"Before you go-"
"Yes?"
"What we know of each other dies here, unless… unless you ever oppose me professionally again. You understand that, Gabrielle? If that ever happens, it will be as if we had never met before."
Gabrielle shivered. Despite the bleakness in his eyes, the despairing recognition that matched her own that all was at an end between them, there was unmistakable menace in the statement. The English spymaster would not forgive and forget an enemy a second time.
She nodded silently and went into the next chamber.
Nathaniel heard her voice in the other room, then he heard the door to the corridor close on the sound of his son's sobbing. He heard her footsteps, light on the stairs. He heard the front door open and close. He stood before the window and watched as she disappeared in her black cloak around the corner into Pigalle.
Chapter 21
On June fourteenth Napoleon defeated the Russians at Friedland and Alexander finally yielded to the wisdom of his brother, Grand Duke Constantine, and sued the French emperor for peace.
The news created great excitement in the salons of Paris, where Gabrielle had passed the past months in a state of limbo. She had passed similar periods- ostensibly taking lively part in court life, talking, smiling, flirting-during her affair with Guillaume, when there had been deserts of time between their meetings, and she'd lived in fear and emptiness, and none of her desolation had shown on her face or in her eyes.
"Now, mon enfant, the fun starts," Talleyrand announced three days after the battle. He came into her apartments, flourishing a dispatch bearing the Napoleonic eagle.
"Alexander is sending his plenipotentiary to the emperor requesting a truce, one that I suspect will leave England isolated. I am summoned to Napoleon's side to assist with the terms of the truce. You shall accompany me."
"Me? Why, sir?" Gabrielle stared in surprise.
"I shall need a hostess," he said blandly. "Catherine cannot perform such a task with either discretion or distinction, as you know. So you shall take her place. No one will consider it strange."
"I'd been thinking of going to Valencay," she said. She strolled over to the window, looking down at the street. The plane trees had the dusty look of city foliage in summer, and a mongrel cur lay in the shade, his tongue lolling. She'd been intending to visit Talleyrand's country chateau for a few weeks. She'd often stayed there in the old days, waiting for Guillaume. Once or twice they'd had more than a week together in the idyllic country setting, undisturbed by any but the most discreet staff. They'd fished the river and swam in the deep pool under the bridge. They'd ridden over the countryside under the moonlight, picnicked and picked peaches and greengages in the lush orchards. And they'd made love-under the trees, in the river, in the hayloft, in the fields-whenever and wherever the mood had taken them.
"This will offer you greater distraction," her godfather pointed out.
"You think I'm in need of distraction?" She turned from the window, raising an ironic eyebrow.
Talleyrand made no response to what was a rhetorical question. Gabrielle was a wan shadow of her former self. She had little interest in anything, and none at all in the business of espionage. The bitter end to her encounter with Nathaniel Praed had engendered a deep loathing for anything clandestine. She slept little and ate less, and he'd been an impotent observer of her suffering for too long. It was too much akin to the dreadful weeks after Guillaume's death, and he found himself wishing that she didn't have to feel so deeply, didn't have to throw her entire self, body and soul, into her love affairs. But he also knew that that was Gabrielle's nature and there was no changing it. All he could hope to do was alleviate her pain as and when he could.
Gabrielle smiled in rueful resignation as he merely held out the dispatch to her.
She read it and then shrugged in acceptance. "So when do we leave?"
Talleyrand couldn't conceal his satisfaction. "We travel to Tilsit in the morning. It will be a tedious journey, no doubt. But at least it's summer and the roads are no longer enmired."
Tilsit was on the border of Russia and Prussia, a small town on the River Niemen, and it took a week of hard journeying to reach it. Gabrielle rode beside the carriage whenever she could, but she was soon heartily sick of the primitive way stations where they passed the nights and the rancid meat and hard bread that passed for decent fare.
Her godfather was a poor traveling companion, nursing his aching leg and saying very little, his brain ceaselessly at work on plotting his campaign.
They arrived in Tilsit on the evening of June twenty-fourth. The minister's staff had traveled ahead and had laid claim to a house on the left bank-the Prussian side of the river-to accommodate the Minister for Foreign Affairs and his hostess. It was one of the larger houses in the modest town as befitted the prince's consequence.
The town was taken over by Napoleon's entourage and his Imperial Guard. His victorious army camped in the surrounding fields, as usual living off the land with blithe disregard for the peasantry. They were a conquered people, after all, and Napoleon had little time for his defeated enemies unless they could be useful to him. Alexander, the Czar of all the Russias, he believed, could be useful in the battle he fought against the intransigent English. Therefore, he would treat him accordingly.
"What on earth is that?" Gabrielle exclaimed, wearily dismounting outside the house assigned to them. She stared at the river, where a massive raft was anchored midstream. It bore two lavishly adorned white pavilions, the larger of which carried a massive embroidered letter N on the side facing Napoleon's camp.
"Our emperor, ma chere, has always had a flair for the dramatic," Talleyrand declared. "He and the czar are to meet tomorrow morning in the large pavilion. I daresay, if you went to the opposite bank, you would see the letter A embroidered in the same style on the other side."
Gabrielle shook her head and muttered, sotto voce, "He is a vulgar little man, isn't he?"
Talleyrand tapped her wrist in half-serious reproof. "Be careful where and to whom you say such things, mon enfant. I must go now and pay my respects. I'll leave you to inspect the accommodation and make what adjustments you think fit. I intend to entertain quite lavishly at some point in the next few days."
" D'accord."Gabrielle entered the house. The duties of a diplomatic hostess sat easily on her shoulders, and Catherine was always very happy to yield her place at such tedious functions to the younger woman. No one here would think twice about the role of the prince's goddaughter.
She chose a bedchamber for herself overlooking the river and sat in the window for a few moments, looking across the river with its flamboyant raft. On the right bank lay Russia. There was no sign of the Russian emperor or his entourage on the shore, where a crumbling cottage stood in the middle of a field.
A summons to dine with the emperor arrived with Talleyrand's return, and it was late when she finally got to bed. The conversation had all been about the upcoming meeting between Napoleon and his erstwhile enemy, and there was an air of suppressed excitement in the town, as if great things were about to be accomplished.
Midmorning the next day found Gabrielle positioned in her window. She saw a line of barouches arrive on the opposite bank and a small group of men alight and enter the ruined cottage.