Almost a Lady (35 page)

The change in topic distracted him as she’d hoped, and he launched into a detailed commentary on the uncertainty of the Directory that at present controlled the government. “Without the support of the army, the Directory would have been overturned long since,” he stated. “If it hadn’t been for my ‘whiff of grapeshot’ three years ago, the political face of France would be very different.”

“Will you continue to support the Directors?” she asked, picking at a meringue-covered hazelnut.

He shot her a sharp glance over the bowl of syllabub. “That remains to be seen, madame.”

She smiled. “First, of course, you must conquer the Orient.”

“I shall,” he declared through a mouthful of whipped cream.

The manservant knocked and entered. “Would you prefer to take coffee in the drawing room, General?”

Napoleon regarded his guest thoughtfully. “Madame?”

“As you wish, Napoleon.”

“Very well, then, we shall adjourn. Bring port and cognac, Claude.” He wiped his mouth and pushed back his chair. “Madame.”

Meg accepted his arm and they returned to the drawing room. The long curtains were drawn across the windows and the door to the corridor that she had opened earlier was now closed. She glanced at it and the general himself opened it a fraction of an inch.

“There, madame, is your modesty satisfied?”

“My modesty does not concern me, General,” she said softly, suggestively. “But my reputation does. I will not compromise that lightly.”

His bright eyes were suddenly piercing as he absorbed both words and tone. “Of course not, Nathalie. I understand perfectly.” He sat down on the sofa beside her, watching her hands as she poured coffee. One arm slid surreptitiously around her, his hand flattening against the small of her back.

The warmth of his palm seemed to sear her skin through the delicate silk of her gown, and it took a supreme effort of will for Meg not to jump to her feet. Soon this would be over, she told herself. She just had to keep this up for another half an hour, no more. Arrange the assignation and then it would be over . . .
her
part would be over. She need never see Napoleon Bonaparte again.

She declined the glass of port he offered and sipped her coffee, trying to ignore the hand still firmly in place on her back. The fingers started to creep up towards her neck and he leaned sideways, saying softly into her ear, “You know I find you utterly alluring, my dear.”

She shifted very slightly on the sofa, turning herself a little to face him. “As I said, Napoleon, I don’t compromise my reputation lightly.” A slight seductive smile lifted the corners of her mouth, leaving him no doubt that she returned his sentiments.

He was silent for quite a few moments, his fingers absently playing a tune along her spine. Meg held herself still, allowing the tune to come to an end, waiting for whatever response would emerge from the deliberative silence.

Finally he let his hand drop and stood up, going over to the sideboard to refill his goblet with cognac. Then he turned, cradling the glass between his hands, considering her with a slight frown. “So, Nathalie, how then should we arrange this?”

Meg decided to meet the straightforward question with a straightforward answer. Her role was not that of simpering ingénue, fluttering in pretended innocence. She wouldn’t know how to play such a part even if it were. The sardonic thought flitted across her mind to be swiftly dismissed. The moment was too crucial for distraction.

She opened and closed her fan as if in deep thought, then closed it with a decisive snap and looked across at him. “Should we decide upon an assignation, Napoleon, it must be in complete privacy,” she said, her voice low but clear. “We must meet somewhere outside town, just the two of us. I would ask that you come quite alone, as I will.”

She opened her fan again, half concealing her expression as she watched his face. “No one must know of it. In less than a week you will be gone from here, our liaison barely a memory, and I will still be here. I cannot,
will
not be left the butt of every scandalmonger and gossip along the Mediterranean coast.”

“I understand, my dear,” he said. “I believe I can meet your conditions with little difficulty.”

“You give me your word you will tell no one.” She rose with a degree of agitation. “Oh dear, I’m such a fool in these matters. I have no control sometimes, when I meet . . .” She opened her palms in a gesture of helplessness. “When I meet someone who attracts me so deeply.”

He smiled and unconsciously grasped the lapels of his braided scarlet dress coat. “Attractions are meant to be acted upon, my dear.”

