The Spymaster's Lady sl-1

by Joanna Bourne

  The Hawker, unfortunately, could read any man living. He leaned back and opened and closed his hand a few times and looked away. From the open window came the faint sound of men talking at the tables outside. “Any chance for a doctor?”

  “Roussel doesn’t trust the local man. We’ll manage on our own.”

  “How intrepid of us.”

  The fever was down, fought to a temporary truce by the Hawker’s leathery toughness. That couldn’t last much longer. This sneaky, brilliant boy was going to die because Grey couldn’t risk getting a French doctor to him. Because they’d been too slow running down an alley in Paris four days ago. Because he’d sent Hawker into France in the first place.

  He was going to kill the boy tomorrow, digging that bullet out. Damn and damn and damn.

  Roussel’s daughter had brought up water. Grey poured some in the basin. It was hot, almost too hot to touch. “We’ll clean up. We’ll eat well and sleep soft tonight. Tomorrow we put more distance between us and Paris, then stop and pull the slug out.” He made himself study the jagged pucker of red skin. “You’ll have a beautiful scar.”

  “It will add to my manifold charms. Who digs into me—you or Doyle?”

  “We talked it over. My hands are better with small work.”

  “You flipped a coin. I know.” Adrian sketched a grin. “We could wait till England. I know a man in Chelsea who has a fine, artistic way with a bullet.”

  “Coward.”

  “Fervently. Tomorrow then. If you’re set on this, I suggest you choose someplace private. I will whine in an unmanly fashion.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  There were towels stacked beside the basin. Grey tried to remember what they did in the medical tents, after battle. There’d been wounds soaking under hot cloths. That worked with horses, too. He’d try it. He wet linen in the steaming water and wrung it out gingerly. “This is hot.”

  “Ach!” The boy jerked. “Hot. Yes. Right you are.” He took a slow, tight breath between clenched teeth. “Oh, that’s toasty hot. Listen…Carruthers has my last report. That’s safe. Tell Giles to take what he wants from my room at Meeks Street. George gets the watch in my dresser drawer. I promised it to him if I didn’t make it back from some jaunt.”

  “You’re making it back from this one.” Grey lifted the cloth and looked at the wound.

  “Orders. You know how I am about obeying orders. Are you going to keep gawking at the bullet hole? Grotesque, if you want my opinion.” Adrian fixed his eyes on the crack that ran across the plaster ceiling. “Grey, if the fever comes back…Don’t let me talk.”

  The Hawker had more than his fair share of secrets. “I won’t.”

  “Thanks.” He took a deep breath. “Oh. Money. There’s a pile of it at Hoare’s Bank under the name Adrian Hawker. And some deeds.” He winced as the cloth lifted. “Find Black John. I’m godfather, if you can believe it, to his oldest son. The money goes to the boy.” Another deep breath. “I think I owe the tailor. Pay it off for me, will you.”

  “You sound like Socrates over a mug of hemlock.” He squeezed the cloth in hot water again and laid it back on the wound.

  “Who’s…ach…Who’s Socrates?”

  “A dead Greek. Annique admires him.”

  “Wasted on him, if he’s dead. That is a woman born to be appreciated by some man who’s warm and alive.” Adrian’s thin, dark face was a dozen shades paler than it should have been, but he managed an unconvincing leer. “Me, probably. She doesn’t care for you at all, mon vieux.”

  “She’s not supposed to like me. She’s supposed to be afraid of me and stop trying to escape. She can like you.” Grey worked awhile in silence, swabbing blood off the rest of the boy’s chest. “I’m going to sit you up. Don’t help. Let me do the work.”

  “Right.”

  The boy felt light, and brittle as glass, when Grey lifted him. He stuffed pillows to prop him up. “Rest a minute.”

  He tipped the dirty water out the window, down into the pawlike ivy that climbed the stone walls. It was a warm night. On the terrace below, men lingered late around the tables. They were local farmers mostly, but a few were travelers carrying the accents of Paris or Normandy. A pair of men playing cards chatted softly in the patois of the Brittany coast. Candles flickered on the tables, illuminating a peasant cap, a fashionable chapeau, and a shock of fair hair. One of Roussel’s plump, dark-haired daughters sidled between the men, collecting glasses. Beyond the innyard gate, the shadowed fields were full of the trill of crickets.

