by Jane Feather
“Wait here, child.” She hurried back to the cottage for her purse and returned to find Marguerite already in the lane, jumping up and down to see what the packman had on his tray. The gate was swinging wide open, and Jeanne quashed the moment of alarm fueled by so many lessons from the past and William’s oft-repeated strictures. She pushed the gate wider and went up to Marguerite. She felt as if every eye was upon her—she and the child were so rarely seen on the lane—and tried to deflect attention with smiles and cheerful greetings as she examined the packman’s wares with Marguerite.
“I want this,” Marguerite declared, pointing to the garishly striped spinning top. “Please, may I have it? Uncle Guillaume would let me have it, I know he would.” She hung from Jeanne’s arm, her glowing eyes huge and pleading as she produced the one argument that she was certain would carry weight with her aunt.
“Come now, Mama, how can you resist such big eyes?” the peddler asked, holding up the top. “Just sixpence for such a pretty little girl.”
“Oh, she’s not my mama,” Marguerite stated, with a child’s stubborn need for accuracy. “This is Tante Jeanne, she’s my aunt.”
“Then I’m sure your auntie will buy it for you as a special treat.” The packman fixed Jeanne with a determined smile, extending the top. “See how well it’s painted, ma’am. No chips, and the string’s good and strong.”
“Yes . . . yes, we’ll have it.” Hastily now, more and more conscious of the curious eyes upon them, Jeanne took out a handful of coins. She knew she should bargain like any other village woman, but she felt an overpowering need to get Marguerite back into the cottage, away from prying eyes, before she gave away any more details of their circumstances. She gave the peddler sixpence, and as Marguerite flourished her prize in triumph, hurried her charge back into the cottage, locking the door behind her with a sigh of relief.
It was no way to live, she thought, leaning against the securely closed door as Marguerite danced into the parlor, already winding the string that would set her top spinning. This constant underpinning of fear, every knock at the door, every stranger on the street, set the alarm bells ringing. There had to be somewhere in this world where she and the child could live without this constant sense of threat. Marguerite didn’t seem too aware of it, which was a significant mercy, but she was little more than a baby. Soon she would begin to question this seclusion of their lives. And how would Guillaume deal with that? Jeanne felt a flare of resentment. It was too easy for him to dictate the necessities of their lives when he didn’t have to live with their consequences.
Almost immediately, Jeanne felt regret at the reflection. Guillaume lived his own life on the edge of terror, and that terror encompassed the dangers affecting his nearest and dearest. She must simply remain constantly on the alert but reasonably so. There could be no harm in a gypsy peddler after all. The entire village had been his customers.
Hero’s cab trundled across the crowded Blackfriars Bridge, and here she risked pushing aside the leather flap to look out at the unfamiliar surroundings. There was quite a different atmosphere away from the elegant streets and squares of Society London. The air smelled different, the street noises seemed different, and a haze of evil-smelling sea coal smoke shrouded the gray buildings and warehouses lining the river. This city seemed to bear little relation to the one Hero inhabited.
The hackney drew up outside a tall, narrow, run-down house in a long row of indistinguishable buildings. “Number sixty-two,” he called down at her.
Hero opened the door and stepped out onto slimy cobbles, the gutters thick with refuse. Her nose wrinkled unconsciously at the sewer stench of garbage. “Wait for me,” she instructed the cabdriver, who didn’t look best pleased but without payment had little choice. Hero walked up to the door and, in the absence of a knocker, banged with her closed fist.
It was opened after a moment by a small girl, who peered around it, her cornflower-blue eyes round in a small, pale face.
Hero spoke in French as she asked the child if her mother or father was at home. The child nodded solemnly just as a man appeared behind her. He looked thin and worried as he regarded the visitor. “Oui, madame?”
“Monsieur le Vicomte Saulinac?” she asked, and when he nodded, she continued, “My name is Hero Fanshawe. Guillaume Ducasse sent me to you.” She was instantly relieved by the smile that broke across his sallow countenance.