“Maybe so,” she said with a rueful smile. “But it’s the woman who takes the greatest risk.” Even as the glib words dropped from her lips her scalp crawled and a wash of nausea rose into her throat.

“Trust me, Nathalie, I will take no risks with your reputation,” he said, coming towards her, taking her hands and bringing them to his lips, before pulling her sharply towards him and kissing her hard on the mouth.

She struggled against him, turning her head away. “Please, please, Napoleon. Not here, I beg of you.”

Abruptly he released her. His eyes were rather wild and he was breathing heavily. “Forgive me, but you drive me to distraction. I cannot wait to . . .” He didn’t complete the sentence but there was no need to do so.

Meg stepped away from him, moving closer to the window. She didn’t think he would press further at this point, but the knowledge of Cosimo watching the curtains from the gate was more than reassuring. “In the right place at the right time,” she said, thankful that her voice remained steady.

He exhaled noisily and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. “You drive a hard bargain, my dear Nathalie. But it will be as you say. I will arrange matters. Wait to hear from me.”

“Most eagerly,” she said, coming over to him. She leaned into him and lightly kissed the corner of his mouth. “A promise,” she whispered into his ear. “And now I must leave you . . . for the present.”

Napoleon pulled the bellrope with sufficient vigor to yank it out of the wall and the equerry answered before the last peal had faded. “General.”

“Escort Madame Giverny to her carriage,” Bonaparte instructed curtly. He gave his guest a curt bow. “I bid you good night, madame,” he said before spinning on his heel and stalking into his adjoining office without waiting for her responding goodnight.

“General,” she murmured to his back and swept past the interested-looking Gilles, who held the door for her. Bonaparte had played that rather well. The rumor now would be that the widow had displeased him in some way. She managed a look of confused discomfort as she was escorted from the mansion and across the courtyard to her waiting carriage, and returned the equerry’s goodnight with a bare whisper.

He saluted and returned to the mansion to report to Colonel Montaine on the interesting conclusion to the general’s evening.

Cosimo had never spent a more uncomfortable evening. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the curtains at Bonaparte’s window, and every muscle in his shoulders and neck ached. All his customary cool detachment had fled as he’d sat there waiting, trying not to imagine how Meg was managing, and failing miserably. His imagination ran riot. He cursed himself for hurling her into such a dangerous situation. Meg was not Ana, as he’d told himself over and over in the last weeks. She had none of the other woman’s experience, and none of the motivation that drove Ana to play her part in this war.

Ana had survived the Terror but she had lost her family. Her Austrian mother had been one of Marie Antoinette’s closest companions from the moment the princess as a young girl had left her own mother in Vienna to be thrown unprotected, uneducated, and unadvised into the vicious turmoil of the French court. Ana had survived on her wits, escaping to England with a visceral loathing of the revolution and all that it stood for. It hadn’t taken her long to find a home with the antirevolutionary networks spreading across Europe. She and Cosimo had first partnered each other on a mission four years earlier.

Meg Barratt had grown up in the quiet English countryside, well educated certainly, but not in the world of dirty experience. What did she know of the blood and viscera that informed Cosimo’s own world? She was doing what she was doing not out of conviction but out of loyalty to him. Out of
love,
she had said.

His hands tensed on the reins. His world did not admit such an emotion. And this evening, waiting with churning guts for that great door to open and Meg to walk out unharmed, was most definitely not the time to wonder why. The horses reacted to the tension on the reins and raised their heads, pulling against the curbs. It was enough to bring him back to the world that he controlled, the world that existed outside the tumult of anxiety. He quieted them and sat back on the box, forcing himself into the trance that would give him calm and strength.

He was aware instantly of the moment when the door across the courtyard opened. He jumped down from the box and let down the footstep. He watched her as she walked across the paved courtyard. Her step was firm, her color no paler than usual, the slight smile she gave the equerry as he handed her into the carriage perfectly steady.

Cosimo draped the lap rug over her and noticed that her hands were quite still in her lap. He didn’t look at her, spoke only the brief courtesy greeting of a good servant, climbed back upon his box, and drove away.

