Daughters of the Storm (44 page)

He was not entirely joking.

‘If... ‘ she murmured.

The supper the four of them enjoyed before the fire in the tiny salon that evening was the first of many. Both women had agreed on the principle that no one was to dress formally, to which Louis and William acceded, and they lingered until late over cards and wine, often helpless with laughter.

It proved to be a golden time – one for friendship and levity, and for pushing away dark thoughts and darker fears. During the day they rode, turning always from Paris towards the forest to the west, racing each other over the hard ground. Héloïse very often won, her light hands and excellent horse allowing her to outpace even Louis. Occasionally, they made an expedition to some site. Once they ventured as far as Versailles, but drew back from actually entering the grounds, preferring to leave the palace, slumbering in its silence, to others.

They returned for dinner and to read and write until supper was served. After supper they played expensive games of piquet or loo until, sleepy from the fresh air, they made their way to bed.

Héloïse loved the moment at the end of the day. Lying in bed, she watched for the door and for Louis.

She also loved when, in the late-winter mornings, they awoke entangled in each other's arms.

‘You're sure the servants are to be trusted?' he asked one night, sleepy and sated.

‘As far as they can be,' replied Héloïse. ‘I picked them myself.'

‘And Monsieur le Comte?'

‘He will never know.' Héloïse was not a good liar.

‘He knows,' said Louis, kissing a strand of hair. ‘If I understand Monsieur le Comte correctly, he is playing a game. Your idyll in return for leaving France.'

‘Perhaps,' said Héloïse, as his hands slid down her body, ‘but I will have had my idyll.'

On another occasion Louis asked Héloïse to tell him about de Choissy.

Héloïse told him a little. Louis tightened his grip round her shoulder.

‘Ma pauvre,'
he said, shocked at her recital. ‘What a strange man. He hates women, and yet he needs them. He hates you, yet he loves you. Do you understand?'

‘No,' replied Héloïse, and pressed her cheek into his chest. ‘I don't want to understand. I tried to begin with, but he sickens me too much.'

‘He is beneath contempt,' said Louis after a moment.

*

The weeks slid into spring. The days grew longer, and snowdrops and anemones poked their leaves up under the trees. Still Sophie said nothing to William, and hated herself for it.

Why my reticence...
she asked herself many times.

‘It might be the only time we ever have,' was one answer which she wrote in her journal. ‘A spy is always an object of hate and suspicion, and I am not immune from that feeling.' She added: ‘I think I read somewhere that revolutions have a habit of devouring even their own children. So perhaps we are doomed anyway.'

Sophie allowed yet another day to pass. And another.

‘But you love me...?'William cornered Sophie after their early morning ride.

They were in the stables which smelt of horse sweat and straw. Good smells. Companionable smells.

‘Yes, yes... I do... but...'

‘But....?'

She laid a hand on his jacket at the point where his heart would be situated. ‘I don't know you.
Really
know you.'

Then William had an inkling of the truth. At first, he dismissed it. Sophie could not possibly know, there was nothing that could have given his game away.
Never accept what lay on the surface. Always look underneath.
He knew that secrecy was porous and Sophie might well have stumbled on something. Still, he was puzzled and hurt by her attitude, knowing that a barrier had been built between them. A frown line began to etch itself over his eyes.

De Choissy sent regular missives from Paris with the latest news to which Héloïse always replied that she wasn't as yet fit to travel.

‘I have received news that Général Dumouriez has won a battle at Jemappes, and it is said that the republic will go on to annex Savoy, Nice and Belgium. This will incite England to declare war, if I am not mistaken,' de Choissy wrote in January.

‘As I predicted, France has declared war on Britain,' he wrote on February 3rd. ‘This is good news, for perhaps the republic will take a beating.'

Towards the end of February, his letters took on a more urgent tone. ‘You must be very careful,' he warned. ‘There are informers everywhere. Even when you think you are safe.'

On March 11th, he wrote again. ‘I have been summoned to the Hôtel de Ville for questioning. Do not worry.'

