by Lisa Chaplin
A whisper came from behind him. “Monsieur, I’m here to report.”
He wheeled around, causing his almost-healed leg to twinge. The boy’s whole bearing was taut with nerves. So his first attempt had failed. Without a word, Duncan led Argenteuil to the tent to give him everything he’d need for the next part of his mission.
Inside the house, pacing the floor of her room until she was sure Fulton would be lost in his work, Lisbeth decided it was safe to begin her initial tests. “First step up from the landing squeaks in the middle,” she whispered, to help her remember. “Fourth floorboard from the landing window is also loud. Walk against the banister.”
Even on the edge of the stairs to the attic where he worked, a stair squeaked. All movement ceased above. Holding her breath, she retreated to her room and snuffed the candle. Soft squeaks followed her all the way down, stopping outside the closed door.
In a panic, she made the muffled sounds of a woman crying into her pillow.
The squeaking steps as he returned to the attic hovered in her ears, echoes of her self-disgust. So this was the life of a King’s Woman—deceive and betray, using feminine wiles—and for Edmond’s sake, she hadn’t even hesitated.
She closed her eyes, but sleep was elusive. How many mistakes had she made today—and how long could she use the part of the bird with the broken wing to cover her errors and he’d still believe her?
CHAPTER 24
Ambleteuse, France
September 13, 1802
LISBETH FOUND THE NOTE in the triangular pantry, right beside the tiny window he’d asked her to leave open.
Madame, it’s been two days. Why have you not come to me? It is imperative that I know what you have learned.
“Are you well, madame? Do you need something?”
Lisbeth froze in place. Fulton had come up behind her, as she was about to make her escape. Every time she turned around he was there.
Even with her back to him she felt his presence, watching—like LeClerc and Tolbert. Like Alain. “Please don’t creep up behind me, m’sieur,” she whispered.
The silence conveyed his dismay. “My dear girl, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
I have but six weeks to save Edmond. She shrank from his reaching hand. “I—I just wish to walk for a little. I still need to purchase, um . . . ?” This time it had the advantage of being true.
“Of course, madame, I beg your pardon. I forgot,” he mumbled, his face burning.
The awkwardness of cohabiting strangers hovered in the air: the awkwardness and intimacy she must foster, maintaining his instinct to protect while preventing him from forming any suspicions. “May I go now?” She heard the quiver in her voice, hating the lie by inference.
“It looks set to rain. If you wait—” He stopped when she cringed again. “You’re free to come and go as you wish, madame.” He sounded mortified.
Crushing a wish to reassure him, she shoved the commander’s note into her sling and pinched her aching arm before turning her white, battered face to his. “M’sieur, I need those three francs . . . ? If you can give me a little also for food . . . ?”
“I am a fool in every way.” He crossed the room and out, to his library. She heard a drawer open and close again. Within a minute he returned with a handful of coins, his cheeks still flushed, his eyes filled with remorse. “Use what you need, madame. Count no cost.”
Knowing his limited pocketbook, she smiled, slow and diffident. She hated manipulating his chivalrous instincts. She slipped the coins into her cape pocket. “Thank you, m’sieur.”
“Please return soon, madame, lest my anxiety engulfs me and I begin hunting for you.”
Though meant as a joke, she felt the veiled threat. Her smile faded. Wheeling around too fast for her injured body to cooperate, she walked through the door, and closed it behind her.
Trying to keep balance on the uneven path in a hard salty wind, she was halfway along it when she heard a rustle in the blackberry brambles and a hard whisper. “Madame, I’m here.”
She started, jerking her arm in its sling. Sudden, savage pain hit her shoulder; her head spun, her legs wobbled and she began to fall.
The commander caught her against his shoulder, making her feel warm and safe for a moment; then he laid her on the cold, damp sand. “Fulton was watching you from the attic. He’ll be here any moment.” She barely heard him through the whining wind. “Madame, I beg your pardon. I should never have demanded your presence before you were completely recovered.”
The echo of Fulton’s words annoyed her. “I’m not a child.”
