The Star of Versailles

by Catherine Curzon

  Followed by six men on horseback, the carriage drew to a shuddering halt at the sight of her, the outriders pulling back their mounts in well-trained formation. Seconds passed before the door of the vehicle opened and Tessier emerged, a shadow in rook-black, silver buttons glinting sparks in the sun. He regarded her with a face that betrayed nothing, knitting his gloved hands behind his back.

  “You made good time,” Sylvie called, bringing her mount to a halt as she neared him. “I knew you’d find me.”

  “Your safe house is gone…it is burning still.”

  Sylvie kept her expression calm, asking, “Why?”

  “Because this game is over—we are bringing all of you into custody today,” Tessier snarled. “The playwright will hand his sister over when I am done with him—he will beg to hand her over.”

  “All of us?” Tessier’s words filled her with a jolt of fear, hidden in the sharpness of her tone. He wouldn’t, not to me.

  “Not all—those who have no value will be executed where they stand.”

  “I came to find you—”

  “You have betrayed me at every turn…humiliated me with your professor, sent me along the road for nothing but sport.” He shook his head, face hard as marble. “What lies do you bring me now?”

  “Harsh words, indeed”—Sylvie met his gaze squarely—“when I’ve been so sorely mistreated already. That meddling professor—who is no more mine than the playwright, I’ll have you know—changed plans at the last minute, and I’ve been a prisoner from then until the moment I managed to escape. I’ve chased along this road for hours in search of you, and this is how you greet me?”

  “And you have left your son?”

  “They’ll look after him.” She nodded to remind herself of that fact. “He’s safer there for the time being.”

  “Get into the carriage.” He turned to one of his men to bark, “Take the horse alongside.”

  With a surge of satisfaction and relief, she slid down from the saddle, allowing Tessier a smile as she climbed inside the carriage to take a seat.

  “And are we to collect your boy now, or would you like to leave him a little longer?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Sylvie decided. “We’ll get him when the time is right.”

  “The time for action has come. I am recalled to Paris.” Tessier slammed the carriage door and it began to roll along. “We shall see how much stamina the playwright has this time.”

  “It was his fault we didn’t leave when we were supposed to,” she remembered, certain he was at least partly to blame for what had happened.

  “Why?”

  “Him and your Morel had a right argument. He was yelling for hours.”

  “Why would they argue?”

  “Oh.” She gave a sly grin. “They’ll be all made up now, I imagine.”

  “Do not play your games with me, Sylvie, speak plainly.”

  “They’re fucking each other.” Sylvie watched for his response and saw none. “Is that plain enough for you?”

  Despite herself, she still saw nothing in the stone-cold expression, the only movement the knitting of Tessier’s hands before him. She wondered again at the innocent young man he had once been, the shy student who had burned like a firebrand on the political stage, yet had barely been able to string a sentence together when faced with a pretty girl.

  “Enough of them.” She let her voice soften. “We shan’t quarrel, shall we?”

  “Never.”

  “Never,” she repeated, smiling softly with satisfaction before turning her gaze to the window.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Might I have a word?” William rehearsed the question a couple of times under his breath on his way to the kitchen, entering the room a moment later where he spoke it for real, determined that he and the professor would have more than one before the interview was over.

  “There’s no time,” Dee told him, busy loading an assortment of pistols that were ranged on the table. “We need to be away.”

  “‘We’?” He shook his head impatiently. “I fear I am uncertain where I stand after my dismissal.”

  “You are with us to the coast, of course.” The professor frowned. “I would not abandon any one of you, you know that.”

  “I don’t need a bloody nursemaid.” William’s ire rose once more, despite Gaudet’s best attempts to calm it earlier. “Let me do my job.”

  “One thing I told you, one.” The words were stern, the tone as infuriatingly level as ever. “You keep things professional—I do not think that you are cut out for this work.”

  It felt like a punch to the stomach, even as he told himself he shouldn’t, didn’t care. “And so again, you prove yourself to be wrong.”

  “I have been informed by a contact in the south of the facts in the death of Yves Morel.”

  Now William was silent, this new revelation unexpected.

  “You have put yourself in danger, Knowles, and I would not want that. I thought you had killed Morel. I learned he died thanks to a drunken accident—you are not ready for a job of this importance.”

  “I don’t need your concern.” William scrubbed a hand over his face, mortification adding to his anger. “I can take care of myself.”

  “There will be other work for you, but, I think, something a little less intense.”

  “Do you want to know,” he asked, “what you can do with your work, sir?”

  “There is no need for—”

  At that moment, the door to the yard opened and Harriet hurried in, followed by the ever-present poodle. “Papa—”

  “Will you leave us be?” William snapped, the unwelcome intrusion the last straw. “What kind of a mission brings damned children along for the ride?”

  Without a word, Harriet turned on her heel and walked quickly back into the yard as Dee told him, “You will not speak to my daughter in that tone, sir. I may put up with your rudeness, but I will not expect her to do likewise.”

  “I don’t want any of you putting up with anything.” He just managed to keep from stamping the floor. “I have had enough of all of it.”

