The Spymaster's Lady sl-1

by Joanna Bourne

  Doyle’s face didn’t change—he wouldn’t blink at the announcement that Annique was empress of the Chinese—but some signal of surprise leaked through. The mare shuffled nervously. Doyle made an odd whistling sound between his teeth, and the animal quieted.

  “Crikey. Blind?”

  “She took a saber cut to the skull, five months ago. There’s a scar hid up in her hair, if you go feeling for it.”

  “Cats in hip boots.” Doyle fetched a little ivory pick out of his waistcoat pocket and began a ruminative exploration of his back teeth. “Why don’t I know this? I heard she was in Marseilles with the mother. Never heard a whisper about the Cub being out of commission. Not from any of my sources. Not a syllable.”

  “She’s good at hiding it. She must’ve spent months practicing.” How long had it taken her to learn to fight in the dark?

  “That’s why we got her so easy. Blind and on the dodge.”

  “…and hungry and hurt and exhausted. It only took three of us to haul her in.” She picked up the coffee cup, eyes demurely lowered, smiling. He’d been wrong about the blue dress. It didn’t make her look like a whore. It made her look young and chic and carefree as a spring butterfly. “You ever hit a woman?”

  Doyle eyed him. “Missed doing that somehow. Fun, would you say?”

  “Not much. Makes you feel shabby as hell afterwards.”

  “Accident, I imagine.”

  “I was stupid. That doesn’t make it an accident.” He was the officer in charge. She was his prisoner, and he’d hurt her. There were no excuses. “I punched her solar plexus so hard she stopped breathing for a while. I don’t think I did any permanent damage, but keep an eye on her.”

  “I keep an eye on everything.” Doyle squatted and curled the mare’s hoof up against his thigh, matter-of-fact as any blacksmith. After a brief inspection, Doyle searched one-handed in his jacket pocket and fetched out a blunt probe. He scraped along the edge of the hoof, taking his time with it. A perfectionist, William Doyle. It’d saved their bacon a few times. “You going to talk about it?”

  “I let her get a line around my neck.” He slid a finger inside his cravat and pulled it aside to show the red line. It still hurt to swallow.

  “Now how the devil did she…?”

  “That damned nightgown. The cord tying it.”

  “The cord. Oh, hell. I should have spotted that. She made a garrote. Clever as a flock of jackdaws, that girl.”

  “You could say I achieved my objective. She’s stopped fighting. Do you know how much you have to hurt that woman before she gives up?”

  Doyle released the hoof. “I’ve known you a good long while, Robert. What’s it been?”

  “Ten years, maybe.”

  “All of that.” He moved on to the next hoof and picked it up. “Sometimes it shows, you coming in from the army instead of up through the ranks in the Service. If you’d spent even a year as a field agent, you’d know how dangerous our pretty little Annique is. You’d forget she’s got breasts and do what you had to. Then you’d eat a hearty breakfast the next morning.”

  “I did eat breakfast.” He sounded testy even to his own ears.

  “But now you’re brooding about it. Being a gentleman. Get yerself killed, doing that.” Doyle grunted and stepped back. “You stopped being a gentleman the day you joined the Service.”

  “Fine. Next time, you kick her in the belly, and I’ll hand out advice.” Across the courtyard, Annique chuckled at something Adrian said, a sound like water gurgling, sweet and easy, out of a china pitcher. Ordinary. Intimate. Relaxed.

  It irritated the hell out of him. “Leblanc’s men could ride into this courtyard any minute. She sits there giggling.”

  Doyle followed his gaze. “That, my friend, is sheer, unmitigated guts. She’s running for her life. There’s not a rock in Europe that girl can hide under.”

  “Leblanc’s going to kill her. Nothing to do with the Albion plans. He’s covering some private secret, something particularly damning. Any ideas?”

  Doyle shook his head. “With Leblanc it could be anything. He’s an evil bastard.”

  “What’s Fouché doing?”

  “Right about now, he’s probably wondering why one of his agents hasn’t reported in.” Doyle gave his imitation of a man contemplating fetlocks. Nobody knew more about the workings of French intelligence. “She could go to him—to Fouché. He won’t let Leblanc kill her, unless she’s been dabbling in treason with the Albion plans, which I take leave to doubt. But she’s useless to him, blind. That brothel the Secret Police keeps, the one in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He’ll put her to work in that, with his other girls.”

