Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Giselle clapped her hands over her mouth in shock at what she had done.
Had she…had she said that aloud? She had just meant to think it, so proud was she that éduard had still not managed to work out that she herself was the one that he had been hunting – but now it was out.
After two months of living in fear, lying, scheming, and being constantly on the run, she had finally given herself away.
“You … you are the Great Whisperer?” éduard murmured, not taking his eyes from her.
“I – I did not – y-you …” It was all Giselle could say, and even then she was well aware that her words made no coherent sense. What had she done? “It was just a joke.”
“A joke?” éduard was standing up now, but she could not remember when he had risen from the log. “‘Tis a specific joke, if you ask me, and a little strange.”
“I take it back.” And as she spoke, Giselle took a step back, a step away from the tall man now advancing towards her. She tried to laugh, and said, “A joke, that was all, éduard. You will have to learn more about my sense of humour!”
éduard stopped in his tracks, and his eyes narrowed as he examined her. Giselle could feel her heart beating heavily in her chest. Could he not hear it too?
And then he laughed, a little nervously to Giselle’s ear. “It is a strange thing to say, a woman, the Great Whisperer.”
And then he laughed again, and his eyes and face relaxed, and Giselle found the irritation in her soul welling up again like a tide about to sweep over the sand. How dare he? How can he just stand there and laugh in her face?
“Just two days ago, you did not believe that a woman could be a spy hunter,” Giselle snapped, no laughter in her words. “You are just the same as every other man on this earth, do you know that? Vraiment, you think that you are the smartest ones, the only ones to have any brains!”
“It is not that,” said éduard with a smile that he clearly thought was winning.
“It is just…well, ‘tis a foolish idea to think that a woman could be the Great Whisperer, is it not? A clever joke though, I must say, Giselle. Though if I had thought about it, I would have quickly seen that it was just not possible.”
And it was that which pushed Giselle over the edge.
If she was going to go down and have her true identify finally revealed, then she would have to live up to the hype.
As much as she loved him, as much as she cared for him and wanted naught but good for him, she would have to be cruel, have to break his heart.
That was the only way to stop him following her, taking him into more danger.
She would have to be cruel to be kind, and watch his heart break before her.
She swallowed. “So smart, so wise! Well let me tell you, Prince éduard, you may be a member of the royal family from wherever you are from, but I have led you a royal dance, because I am the Great Whisperer.
I am Giselle d'épilucon, daughter of Jean-Pierre and Marie, and I am the Great Whisperer. So there.”
éduard’s heart almost stopped, and so rocked was he by Giselle’s words that he almost fell to the sand beneath his feet.
Giselle, the Great Whisperer? The Great Whisperer that he had been searching for all these weeks, months even? This attractive woman, the Great Whisperer?
Could he really have just spent the night with the Great Whisperer?
Everything that he thought to be true, everything that he thought he knew, it was all falling apart right in front of his eyes.
He had thought that he had been completely sure what he was doing, he had felt purpose in his life, as though fate was leading him on a certain direction; but it was all lies, smoke and mirrors, the currency of a spy.
The Great Whisperer? Nothing but a false title of a false spy. And Giselle, Giselle was the one who had managed it! She had constructed this lie, and lived it so well that it was almost truth. It was impossible, it simply could not be!
éduard swallowed as he looked at the startlingly beautiful woman before him, looking back at him so defiantly, so proudly. But as he thought about it, the pieces started to fall into place, and all of a sudden what had seemed nonsense now started to seem obvious.
Who else would know so much about the Great Whisperer? Giselle knew so much: where he was going, and why. She had been there in the inn, he had seen her. She had run as soon as he had attempted to speak to the other man, and she had run fast, as though she had something to hide.
She had a dagger, and she knew how to use it.
She could row, make shelters, find fresh water, build and light a fire.
Who could do all those things – what man could?
Few in this day and age. Even he, who had roamed free and wild on the castle’s estate as a child and young man, could only do half of those things, and all of them poorly.