‘I am sure Monsieur le Comte will be safe,' said William as Héloïse read out his letter. ‘But he is right,' he continued, glancing down at the broadsheet he was reading. ‘We have been foolish in permitting Monsieur d'Épinon to ride with us.'

Louis looked grave. ‘I will remain inside from now on,' he said. ‘It's too dangerous. And the time has come to make some plans.' He stretched his hand across to Héloïse.
‘Ma mie,
we must face facts.'

Héloïse replaced the cup of chocolate she was drinking on the table and looked steadily at Louis.

‘But of course,' was all she said. ‘I will help you.'

Louis' fingers tightened on hers.

It was a considerably more sober party who adjourned to the green salon for the morning. The men went out to inspect the horses and Sophie picked up a piece of embroidery.

‘Ugh, how I hate it,' she murmured.

‘Then, why do it?' asked Héloïse, pacing up and down the room.

‘Habit,' said her cousin with a long-suffering sigh, ‘and the memory of Miss Edgeworth.'

The peaceful scene outside mocked at Héloïse, and she flung herself down in one of the chairs, only to spring back to her feet to continue her peregrinations. Sophie sewed on, lovely and seemingly tranquil, but wrestling yet again with what she should say to William.

‘Don't move,' she said at last, biting a thread off.

Héloïse, surprised, did as she was bid.

‘Exactly the same,' said Sophie.

‘What do you mean?'

‘The portrait.'

Héloïse looked up at the wall where the portrait of her great-grandmother hung.

‘You're so alike.'

It was true. Sharing the same colour of eyes and shape of the chin and thus - except that her great-grandmother appeared to be enjoying her life at the moment of painting, surrounded as she was by her children and dogs - the two women were alike.

‘She was very wicked,' commented Héloïse. ‘With many lovers.'

‘Like great-grandmother, like great-granddaughter,' said Sophie, and laughed at the outrage on her cousin's face.

‘I'm teasing you,' she pointed out. Héloïse sat down and forced a smile. ‘You know,' remarked Sophie, ‘you're behaving like a caged animal.'

A scratching at the door interrupted them and one of the servants proffered a letter on a salver. Sophie took it, and saw with surprise that it was addressed to her. She broke the seal and a second, smaller, packet fell into her lap. She picked it up. It was from Ned, and the covering note, dated the afternoon of March 11th, was from de Choissy.

‘My very dear Miss Luttrell,' she read out, ‘I hasten to enclose this letter which has arrived for you. I trust everything is in order. I remain, of course, your very obedient...'

Sophie laughed. ‘How very like Monsieur le Comte,' she commented, and took up Ned's letter. It was dog-eared and stained and she had an odd presentiment that it had passed through many hands.

‘Sophie, I write in haste,' Ned had scrawled in his large hand. ‘I am about to embark for England, but I must warn you that I have been searched and some documents were taken from me. The same documents that I once showed you. You know what I mean. Tell Mr Jones that I sincerely did not mean this to happen.'

It was dated October 20th, 1792.

‘Over four months ago,' said Héloïse, reading it. ‘How curious. What could Ned have that belonged to Mr Jones?'

‘I don't know,' lied Sophie, and Héloïse watched in surprise as she almost ran out of the room.

Sophie found William in the stables, discussing the finer points of one of the horses with the groom.

‘Superb, isn't he?' he said by way of greeting, running his hand down the glossy black back of the horse. ‘I wish I could take him with me.'

Sophie indicated that she wished to speak to him alone. This was the moment she had dreaded. All the same, it had come none to soon and she must talk plainly.

Careful to use only English, she said, ‘This letter has arrived from Ned.'

William frowned and drew her towards the door. ‘What can Ned want?' he said, his pleasant mood shattered.

‘Read it,' said Sophie.

She observed him carefully as he did so and saw for the first time the side that he normally kept hidden from her.

‘Aha,' said William under his breath. ‘I should have known.'

‘William. Isn't it time for the truth? Ned showed me those documents before he left.'