  The thought made a foul taste in Grey’s mouth. “Decadent place. Does she know?”

  “Bound to. He’s been trying to use her as a whore since she turned fifteen. The mother’s dead. Her old master, Vauban, is dead. Soulier would help her—he’s senior enough, God knows, and she’s been his pet since she was knee high—but he’s sitting on our doorstep in London. Everybody who could protect the Cub is dead or out of France. Fouché’s going to pimp her.”

  “That’s cold-blooded, even for the French.”

  “No malice in it. He’s old school, Fouché is. Don’t much like a female agent working anywhere but on her back.” Doyle stooped to check the buckles on the girth straps. “There’s men who’d enjoy bedding a blind girl.”

  “Hell.”

  “We all know the risks, being in the Game.” Doyle dusted his hands, nothing in particular on his face. “But it’s worse for women.”

  It could be a lot worse for women. He hated sending his female agents out into the field.

  The innyard gates stood open to the road. High cirrus streamers and a gray haze shimmered on the horizon to the west. That was tomorrow’s weather, and the next day. It’d be raining when they ran the final gauntlet down to the coast. Leblanc’s men would be waiting for them. “She was running for England when she left Marseilles. I’m sure of it. It’s the only place she’s safe from Leblanc.”

  “Makes sense. Leblanc on one side, Fouché on the other. No refuge in France. She was headed for Soulier, in London, for help.”

  “And she runs into us instead. She’s ours.” Mine.

  “We got ourselves one little French agent.” Doyle smiled. “I’ll bet she’s just packed with secrets. She’ll deal with us. She’s got no choice at all.”

  “She’ll realize it, after a while.” He’d take her to Meeks Street, to his headquarters. She’d be safe there, and he’d have all the time in the world to delve into that clever, complicated mind. She’d tell him everything he wanted to know. He was good at what he did. “She’s already getting used to the idea. Making accommodation.”

  “Is she now? Then I don’t have to worry about choking me lungs out on some spare bit o’ string she picks up, do I?”

  “If you don’t turn your back on her.”

  Doyle turned his frown to the horse. “I’ll be careful. Blind. Stone the crows.”

  At the rustic table, between coffee cup and a basket of rolls, Adrian lounged on his elbows, looking like he’d had a hard night of it, drinking. Annique kept her eyes downcast, looking slightly abstracted. She had a way of sweeping her fingers out before her when she reached for things, a slow, graceful gesture without hesitation or clumsiness. Adrian didn’t look wounded. Annique didn’t look blind.

  “Grand, ain’t they?” Doyle gave no sign he was looking at them, but, of course, he was. He worked his way along the reins, slipping them back and forth in the terrets, laying them grain side up, checking for wear. “Professionals. It’s a pure pleasure watching ’em work. Wish we could recruit her. I could use that girl, even blind as a bat.”

  The wind had kicked up a bit, tugging tree shadows back and forth across the terrace. Annique smiled down into her coffee like it was a treat Adrian had invented just for her. That smile was like a stroke down his groin. Madness. He wanted to stomp across the courtyard and drag the gir
l upstairs and show her why she shouldn’t go smiling like that in public.

  He made himself stop watching her. “Tell me about Annique Villiers. There’s no folder on her in London for some reason.”

  “Odd. Well, they don’t use her against the British. What do you want to know? She’s Pierre Lalumière’s natural daughter, for one thing.”

  “Lalumière? The one who wrote The Ten Questions?”

  “And Natural Justice and the Law, and Essays on Equality, and the rest.” Doyle gave that a chance to sink in.

  Pierre Lalumière. He’d read every word that man had ever written. At Harrow, they’d sat up late in the common room, arguing passionately about those books. He’d come away half a revolutionary, reading Lalumière.

