CHAPTER 33
In general, civilians were a drawback on a mission. They were liable to get overexcited and take unnecessary risks. One could never be sure which way they’d jump in a crisis, and they often needed rescuing at the awkwardest moments. Yet Suzanne couldn’t deny that the excitement of Wilhelmine and Dorothée was infectious. Their bright eyes and high color took her back to the start of her time as a spy, when choices and loyalties had seemed simpler, when the thrill of adventure was as bright and unsullied as new-fallen snow. A thrill of adventure that, if she was honest, was as much a part of her love of her work as were her Republican ideals.
Juliette could hardly be said to share that thrill. Her face was set with determination, but her hands were steady as they held Rose, a baby of about ten months, in her lap. Rose, mercifully, had fallen asleep as they pulled away from Wilhelmine’s house. Juliette and Suzanne wore gowns borrowed from Wilhelmine’s maids Hanchen and Annina, who had once served Tatiana Kirsanova. Six-year-old Marguerite sat bolt upright on the seat between Juliette and Suzanne, studying the two glamorous women across the carriage from them.
Wilhelmine and Dorothée leaned back against the watered-silk squabs, ruched and flounced skirts spread round them. Pearls showed beneath the satin ribbons on Doro’s bonnet and emeralds beneath the tulle scarf that anchored Willie’s hat. They had dressed to accentuate their positions as Princesses of Courland. They might not be agents, but both knew the role costume played in creating a persona.
Young Pierre sat between them. He and Marguerite were old enough to understand the seriousness of what was happening but young enough still to be wide-eyed with adventure. And to trust that the adults would make sure everything came out right. Trust could be a frightening burden.
Colin squirmed in Suzanne’s lap. Bringing him was perhaps another violation of the rules that should govern an agent’s behavior. She had told herself it would be helpful to have an extra child in the mix, so the group with them didn’t exactly mirror the St. Gilles brood. But the truth was she hadn’t wanted to leave him behind, not knowing how long she might be gone. It wasn’t the first time she had taken him with her on a mission.
Wilhelmine glanced out the dark glass of the window. “Not far to the gates now.” She must have noted, as Suzanne did, the tension that shot through Juliette, for she added, “Doro and I went out of the city together only last week. The guards just wave us through.”
“You don’t think they’ll notice that your maids look rather different?” Juliette asked.
“I very much doubt it,” Wilhelmine said. She seemed about to add more, then checked herself as though realizing it was impolitic.
“People don’t look at the servants,” Suzanne said, steadying Colin as he turned to the window. “It affords the same anonymity as the uniforms the men are wearing.”
Juliette gave a wry smile and nodded.
“Do we need to do anything special?” Pierre asked, looking between the adults.
Wilhelmine flashed a smile at him. “Just pretend we’re on an adventure. Which we are.”
Rose stirred in Juliette’s arms and gave a small but insistent cry. Juliette unfastened the flap on the front of her bodice and put the baby to her breast with the ease of long practice.
The carriage picked up speed as they left behind the crowds at the center of Paris, then slowed as they approached the gates. Wilhelmine’s coachman had their papers, but she turned to the window and lowered the glass. “Sergeant Hébert. How lovely to see you again. You scarcely get a day to yourself, do you?”
The sergeant’s ruddy face appeared outside the window. A sharp, dark gaze swept the interior of the carriage.
“Don’t stare at my maid.” Wilhelmine leaned out the window to tap him on the shoulder. “You must be used to the sight of a woman feeding her baby. It isn’t a display for men to leer at. You will be a dear and not detain us long, won’t you? I fear we’re shockingly late for the Duchesse de Lagarde’s fête. My sister had the hardest time choosing a shawl.”
“Don’t listen to her, Sergeant.” Dorothée leaned over her sister’s shoulder. “It was the duchess herself who had to have her hair dressed three times.”
Suzanne kept her gaze demurely lowered, in keeping with her role, but she heard the sergeant’s easy laugh. Colin cuddled against her. He had a good instinct for when to be quiet. A stir of movement followed, and a call of “Let this carriage pass.”
Reins snapped and wheels rattled. Suzanne smiled across the carriage at Willie and Doro as they pulled forwards. Amateurs or not, the sisters had a knack for this.
“Are we safe?” Marguerite asked in a small voice.
“Very nearly,” Wilhelmine said. “The rest of the journey should be easy.”
