Page 25 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘Without problem?’ When he stood he put pressure lightly on his wounded leg and was glad when it held. ‘You are known as the White Dove in the circles of espionage. A woman of mystery, McPherson says. A woman who has served many masters.’
‘Mystery is one of those imprecise words that holds a lot of different meanings.’
‘Why did you risk everything to save me?’
‘I was dead even before I warned you, Major, and it seemed pointless to die for nothing. So I thought to make it count.’
‘Count?’
‘You are a saviour to the world who despises Napoleon and his ruthless tactics. There are many here who hold no sway to vent their voice for dissent and yet by your actions you gave them hope.’
‘People like you?’
* * *
She watched the words form on his lips and saw the truth of them.
‘My father believed so strongly in Napoleon’s ideas that he died for them, six years ago in the house of the woman I met last night. Madame Caroline Debussy. Perhaps you have heard of her?’
‘The daughter of the Mayor of Léon?’
‘You are well informed, Major, but then of course you would be. Papa was murdered after she betrayed him. She told me that herself yesterday.’
‘A hard truth.’
‘And there are so very many more of them.’ Her hand came forward by its own accord to stroke down the line of his cheek. ‘I never forgot you. At least know that.’
The flint in his eyes made her swallow for she wanted him to feel as she did, even if nothing at all could be done about it. She wanted such a power between them, pulling them back to a time that was more innocent, a time when she was still in control of her own fate.
She felt the heat of him rise against her skin, saw the heavy beat of his heart in his throat and heard the shallowness of breath. And just for a moment, in the new dawn of a breaking day, Celeste felt less broken in the intimacy of his company. Then he moved, the anger in him palpable.
‘If they identify me on the road, you are to leave without a word.’ This order fell into the space between them, unpolished and harsh.
Clasping her fingers behind her back, Celeste wished she might have been braver. It was easy to play the siren when the mark was a man who meant nothing at all to you. But with Summer Shayborne such a charade would not have been a lie.
He did not want her and she was too afraid to demand to know why not.
‘You are a slut, Brigitte. You use men to gain only what you want.’
Guy Bernard’s words came back to her, whispered in hate.
‘Your father told me once that you were careless, but I think you are not that at all. I think you have always known exactly what you were doing.’
Caroline Debussy’s summary of her character was closer to the truth. Shehadknown, for behind the slaughter of her morals there lay an attempt to protect herself against the nothingness that crouched inside, the ennui that made her sell herself cheaply and without any care whatsoever. The dissolution of responsibility, she supposed, the final acceptance of chaos.
She was her mother’s daughter in more ways than she knew, after all—shattered inside, irreparably broken. Too scared to jump, too ruined to settle. The props of a husband and a social position that had kept Mary Elizabeth going were missing in her own existence and yet she could not quite give up. Not when this one last chance had been provided so unexpectedly.
‘The freedom of lust is a balm for any emptiness, Major, I promise it.’
The tick at the side of his jaw was the only movement in a face set in cast stone.
Why had she touched him like that and showed herself so blindly when until now she had only lived in lies? He did not even want such honesty; she could see he did not in the stiffened lines of his body and in the quick sorrow across his face.
Pity.
The one emotion she hated more than any other.
Chapter Four
