Ignoring his later words, Helene asked with sudden excitement, "What general is that?"
The colonel gave her a hard look. "Michel Roussaye. A friend of mine tried to capture him and a small force of French soldiers after the Battle of Leipzig. Roussaye slithered away time and again, very much like a serpent. He's a fine soldier."
"General Roussaye is another leading suspect"
"How would he benefit if France is crippled by the peace settlement?" von Fehrenbach said with exasperation. "You are guilty of massive illogic."
"A revolutionary might welcome a settlement that would anger France to the point where she would once more take arms."
The effect of Helene's words on the colonel was immediate. His face closed and he seemed to forget that she was there. Eventually he returned his gaze to her. "Why have you come here to tell me this? If I am truly under suspicion, why didn't Wellington simply have me arrested?"
"There are political realities," she replied. "Marshal Blucher would be furious if a valued aide was arrested on such flimsy evidence. Indeed, there is no evidence to speak of, merely probabilities. That is one reason why this business is being handled with as much discretion as possible. If the story of the plot became well known, the effect would be almost as disruptive as an actual assassination."
"Perhaps," the colonel agreed. "But as you say, there is no real evidence-which is not surprising since I have done nothing. What makes you think that there is a plot at all?"
Helene shrugged. "Rumors and small inconsistencies that would never stand up in a court of law. The only truly solid evidence is the attack on Lord Castlereagh, which was designed to look like an accident. Also, a British agent may have been murdered because he was getting too close to Le Serpent."
"Or else because he got into a fight over a woman- I've never heard that spies were a very honorable lot." Von Fehrenbach's gaze bored into her. "Which brings us to you, Madame Sorel. You have answered my other questions, but not why you, of all the men and women in France, have come to accuse me."
Now the conversation was going to become really difficult. Palms damp, Helene said, "I have an unofficial connection with British intelligence, and have been involved in the investigation."
"So the lady is a spy," he said with disgust. "Or is that a contradiction in terms? Spying is just another form of whoring, and I understand that female spies sell themselves in many ways."
She had known that something like this would be said, but it still stung. "I have never sold myself in any way, Colonel, and I accept no money for what I do," she said sharply. "Someone else could have come to question you, but I wanted to."
"Why?" He leaned forward in his chair, his face hostile. "Once again, why you?"
"You know why, Colonel." She gazed at him with all the warmth and honesty she possessed.
Though his eyes might be the cold blue of northern ice, in their depths she saw raw, blazing pain. Muttering a German curse, he wrenched his gaze away from her and stood, turning toward his bookcase. She could see some of the titles from where she sat. Philosophy and history, mostly, with a number of Latin and Greek texts. The colonel was a man of broad interests.
Not looking at her, he said, "You speak in riddles, Madame Sorel."
"I am speaking very clearly, though it might not be a language you wish to acknowledge." She rose and crossed the room, stopping several feet away from him. "Even if you will not admit it, there has been something between us since the first time we met."
He spun around and faced her, anger melting his calm. "Very well, I admit it. You arouse me, like a mare in heat inflames a stallion. You feel it, too, or you would not be flaunting yourself here. Have so many Frenchmen died that you must seek farther afield for a stud? Shall I take you here on the carpet, do to you what I want the Allies to do to France?"
Helene's face whitened. She had expected him to fight her, and recognized that his cruelty was a measure of how much she affected him. Even so, his words cut too close to the bone to ignore. "If casual fornication was all I wanted, I could find it easily enough without coming to a man who insults me."
"Then why are you here, madame?" His words were bleak, yet not so bleak as his haunted eyes.
Steel in her soft voice, Helene said, "I want you to look at me, just once, without remembering that I am French and you are Prussian."
The colonel looked down at her for a long moment, a blood vessel throbbing visibly under his fair Nordic skin. Then he spun away from her. "That, madame, is quite impossible."
When there was a safe distance between them, he turned to hurl bitter words at her. "I look at you and see my burned home, my murdered wife and son and sister. Murdered by the French, madame, by your people, perhaps by your brother or husband. I can never forget that we are enemies."
"I am not your enemy," she said softly.
He stared at her, his face working. "Yes, you are. The only worse enemy I have is myself, for being attracted to a woman of a race I hate and despise. You have given me many sleepless nights, madame. Does it please you to know how much you have made me despise myself?"
Helene made no attempt to close the distance between them. Standing before the bookcase, she was a small, gently rounded figure. Soft, yet unyielding. "I can never be pleased at another's pain. I became involved in spying to make what small contribution I could to peace. I did have brothers, Colonel. One died in the retreat from Moscow, the other under torture by Spanish partisans. I was told it took him two days to die. That was my younger brother, Pierre, who wished to be a painter.
"And I had a husband, too, killed at Wagram two months before my younger daughter was born. You fought at Wagram, Colonel. It might have been your troops that killed him."
"Splendid, Madame Sorel, we have both suffered." His voice was a lash of bitterness. "You have my permission to hate the Prussians as much as I hate the French. Will that satisfy you?"
"No!" she cried, her pain finally overcoming the hard-won serenity she had learned in a lifetime of loss. "I want to see an end to hating. If Prussia had been the aggressor rather than France, would my husband be any less dead? I want my daughters to live in a world where their husbands will grow old with them, where boys like my brother can paint flowers and pretty girls and write silly love poetry, instead of dying screaming."
She looked at him pleadingly, wondering how to melt the ice around his heart. "As a Christian, I have been taught to hate the sin but love the sinner. I hate war and the unspeakable evil it brings-and if we cannot learn to love one another, we are doomed to fight and die again and again."
"And you think that if I could love you, that would put an end to war?" Though his voice held scorn, there was also a thread of yearning to believe.
"I don't know if we can love one another, perhaps there is nothing between us but physical attraction," Helene said, tears flowing down her face. Though she saw that her words affected him, she feared that it was not enough. He had lived in his agony for too long to risk life again. Voice breaking, she continued, "If two individuals cannot even try, there is no hope for mankind. We will be condemned to suffer our mistakes forever."
Von Fehrenbach began pacing about the room, his broad shoulders rigid. He stopped by a table where a miniature portrait in a silver frame stood next to a closed Bible. The painting was of a lovely blond woman holding a child in her arms.
Looking down at the portrait, he said huskily, "You are a brave woman. Perhaps women have more courage than men. If a body is injured badly enough it dies, but with an injured heart one survives to suffer pain without end."
Gently he touched the face of the woman in the portrait, then looked up at Helene, his face deeply sad. "You ask too much, Madame Sorel. My strength is not equal to the task."