Sophia James: A Night Of Secret Surrender

Just as she was about to go she saw another figure, his shadow eating up the glow from a lamp above him and with a shock she knew it to be Guy Bernard. He did not hide or melt into the darkness as she did, but stood there like a threat.

An impasse, then, between the three of them. Guy could not know for certain that the English major was anywhere near, otherwise Celeste knew he would have acted brutally and without hesitation.

A suspicion, then. A rumour. The first of all the truths that would come. There were fifty apartments in this block and another hundred in the one opposite. People lived close here and it would protect him. It was why Shayborne had chosen it, she supposed, with its heaving, teeming population and its high percentages of itinerant tenants. Nobody would look twice at a newcomer here for they arrived in Paris all the time, especially those in uniform.

Laying her head back against the dappled trunk, she closed her eyes, her body melting into the shadows inseparable from the tree, and when the first light of dawn rose in the east she saw that she was alone.

* * *

Fifteen minutes after the bells of Saint Leu rang out the hour of seven, she followed Shayborne, far behind and away from his sight. She wanted to see who he met and where he went. She wanted to understand his purpose.

She had always shadowed people. It was a big part of her job and she was good at it. No one ever looked back and neither did he. Shayborne strode the city streets as if there was no doubt in his mind that he was safe. He did not act like a man on the run or one who sought the protection of invisibility. He stood so far out that he simply fitted in, a soldier returned from the ghastliness of war and wanting to exist here in the small peace of what was left. He had changed his uniform and she was glad of it, for he wore a dark blue jacket over the grey trousers now.

* * *

It was only later Celeste discovered that he had known she was there from the start. He’d left markers and doubled back and then under the canopy of the café, Les Trois Garçons, a hand snaked out and caught at her wrist, dragging her in. Behind striped canvas. Completely out of sight. In a pocket of warm air that held only the two of them.

She did not scream or fight. Her knife was close and her knee was ready, but she’d known it was him from the very first touch.

‘Your disguise is hard to fault, Mademoiselle Fournier.’

She smiled because to do anything else would be churlish and small.

‘But a bread vendor with the luxury of wasting time is noteworthy and the moon last night was bright.’

‘When did you know it was me?’

‘A minute after you gave me your warning in my rooms under your wig of whiteness. If you hadn’t wanted me to know you, you would not have come.’

She looked at him then directly. In the daylight, his golden eyes were still beautiful, but they were now every bit as distrustful as her own. No longer a boy but a man, hard, hewed by war and suffering.

‘There is not much time left for you in Paris, monsieur , for your friend the jeweller will have a visit before the morrow’s end and it will be much easier for them to find you after that. They already have the arrondissement your apartment is in under surveillance.’

‘Do you work for Savary or Clarke?’

‘A disappointing question, Major. Try again.’

‘You are a lone player trading off the secrets of war to the highest bidders.’

‘Warmer.’ She did not look away at all.

‘Then you play a dangerous game and one that will kill you in the end.’

‘And you think I would care?’

There was darkness in his glance. ‘Your father might?’

‘He is long dead.’

‘How?’

‘War carries many casualties.’ She did not like the waver in her tone so she coughed to hide it. But Shayborne had heard it, she could tell that he had.

‘Your father should not have brought you back to France in the first place.’

‘No?’

‘I told him it was suicide, but he did not listen. Europe was descending into chaos and there was no safe road for any traveller. A simpleton could have worked that out.’

‘We are French, Major, and our time in England was at an end. We came home.’ The hardness in her words covered over the anger.

* * *

‘Home to danger and tumult? Home to a rising political anarchy?’

Hell, Shay thought, could the English girl he had known been entirely lost under the cold French woman she’d become? The black scrawny wig of a baker boy shouldn’t suit her, but it did and her whole demeanour was more than convincing. Celeste Fournier had always been good at hiding who she was, even as a seventeen-year-old.

‘Perhaps such travel was as dangerous as your choice of work, Major? You broke a parole to General Marmont in Bayonne and nobody was pleased. Is the word given by a gentleman such a trifling thing, then?’

‘The French were going to hang me.’

‘In uniform?’ Disbelief lay in her query.

‘Not everyone adheres to the rules of warfare. Those soldiers who accompanied me across Spain might not have done the deed themselves, but on the border I was to be handed over to Savary’s thugs on Marmont’s orders. I had heard it said there were instructions to see that I did not live to cause another problem.’ He looked across the street. ‘That man over there reading the paper. Do you know him? I have seen him before.’

‘At a guess, I would say he is one of the Minister of Police’s. I recognise the arrogance and the incompetence. You are right before his eyes and he does not see you because it is me he has in his sights.’

‘Why you?’

The sharpness of his observations made her give him the truth. ‘A few days ago I tried to help a French family who had strong ties with England and it did not go well at all.’

The crouching danger of Paris at war, Shay thought, and no end in sight. ‘So you are under scrutiny for it?’

‘Any mistake can be your last here, now that trust has gone.’

‘Trust.’

‘Everyone says that Napoleon will triumph, but nobody truly believes it any more. By my calculations his empire will be diminishing by the end of next year. I am sure you have heard of his pretensions to capture Moscow.’

He smiled and tipped his head. ‘Come to Spain with me, then. We could leave tonight.’

‘I’m no longer the Celeste Fournier you once knew, Major, and I’d be safer alone.’

‘How can it be safer to be taken to the Military Police and named as a spy?’

‘There are worse things than an honourable death in this life.’

‘And would it be such an honourable death when they find out you have warned me and allowed me to escape? Such a person could not hope for lenience.’

‘And I would not expect it.’

His finger ran across the soft flesh at her throat. ‘Your heart is beating too fast to plead indifference, though your father’s tutelage in the art of theatre adds a certain truth to your charade. It must fool many.’

‘I am not like you, Major Shayborne. My morality is questionable at the best of times and if you believe otherwise you will be disappointed. Meet me tomorrow under the front arch of Les Halles if you want my help to leave the city. At five in the morning. Do not bring luggage. It is your last and final choice. If you aren’t there, I shall not see you again. Bonne chance .’

Anger sliced through him and he bit down on a reply, but she’d pulled away and was already gone.

Like smoke. There one moment and gone the next. He wondered how she did that, but reasoned the street was suddenly full of pedestrians and she had only been waiting for them to draw near so that she might depart unnoticed. His eyes scanned the road.