A Night of Secret Surrender

by Sophia James

  But she had not imagined she could even complete such a journey with the nausea and weakness she was now afflicted with and so had turned north instead. She had marked a small sheet of paper to keep track of the days as she travelled for time seemed inconsequential and nebulous. Only sunset and sunrise.

  Sometimes, though, when she’d lain down to rest she’d had the quiet feeling that she was no longer alone. Sometimes she imagined Summer Shayborne’s hand in hers, solid, strong and warm. Almost as though he was there with her.

  Chapter Nine

  It was getting colder, the summer running down into autumn, the trees in the London parks changing colour. Russets and oranges, reds and browns, the edges of the pathways strewn with leaves.

  Lian had accompanied him today on a walk around Hyde Park for it was so much easier to talk there where they were away from listening ears.

  ‘You finally seem to be limping less, Shay. Is the injury easing?’

  ‘My physician says that it is. He said by Christmas I should barely notice the sting of it.’

  ‘So then you will rejoin the army?’

  He shook his head. ‘The title has made it difficult to simply be up and off as a soldier and Jeremy’s wife, Vivienne, is still far from well.’

  ‘The woman I saw you with last week? The one with the brown hair and sad eyes?’

  ‘Melancholy is hard to shake, I suppose, though sometimes...’ He stopped.

  ‘You wish she might be braver?’

  At that Shay laughed. ‘What of you? It seems you are back in England every month these days. Are you still very much involved in things in France?’

  ‘In quieter ways than I was. More in the shadows than the light. The identity card of Brigitte Guerin was found at the edge of the Seine along with some clothes just this summer past. Did I tell you that?’

  Shay frowned, not trusting himself to speak.

  ‘Perhaps I should also tell you that Madame Caroline Debussy does not believe Celeste Fournier is dead.’

  ‘You know her? Madame Debussy?’

  ‘She is one of my many godmothers.’

  ‘The sticky web of Parisian society is never simple. What makes her believe this?’

  ‘The girl’s forte was deceit and she was an expert in getting people to believe in things that weren’t true. She has used up all her lives, Madame Debussy thinks, like a cat, and so she has become someone else entirely to begin anew.’

  ‘And gone where?’

  ‘To ground. To hide. To live her days out in the peace she never had after her father’s death.’

  ‘Where do you think she went?’

  ‘I imagine she’d have burrowed into the countryside and made her way south. Caroline Debussy has good contacts in Rome and the rest of the Dubois family have already been taken there. Intelligence insists that it was the fair Mademoiselle Fournier who paid the fare for their transport, so I imagine she would have wanted to see them safe. However, any enquiries I’ve made quietly have turned up no sightings of her at all. So...’

  God. Shay felt sick. Aurelian had said she looked thin and brittle when last he had seen her. The journey south, if she had made it, would have cost her a lot more in energy and resources. He also understood the peril of one who had named her boss as a murderer. Were there others there in Les Chevaliers who had wanted the job desperately enough to help her get rid of Benet? Could they have given her money to disappear?

  Questions upon questions. He did not wish to ask his own contacts in the area to look out for Celeste Fournier either, for any notice was dangerous and if by chance she was hiding...?

  But the Continent was a big place and a woman travelling alone was easy pickings.

  For the hundredth time he wondered why she had not come back with him from Nantes when a passage could have so easily been arranged.

  ‘You have become more bitter, Shayborne, did you know that? You looked different with Mademoiselle Fournier.’

  ‘This has nothing at all to do with her.’

  ‘Does it not? Every time I speak of her I can see your interest. Every time I utter her name you look sad.’

  ‘She is gone. Dead and gone.’

  ‘So you will die along with her and just give up? I have been hurt and disfigured and tried as a traitor in a city that was desperate to blame someone for the imminent collapse of an Empire. But I survived. Now I just want peace and a family. I think I deserve this and you do, too.’

  Such a confession made Shay ashamed. Lian was a good man and a gifted spy. Those two character traits probably had made his life hell and at thirty-three he wanted to settle down, to be quiet and content.

  ‘I have bought a property about an hour away from yours in Sussex, Shay. It is old and beautiful and I wish to make it home. Compton Park holds a great reminder for me of some of the manor houses I remember in Normandy. Substantial and solid buildings that have stood the test of time. Now, perhaps, I can marry, though my attractions are probably questionable and finding a willing bride might be difficult.’

  ‘You have calmed governments and doused the early sparks of international war. I am certain convincing a girl of your finer points would not be too onerous?’

  The resulting laughter was heartening and Shay clapped his hands around the shoulders of his friend as they walked on.

  * * *

  In bed that night, he dreamed of Celeste Fournier. He saw her watching him by the river the evening after escaping the soldiers, her hair damp and the shortness of the light brown curls darkened into longer wisps.

  ‘Do you believe in angels, Summer?’ she had asked him quietly and he shook his head.

  ‘Well, if you don’t I shall disappear.’ When he laughed she had simply curled up into smoke, leaving him there empty-hearted.

