“Of course, because I’m always early and invariably prepared.” Gray Masterson smiled slyly. They both spoke in fluent French.
“How in hell did you get assigned this debacle and why the devil involve me? I won’t do it.”
Gray’s easy grin faded. “I know. That’s why it must be you. Some of our counterparts would be only too glad to slit her throat after they take advantage of her person in other ways, I’m sure.”
Unfortunately, that was true. “What’s the alternative then? If we don’t eliminate the target, someone else will.”
“The plan in motion will neutralize her influence.” Gray leaned in. “A French agent has her young son and has been using him as leverage to force her cooperation. She’s gotten desperate, made mistakes. Her heart’s not with the cause but with her son. If we get the boy, she’ll retreat to Switzerland, never to be heard from again.”
“Who has him?”
“He’s in Chevret with a man named Armand Desmarais.”
Rafe rubbed his nape and sighed.
“You’re familiar with him?”
“He’s a cruel, heartless bastard. How did he get stuck playing nursemaid? Christ, I would rescue the child whether we needed the mother’s cooperation or not. There’s no end to the man’s depravity.” The increasing complexity of the situation brought on a headache.
“Can you get him out?” Gray asked.
“How old is he?”
“Around eight.”
“That’s easier than a squalling babe, I suppose. What about Demarais? Should I eliminate him?”
Gray looked to his ale, rubbing a finger across his lips. “It’s not officially part of our orders, but you’ll not hear any wailing or gnashing of teeth from the Home Office if it becomes necessary.”
“Once I have the boy, where do we meet?”
“The farm. Two days hence. I’ll bring the woman and escort them both to the border.”
“Good enough.” Rafe stood, pulling his hat low over his eyes. “Good luck, old friend.”
“The same,” Gray replied, his mouth tight and his eyes worried.
Chevret was an old French village with a large cathedral dominating the center. Demarais had acquired a spacious house within sight of the looming spires. Rafe surveyed his residence for the first day and a half. People who were comfortable tended to settle into a routine, and Demarais was very comfortable indeed. He strolled through the streets with no protection and received well-dressed visitors during the afternoons. Two whores visited the first evening but left looking disheveled and alarmed. Not surprising given the rumors of the man’s proclivities.
Rafe never saw the boy, but he didn’t question Gray’s intelligence. He was there. Rafe could almost feel him. It would be tonight. He couldn’t stomach leaving an innocent in there any longer.
Rafe moved silently through the deserted garden to a little-used door. After spreading grease on the hinges, he picked the lock and eased it open. A twinge of misgiving bothered him. Demarais was too valuable to leave himself so vulnerable.
He stood inside the door, got his bearings and listened for movement. There was none. A frisson of warning zinged up his spine, but he continued on, determined to finish it. Flying up the main staircase three steps at a time, he hid in shadows at the top. Only the steady cadence of a clock cut the silence and ratcheted up his anxiety tick by tick.
Based on information he’d obtained from the whores, he knew where Demarais’s rooms lay. He padded down the opposite hall, systematically checking the doors. All of them were unlocked, the rooms unoccupied. Until he came to the last one. In only a few seconds, he had the door unlocked, tucked the picks back into his pocket and pushed the door open with the toe of his boot, half-expecting an ambush.
He eased inside, his gaze sweeping around the room, gauging the danger. A small creature huddled in the middle of the bed. Rafe’s heart constricted. No blankets covered the painfully thin boy. Rage urged him to the other end of the house to slit Demarais’s throat. Deep breaths calmed the vicious compulsion. That was not the mission.
He covered the child’s mouth and gingerly shook him. If the boy panicked, he would have to subdue him, but his conscience rebelled at putting the child through further torment. The boy came awake with only a slight grunt and stared up with round, dark eyes.
Rafe whispered a half-truth, “Your mother has sent me to bring you to her, but you must stay very quiet.” The boy blinked vacantly. “Nod if you understand me, lad.”
Life flared in the boy’s face, and he nodded.
“Get dressed in something dark.”