  “Believe me, that is mutual. My party and I were bound for home, yet I find myself forced into France to mop up a mess that should never have been made.” Dee’s calm facade cracked just slightly. “She should not be anywhere near this country.”

  “Nor should she be walking in on other people’s conversations, sir.”

  “This conversation is over, Knowles.” Dee’s words were silenced by the sound of Papillon’s frantic barking from the yard, followed by a cry that could only be from Harriet. Despite his last words, William was at the door moments after Dee, the sound of distress all too unmistakable.

  There was no time to think anything, an ebony carriage hurtling along the track away from the farmhouse that William, with a stone of pure horror in his gut, recognized all too well from those nights spent under the same roof as Vincent Tessier. Whatever Dee thought or knew went unsaid, the spymaster already hauling himself onto the untacked back of one of their own carriage horses and urging it into a gallop after his abducted daughter.

  With a curse, William had no choice but to clamber onto one of the remaining horses, giving chase a few seconds later. Dee had made good time and was thundering after the carriage, William close enough to see but far enough away to be unable to do anything other than watch helplessly as one of Tessier’s men turned in his saddle, the sudden flash of a pistol brightening the muzzle as a single shot sounded.

  The professor’s horse reared back with a whinny, for a moment standing tall in the air before it toppled over, trapping Dee beneath it for a few, terrible seconds. As the animal scrambled onto its feet and cantered back to the safety of the farmhouse the professor was left on the ground, William hoping that the unmoving man was nothing worse than unconscious.

  Bringing his own horse up short, William scrambled down, hurrying to crouch beside the fallen figure. The poodle that had followed them both unnoticed licked at Dee’s f
ace, William noticing with relief the rise and fall of the professor’s chest before telling Papillon, “Go and get help, quickly.”

  Much to his amazement, she gave a blink of her glittering eyes then turned and scampered back to the house, barking wildly once more. With that, William turned his attention back to Dee, tapping the man gently where Papillon had licked a moment earlier, before forcing himself to look at the wound. It was not as bad as he had feared, the bullet having missed Dee even though the weight of the horse had smashed his knee into the stony ground.

  Dee’s eyes flickered open, the memory of the horror that had confronted him all too evident there when he said, “Harriet—”already struggling to sit up.

  “The poodle has gone for help.” William wondered at the words even as he uttered them. “Stay still.”

  “Stay still?” He looked at William as though he was mad and attempted to rise to his feet, an exclamation of pain bitten back as he did so. “My daughter—oh, God, Harriet.”

  “You’re hurt,” He was, he felt, doing a wonderful job of stating the obvious and instead went to support Dee in his futile attempts to stand.

  “Get me a horse.” Dee’s tone was low, face white as though all the blood had blanched from him. “Please…”

  Dee was, William was certain, in no state to do anything, blood already pooling on the left knee of his breeches. A glance down the road rewarded William with the sight of Papillon and those she had summoned fast approaching. Making a snap decision, he got to his feet and pulled himself up onto his waiting horse, knowing only that there was a girl in need.

  “Knowles, please,” Dee told him urgently, glancing down at where his own leg was red with fast-spreading blood. Only then did he clamp a hand to the wound in his knee and gasped, “Help her.”

  Determined to do just that, William had time to shout an assurance before spurring the horse to action and chasing after the distant carriage. He rode the horse into the ground in pursuit, sure he could, must do something to help the young lady. At first, it seemed as though the five outriders hadn’t seen him but then, as they crested a narrow bridge, they turned as one and galloped straight toward him, each man already reaching for his gun except for one, who held in his hand what appeared to be a roll of paper. With no other choice, William slowed, wishing he had his pistol to hand as he waited for them to reach him, to kill him.

  Yet, the shot didn’t come.

  As the riders drew closer, he realized that their leader was Jacquet, the jailer whose son had died at William’s own hand. The man slowed his horse, the smallpox scars that marked his face worn deeper with grime from the road, and he regarded William with a dark frown, holding out the paper wordlessly.

  “What’s this?” he asked, even as he took the note, unfolding it and examining the fastidious writing therein. A quick glance gave him the answer all too soon—a simple exchange of father for daughter was the deal Tessier proposed, the implications of that all too clear to William as he skimmed his gaze over the words for a second time.

  “If his lordship is amenable to the exchange,” Jacquet told him, “the address to come to is in Harfleur.” He gestured to the name of a street on the back of the letter. “No games neither. The people there are very loyal, if you get me, and anything amiss…his girl will get what you gave my lad, understand?”

  He understood too well, managing a grim nod before pushing it into his pocket and wheeling his horse around.

  “Tell him she’ll be a pretty sight on the scaffold, citizen,” Jacquet bellowed after William as he galloped away. “The girls always do!”

  The ride back to where he had left Dee felt like the longest William had ever known, heart seemingly in his throat as he turned the note over in his mind, a plan already forming. It was with a surge of relief that he saw Gaudet standing there in his red coat. The playwright rushed to meet him, his hand outstretched toward the reins.

  “How is he?” William called as he approached, pulling the horse to a halt and noting, even in the panic, how at the sight of Gaudet things were not quite so bad.

