by Lara Archer
It would take work, no doubt, to make her ready. But the spark he’d seen in her eyes told him she would surely agree to try.
And he was going to have to help.
One thought kept pounding through his head, too loud and vicious for alcohol to have any hope of drowning it: no matter what he chose to do, he was about to watch Sal die all over again.
Chapter Two
Despite the heavy velvet cloak around her, Rachel was cold to the bone.
Even the glaring sunshine in this place they’d moved her to couldn’t warm her. The light was an irritant. The whole room—the gilt-edge furniture, the bright Turkey carpet, the pretty oil landscape hanging over the fire—was entirely too cheerful to bear. The men kept talking to her in kindly voices, which made her want to scream.
How long had she been here? An hour? Two? She drew up her legs under her on the cushioned chair they’d sat her upon and wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she could simply lose consciousness again.
Her brain was too stubborn to let her.
Grief swept over her, thick and cold and dark. Sarah. When she and Sarah were girls, if one of them skinned her knee, the other shared the grating pain. After Sarah ran away, Rachel would be kneeling at prayers on the cold slate of her great aunts’ kitchen floor, and feel light burst inside her, and know her twin was laughing. Or wake in a frozen sweat, and know her twin was afraid.
Then, three months ago, she’d been alone in her room at the Greeley’s, late at night after the children were in bed, when a pulse of blind terror struck. Panic sent her leaping from her chair, a scream tearing at her throat. An awful blazing-hot pain ripped through her belly. She fell, clutching her abdomen, fighting to breathe. Looking across the room, frantically, hopelessly, towards . . . someone.
Then it was over. The connection snapped, like a frayed rope.
She lay sprawled on the Greeley’s musty carpet, her copy of Cicero where it had tumbled beside her. In silence. In safety. Utterly alone.
Alone.
Now, a terrible heaviness filled her limbs. Dragging air in and out of her lungs hurt.
Oh, God, she’d known the truth then. She’d known, but hadn’t wanted to believe it. She couldn't bear to.
Now she had to accept it as fact.
“Miss Covington?” Lord Helm laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. As if gentleness could ease the unbearable news.
At least the gargoyle-man hadn’t reappeared since he’d vanished through the wall in Helm’s office. Weak as she felt, one glance from those blazing eyes would reduce her to ash.
“Forgive me, my dear,” said Helm, more insistently, “but we’ve already lost weeks looking for you. Your sister wanted nothing more than to protect England, and I’m sure she—”
“Leave her be awhile,” came another voice, a rich baritone, with a hint of Northern burr. The man had arrived a short while ago. Helm called him Mawbry. Tall, russet-haired, good-looking, smelled of cologne. And he kept trying to show her pity, which made her want to kick him.
“Don’t be soft-headed, Mawbry.” A deeper voice, a true bass, from Mawbry’s companion, a towering hulk in a black cloak, with overlong raven hair curtaining his face. No one had yet referred to him by name, so she’d privately christened him the Black Giant. “We can’t coddle her,” he said. “If she’s fragile, she’s no use to us.”
“Devil take it,” retorted Mawbry. “She’s practically a child.”
“She’s nearly five and twenty,” said the Black Giant. “Sal took down Le Conte when she was eighteen. Le Conte. And DuBlieck and Carteret just two years after that.”
Rachel squeezed shut her eyes. Sal? Awful, ugly, vulgar name. Why did they keep saying Sal? Sarah would never have used it. But, then again, nothing these men were saying made sense. “Le Conte?” she asked, her voice an unfamiliar hoarse whisper. “Who is Le Conte?”
A long silence thrummed in the room. Mawbry was suddenly busy pouring himself a drink from a crystal decanter. Helm became fascinated with an ornately painted globe, and the Giant retreated stonily behind his veil of hair.
She sat up straighter in her chair. Someone had killed her sister. She wanted to know who. “Le Conte is an enemy of England, I suppose?”
“He was,” said Helm, but his voice was guarded.
“And the other names you mentioned. Du . . . Blieck? Carteret? Enemies as well?”
A brief hesitation. “Deadly enemies,” said Helm.
