Read Chapter 14: The Safe House

The farmhouse had been dead for years, but the roof still held. That was enough.

Élise slipped through the gap where the door had once hung and pressed herself against the cold stone wall, catching her breath. The road to Brussels stretched empty behind her, pale under the rising sun. No pursuit. Not yet.

The interior smelled of rot and old straw. A collapsed beam divided the single room, and something scurried in the shadows near the hearth. She stepped carefully, found a corner where the wall met the floor in a dry angle, and lowered herself down. Her legs burned. She had walked since before dawn without stopping, and the small cloth bundle of bread she had taken from the hospital stores was already gone.

She closed her eyes. Théo's letter crackled against her chest, tucked beneath her stays. The route to Chateau Laurent had been memorized and re-memorized until it had taken on the rhythm of a prayer: south past Nivelles, through the Charleroi road, then west along the Sambre until the maps blurred into fields she had never walked.

A sound. Not scurrying. Footsteps.

Élise's eyes snapped open. She pressed herself deeper into the corner, her hand finding the handle of the small knife she had taken from the surgical kit—a thin blade, meant for cutting away cloth from wounds, but it would open a throat if it had to.

The footsteps stopped at the threshold. A pause. Then a voice, low and male, in rough French: "Don't scream. I've got a pistol, and I've used it more times than I'd like to count."

A shape filled the doorway—a man, broad-shouldered, his coat dark with dirt and what might have been blood. He saw her in the corner, saw the knife, and stopped. His face was weathered, his beard patchy, and his eyes moved over her with the quick assessment of a man who had learned to judge threats in seconds.

"A woman," he said. "Alone. In a ruin." He lowered the pistol slightly, but did not holster it. "Are you lost, or running?"

"Both," she said, because there was no point in lying to a man who had caught her in a hole.

He almost smiled. "Then we have something in common."

He moved inside, keeping the pistol low but ready. He chose a spot against the opposite wall, leaving the ruined doorway between them. A man who wanted exits, not a trap. Élise watched him the way she had watched the Prussian looters—for the twitch that came before violence.

He pulled a flask from his coat, drank, and offered it to her. She did not take it.

"Étienne," he said. "Late of the 45th line infantry. Not late as in dead—late as in I left." He watched her face for the reaction. "Deserter. Go ahead and judge. Everyone does."

"I'm not judging," Élise said. "I'm deciding whether to run."

"Where would you run to? Brussels is two hours south. The Prussians are everywhere between here and there, and the British have set up checkpoints on every road leading in." He capped the flask. "I've seen three deserters hanged since Waterloo. TheBritish don't waste time on trials."

"And the French?"

He laughed, a dry sound. "The French are either dead or retreating. The ones left don't want to go home. France is finished. Napoleon is finished. The only thing left is survival." He studied her. "You're not a soldier. You're not a camp follower, or you'd have better boots. So what are you?"

Élise hesitated. She did not know this man. But she had walked until her feet blistered and the road still stretched ahead of her. The wagon to Brussels had left without her. Ashworth was under guard in a merchant's house, his rank stripped because of what he had confessed to save her.

"I'm looking for someone," she said. "My brother."

"Name?"

"Théo Delacroix. He served in the 25th. Last I heard, he was at Waterloo."

Étienne's face did something subtle—a flicker, there and gone. He looked at her again, more closely this time. The eyes that went over her face now were searching for something specific.

"Théo Delacroix," he repeated. "Shorter than you? Same color hair, but always trying to hide it under a shako that was too big for him?"

Élise's heart seized. "You knew him?"

"I served with the 25th for a month. They attached us to a support brigade in June." He looked away, toward the doorway, as if checking the road. "Your brother. He had a habit of talking about home. About his sister who could heal anything. Who used to push a poultice on the stable boy's dog until the dog ran away every time she saw her."

Élise laughed despite herself, a sound that surprised her. "The dog never ran. He followed me everywhere."

"Théo said the dog followed you because you fed him scraps." Étienne's voice was softer now. "Your brother talked a lot. Too much, really. Men tell you their whole lives when they think they're going to die the next day."

