The Spy's Reward (26 page)

Her eyes were wide with shock. He wondered if he seemed mad to her.

“I spent hours on that battlefield,” he continued. “It was dark, and I went from body to body with my lantern, looking at the regimental markings on the jackets—that was the quickest way, you know, because a lot of them didn't have faces any longer. But the lantern can only show you one little spot. Two bodies. Three bodies. Maybe five or six. And I was still there when dawn came.” He shuddered. “I looked—I couldn't help myself—I looked at the whole thing, at the miles and miles of corpses, and I thought of the tiny fraction I had been able to see as I searched, and I remembered what you had said.”

“What I had said?”

“That I send off reports, and thousands of people die. That I play games, and boys wake up without an arm, or a leg, or an eye.”

“No!” she cried, horrified. “You cannot blame yourself for this! You cannot believe I meant my words so literally!”

“It looked quite literal to me,” he said. “The thousands of people dying, in particular. Don't misunderstand me. I am not accepting sole responsibility for that slaughterhouse. But even if I only accept a fraction—and I think I must—a fraction of that horror is too much. When I brought Anthony to you this morning, I felt unclean. I could not be in the same room with myself. I could not even be in the same building with myself. So I came up here.” He gestured. “No roof.”

“What if I accept a fraction?” she asked fiercely. “Shall I throw myself off the city walls as well?”

He stared at her. “You?”

“What if I had never interfered that night at Pont-Haut? What if you had been able to blow up the bridge? Would Napoleon have retaken France? Would all this have happened?” She waved towards the forest beyond the walls. “Perhaps not.”

He frowned. “That is different.”

“Well then, let us consider a much smaller, less complex problem. If you starve yourself to death over the Namur Gate because of some misguided, self-righteous remarks I made in a fit of temper, what is my responsibility for your death?”

“I am not going to starve myself to death.” He was beginning to feel a little calmer.

“Then you are coming down with me?”

He sighed. “Abigail, I am filthy. In every sense of the word. I will come down, yes. But not with you.”

“Because I am a woman of principle, and you are an unprincipled scoundrel?”

“Something like that.”

She sat up very straight, her hands clasping her knees. “Let me tell you about my principles,” she said. “Let me tell you about how pure and virtuous I am.”

“Abigail, don't,” he said. He knew what she was going to say, or thought he knew.

“I let you make your confession,” she said. “And I assure you mine is infinitely more modest. I don't claim to have destroyed the entire British army. Just my good name.”

He sighed.

“Did you know that I was married to two different Harts?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is very unusual, these days.”

“Paul, my first husband, died very young. And I had loved him, and I had wanted his child. I begged Aaron to marry me.” She paused. “Don't imagine I was an innocent. I knew what he was; Paul used to worry about him constantly. Aaron was never sober after four in the afternoon. I didn't care. I wrote to the rabbi of the Sephardic synagogue and asked him to send my family records of other cases where it had been permitted. I got my wish. I married Aaron, and I had a child. But Diana was not a boy. She could not be Paul's child, as I had hoped. And after she was born I was told I could never have any more children. I had married a drunkard to have a child for a dead man, and I had failed.”

“You had Diana.”

“Yes, I had Diana. I tried to stay for her sake, but I couldn't. Aaron loved Diana, loved her passionately; I knew he would never harm her except perhaps through overindulgence. He hated me, though. I had tricked him, as he saw it. I was to produce Paul's son, and bring us Paul's money. I did not keep my part of the bargain. But he would not divorce me; I was too wealthy.”

He put his good arm around her. “Abigail, stop.”

“No. No. You are the only one besides Fanny I have ever told.” She wiped her eyes. “I hired a man,” she said defiantly. “I suppose you would have to call him a prostitute. And I could not take a chance that Aaron would claim it was a fraud, so I—I went to bed with the man. And Rosie, poor Rosie, made sure that Aaron and Stephen would come in and find me.”

She looked up at him, her green eyes glittering with tears. “So you see, when I lectured you in France about deception and manipulation and playing games I was only condemning in you what I hated in myself. I lied to make Aaron marry me, and I lied to make him divorce me, and in the process I degraded myself in every possible way.”

