A Night of Secret Surrender

by Sophia James

  ‘Go home, Celeste, to wherever that might be. I do not need you here.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There are things I have to tell you, things you do not know.’

  ‘Start talking, then. I am listening and this is surely as good a time as any.’

  Crystal Smithson’s name sat in the room alongside his anger and irritation. Aurelian de la Tomber was there, too, with his hatred and his ruined face. But above them all, Guy Bernard lingered for it was only because of her that Shayborne was being hunted. Again.

  It was not the right time to throw Loring into the mix, she thought, her beautiful perfect son who only needed to be loved. So she stood and straightened her jacket.

  ‘I will be here on the morrow, watching over you, and for as long as it takes to know you are safe.’

  ‘I have already refused such help.’

  ‘I know.’ It was the only thing she could think to say there in the darkness of a cold London night. When he did not answer she simply walked to the balcony and climbed down the latticed frame under it. Her place beneath the tree opposite would be out of the wind and there she could watch the house for any untoward shadows.

  He might not want her, but she needed him. More so now after seeing him again than she ever had before. It was only that simple. She pushed away hurt and uncertainty as she buttoned up her jacket, jerked down her hat and sat among the numerous autumn leaves.

  * * *

  Shay finished his brandy and poured himself another. Where the hell would she go at this time of night in a city she did not know well? He smiled savagely. She was a woman who dissolved into her surroundings. Anywhere might do it. Still, he resisted the urge to watch for her, closing the doors instead and locking them firmly, curtains pulled across the night.

  She had left her pistol on the floor next to where she had sat. When he reached down for it her warmth still remained in the metal and he closed his eyes to feel it.

  He had seen her the instant he had returned home with Lian, bathed in the shade of the trees. He had always been aware of even the slightest change in his surroundings, long years of jeopardy imprinting such necessity into him. The shock of seeing her had made his world blur momentarily and he was glad Aurelian had not commented on his unease.

  He had known she would come up the trellis and in through the doors when she was able. He’d left the lattice there when first he had taken over the house from his brother, reasoning that an easy way in meant he could monitor any suspicious activity. He wondered what Celeste had thought of such laxness when first she had spied the entrance. In Paris the stone walls were unassailable and every apartment had supplementary locks. She would have thought it easy. He hoped Guy Bernard would think the same.

  She had looked different. Softer, perhaps, and more filled out. He was glad of it for her sake. She had jumped when he had come closer and he knew to the very marrow of his bones that she had not wanted him to touch her.

  Another difference.

  The lavender perfume had gone, too, and there had been a scent on her that he did not recognise. Unfamiliar and alien. The anger in him grew.

  It had taken him a good year to recover from the loss of her in France. The last few months had been easier, though, more social. Politics had taken the place of the military and he had made himself attend more of the ton soirées and balls in all their elegant dysfunction.

  Crystal Smithson had become a friend. If she had wanted more than that, she had never mentioned it and he was glad of that. Celeste Fournier’s swipe at such a relationship had surprised him. Did others think he was angling to marry the girl? The thought had him frowning.

  Lytton Staines had intimated much the same the other day when he had run across him in Regent Street. God, if he was not careful he could wind up married, pining all the rest of his days for another woman and a time when he had felt free.

  He crossed the floor and sat where Celeste had sat, viewing the room from that angle. She would have noticed his books, the spines from here easily seen in their neat lines on the shelf. She would have seen the painting of his parents, too, above the bed, which also had him and his brother as boys included in it.

  He’d seen her observe it closely, the likenesses well drawn in red pastel and watercolour. A soft and gentle rendering that he had always admired.

  Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back just as she had.

  What did he want? What did she want? Things had changed between them, time having clawed away ease and comfort. Now they were confused and estranged. He wished he might have the energy to go out into the night to find her. But even in France she had never declared her desire for more than the bedding and her indifference today had suggested she now fancied even less than that.

  And therein lay the crux of it all, he ruminated. He’d wanted so much more when he had returned to England and it had shattered him, leaving him broken and uncertain for months. He could not withstand another round of loss.

  He shook his head. No, if she came again he would allow her no glimpse into the hurt she had smote him with. He swore this on the departed soul of his brother.

  * * *

  Loring looked exactly like Summer as a child.

  The picture behind the bed had been a revelation. The same shape of eyes and line of nose. The same fairness of hair and length of body. Her breasts prickled at the knowledge and she was pleased she had thought to bind them so tightly. The smell of her milk lay on the air and prompted a desire to hold Loring that was so vital it almost undid her.

  Was he happy at Langley? Was he unsettled? Please God, let Guy Bernard be here tomorrow so that I can go back, she prayed.

  But Summer needed her, too, and seeing him in the flesh for the first time in fifteen months had brought forth a barrage of feelings.

  She wanted to lie with him and tell him all the things that had happened to her, all the hurts and the secrets. She longed to whisper everything she knew of Loring to him, all the small insignificant triumphs and worries that only another parent might understand and savour.

