by Nita Abrams
That was more difficult.
“So I am to be, in effect, blind and deaf for the rest of this journey.”
Doucet shrugged. “Surely you would not wish to endanger the ladies in your party by inviting unwanted military attention?”
“Why don’t you just lock me up?”
“We’ve tried that,” Doucet pointed out. “You’ve escaped every time. The last time you were running a messenger service from your cell, remember? Cambronne and I believe your parole is a more effective cage than a jail cell.”
The younger man waited, an oddly sympathetic expression on his face.
“I suppose I should be flattered,” Meyer said at last. He would have to accept, of course. He would have to watch Napoleon march on to Grenoble, where the not-so-former emperor would receive a hero’s welcome.
Slowly, he reached over and pinched out the candle.
“You could have waited until I lit the lantern again,” said Doucet dryly.
“I thought it best to remove temptation,” he said. He tilted his face up and felt the breeze circling through the arches.
Marcel, if that was his name, apparently took the command to treat Abigail “with every courtesy” very seriously. She was taken to a small house at one end of the street—the single narrow street which comprised Pont-Haut. A sitting room was instantly cleared for her private use, with only a few empty wineglasses and crumpled tally sheets remaining to indicate that it had been full of a dozen soldiers playing dice when she arrived. From somewhere, a sleepy village girl was produced to serve her. She was offered tea, wine, cakes, a very smelly cheese wrapped in leaves, and some pickled fruit. The earnest young trooper came in at regular intervals to make announcements, bowing and removing his hat each time.
These bulletins were meant to reassure her, but they had the opposite effect. The first announcement came after she had refused all the offered refreshment save the tea. Marcel knocked, entered, removed his hat, bowed, and said, “Madame will be pleased to be informed that this house is at a safe distance from the bridge.”
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, bewildered.
His round face flushed slightly. “In case of an explosion, that is.” He looked acutely embarrassed, as though the mention of exploding bridges was inexcusably vulgar.
“The bridge is in danger of exploding? The bridge at the end of this street?” She had caught only a glimpse of it before Marcel had detached her from the rest of the troop and brought her down to this house.
“We hope not, madame. But if by some unfortunate chance something were to occur, madame is not to be alarmed, no matter how loud the noise.” He bowed again, and withdrew.
The next interruption told her to be pleased to be informed that the general would be here shortly. More prudent this time, he bowed himself away before she could ask him who the general was and why she should be pleased that he was coming.
Five minutes later, Marcel advised her that the additional troops who would arrive shortly would not dream of invading her private sitting room. Next, that the general did not stand on ceremony and she was to have no fear that he would expect to be treated with any great formality. Abigail was tempted to tell the young soldier that it would serve the general right if she smothered him with impersonal periphrases in imitation of his own behavior to her, but he was gone again before she could marshal enough French to deliver her witticism.
Five minutes later, by the clock, the door opened again. Marcel entered, removed his hat, bowed. “Madame is pleased to be informed that General Cambronne wishes to speak with her.” He stepped aside, and a thin, hawk-faced man with curly graying hair strode into the room. He, too, bowed. At least he did not remove his hat. Someone had obviously taken it, along with his coat and gloves; he was carrying a sheaf of papers in one hand and looked at them now as though only just realizing he was still carrying them. He gave them to the ubiquitous Marcel and waved the boy away.
“Pierre Cambronne, madame. Your most obedient servant.”
“General Cambronne.” She curtsied.
“You are free to go.” Cambronne’s speech was considerably more concise than Marcel’s. “You may wait for Monsieur Meyer, or I will send one of my own men to take you back to Corps.” He added after a moment, “I must tell you that I have the most sincere admiration for your ami.”
“Monsieur Meyer is merely a family friend,” said Abigail, gritting her teeth.
Cambronne raised his eyebrows and shrugged. You Englishwomen! So prudish! said that shrug. “As you wish. But he is a very fine gentleman, even if he is a Jew. I am relieved this incident has ended so happily. I am too much in his debt to wish otherwise.”
