by Jane Feather
They had honeymooned quietly in the country, and Hero, anxious to leave them alone despite her stated dislike of the rituals, had plunged back into Society life in the mansion in Grosvenor Square, where Great-aunt Emily took up her position once more as chaperone with her usual vague benevolence.
Hero had thrown herself into the social round with a vengeance, heedless of raised eyebrows or the whispers of gossips as she did exactly what she felt like doing, most of it quite unsuitable for a young lady on the marriage mart. And deep down, she knew that she was defying William, proving to him that whatever he said and did to keep her from shocking the world, her reputation was her own to keep or lose as she chose. It was childish to take pleasure in thinking of his disapproval, but it offered some balm for her hurt.
And at last, once the first edge of that hurt and loss had blunted, it had occurred to her that his cruelty might have been to protect himself from his own emotions. Perhaps there had been something deep within him that had forced him to push her away. And there were moments when she felt with absolute conviction that he had loved her. And at those moments, the pointlessness of her behavior seemed puerile, and she began to modify her recklessness a little, slowly coming to terms with the inevitability of living a life that did not include William Ducasse, Viscount St. Aubery.
Then, of course, he had to cross her path just as she was reaching equilibrium, and the attraction had been as powerful as ever. Now Hero felt only a determination that what they had had was not over. She was not going to permit it to be over. Either he was going to convince her with a rational and honest explanation why they could not be together in some way—she didn’t demand marriage or any formal kind of commitment—or they were going to resume their relationship as and when and where they could.
She would settle for occasional visits to London, for snatched moments anywhere, anytime, but she would not accept the end when it was so clearly unnecessary.
On which determination her finally heavy eyelids drooped and closed, and sleep claimed her.
William rode along the tan in Hyde Park as the sun was coming up. It was a time of day he had always loved, when the city was still mostly asleep, the air was fresh and clean before the many rancid odors of daytime activities thickened it, and the grass was still damp with dew. There were few other riders in the park and no obligation to offer more than a nodding bow of acknowledgment as they passed on the tan. Despite his apparent ease, he was as watchful as ever, aware of everyone he passed, constantly aware of who was behind him. The agents set to watch him were often dilatory, particularly early in the morning, which aroused his scorn. Once the political situation in France had stabilized after Napoleon’s swift military action to break the power of the mob in Paris and the Directory was now in charge, the authorities seemed to have decided he was a “sleeper,” not a sufficient threat for a more extensive and arduous surveillance.
More fools they.
But what was he to do about Hero? She would reiterate, of course, that she was none of his business, and she’d be right . . . up to a point. It seemed obvious from her escapade at Ranelagh the previous night that she had not taken his words to heart over safeguarding her reputation. He had hoped that she would be engaged, if not married, to someone suitable by now, and yet he could not deny the surge of happiness he had felt when he had learned on first arriving in London that she was as free of attachments as she had been in Paris.
But his own situation had not changed in the last year. If anything, he was even more unsuited for any kind of long-term commitment than he had been. His life was too dangerous and would make anyone close to him unacceptably vulnerable. The agents of the Directory were as unscrupulous as their predecessors of the Committee of Public Safety and would not hesitate to use any tool that came to hand to attack him if they decided it was worth the effort. Keeping Marguerite safe was enough of a worry without adding a reckless and unpredictable Hero to the mix. But dear God, how he had missed her. Just catching a glimpse of her in the last few weeks had caused a torment of longing. And last night, the touch of her hand, the laugh in her eyes, the sharpness of her tongue, had reduced him to a lovelorn swain from a medieval tapestry. All he needed was a lute to pluck plaintively as he gazed adoringly at the object of his love.
He shook his head in disgust at such a ridiculously inappropriate image, and his muscles tightened. His horse, feeling a nudge against its sides, broke into a canter and then lengthened its stride into a gallop, and William gave the horse its head. Galloping on the tan in Hyde Park was frowned upon, at least where female riders were concerned, but at this hour of the morning, there were few enough folk around to comment. It would also tell him if he was being followed. Anyone on his tail would have to gallop, too, which would break his cover. He wondered fleetingly how often Hero indulged herself in this forbidden activity. He was as sure that she galloped at will around Hyde Park, probably for all to see at the fashionable hour of five o’clock in the afternoon, as he was sure that he was galloping now. The reflection made him smile even as it exasperated him. She was utterly impossible to bridle, and he had never refused a challenge. But Hermione Fanshawe was not a challenge he dared take on. She was dangerous for him in every way.
Just as he was dangerous for her. He had made one catastrophic mistake in his life, and he would not make another.
Certain he had no one on his tail, he rode out of the Stanhope Gate and turned up Piccadilly, heading away from Mayfair and towards the less fashionable village of Knightsbridge. It was a quiet area, with tree-lined streets and shady squares, an area popular with well-to-do bankers, lawyers, business owners, and genteel widows with their spinster companions, usually poor relations grateful for the charity and willing to be at the beck and call of their demanding and frequently querulous employers.