And Sarah had taken them down? This was nonsense, a fairy story. “Lord Helm, forgive me,” she said, “but my sister ran from home at fifteen years of age without so much as a coat on her back and no friends to go to. I don’t see how she could have—”
The Giant’s head swung up, giving her a glimpse of swarthy skin, an ugly hooked nose and cold, jet-black eyes. “Sal was fearless,” he growled, with a force that suggested there could be nothing more to say on the matter.
“Fearless?” she repeated. That at least made sense. Nothing ever cowed Sarah, not confinement in the cellar, not fasting on her knees, not even beatings. On the day she’d finally struck Aunt Martha with her fists and knocked the old woman into the cold hearth, Sarah ran straight out the door. Without a penny in her pocket. Without friends to go to. Without a plan. Though the night unleashed a freezing downpour, she didn’t return. Not ever.
“Sarah was always fearless,” said Rachel. “But when she left Stone Cottage she was little more than a child. You’d have me believe she fought grown men? You might as well tell me she slew ogres with pebbles. I will not be lied to.”
Mawbry came to kneel before her chair, his elegant scent a soft annoyance, as was that damnable kindness shining in his green eyes. “You must trust us, Miss Covington,” he said. “Your sister was our colleague, and our dear friend. She caused great vexation for Monsieur Bonaparte, and saved the lives of many English agents, including myself and,” he gestured towards the Black Giant, who scowled darkly through his hair, “this sweet-tempered fellow here.”
She shook her head. “You will explain, please, how these things were possible. I have heard nothing from my sister, nothing of my sister, in nearly ten years. How could she have—? How did Sarah come to work for you at all?” She waited. The men were all fascinated with the plasterwork and the carpets now. “Can none of you answer a direct question?”
At that, Mawbry broke into what he no doubt considered an irresistibly ingratiating grin. He still had his hands on the arms of her chair, and if he didn’t get his expensive smell and pretty face away soon, she really was going to kick him in the chest. “Forgive us, Miss Covington,” he said. “In our profession, we dodge direct questions like bullets.”
"Surely this one small inquiry could not prove fatal."
Helm was hovering over her shoulder again. He heaved a sharp breath of the sort men made when coming to an unwelcome decision. “Miss Covington,” he said, “do you know anything of codes?”
“Codes?” Her throat went instantly dry.
“Yes, codes. Ciphers, I suppose I should call them. Do you know of the manner in which they’re made, and broken?” The question didn’t sound like a question. Once again, he knew the answer already.
She tried to swallow against the dryness, but the muscles of her neck had gone too tight. He knew, then. Sarah must have told him. Sarah was the only other one who knew.
Well, Sarah was beyond harm now, and if the secret injured Rachel herself. . . well, that seemed a trivial concern. “Yes,” she whispered. “Ciphers. Sarah and I . . . once we learned the Greek alphabet, our tutor taught us how to make our own. It became a game. Our game. Our favorite.”
She needed water. There was a glass on the table beside her, she remembered, brought by that nervous little maid with the clattering tray, the one who'd looked at her wide-eyed, like she was seeing a ghost. Rachel lifted the glass, and her unsteady hands sloshed water over her skirts as she brought it to her mouth. “We made up new sets of symbols,” she said, when she managed to swallow a little. “Wrote
messages for one another to decipher.”
“Your sister was very good at this game?” Helm remained the patient schoolmaster.
“Very. She usually broke my ciphers before I could break hers.”
Helm’s posture shifted, softened. He was about to give something significant away. “When your sister first came to us, we’d been stymied for months by a code—a cipher—the French military were using. Our agents nicknamed the cryptographer Le Merveil, the Marvel, because they could make no inroads into it. Your sister broke Le Merveil’s cipher in a fortnight.”
Mawbry bent close enough that she caught the tang of nervous sweat beneath his cologne. “Thanks to Sal,” he said, “Carteret’s own messages betrayed him and his entire cell, and we cut short a plot aimed at the Prime Minister himself.”
“The Prime Minister?” Rachel couldn’t help her surprise. “Sarah saved the Prime Minister?”
