The Spy's Reward

by Nita Abrams

  Rodrigo looked surprised. “You know about Miss Hart?”

  “My mother,” explained Anthony apologetically. “She is, um, very devoted to the family interests.” He grabbed a hairbrush, presumably his uncle’s, and swiped it over the top of his head. Then he attempted his stockings and boots. “Perhaps it would be best to bring the ladies up here,” he said when he was finally dressed. “More privacy.” And he was honestly not sure if his aching muscles would make it down the narrow stairs.

  “I suppose you are right,” said Rodrigo. He straightened the bedclothes, threw the wash water out the window, and disappeared. A moment later he was back, holding the door open. “Mrs. Hart and Miss Hart, sir.”

  Luckily, Anthony was standing with his hand on the back of the chair. Otherwise, when Diana Hart walked into the room, his already strained legs would have given way. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

  Abigail was normally a light sleeper, but she was very tired, and the Cheval Blanc was quieter and more secluded than the Auberge de Barrême. Consequently, she did not realize there was anything wrong until she woke up and discovered that it was eight o’clock. Lisette had been instructed to wake her at six. Not only that, but no one had been in to make up the fire, and there was no water in her washbasin.

  Frowning, she rang the bell and waited. Two minutes passed, then three, then five. Nothing happened. She opened her door and peered out into the hall. Agitated voices could be heard arguing down in the public rooms below. With her shawl thrown over her nightgown, she darted out and tapped softly at the door of Diana’s room. There was no response, but her daughter was often difficult to wake in the morning. By now Abigail was beginning to be puzzled. Whatever her other faults, Lisette had always been cheerful and reliable in the mornings. Glancing quickly around to make sure no else was upstairs, she marched down to the other end of the small corridor and banged on the door of the room Mlle. Esmond and Lisette were sharing. It swung open, with a sad creaking noise.

  The room was empty. Crumpled bedclothes, open drawers, and a still-burning lamp bore mute witness to an early, hurried departure. Propped on the night table was a folded piece of paper. More and more bewildered, she took it up. It had no superscription, but there was no doubt it was meant for her. Printed in smudged pencil, it read:

  Most esteemed madame,

  It is with desolation that I must leave your very gracious employment in some haste and without taking leave of you and Mlle. Hart. In this emergency I must, however, rejoin my family in Nice immediately.

  Please be assured, madame, of my most respectful devotion.

  Juliette Esmond

  Her first thought was Good riddance, and she immediately felt guilty. She knew all too well how difficult the life of an unmarried, middle-class female could be. And Miss Esmond, unlike Abigail, did not have a substantial personal fortune to ease those difficulties. Her only saleable assets were her rigid aura of propriety and a talent for intimidating servants at the various superior inns the Harts had patronized during their stay in France. Abigail had been very thankful, at least at first, to have an ally in the battle to keep her daughter’s wilder impulses in check. She sighed and refolded the note. Only then did she notice the scrawled postscript, on the outside: Lisette will accompany me to Castellane, where her brother resides. Abigail raised her eyebrows. She had not thought there was any love lost between Lisette and the prim older woman, but obviously somehow Mlle. Esmond had persuaded Lisette that her own need of a companion outweighed Lisette’s obligation to her employers.

  Thinking dark thoughts about unreliable foreign servants, she headed back to her daughter’s bedchamber. A second tap on the door produced the same response as her first attempt. Waking Diana sometimes required prolonged, loud knocking, as she knew from experience, and she was not prepared to stand here in her nightgown. She retreated to her own room and got dressed as best she could with no wash water and no one to help put up her hair. She was very annoyed. Even if Mlle. Esmond and Lisette had, for some unaccountable reason, suddenly gone off early this morning, surely the inn had its own serving girls? She marched downstairs determined to give the innkeeper a piece of her mind.