“Entrez . . . entrez, madame, je vous en prie.” He stepped back with a wide, welcoming gesture. “Come in, come in, I beg you.”
Hero stepped, smiling, into the narrow hallway. He closed the door firmly, plunging the narrow space into gloom, and called, “Therese? Therese, we have a visitor from Guillaume.”
A woman appeared instantly from the corridor behind the steep staircase, her expression a mixture of anxiety and hesitant expectancy. “Madame?”
“Forgive the intrusion, Madame Saulinac,” Hero said, extending her hand. “My name is Hero. Guillaume asked me to come, to see how you are.”
“Well enough, we manage,” the woman said, opening a door to the side of the hall. “Please, madame, will you come in?”
Hero went into a sparsely furnished parlor. It was clean and tidy, with a small sea coal fire burning in the hearth.
“Please, madame, be seated.” The man pushed a chair forward. “How is Guillaume?”
“He is very well,” Hero responded, taking the proffered seat. “I understand there are other émigré families living here, too.” She consulted her list. “Chevalier and Madame Lesquet and Monsieur and Madame Junot.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Sylvie, run upstairs and ask them to join us,” the Viscount instructed the child, who disappeared at a run. “Such a pleasure this is, Madame Fanshawe.”
“Hero, please,” she said. “I was with Guillaume in Paris last year,” she added, hoping that would enhance her credentials. Viscountess Saulinac seemed still a little hesitant. “My brother’s fiancée, now his wife, was Marie Claire St. Julien.”
They both nodded gravely. “She escaped Paris?”
Hero told them the story, and they listened intently. As she talked, she became aware of other people entering quietly, but no one interrupted her until she finished, saying, “That is the story. One I’m sure you know all too well.”
“Indeed, we do. Please, meet our compatriots.” Therese indicated the four people who had just entered, introducing them. A small group of children gathered in the doorway behind their parents, gazing with wide-eyed fascination at their visitor.
“Coffee, Hero. You will take coffee with us,” Therese said, getting to her feet.
Hero hesitated. It was clear to her that these people had little enough of anything for themselves without sharing it with strangers, but then she reflected that to refuse their hospitality would be discourteous, tantamount to pointing out their poverty. She smiled her thanks.
The conversation became general for a few minutes while she tried to think of a way to explain why William had sent her to them. It seemed callous to ask them for help supporting an émigré army when they seemed to need help and support themselves so badly. But it was the Viscount who gave her the opening. “We hear that d’Enghien is raising a Royalist army for another attempt to take back France. Does Guillaume have any further news?”
Hero took a breath and jumped in. “They need money and men,” she said bluntly. “Guillaume is attempting to raise both from any who can manage to help.”
Silence fell over the room. Hero sipped her coffee, a thin and bitter brew that tasted a bit like she imagined acorns might.
After a moment, one of the men said, “We have little enough money for ourselves. My wife and Therese both work as milliners, and when times are really hard, they take in laundry. We . . .” He gestured inclusively to the men. “We take what work we can find.” He shrugged. “It is hard when one is unaccustomed to earning a living. None of us
has been trained to do anything worthwhile.” His voice was bitter. “I work occasionally cleaning out the stables at the King’s Arms inn at Bankside. Saulinac mends shoes. We turn nothing away, but it is still a struggle to put food on the table and shoes on our children’s feet.”
“I understand,” she said quietly. “I believe Guillaume understands your struggles, too.”
“We have sons,” Therese said, as if the words were dragged from her. “They are of an age to offer their services to the cause.”
Hero glanced askance at the small children still crowding the doorway.
“We all have older sons,” the Viscount said. “They, too, work where they can and at what they can. Therese is right. Both of our sons, Jacques and Marc, are anxious to do more. They complain about sitting on their hands while other young men are fighting for the cause.” He looked at his wife and then around at the others in the parlor. “Their mothers have been unwilling to let them go.”
