Kit (39 page)

Her heart thumped. It was right that he, who knew her the best of all, should be the one to find her out. ‘Who is?’ she said lightly.

‘I see you wear a wedding ring.’

‘The insignia of my profession and the most precious thing I own,’ she teased, echoing his earlier words.

‘And yet there is no Vicomte Saint-Hilaire de Blossac?’

She knew the patter. She knew what she should say:
My husband lives, he fights for England’s cause behind French lines
. But she missed her cue, ignoring Ormonde speaking in her head like a prompter. She lowered her eyes. ‘Not any more.’

He looked at her sharply, his eyes wide. ‘I am sorry. Was your loss recent?’

‘In some ways it seems as if it were a year ago,’ she said truthfully, ‘and in other ways, just a week.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Ross, genuinely contrite. ‘I am a fool. I have had overmuch to drink, and I
am
angry, and I insulted you. I took your grief for complacence. And God knows it is not a mistake I should make, for I too have lost.’

‘A bereavement in the family?’

‘My wife. And my … son.’

It was the first time he had told her of his wife. How salutary that he would share with a woman, in the first hour of acquaintance, something he would not share with his brother in arms. Kit was learning much about the difference in the sexes.

‘But that was not the loss of which I spoke.’ He looked down to the sword, and Kit followed his eyes. She could not miss this opportunity. She steeled herself, and then asked, ‘Are you speaking of the former owner of your sword?’

He looked at her with surprise. ‘I am.’

She licked her lips. ‘Is he dead?’

‘No, not dead. Gone.’

‘It sounds as if you loved him,’ she ventured.

‘
Love
,’ he said with a bitter laugh. ‘A woman’s word.’

‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘Then can you instruct me? Can you describe the regard you felt for this man?

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to deprecate your excellent sex. It is just that this is such a difficult bond to describe to someone who has not been a soldier. You ride with someone by day, and sleep by them at night. You spend more time together than man and wife. You cheat death every day but at the same time feel more alive than you have ever felt. You feel bone-shaking terror at one moment, and the next you are laughing fit to burst with merriment. And through all of this you fear most for your brother, for you would do anything for him, and you would give yourself to the Reaper before you give up a hair of his head.’ He tapped the hilt of Sean Kavanagh’s sword. ‘Thus I felt for my brother that is gone.’

For a moment she could not speak. ‘That sounds like love to me, Captain.’

He smiled sadly. ‘Perhaps it is. But it is a love of the mind and heart – there is nothing of the body in it. It is not the love which, saving your presence, a man would feel for a woman. Only in such a partnership can a man achieve his heart’s desire.’

There was Ormonde’s phrase, Maura’s phrase; trite but true. She understood then, singing inside with joy, that a union with Ross could offer the best of both worlds – he would love the person he had fought with, his brother in arms, and he would love her as a woman, with a physical bond. ‘And is that your heart’s desire, to have such a partnership?’ His answer suddenly mattered, so much.

‘Sadly, that is one of the privileges of peacetime. For now I would like the French to be beaten, with minimum losses to the Alliance. Then I will ride for the horizon; and beyond that, perhaps, such happiness awaits me.’

From across the room she saw Ormonde signalling discreetly. There was so much left to say, but she could not frame a goodbye. Instead she said, ridiculously, fervently, ‘I hope you stay alive.’

He smiled. ‘And I wish the same to you. And if we both manage it, I would see you again,’ he said.

‘You will,’ she replied, hardly breathing, praying it was true.

Ross raised her hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly, on the flesh of her scarred little finger, the one that had been all but severed. She felt the kiss through the lace, through the skin, right to the very bone of her. Then he checked and stared at the hand, his fingers moving to the scar, searching, feeling the deformed joint. He turned the hand over, looking at the finger through the lace mitten. Then he looked her in the eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but she snatched her hand away and ran.

In the carriage Ormonde was cock-a-hoop. ‘Got ’em!’ he said. ‘Even Jack Churchill! “May I …” “You
certainly
may.” The great booby! And on whom did you test your persona while I was closeted with Panton? I saw you dancing with a handsome captain.’

‘Some cavalryman,’ she said airily.

‘And I take it he did
not
know you as Irish.’

Until the last moment, she would have sworn he did not. ‘No.’

