Marlowe's tone was courtly, a touch obsequious, perhaps a trifle admiring. Drinkwater had destroyed a Russian line-of-battle ship in the Pacific, but that had been six years ago, in what? September of the year eight. Good God, the Russians had changed sides since then, when Boney invaded their country and Tsar Alexander had become the French Emperor's most implacable foe.
'Thank you for your concern, Mr Marlowe.' The lieutenant drew back and let his captain past, his head inclined in the merest of acknowledgements. Drinkwater approached the cloaked figure. The bell-topped shako with a tall white plume, a mark of Bourbon sympathy, Drinkwater supposed, stood out against the dark sea beyond.
'Well M'sieur, are you French or Russian?'
'I am French, Captain Drinkwater ...' The voice seemed oddly familiar, yet artificially deepened. Paine was correct, a clever lad. He knew in the next instant who his visitor was.
'I know you,' Drinkwater said sharply, stifling any further explanation, and raising his voice slightly, so that the eavesdropping Marlowe and any other curious-minded among the listening anchor-watch might hear, added 'and I think I know your business. You are on the staff of the Prince of Conde. Come, we must go below.'
Drinkwater was certain his night-visitor was not on the staff of the Bourbon prince, and with a hammering heart, turned on his heel and led the way, nodding to the marine sentry at his door as the soldier snapped to attention. The French officer had removed the ridiculous shako to pass between decks, but held it in such a way that it masked his face from the marine's inquisitive stare. He was still half hiding his face behind the plume as Drinkwater, closing the door behind them, crossed the cabin and held up the candelabra on his table.
'You come by night like Nicodemus, but you are, if I mistake not, Hortense Santhonax.'
She lowered the shako and shook her head, not in denial of her identity, but to let her hair fall after its constraint beneath the shako. Drinkwater recalled something else about her. In the imperfect illumination, her profusion of hair still reflected auburn lights. She dropped the hat on a chair and unclasped her cloak. For a moment they both stared at one another. She had half-turned her head away from him, though her eyes were focused on his face. Her hair had pulled over her right shoulder, revealing her neck.
It was a quite deliberate ploy and as his eyes wavered towards the disfigurement, Drinkwater saw the twitch of resolution at the corner of her mouth. The scar ran down from under her hair, over the line of her jaw and down her neck. It was not the clean incision of a sword cut, but marked the passage of a gobbet of molten lead.
He took her cloak and without taking his eyes from her, laid it on a chair behind him. It was warm from her body and the scent of her filled the cabin. He reached out his left hand, gently lifting the hair off her right ear. It was missing.
Hortense Santhonax made no protest at this presumption. He let the hair drop back into place. 'I knew of your injury at the Austrian Ambassador's ball, Madame,' Drinkwater said kindly, 'and I am sorry for it.'
'When a woman loses her looks,' she said in her almost faultless English, 'she loses everything. Thereafter she must live on her wits.'
Drinkwater smiled. 'Then it makes them more nearly men's equals.'
'That is sophistry, Captain.'
'It is debatable, Madame, but you are no less lovely.'
She spurned the gallantry, raising her hand to her neck. 'How did you know ... about this?'
'Lord Dungarth acquainted me of the fact some time before his death.'
'So, him too.' She paused, and then seemed to pull herself together. 'Men may acquire scars, Captain, and it does nothing but add credit to their reputations,' she remarked, and was about to go on when Drinkwater turned aside and lifted the decanter.
'Is that why you have assumed the character of a man, Madame?' he asked, pouring out two glasses.
She looked at him sharply, seeking any hint of malice in his riposte, but the grey eyes merely looked tired. He saw the suspicious contraction of the eye muscles and again the tightening of the mouth. She accepted the glass.
'Pray sit, Madame; you look exhausted.' He took in her dusty hessian boots, the stained riding breeches and the three-quarter length tunic. There was nothing remotely military about her rig. 'I presume you stole the shako,' he remarked, smiling, handing her a glass.
'There is a deal of convivial drinking in Calais tonight, Captain. A lieutenant of the Garde du Corps is going to find himself embarrassed tomorrow morning when the king leaves for Paris.' She returned his smile and he drew up a chair and sat opposite her. He felt the slight contraction of his belly muscles that presaged sexual reaction to her presence. By God, she was still ravishing, perhaps more handsome now than ever!
Was it the wound that, in marring her beauty, somehow made her even more desirable? Or had he become old and goatish?
'That is the first time I have seen you smile, Madame.'
'We have not always met under the happiest of circumstances.'
'Is this then, a happy occasion?'
She lifted the wine to her mouth and shook her head. 'No, I wish it were so, but...'
Drinkwater left her a moment to her abstraction. He was in no mood for sleep now and there was something of the extraordinary intimacy that he remembered from their last charged meeting, in the house of the Jew Liepmann, on the outskirts of Hamburg.[4] But there was something different about her now. He sensed a vulnerability about her, a falling off of her old ferocity. Either he was a fool or about to be hood-winked, but he sensed no scheme on her part to entrap him. Even had she sought to suborn him, she would never have allowed him to lift the hair from her scar in an act that, even now, he could scarcely believe he had accomplished.
She sighed and stirred. 'I have ridden a long way today, Captain Drinkwater, and we are no longer young.'
'That is true. Forgive me; you must have something to eat...' He rose and brought her a biscuit barrel, placing it upon the table beside her. She hesitated a moment and he watched her carefully. She was tired, that much was clear, and had undoubtedly lost her former confidence. Was that due to exhaustion, or the consequences of her scars? Had she been abandoned by those friends in high places she had once boasted of: Talleyrand for instance? Even now the ci-devant Bishop of Autun, foreign minister and Prince of Benevento, was conducting the government of France during the inter-regnum which would shortly end when Louis was restored fully to the throne of his ancestors. In these changed circumstances, a mistress like Hortense Santhonax would be an embarrassment which the calculating Talleyrand would drop like a hot coal.
He watched, fascinated, as she began to eat the biscuits, swallowing the wine with an eagerness that betrayed her hunger. The soft candle-light played on her features and he felt again the urgent twitch in his gut. He recalled the group of fugitives he had rescued off the beach at Carteret years earlier; Hortense and her brother had been among them. Later, at Lord Dungarth's instigation, she had been put back on a French beach once it was known that she had thrown her lot in with a handsome French officer called Edouard Santhonax. Drinkwater remembered, too, the earl's injunction that they should have shot her, not let her go.[5] Since then she had risen with her husband's star until he was killed, when her name became linked with that of Talleyrand. Such a beauty was not destined for a widowhood of obscurity. Hortense had been present at the Austrian Ambassador's ball, given upon the occasion of the Emperor Napoleon's marriage to the Archduchess Marie-Louise, and this confirmed she was still welcome at the imperial court despite imperial doubts about her husband's loyalty. Now the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy threatened to set her world upside down again, and while the Bourbons could not avenge themselves upon the whole of France, they would undoubtedly visit retribution upon the vulnerable among Napoleon's followers.