“I know that.” With a tiny rustle of brambles, he was gone.
The sound of pounding feet reached her ears. “Elise!” Fulton sounded frantic. “Thank God I was watching you.” He lifted her in his arms. She flopped against him like a cloth doll.
In his dirty smock and a coal smudge on his cheek, his pince-nez askew and eyes wild, Fulton was the most unlikely knight she could imagine—but she could only be grateful for his care. Sudden, swirling rain turned sleetlike before they reached the house, wetting them both.
In her room, he laid her on the bed. “You must change out of those damp things. How have you coped until now? I ought to have asked. Madame, may I help you to—to undress?”
Before he’d finished his question, she’d scurried to the other end of the bed, pulled the blankets up to her chin, and snatched up Luc Marron’s knife from under her pillow, tears streaming down her face. Instead of Fulton’s kind, shocked face, she saw Alain’s vivid triumph as he’d left her broken and bleeding a year ago, LeClerc’s blazing excitement as he’d jerked her skirts up . . . “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me!”
Fulton was white around the mouth. “Oh, dear Lord.” He took a step back. “I—make a list of what we need at the store; I’ll buy it. I’ll build you a fire and bring an armchair in. You can sit and dry your dress in peace. You need to rest and eat. I-I could toast bread over the fire, with butter and cheese. And—tea, yes? Ladies like tea with milk. The farmer delivered milk . . .”
Still in mid-babble, Fulton turned and bolted from the room—and Lisbeth burst into tears, crying as though she’d never stop. It seemed Fulton was already emotionally involved. But she had to learn how to ensnare him sexually, or she’d never get the boat, or save her son.
CHAPTER 25
Ambleteuse, France (Channel Coast)
September 16, 1802
SEE THIS?” FULTON HEAVED an iron cylinder into his arms. “This is the propulsion chamber for the, um, barrels.”
In the small A-shaped attic by the roaring fire, in a wing chair covered in blankets, Lisbeth smiled. He’d stopped saying “corpses” the first time he’d seen her shudder, but he couldn’t bring himself to say “bombs.” The reality of what he’d created seemed to offend him.
“Releasing a barrel by lighting it, attaching it to a screw outside the submersible, and releasing it by turning the screw gave us too little time to get away. These new barrels are lit once in position in the chamber. They have longer wicks inside the barrel, double dipped in tallow to make them burn slower and remain water resistant. And by using spring propulsion—”
Lisbeth repressed a yawn, but she doubted Fulton noticed. He did his best work at night. His mind, always spinning like a top, required only a few hours of rest before taking off again with the latest idea. She pushed off one of the blankets and wiggled her feet out from under the blankets to cool them. “I don’t understand what spring propulsion is, m’sieur.”
She’d learned not to ask veiled questions. Fulton’s mind was literal. If she didn’t tell him she was confused, he’d assume she understood, and move on with his explanation.
Something had changed since that moment in the rain . . . or since the episode in her room. The commander had been right. Compassion was the key to Fulton’s trust—or maybe they’d underestimated his loneliness.
He’d come into her room the next morning after knocking. “Yo
u’ve been sleeping in that dress, madame, and cannot yet fix your hair. I assure you, I can do this. For a time my mother was very ill, and I stayed home to care for her. I shall be to you as I was to her.”
Why his blank eyes and wooden demeanor reassured her, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was because he looked so—so like a servant. Or was it the reference to his mother?
This was a golden opportunity. “I am sorry if I look disheveled, m’sieur. I cannot use my left arm to reach the buttons at the back, nor can I lift it yet to braid my hair.” And she wondered if the commander had bought all her dresses with back buttons for this purpose. Rouse his pity.
But the necessity of involving Fulton’s emotions left Lisbeth not liking herself very much. His kindness made it hard for her to maintain distance, but her conscience dimmed as the weight of missing her baby grew. Day and night, she ached for Edmond, prayed for him, cried for his loss, and imagined him with the greed of unending grief. He was four months old now. Did he have his first tooth yet? Had she missed that first smile with a little tooth peeping like gleaming ivory?