  They’d be safe tonight, in this tiny village, in this obscure inn, which was a waystation of the British spy network in France. Tomorrow was going to be hell.

  The bed creaked. “You’re handling her wrong,” Adrian said. “She’s battering herself to bits against you. It’s sickening.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. It’s like wrestling a starved cat.”

  But he lied. It was wrestling lightning wrapped in silk. Annique Villiers wouldn’t admit she was beaten. Desperately, madly, she kept throwing herself against him, trying to get out of the coach. Again and again, he’d trapped a kicking, writhing, squirming body beneath him. Every time he pinned her, she’d sigh and lie back and accept another defeat. The sharp angles melted. The pulsing energy went quiescent in his hands. It was like the soft, sweet letting go of a woman after climax. She was everything beautiful and insidious. Addictive as opium.

  Hell of a way for a senior officer to feel about a treacherous French bitch. “I’m trying not to hurt her. It’s not easy. She’s fast as a little cobra.” He put the dressing in place and set Adrian’s hand to cover it. “Press hard.” He tied up the last corner of bandage. “I doubt she’s looking forward to the discussions I have planned. I know what’s she’s done.”

  Will Doyle pushed into the room, balancing a tray. “What has she done?” He had a roll of clothing bundled under his arm, a swirl of burgundy and white, moss green and slate blue. He edged the door shut with his foot. “Besides run rings around us in Italy and Austria the last couple years?”

  “You’re supposed to be watching her.”

  “I put a pair of Roussel’s boys at the door and window. Annique Villiers ain’t going to run when there’s thirty people milling around downstairs. She’s not an idiot. Robert, there’s something wrong with her.”

  “I don’t have to hear this from you, too.”

  “She wouldn’t even turn around and talk to me. Not a word.” Doyle slid the tray to the table and dropped clothes in a heap on top of the dresser. “I saw her at work in Vienna. She chatters like a magpie. Something’s wrong when she shuts up.”

  “I’ve hurt her then.” All those tiny bones, strung together with catgut. So fragile.

  “Or Leblanc did. He had her longer than we did.”

  He didn’t want to think about her being hurt. It was too easy to feel sympathy. Too easy to forget what she was. “I’ll take a look at her when I put her to bed.”

  “That’s an intriguing notion,” Adrian said. “Wasted on you, I expect.”

  “And ain’t you feeling better.” Doyle lifted the napkin tented over a flowered blue and white bowl and sniffed appreciatively. “Roussel’s stew. Leeks and chervil, smells like.” He tipped a spoon into the bowl and handed it to Adrian with a brusque, “Eat.”

  “To hear is to obey. Toss me some of that bread while you’re at it.”

  Doyle tucked the loaf against his forearm and sawed a slice with quick, practiced strokes. “I been downstairs making excuses to Roussel—who wants your blood, by the way, Robert, for bringing her here. I pretended to know what’s going on. You going to explain?”

  “One lives in hope,” Adrian said piously.

  Doyle said, “You start discussing that stew with yer belly. The Head of Section don’t explain himself to the likes of—”

  A sharp crash broke the peace. Outside and nearby. Doyle froze. Adrian’s eyes snapped to the window.

  My gun’s in my ba
g, on top, loaded. There’s another in Hawker’s. Doyle carries his on him. The stairs are defensible. They’d—

  Masculine laughter rumbled over the sound of a woman’s rueful giggle. Chairs scraped on the stone. A dozen low-voiced conversations resumed. It was some kitchen mishap. Not Leblanc’s men. Not yet.

  Grey took his hand off the valise. “I’ve been out of action too long.”

  Adrian slid a dark, thin-bladed knife back under the covers.

  “We’re all on edge,” Doyle said, “not least from having that damned dangerous woman locked up in the next room. Are we going to get rid of her any time in the foreseeable future?”

  “He’s going to drag her all the way to Meeks Street. I’d lay money on it. Any brandy on that tray?”

  “For you, wine.” Doyle uncorked the jug with his teeth. “I gave her that indecent nightgown, Robert. She weren’t best pleased.”

  “I’m not trying to please her.”

