Free The Tide Watchers by Lisa Chaplin

inside the coach. But the important man said your invention could most likely work in the hands of experienced naval engineers—”
    Fulton whitened, and he huffed in choppy breaths. “Not until I am dead, Monsieur Decrés,” he muttered, his gentle eyes hard, “and you can bank on that, as surely as you banked on taking my inventions without payment!”
    The inventor downed his chocolate and stormed out.
    Left to pay the reckoning, Flynn chuckled. Mission accomplished, and far easier than he’d hoped. Fulton’s paranoia had grown to legendary proportions as First Consul Bonaparte became more important,and less inclined to pay for what he wanted. The American’s excellent mind would ensure he disappeared before Boney’s men came to confiscate his life’s work. One of their French recruits awaited the inventor at home to make Fulton an offer he couldn’t refuse.
    Stage three was up to the commander, and the girl he’d found.

CHAPTER 8
    Tavern Le Boeuf, Abbeville, France
    August 26, 1802
    T HE STRANGER WAS BACK.
    For the past seven nights a different man waited outside Le Boeuf beside the horse. When she’d backed away the first time, he’d said the words tide watcher and handed her a note.
    Madame, please accept John’s escort for a few days. I will return soon.
    This John was a man of few words but kept his pistols ready. As they walked home, he constantly watched for signs of trouble, but there had been none. At the door of the pension he’d helped her off the horse, bowed, and vanished into the night.
    But tonight her stranger sat at a well-lit table by the fire. He’d left his cloak on, probably so she could identify him. He couldn’t know she’d already recognized him by his height and breadth, and the slight hunch of his left shoulder she’d noticed the other night.
    Seeing her watching him, he moved his cloak to reveal the knee breeches, waistcoat, and cravat of the socially conscious, up-and-coming businessman. His waistcoat had too much embroidery on it. He ate ragout and swallowed ale with seeming gusto, yet the effect was the same: no sense of belonging. A purebred Arabian in a peasant’s stable. Nothing but the cloak sat right on him.
    Why was he showing her his face? What had changed?
    Though she sensed a trap, she kept looking whenever she passed. She held him feature by feature in her memory, as if putting a puzzle of the world together.
    He was younger than she’d supposed, perhaps thirty. His black hair was thick and tumbled, caught back in a naval riband. In the shadows cast by the warm, dark room and his hair it was hard to tell, but she thought his heavy-lidded eyes were brown. His brows soared toward his temples like raven’s wings. He had a heavy nose, sharp-defined cheekbones, and a tense mouth above a chin with a cleft.
    It was a striking if not handsome face. The scars on his cheeks drew her gaze. The left side had the worst injuries, with slashing cuts and the melted flesh of imperfectly healed burns concentrated near the ear. The other side had older cuts close to his mouth, and one by his eye.
    A brave face with haunted eyes. Did all King’s Men have that on-the-road-to-damnation look? How many times had she seen the self-loathing and desperate need to forget on her father’s face whenever he came home? She’d never understood the expression until she married Alain. Until her first beating. Until she came to France and saw her first beheading. Until she could give no more than a pittance to hollow-eyed soldiers’ or guillotine widows and their begging children because, if she gave more, she’d have to whore herself to survive.
    Until Alain took Edmond from her, and in the mirror, she’d found her father’s eyes in her face. Now she saw Papa reflected in the eyes of a stranger with lies on his tongue and suffering in his soul.
    Her gaze flicked left. LeClerc and Tolbert were