“With good reason,” Madame Junot said, her face very pale. “We barely got out of there alive. You would have us give them back to the carnage? Guillaume would ask that of us?”
William would ask anything of anyone, Hero thought, just as he set no limits on what he demanded of himself. She had no answer to the woman’s question but privately decided that this particular work William would have to do for himself next time. She would infinitely prefer to be paddling though a Parisian sewer rather than asking such a sacrifice from these people.
“Tell Guillaume that we will consider the matter,” the Viscount said into the silence. “We will talk with our sons. Where can we send a message?”
“To White’s in St. James’s Street,” Hero told them. It had seemed to her a very public and vulnerable poste restante for delicate communications, but William had simply said that the best place for secrets was in the open. And she could see his point. “If you think you can help in any way, however small, just send a message, and he will come to you himself.” She set down her coffee cup just as a loud banging came from the front door. “Oh, dear, that’ll be the cabdriver. He has grown impatient, and indeed, I have kept you long enough. My thanks for the coffee.”
The Viscount escorted her to the door, where the hackney driver stood fulminating, his fist raised for another round of knocking. “’Bout time,” he muttered as Hero appeared. “Wastin’ time and money ’angin’ around out ’ere.”
“You’ll be well paid, I assure you,” Hero said haughtily, before turning to take her leave of her host. She wanted to give him money but knew it would be seen as an insufferable insult, so she contented herself with a warm handshake and the resolve that she would send presents for the children, winter coats, perhaps. That would not come amiss, she was sure.
TWENTY
Alec left for Hampshire with his wife and baby a few days later, when Dr. Barrett pronounced Marie Claire fit for the coach ride. Nan accompanied them, and Hero waved them away from the front steps, feeling both bereft and liberated. It was difficult to share a house with another family, for all that she and Alec were closer than most siblings, but sometimes she felt like an intruder in their marriage, and now, with the baby, she could see it might feel even more so. But for the present, she had a mission, a sense of life-affirming purpose, and a man whose presence was somehow essential for her happiness. She didn’t dare call it love even to herself; somehow she felt that such a definitive emotion could only exist if it were openly reciprocated. It was certainly lust, but it went much deeper than mere lust, she knew that, and it suffused her with energy, the lethargic indifference she had felt since Tom’s death banished, for the present. She would not think about the future, better . . . safer . . . always to live in and for the moment.
She didn’t notice the carriage trotting slowly past the front door of the mansion as she turned to go back inside.
“If his intention is to make me anxious, he’s succeeding better than his wildest dreams,” William muttered into his claret. “Look at him, all complacent smiles, while we both know he’s just waiting for the moment to strike.”
“The proverbial snake in the grass, except that he’s not hiding,” Marcus observed, refilling his glass from the decanter on the table between them. His eyes flicked across the salon at White’s to where Everard Dubois sat at his ease, legs crossed, seemingly engaged in a spirited game of piquet with one of the eager young lordlings who frequented the club, confident that they could fleece any older member unwise enough to take up the cards against them. This particular lordling was looking increasingly troubled, William noticed, unable to resist giving his nemesis a silent cheer for putting the arrogant young man in his place.
“So what is he up to?” William muttered again. The Lizard seemed to be everywhere, just taking up space, showing no particular interest in Ducasse beyond a raised glass, a nod of acknowledgment as between casual acquaintances. But there was nothing benign about his presence, and William found it utterly disconcerting to have his enemy constantly in his sights.
“I don’t think anyone’s following me, either,” Marcus said thoughtfully. “Once or twice, I’ve had a sense, but every countermove I make reveals no one. Either they’re becoming superhuman at surveillance, or they’ve lost interest in us.”
William shook his head. “Not the latter, I assure you. He’s changed tactics, but I’m damned if I know what to. And that, my friend, makes me very uneasy indeed.”
“Did Hero have any success on her visits?” Marcus moved the subject on a slightly different tack.
