Scars of Betrayal

Swearing, he turned away, but not before the pale outline of a figure holding a candle moved through the second floor, down the stairs and out on to the porch, peering through the black of night.

There was no way she could have seen him, tucked into the shadow of a brick wall. But for a second before she blew out the flame the world seemed bathed in a daylight born from the candle, and she looked right into the heart of him.

Then there was only darkness and she was gone.

Sometimes his world disgorged ghosts from the past, but never ones as worrying as Sandrine Mercier. He’d been twenty when he had entered the heady enclave of espionage, his grandfather’s distant demeanour a catalyst for him to become part of a close group of men who worked for the British Service.

His friend, Stephen Hawkhurst, had already been involved and when Nathaniel’s grandfather, the Earl of St Auburn, had ranted and raved about his uselessness as the only son and heir, Nathaniel had joined as well.

Determining the likelihood of the rumoured marriages between the Spanish and French crowns had bought Nat into France, his expertise in both languages allowing him an easy access to the higher and lower echelons of its society.

The ties that were being forged between Britain and France were becoming strained, leaving a climate of suspicion and fear in their wake. A united block would render England isolated and make the battle for the control of Europe all that much harder to fight.

Nathaniel’s mission had been to test the waters, so to speak, and to liaise with the handful of British agents who had been assimilated into the French way of life, keeping an eye on the workings of a political ally who was hard to trust.

Determining the likelihood of such an alliance had taken him to the court of Madrid. Returning across the Pyrenees to make his way up into Paris, he had been alarmed at the murder of one of his agents whilst on the road to Bayonne. Finding those culpable had led him into an enclave of French bandits near Lourdes.

And it was here he had met Sandrine.

* * *

Cassandra knew he was there, quiet and hidden in the night. It had been the same at Nay, when in the chaos the spaces around him had been full of a certain resolve, menacing and dangerous, the last afternoon light glinting in the dark of his hair as he had taken apart the minions of Anton Baudoin.

She shivered at the name and thought of Celeste. A week sooner and her cousin might have lived as well, might have been taken too, through the long night and back into warmth. She did not know Lord Lindsay was an Englishman then, dressed in the trousers of a peasant, skin sliced with the marks of war. The French bastards had not known it either, his accent from the warmer climate of the south and the musical lilt of a Provençal childhood masking all that he was.

Nathanael. He had named himself such. Monsieur Nathanael Colbert. At least part of his name had been true. His hands had been harder then, marked with the calluses of a labouring man and none of the softer lord on show. He still wore the same ring though, a gold chevron against blue, on the fourth finger of his right hand.

A movement behind made her turn.

‘Ma’am, Katie is crying and Elizabeth cannot make her stop.’

One of the Northrup maids stood in the doorway, a heavy frown evident, and, forcing all the thoughts from her mind, Cassie hurried inside.

Tonight, chaos felt close and Lord Lindsay was a large part of the reason. She understood that with a heartfelt clarity as the cries of the girl took Cassie from her revelries.

Elizabeth, her maid, was in the annex at the rear of the house, the place used when women needed a bed for a night or two before being rehomed elsewhere. She was bathing the burns on thin legs, angry red scarring beneath the soft brush of cotton; another small casualty owing her injuries to London’s underbelly of child trading.

‘Did you make certain your hands were clean, Lizzie, before you touched the wounds?’

‘I did, ma’am.’

‘And you used the lime solution?’

‘Just as you told me, ma’am.’

The smell of it was still in the air, sharp and strong, crawling into all the corners of the room. Alysa, Cassie’s French mother, had always been a vehement supporter of cleanliness when dealing with sickness, and such teachings were ingrained within Cassie.

Soaping up her hands, she dried them and felt the child’s forehead. Fever was settling in, the flush in Katie’s cheeks ruddy and marked. Removing a clean apron from a hook by the door, Cassie put it on and went to stand beside Katie, the folds of the child’s skin weeping and swollen. Carefully Cassie took plump shards of green from her medical cabinet and squeezed the slime into a pestle and mortar before spitting into the mixture. Mama had shown her this and the procedure took her mind back unwillingly into a different time and place.

She had been almost eighteen years old, still a girl, still hopeful, still imbued with the possibilities of life.

Completely foolish.

Utterly naive.

And painfully heartsick from the guilt of her mother’s death.

Chapter Two

Nay, Languedoc-Roussillon, France—October 1846

The stranger had forced himself into stillness. She could see it as he stood, his heart and breath calmed by pure will-power as he raised his blade and stepped forward.

So many were dead or dying; such a little space of time between the living and the departed and Cassandra expected that she would be next.

A knife she had retrieved from the ground felt solid in her fist and the wind was behind her. Left handed. Always an advantage. But the rain made steel slippery as he parried and the mud under her feet finished the job. As she fell her hat spun off into the grey and her plait unfolded into silence. She saw the disbelief in his eyes, the hesitation and the puzzlement, his knife angling to miss her slender neck, pale against all else that was not.

The shot behind sounded loud, too loud, and she could smell the flare of powder for just a second before he fell, flesh punched with lead.

He could have killed her easily, she thought, as she scrambled up and snatched back her cap, angry with herself for taking another look at his face.

Mud could not mask the beauty of him, nor could the pallor of death. She wished he might have been old and ugly, a man to forget after a second of seeing, but his lips were full and his lashes were long and in his cheek she could see the dent of a dimple.

A man who would not bring his blade in battle through the neck of a woman? Even a fallen one such as she? The shame in her budded against the futility of his gesture and she went to turn away. Once she might have cared more, might have wept for such a loss of life and beauty and goodness. But not now.

The movement of his hand astonished her.

‘He is alive.’ Even as she spoke she wished she had not.

‘Kill the bastard, then. Finish him off.’

Her fingers felt for a pulse, strong against the beat of time, blood still coursing through a body marked with wounds. Raising the knife, she caught the interest of Baudoin behind and, moving to block his view, brought the blade down hard. The earth jarred her wrist through the thin woollen edge of his jacket and she almost cried out, but didn’t.

‘Take your chances.’ Whispered beneath her breath, beneath the wind and the rain and the grey empty nothingness. Tonight it would snow. He would not stand a hope. Cleaning the knife against her breeches, she stood.

‘You did well, ma chère.’ Baudoin moved forward to cradle the curve of her chest, and the same anger that had been her companion for all of the last months tasted bitter in her mouth.

She knew what would come next by the flare in his eyes, knew it the moment he hit her, his sex hardened by death, blood and fear, but he had forgotten the knife in her palm and in his haste had left her fighting arm free.

A mistake. She used the brutality of his ardour as he took her to the ground, the blade slipping through the space between his ribs to enter his heart and when she rolled him off her into the mud and stood, she stomped down hard upon his fingers.

‘For Celeste.’ She barely recognised her voice and made an effort to tether in her panic. The snow would help her, she was sure of it; tracks could be hidden beneath the white and the winter was only just beginning.

‘And...for you, too.’ The sound was quiet at first, almost gone in the high keening of wind, a whisper through great pain and much effort.

Her assailant, his grey eyes bloodshot and sweat on his brow underpinning more extensive injuries. When he heaved himself up, she saw he was a big man, the muscle in his arms pressed tight against the fabric of his jacket.

‘You killed him too cleanly, mademoiselle.’ Not a compliment either as he glanced at Anton Baudoin. ‘I would have made him suffer.’