“That was just the first of several ciphers your sister broke,” said Helm.
Rachel pressed the rim of her glass back to her lips, pushing down a wave of absurd giddiness. It mixed dizzyingly with the cold and dark still washing through her. All those years wondering, wondering where her sister was, and Sarah was a spy. As soon believe she’d turned highwayman, or admiral, or queen.
Though of course it made a kind of sense. Daring, headstrong Sarah. So much more ready to rush out into the unknown darkness than Rachel could have dreamed of being.
Still, something was wrong with the story. The numbers they mentioned, the ages, didn’t quite line up. These men were hiding something important.
She set her glass back on the tray.
“Lord Helm,” she said firmly. “You say Sarah helped catch this Carteret before she turned twenty?”
The guarded look returned to Helm’s face. Yes, Mawbry had revealed too much.
“But she brought down . . . Le Conte, was it? At eighteen? And there were three years before that, after she left home. What happened during those years?”
No one answered her. The silence grew heavier.
She slapped her palms on the arms of her chair. “You wish for my help, Lord Helm, yet you deny me the most basic information? You speak of risk. You expect me to place myself in danger for your sake, I take it?”
“Grave danger. But you do not strike me as a coward, Miss Covington. And if you succeed, you’ll be given a comfortable annuity and a house of your own in whatever part of the world you choose. You’d never need work as a governess again.”
She shook her head roughly. “Irrelevant. What I care about is my sister. I want the truth. I want to know what . . . what happened.” A swell of grief clotted her throat. “Everything that happened. And I want to know how she died.”
Helm ran blunt fingers through his white patches of hair. “As to that, the French caught her at last. She’d cost them a great deal, and threatened to cost them much more.”
The trembling began in her again. She wasn’t sure she felt strong enough, after all, to hear this.
“Sarah had no regrets,” said Helm, “I promise you. Her commitment to England was absolute.”
No regrets? A black, thick flood of sorrow rose in her, more icy and suffocating than before. One could drown beneath it. But something hot cut through, something she rarely gave herself permission to feel. Rage.
It turned out there was something else she wanted after all. Wanted badly.
What did it matter who these men were, or whether they lied to her about details? Clearly they’d known Sarah—they’d never have known of that line from Horace otherwise. They’d never have known about her love of ciphers. And the distress she’d seen in Helm’s eyes, and in Mawbry’s, seemed genuine enough.
She looked back up at Helm, fresh energy sparking along her nerves. “If I help you, Lord Helm, will it harm those who killed my sister?”
“Yes.” Emphatic. Hopeful. He wanted this vengeance too.
“Then tell me what you want me to do.”
Helm breathed out hard, his mouth stretching into a smile.
Mawbry still boxed her in gently with his arms. “You resemble your sister, Miss Covington. To a most extraordinary degree.”
“We are identical twins, sir. We . . . were.”
“Aside from your style of dress, even I would have believed you to be Sal.” Sorrow in Mawbry’s eyes again. “I keep having to remind myself you’re not she.”
The final piece fell into place. She was useful to them because she looked like Sarah. “You wish me to impersonate her?”
Mawbry blinked, apparently surprised she’d caught on so quickly, but then he nodded. “Our enemies don’t know you exist. None of us knew about you either, except for Helm and—” He looked distinctly uncomfortable, his eyes casting about at his companions. “Except for Sebastian.”
Her breath hitched. “That man in Helm’s office.”
“Yes,” said Helm. “Sal made him swear to tell no one about you while she lived.”
“Oh.” Sarah hadn’t wanted others to know she had a sister. She ran from that house in Rookshead and never looked back. Rachel sank deeper into the cloak. “But if my sister is known to be dead,” she said, “what point could there be in my pretending to be her?”
“Ah,” said Helm, and his intelligent eyes flashed. “That is exactly the point. The French agents who attacked Sal assumed she died where they left her.”
“But she did die.”
“Yes. She did. But since our own agents stormed the room immediately after the attack, her killers were never able to confirm her death. If they see you, alive and well, dressed in Sal’s clothes—”
“They’ll assume they failed,” hissed the Black Giant, with surprising vehemence.
