The Spy's Reward

by Nita Abrams

  “Mother, why didn’t you stop me?” moaned Diana. “I have never been so mortified! Poor Mr. Roth! He will never speak to me again.”

  “He looked ill.” That was Abigail, sounding worried. “I will ring for someone; Mr. Meyer must be found. I think we should call a doctor.”

  Anthony was sitting up in bed, his mouth open, staring at the fireplace. Only now did Meyer notice that he was not wearing anything except a pair of drawers and the tape over his ribs. His bruises had turned green around the edges.

  “Do me a favor,” said Meyer. “Wrap yourself in a blanket, and go to their room at once. Tell them it is your turn to beg their pardon, but their voices are coming through our fireplace and you thought they might wish to know.”

  Anthony gave a dazed nod, heaved himself out of bed, and disappeared, trailing half the bedclothes behind him.

  So, thought Meyer, at least he was no longer the only one in the family who had been displayed half-naked today to a woman he admired.

  Dinner was a very awkward affair. First, Meyer had to pretend that he knew nothing about the conversation he had overheard. There was a speculative light in Diana’s eye when she looked at him which made it difficult to forget some of her remarks, however. Her gaze lingered several times on his torso, and once he even caught her peering at his shoes. Perhaps she thought he had a dagger in them. Abigail, on the other hand, did not look at him at all. She kept her eyes lowered during the entire meal. In fact, she kept her head down as well, which meant that he spent over an hour looking at the top of one of her accursed caps. He suspected that she was nervous about her plan to interrogate him. He was none too sanguine himself about that prospect.

  He also had to pretend that he knew nothing of the encounter between the two women and his nephew. Every time Anthony’s name was mentioned, Diana turned scarlet, which made that particular bit of acting very difficult. Finally he decided that it would be more suspicious to ignore such a blatant display than to acknowledge it, and at the next blush, he broke off his sentence and asked Diana politely if she was too warm. She turned even redder, looked at her mother in frantic embarrassment, and fled the table, murmuring some disjointed excuse.

  Abigail raised her head for a moment. “Pray do not tease her, Mr. Meyer,” she said in a low voice. “She is—she is very conscious of Mr. Roth’s attentions.” Then she looked down at the table again.

  Meyer could not believe his ears. The self-possessed, morally upright Abigail Hart was lying to him. She was doing a terrible job, too. He frowned. This was very interesting. Why would she lie to him? He knew her well enough by now to feel sure that she would not normally hesitate, once Diana was gone, to reveal what had happened with Anthony. She would even see the humor in it. He certainly did. If only he had hidden in the armoire; then he could have seen Diana’s face when Anthony erupted bare-chested from under the covers.

  Let us consider this logically, he said to himself. The only reason to lie about such a delicious story would be to conceal her visit to his and Anthony’s bedchamber. And the only reason to conceal the visit would be to avoid answering the question he would probably ask: why did you come to my room?

  He leaned back, studying tonight’s cap. It was amber-colored silk, matching her gown, and nearly the same color as the tiny bit of hair at the edges. From what he had overheard, from what he had seen just now, it appeared that Abigail was even more reluctant to interrogate him than he was to be interrogated. Why not put her on the defensive? Why not take the initiative?

  “Mrs. Hart,” he said.

  She looked up, alarmed at something in his tone.

  “I would like to speak with you in private.”

  Flustered, she looked around the dining room. It was not crowded; the weather at this time of year in Gap did not attract visitors. There were no other guests within earshot. There were, however, several hovering waiters. It was that sort of establishment.

  He signaled to the nearest hoverer.

  The man snapped to attention as though he were a subaltern and Meyer his captain. “Monsieur?”

  “Is there a small room nearby where madame and I might take a glass of wine?”

  “Certainly, monsieur. If monsieur will have the goodness to wait for one moment?” He summoned a lower-level hoverer, who darted off at his whispered instructions and returned a minute or so later accompanied by a very superior gentleman in a powdered wig who escorted Meyer and Abigail to an alcove off of the hotel’s music room, where a horn quartet was playing. There was a certain amount of additional hovering, involving wine and biscuits, but at length the various carriers of trays and openers of wine were dismissed, and he and Abigail were alone. The musicians did not count; in fact, they were excellent insurance in case this room resembled the Harts’s bedchamber acoustically.

