A Night Of Secret Surrender. Sophia JamesЧитать онлайн книгу.
‘Benet wants to make sure that you realise if there is another incident of such a nature, you will be dead. Do you understand? There will be no further clemency.’
Alan’s knife was out now and the slice across the skin on her right hand cut deep into the flesh between her thumb and forefinger.
‘Do you understand?’ Pierre Alan repeated, menace clearly audible.
‘Yes,’ she breathed out, feeling the spin of terror. Another few moments of this and she would not make it home, the weakness of shock consuming her former bravado.
‘Look at me.’ It was Guy’s voice now, its personal intonation alerting her to a new degradation on its way even as his lips came down hard across her own. One hand curled about her throat, holding her there as the other wormed under her shirt and squeezed her left breast.
She saw his intent and the horror of her past resurfaced, moving like wraiths under her skin before the world blackened about the edges and she was falling, her blood slick on the coping stones as her feet went from beneath her.
* * *
When she woke she still wore all her clothes and was relieved that he had not followed through on the threat implicit in his assault. Leaning over to one side, she was tidily sick, the contents of her stomach soaking her trousers and running across the bleached stone.
Her nose streamed, her hand smarted and one of her front teeth felt loosened. A lucky escape. A fortunate evasion. The ache in her breast left her dizzy as she fumbled with the buttons on her shirt. He had pinched her there, next to the nipple, pinched her so hard the skin had dimpled and left a red mark.
But nothing was broken. Nothing would be permanent save for the scars inside. Benet knew his business and Guy was a competent servant. If not for her hope of helping Shayborne, she would have been well bent into submission now, too scared to think for herself, let alone act.
They could find her whenever and wherever they wanted and next time she would die. Less cleanly than Benet had directed, she imagined, the rush of lust in Guy’s face unhidden. If he had been there alone without Pierre Alan looking on, she wondered if he could have controlled himself. She was certain he would not have.
A crossroad dressed as a warning. The play of men against a woman. No one knew the true and personal ramifications of what had been threatened, save her.
She sat back and took her hat in her hand, hiding the injuries with it as others hurried past. For this moment she could not walk, fright having frozen her into incapacity. Passers-by would see a drunk perhaps, a youth who could not hold his liquor, a working boy with little sense or intellect and no hope.
Breathe, she instructed herself firmly and began to find air, small gulps at first and then greater ones. The tight alarm in her chest loosened and her teeth let go of the soft flesh inside her mouth.
‘Papa,’ she whispered when her voice was back, hating the need she could hear in the single word and the tears that stung the cut across one edge of her cheek.
Shay counted down the seconds following Celeste’s departure, wanting to place a good amount of time between them. Safety depended on careful observations and well-planned escape routes.
McPherson would have to be warned, of course. The net was closing in day by day, but he hadn’t yet done what he’d hoped to since coming to Paris. He had passed military and political intelligence through McPherson to Wellesley, good intelligence that would inform the strategists and policy makers. But things were coming to a head now and he did not want to miss the last battles of the campaign.
Napoleon and the Grande Armée were Russia-bound and General Wellesley was moving east towards France, chasing the last of the remaining French troops under General Soult out of Spain.
He would quit Paris for the Spanish north. In disguise, he thought, and his heart sank. In all the weeks he’d been in France he had worn his uniform, as he had promised to do. Never before had he broken his promise to stay under the protection of military clothes.
Celeste Fournier was another problem. If she had come to him, then others were probably watching, too, and her vow of help was beguiling. He would like to understand why she had left Sussex so abruptly. He would like to know why she had never made contact with him, why she had slid into the Parisian underworld of subterfuge and sacrifice instead.
A small hole in the canvas allowed him to slip into the backstreet behind the restaurant and up through a series of alleyways that led to Montmartre.
McPherson’s apartment was halfway up the hill on the Rue des Abbesses and he was home, setting a substantial diamond in a gold ring.
‘The secret police and the War Office have us in sight. You will need to pack up and leave.’
Grey eyebrows shot up. ‘Cunningham implied as much when I saw him last. The White Dove warned him.’
‘The White Dove?’
‘A woman who transfers cachets for us sometimes and one who goes by so many names I have lost the truth of her real one. It is rumoured her father was murdered six years ago by the English.’
‘Where was the daughter when this happened?’
‘Here in Paris. Another lost soul of the Empire.’
Shay felt unaccountably sick. Was this Celeste he spoke of? Had she been with her father when he had been killed? Had she seen the murder?
‘Who does she work for now?’
‘Nobody and everybody. I pay her well for things pertinent to the security and success of Britain and her causes. Sometimes she slips in red herrings so even that loyalty is questionable. At heart I imagine she works for one of the clandestine and dangerous underground agencies set up by Napoleon’s less salubrious captains. Like everybody else here she needs money to survive.’
My God, such revelations turned all he had once known of Celeste on its head. Spoiled. Impetuous. Arrogant. Brittle and beautiful like her mother, but in a far more spectacular way.
Why would she come to his rooms and risk exposure? Why had she shadowed him? There was something he was missing and he could not quite put it together. The disguises she had sported each time he had seen her made no sense either, for August Fournier had been wealthy and his daughter’s gowns the veritable talk of the county. She could have retired into an elegant lifestyle with her looks and her money. She could have married anybody she’d desired and done well. Yet she plainly had not.
McPherson hadn’t finished, though, and after a moment he continued speaking. ‘The thing is that there is a certain fineness about her that one understands only by degrees. She brought me medicine when I was in bed with a bad chest last winter and only a few days ago she played a role in trying to save the lives of a family caught in the crossfire of politics.’
Now he knew it was Celeste, for she had spoken of the same blunder.
‘How?’
‘She warned them of the danger. They were about to leave Paris when they were killed.’
‘What was their crime?’
‘The father had shot a man who threatened his wife, but honour in Paris has many complex layers and most people are entangled in some way or other with government strategy. For all the freedoms Napoleon promises, he keeps a tight rein on divergent thinkers.’
‘Which Felix Dubois was?’
‘Ah, so you had heard of the fracas? The White Dove has her own thoughts on justice and if I know of her involvement, then others will, too. There were documents found in the Dubois house which heralded British sympathies. Some say they came from her hands. If she is not careful, it will be she who will feel the wrath of suspicion next, if she still lives.’
Shay