Velvet

by Jane Feather

  A great stillness entered Nathaniel, but his eyes remained calmly on her face.

  “There are some secret articles to be appended to the treaty. One of them commits Alexander to mediate a peace between England and France. If the English refuse, then Russia will declare war on England and join France and her allies in the Continental Blockade, bringing Denmark and Sweden with her.”

  Nathaniel said nothing for a long time. Napoleon had forced all the nations subjected to France to join a naval blockade designed to starve England into submission. Her prosperity, indeed her lifeblood, depended on overseas trade. With all the ports of Europe closed to her, she would be unable to trade, and the nation of shopkeepers, as Napoleon referred to them, would be brought to their knees. The blockade was already biting deeply into the nation’s economic foundation, but while Russia was at war with France, the Baltic ports had remained open to English commercial shipping. If the Scandinavian nations in hegemony to Russia were forced to join the blockade, then they could close off the Baltic and there would be no outlets for British trade. She would indeed starve to death.

  Nathaniel also knew that no amount of Russian mediation would convince the English government to make peace with Napoleon, so war with Russia and the closing of the Baltic ports was inevitable under the terms of the secret articles.

  Gabrielle had just given him a piece of information of such outstanding value that for a minute he couldn’t fully comprehend its consequences.

  “Why would you tell me this?” he asked finally.

  “It’s a gift, I told you.” She twisted the stem of her wineglass. “A lover’s gift.”

  “You would betray your own country?”

  She shook her head. “I told you once I didn’t believe Napoleon was good for France.”

  “But you spied for France.” It was a flat reminder.

  “I spied with my lover for France. Now I give you the lover’s gift of a piece of priceless information.” Was he believing her? He should; it was only the truth. She didn’t want to look at him, to read his expression, but she forced herself to do so.

  So the lover had also been a spy. He’d wondered about that in the brothel in Paris, Knowing Gabrielle as he did, it seemed inevitable that she would have embraced every aspect of her lover’s life.

  Nathaniel leaned back against the table, his glass in his hand, his eyes resting unwaveringly on her face. “A gift of love?” he asked.

  “I love you,” she said simply. “I know now that I can’t endure to be separated from you. And I can’t be with you when we’re on opposite sides in this war. I’ve always been torn between two allegiances. Now I have chosen.”

  Nathaniel drew a deep shuddering breath. The power of that simple declaration shook him to his core, and for the moment he was unable to absorb it, to see how it affected them both. “How did you discover this?” he asked as if she hadn’t said what she’d said.

  Gabrielle gave him her explanation.

  “You’re very fond of your godfather,” Nathaniel probed, still unable to accept the simplicity of her declaration. “Why would you choose to betray him?”

  “I don’t believe this does,” Gabrielle replied steadily. She wondered absently if Nathaniel had heard what she’d said. He wasn’t reacting to it in any way.

  She kept her voice calm and matter-of-fact as she offered an explanation as close to the truth as she could get without revealing Talleyrand’s true goals. “He too believes in a strong, united Europe. I have no idea what deep plans he has, except that he’s not in favor of an alliance between Russia and France. He’s attempting to circumvent the Russian negotiators—I know that for a fact—and from what I do know of Talleyrand, I’d lay any odds that he’s no more in favor of the secret articles than England would be.”

  Gabrielle’s reasoning was devious, but from what Nathaniel knew of Talleyrand’s reputation and ambitions, it was sound. Whatever reasons she had had for bringing him this information, the information itself was pure gold and only a fool would debate its authenticity. From his own observations during this meeting of the two emperors, it was clear that Alexander was willing to court Napoleon as assiduously now as he’d been prepared to fight him before.

  “I must leave for England immediately.” He pushed himself away from the table.

  “Now?”

  “By dawn.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Don’t be absurd.” He dismissed her statement with a brusque gesture.

  “I told you I loved you,” Gabrielle said quietly. “Will you give me nothing in return?”

