The Spymaster's Lady sl-1

by Joanna Bourne

  “You are not a woman one lies to with impunity. Whatever we say, you will decide for yourself. Wisely, I think.”

  She would choose correctly in the end. She could never be of the cult that worshipped Napoleon. Not Peter’s daughter. It would be her terrible duty to betray France. His job, and Robert’s, to reconcile her to the guilt of it.

  “I speak politely to you because I have been taught respect for age and white hairs.” She let off a few loud discords to make her point. “You become sure of me. It is a mistake on your part. I am a woman of infinite cunning. I will give to you precisely as much information as I wish, no more. And I will do it for my own reasons, in my own time.”

  A formidable woman, as Paxton said. Thank God Robert knew how to deal with her.

  She began to poke through Bach’s “Prelude in C Major.” Her hands could never be clumsy, of course, but she was utterly without an ear for music. He chose the red sofa, a deliberately uncomfortable piece of furniture, and closed his eyes and accepted his penance.

  The notes ceased abruptly. “Ils arrivent.”

  They were coming. She stood and gripped the back of a chair, keeping well away from the window and its chance of snipers. Vauban had trained her supremely well. The young girl longing for her lover’s return was wholly subsumed in the experienced agent who never made mistakes.

  Now even he could hear the horses. Out front, Ferguson stumped up the basement stairs to greet them as the hackney pulled to a halt. They were back, safe. From the corner of his eye he saw Annique truly relax for the first time in hours.

  He is back. She pressed her hand to her stomach and felt the knots untie, one by one. Was she not foolish to worry about Grey, who had survived battles, when he went upon a trifling errand? Being in love made her an idiot.

  Galba pretended not to notice her weakness. She was disarmed, utterly, to be the recipient of such delicate politeness.

  Marguerite came in first, Grey and Adrian following. She looked extremely pleased with herself, so it was even more clear that all had gone well.

  “Done.” Adrian tossed his cane on a table and spun his hat down on top of it. “Smooth as silk. I told you it would be.”

  Marguerite’s fingers worked at the ribbons of her bonnet. “I saw the child myself, on board, still sleeping. She is recovering. Everyone is agreed to let her go with her father, though the man is a rogue.”

  “Walk in. Steal someone. Walk out.” Adrian’s eyes gleamed. “I love this work.”

  Doyle was the last one in. He portrayed some low English type in a leather coat and a neckcloth with brightly colored dots upon it. “Lazarus is annoyed. Mostly at that young fool.”

  “I’ve annoyed him before.”

  “How you managed to stay alive as long as you have…” But his Marguerite brought him a glass of wine from the sideboard and kissed him upon the mouth, right there in the parlor. It was a serious, married kiss that looked as if it had been practiced a good while.

  “You like him dressed rough, do you, Maggie?” Adrian dodged back from the small fist Marguerite raised in his direction. He was like a buzzing fly when it amused him to be. “Must be like having an affair with the groom. You should try that sometime when he’s off wandering in France.”

  “You, Hawker me lad, are going to get your comeuppance one fine day,” Doyle said. “Maggie don’t need no advice who to have affairs with. Woman with a mind of her own, she is.”

  Marguerite chuckled. “I prefer my lovers more soigné, but a woman my age cannot be particular. I think this one will clean up nicely when I get him home.”

  Adrian went to help Giles pour wine. “Lazarus didn’t slit my throat, the smugglers owe us a huge favor, and the Service walks away clean. Ye gods, sometimes I even amaze myself.”

  And Grey had come to her, come as if there were no one else in the room. He put a glass into her hand and closed her fingers around it. How could she think at all when he looked at her this way, as if he wished to drag her to his lair upstairs and make her naked?

  Adrian lifted his glass. “To espionage. The bladeless sword…”

  “…without a hilt.” Galba made the answer. “My congratulations. You’ve done well, all of you.”

  She toasted with the others. How easy to sink into the camaraderie here, to pretend she was one of them.

