by Sophia James
He said her name in a way that was sad, a catch of resignation there, but he was too much of the gentleman ever to explain it further.
‘Word was sent to your grandmother at Langley that you had died alongside your father.’
‘It was Caroline Debussy who wrote the letter. She thought it wise.’
‘Why?’
* * *
When she turned into him he felt her breath against his chest and her fingers tightened around him.
‘Because sometimes people just cannot return to the lives they once lived and it is kinder to give those who wait some closure.’
‘The candles burning each and every day and night for you at Langley did not look much like closure to me.’
‘My grandmother said that I was as wild as my father and as damaged as my mother. We left before the funeral because she did not wish for us to be there. She said that she could never forgive my father because he didn’t love my mother as much as he loved his country.’ She stopped for a moment before she whispered, ‘And perhaps she was right.’
‘Families sometimes tear each other to pieces only out of love.’
‘Before Mama jumped she left a note. She wrote to say that I would follow my father and be damned because of it. She said that there was no hope for my future and she could not be there to watch such a tragedy unfold. She said I was wild and selfish and unrestrained. I think my grandmother felt the same.’
‘And therein lies the devastation of miscommunication.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your grandmother sent investigators after you a number of times. She had given up on your father, but she paid out handsomely for any word of her granddaughter. The trail went cold in the month of July in 1806 when August wrote and said you wanted nothing more to do with your mother’s family. She was desolate.’
Now Celeste turned over so that her back was to him, but he could tell that she was stiff and resistant. Lifting the blanket, he drew his fingers across her shoulders above the flimsy bodice, making circles and letters on her bare skin. He felt the moment she relaxed and was grateful.
‘Love sometimes isn’t what you say, it’s what you do, and Lady Faulkner did do a lot to try and find you again.’
‘You like her, then? My grandmother?’
‘She is strong and she is a survivor. Does that remind you of anyone?’
Her shoulders shook and he smiled. Reaching into the bag beside him, he extracted the rosary she had given him.
‘I won’t be needing this again, but perhaps you might. I think your grandmother would be very happy to see you at her doorstep when you are ready.’
‘Summer?’ He stiffened at her use of his old name. She was the only person who had ever called him that.
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you.’
Chapter Seven
Celeste woke early the next morning and sat watching the night break into day, the darkness fading to dawn. She tried not to move for she didn’t want to wake Summer. Not yet. She liked the silence here. A bird cooed from somewhere nearby and another answered from further away, but there was no human movement, no sound that broke a natural peace with the cacophony of rush or anger or just plain busyness.
The sky looked as though it might be blue and clear today, the cool of night swiftly being replaced by the growing heat of summer.
‘Good morning.’
The words came from behind and she smiled, the blanket catching the edges of the movement as Summer tucked it about them.
‘I love the peace of this place. In Paris there was always noise.’ Even her voice sounded different this morning.
‘Where did you live there?’
‘Behind the Palais Royale, in one of the small streets to the north.’
‘A safety net?’
‘A trap sometimes. I used to leave items around to make certain that no one had trespassed upon my territory. Dust from the street, a leaf balanced against my door in an exact position. A hair wound around the handle.’
‘Did you ever discover an intruder?’
She laughed. ‘A dove once. She ate the breadcrumbs I had foolishly left on the step. She cost me hours of time in worry and it was only the next day when I re-applied the crumbs and waited to see the result that I understood the culprit.’
‘You were always careful?’
‘Extremely.’ She did not temper this word with tones that might minimalise her reply.
‘The weight of the damned is a hard way to live.’
‘As hard as an English soldier spying in the very heart of an uneasy Paris?’
She had turned now and watched as he tipped his head. ‘How long did you live with Guy Bernard?’
‘A year.’
‘And did he go easily at the end of it?’
‘What do you think?’ She looked straight at him, his shirt ruffled from sleep, his face indistinct in the half dawn. She could smell him, too, a masculine comforting scent that made her want to breathe in more deeply.
‘I think a man like Bernard would not wish to lose any toy that he owned.’
She flinched. ‘How do you do that? How do you see into the heart of a truth so many others would easily miss?’
‘I am trained to notice detail. The pinch of a bruise on your left breast. The way he looked at you in the dungeon. The fury when you speak of him which is underlined in fear. How did you meet him?’
‘By chance. It was not an easy meeting at all because Papa had just been murdered and I was...barely me.’
‘James McPherson said the French soldiers took you...?’
She frowned at that and felt bile rise in her throat, the burn of it making her want to be sick. ‘I don’t speak of my life much. It’s just now, do you understand me? Just here. This second. This moment. This day.’
She felt like striking out at him, hard and fast, a considered blow, a way of stopping more words. But he was turning from her even now, rising, stretching. The muscles on his back rippled with the exertion. Strong, straight and undamaged.
‘Men have the better side of war because they can fight back,’ she added suddenly, surprised by her own admission.
