'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.

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.