A Counterfeit Heart

by K. C. Bateman

  Richard’s stomach clenched at the thought of seducing the information out of his “guest.” It wouldn’t exactly be a hardship. She couldn’t be a virgin; she was too poised, too brazen, too self-assured. And by her own admission she was no man’s wife or lover. She’d presented herself on his doorstep, placed herself in his clutches. Surely that meant she was fair game?

  “So what are you going to do with her?” Raven’s question interrupted Richard’s heated thoughts.

  “Use her, of course. She can start forging documents right away.”

  Raven raised his brows. “You’re keeping her here? Not putting her in a safe house?”

  Richard drummed his fingers on the armrest. “I don’t want her to run. I need her close.”

  Raven shot him a sardonic look. “Purely in the interests of national security, of course,” he said, deadpan. “Poor Richard—forced to endure the company of a beautiful little traitor, day after day. Night after night. My heart bleeds for you.” He shook his head with a grin. “I saw the way you were looking at her. Enforced proximity’s going to be just the thing to keep a lid on all that simmering attraction.”

  Richard narrowed his eyes at his friend. He wasn’t the only one affected by a tiny, infuriating woman. “Why are you here so bright and early, anyway? It’s not like Heloise to let you off the hook.”

  Raven had married Richard’s little sister Heloise only a few months ago. Out of choice. Richard still couldn’t fathom it. Still, they seemed nauseatingly happy together. He tamped down a tiny wistful twinge of envy for their contentment.

  Raven’s expression sobered. “I came because I have news. Visconti’s here. In London.”

  Richard straightened in his chair, all teasing forgotten. “Visconti? Christ, are you sure?”

  Raven nodded. “Castlereagh’s been tracking him since the Congress of Vienna. He must have run out of people to assassinate on the Continent. No confirmed sighting yet, but I’ve heard enough whispers to believe it’s true. He’s here.”

  “I doubt he’s come to enjoy the smog or the cuisine,” Richard finished darkly. “He’ll be here for a job.”

  Raven leaned back in his chair. “Exactly. So all we have to do is figure out who his target is and who’s hired him. Unfortunately, with the country in the state it is, there are any number of candidates. The prime minister. The cabinet. The entire royal family. Anyone in the public eye.”

  This gloomy pronouncement was interrupted by a discreet knock on the door. Hodges entered. “I searched our guest’s room, as you ordered, sir.”

  “And?”

  “It appears she brought very little with her, my lord. Three dresses. Some serviceable undergarments, a pair of gloves, one hat. A small case of artist’s materials: sketchbook, paints, pastels, brushes. And some travel papers in the name of Marie Lambert.”

  Richard frowned. “No jewelry? Coins? Bundles of money? Nothing sewn into her clothes or the lining of the valise?”

  “No, sir. Her pockets contained only a handkerchief and a ticket stub for the Dover-to-London coach.”

  “That’s it? No perfume? Powder? Rouge?”

  “No, my lord. Nothing of that sort. There are two small framed portraits, which I assume to be of her parents, on the mantel, and a pocket pistol hidden beneath the mattress.”

  So, she hadn’t been lying about the pistol.

  Richard experienced a faint pang in the region of his solar plexus. So little, to start a new life. He shook his head. He would not feel sorry for his captive. She’d chosen to come here. And, as the pistol evidenced, she was more than capable of taking care of herself. He glanced up. “Thank you, Hodges. That will be all.”

  When the servant bowed and withdrew, Richard turned back to Raven. “I want an update on Visconti’s whereabouts as soon as we have it.”

  Raven nodded. “You have my word. God knows, I’d like to put a bullet in the bastard, but we all know you’ve got prior claim. We’ll catch him this time, Richard, I swear it.”

  Richard nodded grimly.

  Chapter 12

  Sabine took her time studying the library.

  Tall wooden ladders on brass wheels allowed access to the highest shelves of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. A pair of terrestrial globes on splayed feet flanked a mahogany card table, the top inset with a circle of green baize and little indents for the players’ mother-of-pearl counters.

