“Your Sir Knowlton arranges I give my information to someone no one will be suspicious that I am meeting. Someone with a reputation as interesting as mine. Thomas. Voilà! Oh, I asked to meet with him more often, but I was told he dealt in more, how you say, tactical areas. So now I know many, many of you aristocrats.”
Thomas had been involved in espionage. Cat was stunned even as the odd bits and pieces of information about Thomas’s past fell into place; his sudden, unaccountable retirement from society eight years ago, his perfect French accent, his military “friends.” Thomas had been a spy.
Daphne’s next words came to Cat as if from a long distance away. “But now my so good friends are gone, and I am left here. And Napoleon, he is not so very kind to those he feels have betrayed him. I dare not go to my house to even fetch my moneys. It is watched.”
Daphne toyed with the empty cup of tea, her long fingers playing in tireless agitation. “Have you ever seen a person tortured, ma chère? I did not think so. It is very ugly. Much pain. Much screaming.”
“What will you do?” The horror of Daphne’s words produced an unexpected knot of concern in Cat’s stomach.
“I do not know. I have a cousin outside of the city who would see me safely to Russia. There is a man there who does not forget me. But…” The lines deepened between her eyes. “I have nothing to offer the men guarding the blockades. They will never let me out without a bribe.”
Daphne’s gaze once more darted around the room and then settled, curiously blank and empty, on the tea leaves at the bottom of her cup.
Cat felt the lump of the pendant pressing against her leg. No one deserved to be tortured. Withdrawing the gem, she slid the bauble across the table in front of Daphne. It glittered and blinked, trapping the pale light and returning it as brilliant, dancing radiance. Cat heard the sharp intake of Daphne’s breath.
“C’est magnifique!”
“C’est fake.”
“Really?” Daphne held the pendant up to the window, studying it with a practiced eye. “Ah, yes. But such a good one!”
“If you are willing to risk having it discovered as paste, it’s yours.”
Daphne’s eyes held Cat’s for a second before her fist closed in a tight knot over the sparkling glass. She rose at once, as though having gotten from Cat what she wanted she had no further use of her. But then, on the point of leaving, she hesitated and looked down at Cat.
“I did everything I could to seduce him. Everything. But he was already seduced far beyond my ability to compete. By you.”
Cat made her way out of the café, her heart pounding painfully in her chest. She was alone, and no one was going to be coming for her. She was trapped without money, family, or friends. Fear worked on her, causing her legs to shake beneath her gown. She forced herself to walk calmly through the vacant lobby and up the stairs to her room.
She had to think. She couldn’t give in to unproductive hysteria. She wiped her damp palms against the soft wool of her skirts. There had to be a way. There had to be. If only Thomas were here.
Her surprise at discovering he had been a spy had ebbed. It made so much sense in light of what she knew. But other things the Frenchwoman had said worked torturously on her. She wanted so much to believe Daphne’s avowal that Thomas had resisted her.
And yet, Cat admitted to herself, it did not seem to matter to her heart what Thomas had done, or not done. The Frenchwoman’s words gave justification for something her heart needed no reason for. She did not love Thomas any more now than when she had been convinced of his amorality.
Even as she thought of him, her spirits fell. She did not know where he was, she only knew something must have kept him from her side otherwise he would have been here by now. Thomas saw her as his responsibility. He would never willingly turn his back on an obligation. But she must have faith in him. She must believe he would be all right. To do otherwise was to court madness.
It was nearly eleven. She had to face facts: she was going to have to get herself out of Paris. And there was no time to lose. If Daphne was right blockades were being set up even as she stood here in stupid immobility.
She went to Hecuba’s room. Her aunt must have left something of value behind. Cat hastily rummaged through the abandoned piles of clothing and boxes. Fifteen minutes later, she sank onto the bed, her shoulders bowed in defeat. A pair of gold ear studs, a tourmaline brooch, a poorly made paste choker, a small cameo, and an emerald chip clasp lay in her lap. She stared at the small hoard. Altogether they weren’t worth as much as the paste pendant she’d given Daphne Bernard.