  Nathaniel looked at her in silence, allowing her declaration to replay in his head. When he spoke, his voice was unusually hesitant, as if he was feeling for words. “It’s a gift so precious that I don’t know if my own love is sufficient return,” he said. “I don’t have your generosity of spirit, Gabrielle, and I’m afraid, terrified, that I’ll hurt you in some way.”

  Gabrielle shook her head. “You won’t,” she said. “You didn’t hurt Helen.”

  “I was responsible for her death,” he said bleakly. “I didn’t think about her, I thought only of my own needs, and those needs killed her. I don’t feel entitled to another chance at that happiness.”

  “But that’s silly,” she said, reaching for his hands, holding them tightly. “You can’t pay forever for one mistake. I’m not afraid you’ll hurt me.”

  When he said nothing, merely let his hands lie in hers, she said, “Do you love me, Nathaniel?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said softly.

  “Then I see no difficulty.” She smiled her crooked smile.

  “Let me deal with this information first,” he said, drawing her tightly against him. “I have to go to England at once and I can’t give us the attention I must. I’m overwhelmed. It’s something I want more than anything, but I can’t get my mind around it. You have to give me time.”

  Gabrielle heard the sincerity behind the plea, and she knew she could push him no further. “Very well.” She kissed him lightly. “I understand … I think.” She moved away from him, and he stood still, his hands hanging at his sides as if he’d just dropped something.

  Gabrielle picked up her feathers. “How do you intend to travel?” she asked cheerfully.

  Some of the intensity left Nathaniel’s face at this ordinary, matter-of-fact question and her easy tone. “Ride to Silute and take ship from there to Copenhagen, if possible. The sea is safer than the land, and generally quicker.”

  “Then I’ll wish you godspeed.”

  He ran his hands through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “This isn’t right, Gabrielle, but I don’t know what else to do. Will you come to England?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “Very soon.”

  She blew him a kiss and left him, closing the door quietly behind her.

  24

  Silute, on the mouth of the Neimen where it opened into the Baltic Sea. A few hours ride. Nathaniel intended to leave by dawn; presumably it would take him until then to make his preparations, construct appropriate reasons and farewells. He wouldn’t want to destroy such a useful cover by acting in haste. She, on the other hand, could be away within the hour.

  Gabrielle sat impatiently on the edge of her seat as the carriage took her back into the French zone and home.

  Talleyrand had already left: for the Prussian ball, so she scrawled him a note explaining what she’d done and what she intended to do. She put the note on the desk in his study and then rummaged through the pigeonholes until she found the imperial seal that Talleyrand used for all his official documents. She wrote herself a suitably officious set of instructions, folded the document, and sealed it with the imperial eagle. It could well prove a useful passport or protection as she journeyed through Napoleonic Europe.

  It took her a few minutes to change into her britches and throw a few necessities into a cloak bag. She dropped her pistol into the deep pocket of her cloak. A leather purse with a substantial sum of mon
ey went inside her shirt, close to her skin. Brigandage was rife among the disaffected population in the small towns of invaded Prussia.

  She slipped quietly out of the house and round to the stables, where a sleepy lad saddled her horse. He was Prussian, a native of Tilsit, and regarded Gabrielle in her strange costume with scant interest.

  It was still an hour to dawn when she left the town and turned her horse toward the sea, following the river to its mouth.

  As dawn broke, the hamlets and villages she passed came to life, women opening doors, shooing out dogs, plying brooms. Children ran with buckets to the river and men appeared in the fields, anxious to start work before the blistering heat took hold.

  No one took any notice of the black-clad rider. Prussia was an occupied land, and the peasantry plodded about their daily business, hoping only to be spared a ravaging column of French infantry who would pick them clean, chop down their woods for their own braziers, and trample the fields so that they were fit for nothing but to lie fallow for several years. If a lone rider offered no threat, then he could pass among them without hindrance.

  The second rider, following an hour on the heels of the first, engendered the same lack of interest.