“You did what you had to do,” he said helplessly. “Sometimes circumstances don't allow us to be moral. Sometimes we have to choose between different ways of being immoral.”

“So you think I should forgive myself?”

He was weak from loss of blood, and a bit feverish, but he was not stupid. “This is a trap, isn't it?” he asked. “You've argued me into a corner. I've fallen in love with the Spinoza of Goodman's Fields.”

“Are you coming down?” she asked, very gently this time.

“Yes. I don't know how we will manage it, though. Who will come up ninety-six stairs and help me down?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “This is Belgium.” And she stood up and waved her white cap in the air until some people began peering up at the top of the wall from the street below. “Good citizens of Brussels!” she called, in clear, carrying French. “Who will earn four gold pieces helping me carry my husband the banker down the stairs?”

Six men began running towards the stairs before she even finished.

 

 

“You got more value for your four gold pieces than I did,” Meyer told her as they climbed back up to her rooms. On the way up the hill he had told her the story of the looters. “Your hireling helped me down
and
fetched a carriage for us.”

“Also, he did not shoot us,” she reminded him.

She opened the door.

“Mother!” Diana jumped up. “I did
not
go out, even though you were gone a very long time, and the doctor is here, and Anthony has just woken up this minute!”

The doctor was there. He looked at the mountain of bandages on Meyer's arm and raised his eyebrows.

Meyer went over to the bed. Anthony was looking up at him. “Did we win?” he croaked.

Meyer nodded.

“Good.” Anthony closed his eyes. “You can buy me out now,” he said.

E
PILOGUE

 

The Harts were lined up in Abigail's drawing room like a panel of judges facing a prisoner. The women were on the left: Danielle Hart and Abigail's sister, Leah, who was an honorary member of the family—a replacement for Abigail, who had been demoted. The men were on the right: Joshua and Stephen. They sat stiffly, with a look of sorrow on their faces. They would do their duty, but they did not have to enjoy it.

Danielle, as usual, was the spokeswoman. “We have come to see you, Abigail, because Leah has heard a rather disturbing rumor. It is being said that you are planning to remarry.”

“I am,” said Abigail.

“We do not approve.” Stephen crossed his arms. “This was not part of our bargain when we agreed to allow Diana to reside with you.”

She had expected this, but that did not make it any easier. “I made no promise not to remarry. Surely there is nothing improper about marriage? And Diana will benefit from some male guidance.”

“We do not object to marriage
per se
,” Danielle said. Joshua muttered something, clearly in disagreement, and she glared at him. “We object to your choice of husband.”

“And why is that? ‘He is a gentleman of means and leisure, received by notables such as the Duke of Wellington.'” It was childish, but she couldn't help herself.

Joshua winced as she recited the words of his own letter. “I was deceived,” he said. “I admit it freely. I did not know that his daughter had abandoned her faith to further her worldly interests. We cannot permit you to bring someone of such unsteady principles into the family as Diana's half sister.”

“His daughter is grown,” said Abigail. “She is married, with a household of her own.” It infuriated her that they were using Rachel Drayton as a weapon against her father. Only distantly did she remember that at one time she had condemned him for the same reason.

Stephen cleared his throat. “There is another difficulty.” He looked at Joshua, who nodded. “It pains me to speak of this, but apparently Mr. Meyer's son committed perjury. With his father's full endorsement.”

“You are forgetting the duels,” said a voice from the doorway. “Let us by all means be complete in our indictment. James has fought at least a dozen. Everyone of them illegal, under English law.”

She had not seen him in a week. How had he known to come today, right now? She wondered if he had been having her house watched. The thought should have horrified her. It didn't. She was profoundly thankful that he was here.

Meyer was duly presented to her sister and the three Harts. They barely acknowledged the introduction and sat staring at him as though he were a poisonous snake.

“You were saying, before I came in?” Meyer prompted, taking a seat near Abigail.

“We were having a family council,” Joshua said. “About private matters.”

“As I shall soon be joining the family, I would be delighted to assist you in your deliberations.”

Danielle at least had the courage of her convictions. She glared at him. “If you must know, we were telling Abigail that if she marries you, we will feel obliged to remove Diana from her care.”