  He’d woken in a sweat because even he understood that dreams like this could be a sign of the truth. Was she dead already? Had he believed in her enough while he’d had the chance to? Lian’s description of her being thin, brittle and sick was also a part of his anxiety, for as he sifted back across the dream she’d been the same. Barely there, skin and bone, the mark around her wrist reddened and distinct.

  Ropes.

  Someone had tied her up. Lian had said that soldiers had taken her. She had been young and beautiful and half-English. He knew what might have happened to such a one in those circumstances and he turned his face into the pillows to try to block his suppositions out.

  The last year without Celeste had been the most difficult one in all of his life. Granted, he had lost her once before, but then he had not truly known her, her spirit, her grit, her soul.

  He had heard rumours through the intelligence grapevine about the various troubled hotspots in Europe and he had even toyed with the idea of travelling to the Continent to look for her. But she had not accompanied him back to England when she had had the chance in Nantes, so why would she do so now?

  Aurelian’s confession of wanting to find a woman to share his life with had left a discordant note inside him, too, that threatened to turn everything upside down. For he wanted the same things his friend had spoken of, a family and a home.

  He sat up and lit the candle near his bed, watching the light flicker across the ceiling. Celeste had looked so fragile in his dreams, so very easily hurt.

  Swearing, he stood and donned his clothes. He would pour himself a stiff drink and find a book in his library. He wished he were at Luxford Manor right now, where at least at first light he could have ridden his horse as fast and as far as he desired in an attempt to escape the demons that clawed at any momentary contentment he felt. But Vivienne was there with all her sadness and needs and the duties of his peerage in London were many and complex.

  Trapped.

  That word followed him down the stairs of his town house, echoing over and over in his brain. He had never felt so alone.

  * * *

  The last few miles were by far the hardest, Celeste thought, as the horse she had hired passed through the lit
tle village by the Manor House of Langley.

  The Faulkner family estate, entailed to the son of the house. Her mother’s brother, Alexander, was a simple and socially inept man, kept largely in Sussex and in check by his mother. He’d never married. He rarely spoke. Her grandmother had always been the brains and the drive behind both the properties and the title, her son the only one stopping it all being handed over to a distant male cousin. Alexander’s affliction had possibly even suited her grandmother, for she had always been a woman with a backbone of steel and had not wanted to lose control of the management of the estates.

  The Faulkner country seat. She remembered the land all around her like an ache. The betony and the cat’s ear and the red clover. She’d picked bunches of those when she was younger, tying them with twine and presenting them to her mother as a gift when they had come to Sussex on holiday.

  The winds were the same, too, gentle and not quite cold, making the leaves twirl and talk. It was so safe here, so very beautiful and predictable. The scudding clouds, the hedgerows, the cottages in rows in the village with their thatched roofs and whitewashed walls. War had not touched this place, had not made the edges harsh and unreliable. A sustainable land of soft promise and quiet sounds. Closing her eyes, she felt her heart beating fast. If her grandmother tossed her out as a harlot...?

  But she would not think that. She couldn’t. She was glad for the generous warm woollen cloak that covered her. Covered them.

  Tying her steed up at a fence post in the front of the house, she smoothed down her skirts, worn from travel and dust and rain. Her hat she readjusted, too, for her grandmother was a woman who put great stock in appearance.

  The door was newly painted and the small box hedging around the pathway was neat and tidy. Tidier than it had been when last she was here, the aura of shabbiness disappeared under a new regime of formality.

  Perhaps without the chaos of her daughter, Susan Joyce Faulkner had been able to shape her own life with more precision and control. That thought had Celeste swallowing with all that she was about to admit.

  With a heavy hand she knocked, stepping back a little as she waited.

  A young servant she did not recognise opened the door.

  ‘May I help you?’

  On his face dwelt the look of a man who was wondering why such a visitor had not gone to the back entrance.

  ‘I wish to see Lady Faulkner. Could you tell her Celeste Fournier is here? She will know me.’

  ‘Certainly, miss.’

  Her voice had probably confused him, she thought, with its accent of wealth and Frenchness. Yet he did not ask her in.

  ‘If you will wait here.’

  Inclining her head, she placed her bag of belongings beside her. It looked dirty and small in such surroundings. As dirty and insignificant as she herself looked? she wondered. Repositioning her generous cape around herself, she cradled one arm across the front.

  When the door opened again a different and older servant stood in place of the other, a certain avarice in his eyes. She vaguely recognised him as a man who had been here all those years before.

  ‘If you would come this way, I will show you through, Miss Celeste.’

  So her name had been recognised and she was not being thrown out on her head?

  The inside of the house was just as she remembered it, beautifully appointed and tasteful. In some ways it reminded her of Caroline Debussy’s house, elegant and expensive. A gallery of dark portraits faced each other as they traversed down the long corridor to her grandmother’s suite of rooms. Faulkners through the ages, all stern as they watched the return of a prodigal and ruined daughter. Both her mother and her uncle’s portraits were there, their countenances more regal in paint than they had ever been in life.

  A set of French doors opened into the large bedchamber, light filling the space from windows set along one wide wall.