“Only to the extent that she told me roundly that I could do my own dirty work in future,” William responded with a rueful half smile. “She considers it an outrage to ask people to contribute who already have nothing to live on. She’s right, of course,” he added. “But she did say that none of them was aware of any unusual interest in their movements, so it seems as if Dubois and his friends are not actively watching them.”
“And Hero’s not aware of surveillance?”
“She says not . . . at least, not so far.” William’s expression darkened. “If the Lizard makes the connection between us, however . . .” He left the rest of the thought unspoken.
“Hero knows what the stakes are,” Marcus offered. “She’ll have her wits about her. After Paris, just the thought of the Lizard should put the fear of God into her.”
“Into Hero?” William gave a short laugh. “If you could tell me something that would make Hero afraid, I’d be delighted to hear it. She cares nothing for Society’s censure, and while I’m certain she would not deliberately put anyone else in danger by her actions, for herself, she seems not to give a damn.”
“She cares about you,” Marcus pointed out quietly. “She cares about your opinion.”
“She accepts my authority when it comes to our work,” William responded. “A quite different matter, Marcus. I just wish I could get her to care about herself.” He pushed his glass away and rose to his feet. “I have an appointment to cross swords with Maître Raoul. He has a new move with the épée that I would like to master.”
“I must drop by his studio and take a lesson myself.” Marcus picked up his glass with a nod of farewell. He watched as William sauntered across the room towards Everard Dubois’s card table, where he paused with a polite bow.
“Chevalier Dubois.” William smiled courteously. “I trust you’re enjoying your game.”
The Lizard’s smile flickered. “Oh, yes, indeed, Viscount, I find it most enjoyable. Matching wits with a worthy opponent is always a pleasure, don’t you find?”
“Most certainly, I do,” William responded smoothly. “I am sure the better player will win.” His gaze flicked disdainfully to the young lordling before he turned it full upon Dubois. “It is generally the case, is it not, Chevalier?” The smile remained on his lips, but his eyes were narrow and hard, the challenge given and accepted.
The Lizard inclined his h
ead in acknowledgment. “It is always a pleasure to see you, Viscount. Will you perhaps be attending the ball at Almack’s this evening?”
“I think it unlikely,” William responded. At no point in his career had he ventured through the august portals of Almack’s Assembly Rooms, and he had no intention of starting now. The entertainment was insipid, the refreshments lamentable, and he had no desire to be included among the exclusive elite who frequented the weekly balls. He offered another short bow and moved away to the door.
Dubois smiled to himself and laid down a card. “A Rubicon, I believe,” he declared, running his eye down the figures on the paper beside him. “That brings your losses to six hundred, my lord. When will it be convenient for you to settle the debt?”
The young man looked around uncomfortably. “Perhaps you would be good enough to wait until next quarter day, Chevalier.”
Dubois quirked his strangely shaped eyebrow, saying gently, “I am sure you are aware, sir, that a gentleman settles his gambling debts immediately.”
His opponent flushed darkly. “Yes . . . yes, of course. If you will take my IOU now, I will present myself at your lodgings tomorrow to settle up.”
Dubois smiled again. “That will be agreeable, sir. Shall we say at ten in the morning?” He rose, bowed, and strolled away, leaving his discomfited opponent staring dismally at the unpalatable sum in front of him.
That evening, Hero dressed without much enthusiasm for Almack’s weekly ball. She attended only when she could not possibly avoid it, and tonight was one of those nights. Aunt Emily had decided on impulse to indulge in a little light dissipation, and of course, Hero was obliged to accompany her. Emily’s dissipation would consist of sitting against the wall sipping tea, nibbling bread and butter, and engaging in idle gossipy chatter with the dowagers who made up her social circle, while Hero would be obliged to dance and make small talk with whichever gentlemen chose to honor her with their hands in the dance. Almack’s was no better than a marriage mart for debutantes, Hero had declared on several occasions to her amused but sympathetic brother. However, when duty called, it must be obeyed.