The Shadow of the Eagle by Richard Woodman Read Free Book Online Page B

bewitched by you for years. Did you not know it? Had I not a wife and children, I should have long ago …’ He had broken off, seeing the pathetic declaration make her smile.
    ‘Ah, Nathaniel, how,’ she had paused, ‘how damnably English.’
    ‘Do not taunt me. Upon occasions, you have made my life wretched. You have resided in my soul as a dark angel. Tonight you are dispossessed of all the diabolism with which my imagination had invested you. For that I am grateful.’
    They had let each other go.
    ‘They you will see that I am provided for?’
    ‘You know I will.’
    ‘Yes… Yes I did. To that extent your superstitions were correct.’ She smiled again.
    ‘You are returning to Paris?’ Seeing her nod, he had gone on, ‘There is a bookseller in the rue de la Seine whose name is Michel. There, in a month, you will find a draft against a London bank. I shall make it out in the name Hortense de Montholon. Should anything go awry, you may send a message through the Jew Liepmann in Hamburg.’
    ‘You are doing this yourself aren’t you? This is nothing to do with the British government, is it?’
    ‘Hortense, the British government will not give Nelson’s mistress a pension; why should they do anything for you? I know of you and thanks to the fortune of war, I have the means to make a little money available for you.’
    ‘You are very kind, Nathaniel. Had life been different, perhaps …’
    ‘Perhaps, perhaps; perhaps in happier times we shall meet again. Let us cage Bonaparte, m’dear, before any of us ordinary mortals think of our own pleasure.’
    Hortense had smiled at the remark and, as he held her cloak out for her, she said over her shoulder, ‘You and I are no ordinary mortals, Nathaniel.’
    He had merely grunted. To so much as acknowledge by the merest acquiescence any agreement with this braggadocio seemed to him, filled as he was with apprehension at her news, to be tempting providence most grievously.
     
    Now he was left to his thoughts and they were in a turmoil. He found it difficult to clear his mind of the image of her. On deck, in the chill of the dawn, it was almost possible to believe it had all been a dream, a bilious consequence of dining too well at the royal table. Was that event any more real, he wondered? And then from his breast the faintest, lingering scent of her rose to his nostrils.
    Yet the appearance of the curious ‘French officer’ had far greater importance than the temptation of Nathaniel Drinkwater. He was in little doubt of the truth of her asseveration. Drinkwater had only the sketchiest notions of the military position of the French army at the end of March, but he had gleaned enough in recent days to know that Napoleon’s energies seemed little diminished. He had fought a vigorous campaign in the defence of France, only to be overwhelmed by superior numbers against which even his military genius was incapable of resistance. Finally, it was widely rumoured, it had been the defection of members of the marshalate in defence of their own interests which had prompted the Emperor’s abdication.
    Under the circumstances, Napoleon was an unlikely candidate for a quiescent exile. And across the Atlantic raged a savage war, a repeat of the struggle from which had emerged the independent United States of America. Drinkwater had cause to remember details of that terrible conflict; as a young midshipman he had tramped through the Carolina swamps and pine barrens and had seen atrocities committed on the bodies of the dead. [7] More recently, he had been involved in the last diplomatic mission intended to prevent a breach between London and Washington, and he knew of the efforts which the young republic was prepared to make to discomfit her old imperial enemy. [8]
    Nor had his foiling of that effort settled the matter. Yankee ambition was like the Hydra; cut one head off and another appeared. Within a few months of destroying a powerful squadron of American privateers,