  In a bed at one end a figure sat, pillows stacked behind her. Her hair had been newly combed.

  ‘You have come back, then?’

  Not a warm greeting, more of an accusation.

  ‘For now, if you will have me, Grandmère.’ Celeste did not move forward, but stood there awkwardly, her voice shaking in a way that she hated.

  The French word had the older woman frowning.

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘Papa is dead.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A knife to the heart. It was quick.’

  If her grandmother was kind in her reply, she knew she would cry.

  ‘You may use the lavender suite. Your mother always liked those rooms the best.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Wilkins.’

  The same man as before came again.

  ‘Take my granddaughter to the lavender suite and see that she gets some lunch.’

  Then her eyes shut, the lashes thin and spindly on crepe-wrinkled cheeks. Celeste noticed the trace of a single tear leaking from the corner of her closed right eye and turned quickly.

  Only a little while. Only until I can get on my feet again. Only if I am welcomed.

  The ghost of her dead mother walked along beside her. She could smell the attar of violets she had always used quite distinctly.

  Once she was alone, and food and drink had been brought from the kitchens on a tray, she unwrapped her cloak and smiled down at the small child in swaddling cloths, her breasts aching with the desire to feed him.

  Loring was five months old and his fingers clutched at her, dark eyes watching as she unlaced her bodice.

  ‘We are safe for now, my love,’ she whispered and was glad both for the heavy lock on the door and the large size of the house. She had not told her grandmother of his existence because today she was exhausted and another fight was the very last thing that she wanted. Without Loring, she would never have come back to England. She would have kept the shifting rootlessness of her life on the road on the Continent. But a child changed things, made journeys infinitely harder, and she was willing to risk anything and everything to see him safe.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered as he began to suck, this small scrap of baby taking her breath away with his beauty. He looked like Summer with his light wisps of hair and eyes that had changed from smoky blue at birth into a golden amber. He had the same fingers, too, long and slender.

  ‘I will tell her in the morning, darling, and it will all be fine. I promise you.’ She spoke softly in case anyone was outside and because saying the words, however improbable, gave her strength.

  Here there was a large, comfortable bed and glass at the windows to keep out the weather. Here there was food and something to drink that would not make them sick. Here if she became ill, others might help her, might help her child. Here there was a measure of security that she had not felt since Nantes.

  She knew Summerley Shayborne seldom came home and that he was well occupied in London with politics. She had made it her business to find that out as she had listened to local gossip on her way through the county. He had not remarried either, but that was something she had no right at all to feel relieved about, for she had given up any hope of him over a year ago when she had made her choice to stay in France.

  If it was not for Loring, she would never have returned to Langley—she knew that to the very bottom of her heart.

  When he finished feeding she changed her son and held him tight until he fell asleep. Then she tucked him in beside her, protected by a cradle of pillows, and covered him with a silky sheet and a fluffy blanket.

  They were safe. Sitting back against the headboard, she breathed out, crying noiselessly so as not to wake him. She did not wipe at the tears that fell down her face or try to stop them. She let the sorrow come unbidden, soft against her skin until the fabric of her gown was soaked dark and wet.

  For so very long she had not cried. For all the months of her pregnancy and for every month since she had bitten back emotion and carried on. Until now. Until there was no danger at her heels or sword across her he
ad.

  And finally, when the great emotion was past, she stood and looked out the window, over the fields and the gardens and the river that ran before the house, the sun showing up in patches as large clouds raced across before it.

  Home. She had never felt it before but today she did, the safety of the place wrapped around her, her grandmother, the richness of the decor and the marches of history. Beside her, Loring breathed fast, the congestion he’d had crossing the Channel so much improved here. Yet another worry gone.

  He looked so perfect, so very solid. The next generation. Summer’s child. Wrapping her arms about him, she lay back and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  The knocking was getting louder, more forceful, and as she regained wakefulness, she knew it to come from the door. With a start, she glanced at the day outside and thought she could not have been asleep for more than an hour. Loring was still asleep, though the noise had disturbed him. She laid a hand across his back and willed him back to sleep.

  Then she answered the door.

  The same servant as before stood there. ‘Your grandmother requires a word with you downstairs, Miss Celeste. If you would follow me.’

  ‘Just a moment.’

  Shutting the portal, she made certain Loring slumbered, piling up pillows all around him to see him safe. Then, tidying her hair in the mirror and straightening her clothes, she followed the servant downstairs, her heart beating at twice its normal speed.

  This time her grandmother was sitting fully dressed at a table in an alcove to one side of a yellow drawing room. She was dressed in an austere navy gown, her hair tightly bound, and she looked so much more like the woman Celeste remembered.

  ‘Please come and join me for a cup of tea. I have a new shipment just in from India. The East India Company imports it and one has to put one’s name down months in advance to procure even a small container.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Her grandmother’s voice sounded feeble and weak, just a ghost of the tone Celeste remembered. She waited as the maid standing behind her moved to pour the tea. The porcelain pot was painted with a variety of exotic-looking birds, their feathers brightly coloured and finely drawn.