Page 66 of Yielding to Love

“I’m not eager to sit out the war in French custody.”

“Your other option is to masquerade as a civilian. And be shot if you are caught.”

“So I mustn’t be caught.”

Grant shrugged. “Tricky. Your French is better than passable, but you don’t look French. You might do for an American, but your accent is terrible. And you are not inconspicuous.”

“All true. I don’t know why you want me for this job.”

“Because I have to be here. And there is no better second best than you.”

*

Fourteen hours later, Crispin had to remind himself that there were many kinds of filth in the world, and this was by no means the worst. He was somewhere near Beaumont, a town at the southwestern border with France. Wearing tattered clothes hurriedly purchased in a second-hand shop in the Brussels stews, he was lying on dirty straw in a cowshed that had never seen a shovel. The stench of manure made his eyes stream. It brought back a long-ago memory best forgotten.

He closed his eyes to run again through the maps Colquhoun had shown him. The prevailing intelligence indicated Napoleon intended to enter Belgium through Mons. Wellington suspected he would then try to flank the British to the right, cutting off their supply lines and their retreat route to the north. Colquhoun thought the opposite. That Napoleon would head to the south, into the gap that remained between the British forces and the Prussians under General Blücher. Boney would drive a wedge between the two armies and defeat them one after another. No one was foolish enough to imagine he could not do it. He was a master of the tactic.

Wellington was wedded to the idea of protecting the northern border as long as doubt remained. Colquhoun wanted proof that Napoleon would head for the gap, so that the British corps could be shifted south to narrow it. Therefore, Crispin was sneaking—there was no better word for it—along the River Sambre, creeping closer to Blücher.

Before dawn that morning, Crispin had seen a Prussian patrol, six men. They either didn’t see him or took no notice of him, either of which was concerning. What if he were French reconnaissance? Boney certainly had scouts floating about. Would the Prussians ignore them too?

He resisted the urge to roll over and find a more comfortable position in the straw. If he moved, he was sure to coat himself in crap. But he needed to sleep. He was fatigued and had hours to kill. It was midday, and he was waiting out the sun. When darkness fell, he would make his way on foot to Beaumont, where a tavern keeper in Colquhoun’s pay would, hopefully, have something useful to say.

Crispin groaned at the prospect. He was already footsore. He’d left his horse behind when he got close to the border. He was supposed to be a tramp and tramps did not ride. Colquhoun had better be right about Napoleon. Or he was just wandering in the dark to no purpose.

Closing his eyes again, he tried clearing his mind so he might sleep. But the problem with banishing thoughts of war was that it made room for Camellia. Her uncanny beauty. The outline of her shape in the dark. Her easy smile and deep-throated laughter. The way she waltzed. The way she’d felt in his arms. Her generosity and cleverness. Her false innocence. Drifting, he heard her voice. No better proof of devotion could there be, than loving you till you loved me.

He started awake. He’d heard something. Scuffing. Breathing. The door to the shed creaked open. A wiry, grizzled man in peasant clothing stood in the doorway, outlined by sunshine. The man stared at him. He squinted back.

“Merde! Qui êtes-vous?” The man’s hand slipped inside his shirt.

“Nul. Personne.” Crispin sat up slowly, shaking his head, pretending drunkenness while straining his ears for the sound of the Frenchman’s companions. He let his hand rest on his pistol under the straw.

The man pulled a gun. Crispin put a bullet in his forehead and the poor devil dropped to the ground.

Crispin swore. He grabbed his second pistol and waited. After several minutes, he relaxed. He laid down his loaded gun and reloaded the other. Then he crept to the corpse. He rifled through the man’s clothing, looking for missives. Nothing. There was nothing.

He’d just killed a man for speaking French.

Crispin’s hands started to shake. Sweat broke on his brow. He rubbed his face. Counted to twenty. Then to one hundred. His heart finally stopped racing. He made himself look back at the body.

The gun lay beside it. The gun was real.

Still, the frog-eater could be anyone. He could be the owner of the cowshed for all Crispin knew. He had to go. But he couldn’t leave the dead man in the doorway for someone to stumble over. A wife. A daughter. Damn, damn, damn.

He crawled to the door and peered outside. The surroundings remained deserted. So he rose and hooked the corpse’s feet under his arms to drag him into the back corner of the shed. In doing so, Crispin noted the feet. He was slipping—he hadn’t checked the boots. Expecting little, he pulled off first the left boot, then the right. Mashed into the right boot was a bit of paper. Crispin’s miserable cloud of guilt lifted. A French spy after all.

A few lines of nonsense were scribbled across the slip. Something encoded. Too much for his tired brain. He had to get it to headquarters. He flipped the page over. There was a map. Crudely drawn. Surely the map was for the spy’s sake, not Boney’s. It showed the River Sambre and a trail or road from French Avesnes to Belgian Charleroi that cut right through Beaumont, with a few landmarks and villages marked along the way. Villages that were likely to welcome the French invaders? Or something else?

He closed his eyes to see again Colquhoun’s maps. Charleroi was a long day’s march nearly due south of Brussels. The road to Charleroi indicated on the spy’s map threaded the needle between the British and Prussian armies. Divide and conquer. And Napoleon was coming into Belgium through Beaumont, not Mons.

Crispin smiled. He had Colquhoun’s proof.

Now he only needed to find out where the devil was.

He left the cowshed and followed the river another two hours toward Thuin, thinking himself now roughly halfway between Beaumont and Charleroi. Just outside the town, exhausted, he bought himself a bed in a brothel, always a good place to hide, and paid the girl extra to leave him alone. He woke just before dawn to the rumbling sound of a very large army on the march. He didn’t see it, but he heard it well enough. He now knew where Napoleon was. Unfortunately, the general was here.

*