  Doyle slopped wine into a glass, then added water till the deep red went pale. “I don’t like what you’re planning for that girl.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “First off, I don’t like dressing Annique Villiers in some whore’s castoffs.” Doyle nodded to the bright dresses heaped on the table. “That’s what Roussel had in the storeroom—the leavings of some ladybird who flew off without paying. It’ll fit her, but it’s brothel wear.”

  “She’s worn less in the service of France.” He picked up a dress. The complex, enigmatic blue was the color of her eyes. Thin, soft cotton clung to his fingers. Brothel wear. “Very nice. Paris work.”

  “Not the garb to blend into a Normandy village, is it? She won’t get far if she gets loose.” Adrian took the glass. “There’s a bench in hell reserved for men who water good wine.”

  Doyle poked around the tray and helped himself to a flaky square of pastry. “You can read print through some of those dresses. It’s going to be distracting.”

  “She could wear sackcloth and be distracting.” When he put Annique in this, she’d look like what she was—an expensive courtesan, a woman born to entice men. She sold those sweet little breasts like apples in the market. “I watched her take Henri Bréval down with a cosh she slid behind her skirt. These won’t hide a toothpick.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Robert. She’s one of us. One of the best. She’s been in the Game since she was a child. You don’t take one of the great players and treat her like a doxy. You put her in that nightgown or one of these flimsy dresses, and you’re going to start thinking she’s a whore.”

  “She’s not. For one thing,” Adrian chased vegetables around the bottom of the bowl, “she can kill you with the odd bit she finds lying around the house.”

  “She’s probably stropping something down to a sharp edge right now.” Doyle scratched the scar on his cheek. It was a clever fake. When he wore it a long time, it itched. “She’s not really safe, left alone for any length of time. I do wish that girl worked for us.”

  “No, you don’t.” Grey crossed the room, hunkered down at the hearth, and set a thin log of beechwood on the fire. They’d need more wood in here. Adrian would feel the chill if his fever came back. The flames teased him with images, flickering and writhing. In tongues of fire, a dozen Anniques danced Gypsy dances, gleaming with sweat, sleek with scented oil. “She was at Bruges.”

  He could feel the change in the room.

  “Bruges,” Doyle said.

  “I was in the market square, in the café by the tower, waiting to be met. On the other side of the square was a half-grown Gypsy boy, juggling. He had four or five knives in the air, laughing. Enjoying himself the whole time.”

  “Annique,” Doyle said.

  “Annique.”

  “I’ve heard she makes a reasonably convincing boy.”

  “I didn’t know she was a woman till I saw her at Leblanc’s.”

  He’d nursed a cup of coffee, there in the square at Bruges, letting himself soak in some of that joy and brightness, letting it seep through the tense watch he was keeping. He’d remembered, later, that he’d been glad to see that boy. “He made a game of it, throwing ’em, hitting small, exact targets. Collected a fair capful of coins before he wandered off.”

  “She’s good with knives. Not up to the Hawker’s standard, but good.”

  “Nobody’s up to my standards,” Adrian said.

  There were pinecones in the box on the hearth. Grey lay a few on the fire and shifted logs with his fingers, coaxing a draft in. “An hour later Fletch came to tell me they’d been ambushed, and the gold was gone. McGill, Wainwright, and Tenn’s brother were dead.”

  Adrian put his bowl on the table. “I served with Wainwright in Paris.”

  “Tenn’s brother was one of mine,” Doyle said. “That was his second mission. Stephen Tennant. I took it hard when I heard.” He hooked his thumb into the boy’s bowl, tilted it, and looked in. “You going to finish this?”

  “No.”

  “Drink the wine, then.” Doyle stacked plate and bowl with big, tough hands. “It was supposed to be an easy exchange. The Albion plans for the gold.”

  The Albion plans were the tactical details for Napoleon’s invasion of England: the exhaustive accounting of troops, supplies, ships, routes, timetables; the date of the invasion; the landing points and the routes inland; the alternate dates for bad weather.

  With the plans, the English could turn back the invasion. Or they could ambush the incoming French fleet and blow it from the water. The plans were a priceless mine of intelligence about France: the strength of every ship, the soldiers of every company, the production of every factory. They could turn the balance of power.

  Thirty-six complete copies had been made. One copy, rumor said, had gone missing. When the offer came, he should have smelled treachery. The asking price was a handful of gold. Nothing. He’d have paid a hundred times that.