  The agitated voices were louder now, coming from the front room of the inn. She opened the door and stepped in. Six people were clustered by the window that overlooked the street. She recognized Munot—the innkeeper—and two of the maidservants; the others, all male, looked to be townsmen. One of them was wearing stockings of two different colors and had what looked very much like a nightshirt stuffed into his breeches. They fell silent as she entered—a cold, wary silence. Munot would not meet her eyes. Last night he had hovered over their table at supper, pressing his best wines on them and joking with Captain Hervé about his good fortune in obtaining such lovely clients.

  “I rang several times,” she announced. “My own maid has been called away by a family emergency.”

  At this two of the men coughed.

  Ignoring them, she turned to the nearer of the two maidservants, trying to sound firm and composed. “I require hot water and fresh towels, at once. Also, the fires in our rooms are out. Is Captain Hervé still abed?”

  The maid glanced nervously at the door leading to the back rooms: the parlor and downstairs bedchamber.

  Abigail did not wait for a reply. “Please ask him to wait on me at his earliest convenience.”

  She turned and left the room, but not without hearing the innkeeper say in a low voice, “That is her—the Englishwoman.”

  Five minutes later, the maidservant appeared. She had no hot water and no towels, and she was clearly very frightened. “My regrets, madame, but Monsieur Munot says that you must leave at once. It is not safe for you here; there is strong feeling against the English now.”

  “But we have Captain Hervé, and our coachman. Surely there is no real cause for alarm?”

  “Both men are gone, madame. Very early this morning.” Bobbing a curtsey, the woman scuttled away.

  “What is it, Mama?” Diana, in a lace-edged wrapper, had emerged into the hall.

  “I don’t know,” Abigail said, worried. “Our servants have all vanished, and the innkeeper seems to have taken us in aversion.” She was trying to remember how much money she had given Hervé last night. Quite a bit—there were the charges here at the inn, and two sets of horses, and the new, larger carriage she had bespoken for this morning. Perhaps he had left the purse with Munot.

  The maidservant reappeared. “A gentleman to see you, madame.” Booted feet were coming up the stairs, and Diana fled with a small shriek into her chamber.

  It was Meyer’s manservant. She recognized him at once, although he was dressed rather oddly, in an elegant shirt and jacket quite unlike the usual garb of a valet.

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hart, for venturing to come up uninvited, but I—” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps you recall me from yesterday. I am Rodrigo, Mr. Meyer’s man. He is extremely concerned for your safety. He proposes that you and Miss Hart and your maids join him at the post house immediately.”

  “My maids have left,” said Abigail in a voice that did not sound like her own. “Everyone has left.” She took in a shaky breath. “Something has happened, but no one will tell me what it is.” Diana had opened her door again, just a little.

  He was taken aback. “You have not heard the news?”

  “What news?”

  “Napoleon landed near Antibes last night with a force of unknown size. He has pledged to reclaim France from its enemies. The first reports arrived here some hours ago, and the entire region is in chaos.”

  God help us. She leaned against the wall. Decades of conflict in Europe had finally ended last year—the same year that her nine-year exile from her daughter had been revoked. Two long-held, long-cherished fantasies, combined in one: to travel to the great cities of the continent with Diana. It had been her idea, her plan. She had made all the arrangements, hired Hervé, read dozens of now-outdated guidebooks and me
moirs, pored over maps. And now her daughter—her sheltered, spoiled, impulsive, beautiful daughter—was trapped in a town full of Bonapartists in the middle of what had just become a war zone.

