‘People are all different, my dear. What might break one into pieces may only strengthen another, but August set out his pathway and he followed it.’
‘And my grandmother? Did she give him her blessing?’
‘No, she did not. She cursed him to hell and back for taking you.’
The lump in her throat thickened at the knowledge of her father’s choices. Not so easy, after all.
‘After the soldiers came I wrote to your grandmother, anonymously, and told her you were both dead.’
‘In a way we are, Caroline.’
Celeste was surprised at Caroline’s tears. She had never seen Madame Debussy cry, not through all the times they had struggled side by side, not even when her father lay dying at her feet in this very room.
‘It was my fault, all of it. Those who hated your father came here because of me. I was a part of it, don’t you see. They had been watching me. They knew what August wanted. They knew one day he would cross a line and that they would have their revenge.’
‘A line? What line?’
‘Your father assaulted the son of the head of their small faction in a drunken rage because he thought it was the only way to make them stop. By then he was crazy with his hopes for France under Napoleon’s stewardship and would allow nothing to get in his way.’
‘And I was the person in the middle. The daughter? They could not chance what I might say.’
‘You never had a hope, Celeste, not from the moment August set foot in France with his hatred and his zealousness. Mary Elizabeth had wounded his soul somehow and even with my best attempts at loving him I could not bring him back to be the man I’d known as a young girl.’
The penny dropped then. Caroline had watched as they had killed her father here in her house. ‘In the end, you did not try to save him.’
She shook her head. ‘There is as much danger in caring too much as there is in caring too little. August was a lost cause, but I failed you and that is my greatest regret.’
The moment came rushing back to Celeste, the moment the men had taken her, their arms wound around her own, her dress ripped in anger, the blood of her father on her hands where she had tried to stop the bleeding. Slippery with the redness.
She needed to get away and back to Shayborne. This place was like a spider’s web with a hundred sticky threads of deceit mixed strangely with honour—the cutting edge of a politics that demanded the blood of its martyrs. Again and again. Until there was nothing left. Not even grief.
Bundling up the medical supplies the maid had brought, Celeste turned, ignoring Caroline Debussy’s quiet plea for forgiveness.
Outside, she brushed away the tears that fell down her cheeks, angry at her emotions as well as at the reminder of the loss she had suffered. She should be used to it, this treachery, but Caroline Debussy was the last link she’d held to her father and now that was gone, too.
When the light of a streetlamp fell full across her she was brought back abruptly to the danger of exposure and stepped into the shadow, her palms splayed against thick and reassuring stone.
She was like a drop of water in a river that rushed to an endless ocean. She was a leaf on a tree in the deepest of forests in some far-off land not yet discovered.
She was alone and she was lonely, the jeopardy of Paris all around her reaching out and searching. Well, they would never find her. Not alive, at least, she promised herself that.
* * *
Shayborne was barely conscious when she returned, his skin burning with heat, the wine in a glass beside him untouched.
In the bag, she found the water Caroline had insisted on giving her and was infinitely grateful for it. Soaking one of the new bandages, she brought the fabric to his mouth, glad when he began to suck.
‘I thought...you had...gone,’ he said finally, his strength returned enough to be able to hold the water bottle himself.
‘If I leave, you will die.’
He had the grace to smile and the gesture pulled at her heartstrings. Uncomplicated. Sweet and sad. After the evening with Caroline Debussy, such honesty was a relief.
* * *
He saw the flicker of something in her eyes, the choice she had made, he supposed, or the lack of it.
The wound in his thigh throbbed badly and he felt shaky and sick. Once in Spain he’d had the same sort of malady and it had taken him weeks to recover. Here he had a matter of hours before they must move.
