Sophia James – A Night Of Secret Surrender (страница 9)
And with that she replaced the grille so the bars were between them, dividing the light. She used her knife to screw the grate back into place and Shay noted blood seeping through the bandage at her wrist.
* * *
Guy Bernard was a threat as well as a bully and Celeste trod lightly past his inert body. She could not be sorry it had come to this, for her debts to him had long since been discharged in full, and more. The other man, one of Guy’s younger accomplices, was someone she had never liked, though she was confident she hadn’t killed him. When he awoke he would talk, but it was too late any more for caution and she no longer held the taste for brutality.
She rubbed her cheeks hard with her hands and breathed deeply to try to take away the tremors, her tongue coming to the split in her lip. The pulse in her throat beat wildly, but there was nothing she could do about that save summon the strength to cope. If she looked even vaguely guilty, she would never get through the next room alive.
Martin Blanc looked up from his desk and then down again, but not before she’d seen him take in her disarray. With a practised start she fumbled with the silk.
‘Interrogation makes Guy imagine every woman wants to bed with him. It is a fault he needs to address, I think, for it is becoming tiresome.’
At that he stood and walked across to her just as she knew he would. Breathing in hard, she sniffed and wiped her eyes with the fabric in her sleeve. She had allowed Blanc small liberties before when she wanted information. This time all she needed was distraction.
‘Guy said the English Major is proving difficult and I had no desire to stay and watch his violence. He also said to tell you that it might take a while to gain information and that he does not wish to be disturbed again until he calls.’ With a small shake she clutched at the side of the table. ‘Perhaps I should go outside and get some air? Could you take me?’ Her cloak was on the chair and she shrugged into it, glad for its covering.
Martin Blanc’s hand came beneath her elbow as he shepherded her out, past a group of men busy around a map on the table. Out on the street she led him into the doorway of an empty shop, her hands pressing down on the side of his neck with just the right amount of force. Her father had shown her this defence and she had never forgotten the teaching. It would be precious moments before Blanc regained consciousness, though to stop him hurting himself further she pushed him back to sit against the sturdy wood of the door frame and pulled up the collar of his jacket.
‘I am sorry,’ she said quietly and then she was off, walking fast with her face against the wind.
At the chapel, she found Shayborne stepping out from the shadows, his nose dark with blood, his right eye swelling.
‘Come, but hide your face.’ She did not touch him or allow him to touch her as they traversed the streets to a part of town she seldom visited. She could not risk the other address and this one was closer anyway. She saw that he limped badly and that his face was pinched with pain under the cloak’s hood. Still he followed, doggedly. She was glad of the sudden rain shower to wash away any blood that might have splattered on the road behind him, giving them away.
Inside the apartment, she quickly sought some privacy to dry retch into a hand basin without any sound whatsoever. Killing never got any easier, but her soul had long since been damned.
Her father had often recited this verse from Proverbs and she believed in its message. She shook her head. There was no hope for her to rise with the angels. The most she could pray for was a quick and final end.
After rubbing herself down with a dry cloth, she looked at herself in the mirror. The blood of Guy Bernard felt as though it had soaked through her very skin, the harsh tang of iron filling her mouth, even as she swallowed. The smear of red lip grease coated the small damp towel she held.
She had always known it would come to this, one way or another.
Spare clothes were neatly folded in a wicker basket and she donned them with haste, stuffing the gown she wore back where the others had lain. A hat, boots and a belt followed. The pistol she slid into a leather pouch and attached her knife beside it, the blade cleaned and readied for the next time. Armed well, just as she liked it.
Rubbing boot polish into her hands and cheeks, she bent to scrape her nails against the rough plaster on the floor. Success lay in the detail and she had been brought up for years on the stories of the demise of the French aristocracy and their unblemished hands as they had marched to the guillotine for a final reckoning.
She felt more confident now, the tremors inside quietened. This was her world and it had been for a long time. There was just one last job to do.
* * *
The woman who had disappeared into the room to one side of the passageway was nothing like the dirty lad with the ancient eyes who came out of it.
‘Your father lived here?’
‘Yes. He rented a house in the centre of Paris when we first arrived back, but this was his secret place, you understand, the hidden part of him that few saw. He wanted it as a place to escape, I think, somewhere he would be most unlikely to run into anyone he knew.’
‘Because he was delving into the dangerous politics of a failing Empire?’
‘And he was drinking heavily.’ These words were said with less certainty. ‘The sentence for bitterness and broken dreams. He met my mother here in Paris and then spent years back in Sussex. Perhaps he did not truly fit in any more.’
Looking around, he could see all the signs of August Fournier. The books. The pipe. The furniture in the French style. The violin. As well as half-a-dozen old and dusty bottles of various wines and spirits.
‘Did you come here with him?’
She shook her head. ‘After he died I kept it on only as a sanctuary to hide in should I ever need it.’
‘Because you understood by then the danger of what your father had led you into?’
‘In his defence, he truly believed Napoleon would make the world a better place.’
‘And has it, for you, I mean?’
Real anger found its way through the careful indifference and Shay was glad for it.
‘You know nothing of who I am now, Major, and if you are indeed one of the lucky few whose morals have never been tested, then you are fortunate.’
‘You are saying yours were?’
‘I am saying that you have to get out of this city before every agent of every intelligence group in Paris tracks you down. I pray what is said of you is a truth.’
His eyebrows raised up. ‘What is said of me?’
‘You are the wiliest of all of France’s enemies and you can disappear into the very edge of air in the time it takes to draw breath.’
‘Flattering but foolish.’ When she smiled he looked around. ‘Do you have rope here?’
‘Yes.’
‘And a Bible?’
She went to the shelf and plucked out two tomes. ‘Catholic or Anglican?’ As he took the Latin Vulgate he saw one of the nails of her left hand had been pulled right off, the bed streaked in blood.
She had never been easy to read, even as a youngster as they had traversed the countryside around Sussex. At sixteen she had let him kiss her. At seventeen she had brought him into the barn at Langley and lain down on the straw to lift her skirts in invitation. She’d worn nothing underneath, save a lacy blue garter about her thigh. The next day she had left with her father to return to France and he was sent to London with a commission to join the army. She would be twenty-five now while he was twenty-six.
Different paths. He wondered if she had thought of him ever.
She was the daughter of a wealthy man who should have been brought out for a London Season. She had no siblings still alive and her mother had been damaged somehow. He could never see that same weak will in Celeste Fournier and he could not now.
‘Do you speak the Latin?’ His voice was low.
‘Yes.’
The past between them slipped back into its place as he wound the necessities for escape out of nothing.
‘The appearances of things are deceptive,’ she returned, and he smiled. No doubt her father had taught her, for August had been a scholar of some note. ‘We’ll leave tomorrow, mid-morning. It is the busiest time of the day.’
Gathering all that was needed, he sat on the balcony with his back against the wall, the warmth in the stone from the day gone so he felt the coolness through his shirt. No one could see them. No one overlooked this particular space and the thought crossed his mind that this would be why August Fournier had chosen such a location, hidden as it was from the world. He was glad when Celeste joined him, sitting opposite, her hands clenched around her knees so that every knuckle showed white.
‘I shan’t journey with you further, Major. They know me here and you will have a better chance of escape alone. For me to rescue you from the hawks and then feed you to the wolves would make no sense.’
He brought the cheroot he’d lit to his mouth and inhaled. It was one of her father’s that he’d found in a box on the desk. The red tip of it could be seen in the looming dark so his other hand shielded the glow, just in case.