The boy’s lips were pasted tightly together, and he shook his head, holding up the thin, dirty shirt he wore.
“You have no other clothes, is that it?” The boy nodded again. “Well, come along, we’ll make do.”
The boy scrambled off the bed, and Rafe’s gaze cut to the window in dismay. The welts running up and down his bony legs incited another blast of fury. Damn Demarais. Shrugging off his jacket, he put it around the boy, buttoned it and rolled up the sleeves. The boy’s hands poked out the ends and with his gaunt face and shadowed eyes, it called to mind caricatures from Rafe’s childhood storybooks depicting wraiths in hell. Perhaps this place was a version of hell.
The bedroom looked over the garden, one floor from the ground. An easy jump for Rafe, but he worried the lad might break like a dry, brittle twig under a boot. He couldn’t take the chance. A stroll back through the house it would have to be.
Rafe picked up the boy and swung him around to hang onto his neck and down his back. The boy locked his ankles around Rafe’s waist. The boy’s weight barely registering, Rafe relocked the door once they were in the hall. Who knew if Demarais made a habit of checking on him? Time was an important commodity.
Rafe moved like a whisper down the stairs and out the garden door. On the street, he trotted with the boy still on his back. His horse waited at a nearby inn, and if the hostler thought it odd a half-starved boy clung to him like a barnacle, he made no mention of it.
After mounting, he settled the boy across his lap, wishing he had a cloak for them both. It had started to mist, the heavy air portending a deluge. Rafe adjusted the collar of his jacket to shield the boy as best he could. It would be a miserable ride.
He left Chevret at a fast clip, the muscles along his shoulders relaxing the farther they went. He should feel satisfaction at a job completed, but worries remained. Demarais had left himself wide-open and unprotected. A cruel man, yes, but not a stupid one.
Dawn streaked the sky on the approach to their rendezvous. The abandoned farm lay in a valley not yet touched by the sun’s unfurling tendrils. The dark clouds fled to the west, promising a beautiful spring day. Rafe rode the perimeter, birds and squirrels chattering and on the move. There was no trampled undergrowth from clumsy boots. Nothing appeared disturbed. He broke from the trees toward the dilapidated barn, which sat behind an equally rundown farmhouse.
The field, long left fallow, burst with blooming flowers. It was easy to believe in peace in a place like this. Easy to convince yourself there was no war and ugliness in the world. But the boy asleep in his arms would forever feel the effects of being a pawn in this terrible game.
Sunlight revealed the extent of the injuries inflicted on his young body. Bruises, some old, some glaringly new, riddled his legs and face. No wonder Demarais couldn’t allow the boy out of the house. And what was the purpose? The boy knew nothing. It was pure depravity. Rafe’s hold tightened, and the boy stirred.
Sitting up, he looked around in wonder, and then cut eyes to Rafe, the question clear.
“She’ll be here soon if she isn’t waiting for you already.” Rafe didn’t care if his mother was guilty or innocent. This boy needed her more than England needed to eliminate one more spy.
He dismounted with the boy cradled in his arms
and set him carefully on the ground. The boy took a few unsteady steps into the dim interior of the barn. It was empty.
“My friend is bringing her. We’ll wait.”
The boy sank to a mound of hay, his knees noticeably trembling. Rummaging through his saddlebag, Rafe pulled out bread, cheese and a skein of water. The boy hovered over the food and shoved hunks of bread into his mouth until Rafe stilled him with a pat.
“Slowly, lad, slowly. I know you’re fair to starving, but you’ll make yourself sick. It’s all for you.” Giving a quick nod, the boy slowed, but he never took his eyes off the food as if Rafe might steal it back at any moment.
Every minute that passed increased Rafe’s anxiety. Hidden in the shadows, he kept his gaze trained on the horizon. Only when he spotted Gray could he relax. The sun was high overhead when two riders appeared, one unmistakably Gray. The small meal had coaxed the boy to sleep. Soon, perhaps, this would seem like a bad dream.
Rafe shook him awake. The two riders approached through the flowered field. The boy slipped his hand into Rafe’s, wrapping thin fingers around two of his larger ones.