  Gabrielle rode into Silute just before noon. Away from the open countryside, the atmosphere was different. The narrow, muddy streets were smothered in refuse that steamed and stank in the broiling heat. The houses were cramped and dark, the people pinched and scrawny, generally barefoot and clad in grimy rags.

  Here a stranger riding a piece of prime horseflesh drew immediate and unwelcome attention.

  Gabrielle rode straight to the small harbor, where fishing boats and several larger vessels were docked, waiting for the tide to turn. The smell of rotting fish seemed an almost palpable miasma on the hot, still air. She examined the assorted fleet critically, looking for one large enough to make a sea crossing.

  A group of men surged out of a tavern and came toward her. They were silent except for the sound of their heavy clogs on the cobbles of the quay.

  Gabrieile’s heart thumped, and she reached inside her pocket for her pistol, backing her horse against the water’s edge so that she wouldn’t be surrounded.

  They formed a half circle and examined her in the same menacing silence. One of them put out a hand and touched the fine embossed leather of her bridle. He looked up and grinned, his teeth blackened stumps. Money, she decided, would incite rather than appease. Her pistol would probably do the same. She couldn’t deal with six men with one shot, and there’d be no time to reload.

  Slowly, she withdrew from her pocket the one talisman that in occupied Europe spoke louder than anything else. It was the document with the Napoleonic eagle. She held it up and the group fell back. One of them spat on the quaystones, but the danger was over. It was more than their lives were worth to interfere with an imperial courier.

  Taking advantage of her ascendancy, Gabrielle asked in her halting Prussian if they knew of a vessel bound for Copenhagen. She had the emperor’s message to deliver. Silver now glittered on her palm as she waited.

  There was a guttural, staccato exchange, and then one of them gestured toward a small frigate anchored in the bay. A second coin on her palm produced the information that the master was to be found in the tavern. A third produced the master himself, a Dane, who, to Gabrieile’s relief, spoke French.

  He held a tankard of ale as he listened to her request for passage for two and named an extortionate sum, one eye disconcertingly squinting to the right while the other looked straight at her.

  Gabrielle frowned, then said that for that price she’d expect him to accommodate their horses.

  The master hesitated, examining Gabrielle’s mount with his straight eye, then he drained the contents of his tankard and nodded. “High tide’s at three. Ferry’ll be at the quay at two. If you’re not here, we go anyway.” He returned to the tavern without a backward glance.

  That left an hour and a half to kill and hopefully sufficient time to bring Nathaniel. Gabrielle was hungry and thirsty but didn’t dare risk leaving her horse anywhere in this den of thieves while she went in search of sustenance. She wondered where best to await Nathaniel’s arrival and decided to position herself at the end of the quay, facing the alley he’d have to use to reach the harbor. She decided it was not pointful to consider what she would do if he didn’t arrive before the surly Dane’s ferry left the quay, just as it was not pointful to anticipate his reaction to her presence. The man needed a serious push, and he was going to get one.

  Nathaniel rode into the reeking town just after half past one. He was instantly aware of the eyes on him as he guided his horse through the narrow, ordure-ridden lanes toward the waterfront. Hollow-eyed children gazed from doorways at the well-dressed stranger on his glossy stallion. Men lounging against walls in the shade picked their teeth and spat as he rode past.

  As he turned down a particularly dark, narrow lane, where a slice of water and a change in the quality of the light at the end indicated the quay, a stone flew through the air and thudded against his shoulder. He swore and turned his head. A group of men advanced on him from behind, cudgels and rocks in their hands. Another stone hit his horse’s neck, and the animal squealed and reared.

  Suddenly there were men all around him, emerging from passageways so narrow, they were barely wide enough for a man’s shoulders, moving out of shadowed doorways, all bearing staves and knives.

  It was, Nathaniel thought, about the ugliest mob he’d ever encountered, and he was its sole target.

  His pistol was in one hand while the other loosened the cane he carried attached to his saddle; his eyes never left the gathering rabble. He pressed a catch in the handle of the cane, and a wicked blade sprang forth. Another stone flew, catching him full in the chest, almost winding him.