The air changed in the room. The birds outside had gone quiet.

"Where is he?" Élise asked. "Is he alive?"

Étienne looked at her for a long moment. "You have to understand something about the last days," he said slowly. "Nobody knew what was happening. Orders came and went. Men got separated. There were rumors—so many rumors. I heard he was taken prisoner early, before the guns—

they took a lot of prisoners in the morning skirmishes. Moved them back toward Brussels."

"Was he taken?"

"I don't know if he was taken or if he ran." Étienne met her eyes. "But I know this: a week before the battle, he was talking to men he shouldn't have been talking to. French civilians. Not soldiers—civilians who looked like they didn't belong. And after that talk, he started asking questions about families. About who was looking for soldiers who might not want to be found."

Élise felt the floor tilt beneath her. "What kind of questions?"

"Questions that would get a man hanged if he asked them in the wrong place." Étienne leaned forward. "There's a network in Brussels—French loyalists who never accepted the Bourbon restoration. They smuggle men out of the occupation. Soldiers who want to go home without being shot for desertion. Families who want their boys back." He paused. "Your brother was looking for passage out. Or he was running from something. I didn't know which then. I still don't."

Élise's mind raced. Théo, asking about deserters and escape routes—that wasn't the boy who had written her letters full of a soldier's simple pride. That wasn't the brother who had promised to come home when the war was done.

Unless the war had changed him. Wars did that.

"You said you came from the 45th," she said slowly. "But you said you served with the 25th for a month. That was only weeks ago." Her hand tightened on the knife. "Why are you here, Étienne? Why are you telling me all this?"

He gave her a hard smile, and there was something in it that she didn't trust. "Because I was one of the men your brother talked to. And I gave him a promise that if anything happened to him, I'd make sure his sister got the truth." He reached into his coat, pulling out a small, folded piece of paper. "He gave me this. Said to give it to you if he didn't make it."

Élise stared at the paper. "He gave you something for me, and you only decided to give it to me after you heard me speak my brother's name?"

"I've been robbed three times since I left the field," Étienne said flatly. "I give things away carefully now. You say you're his sister. You look like him. You talk like him. But the Belgian countryside is full of people looking for easy marks."

He held out the paper. "Take it. If you're his sister, you'll know what it means."

Élise took it. The paper was worn, creased from folding and refolding. She opened it carefully. The handwriting inside was rushed, the letters uneven, but she knew it. She had known it since she was a girl watching Théo carve his name into the stable door with her birthday knife.

*Élise—if you're reading this, don't look for me. It's not safe. I'm not the man who left. Ask at the golden goose. They'll know where to send you. Don't trust anyone wearing British red. Not even the one who saved you.*

The last line made her go cold.

She looked up at Étienne, whose eyes were waiting for her reaction. "You read this."

"I watched him write it."

"Who is the one who saved me? What does that mean?"

Étienne shook his head. "I don't know. He never had time to explain. But before he wrote that, he asked me a strange thing—he asked if there was an English officer who'd been taken to the medical tents. A captain. He said the name was Ashworth."

The floor opened beneath her. The map in Ashworth's boot. The confession in the inquiry room. The way he had watched her with those calculating eyes.

"Did he say why?" she demanded.

"He said it was a matter of life and death. His words." Étienne stood, brushing dust from his trousers. "I've told you what I know. Now I need a favor. You're going to Brussels. If you're going to find your brother, you'll need to contact the network. There's a meeting tonight—a safe house near the old city gate." He pulled a small token from his pocket: a brass button stamped with a laurel wreath. "Show this to the doorkeeper. Tell him Étienne sent you. If you want to know what Théo was involved in, that's where they'll tell you."

Élise took the button. It was warm in her palm. "What do you get out of this?"

"My conscience quiet," he said. "And maybe, if your brother is still alive, he'll speak well of me when I come looking for my own way out of this country." He moved toward the doorway. "Be careful. The people in that house are not kind to traitors. And your brother's name has already been spoken there."

He was gone before she could ask what that meant.