The woman dismounted, her velvet blue riding habit swirling a cloying perfume over them as greeting. Gray kept his seat, his mount snorting and sidestepping. The woman snatched the boy from Rafe, hugged and peppered him with kisses. The boy shared her coloring, but his bony body and rags were in sharp contrast to her well-dressed, well-fed roundness. He stood hollowly in her embrace, not returning the hug. The woman let go of the boy with tears in her eyes, but the smile on her lips set the hairs on the back of Rafe’s neck up.
Gray left his horse grazing and stepped into the barn, his gaze darting. Rafe had known Gray since birth. Something was amiss.
The woman looked to Gray. “When can we leave this horrid place?”
The boy sidled back to Rafe and pulled at his sleeve. Rafe knelt down, eye to eye with the boy. While Gray offered vague assurances to the woman, the boy spoke for the first time. In English. “That’s not my mama. That’s my auntie. They look alike.”
The woman had not heard her nephew’s confession. It hadn’t felt right from the beginning. One or both of them had been followed. Rafe rose, closed his eyes and breathed great lungfuls of air. A moment of peace before all hell broke loose.
When he opened his eyes, Gray stared at him, and Rafe shook his head.
“A trap?” Gray asked.
“Indubitably.” He kicked a rotten stable door open and pulled at hay and canvas, uncovering loaded pistols, knives, sabers and even a quarterstaff. He stuck two pistols in his belt, along with a couple of knives and tossed Gray an assortment of weapons. “At least it won’t be a complete surprise, thanks to your nephew, madam.”
“What is this? You promised to save us.” The hip she thrust out and the hand that smoothed her hair tempered her faked outrage.
They ignored her. “I knew something was amiss, but she looks exactly like Amelia and had all the right answers.” Gray shook his head with a grimace.
“I knew too. Getting the boy out was too damn easy.” Rafe prowled the perimeter of the barn and examined the trees for any hint of movement.
Gray stalked the woman into a stall door, asking rapid-fire questions she attempted to parry.
“Where is Amelia?” he asked for the third time.
“In hell. Where all French traitors will go. She was weak. He made her weak. Don’t worry, you’ll be joining her soon enough.” She spit at his feet.
The boy’s face had blanched. Even his lips were colorless. There was no time for tears and comfort. It was a time for survival. Rafe tossed him in the loft and instructed him to cover himself with hay.
Rafe sensed rather than saw movement at the edge of the forest. “They’re here.”
Gray tied the woman’s hands with a length of rope and shoved her into a stall. Rafe and Gray faced each other. They didn’t need words, hugging fiercely and standing back to back.
The onslaught wasn’t long in coming. Men poured into both sides of the barn. Rafe immediately discharged both pistols killing two, and Gray did the same. A few soldiers had muskets, but after accidently killing one of their own in the tight space, everyone reached for blades.
Although outnumbered, Gray and Rafe were better trained, stronger and experienced. After the first few men went down, fear lurked behind the soldiers’ eyes and in their tentative attacks. Rafe smiled, wiping another man’s blood from his cheek. The tide was turning.
Movement at the ladder drew his eye. The woman had freed herself and was climbing to the loft. A knife glinted, clamped between her teeth.
“Gray, the loft!”
Gray shot a quick look up and cursed. “Go. I can handle…the…rest.” He kneed one man in the crotch and elbowed another in the neck before slashing his belly open with a long-bladed knife.
A soldier with matted hair and twisted lips aimed a punch at Rafe’s chest. He was no more than ten and eight. Rafe hesitated a moment, the woman was three quarters of the way up the ladder, then he shattered the bony cap of the soldier’s knee with his boot heel. Rafe left him to roll in agony. His screams sent a handful of men retreating through the thigh-high flowers.
Rafe jumped three rungs high and grabbed at the woman’s ankles, but she scampered over the top. The ladder was old and rotten, and the next rung snapped under his foot. A high-pitched wail cut to his soul.