  Attack first, he reminded himself. “It seems to me that you might have some questions about what you learned of me today. Well-justified questions. I wanted to give you an opportunity to ask them.”

  She twisted the wineglass in her fingers. “That is very kind of you, but—”

  “Come, Mrs. Hart. Surely, even if you averted your eyes from my, ah, déshabillé, you cannot have failed to hear the guard’s description of my scars?”

  “I saw them,” she said, almost inaudibly. “There were . . . quite a few.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Unless I was attacked simultaneously by five footpads, each armed with a different weapon, I think we must conclude that I have been wounded on more than one occasion. Oh, and he missed one.”

  She looked up, startled.

  He pointed to a spot just below his left shoulder. “Dog bites. He thought they were knife wounds.”

  “Dogs? You had dogs set on you?” Her eyes were enormous.

  “I have been chased by dogs. I have been stabbed, shot at, sliced at, and imprisoned. I carry several sets of false papers. I travel very well armed, and have already replaced the knife in my boot that was confiscated this morning. I am an excellent liar. These are not the usual credentials of the ‘family friends’ recommended to you by your cousin. You are owed an explanation.”

  She frowned. “I am not sure that I am. Let us not forget that I began our acquaintance by dismissing you very rudely after you had traveled quite a distance out of your way to do us a service. Then, the moment I needed help, I suddenly came running back to you, disrupting any plans you might have made. I am not blind, Mr. Meyer. It was perfectly obvious to me that whatever your intentions that first day in Digne might have been, by the time you saw us again in Barrême, Diana and I were an encumbrance.”

  It was true. It was only later that he had begun to perceive the advantages of having two women—genteel, attractive women—in his party.

  She set down her wine cup and smoothed her skirt. “You are right that I was perturbed by what I saw this morning. I meant to ask you about it earlier, but I lost my nerve.” She smiled briefly. “It is not easy to confront someone who carries a knife in their boot.”

  “I would never, never harm you or Diana,” he said, horrified. “You must believe that.”

  “Oh, I do,” she assured him, “now. Because once I was calmer, and had thought about everything carefully, it occurred to me that the explanation was really very simple.”

  “It did? It is?”

  She nodded. “The first thing was the pigeons.”

  He had prayed she would not connect them with his other activities. He had already admitted to himself that he would have to tell her about the past. There was no avoiding it. It was the present he wanted to conceal. Apparently he was going to have to confess everything. Or, more accurately, listen to her formulate his confession for him.

  “This afternoon, when we stopped to give Mr. Roth a hot drink, I—” She stopped, then continued determinedly, “I went to find Mr. Santos. Rodrigo. I began to ask him questions about you.”

  What did this have to do with pigeons? “He mentioned something of the sort.”

  “I am very
ashamed of myself,” she confessed. “But I was upset—to see Diana in the hands of that rabble! And then, when they searched you, and found all those terrifying, inexplicable things! I was angry; I thought you had deceived us.”

  “I did deceive you. You were right to be angry.”

  She ignored him. “When I left, I walked by the gig, and Mr. Roth’s pigeons were cooing. That reminded me of what he had said about the bank’s courier system. That was the first piece.”

  She still thought the pigeons were Anthony’s. He gave a little sigh of relief.

  “And then, just before dinner, I remembered the second piece. The most famous loan your family bank has ever made: the Roth-Meyer Bank smuggled gold through France, right under Napoleon’s nose, to pay Lord Wellington’s troops in Spain. Is that not correct?”

  Puzzled, he nodded.

  “A very dangerous, very difficult undertaking. Surely the bank did not entrust an operation of such magnitude, of such delicacy, to ordinary employees.”

  Right again. Meyer’s brother, Jacob, had coordinated the entire affair from his house in Paris, and the shipments were escorted by two trusted subordinates.

