Page 40 of A Night of Secret Surrender
She wanted the dawn to linger, to hold them in its embrace, to soothe doubt and allay fear. She wished time would stop now, this feeling of safety so final and complete. But true dawn crept in on quiet footfalls and touched all the hidden spaces of the room, and Summer rose to find them some breakfast.
When that was finished, she buttoned her new jacket to the neck and pulled on a hat that she had not seen before.
He was dressed as a gentleman of means today, his bearing a little bent and a greying wig placed across the short growth of his hair. He, too, wore a hat, an imposing specimen that was almost as fine as the ebony and silver cane he carried.
He so easily slipped in and out of personas, his voice carrying the waver of age as he spoke.
‘A carriage will collect us and remove us to the river. We are travelling down the Seine to Les Moulineaux to see my sister who has taken to her bed with an unexplained illness. She is not expected to make a recovery.’ Even the slight catch of worry was masterful as he lifted a small leather case and gave it to her. ‘You are the servant who will see to my luggage. It is as light as I can make it.’
The last remark was said quietly, his eyes soft with something that she could only interpret as worry. For her. Did he not know that the baskets of bread she often carried as the baker boy weighed ten times as much? It was a new experience to feel wrapped in his care and she found she liked it. It was a weakness, though, for such things could never last.
The carriage was substantial and well appointed. Inside there were small bottles of drink and crusted new baked rolls wrapped loose in calico. They touched nothing as the conveyance moved into the street and the driver called the horses on to a faster pace.
She had expected soldiers but they saw none, the way fast and largely empty. At the river, when the carriage stopped, she let go of the breath she hadn’t realised she was even holding because at least in the open there was room to escape.
Then they were on the boat and the ropes were heaved to, the current taking the weight of the small vessel and flinging it south on the Seine out of Paris.
‘We’ll disembark at the river before it turns north.’
‘And go west, maybe? The Americans at Nantes hold a great affinity for the English, despite being a French ally.’
‘There’s two problems I can see in that, Celeste. If we do somehow manage to avoid being blown out of the water by the British blockade standing out to sea, we will undoubtedly then be heading across the Atlantic to the Americas.’
‘It’s Spain, then?’
‘Well, we can’t go north, for odds are they’d think I’d head to England by the quickest route. It’s over a hundred miles to Le Havre or two hundred to Cherbourg. To get to the French–Spanish border is at least five hundred and once in Bayonne there is the problem of crossing the Pyrenees in an oncoming winter.’
‘A long way and dangerous?’
‘It will become safer the further we get from Paris. Time and distance have an effect of weakening the resolve of an enemy. But it is me they are chasing the hardest and if you feel you might do better alone...’
She shook her head. There was nothing between them save the past and that was fractured and difficult. Yet for the first time in a long while she felt she had found a place, even if only for a short while.
‘I won’t come back to England with you, but Spain might do.’
‘To live in?’
She shrugged, such vagueness a way of life. Make no plans. Set no times. Stay in the shadows. Lay low.
‘I have good contacts in Santander,’ he said.
She nodded and when he did not press her for more she was grateful. Everything about their relationship was strange and dislocated. But it was familiar, too, and it was this that pulled her back and made her want to stay.
There were weeks of travel before them, each day holding no certainty. In just three days they had nearly been killed, shot at, knifed and punched. They’d been tracked by experts and helped by other shadowy figures, always contending with the revolution’s atmosphere of lies and double dealing. It was hard to trust anyone in the underbelly of espionage.
Maybe Shayborne did not trust her either. That thought had her swallowing, for why should he? She wanted simply to fold herself in his arms and tell him that she would always keep him safe. But she didn’t, because how could he believe anything at all that she said? His friend Aurelian de la Tomber had taken the true measure of her. She had seen the dislike in his eyes.
She wished she could have gone back to the moments in the Langley barn again, become that young innocent girl who had laid her virginity out for Summer like a gift. She wished the circumstances of their tryst might have been different. She wished her mother hadn’t just tried to kill her and her papa hadn’t threatened to leave England altogether come the light of the morrow.
Thrown out.
Those other words echoed across the kinder ones. When she had finally returned to the house to find her mother was dead, her grandmother had exiled her father and called him every name under the sun, her own grief whipping out to include Celeste as well.
‘At least leave me Mary Elizabeth’s daughter so that I might try to reverse all the damage you have done to her.’
Damaged. Even then.
And here she was again, repeating exactly the same mistakes. Hoping for more.