Rafe cleared the top, embedded splinters shooting pain into his hands. The woman kneeled over the boy, blood painting a horrific tableau over the hay. Rafe’s stomach swooped as if he’d fallen backward, but numb fingers held him on the rickety ladder. Blood dripped slowly from the knife in contrast to the blood rushing like a river through his ears, muffling the clashing metal and guttural yells from below.
Murder bloomed in his heart, streaking out to prod his body into motion. He launched himself into the loft, and the woman kicked out to keep him at bay, but she was no match for his size and strength.
He grabbed at her legs and pulled. She scrabbled uselessly at the hay. Inexorably, he dragged her closer to the edge, and she screamed when she hit the ground. Rafe landed like a cat beside her, but she was up in an instant, throwing herself at him with a viciousness he had never encountered in any man. A burning along his cheek obscured his vision. He rubbed at his eye, clearing blood, but it kept flowing. Jesus, he was going die at the hands of an insane Frenchwoman.
His hands found her throat, and with a sense of justice—or maybe vengeance—he squeezed. She dropped the knife and clawed at his hands. The image of the boy’s body bleeding out obscured any gentlemanly inclinations. Imminent death reflected in her bulging eyes. All he felt was satisfaction.
A shot rang out and where the woman’s face had been was a bloody mass of skin and tissue. He opened his hands, and the woman body crumpled at his feet. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the destruction.
“I have a bullet for you too, Rafe Drummond. You should have killed me when you had the chance. May you rot in hell.” Armand Demarais stood with two pistols, one with smoke curling out the end.
Rafe tensed himself for impact, but as Demarais took aim and fired, a knife flew end over end to plant itself in Demarais’s upper arm. Excruciating pain tore from Rafe’s shoulder to every extremity. Gray finished Demarais off, his death keen an eerie echo of the boy’s.
Every inch of Rafe’s body burned, and he lacked the ability to shuffle to the nearest pile of hay. His face throbbed with each beat of his heart, and his vision drew in on itself. The barn disappeared. There was only Gray’s face, pulled taut in worried lines, red painting the furrows.
The blood loss quickly took its toll. His brain moved like honey on a winter’s day, and his tongue thickened in his mouth. Gray poked and prodded his shoulder. Pressure around the wound increased and eased the pain somewhat. Rafe turned his head to see cloth stuffed into his mangle
d jacket to stem the bleeding.
Gray’s face ducked into his line of sight again. “We have to move, Rafe. The bullet went straight through, thankfully, but you need a doctor. Those men will be back with reinforcements.”
“The…l-lad. I wasn’t…f-fast enough.” Rafe pointed, and Gray nodded, his face aged a decade in the last hour.
“You have to ride, brother. Can you make it to old Mary’s cottage? We’ll be safe there.”
Gray looked desperately worried, which in turn worried Rafe. “D-do I look that bad? I’ll make it.”
It was a damn miracle he made it to Mary’s. Chills racked his body even with the warm sun. He almost passed out half a dozen times and ended up draped over his horse’s neck, blood soaking the mane. Once at Mary’s cottage, he let himself slip into oblivion.
It was better that way. There was no doctor, so Gray arduously cleaned and stitched Rafe’s wounds. Fever set in a day later, and Rafe roved in and out of consciousness.
Gray bribed a smuggler captain to get them back to England and left him in the care of a doctor in Dover. Lily rushed to claim him and take him home to Wintermarsh. Rafe didn’t remember much from that time. The fever took another month to run its course, but he was strong and his body healed.
Night after night, he tried to beat the woman up that ladder. Night after night, he woke, out of breath and sweating, never saving the boy.
Chapter Twenty
After Rafe fell silent, Minerva was surprised to find herself on a horse in England. She felt like she’d been by his side in France. If they weren’t mounted, she might throw herself in his arms, pepper him with kisses and confess her love. She cleared her throat. “I’m so thankful you didn’t die in France.”
“Me too,” he said gruffly.
“What was the boy’s name?”
“Christopher. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.”
“Rafe, the night I woke you from the nightmare…were you dreaming about that woman?”
A Brazen Bargain: Spies and Lovers, Book 2 Page 23