  It was time and past time she escaped this house. She was disconcerted by many of her thoughts nowadays. Day by day she could feel her certainties seeping away. Each night she slept curled in Grey’s arms, warmed by his rumbling breath as he slept. She felt herself slowly become Welsh, as a caterpillar might lie, puzzling in its cocoon, dreaming and changing. Soon she would not want to leave. Soon, perhaps, she would trust the British and give up her secrets to them. She felt them waiting for that, Grey and the others.

  Marguerite strolled across the room, drawing her fingers through her hair. Sunlight dappling her blue dress as she passed the windows. Thin curtains swayed with the wind, molding the bars, blowing loose. Outside a coach approached. It slowed.

  A shaft of uneasiness pierced her. Wrong. Something was wrong. In profile, passing the window, Marguerite could be any woman. Any target. “Marguerite!”

  “Maggie,” Doyle said sternly. “You’re making a shadow. Get away from the window.”

  The carriage outside. Slowing. Wrong. Wrong.

  Adrian already had his hand on Maggie. The bullet shattered the window, and Maggie fell like a stone.

  That shot was the signal. The world crashed apart. Windows burst inward, one after another, in thundering blasts. Splinters of glass flew like a million spears in the air. She hit the floor. Hid her face. Broken glass cascaded down on top of her. Her arms stung and began to bleed. The curtains writhed like mad ghosts. More shots. Chaos.

  “Maggie!”

  Adrian’s voice cut across Doyle’s cry. “Not hit. She’s not hit.”

  Which was a lie. She could see blood upon Marguerite’s head. But she knew what Adrian meant—that Maggie was not killed.

  Outside, horses neighed in terror. Hooves rang on the cobbles.

  Rattling concussion pounded and pounded and tore the room apart. The ceiling caught the force of a direct hit. Plaster thudded down around her. She wriggled and crunched forward. Women’s clothes were no good for this. No protection from the glass. She cut herself. Lead smacked the rug an inch from her face. She crawled forward, right there, through the path of that bullet. Shots hit the bars and bricks and marble sill and bounced off, striking at random. Death riding little slugs of metal. Everywhere.

  A pause. Then three shots came in rapid succession. Another pause. That was reloading. She crawled fast toward the front wall.

  There’d been nine separate blasts in the first volley. Three in the second. Shotguns and rifles, not muskets. Probably three or four men only.

  She made it to the wall, to Maggie, who seemed to be unhurt, except for a cut through the scalp. Her face was bloody. But everyone was bloody now, from the shower of glass. Maggie had sensibly rolled to the wall under the window, which was the safest of all places at that moment. Adrian crouched over her, guarding her with his body, his knife upraised like a cold, black flame.

  He had an extra knife to toss to her, grâce a Dieu. She wedged in next to him, putting her body also between Maggie and the bullets. There was time now to be afraid. Time to consider the doors to this room. Soon, men might break through. She wished she had two knives.

  Doyle scuttled toward them, pistol drawn. “You hurt, Maggie?”

  “No. Only crushed.”

  Another battering volley. Lead hit the wallpaper and gouged holes six inches deep. The piano took a direct hit and died noisily.

  “That’s my girl.” Doyle stretched to peer through the broken window. He shouted to Grey, “One coach. Men inside. One on top. Nobody on the ground.”

  Doyle kept out of her line of throwing, Adrian did also, a courtesy of great value in this tense moment. This was the advantage of working with men o
f some experience. She was also relieved beyond measure that no one was bleeding much or thrashing with a wound. How much longer that could continue, she did not know.

  Two shots in rapid succession. Then more. The red velvet sofa whooshed and sucked air. Feathers joined the plaster dust floating in the room. Galba had folded himself tight in the corner, keeping out of his operatives’ way, his lips thinned, his eyes frigid and distant.

  “Four shooters. One driver,” Grey announced. He calculated the interval of the shots, as she had. He was flat, elbows braced on the floor, covering the front entrance. It was a classic position, the way Grey held that gun, pure army. The manner in which he ignored the bullets slapping into the floor around him was also purely army and showed that he had been much in combat. He rapped out, “Out of here. Everybody. Into the hall. Giles.”

