LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Paris, France—June 1812

      Major Summerley Shayborne opened the door to his accommodation on the Rue St Denis to find a young woman waiting inside among the evening shadows.

      She wore thick glasses and her pure white hair was fastened loosely at her nape. He had not seen such a colour on anyone of her age before and so could only imagine it false.

      ‘I am here to warn you, monsieur.’

      Shay saw the sheen of a blade in her left hand before it was slipped away out of sight.

      ‘Warn me of what, madame?’ He could not place her accent; the French she spoke was tinged with the cadence of one who did not belong anywhere.

      ‘Savary and the Ministry of Police are watching you.’ Her diction was precise as she continued talking. ‘You have held too many conversations about French military affairs on the Champs de Mars and in the coffee houses, and people are beginning to ask their questions.’

      Lighting a candle, she turned away, shielding herself from the brightness. As the flame took, she allowed it to illuminate him instead, the planes of her own face left in semi-darkness.

      ‘It is even being inferred that you might not be an American officer at all.’

      ‘Who are you?’

      She laughed quickly at that, though the sound held little humour and he felt a sudden slide of cold running down his back.

      ‘Politics here takes no prisoners. One wrong move and you will be dead. Even a charming and inquisitive foreigner is not immune to a knife quietly slipped between your ribs.’ Her stillness was amplified by the movement of flame. ‘The police bureau will be here within days, asking their questions. You are a spy, Major Shayborne, of immeasurable value to both sides, but there always comes a time when luck simply runs out.’

      The shock of her words had him turning.

      ‘Why would you tell me this?’

      ‘History,’ she whispered and walked to the door, opening it with care before slipping out into the oncoming dark.

      Shay did not move, rooted to the spot in sudden comprehension of what she had said.

       History.

      There was something familiar in the timbre of her voice beneath the accent, under the hard anger, behind the thick lenses and hidden by a false wig. A memory. Like an echo in the blood. He stood as still as he could, trying to reach out and claim it.

      * * *

      She moved through the roads leading to the Palais Royale with a practised ease and up through the alleyways to the Rue de Petit Champs, walking quickly but not too fast, for such speed would draw attention. It was a warm night for June, the oncoming heat of summer felt through the grates and on the cobbles and the south-facing walls. Her hand ran across the patinas of chalky sand and limestone. Ahead she saw the tavern she sometimes stopped at was alive with people. Melting into the shadows, she brought the hood of her silken cape up, the new and expensive white wig stuffed into her pocket because it was too noticeable.

      She did not wish to see anyone tonight and have to explain herself. She wanted to wash. She wanted to sit on her balcony and have a glass of the smoky Pouilly-Fumé she had bought yesterday in the Marais from the Jewish shopkeeper with good contacts in the fertile, grape-bearing valleys of the Loire.

      She wanted to be alone.

      She should have sent someone else to warn Shayborne. She could have penned a note or whispered her message in the darkness without lighting the candle. She could have transferred her information by any number of safe and practical methods, but she had not. She had gone to see him and whispered exactly what she should have kept to herself.

       History.

      One word coated in shame and blood. One word that had taken her from the girl she had been to the woman she had become.

      She’d shown her hand because the Police Ministry and the War Office would soon be as much on her tail as they were on Shayborne’s and because after six years on the run she had finally exhausted all options.

      It would be a miracle if she was not dead before him even, this English spy who had the whole of France in an uproar after his escape in Bayonne and who, instead of turning back to Spain and safety as he’d been expected to, had made his way north to the very heart of Napoleon’s lair.

      Why?

      She knew the reason even as she asked it.

      He was here to understand what might happen next and where the Emperor would employ his might: Russia or the Continent, the size of amassing armies. Information like that could change the course of a war and the British General, Arthur Wellesley, waited in the wings of the northern Spanish coast for a direction.

      Once she might have cared more, might have turned her ear to the rumblings of the generals or the whining of the various ministries and listened well.

      But there was only so much truth one could discover

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