  Bernard would be here either tomorrow or the next day, she was sure of it. He would come with his stealth and his anger and he would attack when they least expected it. She had to be ready. She had to be prepared. The gun in her pocket was loaded and primed. All she had to do was to wait.

  * * *

  She was asleep, curled into the base of the tree in a bed of leaves. This uncharacteristic defencelessness was so surprising Shay simply stood there watching her, the sun newly rising in the east over a waking city.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked gruffly a few moments later.

  ‘Long enough to have killed you had I been Guy Bernard.’

  Unexpectedly she smiled, her eyes brightening. ‘Then I am glad you were not.’

  ‘Come and have breakfast with me, Celeste. You look like you need it.’

  She stood, brushing the detritus of a night’s interrupted slumber from her clothes and when her jacket gaped a little he saw the rise of one breast above a heavy binding of linen. More rounded and full. He looked away before she noticed. ‘This protection you insist on giving me is not necessary.’

  She said nothing as she followed him into the house. The sideboard in the dining room was laden with fare to break their fast and his servants watched her with more than interest. Today she looked nothing like the lad she was dressed as, and when she took off her hat her hair spilled down, curlier than it had been yesterday.

  ‘If you would like to wash first, there is a bathroom through that door.’

  She nodded and promptly disappeared, returning five moments later with water sluicing down her wild curls and her face washed. She looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Shaking away that thought, he gestured for her to sit.

  ‘If you do intend to stay, perhaps I could offer you the use of my library. You once enjoyed books, if I recall?’

  ‘I’ve barely read in years.’
<
br />   ‘And yet people have not stopped writing. There are some recent editions of novels that I could recommend.’

  She met his gaze then, full on, and he could see things inside her eyes that he had no words for, hidden dark things brittle with sadness. The servant at her back interrupted such discoveries, though, as he asked her what her preference was for the morning’s meal. When she had given her order she once again observed Summerley Shayborne.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about Jeremy. He sounded like a lovely man. I cannot remember meeting him, before.’

  ‘Who told you of his death?’

  ‘Many people.’

  That was also a lie for there was complicity on her face. Lord. So many feelings came flooding back. Complex complicated feelings that he had no need of.

  ‘When did you arrive in England?’

  ‘Just over a week ago.’

  ‘Have you been down to Langley?’

  He knew that she had even before she answered him.

  ‘My grandmother was pleased to see me. You were right about that.’

  ‘And now? After this? Will you go back to Sussex again?’

  ‘For a little while. Just until I find my feet.’

  ‘I am due down at Luxford next week. Vivienne, my brother’s wife, has been despondent since Jeremy’s death so I try to see her when I can.’

  The bruising in her eyes darkened. She was not pleased with his words. Breathing out, he began to eat his eggs and bacon and she did the same.

  * * *

  The food tasted like dust in her dry mouth. Summer would be in Sussex next week! It was too soon. The wheels of fate were turning too fast and she could stop none of it.

  This morning he was dressed down and he looked so much more like the man she had traversed France with, the man she had slept with every night for weeks.

  Love me, she felt like saying, here in a room filled with food and servants. Take me in your arms and make the world right again.

  Swallowing such emotions, she directed her mind to other things and was pleased when he spoke.

  ‘Aurelian said that Les Chevaliers was disbanded along with a few other of the agencies of Napoleon?’

  Such a change in topic was welcomed.

  ‘Perhaps de la Tomber may have been happy with such a result. It strengthened the remaining agencies, the Ministry of War included, though I did not stay around the city to be sure of that.’

  ‘I don’t think he would have seen it in such terms.’

  Celeste caught the edge of something. ‘Why?’

  ‘He was unveiled, I suppose, which is a difficult thing to be when you wish to work as a spy. The same might be said of you, Celeste. Being unveiled, I mean?’

  ‘Once that was true.’

  ‘But now?’

  ‘Now I have other more important responsibilities.’

  She could see he was more than interested to know what these might be, but was too polite to ask.

  ‘What else did de la Tomber say to you of Guy Bernard?’

  ‘He said he had taken a long while to get back to full strength after his “accident”. He also said he was a wild cannon whom no one now had any time for.’

  ‘Which makes him doubly dangerous.’

  ‘I thought the same.’

  ‘Where was his information coming in from?’

  ‘Clarke’s office, I suppose.’

  ‘A second source, then. My warning was from Caroline Debussy.’

  ‘And I hold a third. Bernard was seen coming off a fishing ship late last night in the English port of Dover.’

  Celeste frowned. ‘Then he will be here today.’

  ‘Which is why I want you out of it. I want you gone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your presence will only make the meeting more difficult, given the last time he saw you, you cut his throat.’

  He was striving for cold distance and she could not allow it. ‘Two sets of eyes are better than one and I can fire a gun with expertise.’