“I will show you the same respect I have for my mother, madame,” he’d vowed—and Lisbeth shoved aside the tearing sorrow and accepted his help. Edmond needed his mother, and Fulton was a man grown. If he was hurt, she’d be sorry, but it was his lookout.
From that morning Fulton helped her dress and undress, brought hot water for her morning wash, lifted anything, and made their meals. She taught him to braid her hair, as she’d taught the commander. But there were still too many hours in the day to worry about her. So the lonely master took on a pupil. It didn’t matter if she understood or not; he had an audience, and he didn’t have to worry that she’d hurt herself. That seemed to be enough.
He showed her one end of the chamber. “See the coiled steel?”
Tilting her head, she nodded. He didn’t like unnecessary interjections like yes and I see.
“That’s a spring,” he told her. Squelching an urge to smile, she nodded again. She knew that, thanks to her childhood pestering of the local blacksmith. On board ship, Carlsberg had taught her the history of spring coils: first known use on the wheels of a pharaoh’s chariot thousands of years ago, and still in use for anything from carriages to spring-lock rifles.
Lisbeth didn’t know whether she’d gained Fulton’s trust or had become his captive audience. He wouldn’t let her leave the attic except for intimate necessity, or to sleep. He brought her up here as soon as she left her room in the morning, put heavy woolen socks on her feet, and covered her with blankets. He fed her through the day with cheese sandwiches toasted over the fire on forks, and the pots of strong tea he made for her. And he’d talk, and talk.
“A spring?” she encouraged, when it seemed he’d become lost in checking its tension.
“Oh.” He started in comical guilt. “I’m experimenting with high-tensile steel. Iron rusts far too quickly and loses recoil. It also needs constant oiling, especially if it gets wet.”
She kept her tongue between her teeth. He wasn’t ready for intelligent questions, didn’t want to know her cover story, or about her tomboy years in the smithy and stables. He’d painted his own portrait of her as a delicate lady who’d roused his chivalry, who needed her mind instructed as she healed. She wouldn’t shatter his illusions. The less he thought she understood, the more he told her.
“We put the barrel in the chamber, light it and seal the cork with tallow, hold it for a few moments to increase the power through tension, then let go. So far the farthest it has gone is twenty-seven feet. I’m hoping this better steel that the—that I procured will go farther . . .”
So Fulton isn’t above little fibs. She quashed a smile, knowing well who’d procured the high-quality German steel with so few impurities.
“One day I believe a better method will come through steam-engine propulsion. If I can find the correctly shaped chamber and modify the barrels so they can travel through the water for at least sixty feet—”
“Through steam what, m’sieur?” She knew about steam engines, but how it could propel a bomb through a chamber and shoot it through sixty feet of water was a mystery.
Fulton’s face blazed like the fire he’d built to bend the thin lengths of steel he’d smelted on his small forge. “Steam-engine propulsion is the way of the future, both for propelling ships in a dead calm, and for any machine . . .”
At last she’d stumbled on the right question to unlock the eloquence she most needed to learn about. She bit into her tenth cheese sandwich in two days, sipped the tea he kept hot in a cast-iron pot by the fire, pinned a bright smile of interest on her face, and prepared to settle in for the lecture. The more she learned, the more went into her journal that night, complete with detailed sketches, as close to the correct proportions as she could do.
When she could leave the house, she’d throw out the musty cheese and procure chocolate, apples, potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, and meat at the store. But the secrets she’d learned during the past few days had made her stomach’s sacrifice worthwhile.
The Coastal Road to Boulogne-sur-Mer
September 16, 1802
Símon arrived at the latest road dressed as a farmer’s lad, hair and brows dyed reddish brown, a ruin of a hat crammed on his head. “Your business?” a soldier barked.
He waved at the donkey and cart he’d hired this morning. “Carrots and beans for the Friday farmers’ market, m’sieur.”
