Gabrielle's reasoning was devious, bur from what Nathaniel knew of Talleyrand's reputation and ambitions, it was sound. Whatever reasons she had had for bringing him this information, the information itself was pure gold and only a fool would debate its authenticity. From his own observations during this meeting of the two emperors, it was clear that Alexander was willing to court Napoleon as assiduously now as he'd been prepared to fight him before.

"I must leave for England immediately." He pushed himself away from the table.

"Now?"

"By dawn."

"I'm coming with you."

"Don't be absurd." He dismissed her statement with a brusque gesture.

"I told you I loved you," Gabrielle said quietly. "Will you give me nothing in return?"

Nathaniel looked at her in silence, allowing her declaration to replay in his head. When he spoke, his voice was unusually hesitant, as if he was feeling for words. "It's a gift so precious that I don't know if my own love is sufficient return," he said. "I don't have your generosity of spirit, Gabrielle, and I'm afraid, terrified, that I'll hurt you in some way."

Gabrielle shook her head. "You won't," she said. "You didn't hurt Helen."

"I was responsible for her death," he said bleakly. "I didn't think about her, I thought only of my own needs, and those needs killed her. I don't feel entitled to another chance at that happiness."

"But that's silly," she said, reaching for his hands, holding them tightly. "You can't pay forever for one mistake. I'm not afraid you'll hurt me."

When he said nothing, merely let his hands lie in hers, she said, "Do you love me, Nathaniel?"

"Oh, yes," he said softly.

"Then I see no difficulty." She smiled her crooked smile.

"Let me deal with this information first," he said, drawing her tightly against him. "I have to go to England at once and I can't give usthe attention I must. I'm overwhelmed. It's something I want more than anything, but I can't get my mind around it. You have to give me time."

Gabrielle heard the sincerity behind the plea, and she knew she could push him no further. "Very well." She kissed him lightly. "I understand… I think." She moved away from him, and he stood still, his hands hanging at his sides as if he'd just dropped something.

Gabrielle picked up her feathers. "How do you intend to travel?" she asked cheerfully.

Some of the intensity left Nathaniel's face at this ordinary, matter-of-fact question and her easy tone. "Ride to Silute and take ship from there to Copenhagen, if possible. The sea is safer than the land, and generally quicker."

"Then I'll wish you godspeed."

He ran his hands through his hair in a gesture of frustration. "This isn't right, Gabrielle, but I don't know what else to do. Will you come to England?'

"Yes, of course," she said. "Very soon."

She blew him a kiss and left him, closing the door quietly behind her.

Chapter 24

Silute, on the mouth of the Neimen where it opened into the Baltic Sea. A few hours ride. Nathaniel intended to leave by dawn; presumably it would take him until then to make his preparations, construct appropriate reasons and farewells. He wouldn't want to destroy such a useful cover by acting in haste. She, on the other hand, could be away within the hour.

Gabrielle sat impatiently on the edge of her seat as the carriage took her back into the French zone and home.

Talleyrand had already left for the Prussian ball, so she scrawled him a note explaining what she'd done and what she intended to do. She put the note on the desk in his study and then rummaged through the pigeonholes until she found the imperial seal that Talleyrand used for all his official documents. She wrote herself a suitably officious set of instructions, folded the document, and sealed it with the imperial eagle. It could well prove a useful passport or protection as she journeyed through Napoleonic Europe.

It took her a few minutes to change into her britches and throw a few necessities into a cloak bag. She dropped her pistol into the deep pocket of her cloak. A leather purse with a substantial sum of money went inside her shirt, close to her skin. Brigandage was rife among the disaffected population in the small towns of invaded Prussia.

She slipped quietly out of the house and round to the stables, where a sleepy lad saddled her horse. He was Prussian, a native of Tilsit, and regarded Gabrielle in her strange costume with scant interest.

It was still an hour to dawn when she left the town and turned her horse toward the sea, following the river to its mouth.

As dawn broke, the hamlets and villages she passed came to life, women opening doors, shooing out dogs, plying brooms. Children ran with buckets to the river and men appeared in the fields, anxious to start work before the blistering heat took hold.

No one took any notice of the black-clad rider. Prussia was an occupied land, and the peasantry plodded about their daily business, hoping only to be spared a ravaging column of French infantry who would pick them clean, chop down their woods for their own braziers, and trample the fields so that they were fit for nothing but to lie fallow for several years. If a lone rider offered no threat, then he could pass among them without hindrance.

The second rider, following an hour on the heels of the first, engendered the same lack of interest.

Gabrielle rode into Silute just before noon. Away from the open countryside, the atmosphere was different. The narrow, muddy streets were smothered in refuse that steamed and stank in the broiling heat. The houses were cramped and dark, the people pinched and scrawny, generally barefoot and clad in grimy rags.

Here a stranger riding a piece of prime horseflesh drew immediate and unwelcome attention.

Gabrielle rode straight to the small harbor, where fishing boats and several larger vessels were docked, waiting for the tide to turn. The smell of rotting fish seemed an almost palpable miasma on the hot, still air. She examined the assorted fleet critically, looking for one large enough to make a sea crossing.

A group of men surged out of a tavern and came toward her. They were silent except forthe sound of their heavy clogs on the cobbles of the quay.

Gabrielle's heart thumped, and she reached inside her pocket for her pistol, backing her horse against the water's edge so that she wouldn't be surrounded.

They formed a half circle and examined her in the same menacing silence. One of them put out a hand and touched the fine embossed leather of her bridle. He looked up and grinned, his teeth blackened stumps. Money, she decided, would incite rather than appease. Her pistol would probably do the same. She couldn't deal with six men with one shot, and there'd be no time to reload.

Slowly, she withdrew from her pocket the one talisman that in occupied Europe spoke louder than anything else. It was the document with the Napoleonic eagle. She held it up and the group tell back. One of them spat on the quaystones, but the danger was over. It was more than their lives were worth to interfere with an imperial courier.

Taking advantage of her ascendancy, Gabrielle asked in her halting Prussian if they knew of a vessel bound for Copenhagen. She had the emperor's message to deliver. Silver now glittered on her palm as she waited.

There was a guttural, staccato exchange, and then one of them gestured toward a small frigate anchored in the bay. A second coin on her palm produced the information that the master was to be found in the tavern. A third produced the master himself, a Dane, who, to Gabrielle's relief, spoke French.

He held a tankard of ale as he listened to her request for passage for two and named an extortionate sum, one eye disconcertingly squinting to the right while the other looked straight at her.