The Tide Watchers

by Lisa Chaplin

“You’re shivering.” Gloved hands divided from his voluminous cloak, reaching to her.

  She jerked up and pointed a shaking finger at him. “Don’t touch me.” She hardly expected obedience. Men never allowed women control: not fathers, brothers, husbands, or even chivalrous, hooded strangers.

  Yet without a word he stood, pulled off his cloak, and laid it over her, shrouding her in its warmth. He laid his pistols by her and returned to sit at her feet.

  He’d handed her his pistols? Why? She blinked and waited for him to speak, but he seemed content on the ground, waiting for her word to move. With the thin moon fallen behind the Channel, his face was a black silhouette in the dearth of light. Was he the phantom imagining of a desperate girl, an uncertain resemblance of what a gentleman ought to be?

  The minutes ticked past while she shivered and he remained silent, waiting.

  At last she whispered, “Help me.”

  He got to his feet. “I’m coming behind you. Now I’ll put my hands under your arms, so. Are you ready?”

  Overwhelmed, she could only nod. It hurt her throat, made it hard to breathe.

  Touching only her underarms, he lifted her to her feet. When her legs trembled, he murmured, “May I carry you to the bench?”

  After a long moment, tossing up whether speaking would hurt less, she nodded.

  He set her on the bench in the belfry’s shadow and wrapped his cloak around her once more. He retrieved his pistols and left them beside her. “Are you feeling warmer? If you take a chill, you won’t be able to work tomorrow.”

  Lisbeth started. He’d been at the tavern? The man in the corner who’d turned from her whenever she approached him?

  Why was he treating her as a lady when he’d seen her at work, and had just seen more of her than any stranger ought? How could he expect her trust when he wouldn’t show her his face? Unwanted intimacy, respect, and concern coming from blackness. She wanted to pull her own hood over her face, run away. If she could make her legs obey her.

  If only she could be sure LeClerc and Tolbert weren’t waiting for the opportunity.

  The stranger sat still, lost in the night. It seemed deliberate. He’d put her in the light while he remained in darkness and silence. She refused to speak first, or play the helpless damsel to this odd Galahad . . . but the silence grew and her curiosity hurt.

  “Who are you? Do you know me?” she whispered at last.

  She felt rather than saw his smile: a tiny hummingbird of satisfaction fluttering in the air. “You may call me Gaston.”

  Her mouth turned down as a cold sliver touched her bone. “No, I may not, monsieur. Not without ruining what reputation I have.”

  After a moment, a slow nod came. “Then you may call me Monsieur Borchonne.”

  She frowned at him, doubting. Somehow, despite his perfect accent, he didn’t look French. Or maybe it was the lost Spanish accent? “It’s not your real name, is it?”

  He didn’t answer. Knowing herself to be in the right, she didn’t lower her gaze, but lifted her chin and waited.

  Eventually he spoke. “You’re still shivering. This may help.” He held something out. Squinting, she caught the dull glint of a flask. “Brandy’s good for shock.”

  “So is tea,” she replied, feeling foolish.

  Again she heard the smile in his voice. “I know tea is preferable to ladies, but I’m afraid this is all I have.”

  There was something in his voice, an expectation of obedience. Almost resenting it, she lifted the flask to her mouth. In seconds she spluttered and choked.

  A low chuckle. “It always happens the first time. Sip slowly, and count to ten.”

  Saying that—understanding that she hadn’t drunk brandy before when he knew she worked at a tavern—insensibly soothed her. By the time she reached nine, the pain in her throat eased a little. “Merci, monsieur.” It was deliberate, leaving out the Borchonne.

  She felt his disapproval in the long time it took to say, “I have a horse over there.” His half-turned face indicated the street. “Do you think you could sit astride?”

  The times she’d been in Mama’s black books for wearing a pair of Leo’s or Andrew’s jodhpurs, and riding astride . . . she forced down a second bubble of laughter, lest he think she’d lost her mind. “Yes.”

  The stranger stood. “I’ll fetch him.”

  She grabbed his jacket. “Don’t leave me.” Thick broadcloth, warm and functional, a working man’s jacket on a gentleman. The understanding only added to the enigma.

