The Spymaster's Lady sl-1

by Joanna Bourne

  “We walk in among the trees, past the old mill, down the spinney,” he said. “There’s green places in the woods full of flowers. I spread my coat under us, on the grass.”

  “We lie together,” she whispered.

  “Till dawn. And I tumble headlong into love with you. Do you stay with me, Annique? Or do you get up and brush yourself off and walk away?”

  The Head of Section for England stripped himself to his soul in front of her. He was easy to love. “I do not want to hear the end of that story. I would rather go back to dancing on the green.”

  “Or making love on the forest floor. That’s a good part, don’t you think?” He bent to her breasts, breathing upon them. If he expected her to talk with him, he should not do such things. Her hands wrapped themselves around his forearm where the tendons and muscles were tough as leather. He was a stern man in every way. Except with her, sometimes.

  His breath moved across her face, across her closed eyelids. “If we were in Littledean, you’d wake up with bits of flowers in your hair. You wouldn’t want to run anywhere at all. You might even fall in love.”

  “I was a little in love with Robert, when I knew him, before he turned into you and locked me up.”

  “I can’t let you loose. Leblanc would kill you.”

  “Perhaps.” It was not possible to shrug, lying down.

  “What do you know about him? What’s this secret he’s going to kill you for?”

  She had the Head of the British Section in bed with her suddenly. She hated it when that happened. “You are persistent.” She dropped her hands from him. “Let us discuss gun emplacements in Toulon instead. I can be extremely witty about the gun emplacements of Toulon.”

  The next instant the spymaster was gone, and it was Robert who smiled down at her hungrily. “Later.” He nuzzled her breast, sucking, and the pang of it came between her legs. She wanted to groan and curl around the sharp longing that struck her there. “We’ll get to gun emplacements later. I have a whole list of secrets I’ll seduce out of you.”

  “You. You do not seduce anything out of me. You do not talk politics at all, not even when I become entirely mindless, and you could make me agree to a theocracy ruled by mice.”

  He laughed at that, her so-serious Grey, whom she could make laugh. “Galba’s the one for political theory. I’m a practical man, and you have a very pretty belly button. Have I told you that? Like an acorn cup. Just the right size.”

  “The right size for what? Oh, for doing that with. But that is not erotic, that only tickles.” She began to breathe fast. “I keep expecting you to corrupt me with argument, and you do not.”

  He kissed his way down and down her belly. “I’ll get around to corrupting you.”

  “What was I speaking of?”

  “Politics. No. Lie back a bit. We’re not in a hurry. I’ll see if I can change your opinion about belly buttons. More important than politics anyway.”

  “It is a fault in you to be of such cynicism. You are…You…I have decided it is, after all, erotic, what you are doing.”

  “Mmmm…?”

  She trembled because Grey kissed the soft skin in the inner curve of her thigh. “I will tell you…I am abjectly susceptible to this particular thing…you are about to do.”

  “Are you now?”

  “I did not think I would be, when this was described to me. It sounded…rather silly…at the time.”

  “Silly. Well then.” He began to kiss between her legs.

  She could no longer speak. He transformed her to a creature of liquid fire, all desire. Her hips thrust in rhythmic, shuddering motion. She became only a hunger, only the need to be joined with this man.

  She heard herself whispering, “So beautiful. You are for me, beautiful. Only you…” When he made her like this, her mouth was not sufficiently connected to her brain. It said more than she meant to say.

  He waited until her breath sobbed in and out, until she clutched at him, at the bedclothes. Then he loomed above her, looking down.

  “We can talk politics, if you’d like.”

  She gasped. “I do not…No. Let us not.”

  “Sure about that?”

  She needed him, such need that she shook with it. The skin of his chest was slick and salty on her lips. It was impossible not to taste, not to draw her tongue over harsh, curling hairs, over sweaty skin, over the flat, dark, alien nipple. He shuddered when she did that. She felt it. They had such power, each over the other. “You, Monsieur Grey, are the devil.”

  He smiled, slow and complacent. He had forgotten with whom he dealt.