The soldier frowned. “Surely you’ve heard that only those on military business are now permitted to pass?”
Símon held in the frown. Had they been warned about him? Was his costume not good enough? “M’sieur, how are we to survive? Never mind,” he blurted as the man lifted his musket. “I’ll go house to house, for my father will beat me if I return with a full cart.”
He turned his donkey around and walked away with slumped shoulders. It seemed the commander must procure a military uniform from somewhere. In the meantime, he’d have to report his latest failure.
The commander’s orders were clear. Símon must find a way inside Boulogne, to find out if the first man the commander had sent inside, Peebles, was alive or dead. Either way, as a bona fide Frenchman, Símon was to take his place. If Peebles had sold out, he had to die.
“You are Argenteuil, and one sacrifice can save thousands,” he whispered to himself, wishing he could feel a sense of higher purpose, instead of feeling so young, so vulnerable—or so sick.
CHAPTER 26
Ambleteuse
September 21, 1802
EVEN AT MIDDAY THE world was enfolded in white twilight. The sea mist shrouded the shore, in a rare day without wind. Huddled in a gray cloak and dress, mist enveloped Lisbeth until she was lost in it. With every step, her feet either sunk into the squelching wetness of sandy soil or she almost turned her ankle over on the stones littering the beach. Rain fell like tiny darts, its icy sharpness proclaiming an early winter. She was a fool to be out, but every time Fulton dressed her or touched her hair, she felt smothered by his tender domination. After enduring day after day of his excuses to keep her at home and with him, today she’d slipped out the door when he used the water closet.
A red rag was caught in a gorse bush just out of sight of the house. She undid it and rushed on in case Fulton came to find her.
The note was damp, more than a few days old by the deep creases.
Meet me at the river bend past the fort.
He had included a rough map of the area.
How many days had he been waiting at the river bend for her?
Fifteen minutes later she passed the looming shadow of Fort Vauban, a dark phantom in the curling mist as she headed toward the river mouth. Waves broke at the base of Henry VIII’s fortress, slapping against heavy stone. Soft whooshing sounds followed as loose beach stones skimmed over each other. She felt a hidden presence on the parapet, watching her.
“Bonjour, madame.”
Startled, she realized she’d r
eached the river bend already, three hundred feet past the fort. The commander sat on the sandy hillock above the rock-edged river, wearing a gray cloak. In the thick curls of mist, all he need do was turn into the tussocks and he’d disappear. His face, dark and strong in its rawboned fashion, was just as obscure.
How did he seem a thousand miles away even though he was right here with her? She hated that he controlled this game, that he knew her secrets, had seen her body, and she didn’t know anything about him.
“May I assist you, m’sieur?” During her training on the ship he’d made it clear she must never slip out of character, but it was easier than she’d expected to speak in her haughtiest voice.
She’d picked up a handful of stones on the way. She dropped them in the direction she’d just come, using a simple code they’d worked out on the ship. Someone is watching.
“I beg your pardon.” He stood, bowed, and vanished. He would find her.
Gathering her skirts and cloak, she forded the river at its shallowest point and headed toward a small promontory around the bend, where the cliff and rocky beach beneath it were lost in the mist. Soon, so was she. Fulton had told her the rocky part of the shore was favored by local mussel collectors, but only at sunrise or sunset. It should be deserted now, but she wasn’t sure.
She fought the urge to look up the cliff. She didn’t know if the specter of someone watching was real, or a well-founded paranoia after the past few weeks. Could it be Alain?
A crunch of pebbles heralded the commander’s arrival. The sight of his gray cloak reassured her now. “Who was it?”
“There are soldiers stationed at Fort Vauban, I think. I didn’t see anyone else, apart from a farmer with a cart.”
“I’ve seen the soldiers too—too many. It was supposed to be only minimal manning there under the terms of the treaty.” He sat at a careful distance from her. “Thank you for coming, madame. How are you feeling?”
“I didn’t escape Fulton’s constant concern only to run the gauntlet of your anxiety,” she snapped. “I’m fine.”