  The moment the silence grew painful, he spoke. “May I carry you to the horse?”

  She couldn’t walk, couldn’t bear to be alone, and LeClerc and Tolbert could return with weapons—or God help her, with Alain, given her new suspicions—at any moment. “Yes.”

  He carried her through shadows in the darkest part of night. In the blackness there was only the faint silver of fading stars. When she squeezed her eyes shut, her other senses took over. Warmth and security and her pounding heart, too many impressions too fast, overwhelming.

  She was tall, but he dwarfed her. His clothes smelled clean, his skin fresh. No reek from beneath his arms. His breath smelled of peppermint water and hazelnut wood. She knew both scents from Mama’s obsession with avoiding the dentist to have her teeth drawn. He’d probably rinsed his mouth and used a twig to clean his teeth.

  The information clicked like a cog into a wheel. Rough clothes, but newly washed. Clean teeth, sweet breath.

  Her arm around his neck, she felt the unevenness to his shoulders. It felt unnatural. An injury? Was he a soldier? Naval officer?

  A horse nickered nearby. “The stirrup is by your left foot, madame.”

  All by feel, she slid her foot into the stirrup, found the pommel, twisted her body around, and swung up. When he untied his horse, she took the reins and covered her bare legs with her cloak.

  She looked at him. He was looking down at her hands. His hair was thick and dark, tied naval style with a riband. “The trembling is much less. Trés bien. I see you like horses. You mounted astride perfectly.”

  “A misbegotten youth,” she said with a chuckle. How could a stranger keep making her want to laugh, when he seemed so serious, and she’d barely even wanted to smile in the past year?

  Without answering, the stranger steered the horse in the direction of her street. He stopped the horse on the uneven cobblestones in front of the pension on the rue Jeanne d’Arc.

  He knows where I live. The scales of knowledge were too one-sided, too personal. Though her hands were still cold, her palms turned sweaty.

  A room above them had a candle burning by the window, too soft to see him as he came around to the other side. He didn’t lift his head, showing only his dark hair, the riband. He must have been in France for some time, to understand the danger of those who watched, listened. “Can you dismount unaided?”

  She scrambled off the horse on the wrong side rather than let him touch her again and hit the ground with a shock in her feet. With a gasp she leaned on the wall of the pension, fingers digging into the mortar. The bulging cement with globs of plaster laid over to strengthen the painted wooden beams supporting the medieval house was cold to the touch, and she shivered.

  “You need warm gloves, madame.” Barely a whisper.

  “I—forgot them today.” Pot-valiant lie—but she couldn’t rely on an eccentric Galahad who saw too much and gave too little. If he had gloves in his pocket, she didn’t want them.

  She handed him his cloak without looking at his unshielded face. Discretion was the only gift she could give in return for all he’d done tonight. “Thank you for your rescue, your cloak, and your escort, monsieur.”

  “Those men won’t give up.” He pulled the cloak on, the hood down. “I can teach you to use that knife to greater effect.”

  So he was coming back. That meant he wanted something from her—then she sucked in a breath. “The knife isn’t mine. Monsieur Marron will take it from my wages, and I can�
�t—”

  “Madame.” When she looked up, he was holding the knife’s hilt out to her.

  A year ago, her greatest fear was Papa’s arranged betrothal of her to a rich nobleman she’d never met. Now her life was reduced to avoiding unwanted attention, and worrying over the cost of a knife. Feeling small and stupid, Lisbeth mumbled, “You’ve been a godsend tonight.”

  “All this is unworthy of you,” he said quietly. “You’re a baronet’s daughter. Don’t you want everything you left behind? Don’t you long to go home?”

  Like fog rolling in from the river, sorrow enveloped her. Her rescuer had just inflicted more pain on her than any LeClerc or Tolbert could give. How could he speak so casually of returning to England, when she’d give her life’s blood to go home?

  “He burned my identity papers,” she muttered, thoroughly trained in controlling every emotion around men during the past year. “A man legally owns his wife. With soldiers posted on every road, I can’t even leave Abbeville without his permission.”

  A moment’s silence. What had she said to grab his attention? Then another whisper: hooded temptation, anonymous desire. “You can. Just say the word. I can take you home.”