He soon left the more fashionable and populous parts of Knightsbridge behind and found himself in a lane on the outskirts of the comfortable residential area, a part that was closer to a country hamlet than well-to-do Knightsbridge itself. The cottages were small and inhabited for the most part by farm workers and their families.
William drew rein at the gate of a pretty whitewashed cottage at the farthest extremity of the hamlet. Fields stretched to the horizon in one direction, the jumbled and smoke-hazed lines of the city in the other. He dismounted, looking along the narrow lane with customary caution. He was certain he had not been followed from the park, but as always, he took nothing for granted. A yoked milkmaid came down the lane carrying full pails from one of the nearby farms, stopping at the various cottage doors as their occupants came out with their jugs to be filled. William waited for her to reach him and opened the gate for her.
“Why, thank you, sir.” She managed a bobbed curtsy despite her burden and went up the path ahead of him. The door opened as she reached it, and a small girl stood there holding up a jug with an air of importance. A woman appeared behind the child and helped her lift the jug for the milkmaid to fill, for the moment unaware of the man standing a little to one side of the path, watching the little scene.
“Oh, my goodness,” the woman exclaimed as she saw William. “You’re here, Guillaume. Why didn’t you send word?”
William stepped forward and swiftly took the full jug from the child as it dipped dangerously from the little hand. “I wanted to surprise you, Jeanne. Don’t frown at me so.” He bent to kiss the child’s cheek. “Good morning, Marguerite.”
She regarded him solemnly. “Good morning, Uncle Guillaume. You haven’t been to see me for a long time, weeks and weeks and weeks.”
He laughed and handed the jug to Jeanne. “Has it been that long? How shocking.” He picked up the child, swinging her onto his shoulders. “Come, you shall tell me everything that has been happening in all those weeks and weeks and weeks.” He carried her into the cottage, ducking low beneath the lintel and following the woman into the kitchen at the rear of the cottage.
“You’ll be wanting your breakfast, I daresay,” Jeanne declared, setting her jug on the pine table. “Marguerite needs hers, too. I’ve veal cutlets and coddled eggs.”
“Sounds wonderful.” He set the little girl on her feet.
“I shall have porridge and an egg,” the child announced solemnly, clambering onto the long bench at the table. “Sit here, Uncle Guillaume.” She patted the bench beside her imperatively.
“At your service, mademoiselle.” He straddled the bench.
“What have you brought me?” she inquired, reaching out for his pocket.
“Marguerite, child, you do not ask for presents,” Jeanne scolded, setting a bowl of steaming porridge in front of the little girl. “It’s very rude. Maybe your uncle has brought you nothing.”
“Oh, but he has, of course he has,” Marguerite protested. “He always brings me something.” She slipped her hand into the deep pocket and withdrew it with a triumphant squeak. “See . . . this is for me. It has a red ribbon around it. It is for me, mon oncle, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know how you guessed,” William teased. “But yes, it is for you.”
“And is there anything in the other pocket?” she demanded, setting the package beside her plate.
“You must wait and see. You may open that one, then eat your porridge. After that, you may see what you can find . . . Oh, my thanks, Jeanne.” Gratefully, he raised the tankard of ale she had put before him and drank deeply.
The child tore open the wrapping with impatient fingers and revealed a squat wooden doll figure, the features on its round face brightly painted. She examined it in some puzzlement. Its clothes were painted on, and shiny black boots formed its base. “What does it do?”
“Twist her head,” William said, smiling over his tankard.
Marguerite struggled for a moment with the head, a deep frown of concentration drawing her delicate fair eyebrows together. She was so like her mother, William thought, with her creamy complexion, the rosebud mouth, and her long pale hair.
“Ah,” she exclaimed as the doll’s head finally came loose. “Oh, look, there’s another one inside.”
“She’s called a matryoshka,” he told her. “They make them in Russia. Inside each doll is another smaller one.”
The child needed no further instruction, revealing each delicately painted doll until finally the very smallest stood on the table in line with the others. “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said. “I shall put them all together again.”
“Eat your porridge before it goes cold,” Jeanne directed, although she was smiling at the little girl’s fascination with the intricate present. She set a plate of veal cutlets and coddled eggs in front of William and refilled his ale.
William ate heartily; the early-morning ride had given him an appetite. When he’d finished, he said to Marguerite, “Aunt Jeanne and I have to talk for a little while in the parlor. Play with your doll, and when we come back, you shall have your second present.”
The child merely nodded, all her concentration once again on lining up the family of dolls. Jeanne wiped her hands on her apron and went ahead of William into the parlor.
“You’ve seen no one?” he said, closing the door softly behind them.
“No, no one untoward,” the woman responded. “I let her play with the village children sometimes . . . she can’t be kept alone with only me for company; it’s not good for a child.”
“No,” he agreed. “But it still worries me. Perhaps it would be safer if you moved out of London.”
“You can’t move her again, Guillaume. The child needs some continuity. This is the third place she has lived in, and she’s barely four. She needs to play with other children, to feel some sense of permanence in her life.”