“Do you like backgammon?” Dorothée opened a mahogany compartment in the carriage and took out a traveling set. “We can entertain ourselves until we get to the inn.”
Now that they had passed the gates and inspection, they rearranged themselves in the carriage, Marguerite and Pierre sitting with Dorothée and the backgammon board, Wilhelmine moving across the carriage to sit by Suzanne and Juliette and the younger children.
“Thank you,” Juliette said, looking into Wilhelmine’s eyes.
“Your children are a delight.” Wilhelmine’s gaze focused on Pierre and Marguerite. An ache of loss flashed into her eyes, then was quickly banished. She looked back at Juliette. “And I’d say that even if nothing else bound me to them.”
Open country flashed by outside the window as they picked up speed. Suzanne felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders. Experienced or not, one never lost the wariness. Or one did at one’s peril.
Juliette switched Rose to her other breast. Pierre won the first backgammon game, and they began another.
“You look so wonderfully relaxed,” Wilhelmine said to Suzanne.
“Never that. One can’t risk losing one’s edge.”
The carriage slowed abruptly. Pierre and Marguerite looked about with anxious faces.
“Probably just something in the road,” Dorothée said, steadying the backgammon board.
Juliette smiled at her children, though Suzanne saw her fingers tighten on Rose’s lavender blanket.
A muffled voice sounded through the glass of the windows. It sounded like “Papers?”
Wilhelmine shot a glance at Suzanne, drew a breath, and opened the window. “Why the delay?”
Another face appeared at the window. “Your papers, madame?”
“My coachman has them. But we already presented them at the gates. I don’t appreciate the delay.”
Over Wilhelmine’s shoulder, Suzanne could see the uniform of the soldier outside the window and at least four more men beyond him. They would have muskets.
A pause, the rustle of paper as he examined the documents Wilhelmine’s coachman had given him. “I fear we must ask you to step from the carriage, madame.”
“Step from the carriage? Into the mud? What is this?” Wilhelmine demanded. “Do you know who I am?”
“If you’ll forgive me, madame, I know who your papers say you are.”
Wilhelmine drew a breath of pure outrage, probably only partly feigned. “The effrontery—”
“These are unsettled times, madame. We must use caution. I’m sure you appreciate that as well as anyone.”
“How dare you—”
“We’ve had reports of an escape from Paris by suspected traitors.”
“Surely you can’t think that has anything to do with my sister and me.”
“We must proceed with all caution, madame.”
“Willie, what on earth is the delay?” Dorothée demanded. “I never heard anything so tiresome. We’re going to be so late for the fête we might as well have stayed in Paris.”
“If you’ll step from the carriage, madame. Madame,” the soldier said, acknowledging both princesses. “This won’t take long.”
Wilhelmine flicked a glance at Suzanne under cover of looking at her sister. Suzanne inclined her head a fraction of an inch. Their options were limited. If they made a run for it they’d rouse suspicion with armed men on their tail. An easy target.
They climbed from the carriage, Dorothée holding Marguerite and Pierre by the hand, Suzanne carrying Colin, who clung tightly to her, Juliette soothing Rose, who had begun to cry again, sensing the adults’ fear.
There were five soldiers, counting the man in a lieutenant’s uniform who had ordered them from the carriage. The men stood respectfully at attention, but they ringed the women. Suzanne was all too aware that they were surrounded with the carriage at their back. And her own son in her arms. She pressed a kiss to Colin’s head and handed him to Dorothée. Dorothée accepted him without question. Colin looked at Suzanne but went into Tante Doro’s arms willingly. It might look odd to the soldiers for a maid to give her child to her mistress, but it couldn’t be helped. Suzanne suspected she would need her hands free.
The lieutenant’s gaze swept the small group and settled on Pierre. “What’s your name, young man?”
“Michel.” Pierre delivered the alias with the easy skill of a trained agent. Perhaps some of it was in the blood.
“Right. If you’ll come with me, young Michel, the ladies can be on their way.”
“What?” Wilhelmine’s arm shot out in an instinctive gesture to protect the child, the way Suzanne would protect Colin when their carriage came to a sudden stop.
“No need to trouble yourself, madame,” the lieutenant said. “All we want is the boy.”
Tension ran through the women in a palpable wave. Juliette’s hand tightened on her son’s shoulder.
“That’s absurd,” Dorothée said. “He’s only a child.”
“Nevertheless.”
