‘There are problems afoot, Shay. A fracas yesterday has ripped apart the private world of Parisian intelligence and each office is blaming the others in their various bids for more power. As a result, it is now every man for himself and a dagger in the back is a very real concern.’
‘You are speaking of the murder of the Dubois family?’
‘You’ve heard of it, then? From whom?’ His friend’s dark eyes widened. ‘Word on the street has it that Napoleon’s agencies are exterminating anyone who fails to agree with the Emperor’s vision for France. That includes the families of those who might have the temerity to criticise a regime that many know is tainted. They were said to be in receipt of incriminating documents, papers which raised questions about their loyalty to France. Napoleon has gone mad with his greed for power!’
‘Threads,’ Shay returned, ‘threads bound and winding into the foolish hope of greatness. Conquer Russia and nobody will be able to stop Bonaparte from ruling the world.’
‘It will be winter that brings him to his knees, mark my words. There are thousands and thousands of miles between here and Moscow.’
‘So you are leaving? Getting out?’ Shay’s eyes dropped to a bag near the door.
‘I am. Tonight. Come with me. It’s the only option that makes sense.’
Fifteen minutes ago Shay thought he might have done just that. A quarter of an hour ago, he might have packed his bag summarily and left the city, his reports completed, his duties done.
But now he shook his head. ‘There is something I still have to finish.’
He thought of Celeste. He thought of her gift to him in the hay barn at Langley, the winter sun slanting through the dirty glass of a cracked window. Long limbed, perfect and sad.
‘Does James McPherson know of the danger?’ There were others to be considered, too.
‘If he doesn’t, the channels of his intelligence are failing him. It’s over here, don’t you see? There is nothing left that could make a difference to the outcome of a war that defies every tenet of sense. If the Little General wants to cut his own throat, then who are we to hang around and bathe in the blood of it?’
‘Which way are you headed?’
‘To the coast in the north. There are fishermen whom I wager would place gold above the sway of politics if given the chance and will transport me across the channel.’
‘Then I wish you good luck and God speed.’
‘You won’t come?’
‘I think you will have a better chance of safety without me. My cover here has been blown. I heard of this today.’
‘God. Then why the hell are you staying?’
‘It’s just for a little while. I will leave tomorrow night.’
‘Find another uniform, then. I’ve heard rumours that every American envoy of President Madison will be searched.’
‘I have already heard that warning, but thank you.’
‘There’s a brandy waiting for you in a London pub when you make it home.’
‘I’ll hold you to it.’
‘You’re a hero, Shay, in Spain and in England, but be mindful that you only live once.’
‘And die once?’
‘That, too.’
When he was gone, Shay crossed the room and finished the cognac that Cunningham had poured himself. Blowing out the candles, he opened the curtains and sat to watch the moon’s outline barely visible against the tufts of gathering cloud.
One more day and it would be over. His war. Intelligence. Freedom. He could not even imagine going home to Luxford and being content.
* * *
Guy Bernard was waiting for her early the next morning as Celeste sidled into the busy marketplace at Les Halles, bread and buns in the basket on her back. If she’d been paying more attention, she could have simply avoided him, but as they’d come nearly face-to-face she had no way of pushing past. The colour in his cheeks was high and there was a certain set to his shoulders that she recognised.
‘Are you turned traitor, ma chérie?’ His greeting dripped with sarcasm. ‘After the Dubois fiasco it is being whispered that you are working for the English.’
‘That implies I might care more about the outcome than I do, Guy.’ She threw this back, this certain truth, for two could play at this game and she knew he had never been in it out of loyalty to France. They were both for hire, to anyone who might pay them well, and this was their strength as well as their weakness. When she saw him relax, her fingers slid away from the blade in her pocket and she breathed out.
She needed to know his intentions, needed to understand just what he might do next and, although it might have been wiser to run, a quieter voice inside ordered patience. Without his connection to the inner sanctums of the agencies, she would have been dead years ago. He had saved her so many times in those first, terrible eighteen months that she could not but be grateful. Napoleon’s Paris was not a city easy to exist in alone and a young woman of gentle birth like herself could not have made it through the first week if he had not been there.
She had learnt things. From him. She had learnt to survive and to flourish. She had risen from the ashes of shame to be reshaped into the flesh of the living, a knife in her hand and hatred in her heart. Guy had taught her how to hone it, how to use it, how to live with the vengeance tempered. She was a thousand different women now in every way that counted. The self that had barely been alive after her father’s death was gone. There were too many hurts to want to remember, too many ripped-away pieces that had stopped her being whole.
So when his hand came down across her own she did not pull away. There was good reason in the pretence of it, after all, even for the small time left to them. A front. A necessary deceit. A way to navigate the sticky path of espionage and not be dead.
‘You are too alone now, Brigitte. I no longer recognise anything about you, about who you were.’
Once, she had liked Guy Bernard, liked his passion and his energy for a better France, until she saw that there was no morality beneath his desires and until she understood other things as well.
He was dangerous and he drank too much. Before the first year of their marriage was over she had pulled away from the intimacy. They had continued with the charade of it all for another six months for the sake of the jobs they did. Together they were a formidable team and if Guy heard something that she had not, then he made certain she knew of it, and vice versa. The newly invented Mademoiselle Brigitte Guerin was a woman fashioned from smoke and mirrors, after all. Guy had lifted the identity card from a dead whore in the back streets of the Marais because the deceased girl was about the same age as she was and had enough of the same features—hair, eyes, height—to get away with sharing a casual description on the livret. Such a paper was enough to allow marriage, to be legal again, to have a history and thus a present and a future; a name change to weave a further ring of protection around the dubious centre of her truth. There was too little trust in Paris to be an outsider for long.
Brigitte Guerin filled the gap nicely and her father’s mistakes could not be traced back to it. Guy Bernard’s street savvy had afforded her protection and he’d never uttered her birth name again. But politics and the shifting tides of France’s fortune had drawn them apart, his anger becoming more and more pronounced and his moods so melancholy she had been able to stand it no longer.
Striking out on her own, she’d taken all the skills that her husband had taught her, skills that crept into her bones even as they made them hollow. He’d followed her for a time, trying to insist he’d change, but she had never allowed him the chance and so