  Giles had his keys out. He half stood to open the door. He was young enough, that boy, to think he was immortal.

  “Down, you fool!” Grey grabbed him and shoved the idiot behind what was left of the sofa. “And stay down.” He waited, counting. A double blast shook the room.

  Smooth as if he could slip between bullets, Grey launched himself at the wall, at the bracket that had held the jagged remnant of a lamp. He grabbed the brass sconce and twisted in a wide circle. Inside the wall, smoothly, the bolt pulled back, and the door swung free.

  “Giles. Anson. Out,” Grey ordered. “Into the safe haven. Doyle, take the front. Annique, can Maggie be moved?”

  “She is not hurt.” She raised her voice above a volley of gunfire. “Except cut.” A spindly table chose this minute to rock and crash to the floor, carrying with it the last still-intact lamp globe.

  “Get her out of here. Adrian, with me.”

  Maggie, once no one was kneeling upon her, showed every ability to crawl with commendable speed. Halfway down the hall Galba opened a door and pushed Giles ahead of him. The safe haven room was windowless, small and dark, but it would give some security from the bullets. She pushed Maggie through and slammed the door behind her. She stood with her back to it.

  Grey met her eyes as he passed. He nodded one swift approval and headed to the back of the house, leaving her as the last guard of those within the safe haven. Wholly and completely cold was her Grey at moments like this, most entirely deadly.

  So. This was her post. She knelt, hunkering down as far as was practical. Bullets spat through the front window, down the hall, and pockmarked the plaster. She did not like the thought of one hitting her. Her knife—good. It was completely familiar. All Adrian’s knives were of the same balance within the weight of a pea.

  She had a good view of the front door. Doyle, in the parlor, would take the first man through. She would take the second and perhaps give him time to reload.

  The piano was hit again, more bass this time. Then pistol shots began outside, a sound like the popping of pine logs in a fire. Grey had circled the house and was shooting into the coach. Doyle took this as a signal to raise himself and fire out the window. He dropped to the floor to reload. She heard the coach rolling away, and in a minute gunfire ceased altogether.

  Silence. Her ears were dull and stuffy. Plaster dust, feathers, and gunpowder hung in the air. The walls of the parlor dribbled plaster and strips of wallpaper. She waited, unmoving. Doyle, too, stayed in position, his back to the wall, gun held close to his chest. In the safe haven behind her there was no sound. So much experience they had, all of them.

  “It’s me,” Grey called from outside. “Hold fire.” And when the front door opened, it was indeed Grey, not anyone she should throw a knife into, so she stood up and breathed out, long and slow. She had not thought the attackers would loiter when men began to shoot back at them.

  The door of the safe haven opened behind her. Galba emerged into the hall, stiff and angry. “Is anyone hurt?”

  Grey walked toward them, his pistol primed and pointed to the rug. “Stillwater has a sprained ankle. Ferguson got cut on the arm. Nothing serious.” He touched her face, turned it to see where she was bleeding. “You’re fine.” He said it as if she were one of his men. It warmed her that he should think of her that way, that he did not make of her a civilian like Maggie and Giles. He set his gun on the hall table and took out his handkerchief to stop the bleeding on her forehead. Doyle came to take Maggie away, picking pieces of glass from her hair, his huge bearlike hold tight around her. Outside, she could hear men swearing imaginatively.

  Leblanc had come all the way to London to kill her, braving the wrath of Soulier, knowing the the British Service would take great interest in the events at Bruges. Now, more than ever, he would be desperate. He committed this outrage on a street where children played, where women might come out of their houses at any minute. What a dog of a man he was.

  “Someone,” Galba said, “has offended me. Leblanc?”

  “Leblanc.” Grey’s eyes were the color of granite.

  “That was Leblanc.” She was sick to know what she had brought upon this house. “That was his first try.”

  Thirty-five

  GREY PUSHED HER DOWN UPON THE BED AND pressed his mouth to the cut on her forehead. He ran his tongue across it.