  She employed one of the wrestling tricks René had taught her all those years ago. Grey was not expecting it. He flipped over most satisfactorily onto his back, and she climbed on top, straddling him.

  “The women of my family,” she bent to whisper in his ear, “know exactly how to deal with cunning foreign spies like you.”

  He did not look disconcerted. Perhaps he had known that trick, after all. His hands enclosed her hips, one side and the other, deep and strong against her flesh, and he thrust upward. Between clenched teeth he breathed out, “Yes. Just like that. That’s right. Yes.”

  He was a man who controlled sternly the passion that lived at his heart. In bed, he set it free. It was not his practiced skill or his huge, hard body that drove her to madness. It was the fierceness of him.

  She felt it now, gathering like the wildness of a thunderstorm. He was not slow and careful, but a fury like a beast. No more thought. No questions or answers. She wrapped her legs about him and rode the storm. Rode the thunder. Masculine power jolted through her. Power unending. She took indescribable pleasure from him and arched back and cried out into the night.

  MUCH later, when they were quietly side by side, snuggled against the cold that came in from the window, she lay her head upon his arm. Her last hours with him were slipping away. He would sleep soon. Then she must go.

  He said, “I could protect you from Leblanc if you’d tell me what’s going on.”

  She did not even bother to answer, just shook her head. Outside, a mist rose over the city, glowing in the distant streetlamps. The cobbles would be damp and slippery when she had to run.

  She stretched so her lips were next to his ear. It was, after all, the last time. “I will tell you a truth, Grey. What I have for you is love, deep to my heart. Only love could hurt this much. I wanted you to know that.”

  “You’re saying good-bye to me again. I wish you’d stop that. I’m not going to let Leblanc get to you.”

  “I just wanted to tell you.”

  “Go to sleep, Annique.

  “Leblanc will kill someone in this house if he is not stopped. He knows where I am, and he is very dangerous. It would be far better if you let me go, to face him on my own.”

  “Never. Go to sleep.”

  Thirty-six

  SHE SLIPPED DOWN THE STAIRS LIKE A SHADOW, naked, wearing only shoes, her clothing bundled under her arm. It would be ten or fifteen minutes before Grey stirred in his sleep and felt for her and realized she was gone from his bed. She had that long.

  At the end of the hall, a single yellow flame burned in a glass chimney. But she had counted these steps. She could have walked this path blind. Surprises of glass crunched in the carpet under her feet. Ferguson had not been able to sweep it all up. For this one night the monster dog was not stalking the halls, slavering and famished, seeking human flesh.

  The door to the front parlor was closed, locked with its expensive Bramah lock. But Grey had opened this door from the other side with a hidden lever. In this devious house, doubtless there was a release on this side as well.

  There is a truth of locks and hidden places. If the same mind contrives two, they are alike in flavor. In the parlor, the release was a sconce on the wall. Here…? The mirror at the end of the hall flickered with the shadow of her pale, naked body, as she made her silent search. A narrow mar-quetry table clung tightly against the wall, so tightly
she could not squeeze her fingers behind it.

  It was the back left leg that lifted to the side. A hidden bolt snicked. The door to the parlor clicked. Cool air touched her face, blowing in from the glassless windows.

  Ferguson’s broom leaned against the wall. She brought it with her. Two minutes had passed since she arose from bed.

  She did not pause to congratulate herself. Softly, she picked her way across the parlor. The floor had been roughly swept. She made no sound, walking through. Broken furniture was pushed back against the walls. The hideous sideboard was unscathed. It was typical of battles that the ugliest things emerged unharmed. The piano was a ruin of twisted wire and splintered wood. No scales would ever again be practiced upon it. One heartening thought amid much destruction.

  How many broken rooms had she walked through when she lived among armies? She had seen houses as wealthy as this, shelled and looted and left open to the weather. This parlor had the smell of a battle ruin—gunpowder and plaster dust and, faintly at the edges, blood.

  One image filled her mind, plucked from the confusion and fear this afternoon. An image of the window.