  It was a decidedly masculine room, designed to put the inhabitant at ease. A pair of green wing armchairs had been grouped around the fire. The leather on the arms was a darker color, polished to a high shine with age and constant use. She wanted to curl up in one and read the day away.

  The smell was familiar, too, the same aroma as Jacques’s print shop—a comforting musty mix of leather book bindings, paper, and beeswax.

  Sabine scanned the shelves. They boasted an impressive array of titles, from the Ancient Greeks to a range of modern periodicals. But more surprising was the large section in French. She tilted her head to read the spines. Descartes, Balzac, Molière. A tragedy by Racine, Voltaire’s amusing Candide. She even spied some of her favorites, including Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prevost and Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Laclos.

  Her brows rose as she spied a copy of the erotic novel Justine by the Marquis de Sade. No wonder Hampden kept the French section so high up. She glanced farther upward. If de Sade was only halfway up, what on earth did he keep on the top shelves? She climbed a couple of rungs up the ladder and strained her eyes, but alas, it was too hard to see.

  Her gaze alighted on the collected works of Roger de Bussy-Rabutin. He’d written one of her favorite quotes: “Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small and inflames the great.” Sabine grimaced. She’d had quite enough bonfires recently.

  She climbed back down.

  What was Hampden talking about with his friend in the study next door? Her, most probably.

  Her eyes went to the pictures on the walls. One could tell a lot about a man by the pictures he chose to hang in his house, the things he chose to see every day.

  In France, the nouveau riche who’d prospered under the emperor had raced out to auction and bought up all the family portraits of exiled and guillotined aristos. Voilà. Instant ancestors, to counterfeit a long and illustrious family heritage. The hypocrisy made her sick. The bourgeoisie who’d so detested the upper classes now seemed determined to emulate them as ostentatiously as possible. They had all of the money and none of the élan.

  Richard Hampden’s family portraits probably hung in some endless picture gallery at his ancestral home, no doubt complemented by gloomy Dutch still lifes and the bloodthirsty hunting scenes the English seemed so enamored of, with the poor fox pursued by baying hounds and red-coated huntsmen on lathered mounts.

  Sabine turned her head and her mouth dropped open in shock. Good God. Was that a Rembrandt van Rijn? She hurried over to take a closer look.

  She’d studied Rembrandt’s works at the Louvre, copied him on many occasions, but she’d never been satisfied with the results. This portrait was of a woman wearing a red hat. Sabine suspected it was Rembrandt’s wife, Saskia. The artist had often used her as a model, and she looked vaguely familiar.

  She stepped closer. The woman wasn’t beautiful, by any stretch of the imagination. Her face was plump, with doughy features and the hint of a double chin, but her expression was kind. There was love in every brushstroke, a warmth in the way the artist had portrayed her that made her luminous, despite her flaws.

  Sabine swallowed an unexpected tightness in her throat. Lucky Saskia, to be so loved.

  The door clicked and she turned with a start.

  “Admiring my Rembrandt?” Hampden drawled.

  She didn’t bother to hide her appreciation. “I am. It’s wonderful.”

  “I hope you’re not thinking of stealing it.”

  She shot him an irritated look. “I’m a forger, not a thief.”

  He grinned, apparently pleased with
having needled her. “As an artist, no doubt you have a far better understanding of his skill than a philistine like myself. I know I like it, but I can’t explain what makes it so extraordinary.” He stepped closer and she drew in a breath. “Tell me, what do you see?”

  He sounded genuinely interested, so Sabine decided to humor him. She turned back to the painting to avoid looking at him. “It’s a deceptively simple painting. Rembrandt’s using a whole host of complex techniques to manipulate you, the viewer.”

  Hampden’s brows rose. “Really? Can paintings be deceptive?”

  “Anything can be deceptive,” she said briskly. “Some paintings are pure propaganda. Why, Napoleon’s own court painter, David, depicted the emperor leading his troops across the Alps on a fiery, rearing steed. In truth, he rode an ass.”

  Hampden’s lips twitched in a smile.