Tears blurred her vision and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. She would sign away her future if she wasted valuable time crying. She picked up a lump of something and worried it with her fingers, forcing herself to think. A sharp pin pricked her thumb, and she dropped the lump, sucking at the bead of blood. What the devil was the confounded thing, anyway? It was one of Aunt Hecuba’s many bust improvers. There were dozens of the things scattered all over the place.
Cat’s eyes narrowed and she swiveled her head toward the vanity on which stood half-full pots of creams, lotions, and paints. Without a sound, she started to undress.
Monsieur Giroux, manager of the hotel, watched the old lady hobble unsteadily down the grand stairway, her hands clutched around a small but heavy-looking portmanteau. So Lady Montaigne White has rededicated her life to God, he thought sardonically, noting the thick swathing of dark wool around the stout, bowed body, the heavy veil, and the iron crucifix. Well, he sighed, it was as good a time as any to befriend God. Soon the dispossessed would arrive, and they would not be friendly to those they considered traitors. God might not be such a bad idea.
Lady Montaigne White had reached the front door of the hotel. She was pulling her voluminous cape tightly about her. Perhaps the old girl was trying to fly without settling her considerable account with the hotel. Were the young and delicious Lady Cat with her, Monsieur Giroux feared he would certainly have had to stop them. But Lady Cat had disappeared after breakfast. Irresolute, the manager stood, wondering if he should go after the ancient dame.
A sudden ear-shattering wail turned his attention toward the green baize door leading to the kitchens. One of the chambermaids, the one with a penchant for handsome English lordlings, was screaming that Napoleon’s returning armies would surely kill her. They should be so kind, Monsieur Giroux thought as, his course decided by this imminent crisis, he started for the kitchens.
He glanced over at the front door just in time to see the badly hemmed black skirts swish from view. He let her leave with a shrug of indifference. Where could she possibly run to, anyway?
Chapter 22
Seward’s approximation of forty-eight hours before Paris heard of Napoleon’s march had been wrong. Not long after Thomas had left Merton’s, Peter Arbuthnot had arrived from the coast, breathless and disheveled. His garbled exhortations quickly deciphered, the other gentlemen had raised him onto their shoulders, from where he shouted, “Napoleon is in France! He marches on Paris!”
In the morning, a tidal wave of Englishmen flooded the streets trying to secure some means out of the city. Thomas rose late and, determined to confront Cat, went to hire a hack. There were none. Every available means of conveyance was occupied. Hay wagons pulled dukes and their duchesses. Drays carted lords and their ladies through the cold drizzle.
Thomas hurried the short distance to the Mertons’ address, seeking Cat and Hecuba’s location. The mansion was abandoned. Only a handful of servants remained gleefully, if fearfully, scavenging the treasures, toys, and pretties abandoned in the Mertons’ haste to leave. Thomas pulled the French valet to his feet and demanded to know where Lady Cat was staying. The valet shook his head. Angrily, Thomas flung him away. He went on to the next servant and then the next even as the minutes ticked away with brutal regularity: ten-thirty, three quarters past ten, and then eleven o’clock.
Finally a tweenie, the glint of greed sharp in
her pale blue eyes, beckoned him forward to demand payment for her information. Wordlessly, Thomas pressed a stack of sovereigns into her hand, and she spat a name at him before darting away.
Fontaine. He swore viciously. The Hotel Fontaine was miles across town. He left the house, the sharp pellets scoring his face as he jogged down the deserted streets, heading toward the river.
He had gone nearly two miles when he saw the horse. A small group of rough-looking men surrounded her as she danced at the end of her reins, made nervous by the press of the crowd. She was a big, ugly-looking nag, her eyes rolling in her great slab of a head.
Thomas was by her side in a trice.
“How much?” he demanded of the men in their own coarse patois. They eyed him suspiciously.