  ‘The bloodthirsty Celeste Fournier?’

  ‘He is dangerous to us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘All of us,’ she amended and looked away.

  ‘Me. You. Who else?’

  ‘Anyone around us. He will kill anyone at all to get what he wants.’

  ‘And you lived with a man like this?’

  ‘He helped me once. He helped me survive.’

  ‘After your father’s death?’

  She stood at that suddenly, pushing the chair back so hard it fell over, the noise of it bringing the servants in quickly from the kitchens. ‘England is the soft land of ease and excess, Major. There is nothing here that could make you understand exactly what it was like for me there in the middle of a war in France. You could not know how it was.’

  * * *

  He got up, too, his blood running as hot as her own as he grabbed her arm and pulled her from the room. When she went to scratch him with her other hand he fastened on that one, too, lacing her fingers together with his fury. Once in his library he pushed her inside and locked the door.

  ‘Then tell me what it was like for you, Celeste. Tell me what happened after the soldiers took you away from the house of Caroline Debussy; the same five soldiers who were found a day later with their throats cut in a room off the Champs Elysées.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘It was Guy Bernard who killed them for you, wasn’t it? He killed them because they had hurt you.’

  ‘No.’ The croak of the word was barely audible. ‘You can’t know this. You were not there. Anyone who was is dead.’

  Tears were running down her cheeks now, tears that she did not even dash away as they fell unstopped, a dam of emotion that had suddenly burst.

  ‘What happened to you, then?’ This time he was gentler. This time he felt his own throat thicken. ‘Tell me, Celeste, and then live, damn it!’

  She brought one hand up, running it through her hair, and he could see the conflict of whether or not she should allow him the truth in her eyes. Finally, resolution settled.

  ‘What do you think might happen when five soldiers take a young girl to a private room?’

  He’d asked himself the very same question, but was now silent as she continued.

  ‘They raped me for a whole day and all I thought of was you.’

  ‘Me?’ He could not quite understand what she was telling him over the loud beat of his heart, over the sound of rushing in his ears.

  ‘You were the only man who had ever touched me like that before...and so I pretended that...it was you until all...I could see was your face and all...I could feel was your body. I could even smell you there, that particular scent that I have never forgotten. Even when I screamed I imagined it was you.’

  ‘Hell, Celeste.’ This time he leaned forward and took her in his arms. This time she did not fight and she felt soft and right and warm. She felt like home as they stood together with the horror of the past streaming down her face.

  ‘It’s over now. I will see you safe. I promise it.’

  He whispered the words into her hair as he held her close, the clock in the corner ticking away the moments and then the half hour.

  He would keep the fury of all she had admitted inside him until he was alone, keep it in a place where it was controlled and manageable until he could deal with it in his own way. He kept swallowing away the thickness in his throat.

  When she finally pulled back he let her go, but he was not quite finished with his questions, for he needed to know what had happened as desperately as she needed to tell him.

  ‘Then Bernard came and killed them all?’

  She nodded. ‘He’d heard the commotion for his contacts had alerted him of the soldiers’ presence. I did nothing to stop him. I stood there and watched until every one of them was dead and I was glad of it.’

  ‘Good for you. I would have done the same thing. They deserved exactly what they got. Sometimes justice like that is the only punishment fo
r men who have stepped so far outside humanity. Sometimes death is the only option for a depravity that is staggering.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For listening. For not judging. Even for asking me to tell you because I am certain things like this are easier out than in and I have always thought that it was my fault, or my father’s.’

  ‘It’s not. I hope like hell that you know it wasn’t.’

  ‘I know. Now I know. Before I didn’t.’

  He swallowed as he gave her his next words. ‘I want to talk to Guy Bernard when he comes. I want to have the chance to comprehend this revenge of his, to understand why he has come here now.’

  ‘I tried to kill him. He will never give such retaliation up and I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for ever.’

  She looked spent and exhausted. Her eyes were red and her nose was running, but the fear in her face was lessened.

  ‘You won’t need to. I will see to that.’

  ‘So what happens now?’ Her voice was small and hollow.

  ‘I’ll be the one waiting for him to come.’

  ‘No. I want to be here, too.’

  ‘Very well.’

  To send Celeste off alone after what she had admitted seemed wrong. ‘But you have to promise not to get in the way, not to shoot. Guy Bernard is mine, the final piece in the puzzle of the past. I want you blameless in his death. Do you understand?’

  * * *

  He was giving her the gift of the life she once thought she had taken. He was allowing her clemency. After all she had told him, he would still give her that? She could barely believe it.

  ‘He will come this evening, using the trellis beneath your window. He will wait until it is dark and the house is silent because that is what he taught me to do. If you greet him in the same way you did me, you will have him at a disadvantage.’

  The clock in the corner chimed out the hour of eleven in the morning. Had it been that long since breakfast? It felt like hours on the one hand and like no time at all on the other.