  She pointed to Saskia’s collar. “There. Notice how some parts are more in focus than others? That’s deliberate. The less important areas are left blurred and vague. The sharper areas draw the eye. It’s misdirection, the way a street magician misleads you to perform a trick.”

  She gestured to the woman’s face. “The eyes are the most important part, so he paints them in more detail than the rest. That is where we focus.”

  Sabine resolutely kept her gaze on the painting, determined not to succumb to the temptation to study Hampden’s extraordinary eyes. They were the most unusual color. She couldn’t quite decide which paints she’d need to replicate them; burnt sienna, maybe? Flecked with charcoal and umber.

  She cleared her throat. “His use of color is masterful too. People who have never painted always think human flesh is one single tone, but to paint skin well you need a whole range of colors.”

  She leaned forward. Next to her, Hampden did the same, not touching her, but his solid presence was a disturbance in the air, impossible to ignore. She caught the faintest whiff of his clean, masculine scent. Her stomach knotted.

  “If you look closely you can see spots of red, blue, and yellow on the face. Blue in the shadowed areas, red on the nose, cheek, and eyebrow, and yellow in areas he wanted to lighten.”

  “Fascinating,” Hampden murmured, and even though she didn’t turn her head she had the unnerving suspicion that he was studying her rather than the painting. She stepped back and cleared her throat. “This is one of his later works, I would imagine.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Later in his career the brushwork is looser. Less detailed, but more confident.”

  She moved away, intensely aware of the fact that they were alone. Sometimes retreat was the better part of valor. She sidestepped to the bookcase and ran her fingers over the lowest shelf. “You have an excellent selection of books in French.”

  He shrugged. “My mother made me read a lot in her native tongue.”

  “Ah. My mother made me read a lot in English. Shakespeare. Marlowe. Chaucer.”

  He gestured to the large leather-topped desk she’d sat at before and pulled out the chair for her, another automatic gesture. “Feel free to borrow something another time. Now have a seat. It’s time to get to work.”

  Sabine settled into the chair he indicated, across the desk from him. “What is it you want me to do?”

  “As I said last night, I want to catch a dissident group who have been plotting against the government. We’ve identified most of the members, but they’ve been careful not to get caught doing anything treasonous. I wanted Lacorte to forge some incriminating papers that would set them fighting amongst themselves. Evidence of an affair, perhaps, or of double-dealing, to break up the gang.”

  He smiled, a crafty look that made her immediately nervous. He looked like a fox contemplating a gap in the chicken-coop fence. “But now I realize we can do something much better. Your fake fortune has given me an idea. We’re going to encourage the plotters to complete Napoleon’s unfinished work and ruin the economy by distributing your fake money.”

  Sabine frowned. “How are you going to do that? You’re certainly not having my money. I won’t tell you where it is.”

  He shot her a patronizing look. “I don’t need your fakes to draw them out. All I require is that they incriminate themselves by agreeing to the plan. When they do, we’ll arrest them for plotting treason.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “A letter from Napoleon, detailing his intentions.”

  “How will it get to the plotters without arousing their suspicion? Do they take their orders from France?”

  “No. They’re English. But they sport the same addle-brained, revolutionary ideas as your beloved countrymen.” His tone was sweetly mocking. “And the letter is going to come via someone with intimate knowledge of the counterfeiting scheme. Someone with plausible access to the fake money and a proven loyalty to the emperor.”

  Sabine raised her brows, already suspecting his next words. “And that would be—?”

  “Philippe Lacorte.” Hampden leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re going to have someone pose as Lacorte?” A surge of anger warmed her chest at the thought of some stranger trying to emulate her professional competence. “Won’t these men be wary of a trap? Surely they’ll test whoever is sent?”

  Hampden nodded placidly. “Doubtless they will. If they suspect whoever they’re meeting isn’t really Lacorte, they’ll probably kill him.”

  Sabine’s throat closed in dread. This was a human life he was talking about so casually. “Then if these men know anything about the technicalities of forgery—which, as criminals, I’m sure they will—they’ll realize your man isn’t Lacorte within minutes.”