‘As opposed to a woman’s lot?’ The sound of his words was sharpened.
She made herself be quiet, biting down on the anger that hung beneath the shame.
‘It sometimes helps to talk,’ he continued and her restraint broke completely as she scrambled up.
‘About what, Major? You are only spoiling what is between us with your questions.’
‘You don’t wish me to know anything more?’
‘You know enough. You know more than anybody else in the whole world knows about me.’
At that he smiled, his eyes wrinkling into humour. Sometimes his beauty simply took her breath away.
‘When I married Anna I knew that I should not have.’
It was an enormous confession offered without question on her behalf.
‘I was lonely. She was kind and honest and good and, whether it was from years of soldiering in harsh conditions or whether it was simply some lack inside of me, these traits became stultifying and choking quite quickly and I could never find the essence of who she was. In the end I gave up looking.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because no one is as heroic as you think they are and because some of your deepest secrets are probably less damning than my own.’
The gift of his truth floored her and she could only watch him as he gathered his things and dressed, too astonished to allow reply. He had not kept loving his wife in the fierce way that she had imagined he had and he felt guilty for it. There was a gift in his admission that was quietly put and it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her in this way. She respected his honesty and knew that it couldn’t have been easy for him to say such things.
The fight left her in a rush and she grabbed at her own attire and pulled it on. She wished he would step towards her but he didn’t, his confession building a wall someh
ow, the disclosure shocking them both. Nothing was quite as it seemed, he was saying. Nothing was written in stone.
* * *
Two hours later, her horse threw a shoe so they had to make a detour into the town of Buc, a small settlement some miles off their route. Once there, the farrier told them he could not see to the animal’s foot until well into the afternoon and gave them directions to the public house where they could wait out the interim and get something to drink.
Summer looked ill at ease as they sat with an ale in the shade of a tree. The grey wig usually had the effect of lightening his eyes, but this afternoon they looked dark and bruised. Perhaps he still thought of his wife and was wishing he had not breathed a word about their relationship. Perhaps he was confused by her anger and wished himself away.
She liked the warmth of his thigh as it ran down the length of her own on the old wooden seat upon which they both perched.
When she had told Summer that he knew more about her than anybody else ever had it was true. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Right now, in the shade of a thick, leafy horse chestnut, a kind of contentment stole across her.
I could do this for ever with him, she thought, and was shocked by the realisation.
If Anna’s sweetness had been a bane for him once upon a time, then just imagine what damage her own violent chequered past might wreak.
Finishing the last of her drink, she stood, excusing herself to use the outhouse that she could see at the very rear of the garden.
It was an old building with a rickety door and she checked for spiders before entering, seeing only a thick web without an occupant. There was no latch at all so she sat perched above the hole with one hand around the handle, keeping the door barred against any new person who might wish to use the amenity.
A moment later it was snatched away and a man stormed into the small space. With her trousers down she was at a definite disadvantage and as she scrambled up she whipped them back in place as best she could, the seconds needed taking away her own instinctive defence.
‘Troy here said he thought you might be a girl?’
‘Get out.’ She said this quietly, imbuing as much menace as she could in the command.
‘You going to make me? The old man you are with don’t look like he could hurt a fly.’
‘I said get out.’
When he did not leave she simply stepped forward and laid her hand upon the side of his throat, pressing hard. He went down quite gracefully, falling through the door with a quiet ease, but then her own problems truly started.
She felt the blow to the back of her head almost with a calmness, a fist she supposed or something heavier, the dizzy unbalance catching her off guard. Two others had her now and they were dragging her into the bush behind the outhouse, one ripping off her jacket, the buttons popping with such force that everything below was exposed.
She tried to get her fingers around the second man’s throat, but he swatted her off and punched her again, this time in the side of the head.
With the last bit of her energy she screamed, a high-pitched cry for help that gave away any last vestiges of her supposed masculine identity. The other man beside her had his hands around her left breast and was scrabbling for more. She bit at his arm with all the force she could muster.
Then Summer was there and he appeared like she had never seen him before. Here was the man legend told of, the soldier and the hero, his face unreadable and indifferent, his eyes almost black with fury.
‘Let the girl go.’ He stepped in front of her and the lad on her right laughed in his face.
‘Who’s going to make us do that?’ he spat out, dirty fingers squeezing the outline of one breast.
‘I am.’ Raising his hand, Summer smashed the fellow in the face, grabbing the other one as he went for a knife. A quick kick to the groin had the miscreant kneeling, a discarded piece of wood lying on the ground doing the rest. Even in Paris Celeste had never seen anyone use such damaging force and so elegantly. She was astonished at the pure violence meted out with such careful precision. No wonder he did not use a knife or a gun, his hands were twice as effective as any conventional weapon. She simply stared at him open-mouthed, seeing in his demeanour a thousand hours of practice. Unstoppable and unmatched. A savage and fierce peril.
