Page 13 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘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.
‘The way of life is above for the wise that he may depart from hell beneath.’
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?’