  “I agree,” Hampden said mildly.

  Sabine frowned. His imperturbable calm was supremely annoying. How could he risk one of his men in this way? She placed her hands on the desk and tried to make him see sense.

  “It is arrogance and stupidity to send someone who is not proficient in counterfeiting to deal with them. You’d be sending your man to his death.”

  “I agree,” Hampden said again, and his amused tone penetrated her righteous ire. “I doubt any of my agents could pull off the deception. As I said, I’m going to send someone I’m certain will be convincing.”

  Sabine curled her lip. “Yourself, I assume?”

  His smile stopped her heart for a fraction of a second. “Your confidence is heartwarming,” he mocked, “but no.” His eyes never shifted from hers and her stomach lurched unpleasantly. “I was going to send the real Philippe Lacorte.”

  Her heart thudded to a stop. “Now, wait a minute. You just said these men will kill anyone suspected of being a spy or an impostor!”

  His smile widened. “You’d better be convincing, then.”

  Her head reeled. When she’d first decided to offer her services to Hampden, she’d thought it would be a simple case of forging a few documents, taking payment, and getting out of London. Now, at every turn, she was becoming embroiled deeper and deeper in his world. A frightening, dangerous world.

  She crossed her arms. And wished she’d brought her pistol. “This isn’t at all what I agreed to.”

  His amber eyes bored into hers, unblinking. “You came to me. You agreed to work for me. It was your choice. You will write me that letter. And then you will offer the traitors the forgeries so they can carry out Napoleon’s wishes.”

  “I’m a counterfeiter. Not a secret agent, or a spy, or whatever it is you call yourself.”

  His broad shoulders lifted in an elegant shrug.

  She cast around for obstacles to the plan. “How would Philippe Lacorte even know about the existence of a bunch of English dissidents?”

  “Leave that to me. The criminal underworld’s a very small place. A few whispers in the right ears and the plotters will seek you out.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” she murmured darkly.

  Hampden stretched like a lazy cat. “So, first things first. Let’s write that let
ter, shall we?”

  Chapter 13

  Hampden leaned back and opened the central drawer to the huge desk. “You’ve forged the emperor’s handwriting before.” He made it a statement, not a question.

  “I might have done,” Sabine hedged.

  He withdrew a sheaf of documents. “Come now, no need to be modest. Castlereagh sent over a few examples of your work.” He opened a file and picked up the topmost piece of paper. “Like this one. A passport for the Comte de Noailles. We recovered it last month, during a raid in Seven Dials.”

  Sabine narrowed her eyes. “What makes you think it’s one of mine?”

  He smiled at her defensive tone. “Not any technical flaw, I assure you. It’s just that the Comte de Noailles was guillotined in ’94. Odd, then, that he should have sailed into Portsmouth six weeks ago.” His lips twitched at the corners.

  She glanced over at the paper as if she’d never seen it before, but couldn’t prevent the tiny smile of pride that tugged at her lips. “That was one of the last ones I did before leaving Paris.”

  “For whom did you make it?”

  “I have no idea. Those using Lacorte were rarely forthcoming with their names. And I never met the clients. It was always An—” She bit her lip before she betrayed Anton’s name. “An associate of mine,” she amended quickly, hoping Hampden hadn’t noticed the slip, “who dealt with the customers.”

  He flicked through a few more sheets.

  She had no need to defend her actions to this man, and yet she felt the urge to explain herself. That alone made her angry.

  “Apart from the fake currency—which I was forced to make—I only produced documents that helped people,” she said. “Travel papers, hospital receipts, certificates of residence for returning émigrés who needed to prove they hadn’t really left the country. Other, less scrupulous forgers faked ‘deeds of gift’ so illegitimate heirs could fraudulently claim an estate, or forged wills to give people an inheritance to which they weren’t entitled. I never did anything like that.”

  That dimple appeared in his cheek. “Yes, we’re lucky you’re such an honest criminal,” he drawled. “A regular saint.”