“You aren’t going to turn around and sell her to some stinking English dog, are you?” one of the men asked.
Thomas flashed his teeth in a violent grin. “No. No. This horse carries me.”
Another man stepped forward. “And what would a patriot want to run away for?”
Thomas grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, dragging him until he stood bare inches from Thomas’s snarling face. “Who said I was running away?”
The other men shifted uneasily on their feet. Sweat and sleet had plastered Thomas’s hair to his head and down his neck. His eyes burned in his workman-dark face. He appeared a true devotee of the cause. “How much can you pay?” a burly balding fellow in a leather apron asked.
Thomas fished into his pockets and withdrew a small leather purse. He untied the jesses and dumped twelve gold coins into his palm.
“This is what I have. Therefore, this must be her price.” He grabbed the burly fellow’s hand, forcing his fingers open, and pressed the gold into his palm.
“For Napoleon!” Thomas shouted, jerking the reins free and leaping onto the mare’s broad back. He wheeled her around, rearing away from the little group and galloped down the icy alleyway.
Her shaking was due more to fear than the cold, Cat knew. Hecuba’s bust improvers and her own dress worn beneath Hecuba’s gown kept much of the biting wind from her flesh. She had thought the hotel manager was going to stop her. She had seen his eyes narrowing as she hobbled slowly past him. But she had made it. She was on the streets, committed to her plan to find a way out of Paris. She forced herself not to think of Thomas, where he was, what danger he was in. He would be safe. He had to be. Because they had to be together again.
The few carriages that passed didn’t slow when she hailed them. Cat fought down her panic. Her own resourcefulness was her only hope of exiting the city, and that virtue was being quickly depleted.
A wagon pulled by a pair of plow horses clattered around the corner. A group of English, eloquent in their rigid silence, were crowded onto the hay-covered bed.
Cat dropped her bag and jerked it open, fishing frantically for a piece of jewelry. Her hand closed on the paste collar and she thrust it over her head, shaking it so its glass prisms would catch the driver’s eye.
The wagon was almost even with her now, and after a quick glance, the driver was once more clucking to the horses, urging them past her. An older gentleman, his face red and set, directed his angry gaze on her. His fleshy lower lip trembled before he lifted his walking stick and rapped the driver sharply on the shoulder. He said something to the man and—merciful heavens!—the wagon pulled to a stop.
“It will be a fine day when an English gentleman abandons a lady!” the gray-haired man sputtered, reaching down for Cat.
“I can get much more than that pauvre necklace from someone else,” grumbled the driver.
“I have more!” Cat gasped fearfully as she passed her portmanteau up to one of the men in the wagon.
“Now, now, m’dear. Do not concern yourself.” Her savior patted her hand. “Come now, lads, help the lady!”
Three pairs of hands reached over and swung Cat up and over the wagon’s sides. One of the middle-aged women offered a distracted smile. The other ignored her. The little company retreated into silence as the wagon started forward.
Only the man who’d spoken revealed any emotion. His face, Cat surmised, was not red from the cold, but with barely restrained anger. He muttered to himself in sharp, vehement barks before noting Cat’s stare, obscured though it was by the heavy veil.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” He inclined his head in an abrupt, military nod. “Gerald Leades, of His Maj—”
“Gerald!” The woman who’d smiled at Cat gasped.
“Damnation! Am I to skulk about like some whipped cur while that miserable little, trumped-up—”
“Gerald!” the woman implored, laying a restraining hand on his arm. The couple’s eyes locked. Abruptly the rage seeped from Leades’s face, leaving on his florid countenance an odd combination of misery and tenderness.
“For you, Sally. Only for you,” he whispered. He turned back to Cat. “My wife, Sally Leades.”
“Lady Hecuba Montaigne White,” Cat rasped.
“Honored, ma’am,” the older woman said.
The group fell once more into silence. A young English dandy appeared, panting breathlessly at the side of the wagon as he kept up with them. Wordlessly the men reached down to lift him over the side. He shook his head and pointed to several trunks piled on the curb some yards behind. As silently as hands had been offered, they were withdrawn, leaving the youth staring, openmouthed and astonished, in their wake.