  He fired his pistol straight into the line of men in front of him. A man went down with a scream, and for a second the line faltered. He put spur to his horse and charged through them, bending low over the saddle as he slashed with his sword. For a moment he thought he was through, and then his horse caught a hoof on an uneven cobble and as the animal struggled to regain his balance, a knife plunged into his neck, severing the carotid artery. Blood leaped in a pulsing fountain as the horse died instantly. Nathaniel flung himself sideways off the saddle before the animal rolled on him, and spun on the balls of his feet, his sword slicing through the mosaic of grim faces bearing down upon him. On his feet and with no time to reload his pistol, he hadn’t a chance against such a number.

  It seemed ironical that after a career of circumventing danger and treachery for the highest stakes he should meet his death in a squalid alley in a reeking port in Eastern Prussia at the hands of a starving mob.

  And then he heard the sound of a pistol shot and a wild cry of fury. A horse plunged through the mob, rearing, caracoling, hooves flailing, forcing men to fall back or be trampled. There was a moment when he saw clearly through the bodies surrounding him to the glitter of water at the end of the alley. He flung himself toward the gap before it closed, and Gabrielle leaned low over her saddle, holding out her hand. He grabbed it and sprang upward with the same acrobatic agility he’d shown when he’d leaped into the rafters in the attic in Paris.

  And then they were out in the sunlight of the quay and the milling horde was left behind with a dead horse, leather harness, and Nathaniel’s portmanteau as prize.

  Gabrielle rode her horse straight onto the flat-bottomed ferry waiting at the quayside. The Danish master of the good ship Kattegat was already on the ferry, supervising the loading of supplies. He glanced at the horse and its two riders and then came over to Gabrielle.

  “Two horses, you said.”

  “Yes, but now there’s only one.”

  “Same price,” he declared, squinting ferociously.

  “D’accord,” she replied with an impatient shrug, swinging off her mount. “I’ll tether him to the rail.”

  Nathaniel said nothing. Wh
at he had to say couldn’t be said on an open deck. Gabrielle had simply followed her own impulses as she always did, and he wondered vaguely why he hadn’t expected this. She’d accepted his refusal in Tilsit with too much docility, and he should have been warned. Then he noticed that blood was dripping from her arm, leaving a sticky trail across the bottom of the ferry. Presumably, as she’d plunged into the fray, one of his assailant’s knives had nicked her arm.

  He pulled off his cravat. “You’re bleeding all over the place. Let me bind it for the moment and I’ll look at it properly when we get where we’re going.” He fastened the cravat tightly around the gash. “Just where are we going?”

  “Copenhagen,” she said with a weary sigh. “That vessel in the middle of the bay … the Kattegat.”

  Nathaniel sank down on the bottom of the ferry, propping his back against the rail, and lifted his face to the sun. A slight breeze offered some relief from the scorching heat and carried away some of the noxious stench of Silute. Gabrielle tethered her horse and came and sat down beside him.

  She wasn’t fool enough to believe that Nathaniel’s present silence meant that he had nothing to say. The storm would break when he was good and ready, so she kept her own counsel until then.

  Rowers pulled the ferry across the short stretch of water to the Kattegat. Gabrielle followed the master up a swinging rope ladder, Nathaniel on her heels.

  “We’ll manage the horse,” the master said. “There’s a cabin to starboard for you two … uh—” His straight eye rested on Gabrielle in open speculation, running down her figure. Her cloak was thrown back from her shoulders, and the britches and shirt offered little concealment to the rich curves of her tall body. “Gentlemen …” he added with something suspiciously like a leer.

  Gabrielle kept her expression haughtily impassive, and Nathaniel stared out to sea, apparently stone deaf.

  The master shrugged. “Not that it’s any of my business. You pay your passage and I ask no questions.” He held out his hand. “Forty livres, I believe was agreed upon.”