“You can’t possibly imagine I’d acquiesce,” Wilhelmine said at her most imperious.
“I don’t believe you have a choice, madame.” The lieutenant drew a pistol from inside his coat and leveled it at them. “The boy.”
CHAPTER 34
Children changed everything. Suzanne had heard that more than once when she was pregnant with Colin. She’d nodded her head, but she hadn’t properly understood it until Malcolm placed the baby on her breast and she felt the joy and terror of what she owed this small, blue-tinged, squirming human. It was never truer than when one faced danger. Any number of options for escape were impossible with the safety of four children at stake. And yet the threat to the eldest of those children made escape imperative.
Suzanne gave a cry and crumpled to the ground, twisting her legs under her to avoid banging her knees in the trick her actress mother had taught her for fainting onstage.
“Maman!” Colin screamed. Heartrending but effective. Fortunately, they’d been speaking French in the carriage. Colin switched back and forth between calling her “Mummy” and “Maman.”
“Margot!” Wilhelmine dropped to her knees beside Suzanne and began to chafe her wrists. “I think she’s hit her head. Oh, what have you done?”
“She’s just pretending,” one of the soldiers muttered.
“She isn’t,” Wilhelmine cried. “Come and see.”
Suzanne could hear Doro murmuring to Colin. The lieutenant’s boots thudded on the ground as he took a step forwards. Suzanne moaned, half pushed herself up, then gave a cry and reached into her bodice as though gasping for breath. Her fingers closed round her pistol, tucked into her corset. She moaned again and collapsed back, the pistol concealed in her palm.
The lieutenant loomed over her, muddy boots and buff breeches. “Here now, what the devil—”
Suzanne pushed herself up, the pistol pointed between the lieutenant’s legs. “I advise you to let us go. If you ever want to produce children of your own. Or even enjoy the attempt.”
His gaze shot down. The look of horror that crossed his face would have been comical in other circumstances. “You damned bitch—”
“Watch your tongue.” She pressed the pistol into his groin.
“My men are armed.”
“Oh yes. They could do incalculable damage. But not before I unmanned you. Not that I think much of the sort of father you’d make, but somehow I don’t think you want to lose what I could destroy.”
A vein fairly popped in his forehead, yet his mouth was white with fear. “Who are you?”
“I might ask the same question, but I fear we haven’t time for pleasantries.”
He drew a breath.
She pressed the gun into his flesh. “Tell your men to drop their muskets and withdraw to the tree line.”
Gut-churning silence for perhaps the length of half a dozen heartbeats. Then, “Sergeant,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Withdraw.”
A moment of silence, then the clatter of muskets being dropped to the ground.
“Very good,” Suzanne said. “And drop your own pistol.”
The lieutenant did so.
“Madame,” Suzanne said to Wilhelmine, not taking her eyes off the lieutenant, “get everyone back in the carriage. If we have the least trouble, I fire,” she added to the lieutenant.
A rustle of fabric and patter of footsteps followed as the Courland sisters and Juliette got the children into the carriage with admirable economy. Suzanne picked up the pistol the lieutenant had dropped on the ground. Gaze trained on him, she eased herself to her feet.
The lieutenant shot out a hand to grab her arm. Suzanne dealt him a blow to the side of his head with his pistol. She pulled out the string she kept threaded loosely through her corset and bound his wrists in case he had any thoughts of going after the dropped muskets before they were away, then dealt him another blow to the head. Wilhelmine’s coachman was already back on the box with the steps raised. Suzanne shot him a look of approval and sprang back up into the carriage. He gave the horses their office as she was slamming the door closed behind her.
She fell back on the seat beside Wilhelmine and Dorothée and took Colin from Doro. Colin’s arms closed tight round her neck. “All right?” he asked, tilting his head back to look at her.
“Splendid.” She kissed his hair and tightened her own arms round him.
Across the carriage Juliette had Rose pressed to her breast and Marguerite and Pierre snuggled up on either side of her. Suzanne drew a breath. Dorothée turned to look at her. “You’re frightened.”
“I’ll own it was more of a near run thing than I’d have liked.” Suzanne smoothed Colin’s hair. Her fingers were shaking. Not the worst danger she’d ever been in, but the threat to Pierre had put it in a whole different key.
Marguerite’s wide blue gaze swept over the adults. “Why did those men want Pierre?”