William sighed. Jeanne was right, and yet the risk was ever present, however watchful they were. He had made too many enemies in the last six years ever to drop his guard. He reached inside his coat and drew out a bank draft. “This should suffice for another six months. If you need more, just send word.”
Jeanne took the draft and put it on the mantel shelf. “Our needs are small, but Marguerite’s feet are growing apace. She needs new shoes.”
“And what of you, Jeanne? This is no life for a woman. Are you not lonely?” He spoke with difficulty, aware as always of the great debt he owed this woman, Marguerite’s mother’s sister.
“No lonelier than I would have been had I taken the veil,” Jeanne replied with a smile, placing a hand on his arm. “Indeed, I find caring for Isabelle’s child a more worthwhile use of my life than one of silent contemplation in a convent. Maybe when Marguerite no longer needs me, then I will seek that life again, but for now, I am content.”
William kissed her cheek. “I have no words to express my gratitude, my dear.”
“Nonsense. This is my calling, and I find it a deeply satisfying one. Let us go back to the kitchen. Marguerite will be growing impatient for that second present.”
William left an hour later, feeling the imprint of the child’s kisses still on his cheeks and the warmth of her little arms hugging his neck. She was more precious to him than anything in the world, and that terrified him because it weakened him.
FOURTEEN
The three men sat around a fire in an upstairs chamber of the Gull, a small inn just up from the busy quay at Dover harbor. They were drinking hot spiced wine, and two of them looked cold and pale, still huddled in their boat cloaks after a particularly rough crossing from Calais. The third, Everard Dubois, his swarthy, angular face distinguished by a strangely shaped eyebrow like a question mark, was clearly more at his ease, lounging in an armchair, his cloak cast aside on a settle beneath the window, as he read through a sheaf of documents.
“So finally, Barras wants us to take him,” he murmured. “And thank God for it. But what’s changed? Ducasse has only been in London a couple of weeks. God knows where he was before that. We’ve been keeping an eye on him, of course, but he’s not been doing anything out of the ordinary. Just idling around amusing himself, as far as I can tell.”
One of the others sneezed violently and cursed, burying his nose in the steam from his tankard. “Doesn’t sound much like Ducasse,” he mumbled. “Maybe you’ve been out of Paris too long, Everard. Barras says he was sighted in Austria, and we have information that connects him with the Duc d’Enghien and the émigré Army of Condé. There are sympathizers aplenty among the émigrés in London, and it’s thought he’s organizing support for another Royalist plot.”
“Yes, and all those émigrés are under watch.” Everard Dubois sounded impatient. “Ducasse has not made contact with any of them.”
“Maybe you’ve missed something or someone,” one of his companions suggested with a snide smile. It was rare to catch the Lizard in any kind of carelessness.
Dubois did not dignify the comment with a response. He returned to his perusal of the documents they had brought him. Paul Barras was the generally acknowledged leader of the Directory that had controlled France since the fall of Robespierre. He was a wily politician, an expert manipulator, and for the moment, at least, his orders were set in stone.
Everard Dubois knew which side his bread was buttered, but these orders also satisfied a long-held need of his own. An impersonal, politically justified reason to exact vengeance against William Ducasse. The man had thumbed his nose at the Committee of Public Safety and slipped again and again through all the traps Everard had set for him. Now in these orders lay his opportunity to see his old enemy’s head roll at the guillotine.
How he had longed in the last couple of weeks to slip the assassin’s blade between Ducasse’s ribs, but he had restrained himself, knowing full well that without direct orders from Paris, he would fall foul of the powers that be. Guillaume Ducasse, Viscount St. Aubery, was a powerful enemy of the state and at his most dangerous when he was seemingly quiescent. Everard was well aware
of that and had been convinced that he was plotting something. There would be a network operating with him even if they weren’t immediately visible, and a premature strike might remove the Hydra’s head, but others would sprout quickly enough in its place. They had to spread the net wide enough to catch them all. Now it seemed Barras himself had decided it was time to behead the beast.
“Were you told whether we are to break him here or take him straight back to France?” he inquired. There had been no instructions in the papers he held.
“Both, if possible. But if he’s too tough a nut to crack, then he goes back to the experts. He’s to be taken and returned alive, that much is definite.”
“Mmm.” Everard nodded, quietly resolved that once he had his hands on his old enemy, he would wring every last truth out of him and enjoy every moment of doing so, before he returned him to his masters in Paris.
“So what now?” one of the men demanded with another vigorous sneeze.
“Well, I, for one, am for my bed and a warming pan,” his fellow sufferer declared. “I’m frozen to the bone, haven’t felt my feet for hours.”
“You haven’t supped as yet,” Everard pointed out mildly. “The ordinary here does a decent enough supper.”
“I’ve been puking my guts out for the last six hours; the last thing I want is food. You coming, Gerard?” He headed for the door.
“D’accord, Luc.” Gerard hauled himself from his chair by the fire and followed his friend, with a brusque nod of farewell to Everard Dubois.
