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Having spotted a likely resting spot under a stand of trees near a small river, he motioned her to turn her mount off the road. While she watered the horses, Will removed his saddlebag and extracted their simple meal, his thoughts returning to the conundrum of England.
Maybe he could stash madame at some quiet place in the country; he owned several such properties. He’d journey to London alone, feel out some contacts in the Foreign Office. Maybe there was a way to clear Max’s name without incriminating Madame Lefevre.
The idea of giving her up to the gallows was growing more and more unacceptable.
By the time she finished with the horses, he had bread, ham, cheese and wine set out on a saddle blanket on the sun-dappled grass under the trees. This time, hoping to lure her into speaking, as they sat to consume their meal, he did not immediately launch into a story.
It seemed she was content to eat in silence. Just as Will was about to judge his experiment a failure, she said, ‘So, are you out of tall tales?’
‘Have you not grown tired of my exploits?’
‘Not at all. But there is something else I’d like to know about. Won’t you describe your childhood? You’ve spun many stories of your roguish life, but nothing of how you became who you are.’
The whirlpool of the past swirled in memory, threatening to suck him down into its maelstrom of fear, hunger, pain and grief. He shook his head to distance it. ‘There’s nothing either entertaining or edifying about it.’
‘It was … difficult?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d still like to know. I’ve never met a man like you. It’s ill bred to be so curious, I realise, but I feel driven to discover how you became who you are.’
He saw an opportunity and grabbed for it. ‘I’ll tell you about my youth—if you tell me about yours. Over our travels, I’ve blathered on at length about my misspent life. You’ve told me nothing.’
After a moment, she nodded. Exultant, he exhaled the breath he’d been holding.
‘Very well. But you first. How did you learn all these things you seem to do so instinctively? To move as silently as silence itself. To be so aware of everything, everyone, all the time. The ability to be anyone, mingle with anybody, to converse as an English aristocrat or a Viennese workingman.’
‘Silence, so as to move and not be seen. Awareness, in order to snatch purses and not get caught. Pickpockets in England are transported or hung. And to be anyone? Perhaps because I have been almost all those things and had to mimic them to survive until I mastered the roles.’
‘How did the nephew of an earl, even an illegitimate one, become a thief, a pickpocket and a working man?’
Will thought of the taunts and hazing at Eton that no amount of bloody-knuckle superiority had stopped. Crude drawings of cuckoos left on his chair, muttered obscenities about his mother issuing from within a gaggle of boys, impossible to identify the speaker. Would this daughter of aristocrats scorn him, too, when she knew the truth?
Somehow, he didn’t think so.
‘During her come-out in London, my mother, a clergyman’s daughter, was bedazzled by my father. The younger son of the Earl of Swynford, he was a rogue, gamester and self-centred bastard of epic proportions. He lured her to his lodgings, a midnight excursion that ruined her reputation. When she refused to slink away to the country in disgrace, her family disowned her. For a time, they lived together at some dismal place just outside Seven Dials, but after losing a fortune at cards one night, he fled to Brussels. His older brother, now the earl, had already warned him he’d pay no more of his debts, and my father wasn’t prepared to adapt himself to a debtor’s life in Newgate. He left behind my mother, six months gone with child. Mama managed to eke out a few pennies doing needlework, enough for us to survive.’
Though all he remembered was being hungry. Frightened. Alone. And, later, angry.
‘And then?’ she prompted softly.
‘When I was five years old, the local boss made me a runner and the street lads became my family. For the next six years, I learned the finer points of card sharping, lock-picking, house-breaking, knife-fighting and thievery.’
‘Did your father never come back for you?’
‘No. I heard he died of a bullet wound, courtesy of a man he’d been trying to cheat at cards in some low dive in Calais. But among his papers, later delivered to the earl, were letters written by my mother, begging him to make provision for their child. The earl set his solicitor to investigate and, once paternity was established, he had me brought to Swynford. Although, over the years, I’m sure he’s regretted the decision to turn a second-storey boy into a gentry-mort, my cousins did their best to make me into a proper Ransleigh. Especially Max. Now, your turn.’
