Chapter Fourteen
Giselle stood back to examine the last stroke on the small houses of Hove.
Those buildings to the west of the center of Brighton were only a few, the population of Hove perhaps two or three hundred.
The Bath stone of the more muscular houses was a slightly creamier shade of that found in older buildings in the city center.
The rest were of brick. They provided the picture of the shore so necessary to her work.
She removed the clip that pinned the stock to the back of her easel and took it to her window. Pulling back the lace curtain, she raised the thick paper to the sunlight. Yes, she approved of this one. Only another morning and she would finish this. Then she could begin the east side of town.
She frowned.
It was the part of Brighton she knew least. She had not walked there at all, but this afternoon she had reason. She was to meet Jacques Durand’s new man and tell him she’d have his final drawings to convey to Durand to take across the Channel.
She pushed down her questions about this morning and this new man employed by the one who had smuggled her across the sea.
Durand, notorious and wanted by the British and French governments, did a service for the Crown.
Running goods like cognac and schnapps, china and carpets through the tight shipping lines, Durand also smuggled those who wished to escape the claws of Napoleon.
She had sailed with him, terror struck and chilled to the bone, but rejoiced to land alive and well.
Now she would send back tomorrow with his man the last of the drawings she’d been recruited to do.
This set would complement those other, smaller versions that Lord Ramsey had managed to put into suspected French agents’ hands.
Much like the set in Hastings that were to be purchased, so it was believed, by a French spy, this set for Durand would confirm the seascape, its elevation, and its surrounding buildings.
Proud of all her work, she thrilled to hear the end was near.
The victory came with bittersweet regret.
She had sacrificed for it greatly. Clive Davenport, her dashing lover, had not bothered her at all these past three days.
He had followed her back to the hotel that day after she abruptly left the picnic.
But he had not knocked on her door nor sent a message to her.
He most likely had returned to London with his daughter, his sister, and Lord Langley.
Better for it, too, he was, out of danger and done with the heartbreak she could not avoid causing him.
As for her own grinding loss of him, she shoved that ache down, down, down as deep as it would go. Soon she would deal with that…and surrender to that grief which she knew might well kill her.
After her work was completed in a few days and sent off with Durand’s man across the waters to Boulogne, she would go west to Cornwall.
The image she held in her mind of wild winds and lightning crashing on a rugged shore spoke to her current belief that chaos reigned over a damaged world.
Her brief affair with Clive had shown her vistas painted in rolling greens and scudding blues brilliant with a golden sun.
Gone now.
Dissolved in the mists of yesterday.
*
An hour later, she stood outside the blacksmith’s shop. Durand’s man was late.
For safety, she’d arrived in a hired hack.
But as few walked the street, she took the liberty to do so herself.
Strolling down the street, she noted the dimensions of the bakery and the bookstore next to it.
The shops along this part of the eastern promenade were tiny compared to those in the Lanes near the pavilion.
She would render them as they truly were.
She walked back to her meeting point. As she went, she reevaluated her original calculations of length of street, heights of buildings, and the depth of the beach from sea to seawall.
Her method of calculation corresponded to her length of stride.
She’d done it so often, her actions were automatic.
She stood a moment and paced off in her mind the distance from the smithy to the shoreline.
She flexed her shoulders and scanned the street once more. It was noon, but few were about. She could wonder why, but credited it to the sticky weather. Too hot for June, the air suddenly seemed to smother her.
She checked the watch pinned to the collar of her pelisse.
She’d wait only for another ten minutes, then be gone.
He would have to make another appointment, because she would not risk waiting too long.
She suspected that anyone observing her now would question her intentions.
Did she meet a friend? Did she have a rendezvous with a lover?
She scoffed. If only.
She began to pace.
*
Across the corner, Clive sat by the window, tracking her movements.
“Another, milord?” The barmaid hoisted a stone pitcher of beer.
“Aye, thank you.” He sat back to allow her access to pour.
The woman bent to follow his line of sight through the window. “Pretty lady. Yours?”
What to say, other than, “I hope so.”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “A man came earlier today and walked that corner.”
“When did he leave?” Clive had no idea if what they spoke of was of any importance, but he’d research every fact if it meant he would save Giselle from whatever and whomever she feared.
The maid shrugged. “Maybe…eleven?”
“I see. What did he look like?”
“Gruff. No shave. Rough and dirty, hair like string.”
“His nose?”
The woman gave a start, looked at Clive with a smirk, and said, “Flat.”
“Ah.” So not the beak-nosed one, but a colleague, perhaps. Christ, what a tangle.
“But there’s another one. Look. He likes the looks of your lady. He’s going to stop her, seems like.”
The stranger charged toward her.
In a snap, Clive was up out of his chair, his coin on the table. “Thank you.”
He was just crossing the street when Giselle spied him.
She gasped and spun sway. Right into Mister Flat Nose’s open arms.
“Bugger.” Clive slid his stiletto from his waistcoat pocket.
But the man was fast, coiling his arm around Giselle’s throat and dragging her back toward the lean-to of the blacksmith’s shop.
“Let her go,” Clive seethed as he marched in time with him.
The man sneered and flicked a small knife against Giselle’s ear. “Don’t try.”
“She’s mine,” Clive spat. “You haven’t a chance.”
“No?” The cur yanked her backward.
Her eyes wide upon Clive, she pleaded with him for reprieve.
’Twas then Clive’s own hired man slithered from the shadows of the blacksmith’s shop and took the fellow down the same way he’d tried to fell Giselle.
“Shall I skin ’im, sir?” His man’s evil grin showed crooked black teeth.
Clive took Giselle’s wrists and pulled her to him. “Learn who pays him. I don’t care how. Send me word via the hotel. Come, sweetheart. We leave these two to their urgent business.”