Page 24 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘Then that was Mary Elizabeth’s problem and not yours. Taken to its full conclusion, your philosophy would expound that I should be held responsible for the death of my own mother. She caught the same sickness I had just recovered from and it killed her.’
She had forgotten the sorrowful story of the Shaybornes. Two young children left motherless after the Viscountess had been taken by fever.
For a moment, reason usurped guilt and the anger in her heart lightened. He had been good at words, even back then. It was what had drawn her to him in the first place, this wisdom, for in the Fournier family there had been a decided dearth of it.
She stiffened at the thought here in the dawn light, only one step ahead of the clutches of peril. The sun had not even risen fully yet, but the day felt hot and worrying, a dozen agencies on their tails and nowhere safe to run.
If he dies, then the last piece that is good in me will go, too.
His eyes were of gold edged in bronze. She wondered what Anna had seen in them when she had stood before him, the kind, sweet wife of a thousand days.
Love, assuredly, and strength. Bravery, too, and cleverness. Such perfection worried her.
If he was not so sick, she might have kissed him full on the mouth, just to see if there were other things in him that were baser, less fine, but a shout from below had her tensing.
Shayborne tilted his head to listen. ‘It’s a drunk, a soldier who wants to forget what has been and live only for this moment.’
‘You can hear that in his voice?’
He looked up. ‘The sky is lightening on the Sabbath and he is far from home. There is a loneliness that is easily felt.’
‘Have you? Felt it, I mean?’
He shifted his position and she saw the truth in his face. ‘Many a time and in many a place.’
‘How did you begin, then? What led you to become a spy?’
‘A few years ago I brought corn, sheep and cattle through the French lines in Portugal to Wellesley’s troops. The arrival of transports bringing rations had been delayed, you see, and there was a serious supply problem of food around Torres Vedras.’
‘You led live animals back through the ranks of a starving enemy?’ She could not believe his explanation.
‘Well, the French fear of the guerrilla bands helped me. Napoleon’s troops were reluctant to venture into the darkness looking for trouble if they heard noises in the night and so there were wide, unpatrolled gaps.’
‘Which you found?’
He laughed. ‘I’d already reconnoitred routes and arranged passwords.’
‘Not all luck, then?’
He ignored that and carried on. ‘The whole enterprise was remarkably successful and gained me the confidence of General Wellesley. After that I found further employment in watching for the movements of the enemy and reporting back.’
‘Still in your uniform? It’s what we had heard here in Paris. That you danced through the lines of Frenchmen in your scarlet red.’
‘I was a professional soldier who wore a wide and sombre cloak.’
‘Because in disguise you would have been summarily hanged? Like John André was in the Americas when he was discovered out of his uniform and stranded.’
‘That, too,’ he said quietly and reached for the bottle of wine beside him.
He remembered this. This sort of conversation. Her wide knowledge of historical events. It had been the same all those years before as they had sat outdoors in Sussex and talked for hours. She never faltered or became boring. She kept him on his toes both then and now. Even with Anna he had not felt this shock of connection.
The thought made him swallow hard. His wife had been kind and sweet, but she had not been...exciting. Hell, that was an even worse thought than the previous one, the betrayal of a woman he had loved crawling under his skin.
Celeste’s hair stuck out from under the cap, cropped unattractively. She had probably cut it herself as the back was longer and less mauled. Her eyes were smoky, distrust written across them. But even after years of fear and danger she was still beautiful. So beautiful he turned away.
‘You’ll have to bulk up your shoulders if you are to be believable as a lad.’
The change in topic had her standing, a full frown on her brow. ‘I don’t need tutelage from you in how to be convincing, Major Shayborne. I have existed as a variety of “lads” without problem in Paris for years.’