  Home . . . oh, the careless wound. Her sharp-drawn breath hurt her chest, like a thin dagger thrust. Yearning engulfed her, the hopes and dreams she’d buried since waking from a drugged sleep to find herself in France. To ride the fields of Barton Lynch once more . . . Mama scolding lovingly, always trying to make her hoyden daughter a lady . . .

  He’d said home as if it was his home, too. So his name and both his accents had been a lie. After the past year, she refused to put her life in the hands of any man. And there was Edmond. “No.” She pushed off the wall and headed on unsteady feet for the door of the pension.

  “How long have those men been following you?”

  Unwilling to answer, she owed him this honesty at least. She kept her back to him. “Since I began at Le Boeuf they’ve been propositioning me, touching me . . . following me.”

  “I can end that problem, if you’ll trust me.”

  She almost laughed in his face. Trust? How stupid. No, he didn’t know her.

  Seventeen months ago she’d been an ingénue in pretty gowns and pearls, in London for the Season. With a smile and curtsy, she’d accepted dances with men she regarded as gentlemen because Mama said they were. Because they dressed the part, could speak the part, and made an elegant bow. The greatest judgment she’d made was on their looks, if they could dance, if their breath was sweet or rank, or if they’d flattered her enough. Boring fribbles that wanted her inheritance, the daughter of the wealthiest baronet in Norfolk, just as other men wanted her friend Georgy because she was a duke’s daughter. The two of them had played tricks on those men, banded together against their matchmaking parents, and generally brewed mischief.

  Now she was a fallen woman who’d made stupid choices she had to live with.

  Turning to the door with its peeling green paint and ancient oak showing beneath, she tried to keep her voice even. “Thank you, but no. You’ve done more than enough.”

  “I’ll be outside Le Boeuf tomorrow night.”

  No man could be as kind and disinterested without wanting something. She stared into the hood, fathomless darkness where a face should be. “I’d prefer it if you were not—tomorrow or any night. I may be beholden to you, but I am not like the other women at Le Boeuf.”

  “You owe me nothing, and I ask nothing.” Quiet, yet spoken with a hardness that made Lisbeth gasp and step back, and he softened. “I beg your pardon, madame.”

  With difficulty, she nodded. “Go on,” she murmured.

  “If I can’t come to you, one of my men will do so. He’ll use the word Tidewatcher.”

  She blinked and tilted her head, frowning. “What—tidewatcher? What does that mean?”

  “Bonsoir, madame.” Before she could recoil he’d come around the horse, bowed over her hand, and, taking the horse’s reins, slipped into the night.

  She stared into the predawn emptiness, dark gray as his cloak. Had it been a dream? The thick curls of morning river mist added to the sense of unreality. If she’d stayed home, she’d be a future baroness, established in London’s haut ton, surrounded by friends and family. Instead—

  She could hear Alain’s gloating voice. Happy birthday, ma chère. Remember last year?

  No. Reliving the night at The White Goose only gave him power over her. There was no point in regretting the spoiled, headstrong child she’d been. She was a mother now.

  Yet as she entered the pension and locked the door behind her, her eyes fluttered shut. I’m sorry I was a difficult daughter, Mama. I wish I’d stayed to meet the baron’s heir for you, Papa.

  Thinking of her father brought her anonymous Galahad to mind. Despite his gallantry—or perhaps because of it—she saw him as a hawk on the hunt, circling above her. Her father had sent him, she felt certain of that; but there was some purpose beyond that, something he couldn’t ask of her after she’d been attacked. But he’d be back tomorrow, and he’d ask then.

  Given the woman she’d become, the only two options left her chilled to the bone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Abbeville, France

  August 18, 1802

  DUNCAN SLIPPED INTO THE saddle with a strong sense of now is the summer of my discontent. Even the small satisfaction of finding her had been snatched away, like a Captain Sharp cheating him at the card table. He’d found the girl. He should be able to go home, returning with a clean conscience, and report to Eddie that his runaway daughter was well and happy. Then he could go home. Put this waste of a year behind him. Get on with his life.