Silence washed over the carriage, different from the fear of a few moments before. “I don’t know.” Juliette reached out to touch her son’s cheek.
“Did they want to put me in prison like the soldiers who took Papa?” Pierre asked.
“I don’t think they actually were soldiers,” Suzanne said. “The uniforms were good, but the insignia on the lieutenant’s sleeve was wrong.”
“Then who were they?” Dorothée asked.
“I’m not sure.” Over Colin’s head, Suzanne’s gaze locked on Juliette’s. Juliette looked back steadily.
“Will you show us how you stopped them?” Marguerite asked. “That was splendid.”
“ ‘Once more unto the breech.’ ” Simon adjusted his bicorne hat. “Takes me back to our undergraduate days.”
“Wrong play.” Malcolm smoothed the facings on his coat. He and David had met Simon and their friend Oliver in an Oxford production of
Henry IV Part I
.
“Same characters.” Simon twitched his cuffs straight. “This one’s more appropriate for adventure. ‘Follow your spirit, and upon this charge—’ ”
“ ‘Cry God for Harry, England, and St. George.’ ” Malcolm cast a glance up and down the street. “Pity Davenport isn’t here.”
Harry had in fact volubly objected to not being part of the party that went into the Conciergerie disguised as soldiers. Malcolm had had to forcefully point out that one of them with legitimate diplomatic connections had to remain on the outside in the event that anything went wrong. Harry had muttered about Malcolm’s “annoying logic” but had subsided. David hadn’t appeared particularly happy about his role, either, though with typical David restraint he’d refrained from objecting. He couldn’t quarrel with the fact that Simon was more skilled at playacting. So Simon and Malcolm were making their way over the Pont Neuf and along the Quai de L’Horlage along with O’Roarke and Rupert, garbed in the uniforms of French soldiers. Malcolm felt the resentful glances cast their way. One or two men actually muttered curses as they passed. Frenchmen who fought for the king were not popular with some of their compatriots.
“St. Gilles knows what to do,” Rupert said. “He’s a quick study. It should all go smoothly.”
“Quite,” O’Roarke said.
To their right rose the stone walls of the Palais de Justice, the massive Gothic palace that had once been the home to French kings. Four towers marked the portion of the palace known as the Conciergerie, which had served as a prison for over five hundred years. Malcolm could hear his voice explaining them to Colin, perched on his shoulders, on a ramble round Paris. He’d told Colin about the Tour d’Argent, which had held the royal treasure, and the Tour de l’Horlage, which bore the first public clock in Paris. But not about the Tour de César, where the public prosecutor had sent hundreds of Royalists to their deaths during the Terror. Or the Tour Bonbec, the babbling tower, where prisoners held for torture learned to speak.
They presented their credentials and made their way down a maze of passages, beneath vaulted ceilings that rose to darkness, past shadowy cells in which movement was dimly visible behind iron bars. Rupert and Malcolm walked ahead, Rupert silently leading the way. Head held high, no need to hide, relying on the cloaking power of the uniform like a magic garment in one of Colin’s fairy tales.
Once they were in the door, the jailers didn’t trouble them. The prison was full, the jailers were busy, few stopped to ask questions. Everyone assumed they must have legitimate business.
Rupert stopped in front of an iron-bound door. St. Gilles’s cell was conveniently located just past a bend in the passage. While O’Roarke and Simon kept watch and Rupert covered him, Malcolm attacked the lock with his picklocks. It gave with surprising ease. Old and heavy but not particularly complicated.
St. Gilles was on his feet when Malcolm pushed the door open.
“I gave even odds on whether or not you’d actually appear,” St. Gilles said.
“You should have more faith in our word,” Malcolm said, pushing the door to after Rupert followed him into the cell.
“Not that. I thought you might not make it this far.”
“Then you should have more faith in our wit.”
Rupert was already stripping off his uniform coat. In less than ten minutes, St. Gilles was dressed in Rupert’s uniform, Rupert was buttoning the coat that he’d smuggled into St. Gilles’s cell on an earlier visit along with breeches, waistcoat, shirt, and boots, and Malcolm was arranging St. Gilles’s discarded clothing over the pillows. With the blankets drawn up, it should serve to deceive a guard glancing through the grill in the door. Long enough to let them get away. In theory.