Ormonde clapped his hands together. ‘Capital!’ He threw his head back against the velvet seat and laughed until the tears spouted. ‘The English Army,’ he said. ‘The finest cunts in Christendom!’ He wiped his eyes. ‘Now all is ready. You are ready. Panton is ready.’

Kit wanted to enquire what Panton had to do with their scheme, but could not stem Ormonde’s triumph. ‘Now for Mantova,’ he said. ‘Now, we are in the game.’

For a moment Kit was horribly afraid, a visceral bowel-opening fear such as she had never felt in battle. The fear that made her want to wrench open the door, jump out, and run back to Ross. The moon was on the wane; soon it would be a sliver, and then? After tonight, and that conversation with Ross, she knew what she had to do. Not for Ormonde, or for Richard, or even for the English Army; but for Ross. She would break the stalemate. She would do what Ormonde wanted, and in the peace that followed she would have a fortune and freedom, and she would spend both of them finding the captain again.

And you’d have no scruples to send us to France …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

The day after Savoy’s name day Kit slept the day through. Ormonde let her be. But the day after that, his preparations acquired a new direction. He trusted that she knew her history and her cultural references by rote, and now he concentrated on the unexpected, training her to improvise her way out of a conversational impasse. Then these improvisations themselves would be rehearsed, until he felt her identity would hold water.

‘Ah, but
Madame la Comtesse
, if you are from Poitiers you must know Antoine de Rouvroy; he was the Haute-Maréchal of Poitou-Charentes.’

‘Yes,’ Kit replied without hesitation, ‘we dined with him and his wife Viviane. She was just then churched with their first daughter, Marie-France.’

‘And you must know Jean Marc-Charpentier, of the Angoulême Charpentiers.’

She foundered. ‘Yes, of course, but … it was a long time ago …’

‘No,’ said the duke, wagging an admonitory finger. ‘Never claim an acquaintance with a name that cannot be verified. It is the easiest way to trap a charlatan. The names I have given to you are well-known scions of Poitevan society; if anyone asks you of another person, say you do not know them. They may be trying to trip you. Now: what do you say if someone sails in an unexpected direction?’

Kit laughed prettily and fluttered her hands. ‘My lord, all these questions! I expect a catechism from my priest, not from a great general! Come, you must tire of my prattling; tell me of your adventures in the Veneto.’

‘Good. And if they persist?’

She pressed her lips together, and her eyes filled easily. ‘Forgive me; my husband so lately dead; my spirits are quite overcome.’

‘Excellent. No true gentleman will press you further.’

Kit’s confidence rallied a little, but one gaping hole in her education troubled her.

‘Fitzjames?’

‘Christiane?’

‘How did my husband die? The
vicomte
, I mean? And when?’

‘All in good time.’

On the day before Kit’s planned sortie into the French court at Mantova, Ormonde gave her a purse of gold nobles. ‘What is this? My pay?’

He smiled. ‘Not yet. You will get your diamonds when the task is concluded; it is not yet begun. No, this is to ease your path – bribes, my dear Christiane, bribes.’ He closed her hand over the purse. ‘You are there for one reason and one reason only; to find something out with which I can break the stalemate. Once you know something – any hint that is dropped, the slightest intimation of what their strategy shall be from hereon in – you will need to engineer your extraction.’

‘How?’

‘That is up to you. Contrive to send me a message, or Panton – that is where the money comes in.’

She had an idea. ‘Can I take Flint?’ Flint would carry her away from danger, and towards Ross’s horizon.

Ormonde stroked his chin. ‘Has he ever been in a team?’

‘He is a she. And no – she has always been a cavalry horse.’

‘Hmm. I was going to suggest matching her into a four and having her pull the coach. But we cannot risk that. We need speed at your arrival.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you will be pursued.’

Kit grew cold. ‘By whom?’

‘By Panton and his division.’

She sat bolt upright. ‘What?’

‘Christiane. We have to sell them the story. You will arrive at Mantova pursued by Alliance troops.’

‘But …’ she blustered. ‘I didn’t know this.’

‘Because I didn’t tell you,’ he said calmly.

‘But … you cannot just thrust new gambits upon me!’ she protested. ‘It is the day before I go to Mantova!’