  “The mother used a couple names. Lucille Villiers. Lucille Van Clef. She and Lalumière popped up out of nowhere about twenty years ago, working for the radicals. Lots of the old radicals were discreet about their origins. The king’s justice had a way of falling on the whole family, back in those days.” Doyle began checking harness, running his fingers inside every strap that touched the horse. “Lalumière got hung one night in Lyon, and Lucille ended up working for the French Secret Police. Arguably the most beautiful woman in Europe. I could give you a list of men she slept with.”

  “And Annique?”

  “Annique.” Doyle sucked at his teeth. “Well. Been in the Game all her life. Raised by the Secret Police, really. Started at seven or eight, running errands for Soulier, back when he was Section Chief for the south of Europe. Couple years later they sent her out as a field observer. That’s when they dressed her up like a boy. She was one of Vauban’s inner circle, one of his five or six special ones. That’s how good she is.” He wiped his hands against his jacket. “I ran into her a few times in Vienna. Lovely thing, of course, but it’s more than that. You’d notice her if she was plain as a rug. She’s about twice as alive as anyone else. You can see it in her even now.”

  Adrian was adding hot milk to her coffee, handing her a roll, unobtrusively doing those things that were hardest for a blind woman to do without betraying herself.

  “Thick as inkle weavers,” Doyle said. “Pretty, ain’t it?”

  “Hawker’s a good interrogator.” He kept annoyance out of his voice. “Women like him. We can use that.”

  “Might work. She’s young and scared, for all she’s a professional. She’s going to be looking for someone to talk to.” Doyle flicked a look at him. “Hawker ain’t gonna lay a finger on a woman of yours. He’s just bedeviling you.”

  Damn the pair of them. “I’m putting Annique up next to you on the box. She has sense enough not to jump from up there. If you can get an arm around her…Her back muscles wind up a little before she attacks. Gives you some warning.”

  “Right.”

  “Try to get her to talk to you. Be nice.”

  “I like being the nice one.” Doyle screwed his seamed and evil face into an innocent expression. “Wonder what they’re saying.”

  “…ABOUT two o’clock on your plate,” Adrian was saying. “They have the first horse hitched. That looks like the last bags going up on top. We have five or six minutes.”

  “I will eat with dispatch, then.” She kept her eyes down, directed to her hands. That had been the very first trick she taught herself. She pointed her eyes to her hands so her gaze did not wander about, staring at nothing, telling the whole world she was blind. Her hands she kept carefully beside her plate. She had burned herself already this morning, encountering the coffeepot. She did not wish to do so again.

  The roll was indeed at two o’clock on her plate. She broke it into three neat pieces and ate deliberately, spacing the bites out. It had been a hard trip from Marseilles, and her stomach was not yet used to enough food.

  “You have sense enough to eat slowly.” Adrian approved. “You’ve been hungry before.”

  “You, too, I think.”

  “I was starving pretty much all the time till I got old enough to steal for a living.” He chuckled. “Maybe I’d be a great walking mountain like Grey if I’d got fed regular.”

  “Almost certainly. You will sit back in the chair more, Adrian. If you wish to faint, do not knock my cup of coffee into my lap doing it.”

  The table told her of his movement. “Bouquets of womanly sympathy. Would you love me if I had Grey’s muscles and walked around towering over all these Frenchmen? I wouldn’t be half the agent I am if I had his height. Too conspicuous.”

  “I find myself not in the least sympathetic to the problems of being an English spy in France. I would not waste my love on such as you, in any case. You should eat something, especially if that man is to remove bullets from you today, as you say.”

  “I don’t think food will help. Disconcerting when your surgeon dreads the procedure more than you do. When were you hungry, Annique? The Terror?”

  She chewed and swallowed. It was harmless enough to speak of this. “At that time, yes, but not in Paris. I was living with the Rom, the Kalderash, for those years. That life is hard in the winter, if the times are troubled.”

  “Stolen by the Gypsies, were you?”

  “That is a very false story, as you must know, being the so-intelligent spy that you are. The Rom never steal children, having many of their own, since they know as well as anyone how to make babies. It is not a matter of great difficulty, in case you wondered.”

  “I’ve heard that. I wouldn’t try to hide that roll if I were you. No place for it under those clothes, delightful as they are.”

  “It is that this dress is not decent then,” she said darkly. “I suspected as much.”