“Fool!” said Leades, rage once more coloring his face.
“Lady Montaigne White, how is it you are alone during this crisis?” Sally Leades seemed to ask more to distract her husband than from any real interest.
“My footmen ran away. My maid was French,” Cat answered, aware her words sounded curt, but afraid conversation would give her away. She knew the haute ton, comfortably reviewing her actions in London, would find no situation dire enough to justify an unchaperoned state.
The driver suddenly pulled the horses to a stop, pointing to a huge crowd gathered at the end of the street. “The blockades are up. We go no farther. Get out.”
Stunned, the occupants of the wagon struggled to their feet, fear and uncertainty robbing them of argument. Except for Leades. His jowls quivering, he grated out, “How much?”
The driver shrugged, eager to be off and haul more passengers from one point of entrapment to another.
“There is nothing I can do. See? Blockade. Soldiers.”
Leades pulled a purse from his greatcoat. It swung heavily from its leather thong. The driver watched its hypnotic movement as his hand slowly reached up toward it.
“Not yet,” sneered Leades. “Not until we are past the blockade.”
“You are too many,” whined the driver.
“Take the women, then.”
“Oui, oui! I will take the women.”
“No!” Sally Leades cried out. “I won’t go without you!”
Leades smiled, love and satisfaction equally mingled. “But you must, Sal. I shall be much better use to His Majesty with you safely on your way to England.”
Gently, he brushed his blunt fingertips across her cheek. Unfolding her hand, he placed the purse in it.
“Not until you are past the barricades. If he should try anything, scream for the soldiers. They would not like to be left out of any transaction he’s made. I will see you in London when this situation has been properly resolved.”
Leades heaved himself out of the wagon. Wordlessly the other men followed. Clipping one of the horses on its rump, an expression of anticipation on his solid face, Gerald Leades watched the wagon roll away.
A few minutes later, the driver stopped the wagon on a quiet back street.
“Soon you cover yourselves with straw. Be quiet. Maybe we get you past,” he said, his eyes on the purse Sally Leades was tightly clutching.
“I will not cover myself in these filthy weeds,” the other woman said, the first words Cat had heard her voice.
“Then you get out,” said
the driver. “These soldiers will look away from a wagon of hay, but I do not bet my neck they be so forgiving if they see Englishwomen.”
“All right.” The woman stood up, dusting off her sodden skirts. “I will get off.”
“Please,” implored Sally, “you mustn’t. You can’t.”
“Oh, but I can,” the woman retorted, every inch the grande dame. “I shall go back to the hotel. Someone there will, no doubt, procure proper transport to England. One must have standards.”
Cat wanted to laugh. Ridiculous, foolish woman! Acting as though this were some game she no longer wanted to play.
“Sit down!” Cat hissed. “Your misplaced sense of decorum will find you a permanent guest of Napoleon’s!”
The woman sniffed. “I can understand this sort of behavior from a soldier’s wife but would have thought better of you, Lady Montaigne White.”
Than you don’t know Hecuba. “There is a time and place for insisting on purposeless niceties. This is neither.”
The woman sniffed and clambered over the side of the wagon before Cat could restrain her, dragging a jewelry case after her. The driver, obviously eager to leave the troublesome woman behind, snapped the leads on the horses’ rumps, moving them forward into a trot.
“You must stop!” Cat called out.
“She stays,” he said without turning.
Cat stared at the diminishing figure, standing stiff with offended dignity.
“Make it back to the hotel!” she called, the wind sucking the words from her mouth and scattering them in the frozen alley.
“Now, you women give me your purse and cover yourselves with hay” the driver said a few minutes later. He had fetched the wagon up behind a stack of crates, a few yards from the barricade. A couple of shabby soldiers huddled next to a muddy quagmire encompassing most of the street.
Promise Me Heaven Page 18