‘At this point in the game,’ said Ormonde smoothly, ‘you will be told as little as possible about your infiltration. That way you will react to the situation with perfect conviction.’

‘What will they be pursuing?’

‘Christiane …’ Ormonde’s voice held a warning.

‘What will they be pursuing? Me?’

‘Your passenger,’ he said, ‘and the dispatches he carries.’

‘My passenger?’

‘All in good time.’ He spoke soothingly, as if she was a child.

She was silent for a time. Then: ‘Fitzjames?’

‘Christiane.’

‘Can I trust you?’

There was a pause. ‘You asked me that once before.’ He smiled his buccaneer’s smile. ‘I refer you to my earlier answer.’

‘Can I?’

‘Trust this. Your life is as precious to me as it is to you.’

She looked doubtful. ‘Truly?’

‘Well … almost.’ The smile again. ‘Let us say that I want this deception to work as much as you do. I will not fail you in this.’

She said nothing.

‘Now go to Mezzanotte. He is waiting in the music room. Your last music lesson, remember?’

Kit rose unhappily and descended the staircase. The parrot, spying her, clambered up his bars with aid of beak and claw and screamed: ‘Like rats in a trap!’

‘Quite,’ replied Kit soberly.

The night before her departure for Mantova Kit sat down at her dressing table to write two letters. She wrote to Bianca Castellano, to thank her for giving her sword to Captain Ross, to enquire after the health of Christiana, and to send a few gold nobles from Ormonde’s purse for the baby’s care. She had made an undertaking to support the child, and she would continue to do so. Then she wrote a letter of blithe falsehoods to Aunt Maura, telling her that all was well, and she would see her soon. Then she wrote a letter of terrible truths to Signora Chiara Walsh, 17 Via Ranier, Rovereto, to tell the widow that Richard was dead. Then she took to her bed, to lie wakeful for the rest of the night.

At the grey dawn, hollow eyed, Kit allowed herself to be dressed in her travelling clothes, a gown of holly green crape, with a matching cape and a tiny tricorn hat to perch upon her powdered hair. She had left off the Rockingham mantua, but it was to travel with her in her trunk. She said her farewells to Lucio Mezzanotte and she put three letters in his long white hand. ‘Will you see these conveyed? In the name of friendship?’

He looked at the three fat little packets. ‘Only if you swear that there is nothing in these dispatches that will compromise Fitz.’

‘I can promise you that,’ said Kit. She had to admire such loyalty, however misplaced. ‘I am merely putting my affairs in order.’

The castrato shuffled the letters like the cards they had so often played together. ‘You think you will not return?’

‘Who knows?’ she said.

There seemed nothing else to say, so they embraced. She nodded at the parrot, her other erstwhile companion. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

‘Damned Jacobite,’ said the parrot.

Kit did not have the spirit to converse with Ormonde on the way to Mantova; and he too seemed little inclined for conversation. Kit was preoccupied with the danger she would face in the French court, but Ormonde too seemed jumpy and nervous on his own account. He seemed changed; as changed as his carriage. The coach had been freshly enamelled in blue and gold and gilded with the invented cognisance of the St Hilaire family and the fleur-de-lis of France. When the carriage finally stopped after many hours of travel Kit’s stomach gave a sudden lurch. She glanced out of the carriage window, but did not recognise the little town. There was no great citadel, no lake. ‘Are we there?’

‘No,’ said Ormonde, breaking his long silence. ‘This is Castellucchio, just outside Mantova.’

She looked at him sharply. ‘Why have we stopped?’

He did not quite meet her eyes. ‘We are here to pick up your passenger.’

The passenger
. ‘Who am I to convey?’

‘This is where I leave you.
Bonne chance
, Christiane.’

‘Wait!’ She clawed at his sleeve. ‘Who is to be my passenger?’

But Pietro helped the duke down the steps and shut the door smartly. Ormonde turned and answered through the open window. ‘Your husband,’ he said. ‘Who else?’

She gaped at him in horror; but he smiled faintly, nodded and turned away. ‘Fitzjames?’ she called. ‘My lord duke?’ But he was walking off across the little piazza before the church, scattering pigeons as he went.

She forced the door of the carriage, and made to get down, but a gloved hand held the door closed, a broad torso in a red coat blocked the light. Her jailer stooped and dipped his head in the window.