Her mind began to swim. “And this will help you how?”
Before anyone could answer, a commotion erupted in the hall outside the room. Hurried footfalls, a short, muffled conversation, and then a harshly raised voice, with sharp words directed at whatever servant was unlucky enough to be stationed there. There was no mistaking that voice.
It belonged to the gargoyle.
The door banged open and there he stood.
She was startled to see him in sunlight. Even in this cheerful parlor, she’d have expected a man of firelight and shadows, a burning ember on two wide-spread feet.
Instead, what confronted her was a splash of color. His hair, a sweep of gold-streaked tawny waves, gleamed in the light from the windows. He wasn’t dressed in black, as she was sure he had been in Helm’s office. His breeches were a fashionable buff, his coat peacock blue, with some impossibly elaborate arrangement of neckcloth. One index finger bore a massive gold-and-emerald ring. Good grief. The gargoyle was a dandy!
“Ah, such a cozy little scene,” he drawled as his eyes—sky-blue, no less—scanned the room. In daylight, his face was handsome as an archangel’s, though his eyes were a bit red around the edges, a bit hard, with a look of dissipation that belied his overall splendor.
His voice was exactly as sardonic as she remembered it. Yes, the gargoyle was still there, beneath the gorgeous surface.
Mawbry stood hastily, giving her a wink. “Hope you have a taste for fireworks,” he whispered as he stepped away from her chair. Damn him, just when she didn’t mind having his broad back as a barricade.
The gargoyle’s gaze swept irritably over all of them, but his look of greatest hostility settled pointedly on her. “I’m so glad you’ve all made yourselves comfortable in my house.”
Helm bowed, but a blue vein now beat at his temple. “It seemed the safest place to bring her,” he said. “Though your timing might be better, Sebastian.”
“Might it? Would you prefer I leave?” Not waiting for an answer, he dropped into the chair nearest Rachel, his long legs sprawled in front of him. “From the looks of things, you were just getting to the best part.” He leaned forward with a speed that made her know what a mouse feels as a falcon swoops towards it.
She shrank back into the protect
ion of the cloak.
“Come now, little nun,” he said, clucking his tongue reproachfully. He planted an elbow on his knee, and his chin on his fist, settling in to examine her. “If you’re scared of me, how do you plan to deal with the most murderous operatives of the French?” His tone was light and teasing, but his eyes blazed with predatory heat. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Fangs bared. Primal, dangerous, not a bit civilized.
Was that liquor she smelled on his breath?
Well, that explained the redness in his eyes. But his hands looked steady. The hand beneath his chin was clenched so tight, his knuckles stood out like white stones.
“Take my advice, ma belle nonnette,” he told her. “Run along home where you’re safe, while you still can.”
Sudden anger sent her pulse pounding against her ribs, her eardrums, the inside curve of her skull. “I don’t have a home anymore,” she said, and added pointedly, “mon beau monsieur. Safe or otherwise. Thanks to all of you.”
Helm came to stand before them then, his hair more disheveled than before, his neckcloth a shade or two more dingy, in contrast to the gargoyle’s perfection. “There’s no need for this unpleasantness, Sebastian. Miss Covington’s come to us quite voluntarily and proved herself possessed of considerable backbone. Perhaps you might prefer to wait in your library or return to your club while we—”
Something tugged at Rachel’s skirts, and she gave a cry. Good God, the gargoyle had seized the hem of her dress, and was lifting it quite high enough to expose half the length of her stockings.
“What is this fabric?” he was asking, in a tone of utter disgust, rubbing the cloth between his fingers. “Sal would have gone naked before she’d have—”
Rachel kicked her skirt out of his hand, and sprang to her feet. “Stop it!” she cried. “I don’t know what game you are up to, Mr.—” She hesitated, realizing she had no decent way to address him. “Mr. Sebastian. But you will not speak of my sister in those terms! And you will most certainly not touch me!”
“Ah,” he purred, standing in a fluid motion which brought him far too close for her comfort. “So she has a temper.” His gaze slid over her, somehow insolent and appreciative all at once. “I wondered just how deep that Quakerish stillness ran.”