Jane Feather - Velvet

Gabrielle stood for a second in the corridor outside, hugging the shadows while she slowly unclenched her fists and breathed deeply until her tight muscles relaxed. He hadn't guessed her tension, she was sure of it. But her entire body ached as if she'd been tied in knots. He'd accept her in the end, he had to. Simon had said it would take time and she'd have to appeal to the most unorthodox aspects of his nature if she was to overcome his resistance. She'd certainly tried that tonight, and tomorrow was another day.

But how difficult it was to conceal her rage and the longing to hurt him as he had hurt Guillaume. Oh, it hadn't been his hand that had wielded the knife, but it had been at his orders. He hadn't known Guillaume, not even known his real name, and yet he'd had him murdered.

How could she possibly seduce such a man? But she had to. She would remember Guillaume, relive his death, and then she would be able to do what had to be done.

There were two men in the comtortable study at the back of the tall house on rue d'Anjou. They were an ill-matched pair, Napoleon's Minister for Foreign Affairs and his Minister of Police. Talleyrand, the elegant aristocrat, and the brutal-featured Fouche were as unlike physically as they were in their choice of methods and techniques. But they were both experts at working in the shadows, at achieving their purposes along the tortuous winding paths of secrecy and intrigue, diplomatic in the one case, mercilessly pragmatic in the other.

After Napoleon, they were the two most influential and powerful men in France and, by extension, Napoleonic Europe. In general, they rarely collaborated, each leaving the other his sphere of operations, each courting the ear of Napoleon in his own way. But on this cold January night in Paris, with Napoleon preparing to face the Russian army in Eastern Prussia, they had come together to discuss the progress of a plan where both theit interests meshed.

"She was making contact this weekend at the Vanbrugh house in Kent." Talleyrand sipped cognac, gesturing to his guest that he should refill his own glass.

Fouche's fingers around the delicate crystal decanter were thick and coarse, the nails ragged, tufts of hair sprouting on the red knuckles. Talleyrand tapped the tapering white soft-skinned fingers of a pampered aristocrat on the polished wooden arm of his chair.

"What does she know of Praed?" Fouche asked before taking a deep swallow from his liberally recharged glass.

"That he's the cleverest spymaster the English have yet produced… that so far we haven't been able to get close to him… that it's her assignment to do so."

"And provide us with the means to remove him permanently," Fouche declared, smacking his lips as he savored his cognac.

Talleyrand winced slightly. Fouche was so unsubtle. As it happened, removing Nathaniel Praed was the last thing the Minister for Foreign Affairs wanted, but Fouche didn't need to know that. It suited both of them to have Gabrielle infiltrating the English secret service, and they had combined their resources to achieve it. Fouche wanted a double agent in England to enable him to wreak havoc with that nation's secret service, and Talleyrand, much more devious, wanted a line of communication directly into the ear of the English government. Nathaniel Praed via Gabrielle was to be that ear.

For the moment the two men could work together toward their differing goals. If Fouche's goal interfered with Talleyrand's at some future point, then the Minister for Foreign Affairs would deal with it.

"You believe the woman will succeed in infiltrating their system?" Fouche regarded his host with shrewd eyes as he posed the question.

Talleyrand nodded. "Gabrielle's been one of our most resourceful and intrepid couriers for the last five years, throughout her liaison with le lievre noir. This mission requires different skills, of course, but she's a woman of passionate convictions and determination, intent on avenging her lover's murder. She will succeed."

"I wish to God I knew who'd betrayed him," Fouche declared with a savage twist to his mouth. “To lose our top agent in such fashion! Mondieu, it makes me want to spit!"

His mouth pursed and Talleyrand grimaced, thinking he was about to suit action to words, but Fouche restrained himself, draining the contents of his brandy-goblet in one gulp.

There was a moment's silence. The fire spurted and a candle flared as a needle of frigid air found its way under the door.

"However," Talleyrand said finally, "as we agreed, there's a way to pull the chestnuts out of this fire. Gabrielle will turn disadvantage to advantage. Once she's gained Praed's trust, she will bring us, among other information, a list of the English agents presently working in France. If Guillaume was betrayed by an English double agent in our own ranks, we'll discover it."

"You're sure there's nothing to connect Gabrielle de Beaucaire with le lievre?"

"Nothing," Talleyrand said firmly. "Their love affair was known only to myself. Gabrielle, as you know, is my goddaughter. Her father was one of my dearest boyhood friends. It was natural that I should offer her my protection when she returned from England after the Revolution. She met Guillaume one night when he was visiting me in secret. They became lovers almost immediately."

A shadow fell over the haughty countenance as Talleyrand remembered the passion of the two young people, the overpowering attraction that had swept them into one of the most turbulent and intense love affairs he'd ever been privileged to promote.

Fouche made no comment. Such liaisons were much more frequent than the fashionable world officially recognized.

"Inevitably with such a passionate affair, Gabrielle discovered the truth about Guillaume and how he served France. I felt he had perhaps yielded up his secrets rather too easily…" Talleyrand shrugged with a half-smile, remembering how he'd rebuked the young man for unprofessional indiscretion. Guillaume had most vigorously defended both himself and his mistress, and he'd been proved right.