  He’d jumped at the chance to buy the plans and led his men into a trap and let them die. His mistake. His responsibility. “She was in Bruges. I’ve been looking for that Gypsy for six months.”

  Doyle said, “You think she did it? Because it was knife work?”

  “They died from single, exact hits to the neck. Expert throws, made from ambush. The French meant to kill us, right from the beginning.”

  Doyle was already shaking his head. “It’s not her. The girl was trained by Vauban, for God’s sake. That was a bloody, clumsy business at Bruges. Vauban wouldn’t have touched it with a barge pole.”

  “Bloody, not clumsy,” Grey said. “Three neat, identical wounds. How many people throw like that? And she was there.”

  “It’s not her. Hawker?”

  “It’s not her style.” Adrian took a sip of watered wine and grimaced. “We get reputations in the Game—you, me, Doyle, all of us. Annique Villiers is playful and wise and stealthy. Slip in, slip out, and you never know she’s been there. If she killed anybody, I never heard about it.”

  “That just means she’s good enough not to get caught.” Grey poked the fire a last time and stood up. “Leblanc says Vauban had the Albion plans.”

  Adrian snorted. “Leblanc’s an idiot.”

  “A truth widely known.” Doyle fingered the stubble on his chin. “But Vauban, meddling with treason? That incorruptible old revolutionary? I don’t believe it. Easy to accuse him now he’s dead, but—”

  “Vauban’s dead?” Adrian moved incautiously and winced and put his hand up to the bandage.

  “You hadn’t heard? The news is slow making the rounds. He died in his sleep. Ah…I guess it was six weeks ago. He was the last of the old guard. We won’t see his like again.” Doyle dropped the napkin on the tray. “I can tell you this, though—Vauban would chop off his own ballocks before he’d sell French secrets. That girl’s been with him since she was a pup. She’s made of the same steel he was.”

  Annique was in it up to her pretty eyebrows. Grey could see that, even if Doyle and Adrian didn’t. He’d know for
sure once he got her behind the bars at Meeks Street. He’d find out where she stashed the Albion plans. Give him a few weeks, and he’d know the color of her bedroom walls when she was seven. “You need me anymore? Adrian?”

  “I’ll manage. You’re wrong about her, you know.”

  “I’ll find out, won’t I? I’ll go eat and wash, then get her settled in.” He had control of his voice, but the latch clanked savagely in his hand as he opened the door.

  Damned if he’d fight her again. Or maybe this time she’d play the whore and offer to part those sweet thighs for him. If she offered, maybe he’d just take her. They could wrap themselves around each other and tussle that way for a change. He’d use her and roll aside and forget her. There’d be no magic to the woman when she was slick and sweaty underneath him. She’d be just another warm, willing body.

  That was a damned unprofessional way to think about a prisoner. “And maybe I’ll just chain her to the bed.” He didn’t glance back.

  Doyle said, “Robert…”

  Adrian said quietly. “Let him go. It’s between them, now.”

  Five

  “IT’S DARK IN HERE.” GREY’S VOICE WAS A RASP of sandpaper and velvet. He spoke in the familiar form, as one speaks to the most intimate of friends or to children or animals or servants. Or prostitutes.

  “Light candles if you wish. It makes no difference to me.” She spoke in the formal mode of speaking, which is how one talks to foreign spies who have kidnapped you.

  “I thought Doyle told you to get into the nightgown.”

  “He did, most certainly. I will let you know if ever I begin taking orders from Monsieur Doyle.” She faced the window, the nightgown twisted between her hands, and did not turn toward him. The night ahead would be one of immeasurable difficulty.

  Wind came to her off the fields, smelling of cows and the earth and apples. She felt a longing, sharp as a physical pain, to see the fields and the stars above them. It never left her in all these months, that ache.

  The shirt she wore billowed loose, then flattened possessively over her breasts and her hips, then blew loose again. Grey’s shirt. She had some wide knowledge of men. There were those who would find her alluring, so incongruously within a man’s shirt, with her feet bare on the floor and her hair farouche and uncombed about her face. In the so-obvious silk rag she held in her fingers, she would look the whore. Wearing a man’s shirt, she appeared the wise and subtle courtesan. There were no right choices for her tonight.