William bent to pick up a curry comb from the floor. ‘So, an explanation... Now I understand your manner towards me.'

‘A spy William? What sort of man is that?'

‘A patriot,' he countered.

‘A strange one.'

‘Yes' he admitted, ‘strange but a patriot, nevertheless.'

‘I wish you had told me, William.'

‘Sophie,' he said, ‘this is not for you. Truly. You could not expect it of me.'

She faced him. ‘There you are wrong. If I am to marry you, it does concern me.'

William looked away. He ran his hand thoughtfully over the horse's back. ‘Easy, boy,' he said, avoiding Sophie's eyes.

The black horse whinnied. The warm smell of the stable battled with the sharp scents from outside. In the adjoining stall, a groom moved about his business and then departed, casting a curious glance, over his shoulder at the English mademoiselle and the American monsieur. At last, William spoke.

‘It's much better and safer if we don't discuss this.' He tried to take Sophie in his arms but she shook herself free. ‘It's dangerous enough. This kind of knowledge is a burden. Believe me.'

‘I have to know,' she said.

‘No, you don't.'

‘This secret of yours is as much about us as anything. These are difficult things to say, and I know I've waited too long to say them, but there must be trust, and truth, between us if we are to understand one another. And I
want
to understand, I do. But I can't if you're not honest with me. Do you not owe me an explanation? I have done my part in sending Ned away. Now you must trust me.'

William kicked at the straw heaped by the wall. In a profound sense, Sophie was right and he wanted to confide everything in her and to make plain and serence between them. Yet, it was impossible. Discretion was the first rule, a rule that applied never more so than now. It was a price he always knew would have to be paid but, until he met Sophie, he had not understood just how high that price would be.

‘Sophie, please...'

Sophie swallowed but stood her ground. ‘Are you a spy, William?'

William dug his hands into his pockets. ‘I'm not going to answer.'

Sophie sat down on a bale of straw and picked out the stalks. ‘How can we have a future if you can't trust me?'

William sat down beside her.

‘Don't, Sophie,' he said. ‘I don't think I can bear it.'

He laid a hand on her knee. Sophie so badly wanted to return the gesture and to tell him that everything was all right, but something – pride and terror - stopped up the words. William got to his feet and dusted down his breeches.

‘Not a very elegant sight,' he observed.

Sophie could not even raise a smile.

William made an effort to concentrate on the things to be done. Chief among them was to obtain passports and travelling visas and to get Sophie and himself out of France. Once that tell-tale document was deciphered by the authorities – and it only needed someone like Jacques Maillard to be snooping round – then they were in danger.

Ned was a fool and William cursed him under his breath. Stooping over, he lifted Sophie to her feet and brushed away the straw clinging to the fashionable china-blue lutestring gown. She allowed him to do so in silence. In a final effort to make her understand, he took Sophie's chin in his hand and raised it so that she was forced to look into his face.

‘Listen to me and listen well.' He spoke rapidly. ‘We no longer have much time. Yes, I do work for my government in a secret capacity. I cannot tell you what exactly, not because I don't trust you but because if I told you I would be both betraying a promise and putting you in danger.'

‘I see,' said Sophie slowly. ‘The American government requires first-hand information about France.'

‘No different and no less than any other government, Sophie.'

‘Very well,' Sophie's tone was more hostile than she really felt, but she didn't care for William's tone of voice. It reminded her of Ned. ‘I am prepared to accept that things go on under the surface which I should not know about. But I can't accept that what I see of you isn't the whole man.' She twisted a lock of hair around her finger. ‘I find it impossible.'

‘Why? You could have the best part of me.'

‘I don't know,' she whispered.

William released her.

‘I will not wilfully put you into danger, Sophie, nor is it proper that I should tell you details that are nothing to do with you. If you cannot accept that, then I am sorry. I'm going to Paris now, and if I am successful I promise you that I will tell you something of the matter. If I do not return...,' he continued while the colour drained from her face. ‘If I do not return, you must promise me one thing.'