What incident? she wanted to ask. What do you mean, happily? Marcel-happy, as in “the explosion will not reach this section of the street”? Why are you in his debt? She had been constructing wilder and wilder theories in her head ever since her conversation with Roth. She had known perfectly well that his tale of Meyer’s seductions was a desperate fiction. Meyer was certainly attractive enough, but there was a reserve there which was incompatible with the picture of a dashing Lothario. No, Nathan Meyer was no Doucet. But her own theories were hardly more plausible. He was a bandit. A gunrunner. An assassin. Now it appeared he might be working for the French. But then why would they be holding her hostage?
Doucet came in now, without knocking. He looked even more strained and disheveled than he had an hour ago. There was another round of bowing, and Doucet repeated Cambronne’s assurance that she was free to go.
“Where is Monsieur Meyer?”
Cambronne seemed to want the answer to that question as well, and Doucet addressed himself to him. “He is making certain that the powder is thoroughly soaked. He will be here shortly. You were told, were you not, that he agreed to all our terms?”
“Excuse me, General,” she interrupted.
Their expressions changed; the serious, military air disappeared and the courtly gallantry returned. They were, she decided, simply more polished versions of Marcel.
“Yes, madame?”
She did not think he would answer her question, but the increasingly tangled assortment of half-explained allusions to explosions and bridges and powder was maddening. “What is Monsieur Meyer’s connection with the possibility of an explosion at the bridge? The powder is gunpowder, is it not?”
“He did not take you into his confidence?”
“No,” she said bitterly.
Cambronne gave her a paternal smile. If she had been a little girl, Abigail thought, he would have patted her on the head. “It is just as well. These matters are not suitable for the tender ears of ladies.”
It was at this unfortunate moment that Meyer appeared in the doorway. His gaze sought her out at once, and she saw, with a queer pang, that he was wearing an expression she knew well. She had last seen that combination of exhaustion and guilt on the face of Paul’s doctor the night her first husband had died. That initial sympathetic impulse might have prevailed; she might not have lost her composure so completely—if only he had not bowed.
“Mrs. Hart,” he said.
She was sick of gallantry. She was sick of lies. She was sick of being terrified and ignorant. She walked over to Meyer and slapped him across the face so hard that her hand stung. “You despicable, cowardly sneak!” she said contemptuously.
There were cries of horror from both of the Frenchmen, exclamations, calls for brandy and smelling salts and handkerchiefs, because, of course, she had collapsed, sobbing onto the nearest chair. Madame was overwrought. It was perfectly understandable. Madame should calm herself, all was well.
Madame calmed herself. But all was not well. They found, from heaven knows where, a carriage. She rode in lonely splendor back towards Corps, with an honor guard of three French soldiers. Meyer rode in front, to lead the way. At the top of the lane which led to the farmhouse, one of the soldiers helped her out. They escorted her, very solemnly, to the gate of the farmyard, and then huddled in low-
voiced conversation with Meyer for a few minutes. She looked longingly at the house. Diana was in there. She wanted to see her daughter. It seemed incredible that everyone here had been asleep, while she had been bowed to and madamed by half of Napoleon’s advance force.
Now the soldiers were leaving, and Meyer was leading his horse into the barn. There was a mule as well; she had not even noticed it before. His shoulders were set in a rigid line, as though he were holding himself straight by sheer force of will. He turned in the doorway. “I will sleep in the barn,” he said. “I am sure you would prefer that.”
She nodded.
Rodrigo came hurrying out with a lantern. When he saw her standing there he nearly dropped it. “You were not in the house?” he said, horrified. He turned to Meyer. “She was with you? Señor, are you mad?”
“Monsieur Doucet invited her to a soirée in Pont-Haut,” said Meyer. He was looking off into the distance. Whatever he saw did not seem to appeal to him. He grimaced and continued through the doorway.
The servant turned to her. “Did he blow up the bridge?”
“He soaked the powder,” she said. “I think that means the answer is no.”