  The bars were lines of solid black against the gray fog, lit by the streetlamp outside. She slid her fingers along the sill. Yes. She’d seen shotgun blasts hit here again and again. In the deep crevice, the middle bar shifted in its mooring.

  She would bend this bar. This birdcage would open, and the bird would fly free.

  Ferguson’s broomstick was still in her hand. She wedged it hard against the metal and pried. Pried again, panting with effort. The lead that secured iron into marble rattled and crumbled. It was moving.

  Another try. She set her foot against the wall and racked herself, calling on every muscle, on desperation, on all the strength of her will. With agonizing slowness, the bar bent.

  Again. Gasping, she set a new hold. This was not the first obstacle she had approached. Like many others, it was convinced, reluctantly, to move aside.

  Again. This time, when her hold slipped, she stepped back. Panting, she measured the gap with her outstretched hands. It was enough. Just enough. Men who put bars across windows never believed how little a space is needed to squeeze through if you are small and know exactly how to do it.

  Ten minutes. It had been all of ten minutes by now. Quickly, she tossed her bundle of clothing into the night, to the paved space in front of the house. She sent her shoes following.

  Giles and Ferguson had knocked out the last of the glass, preparing for the glaziers tomorrow, but malicious splinters lurked everywhere. She sliced the palm of her hand, climbing to the windowsill. Naked, lubricated by fear and blood, she squirmed between the bars.

  She had always been thin, and the long, dark road from the south of France had fined her down even more. But it was not easy getting through. Iron edges scraped skin. Unyielding stone and metal bruised muscle and bone. It was necessary to close her mind firmly against pain.

  Soon Grey would awaken and find the bed empty. That was also a pain she must close her mind to.

  And she was out.

  She crouched on the windowsill, drew her legs under her, and launched herself outward, past the kitchen stairwell, with its little sharp spikes, to the paved space beyond. She hit and caught herself with outstretched hands and turned it into a roll. A kaleidoscope of pain. Stone blocks, glass, sharp edges battered at her. At the end of her roll she flopped flat, arms outstretched, sick, dizzy, half-unconscious.

  It took a few seconds to come back to herself. The paving was icy under her bare back. She hurt with many varied, individual pains.

  The house at Meeks Street stretched above her into the night. Behind it hung the gauzy ball of the moon. When she turned her head, the streetlamps were a long row of globes hanging in blackness, each one smaller than the last. They wavered, shimmering, because she was crying. She had no time to cry. None at all.

  Fourteen minutes.

  She struggled to her feet, naked except for goose bumps. The spies stationed in this street would see her, a hunched and pale ghost, as she scrambled into her clothes. First the white shift went over her head. Then the dark, concealing dress. She contorted to button it.

  She must move fast now. Grey would search for her. Already, men must be creeping forward down this prim street. Stockings. Shoes. She had planned her escape in detail. One has much leisure to make plans, when imprisoned.

  She took one last breath. The air of Number Seven Meeks Street smelled of sulfur and charcoal, as a battlefield does. Then, running, she crossed the road to a narrow walkway between two houses. The low fence was a mere hop, and the mews beyond led to Braddy Street.

  Men waited for her there.

  She dodged them. She ran, flat out, till her sides ached with each breath. Stopped suddenly and slid into a back garden. Became a passing wind that did not even awaken the dogs. Crept down the alley to another street. Ran again, in a different direction.

  This was the Game she played so long and well. Again, she was the little fox who outwitted them all. But tonight she was not joyful with it. Tonight, the game she played hurt and hurt and hurt with every step she took.

  The night was filled with spies. Some she outran and some she evaded and some she fooled altogether. But the best of them kept pace, and tracked her, as she had known they would. In the end, she let them trap her in a corner behind a shop. They were large men, firm and skilled, and they did not hurt her much. They were French.

  ADRIAN held the lamp so they could see the gap in the bars. “Leblanc might have her. Or Soulier. Reams left four marines up on Braddy Street. The Russians are still sniffing around. And Lazarus. Those are the most likely.”