  “You never looked to me like a gentleman of leisure,” she said vehemently. “The moment I met you I should have been suspicious of Joshua’s description. You were not retired from the bank at all; you were their chief courier in France, supervising the currency smuggling. Naturally you would need to carry false papers, need to learn to handle weapons.”

  He sat back against the satin cushions of the sofa, stunned. Her reasoning was perfectly logical. Her conclusion was utterly false.

  “I admire you,” she said. “I want you to know that. I disapprove of war, as many women do. I think it is immoral; I think it corrupts those who practice it. Not all wounds are physical. But I do admire you. Your bank made a pledge to England, and honored that pledge under nearly impossible conditions. You risked your life to make certain that your family stood by their word.” There were tears in her eyes.

  “Mrs. Hart.” He took a deep breath. “I do not know what to say.” He looked down at his shoes. No dagger, alas. Perhaps he could stab himself with the buckle.

  “I apologize for my rudeness to you, for my suspicions, for everything. I was mortified at dinner, to think how I had misjudged you. I could not even look you in the face. You were willing to let that dreadful French guard humiliate you this morning to protect my daughter, and I repaid you by deciding you were the lowest sort of criminal. Please forgive me.”

  Now it was his turn to explain that he was, in fact, the lowest sort of criminal. But, as was natural for a criminal, he thought better of it. If she wanted to take all that damning evidence and turn him into a hero, who was he to contradict her? “You exaggerate my contribution,” he said finally, raising his eyes to meet hers.

  There was a long silence. At some point, without his noticing, the horn quartet had stopped playing. The music room was empty. Neither one of them moved, or looked away. A few renegade strands of hair had, by some miracle, escaped from her cap; they fluttered slightly at her temples. Her face was open, unguarded. He knew, knew with total certainty, that he could kiss her. That he wanted to kiss her.

  He also knew she would eventually hate him, and herself, even more if he did. Perhaps he wasn’t the very lowest sort of criminal after all, because instead of kissing her, he got up, offered her his arm, and escorted her back to the safety of the hotel’s well-staffed reception room.

  12

  “How is he?” asked Rodrigo before even dismounting. Meyer had intercepted him in the alley leading to the stable.

  “Anthony? Not well. He is still asleep, but very restless and feverish.” He glanced at the sky. “It is what, half-past six? He has been sleeping for twelve straight hours.”

  Rodrigo swung off the horse. “Did you send for a doctor? Mrs. Hart seemed to think he needed one.”

  “She may be right,” he admitted. “He is in no shape to cross the Col Bayard, that is obvious. Perhaps we should stay here in Gap another day.”

  “That might not be wise.” They had come up to the stable door. Rodrigo handed the horse to a sleepy ostler, and the two men headed around the side of the building to the enclosed yard where guests’ vehicles were stored.

  “Why? What did you find out? Wait, have some of this first.”

  His servant took a long drink from the bottle Meyer handed him. “Well, first I went south, and nearly ran into Bonaparte’s advance force. They will arrive here late this morning at their present rate. It is even possible—not likely, but possible—that Napoleon and the rest of the troops could reach Gap by midnight tonight. They are moving very quickly. That is why I say it might be imprudent to remain here.” He took another swallow. “On the other hand, there is the pass. I went north for a few miles to see what conditions were like.”

  “And?”

  “Poor. Snow at the top, more snow likely today, by the look of things.” He handed back the flask.

  Meyer took another look at the sky and frowned. “Scylla and Charybdis. What do you think we should do?”

  “Why consult me?” Rodrigo pulled the pigeon crates out from under the seat of the gig and began tipping grain from a little sack into the feeding box. “Surely the decision should be left to Mrs. Hart. Especially if you want to persuade her to trust you again, now that she knows the truth.”

  Meyer said nothing.

  Rodrigo straightened up, grain dripping unheeded onto the dirt. He looked hard at Meyer and then swore softly in Spanish. “You told me you were going to speak with her last night.” He stabbed one finger at Meyer’s chest. “Right before I left, right here, in this very spot, you promised that you would explain everything to her. That you would not leave her wondering about what she saw at that roadblock yesterday morning.”