“What it means,” he said, “is that the answer was going to be yes, but someone or something changed it to no.”
She suspected that someone was the elegant, charming Raoul Doucet. Perhaps he was only charming to ladies. And the something was her. No wonder they had all been so deferential in Pont-Haut.
16
After an hour Meyer gave up on sleeping. After another half hour he found that the contented snuffles and grunts of the animals in the barn were inspiring him with bitter reflections on the happiness he might have found as, say, an ox. So he got up, put on his coat, and went outside.
The sky had cleared, and it was much colder, the air so still that every tiny sound rang out sharply. There would be frost on the ground in the morning. He went over to the stone wall which separated the sheepfold from the rest of the fields behind the barn and sat down. After a few minutes his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and the stars overhead began to assemble themselves into familiar patterns. To the east, the jagged edges of the mountains were blocking off the bottom sections of late-rising constellations. Between the mountains and the stars and his conscience he was feeling very, very small.
When he heard footsteps heading towards the barn he assumed it was Rodrigo.
“Over here,” he called in Spanish.
The footsteps turned, shuffled in his direction. Those were not Rodrigo’s footsteps.
“I cannot see very well,” she said hesitantly. She was a dark form, only barely distinguishable from the silent house behind her.
For the second time that night, he took out his tinderbox, lit his candle from it, and jammed it into a crack in a rock. He suspected that this interview was going to be almost as painful as the one the candle had witnessed under the bridge.
“Oh.” She came closer. “It is you. I thought perhaps it was your servant.”
He got up. “I will go back to the barn.”
“No, I came to find you. I need to speak with you.” She sat down, carefully pulling her cloak away from the candle.
“I cannot imagine why you would ever want to see me again, let alone speak to me.”
“Curiosity,” she said. “Frustration. There are so many unanswered questions. And I owe you an apology.”
He gave a short laugh. “If you owe me one, I owe you fifty. Unless you want to be here until dawn, I suggest we pass over the apologies and proceed to the questions.”
“I am apologizing not only for your sake, but for mine. I am ashamed that I struck you. I do not approve of violence.”
“Then you most assuredly will not approve of me.”
“What are you?” she burst out. “What were you doing at that bridge? Where do you go every night? Why do you lie to everyone? You are such an accomplished liar that last night you even persuaded me to do it for you! You let me tell my story of the smuggled gold and never said one word to contradict me! If your nephew had not accidentally revealed the true story, I would have gone on believing my own fabrication for years!”
So that was why she had been looking for him last night. She had wanted a second round of explanations.
“Have you no respect for the truth? Don’t you trust anyone?”
“Trust does not pay in my line of work,” he said. “I am a spy. Your smuggling theory was not so far off. I smuggle information rather than gold, that is all. Occasionally I also sabotage enemy communications. Blow up bridges, for example.”
“And which side do you—spy for?” She said the word as though it was a disease. “Or are you for hire, like a mercenary soldier?”
His jaw tightened. “I take no pay for my work. And I report to Lord Wellington. Or, more precisely, to two colonels who supervise his intelligence officers. One based in London, one in the field.”
“Did they order you to blow up the bridge, then?”
That would be an easy way to excuse himself. She had approved of his violent ways, after all, when he was supposedly honoring a commitment from the bank. He could tell her he had pledged himself to Wellington’s service, had tried to obey orders without revealing himself to his innocent traveling companions.
“No,” he said after a long pause. “It was my decision to try to stay with Napoleon’s forces, even after I became responsible for you and your daughter and my nephew. I was angry at first that you had arrived to complicate my self-appointed mission. But I was perfectly ready to make use of you. I deliberately goaded you into choosing what I thought—correctly—would be Bonaparte’s route. I rode out every night and sent off dispatches noting the enemy’s position and troop strength, knowing that I was far less conspicuous with women in my party. I risked your lives, as well as mine, by attacking the bridge. I lied to you, to all of you—even to my nephew, even to Rodrigo. I cannot blame any of it on my colonel, or on Wellington. I can communicate with them, but they cannot reach me until I arrive in a large city.”