  “It’s charming. Leave the roll next to the plate, please, and refrain from pilfering crusts in my presence. Roussel’s over there handing up baskets to the coach. Enough food for a small army. One benefit of getting kidnapped by Grey, Fox Cub—you’ll eat well so long as we manage to hold on to you.”

  “I will eat well for some time then.” She had room in her stomach for a last sip of coffee or a bite more bread. Not both. She chose the coffee. She did love coffee.

  Nine Garches, near Paris

  “IMBÉCILE.” JACQUES LEBLANC SPREAD THE MAP flat, fingering across the roads of Normandy. “You waste my time with your whining.”

  “She is in Paris,” Henri said sullenly. “They are on foot, without food, without money. The boy is wounded…”

  “The boy is certainly dead. They abandoned him long since in some alleyway.” Leblanc unrolled the map further. “By now they have horses. Even a carriage perhaps.”

  “The Englishman will go to ground. If Annique escapes him, she will go to her friends in Paris. Why would she—”

  “She has friends everywhere. Be silent.” Leblanc set two inches of Normandy shoreline between thumb and index finger. “This is the stronghold of smuggling. The path to England. Together or apart, injured or well, they must come here.”

  How long would it take the English spy to break Annique? Two days? Three? The Englishman was a hard brute. Even Henri was afraid of him.

  This was a problem in simple logic. Allow three days for the Englishman to break the little bitch and strip the location of the Albion plans from her. Then…Leblanc walked his fingers upon the map, town to town to town. Where had the plans been hidden all these months? Paris? Rouen? Near the Channel? They could be in England itself. The girl could have taken the plans to England for safekeeping when she left Bruges. There had been enough time.

  It did not matter where they were. In the end—this was the Englishman’s great weakness—in the end, the Englishman must cross the Channel. He had no choice but to go to the coast and fall into the trap laid for him.

  Henri did not have enough sense to be quiet. “There is no proof she is with him. No proof she has ever left Paris. We should be searching the—”

  “This is the Fox Cub, you fool, not one of your poulettes. She walked here from Marseilles, blind. Do you think she sits sucking her thumb in som
e corner in the Quartier Latin waiting for you? If she is not with the Englishman, she will still go to the Channel. She goes to Soulier. She thinks she will be safe with him.”

  Henri said stubbornly, “I think—”

  “You do not think. Faugh. I am surrounded by idiots.”

  Events were escaping his control. Even now, Annique might be crawling to the Englishman, broken and begging, telling him anything he asked. Telling him about Bruges.

  The map crackled. He closed his fist over Normandy. This was not disaster. Not disaster. He would scoop them up like bugs. The Englishman would be stopped. Even if he spilled some story of Bruges, who would believe what an English spy said? It could be quashed, every whisper of it. Every breath that spoke of it could be stopped.

  And if he had the Albion plans on him…ventre bleu, but there was no limit to the gold a clever man could get for those plans.

  It would not be like Bruges, with all his work, all his planning, cheated from him. For what? A ridiculous few coins. An insult of coins.

  He pressed his thumb on the city of Rouen and marked the road to the coast. “You will order patrols here, here…and here. Stop everything that moves and search it.”

  “We cannot stop every—”

  “Look for a blind woman, for God’s sake. That is simple enough for even you.”

  The Albion plans had dissolved from Bruges like a puff of smoke. He had torn that inn apart, looking for them. This time, they would not get away, not if he had to rip them from the belly of that bitch with his own hands.

  “I will order patrols.” Henri gave a terse, insolent nod. Another discourtesy he would eventually regret.

  He would salvage this calamity Henri had created. He would retrieve the Albion plans. And he would shut Annique Villier’s mouth. When she was dead, he would be safe.

  “Here…and across here…place the customs. Let them do some useful work for a change. Send our men here.” His fingers tented, spiderlike, above the names written into the blue wash that marked the Channel. These were the villages, tiny, fish-stinking, each with fifty huts and three dozen boats turned down on the sand. “She knows this coast from the days of the Vendée. She made allies among the smugglers, men whose names she never reported to me. This is where she will go, if she is free.” He sat back abruptly and pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. The room was too warm. “Unless she expects me to look for her there. Perhaps…” He frowned at the south. “If we spread the patrols…”