All the rumpus had others streaming in and among them were soldiers in uniform.
Within a second, he had assessed the capability of the three men to relate a coherent story and found them wanting. Grabbing her by the arm, he led her away through a gate at the far end of the garden before circling around to reclaim their one remaining horse. A moment later, she was on the animal in front of him and they were galloping down the road.
‘Will anyone follow us?’
‘If they do, we will be ready for them. Are you hurt?’
‘I feel strange.’ The world was blurring in and out of focus, a ringing sound in her ears that made it hard to hear. It was shock probably, she thought, for the shivers were already coming, her hands barely able to hold on to the edge of the saddle. ‘They hit me at the back of the head.’
‘I know. It’s bleeding.’
‘Badly?’
‘Scalp injuries always do. If it was bad, you’d be unconscious.’
He stopped her hand as it rose to check out the damage by simply holding on to her fingers and bringing them down inside his own on the reins.
‘I think I am going to be sick.’
He’d left the road now to skirt around a thick stand of trees, tipping his head to listen against the wind.
‘Someone is coming and coming fast.’
After he’d helped her down she threw up in some bushes on the side of the pathway, clammy sweat beading on her top lip as she closed her eyes to try to regain the centre of things.
The next moment, the hooves of galloping horses were right upon them and then past, three of them by her count. Soldiers, she imagined, her identity and his discovered in the most unlikely of circumstances, for no one watching Summerley Shayborne dealing with those men today could have failed to understand that he was not the old gentleman he seemed.
Her head was becoming clearer, though, as the nausea dissipated and, if she was still shaking badly, she at least thought she might well live.
Summer had discarded his wig, the hairpiece lying strangely in the hook of a shrub’s branch. He’d also torn the sleeves off his jacket so that it was a working man’s jerkin he now wore.
‘We probably have fifteen to twenty minutes until they turn around. There is a track through the fields just there. We will use that. Get on the horse, I will walk behind you.’
‘We can’t both ride?’
‘No. There will be observers, I should imagine, even in this unpeopled part of the world. If we gallop through together, they will see us clearly. This way we can find other byways, less used and more out of the way. “From each point one finds oneself there are a thousand other ways to travel.” My father used to say that all the time and he was right. Are you well enough to stay in the saddle?’
‘Yes.’
* * *
An hour later, Shay thought that they were probably safe. For the moment at least, though there was still the worry of identity cards and a cordon which undoubtedly would be erected around any means of escape. It was also a long way off until the darkness, which was another problem. A good tracker dog would be able to find them, even though he had made sure to use any ditches filled with water as a way of masking their scent.
Celeste was as pale as he had ever seen her, the bright red blood at the back of her head still streaming. He’d tried to stem it with his necktie, but the wound would not close with her upright stance and movement and right now there was no alternative to travelling slowly.
They’d need the night as well if they had any chance of escape and they would have to ditch the horse. In the groins of the hills behind them were thickets of forest, and if he used these to climb into the next valley and then the ne
xt one, they might elude an enemy hellbent on finding them.
Checking the position of the sun, he determined the time to be just after two in the afternoon. There was a stream up ahead, he could hear the gurgling of the water and it was this he made for. He’d let the horse go on the other side of the river and Celeste and he would strike on along the bed. Two diverging sets of tracks would waste time and he needed as much as he could get.
She looked a little better now, less shaky at least, though her skin was still a deathly white.
‘We will be fine,’ he found himself saying. ‘The countryside here is perfect to disappear into and after it gets dark they will never find us.’
He noticed her hands were red with blood from where she had been touching her injury.
‘The flow is slowing, Celeste, and if you leave it alone, I am sure it will stop altogether.’
She glanced at him, her head nodding up and down. He saw the bravery on her face and in the way she sat up even straighter and was relieved.
At the river, he helped her off the horse and watched as she dipped her head and hands in the water. It was cold but effective. After a moment or two there was barely any sign still of blood.
Tying the reins into the saddle, he faced the horse the way he wanted it to run and slapped its rump hard. Within a moment the steed was lost to their sight.
‘Now we climb,’ he told her and took her arm. He knew how sick she was when she allowed him to help her, for normally she would not have countenanced any such aid.
* * *
‘My father’s journal is gone.’ She felt ill with the realisation. ‘It must have been lost when they pulled at my jacket.’
He stood so still she could almost see his mind ticking. ‘Was there anything in it that could be damaging?’
‘I hope not. It was mostly his thoughts and feelings...’
‘About you?’
‘No. About my mother.’
‘A man who writes confidential things down in a world of secrets is a foolish one. Let us hope no one makes the connection that he was your father for Brigitte Guerin has enough troubles of her own.’
‘Guy Bernard is dead. Apart from him I don’t think anyone else could guess I was someone else, save Caroline Debussy, of course.’