  Abigail would, under ordinary circumstances, have kept Diana as far away from Nathan Meyer as possible. Her daughter was too young to be married; Abigail would not let Diana duplicate her own error if she could prevent it. And even if the notion of Diana’s marriage had been more acceptable in the abstract, she would have been opposed to this particular match. Joshua Hart’s clumsy maneuvering had made her furious. Luring them to Digne—not a town on her carefully compiled list of worthy sights for their tour—and then foisting Meyer on them at the last minute was, in her opinion, despicable. The letter extolling Meyer’s qualifications as a bridegroom had enraged her even further. A gentleman of leisure! Received by such notables as Sir Charles Barrett! What was admirable about leisure? What Jew was a gentleman? As she saw the women she had grown up with presiding over country homes and riding in carriages on the Sabbath and appearing in public with their arms bare, she despised them for aping the manners of a society that would never accept them. Meyer’s own daughter, in fact, had recently married a Christian. The man was a profligate, an apostate, a disgrace. Had Abigail been on her own, she would have hesitated a long, long time before approaching Nathan Meyer for help. But she was not on her own, and so she did not hesitate at all.

  “We can be ready in five minutes,” she told the servant.

  He nodded. “I will remain here, in the hall. Call if you need assistance. Bring only what you can carry yourselves, and dress warmly.”

  Twenty minutes later, she and Diana were ensconced in the bedchamber of the little post house, hastily cleared for their use by Meyer’s nephew. Rodrigo had found them hot water and towels and even some breakfast. The street was quiet at the moment; the only sound was Diana’s soft humming as she pinned up her hair. Abigail wanted to grab her, to shake her, to scream that the world could not be pieced back together by means of a washcloth and a cup of chocolate. But she said nothing, and when Diana asked her to help with the pins, Abigail stepped over and held them in hands that did not tremble.

  The second council of war was convened in the public room of the Auberge de Barrême at a little past ten in the morning. It consisted of Diana Hart, seated; Abigail Hart, seated; Anthony Roth, seated; Rodrigo Santos, standing; and Nathan Meyer, standing. For this meeting, Meyer had decided to play the role of obliging family friend. He drew up chairs for the Harts at a table by the window and, after a moment, another one for Anthony.

  “I assume that you wish to return to London,” he said, addressing Abigail Hart. “As quickly and safely as possible.”

  She nodded.

  “It is unfortunately not easy to determine the best means of achieving that object.”

  She stared up at him. “What do you mean? I thought you said a few minutes ago upstairs that you now knew where the invasion force was.”

  “Yes. I know where it is, and how large it is, and I was even able to obtain some information about their projected route.” He flipped open a book lying on the table—he had borrowed it from her—and unfolded the map bound into the front cover. “We are here.” His finger stabbed down just north of the town of Castellane. “Napoleon, with some fifteen hundred troops, is here.” The finger moved south of Castellane to Grasse. “A small advance unit, under General Cambronne, is here.” He pointed to Seranon, halfway in between. “Cambronne has sent a request to Castellane for provisions. Provisions for five thousand.”

  He saw both women swallow nervously as they looked at the map. Castellane was less than five leagues from Barrême.

  “They are obviously headed to Castellane,” said Meyer. “What I do not know is what they will do when they get there. They may turn west. There is a narrow pass from Castellane through the hills; in two days they could reach the Rhône, and have an easy route to Paris. They could also continue north, pass through Digne, and go up into the mountains.”

  “That was not a mountain?” Diana asked in a small voice. “The pass yesterday?”

  “The range between Digne and Grenoble is, er, a bit higher,” Anthony offered.

  Nearly ten thousand feet higher, as Meyer calculated it, but the girl would likely be discovering that for herself very soon.

  He captured Abigail Hart’s gaze with his own. “We—you—have several choices. First, you can simply remain here. The army may well come through, but they are unlikely to molest a small party of visitors. After they pass, it might be easier to travel.”

  She shook her head. “I—I must confess that it was rather frightening to see the change in Monsieur Munot at the inn this morning. And I am anxious to leave before more recruits join the invaders.”

  “I take it, then, that for the same reason you would not wish to go south and attempt to reach the coast? That would be the second option.”

  She blinked. “Would that even be possible?”

  “Possible, yes. But the roads to the south are jammed at the moment with panic-stricken farmers running away from trouble and bored young men running towards it. I would not care to travel in that direction escorting two women.” He leaned over the table. “To my mind, the practical choice is between north and west. And that choice depends, of course, on where Bonaparte is planning to go.”