  “You search for glass?” she said. “You do not need to. The cuts are clean. I washed thoroughly, and Maggie and I combed one another’s hair to remove it all. Now that I talk to her I find she is an interesting woman, even though she is an aristo. Did you know her oldest daughter speaks four languages and she is only eleven? Doyle took Maggie down to that indecent bathtub to wash her.”

  “So he did.”

  “I hear what you are saying beneath your voice, but I am sure washing is all they will do in that tub.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.” Now her elbow fascinated him. He set his teeth there, lightly gnawing away at her. It was one big shock after another when he did that. He drove her to the edge of madness, sometimes, before he entered her and released the hunger he had built.

  “I had thought an aristo would be more respectable.” She would speak of nothing serious, tonight. She would only laugh. For one little hour I will not think of what I must do. “Are you certain you are not French? This seems very French to me, somehow.”

  “English since the Ark. What would you know about how Frenchmen make love?” He ran the sharp edge of his teeth along her shoulder.

  “I have heard things, me, though I have never heard of the things that you do. I do not think there are even names for them.”

  His hands slipped beneath her and lifted her up so her breasts crested under his mouth. He made tiny bites till she clutched at the sheets, holding on, twitching even before he touched her.

  “You start talking French when we’re in bed. Did you know that?” His voice became deep when he was aroused. He sounded like the bottom keys on the piano.

  “I did not notice.” Yes, she said it in French.

  She was a stretched drum, thrumming with vibration, as he kissed his way along her ribs, exploring each with his tongue. She heard herself crooning softly. Maybe it was in French. Who could say?

  Having brought her so far, he settled down beside her so they could talk. He liked to talk in bed. She, herself, was not in the mood for talking at such times.

  The candles were out. He had drawn the heavy blue curtains back from the window. Moonlight slid over him, outlining every bone, each muscle. Across his deltoid an old knife cut had healed into a straight white line so flat she could not feel it with her fingertips. She would miss that scar when she left him. If Soulier did not kill her, she would miss it for all the long years of her life.

  “You’re worrying.” He drew his thumb across her lower lip. “I want you to stop that. I want you soft and supple as noodles, not worried and fighting me.”

  “If I were fighting you, mon ami, you would know it.”

  “Maybe you’re fighting yourself.” His thumb continued down her throat, past the joining of the collarbone, between her breasts, down the entire journey to her belly
button. His expression was unreadable. “You’d run from me, if you could. Even this minute.”

  He saw too much, always. How could she not love him? “Grey, I…”

  “It’s in your eyes every time you pass a window. You’re thinking how to get out. What’s out there you have to do?”

  “This and that. I do not want to talk about it.” She had only an hour or two left with him. She would not spoil it.

  “And we’re back to being enemy agents.” He slipped his arm under her shoulder so they both lay looking up at the ceiling. “I wish to God we’d met some other way. You could have come to Littledean—that’s my village—on May Day. You’d be walking along the way you do, chewing on some piece of donkey’s meal, and I’d see you—”

  “Am I dressed as a boy? It is depraved of you, to notice a boy in that way.”

  “You have on that green dress you wore at dinner the other night.”

  She wiggled closer, warming her skin against his. “I am foolish to walk the fields in such clothing.”

  “This is my dream. I get to say what you’re wearing. So…You’re walking by the forge. We have a big party on the green at May Day with races and dancing and a bonfire and everybody gets drunk. You stop to see what’s going on. I toss a couple louts out of the way and ask you to dance.”

  “I say, ‘Yes, thank you.’”

  “So you do. Then I swing you around till you’re too dizzy to stand up…between the dancing and the cider. After a bit, I lure you off into the woods and slip you out of your clothes.”

  “I do not go into the woods alone with men. I learned that before I even had breasts, as much as I ever got any.”

  “Are you fishing for compliments? You have splendid breasts.” Swiftly, he rolled on his side and leaned over her, tracing the air above her breasts. Not touching. “Perfection. Well, two perfections, really.”

  The feeling of him not touching her…Lovemaking is of the mind, not a grappling of anatomies. There was nothing Grey did not know about leading her mind where he wanted it to go.