Meg didn’t begin to shake until they turned the corner behind the church and the house was in sight. Her teeth began to chatter, her heart pounding in her chest like a bolting racehorse.

She couldn’t make herself move when Cosimo came around to open the door for her. Her body was somehow petrified on the seat. She looked at him, murmured, “I feel so
filthy.
What have I
done
?” Then she fell silent because if she said any more, the words would pour out in an undammable flood and they could not be retracted.

Cosimo without a flicker removed the lap rug, said calmly, “Here we are, madame. A beautiful night as usual. May I help you?” He took her hand as he spoke, his grip closing tightly over her fingers. His other hand moved to her elbow and he half lifted, half pulled her from the vehicle. When she set foot on the pavement he steadied her with an arm around her waist.

There was no one on the street, but there could be watchers in the house, and Meg found that just the simple pressure of his arm, the firmness of his hand on hers, gave her the strength she needed to get herself through the front door.

“Send immediately for Estelle,” the majordomo instructed a hovering servant. “Madame is feeling a little faint . . . Madame, if you will permit, I will help you upstairs.”

“My thanks, Charles,” she managed, putting a hand to her forehead. She was beginning to regain control but the scene once instigated must come to a natural close. “The heat, I think. It’s such a warm evening.”

Estelle came bounding down the stairs with all the exuberance of youth, flourishing sal volatile that she waved vigorously under her mistress’s nose. “Oh, madame, are you ill?” She took Meg’s other arm.

“No, much better now, thank you, Estelle.” Meg pushed away the sal volatile, her eyes beginning to stream from the potent vapor. “Just a touch of the heat. Charles will help me to my room.”

The majordomo escorted her as far as the door and then when instructed stood back and left her to the ministrations of her abigail. His expression was dark. Meg must have succeeded in preparing the trap. She would not otherwise have said what she’d said. But he felt nothing . . . not one iota of the satisfaction that he would have expected. None of the quick thrill of the chase that would usually accompany this moment. The trap was set, the rest was up to him. Such moments of anticipation had always been the spur to completion. Once he began the operation, his mind was in control, his body automatically performing the moves carefully rehearsed over hours of meticulous preparation. And when the operation was completed, he was simply satisfied. No sense of triumph, merely the knowledge of a mission completed.

But something here was awry. And whatever was awry was within himself.

He waited until the household was asleep before he went to her, and it took every ounce of the control born of experience to wait. There was no line of candlelight beneath her door, but he knew she was awake. He opened the door softly, stepped in, and closed it as softly behind him. He saw immediately that the bed was empty.

“Meg?”

“Yes.” She stepped out from the shadow of the window curtains where she’d been standing looking out onto the dark street and the bulk of the church. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“No, I didn’t imagine you had. May I light a candle?” He lit the taper without waiting for her permission and set it on the table. “You had a hard evening.” It was a statement.

“I didn’t realize how hard until it was over,” Meg confessed. She drew the sides of her peignoir around her with a shudder. “I don’t think I was ever intended for this work, Cosimo.”

“No,” he agreed. “Neither do I.” He took her in his arms, carrying her to the bed and lying down with her, nestling her into the crook of his arm. “But your task is finished, love.”

She reared up onto an elbow. “And will you feel nothing . . . nothing at all when you do this?”

He answered her honestly. “I will think of the countless lives that will be saved if this war is over.”

“And I cannot argue with that logic,” Meg said, sliding down again into the curl of his arm. “Napoleon will make the arrangements and he’ll inform me of them. Is that right?”

“Yes,” he said. “He will feel safer if he dictates the rendezvous. You said it must be close to the city?”

“Close enough for me to go alone.” Her voice was dull.

Cosimo lay on his back, holding her, feeling the dullness resonate in her body. “Your part is over,” he repeated.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Meg sat up again, suddenly the wretched fury of the evening catching up with her. “I’ve lured a man to his death, Cosimo. And knowing you, nothing will prevent that death. You once told me you don’t risk failure. I believe it. If you did, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve done what you wanted; now I want you to leave me alone.” She got off the bed, tugging the peignoir around her again, and went back to the window.