  “Oh, I talked to her.” He laughed shortly. “Or rather, she talked to me. She is very clever—perhaps you have already realized that. She was suspicious long before yesterday morning. She even noticed the pigeons, and drew her own conclusions. We have come to an excellent understanding.”

  “You have?” The servant suddenly noticed the little pile of grain at his feet and righted the sack. “She—she was not angry?”

  “Quite the reverse,” Meyer assured him. “She admires me. She despises soldiers, of course, and war, but she thought it was very noble of me to help smuggle gold to Wellington in order to honor the contract signed by the Roth-Meyer Bank.”

  “What?” The sack dropped onto the floor of the gig. “You told her that you were covered with scars because you had been delivering loan monies?”

  “No, no. She told me. I was getting ready to confess the truth, and she interrupted and started begging my pardon for misjudging me. She saw the pigeons—which, by the way, she still believes to be Anthony’s—and that reminded her somehow of the bank’s role in funding the British troops in Spain, and she put two and two together and came up with seven.”

  “What happens when she recalculates and comes up with four?” Rodrigo asked.

  Meyer shrugged. “We will never see each other again after this week. What does it matter?” He looked down at the crates. “If those pigeons eat any more, they won’t be able to fly,” he observed.

  Rodrigo hastily brushed the spilled grain out of reach of the birds.

  “Get some sleep,” Meyer said. “I will consult Mrs. Hart—I can do that in my capacity as former hero of the banking world—and if she agrees, we will stay here another day. I do not fancy the thought of dragging my feverish nephew over the top of that mountain.”

  He was badly out of practice, or perhaps distracted by his concern for Anthony and the women. Why else would he have returned from the stables by the back way, instead of going around on the street, where he would have seen the soldiers and the sweating horses? Why, for that matter, had he selected the largest, most ornate hotel in Gap, a place which would be the obvious choice to lodge a former emperor, should he happen to co
me to town? But he had chosen the Auberge du Marchand. He had returned through the courtyard. He had not paid attention to the noises he heard, noises suggesting the arrival of a large party of guests. He had not asked himself who would be arriving at a hotel in Gap before seven in the morning. He therefore entered the hotel through the back hallway and emerged into the main reception area just as a hawk-faced man in the uniform of the Old Guard came in from the opposite direction, followed by three mud-spattered officers and a very disdainful young man dressed in evening clothes.

  Too late, old habits reasserted themselves. He allowed his glance to pass in an unhurried way over the new arrivals, gave a puzzled nod to the hawk-faced man, who looked as though he was trying to remember something, and walked purposefully, but not hastily, to the nearest staircase. The minute he was out of sight Meyer began frantically searching for a way to get out of the hotel unseen. The staircase he had chosen ended half a flight up at two locked doors; he cursed under his breath and debated. Right or left? He chose left, and picked the lock. The room was empty, thank God. He opened the shutters. Wrong side of the hotel; he was looking down on the street, where twenty more soldiers were stationed. Back out into the hall. The second room, too, was empty. It was a drop of ten feet to the courtyard; he swung out over the ledge and let go, hoping no one in the building opposite had been looking out their window at that moment. Then he headed back to the stables.

  Rodrigo was still out in the stable yard, cleaning the pigeon crates. “What happened?” he asked, dropping the crate. The pigeons, crammed into the other container, gave an angry squawk as it landed on top of them.

  “I ran into an old friend,” said Meyer grimly. “You underestimated Cambronne’s pace. He is in the reception hall of the hotel at this very moment, no doubt bespeaking rooms for two thousand men.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “I am afraid so. And Raoul Doucet was with him. They only glanced at me, and I did nothing to attract their attention, but the odds that neither one of them will remember me eventually are very small. If I were Doucet—and he is, after all, one of my counterparts in Napoleon’s old intelligence service—I would, sooner or later, think to look at the hotel’s list of guests. I am registered under my own name.”