“The pigeons,” she said slowly. “You let your nephew tell that lie for you.”
“Well, I did let him use one of the birds,” he said. “There was a price.”
“And what was the price you paid for my convenient tale of smuggled gold?”
“I didn’t kiss you,” he said in a low voice. “That was the price.”
“Yes, and that is another thing,” she said, outraged. “How can you suppose I would ever let you marry Diana when you looked at me in such a—a disrespectful fashion?”
He stood up and jerked her to her feet. “And how can you suppose that I want to marry your daughter?” He was suddenly furious. “Are you blind? Was your husband a stick? Can you not recognize desire when you see it? If I didn’t kiss you last night, it was because I do respect you.” He seized her chin and tilted it up. “Look at me.” He stared down at her, holding her eyes with his own. The candle lit her from below and sent shadows racing up into the hood of her cloak. “Look at my face, and tell me I want to marry Diana. Look at my face and tell me I have some frivolous habit of kissing every female who sits next to me on a sofa after dinner.” He pushed off her hood, and her hair spilled out over her shoulders. “Don’t you realize that every time you come out with one of those damned caps on I want to tear it off?”
She put her hand up and touched her bare head. Her mouth made a small O, as if the world had suddenly tilted slightly, and she was no longer sure which direction was up.
And somehow one moment he was telling himself that he should let her go, should step back, and the next moment he had pulled her straight up against his body and was kissing her so fiercely that he thought he might never breathe again. They were hot, scorching kisses; he was in a fever, he branded her mouth, her throat, her shoulder; he was desperate to take as much as he could in these few minutes. He had thought she would push him away, or at least stiffen. Instead, after the first stunned instant she yielded. Her bod
y softened, sank towards him; her face tilted upward. He found himself sitting on the wall; she had tumbled down into his arms, and he was pulling her dress off her shoulder, sliding his hand down the side of her breast. She was not going to stop him, he realized, incredulous. He would have to find a small remnant of sanity somewhere all on his own.
Training yourself to be ruthless had its disadvantages. You could not tell yourself that you had no self-control. He drew back, breathing hard. She was still on his lap.
“Was that disrespectful enough for you?” he said harshly. “Have I thoroughly disqualified myself as a candidate for your daughter’s hand? Or should I take you into the barn right now and continue?”
She gave a choked cry and pushed herself off his lap.
“Do you know why I didn’t kiss you last night?” he said. “Because I knew that later, when you found out how I had tricked you, you would hate me. But after what happened in Pont-Haut, of course, I have nothing further to lose.”
With shaking hands she pushed her hair back under her hood. She sat for a moment, struggling to calm her breathing. “I suppose now you will tell me you want to marry me.”
“I would not insult you by pretending that I have any hopes in that direction at all. Depraved as I am, I draw the line at asking women to marry me when they find me morally repugnant. When they despise me and everything I stand for.”
She stood up, eyes flashing. “You expect me to protest, to say that of course I do not despise you. That is a very strong word, after all. But it is the right one. I do not dislike you. You are in fact a very attractive man; what just happened proves that I am not indifferent to you. But I find you unethical. Unscrupulous. It is all a game to you, isn’t it? To all of you! General Cambronne, who admires you profoundly! Monsieur Doucet, the so-charming, so-elegant courtier, who bows to me while he is taking me hostage! You send off your reports, in some cipher, I am sure, attached to your pigeons. And then there is a battle, and thousands of people die, or have their legs shot off, or go deaf from cannon fire. You killed those men, as surely as if you shot them down with your own rifle! And then you go off and play more games, and congratulate yourself on how clever you are, and when you meet the other players, like Cambronne, you bow and smile and tell each other that it was ‘very well contrived’ and your opponent is ‘a fine gentleman’ and ‘we are civilized people.’ I suppose I will be obliged to put up with your company until we reach Grenoble. If you have any sense of decency whatsoever, you will keep your hypocritical courtesies to yourself. I want no compliments from a man with so much blood on his hands.”