  “Lazarus is angry at you.” Grey chipped the words off from the great, cold fear inside him. Among other criminal enterprises, Lazarus bought and sold women. They all knew what Lazarus did to women.

  “If it’s Lazarus, we have time. He goes slow at first. He won’t hurt her much tonight. He’ll just…” Adrian started to say more, then looked at Grey’s face and stopped. “I’m not welcome there right now, but I can find out if he has her.”

  Galba was swathed in a brocade dressing gown, the knot tied askew. He touched the bars. “Giles, get some chain and close this. Robert, what are the chances she’ll run the gauntlet and escape out of London?”

  “None.” He shifted Adrian’s hand holding the lamp. Annique’s bloody fingerprints showed stark red on the windowsill and up and down the bars, still damp. “She won’t make it a mile. If Soulier doesn’t bag her, Lazarus will. He knows she’s important to Adrian, and he has a hundred thieves and murderers to set on her trail.”

  Galba said, “Where do we send the men?”

  He looked into the night, making himself cold and analytic. A gibbering madman rattled at the back of his brain. He was going to kill someone tonight. “We go to Soulier. Get dressed, Hawk. We may not have much time.”

  Thirty-seven

  ANNIQUE HAD KNOWN SOULIER ALL HER LIFE. He had been Papa’s friend. It was Soulier who came when Papa was hanged and carried her away in his arms from the king’s prison. Years later, Soulier had been one of Maman’s lovers.

  When she had been the youngest of Vauban’s cadre, Soulier had visited often in Françoise’s house in the Quartier Latin to sit at the kitchen table and laugh and drink and plot with René and the others. She’d scampered to bring cakes and pour them coffee in big cups or little cups, depending on the time of day. He had chucked her under the chin and named her Fox Cub and she had called him Old Renard. They had been very witty together.

  “Entre. Entre donc, petite,” Soulier welcomed her, just as if large men did not accompany her. They went to stand against the wall, regarding her every twitch. Six men. Did they imagine she would spring and attack Soulier with her teeth? Someday she would discover where this rumor of her bloodthirstiness had been started.

  Soulier had not changed at all. He was thin and exquisite, somehow like a cynical old magpie, one who has see
n many nests robbed and many eggs broken. She must lie to him tonight. It would be very difficult, lying to Soulier. One does not become director of spies in the stronghold of France’s enemy by being a fool.

  “Come. Yes. Here to me. My child, I was pierced to my heart to hear of your mother’s death. It hurts me still. She was a great and beautiful lady and my friend. To die so suddenly, in such an accident. I am grieved beyond measure.”

  In the midst of her plots and contrivances, she had forgotten Soulier would mourn her mother’s death. She had not thought once of his sorrow. It would seem she had become cold and unfeeling these days, as well as a traitor. She gave him the only comfort she had. “It was swift. There would have been a single moment only when the carriage tilted. Then…a fall into the sea.”

  “Seconds only, and she is gone. The brightness of her snuffed out, and we are left, missing her. You most of all. Coming so soon after the other…But we will not talk of this. It is too new and painful.”

  “I cannot quite believe it, even yet.”

  “It is good you have kept yourself busy. That is always best at such times.” He beckoned. “But let me look at you. You have become a young woman since we last met. You will be more lovely than your mother, even.” He made a gesture toward her face. “It is there, waiting within you. I am glad you were able to escape the British.”

  “I am as well, though I am fled from the frying pan to the fire, as the English say.”

  “As to that…Fouché is annoyed with you, I’m afraid. But sit. Sit. Or you will make me play the polite host and stand up, and I am far too indolent to do that. Come next to me, in this armchair. I do not wish to shout at you across the room. Yves, bring the boule table, yes, here between us and set the lamp upon it. Just so. Now we may be cozy. Were you coming to see me, child? Somehow I do not think so.”

  It was a great irony that she had escaped Meeks Street and put herself into the path of the French exactly so she would be brought to this house. “It is a long story. Where shall I start?”