  “Where do you believe he will go?”

  Meyer studied her, calculating his strategy. Her green eyes narrowed. She was studying him in return. He could feel her suspicion, her hostility. Good.

  “I believe he will go north.” His voice was soft. “There are too many loyal garrisons in the Rhône Valley, and the people of that region have always supported the Bourbons.”

  “And we, therefore, should turn west.”

  “It is what I would advise.”

  “But”—her hand shot out and came down across the line representing the Rhône River—“if there are so many royalist troops here, do we not risk trapping ourselves between two opposing armies?”

  He looked down, shrugged. “I cannot make this decision, Mrs. Hart. You are responsible for your daughter’s safety; it must be your choice. Both routes have their dangers.” He added after a moment, “You may also wish to consider that the northern route is extremely difficult. Yesterday’s road is as nothing compared to some of the passes closer to Grenoble.”

  Abigail Hart was not a stupid woman, he decided. She did not like him, but she did not underestimate him either. He could understand her dilemma: was he urging her to go west in the hope that she would agree—or in the hope that she would rebel? The thread running between the two of them was stretched taut. Would she tug back? Or let go, and watch him stumble?

  She bowed her head. All he could see of her now were her cap and the edge of her smooth, golden-brown hair. “Is your preference for the western route an overwhelming one?” she asked, very low. “Do you believe the choice is clear?”

  He held very, very still. “It is not clear at all. That is why I am so reluctant to endanger you without giving you a say.”

  “I would prefer to go north, then.” She looked up at him. “I cannot like the notion of heading directly into a valley full of newly mobilized soldiers.”

  “I could, of course, ride west today. I would rejoin you in Digne two days from now with more information about the state of things near the Rhône. You could travel with my nephew in the meantime.”

  “No!” cried Diana immediately.

  Anthony flushed and bit his lip.

  “It might be best to stay together,” Abigail said. Her face was tinged with red, although it was not as red as his nephew’s.

  “Very well.” Meyer turned to Rodrigo. “Can you have the horses harnessed in half an hour?”

  “Yes, señor.” His expression was very cold. So Rodrigo, at least, had understood what was happening.

  “And you, Mrs. Hart? Will that be enough time for you and your daughter? Are your bags packed?”

 
Her expression was just as cold as Rodrigo’s. “We have one bandbox apiece, Mr. Meyer, and a small valise. I daresay we can manage to put on our bonnets and close up three bags in thirty minutes. If you will excuse us?” Without acknowledging his bow, she led her daughter off towards the bedchamber.

  Rodrigo did not move.

  “The horses?” Meyer prompted.

  The servant gave him a fierce look. “What would you have done if I had told her the truth?”

  He sighed. “What truth?”

  “That you know France like the back of your hand. That entire divisions of the British army followed your recommendations for their line of march. That it is absurd for anyone else in this party to have any say in this decision whatsoever. Now you have reeled in that poor woman like a fish on the line, so that you can absolve yourself of blame later. You know Napoleon will head for the mountains, and you goaded her into proposing that route for us.”

  “I am not omniscient,” said Meyer wearily. “I believe he will go north, yes, but it is not certain.”

  “I pray that he does go north,” Rodrigo said, still glaring. “Because if he goes west, you will abandon the ladies and go after him, and I will be ashamed that I ever served you.”

  “Do you serve me, Rodrigo Santos?” His voice was low and hard. “Or do you serve some dream of Iberian chivalry? I did not ask you to go to the Cheval Blanc this morning. I did not authorize you to bring those women here and offer my services as escort.”

  “Would you have left them here unprotected?” Rodrigo asked, shocked.

  “Perhaps.” He stared out the window for a moment. “But it is too late now. You offered them my help, and they accepted. I will keep them safe, if I can.”