He laid his hands finally upon his knees and wept for all that they both had lost.
Chapter Eleven
They waited together in the darkened room, not speaking, Celeste’s gun drawn against the window as they watched the night sky fade into darkness and the moon rise above the city.
This morning they had felt like strangers, but this evening they were more than that again. Stronger feelings were there, too, but he could not at the moment think about those.
He teased the silk of a scarf he had in his hands through his fingers, the strength of it reassuring. Every part of his body was honed and ready for action.
* * *
The sound came an hour later, small at first and then more loudly. Scraping and a footfall. Shay took in a breath and kept it there, not a single thing upon him moving. Still. Readied. Focused.
The shadow of a man and then the body with a blackened face turned to the room.
‘Stand very still.’
At Celeste’s voice the figure stopped immediately. ‘Now step in slowly and raise your arms.’
Guy Bernard stood there now in the light of the candle Shay had struck, beardless, thinner, a smile upon his face. His hands were devoid of weapons.
‘Major Shayborne,’ he said softly in French, ignoring Celeste altogether. ‘So all those rumours from Nantes were true?’
‘Rumours?’ He could not understand quite what Guy Bernard meant.
‘Be quiet, Guy.’ Celeste’s words showed the steel in her voice, but the Frenchman wasn’t listening.
‘You do not know of the sacrifice that she made for you?’
‘What the hell are you talking of?’
‘This.’ When he tipped his head Shay could see the scar of her knife’s work on his neck. ‘As well as her accusations against Benet. It was a pure exchange. Her life for yours. The things she had to say were more important than what might have come from your interrogation, I suspect, and she’d promised to go without fight to Paris if you were left alone to take safe passage back to England.’
Shay glanced briefly around at Celeste, sick with the realisation of the danger she had placed herself in for him. When she refused to meet his eyes he swore, for nothing with her was ever as he thought it and he could see the truth of Bernard’s words in her eyes. Sacrifice.
‘And now no doubt she is crawling into your bed with all her gifts, a woman who might see her best chance and take it.’
‘Enough.’
But Guy Bernard was not ready to cease, not by a long shot.
‘Perhaps it might be wise to ask her about some of her other secrets. They are certainly worth listening to.’
‘You speak of the soldiers who took her after her father’s murder? I want to thank you for your part in seeing to their demise. It was the honourable thing to do.’
That surprised him, a heavy frown on his face settling.
Shay took two steps towards him. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I want my wife back. I want her to return with me to France. It is her place, after all.’
‘An unlikely conclusion to our meeting.’
‘She owes me her life. She owes me for this.’ His hand again indicated the old wound at his throat. ‘We were never divorced in the law courts and any judge in France would back me up on that.’
‘You are delusional.’ Celeste pushed into the conversation now, no careful diplomacy in what she said.
‘Go back to France and never return to England.’ Shay spoke across them both. ‘That promise is the only way you will leave here alive and I allow it only because of the way you dealt with the soldiers.’