It would not have surprised him if she had constructed a fishing net from leaves and caught trout from the sea, éduard mused, a half dazed smile on his face. Why had he never questioned this? Why had he not asked her how she knew so much?
Shame, pure and hot and prickly, overcame him. How could he not have seen it?
“Why did you not tell me the truth?” He said quietly. There was no anger there, no bitterness. Just sadness.
Giselle laughed, and there was certainly bitterness there. “The next time someone launches themselves at you at an inn, follows you out, chases after you, shouts at you, and then jumps into your boat as you attempt to escape, you may find that you do not wish to give your true identity either!”
éduard mouthed at her silently, but no words came out.
How was it even possible that he did not put the pieces together?
He had it all there, in front of him, and yet he had not wanted to see it.
All he had wished to see was the beautiful woman, a woman he could pleasure, possess, and so that is what he had seen.
Now a bitter taste had entered his mouth. Had she even wanted him? Had she lied about the pleasure she had felt just as easily as she had lied about her identity? As he opened himself to her, as he had made himself as vulnerable as any man could, had she even enjoyed herself?
Or had she been laughing at him, laughing at his own stupidity, laughing that he was falling in love with her while he was completely in her power?
“Why?” Was all he managed.
She looked ashamed, or perhaps that was the emotion that he was feeling and so saw it in her features.
“My brother, Pierre. He is the only family that I have left, tu comprends, and they said that if I did not help them, if I did not do what they wanted, then they would give him up to the revolutionaries. They would kill him – I had no choice!”
“The Great Whisperer, have no choice?” éduard spluttered. “Do you know have bizarre that sounds to me? I have been told that the Great Whisperer does nothing but for the hatred of France!”
Giselle rolled her eyes at him, and éduard felt a hot surge of anger mingled with bitterness. “Because you must believe everything that you are told, of course!”
“And you really think that your brother, this Pierre, is still alive?” éduard stared at her, almost pitying. “Mon dieu, Giselle, they almost certainly killed him as soon as you left!”
It was incomprehensible, and éduard’s mind struggled to take in everything that he was hearing.
Giselle, the Great Whisperer. Giselle was the one that he had been hunting all these months.
All those near misses, all of those times when he was just a few minutes, a few inches away from catching him, it had been her, all along.
“How?” was the only word that managed to escape his mouth, and éduard swallowed before trying again. “How is this possible?”
Giselle frowned. “Comment? Why should it be impossible? Why should it be so strange that a woman, when faced with desperate circumstances, could not find a solution for herself?”
“I have spent the last six weeks,” éduard managed in a hoarse voice, “living rough, sleeping on the land in this November and December air, looking for you!”
He had stumbled a few paces back now, and felt the log on the back of his legs. He half sat, half fell onto it as he watched Giselle laugh, though there was a tightness around the eyes that did not look right.
“My dear prince, I have only been the Great Whisperer for the last two months! The revolutionaries must be in a pretty poor shape if their best spy is so astonished to find out my true identity!”
éduard tried not to let her words pain him, but it was impossible to ignore the truth in them. Yes, he must be very stupid if he has spent all this time trying to find someone with whom he had made love to the night before.
But he rallied. He was not going to go down lightly.
“It is difficult,” he retorted bravely, “to find someone when you do not know their real name, or what they look like.”
Giselle was standing there, now with her hands on her hips, as though she was about to be made queen of England.
“I have done it. I have done it seven times now, finding out my informants up and down the country. ‘Tis not easy when all you are given is a codename by the previous contact, and yet I have managed it.”
éduard’s mouth fell open. She was far more intelligent than he could ever have imagined, but had he not seen that, in the few short hours that they had spent together here on this island?
Had he not seen her ingenuity, her wit, her vivacity?
And had he not fallen in love with that Giselle, the Giselle that he had thought he knew?
“But in the time that we…we have been together,” éduard swallowed, “you have discovered little about me. Why? Why, knowing that I was attempting to find you, did you not kill me, maim me somehow to prevent you from following you back to shore?”
