‘I do.’
‘So it will have been for nothing in the end. All these lives lost?’
‘I think your father might have said his death was a means to an end. After every tragedy there is reflection and learning. And growth if you know where to look for it.’
‘You went to Spain after your wife died?’
‘I did.’
‘And you thought it did not matter if you were killed because your heart was lost?’
He countered with his own query. ‘Is that how you felt after your father died?’
‘Papa knew the risks.’ Her tone was harsh, the truth leaking out beneath the falsities. ‘My father made his bed and everyone he cared for had to lie in it with him.’
‘It was uncomfortable?’
‘As uncomfortable as anyone else’s barbs of conviction can be. He wanted the greater good and forgot about the smaller one. If he’d been satisfied with less...’ She did not finish, but grabbed a new bottle of wine, uncorked it and took a generous swig. Then she brought a polished jet rosary from her pocket, her fingers sliding across the beads with both familiarity and grace.
* * *
She made the sign of the cross and started on the Apostle’s Creed. ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty...’ The complexity of religion had helped her recover. A salve. A balm. A way of handing her problems over to a deity who could help shoulder the burden.
Shayborne lay quietly as she recited the Our Father and the Hail Marys, the Glory Be and the First Mystery and when, finally, she had finished, she lay the rosary down beside his leg and found salve and sprigs of garlic in the bag Caroline had given her. There was oregano there, too, and the other more potent powders in twists of paper. She began by using the darkest shade, sprinkling it into the red swollen flesh with care. Celeste knew Madame Debussy well enough to know that she swore by these remedies and that they were highly effective. She said her own private prayer of the Guardian Angel under her breath as she rebandaged the wound and tied the ends of soft linen.
‘We will leave tomorrow night. I do not think we can wait longer.’
He nodded, but she could tell all this ministering had cost him much and that he needed to rest.
‘If I die—’
She did not let him finish.
‘You won’t.’
The corners of his mouth came up and then he was asleep, his hands beneath his face as a pillow as he turned on his side.
She would have liked to have lain down beside him and felt his solid bulk against her own increasingly waiflike state, but instead she crossed the room and found a space at the window seat. The night was neither cold nor warm and she was glad for Shayborne’s company here in the silence.
Her papa felt closer than he had for a long time. Once, her mother and father had meant everything to her, until she had seen the truth of them both in the worst of circumstance.
Shayborne had had his share of tragedy, too. Anna. Beautiful. Kind. Sweet. Her last thoughts before slumber were of herself dancing in a London ballroom in the arms of the English Major and laughing as though she really meant it.
* * *
The morning brought heavy rain. She could hear it against the glass at the window and feel it in the air.
Shayborne was awake. He was sitting up against the wall, smoking.
She didn’t know how long he’d been there—her own slumber had been deep and uninterrupted after the drama of the last few days. She hoped he hadn’t been watching her.
‘You are feeling better?’
‘Much,’ he returned, the flash of his teeth white against the gloom of the early dawn. ‘This rain will help us, for what man wants to brave such weather, even for the sake of his country. It was the same in Spain; armies hunker down when it pours.’
‘Perhaps you give yourself too little credit, Major. It would be considered a triumph for any of the intelligence factions in Paris to bring you in and bad weather won’t stop that. The woman I got the medical supplies from yesterday said that if you were caught, their orders were to make certain you were left well enough to be interrogated. Again.’
‘And you?’
