Shay looked through the window, the old glass distorted into waves of blurriness, like his world, not quite real somehow. Until last night, like an onion peeled back layer by layer, he and Celeste seemed to go back to the centre, to the start, exposing the past bit by bit.
He didn’t know what came next and this unsettled him, for things were changing in a way he could not quite keep up with and that was a feeling he had seldom experienced.
Footsteps made him turn and Celeste stood there, wiping her nose with the back of her hand as she sniffed, the urchin completely replacing the woman who had come to his bed in the dark hours of the morning, sultry and sensual, her breasts heavy and her lips swollen. There was dirt on her cheeks.
‘You rise early, Major.’
Not a question but a statement and said as she walked into the dining room. She carried the bag that Madam Caroline Debussy had given her across her shoulder before unlinking the straps and handing it over to him.
‘These are your tools of the trade. The sneaky, clever and unexpected ordinary weapons. I hope for your sake that they can be as effective as a gun.’
Taking the offered bag, he wondered where her firearm was for she had not placed it into the hidey-hole in the apartment in Paris even after promising that she would do so. It was probably in the left-hand pocket of her jacket. Quickly gathered, eminently accessible. But if she was searched, the weapon would be found, and he swore under his breath.
The habits of a spy were pressed into one’s soul like a brand. Hers had been a violent apprenticeship and so she’d brought the things she expected to defend herself with. A blade and a bullet.
He turned to gaze again through the window, watching those who passed by the front step and sifting through threat. He knew he should say something about last night, but he could not find the right words and reasoned silence might be better.
‘Where’s your friend?’ Her stress on the wordfriendwas cold.
‘He didn’t come. We won’t wait.’
A frown passed across her eyes.
‘He’s a dangerous man, you know. He’s tied to those who sweep through the city for any sign of dissension and snuffs it out without asking questions. There are things said of Aurelian de la Tomber that are not flattering.’
‘He works for me sometimes.’
As church bells rang close, counting out the hour, Shay wondered why he might have told her that.
‘And you trust him?’
‘With my life.’
‘Well, it might come to exactly that, Major. There’s still a good mile or two until we get to the Seine and if he means to betray you, there is plenty of opportunity for him to do so. Clarke’s henchmen from the Ministry of War could be waiting this very second right outside our door.’
She turned to the table and helped herself to a ripe fig, splitting it open. He could see the blush of blood on her cheeks even at this distance. He wished he could not.
‘If they take me, Celeste, I want you to run. I will stop them following you.’
‘Run like a coward?’ She threw this back at him and he smiled because he could not imagine she could ever be such a thing.
‘It is worth it for the protection of your life,’ he countered after a few seconds. ‘I promised your grandmother that if I ever met you on my travels, I would keep you safe.’
‘Safe from what, Major. Myself? My grandmother was not inclined to find favour in anything that I did and in the end I gave up trying.’
‘She might be surprised by your strength now if you went home.’
‘My strength to kill and cheat and lie?’
‘I was thinking more of the strength to survive no matter what the world throws at you.’
‘As if you know what life has thrown at me, Major. As if you have even the smallest idea of what my life was like after England.’ Now only fury marked her face. ‘Susan Joyce Faulkner would hate me a thousand times more now than she did then and she would be right to.’
‘The capitulation of the damned?’
She simply looked at him, flinted anger in the vivid blue of her irises.
‘I had not taken you for a quitter, Celeste. I thought you might fight for a better life, for a finer future.’