It was clear by the look in her eyes that Giselle had not expected that, but she rallied admirably.
“Before we had been here twenty four hours, I had discovered that you were a prince,” she began.
éduard started to laugh. “Ah, I knew that my title would come in handy one day. Tell me, Giselle, did you hope for rewards, riches, gold? I am sorry to tell you that though titled, I am hardly wealthy. You should have held out for another, if you were going to take someone prisoner here on this island.”
Anger flashed in her eyes. “Have I not said enough times, I did not wish you to jump in that boat and follow me! No, I simply could not understand why a prince, a royal member of the French nation, was so desperate to find the Great Whisperer in the first place. Revolutionaries do not have titles, at least the ones that live long!”
éduard found that he was breathing heavily, and tried to calm his lungs, but his heart was still racing. Was this the time to tell her? Was now, of all moments, the time to be truly honest?
He looked at her. Giselle was standing, as though about to fight for her life, with one foot before the other, hair wild and tangled and flowing down her back.
Her cloak was slightly lopsided across her body and he could see her chest rising and falling.
She was as full of anger and passion as he was, and for a moment he considered just standing up, walking over to her, and pulling her into his arms, kissing away the confusion and irritation between them.
But she had to know. It was time to finally be honest.
éduard sagged slightly on the log. “I admit it, then.
I was hoping to be able to join you – to join the Great Whisperer, that is.
I hate the revolutionaries, I think that their idea of a world where a person can be punished because of the family in which they are born is repellent.
I thought that if I could find the Great Whisperer, then I could join him!
Giselle stared at him in bewilderment. “Join him?”
“Yes!” éduard shook his head sadly. “How strange we are, you and I stuck on this island. You, the Great Whisperer, desperate to help the nobility of France. I, the nobility of France, desperate to help the Great Whisperer. And yet with all our lies, and deceit, and deception, we have no idea of our true identities!”
She was staring at him now in horror and realisation.
éduard laughed bitterly. “All I wanted was to help him in his cause to overthrow the revolutionaries, and return France to a better way. But of course, now that I know that the Great Whisperer is yourself, I no longer wish that.”
He had intended to go on; to explain to her that all he wanted was for her to be safe, but now that he knows how strong she is, they could work together. His mistake was to stop and smile at the woman that he loved.
Giselle stared at him completely incensed. “No longer good enough for you, am I? Only a male Great Whisperer will do?”
éduard blinked, and immediately saw his error. “No – no, Giselle, that is not what I meant! I love you, and the fact that you are the Great Whisperer makes you all the more striking, more beautiful, more – ”
But Giselle was not listening to him. Muttering under her breath in rapid French and pulling off her cloak, she strode past éduard as though he was not there.
“Giselle, stop, what are you doing?” éduard rose to follow her, but she did not turn around to look at him. It was as though he had vanished into thin air.
His eyes widened as he watched her tug at the string just barely holding her gown together. “Giselle, what – ?”
“You will need this,” Giselle said curtly, stepping out of her gown and leaving just her torn undergarments on, and handing him something that was cold.
“Merry Christmas, my prince. I had hoped that, perhaps, it would … it would not be the last we would spend together. But there we are. Today is a day full of disappointments.”
éduard looked down. In his hand was her dagger. He looked up, and saw a figure striding out into the sea.
“Giselle, no!”
But she did not heed him.
éduard stepped forward into the icy seawater and stopped, desperately thinking but to no avail. “You cannot possibly be thinking of swimming to shore – come back!”
Giselle either ignored him completely, or could not hear him. For ten more minutes éduard shouted after her, pleading with her, begging her to come back, telling her that he loved her. After that, she was just a dot in the ocean.
After another five minutes, the dot was out of sight.
éduard dropped down dejectedly onto the beach, ignoring the rising tide. Being trapped on the island was now the least of his concerns. How would he ever be able to convince Giselle of his love for her?