He caught her chin, making her face him. ‘Who are you, Elodie Lefevre? Because if you’re St Arnaud’s cousin, I’ll eat this tree.’
Before she could deny or dissemble, he rushed on, ‘Don’t you owe me the truth? I’ve told you about my ill-begotten youth. I’ve kept you safe and brought you almost to the gates of Paris. I simply can’t believe St Arnaud would have left his own cousin in Vienna. Beaten her, perhaps, but not abandoned her; someone in the family would have taken him to account. Who are you, really?’
He held her gaze, implacable, willing her to confess, while his heart pounded, frantic with hope and anticipation.
Finally, she said softly, ‘I was born Elodie de Montaigu-Clisson, daughter of Guy de Montaigu-Clisson, Comte de Saint-Georges. Our family home was south of the Loire, near Angers.’
He ran a map of France through his head. ‘Isn’t that in the Vendée?’
‘Yes.’
That fact alone could explain so much. ‘Was your family involved in the Royalist rising against the Revolution?’
‘My papa joined the Comte de La Roche-jaquelein, as did almost all the nobility of the Vendée. I don’t know much, I was only a babe when the Republic was declared. But I do remember turmoil. Being snatched from the house in the middle of the night. Fire licking through the windows. Living in a garret in Nantes. Mama weeping. More fighting. Then that day … that awful day by the river.’
She’d lived in Nantes. Suddenly he recalled the event that had outraged all of Europe. ‘You witnessed The Noyades?’
‘The Republican soldiers herded all the townspeople to the quai beside the river. They marched the priests on to a small boat, locked them below and scuttled the vessel.’ He could almost see the rippling surface reflected in the bleakness of her eyes. ‘They did it again and again, one boatload of priests and nuns after another. All those holy ones, drowned. I was five years old.’
A child so young, watching that. He put a hand on her shoulder, stricken. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It was terrible. But it was also wonderful. There was no screaming, no pleas, no panic. Just … serenity. Mama said they went to a secret place in their hearts, where no evil could touch them.’
Like you do now, he thought. ‘And after? If I’m remembering correctly, the Revolutionary government offered amnesty to all Vendéeans who surrendered and took the oath of allegiance. Did your father?’
‘He died in the final battle. We left the garret in the middle of the night, our shoes wrapped in rags to muffle the sound, and boarded a ship. I remember wind shrieking, rain lashing, travellers screaming, thinking we would all drown like the priests and have to swim to heaven. Then … calm, green land, Mama weeping on the shore. We travelled north for many days, around a great city, surrounded by people speaking a language I couldn’t understand.’
‘You sailed to England, then? A number of émigrés went to the north, supported by the Crown.’
She nodded. ‘Mama, my elder brother and I settled in a cottage on land owned by Lord Somerville.’ She smiled. ‘He had a wonderful garden. I used to spend hours there.’ The smile faded. ‘It was my secret place when Mama wept, or food supplies ran low. When the children in the village taunted me for my poor English and tattered clothing, for being a foreigner.’
‘If you were living in England, how did you come to the attention of St Arnaud?’
‘My brother, Maurice, ten years older than me, despised the Republicans who seized our land, killed my father and turned Mama into a grief-stricken old woman. When Napoleon abolished the Directoire and made himself First Consul, instituted the Code Napoleon and promised a new France where merit and talent would be rewarded, Maurice was ecstatic. He hated living as a penniless, landless exile, dependent on charity. He determined to enter Napoleon’s army, perform great feats of valour and win back our lands. So we returned to France. On his first army leave, he brought home a friend, Jean-Luc Lefevre.’ Her expression turned tender. ‘I loved him the first moment we met.’
Instinctive, covetous anger rose in him. He squelched it. Devil take it, he wouldn’t be jealous of a dead man! ‘Whom you married. He was lost in the war?’
Pain shadowed her face. ‘He fell at Lützen. He died the day after I reached the billet to which they’d taken him.’
‘Is that when you learned to walk like a man? To disguise yourself on the journey?’ At her sharp look, he said, ‘I was a soldier, remember. I know what happens in the aftermath of battle. It’s … dangerous for women.’