“Because I am a bad influence.”

“Yes,” she said defiantly.

“My son, for example. Serving as an officer under a false name.” His eyelids were drooping; he looked half-asleep. “Patriotism carried too far, you would say.”

“He is infamous,” Danielle snapped.

“Oh, hardly infamous. Notorious, perhaps. Since his marriage he has renounced all ambitions towards infamy.” He narrowed his gaze, focusing on Joshua. “You did hear that he married last year, did you not? His wife has been a remarkably steadying influence on his character. Perhaps you should reconsider your judgment of James. Samuel Bernal might take offense at the notion that his son-in-law is unacceptable to one of his principal business partners.”

Stephen turned in alarm to Joshua. “Is this true? Is Meyer's son married to Bernal's daughter?”

Joshua muttered that perhaps he had heard something of the sort.

“It was a quiet wedding,” Meyer said. “Illness in the bride's family. You could hardly be blamed for failing to note the event.”

Abigail watched Joshua squirm. It was one thing for Joshua to insult the Roth-Meyer family, who had no connection with the Harts's cargo brokerage. It was quite another to insult Samuel Bernal, who controlled half the shipping in England. Her stomach felt hollow. She knew she should intervene; should reassure Joshua that of course Meyer would not ruin his brokerage in retaliation for a dispute about Diana, that she would never permit anything of the sort.

She said nothing.

 

 

Five minutes later, the four visitors were being ushered out by Abigail's new butler.

Meyer stood leaning against the door of the drawing room, studying her with a faintly anxious look on his face. “That was extortion,” he pointed out, as though she would not have noticed. “I believe it is illegal.” He added scrupulously, “I feel obliged to tell you that I enjoyed every minute of it.”

“I didn't,” she admitted. “But I wanted to.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. “Sometimes I feel as though I have forgotten how to laugh.”

“Perhaps you should strive to break the rules more, and I should strive to break them less.”

“Perhaps.” She looked down.

He had a terrifying ability to move very quickly without making any noise. Somehow he was now right next to her.

“These caps, for example.” He tugged hers off. “If you are going to look down every time I mention anything dangerous, I would prefer to look at your hair.”

“Only when we are alone,” she said, feeling suddenly as though there was no air to breathe.

“We are alone.” He added, after a moment. “You are not
required
to look down.”

 

 

Some minutes later, Diana opened the drawing room door without knocking and burst in. “Mother, Anthony is back from Edinburgh,” she said happily. “He sent me a note. May I go to a concert with him?” Then she gasped, turned bright scarlet, and backed out, forgetting to close the door behind her.

Meyer sighed, crossed the room, and latched the door. “While I was waiting to make my grand entrance I believe I heard you say that Diana would benefit from some male guidance. Knocking on doors will be the first lesson.”

H
ISTORICAL
N
OTE

Many novelists, including authors of historical romance, have written about Waterloo. Although that epic battle does figure in the conclusion of this story, I wanted to concentrate instead on the beginning of the story of Waterloo—on Napoleon's return from Elba. The former emperor landed near what is now Cannes on the evening of March 1, 1815, accompanied by some fifteen hundred troops of his personal guard, a courtesy force assigned to him for his residence in exile on Elba. That small army marched on foot over two hundred miles—through some of the most mountainous terrain in France—in seven days, reaching Grenoble in triumph on the evening of March 7. This feat is memorialized by the modern French highway called the
Route Napoléon
(N85), which follows the emperor's march and commemorates with historic markers everything from the dramatic confrontation at Laffrey, narrated in this book, to little inns where Napoleon ate an omelet. I have tried to be as accurate as possible in depicting travel conditions and landscapes as my hero and heroine precede Napoleon over the mountains, but true Napoleon buffs may find a few slips.

Readers are invited to find photos of my own trip from Cannes to Grenoble, as well as further information about Wellington's intelligence service and the Jewish community of Regency London, at my web site (
www.nitaabrams.com
). There is also a mail link; I always enjoy hearing from readers.

Many thanks to my research assistants on the N85, Rachel and MK, and to my many wonderful readers, who write me about everything from Jewish marriage law to Regency architecture.