.
“Please tell me you’re not hurt, madame.”
Strange concern in his low murmur. Faceless, anonymous, a stranger. I don’t even know his voice, but he called me Madame. Does he know me?
Stupid! Everyone knows you. You’re the only British whore in Abbeville.
The random observations felt like a ship’s log being filled, coming one after the other, adding to her confusion.
“Will you let me help you, madame?”
That he asked her permission felt like cement slapped over broken bricks: it smoothed the shards of her dignity, yet the cracks remained beneath. All she could manage was jagged breathing, and staring at that faceless space inside the hood.