  “Stubborn as a mule. Terrified as any father would be.” Gaudet caught the bridle, gazing up at William. “What news?”

  “Tessier.” He swallowed hard. “Demands a swap. Dee for his daughter.”

  “But they only have one another…” Gaudet shook his head. “I shall go—he believed me to be Dee once, perhaps he might still.”

  “No,” William said firmly, sternly almost, the thought of sending Gaudet back to Vincent Tessier one he would not even contemplate. “No—I will go, and you must stop Dee from getting involved.”

  “No!” The utter horror on Gaudet’s face, the reflection of it in his voice, struck William unexpectedly hard and the Frenchman shook his head, saying urgently, “Never, Guillaume, not you.”

  “It’s the only way.” He took a deep breath. “Not a word to Dee.”

  “Chérie, please! I cannot go on alone, Claudine and François need someone like you, not a silly playwright.”

  “I’ll be back before you know it,” William assured Gaudet, not quite sure how he would keep the promise. “I don’t intend to stay very long—being Tessier’s houseguest once was more than enough.”

  “I will not let you go.”

  “I’ll fare better than the girl,” he pointed out, remembering Dee’s words when he added, “And Dee will get you to Le Havre—I’ve done nothing but get things wrong since this mission started. I can at least do this to try and do something right.” He reached out to Gaudet’s hand for a moment, their fingers touching before he urged, “Now, we must hurry. And remember, not a word.”

  “Please, chérie,” the words were a whisper, William sure Gaudet had already accepted that he must go. “I will not say a word.”

  “I will come back,” he promised, knowing he must, somehow, now keep his word. “I swear it.”

  “You had better.” Gaudet gave a brave smile. “Because I—”

  “Oi!” Bastien’s distant voice silenced whatever Gaudet was about to say. “Can either of you two drive a carriage?”

  “As well as I can do anything else,” William shouted back before turning to Gaudet. “Which isn’t saying much. Up for giving it a go?”

  Gaudet nodded mutely, apparently just a little lost, but now Bastien was running toward them, the moment they had shared over all too soon.

  “Didn’t you catch them?”

  He had to tell the boy that he had not, adding quickly, “But we will get the better of them. Where is that carriage?”

  “You need to come and tell the professor what’s going on first.”

  The boy was right, of course. William gathered himself for the confrontation, to tell the professor that his daughter was lost. He could not panic, he knew, could not rush—that was, after all, how mistakes were made.

  “See that the boy stays out of trouble,” he told Gaudet, meeting his gaze before heading into the house to find the professor.

  The sound of raised voices was uncharacteristically audible as he entered the building, both Dee’s and Adam’s usually impeccable French distinctly Irish now, despite the language both were speaking. With an expression of utmost gravity on her face, the farmer’s wife bustled into the sitting room carrying a pail of water and bloody rags and told William, “Through there, calm them down.”

  William had about as much chance of that, he knew, as keeping a snowball from melting in Hell, but he smiled grimly at the woman before entering the room.

  “You can’t even bloody walk.” Adam was reasoning furiously whilst Dee sat on the sofa, breeches slit from ankle to knee as he busied himself with dressing his wound, from which blood still flowed.

  At William’s appearance, Dee glanced up. For a moment, his gaze shifted to the empty doorway where he obviously hoped to see his daughter.

  What little color remained drained from his face and he asked, “Tell me all?”

  Feeling this fresh failure deeply, William handed the note to Dee, st
anding back to allow him to read.

  “You did all you could, Knowles.” Dee took the letter. “There was nothing one man could do against so many.”

  He fell silent then, eyes moving over the page as Adam, face set in a mask of anger and worry, crossed to the window to look out into the yard. Finally, Dee turned to his friend and asked, “You will care for Harriet, if I cannot?”

  William remained silent, more certain than ever that his plan must succeed as he waited for Adam to answer. Instead of words, Adam turned and crossed to Dee, peering over his shoulder to read the note. He too was silent for a moment, scrubbing one hand through his hair before he asked William, “Did you read this?”

  “It was not addressed to me,” he pointed out.

  “He doesn’t know you.” Adam turned to Dee and William realized that he’d had exactly the same idea as him and Gaudet. “Let me go.”

  “What good,” William asked, “will that do?”

  “I’ve no one relying on me, no daughter, no lass. I’ll tell him I’m his man.”

  William waited, silently, cautiously, intrigued to hear what Dee would say to that, whether he would capitulate.

  “Nobody’s going but me,” Dee finally replied in a measured, calm tone. “Nobody dies on my behalf.”

  “Nobody is dying at all,” William objected. “Unless it is Tessier.”

  “We need to get underway,” Dee replied, white-faced as he finished fastening a bandage around his leg. “Thank you, Knowles, for bringing word to us.”

  William nodded an acknowledgement, the kind words fueling the feeling of failure and also of determination that he would be the one to put things right.

  The sun was warm when he strode out into the yard searching for Gaudet, needing his company. He whipped his head from left to right, calling the playwright’s name and finding himself even glad to see Papillon at that moment. Her presence meant that her master could not be far away. He set off across the yard, trying to push the memory of Dee’s face out of his mind as he searched for his lover.