A Night Of Secret Surrender. Sophia James

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      ‘The fight is no longer yours, James. It’s too dangerous for a start...’

      A heavy knocking downstairs had them both standing and they moved towards the back of the room in unison. They had practised for this, expected it for weeks now, ever since Napoleon had abandoned Paris, leaving the political chaos in the city behind him. There were so many factions seeking power in the vacuum of all that was left.

      ‘You first.’ Although the older man protested, Shay pushed him through the small opening and lowered the platform with its thick rope gurney. The crash of splintered timber alerted him to the fact that his enemy was close, as did the sound of feet pounding up the creaky staircase.

      As he heard the gurney hit the ground with McPherson safely away, Shay knew his own chance of escape had run out so he turned, raising the stool beside him like a shield, a thick twist of rope in the other hand.

      They weren’t in uniform, a fact that told him the military was not involved. They were also not at all conciliatory. He might have managed something if they had allowed him words, but there were five of them altogether and when the gun fired at close range he felt the bite of it in his right thigh. A coldness spread quickly, his sight blurring. He wondered if the bullet might have hit a major artery or the bone for he could not feel his leg any more. Weakness crawled into his head and his limbs. Then there was nothing.

      * * *

      He came awake in a room and discovered he was bound to a chair. Tightly bound. Two men sat in front of him. One had just thrown a pail of cold water over his head and the shock of it brought him back to consciousness.

      ‘Who are you?’

      ‘Captain John Barton of the American Regiment of Infantry and one of President Madison’s envoys.’

      ‘Liar. You are Major Summerley Shayborne of the Eleventh Foot and you have worked for General Wellesley as an intelligence officer in Spain for these past two years.’

      ‘I don’t know who you are speaking of.’

      ‘Do you not, Major?’

      There was a slight kerfuffle and there materialised before him the face of one of the soldiers who had accompanied him across Spain after his capture by the French Dragoons in the north-west provinces.

      ‘The Englishman’s hair is darker now, sir, but his attitude is exactly the same. It is him, I am sure of it.’

      ‘Thank you, Private. That will be all.’

      A hard fist glanced across his mouth, tight with fury, the smack of it coinciding with pain. A dislocation of the jaw perhaps. He shook his vision clear.

      The second blow jabbed a soft spot in his lower back and then a third targeted the injured leg. His thigh ached like the dickens. It was a considered torture and a damned effective one.

      ‘Confess who you are, Major Shayborne, and we will leave you alone.’

      To hang, he thought, though it did cross his mind a simple knife to the throat might also have been an option. They were in a basement room and the floor was hard-packed earth, a drain of sorts to the side. To sluice away the blood, he supposed, the mess of death easily dealt with.

      ‘Who are...you?’ He got the words out with some difficulty.

      No one spoke. Not Savary’s men, then, for they were braggarts and would have supplied such information readily given the unequal balance of power and the obvious outcome. Not from the War Ministry either. He doubted they would treat a man in uniform like this.

      One of the shadowy unit of Napoleon Bonaparte’s that James McPherson had spoken of? He’d heard of them, of course, but only in veiled reference, the layers of intelligence deep here and impenetrable. He decided to play them at their own game.

      ‘The Emperor will move the Grand Armée into Russia before the winter. It is his first priority and the vacuum left will allow the English to take back Spain.’

      Another slam into his ear, the high squeal of sound inside the drum a direct result.

      ‘Joseph Bonaparte and the Marshals shall be thrown out of Madrid and then piece by piece the victories of Napoleon will dissolve into defeats.’

      His mouth was hit this time and he tasted blood. At this rate, he would be dead before they meant him to be. He kept talking.

      ‘Wellesley will chase General Soult back to where he belongs. When the British enter France, no one will stop them for the French military effort lies in disarray. It will be a straight march up to Paris and victory.’

      They were getting more and more furious and he knew that Marmont’s orders to kill him when he crossed the border all those weeks ago from Spain were still in force here.

      He’d given his life’s work for England. His death would be for that country, too. It was surprising how calm he felt, how distanced. He wondered if perhaps he were already part way gone to that shadowy place between death and life he’d heard talk of on the battlefields of Europe.

      When the door suddenly opened, he was brought sharply back into the moment, the pain skewering through lethargy and dislodging the mucus and blood from his breathing passages. With shock, he saw it was Celeste Fournier who’d walked in, dressed in a harlot’s gown, her hair the red of blood, fire and betrayal, and falling in a curling mass down to her waist. There were bruises around her mouth and a bandage encircling the fingers of her right hand.

      ‘Benet told me to come in and identify the prisoner.’ Her eyes met his own, but there was no warmth or recognition in them, no compassion for his wounds. Only distrust and fury. They were not blue at all, he suddenly thought, but the pale purple of storm clouds over mountains. The skin on both her cheeks was drawn into hollow pits and her lips were rouged and full and sensual. The colour had bled across her teeth. He looked away.

      ‘You know the English bastard?’ The tall bearded man stood now.

      ‘I met him once a long time ago, unfortunately. It is indeed him. I would know him anywhere.’

      Her glance raked across him and then down to take in the dark blood marking his trousers at the thigh. Adept at reading people, all Shay could see in her face was disgust, underpinned by a certain distance.

      ‘You are sure? You would swear your life by it, Brigitte?’

      She stepped closer and regarded him. ‘Marmont wants him dead. Benet wants information. Either way, Shayborne will not leave this room alive. It’s up to you how much you make him tell you, Guy. I would probably use the blade. Here.’ She gestured lewdly to his crotch. ‘Even heroes have their vanities, I should imagine.’

      Her head tipped up to the man standing next to her, an overt and shocking sensuality in her expression. The bodice she wore was partly opened and very revealing and she made no effort at all towards modesty. There was something else there, too, a subservience, he might name it, drawn across the edge of lust. She looked like a prostitute about to satisfy a client’s needs in the back corner of the harsh streets around Les Halles.

      He could smell a perfume on her that was neither expensive nor subtle. Beneath that was the sharp tang of fresh sweat.

      ‘Perhaps СКАЧАТЬ