Once. With Summer.
She wished he was here with her and their child, and the ache was like a hole that ate at her every day.
* * *
Her grandmother was a completely different woman in the company of Vivienne Shayborne. She laughed at the antics of the hounds and even allowed one of them to curl up at her feet, its long face lying across her shoes.
‘I used to have dogs here before my husband died. My daughter played with them for hours and hours, but when one bit her on the hand Walter got rid of them all. No amount of persuasion on both our parts could change his mind.’
‘I suppose it’s only natural that a father wants to protect his children?’ Vivi said this casually, almost as an afterthought, but her grandmother stiffened in a way that was noticeable to them both.
‘Protection is sometimes overrated, I think. Better to let a child make mistakes and see the consequences of them. Your husband’s aunt, Vivienne, was the perfect example of that, I think. I remember she would allow the Shayborne boys to do the most dangerous things and watch them from a distance. To pick up the pieces, I thought at the time, but now I know it wasn’t that at all. She made remarkable men of them both because of her tolerance of their adventurous spirits.’
Vivienne looked entranced at such a turn of conversation. ‘My husband was quite tight-lipped about his youth so I should love to hear more of what you know, Lady Faulkner.’
It appeared as if her grandmother would say no more, but then she laid her hands on the table and leaned forward to speak.
‘They were little devils, both of them, but in the most charming of ways imaginable. Summerley, the youngest, was the leader because of Jeremy’s fragile disposition, but your husband was never far behind, I can assure you. They built a hut in the woods and slept there for a week once, high in the branches of an old oak. I found the ladders of rope a few months later on a walk and a sign carved into the trunk that read“Beware of apparitions”.Not ghosts, as any other young boy might have written, but apparitions. Summerley always had a way with words, even back then.’
‘I know that Jeremy missed his brother when he went to the military academy, for he spoke of him often to me.’ Vivienne’s expression was sad as she said this, leaving Celeste to wonder whether she would ever move on to another marriage, a different life.
‘Do you remember the younger Shayborne, Celeste?’ Her grandmother now asked this. ‘I recall him in the house at Langley a few times before your father took you away.’
‘I do.’ She kept her voice low and a smile plastered across her face. ‘I knew him briefly.’
‘Someone turned up here a few weeks ago asking about Major Shayborne, come to think of it. It seems the fellow knew you once in Paris for he left a note. When we get back home I shall find it for you as it had completely slipped my mind with all that has been happening of late.’
Celeste nodded and tried to pretend it was just a trifling communication, but darker thoughts chased around in her head. Loring chose that particular moment to let out a squawk from his Moses basket at one end of the long table and she was glad for the interruption.
She felt the world of espionage sink back into her skin, that certain smell of fear in her nostrils, the chilling knowledge of danger in her heart. A tea party in the middle of the English countryside with laughter and cakes was safe and normal and lovely for others, but not for her.
She was as ruined as they got and as damaged and already the creeping fury of the world that she had lived in for years was coming back, encompassing others, good people, innocent people, tangled in deceit.
‘You look pale, Celeste.’ Vivienne’s voice held concern. ‘Perhaps a sip of the lemonade would help. The cook has the tastiest recipe in the whole land, Jeremy used to say, and I do believe that it is true.’
Celeste brought the glass to her mouth once Loring had resettled.
‘It’s very good,’ she said, and the small tête-à-tête continued on, just as if the bottom had not completely fallen from her world.
* * *
Later in her room and alone she opened the sealed note her grandmother had finally found for her.
Guy Bernard is alive and word has it he will travel to England in early October to deal with both you and Major Shayborne.
C.D.
The rest of the page was blank.
Caroline Debussy.
He will try to kill you. He will stalk you until he is triumphant. He is consumed with revenge and rage.
Those words could have been as easily written there as the others.
She had not killed Guy Bernard then in the dungeons in Paris? She could scarcely believe her incompetence.
Guy Bernard had not come. Yet. But she could feel that he soon would. His mother’s birthday was on October the tenth and she knew he would not miss that. If there was one thing about him that was good, it was the love of his aged mother and his aunt. Today it was the ninth.