"Gabrielle insisted on playing her own part in the service and lelievretrained her as a courier. As her cover, she took part in society as my goddaughter and the widow of the completely fictional Comte de Beaucaire, who, it's believed, died tragically and very suddenly on his estates in the Midi. But her real life she lived in the shadows."

He spread his hands wide. "They met only in the deepest secrecy and waited for the moment when they could live again in the open… marry, have children." He shook his head. "It was not to be."

"No," said Fouche with a touch of impatience. He was a man devoid of sentiment. "And she will seduce this Praed?"

"If necessary."

The bland statement drew a smile from the policeman. "You're as cold-blooded as I am," he commented, rising to his feet. "Notwithstanding the bishop's miter, Talleyrand."

"An excommunicated bishop," Talleyrand corrected calmly, rising with his guest. "One who loves his country. You will leave by the back entrance?" His eyebrows lifted.

"How else?" Fouche agreed. "There are sharp eyes around, and our emperor would not be happy to hear that his Minister for Foreign Affairs and his Minister of Police have secret conferences."

Talleyrand smiled. "D'accord. Isuspect that our master would regard an alliance between us asmore formidable than another Trafalgar."

"And he'd be correct," Fouche said with another dry smile.

Talleyrand returned to the fire as the door closed on the policeman. He and Fouche made uneasy bedfellows, but they played a game of intrigue where the stakes were of the highest: The Emperor Napoleon was to be toppled from his imperial throne. They would work together toward this goal, using their different techniques and spheres of influence, and one day they would succeed. And when that day came, their uneasy alliance would be shattered as they became rivals for the power vacuum thus created.

Talleyrand sipped his cognac thoughtfully. Fouche knew this as well as he did himself, out until then he was as prepared as Talleyrand to use his arch rival in the interests of expediency.

The world didn't lack for interest, he reflected, taking a copy of Voltaire's Candide from the bookshelves. He riffled through it, chuckling at Pangloss's eternal passive optimism: All's for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Disagreement with that particular philosophy was one belief Napoleon's Minister for Foreign Affairs and his Minister of Police had in common. There was always room for change.

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At Vanbrugh Court, Gabrielle slept the sleep of the just, her dreams untroubled by the obstinacy of Lord Nathaniel Praed. She awoke before the maid brought her hot chocolate, feeling as refreshed as if she hadn't spent a part of the night scaling the walls. She sprang from bed and flung open the curtains, looking out on a perfect winter morning with pale early sun sparking off the hoarfrost on the lawn beneath her window.

She craned her neck outside, looking along the creeper-thick facade of the house toward Nathaniel Praed's window, wondering if he'd decided to close it after his nocturnal visitor had left. In the cold light of day, the climb from the gravel path below looked rather more daunting than it had in the night, but she'd been too set on her goal for apprehension then.

She turned away from the window as the maid knocked and entered with a tray of chocolate and sweet biscuits.

"You're up betimes, madam," the girl said, setting the tray beside the bed. "Cold as the grave it is in 'ere. Best close that window, and I'll get the fire goin'."

"Thank you, Maisie." Gabrielle, shivering in her thin nightgown, closed the window and jumped back into bed, watching as the girl bent to the hearth, expertly raked the ashes, and threw on kindling.

"Shall I lay out your habit, ma'am?" The maid straightened, dusting off her hands as the fire blazed in the grate.

"Please." Gabrielle poured chocolate in a rich aromatic stream from the silver pot.

"The boot boy blacked your boots nicely," Maisie observed, holding Gabrielle's riding boots of cordovan leather up to the light, examining them for any residual sign of scuff marks.

Gabrielle murmured vague assent. It had been agreed with Talleyrand that she should travel without her own maid, relying on Georgiana's staff. The fewer people close to her, the less dangerous any inadvertent errors would be, and she'd have much more freedom of movement if she had only herself to consider.

Maisie bustled around with jugs of hot water, lacing, buttoning, brushing hair, all the while chatting cheerfully about her pregnant sister's latest ailments and the poacher the gamekeeper had caught during the night. Gabrielle allowed the chat to wash over her, murmuring vaguely when it seemed required. Her own thoughts were fixed on the day ahead and how best to renew her attack on Nathaniel Praed.

An hour later she made her way down to the breakfast parlor, humming an old nursery rhyme softly to herself: A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go. We'll catch a fox and put him in a box. A-hunting we will go.

But her quarry today would be more than just Reynard.

A footman jumped to open the door to the breakfast parlor and she went in to find herself alone with Lord Praed.

"Good morning, sir." She greeted him with a casual smile as if she had never climbed into his bedchamber and sat on the edge of his bed in the middle of the night. "We seem to be ahead of the others."

"Yes," he agreed shortly, barely looking up from his plate.

"A lovely day," she persevered, lifting the lids of the chafing dishes on the sideboard.

"Yes."

"Perfect for hunting."

There was no reply.

"Oh, forgive me. Are you one of those people who hates to talk at the breakfast table?" The crooked smile was faintly mocking.

Lord Praed's response was something between a grunt and a snort.

Gabrielle helped herself to a dish of kedgeree and sat down at the far end of the long table, as tar from her taciturn breakfast companion as she could manage. She hummed the silly nursery rhyme to herself as she buttered toast, studiously avoiding looking at Nathaniel.