Without speaking they returned to the passage. Malcolm used his picklocks to relock the door. He and St. Gilles fell in step beside O’Roarke and Simon. Rupert moved past them and made his way briskly through the maze of passages to the gate. A breeze from the courtyard carried the guard’s surprised accents down the passage.
“Didn’t realize you were here, Monsieur Caruthers.”
“Didn’t you?” Rupert asked with careless unconcern. “I’ve been in the plaguey place an hour or more. Tiresome errand for my father. I’m inclined to tell him he can ask his own questions.”
“Doesn’t seem to have been noted down.” The guard was different from the one who would have been on duty an hour ago. They had timed that carefully.
“Doesn’t it? Well, I’m not entirely surprised.” Rupert leaned forwards across the desk in a confiding attitude. “Renard seemed a bit distracted when I arrived. A pretty wife was presenting her papers to see her husband. I’m sure Renard would appreciate it if you amended the record. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
The guard coughed. “Thank you, Monsieur Caruthers. Much obliged.”
Rupert strolled out into the courtyard. When Malcolm, St. Gilles, O’Roarke, and Simon reached the desk, the guard was absorbed in scribbling on a piece of paper (no doubt amending the record to show that Lord Caruthers had indeed entered the prison). He hastily pulled a ledger over the paper and waved them through, too concerned with his own indiscretion being discovered to pay them much heed.
Malcolm released his breath as they stepped out of the shadow of the prison walls.
“Don’t tell me you were nervous,” St. Gilles said.
“Always.”
“I thought you were a professional.”
“Enough so to be aware of the risks.”
St. Gilles gave a low laugh. “You’re very like your sister.”
Malcolm nearly stumbled on the cobblestones. He forced himself to keep walking and swung his gaze to St. Gilles. “She told you.”
St. Gilles looked back at him steadily. “Tania and I were closer than my original account might have led you to believe.”
“Yes, so I’ve discovered.”
“And the physical intimacy was the least of it.” St. Gilles regarded him for a moment with a steady blue gaze. “There was a note in her voice when she talked about you. Though she moved through throngs of people, she was very much alone. But if she had any family it was you.”
“You’re a kind man, St. Gilles.”
“I didn’t say it to be kind.”
“I thought I knew her. I thought we were close. Closer in some ways than I am to my brother and sister in Britain. But not close enough apparently for her to confide in me about her child.”
“She said much the same about you when you married.”
“When I—” Malcolm stared into St. Gilles’s steady gaze. “I told Tania I was marrying Suzanne. It was just before she left Spain.”
St. Gilles’s eyes glinted in the sunlight. “So Tania told me when she returned to Paris. And she said you hadn’t begun to explain how you felt about your wife. Or why you were marrying her. But she was sure it was infinitely more complicated than you admitted. She said it with a laugh, but in truth I think she was a bit hurt.”
“That wasn’t—” Malcolm broke off. “I had other people to think about.” Though in fairness, he’d been protecting himself as much as Suzanne and Colin. His feelings about his wife and marriage went too deep to share, even with Tania.
“I think Tania felt the same.”
“But I wouldn’t—”
“Have revealed her secret? She’d have said the same to you.” Malcolm recalled Tatiana’s teasing, faintly mocking voice when he told her about his marriage. Had he missed an undertone of hurt? He’d prided himself on being good at reading his sister. But God knows he’d been preoccupied at the time. “I still don’t see why she was so determined to keep it secret,” he said.
For a moment something shifted in St. Gilles’s eyes. Then he gave a low laugh. “Perhaps she was embarrassed. I was hardly in her usual style. But Laclos—”
“Was dead. Whatever we may think of Napoleon’s government, they didn’t prosecute the children of traitors. In fact, they were rather more respecting of liberties than my own government.”
St. Gilles drew a breath. “You knew Tania. She could be quixotic. Oh, look—Those must be our horses.”
From the side one would swear the Kestrel really was an old woman. Cordelia studied the line of his shoulders, curved inwards beneath the frayed paisley shawl. The profile, surely more delicate than that of the seemingly elderly man she had first met before he changed into this disguise. The mouth sunken, as though half her teeth had been pulled.
“You’re looking at a master,” Harry murmured. His own hair was disordered, his face smeared with dirt. Though he was far less disguised than the Kestrel. As was she. Cordelia studied the Kestrel, head bent over a piece of knitting. She suspected he wasn’t in disguise only to hide from the authorities. Was there anyone, she wondered, watching the droop of his eyelids, with whom he was really himself?