  But when Bertie Greatheed wrote to Zephyr, it changed everything. The full message had come that morning. Greatheed, owner of the Royal Pump Rooms, traveler, dramatist, and font of all British gossip in France, had said, “French husband deserted her. Chit’s put herself beneath contempt, working in a tavern where the girls whore themselves.” Duncan could almost see the midlands squire speaking in his broad accent, shaking his round head. “If she joined the ranks or not don’t matter. No family of good reputation would take her back.”

  As the coach rumbled south on bad coastal roads from Étaples to Abbeville yesterday, Duncan had hoped it wasn’t the Sunderland girl. That she was somewhere else, or even dead.

  Greatheed knew their world well, the world of British high society. A son was forgiven any and all peccadilloes and welcomed home, but a daughter must remain pure. If she married a rich nobleman, she might make it worth Society’s overlooking her past, but the chances of that were minuscule if she wasn’t a virgin. Though she was an heiress—Eddie’s wealth was almost indecent—the scandal of eloping to Scotland with an émigré, and one who’d turned out to be a spy for the infamous French spymaster Joseph Fouché, meant the Sunderland girl had no chance of returning to Society. Especially because it seemed she’d be unwilling to desert the son she should never have had.

  He’d set up his cover story, the Gaston Borchonne alias to hand. Armed with perfectly forged papers, the ever-efficient Burton had found the agent for the Borchonne house and obtained the keys. The entire Borchonne family was dead, apart from the long-missing Gaston and one missing cousin. Everything was in place, thanks to Zephyr’s foresight—

  How long had Zephyr known the girl was here—and how long had he been distracting Duncan with minor missions, allowing the girl to suffer? So typical of Zephyr, but if Eddie found out . . . then he chuckled. As if Zephyr would care.

  Duncan had been to Abbeville months before, but he hadn’t thought to come to Le Boeuf, the most notorious of taverns on the Amiens-Calais road. The tavern from which no redemption would come, if Eddie or anyone else found out the girl had even passed its portals.

  With her unique face and hair, he’d recognized her at once. Even wearing a red-and-white-checkered dress spotted with sauce and ale stains, and ugly boots, the air shimmered around her. It was like she
carried a pocket of hectic magic, resonating from another time or place, like a tale of the ancients. Not like the mythic Helen, or the glorious Lorelei on her rock. She didn’t have the beauty that led to madness. It was something else . . . the girl had the same blind distance in her eyes as the mermaid figurehead on his ship. The Oracle—yes, the priestess hiding behind the wall who decided a man’s future while she remained held apart from the concerns of ordinary men.

  He clipped the side of his head. “Stick a cork in your stupid bloody myths and sailors’ superstitions. Stick to the point.”

  He’d completed one mission only to stumble onto one more imperative. The girl worked in an obvious hub of French espionage. Without trying, she’d given him a way to ferret out the mysteries at Tavern Le Boeuf . . . and what it was they had scheduled for October 29.

  He’d reached the Borchonne house. He opened the gate and headed to the small stable to get Blue settled.

  A reluctant confession to make, but a small, mean part of him had hoped to find her life here less than blissful. He’d thought it a minor vengeance, considering all she’d put him through. But the way she’d been treated by the patrons at Le Boeuf, the owner, the men who’d attacked her—no one answered her screams for help. It felt . . . well, rehearsed. A Drury Lane drama.

  His knowledge of Alain Delacorte gave the suspicions credence. A few months ago, Bonaparte had deposed Delacorte’s mentor, Joseph Fouché, as the head of the secret police, even scrapping the entire portfolio. Though he’d been given over a million francs for his ousting, and was still France’s unofficial spymaster, it was the power Boney denied him that Fouché craved most. One of his minions was Alain Delacorte—and, like his mentor, Delacorte enjoyed playing puppet-master. Arranging this dangerous, lonely life for the mother of his child was probably good sport to a man of his talents—a way to alleviate the boredom.

  Why was Delacorte still in Abbeville? It couldn’t be the girl; surely she was no threat. But given the sentries in the region, and the conversations at Le Boeuf—

  The Treaty of Amiens had ended the war months ago, but in the Channel region, it didn’t seem so. Something here smelled foul to the wind. Boney was up to something—and if Fouché knew, it explained Delacorte’s continued presence.