A Private Duel with Agent Gunn (The Gentlemen of Scotland Yard)

by Stone, Jillian

  Once on the ground, she clambered over to Sylvain. “How far?” The Frenchman brushed himself off. “The Île de Ré is shaped a like a bent finger—many miles lengthwise, but a short distance across. Less than three miles to the other side.”

  As the airship ascended into clouds above them, they struck out over the dunes, which quickly turned into a difficult slog through a boggy salt marsh. Finally—joyfully—they came upon a road. Cate glanced right and left. “Which way?”

  Sylvain held his index finger to his lips. “Listen—très tranquillement.” The low vibration of a foghorn carried faintly through the mist. Cate’s eyes widened. “Yours?”

  “Oui, the only on the isle.”

  She and Sylvain picked up their pace, and it wasn’t long before they began to catch glimpses, through the haze, of the great bastioned walls of Saint-Martin-de-Ré. “Can you get us into the Palais des Gouverneurs?”

  “But, of course.” Sylvain nodded. “We find out what Monsieur Fortesque knows.”

  “I’m nearly certain he was in Moreau’s boat. He has to know something about what happened.” Sylvain studied her in a way she had never experienced from him. “Prepare yourself for the worst, mon cher.” Then, those playful eyes glimmered with a wink. “But we hope for good news, oui?”

  Inside the township walls, Sylvain led her down backstreets and onto the palace grounds. “He has a suite in the east wing.” Cate followed him up the servants’ stairs and along the darker side of a dimly lit passageway. Beyond an empty second-floor parlor, they arrived at a set of double doors. “Locked.” Sylvain tested the door hardware.

  She raised both brows. “Couldn’t we just knock?”

  Sylvain rocked his head back and forth, weighing her question, then he grabbed her hand. “Come.” They wound their way through the deserted sitting area, and out a set of French doors. Sylvain leaped onto a wide balcony railing and reached down to give her a hand up. “You aren’t afraid, are you, Cate?

  She grinned. “Out of my way, monsieur.” Exactly like a prance along the balcony rails in the Alhambra Theatre. She stepped off the main terrace and onto the railing of Fortesque’s private terrace.

  She signaled for Sylvain to follow and crouched down to peer through the small glass panes of the door. The sitting room was empty. Wait. She could see legs though the open bottom of a tall wing chair. The chargé d’affaires? She hoped so. A hand reached out, lifting a glass of cognac off a side table.

  “What if it is Moreau?” Cate hissed. She pivoted toward Sylvain and held out her hand. “Do you have a penknife?” A moment later she inserted the blade between the paned doors and lifted the latch. Silently, she stepped inside.

  “Miss Willoughby, what an unexpected pleasure.”

  Cate froze. The man had eyes in the back of his head. She stepped around to the front of the chair. “How could you have possibly—?” Cate stopped midsentence. The chargé d’affaires looked a bit drained.

  Fortesque’s eyes darted to the deep amber liquid in his glass. “It is astonishing how many household items can be used as devices to spy with.” He sipped his brandy. “Or to catch the occasional intruder.” Settling into his chair, he offered her a seat opposite. “Please assure me our prisoners are off to Cherbourg?”

  “Safely away.” She remained standing and endured Fortesque’s languid perusal of her body in men’s trousers. “Is Hugh Curzon alive?” The question caused her voice to shake.

  The man finally settled his weary gaze on her face. “Hugh Curzon to the Navel Intelligence Division, or the man better known to Scotland Yard as Phineas Gunn? Which man would you—?”

  “Is he alive?” Cate blurted out and bit her lower lip.

  “He took a bullet to his head.”

  The bluntness of his answer caused her knees to wobble and his gaze to move away. “As you may or may not know, head injuries can be a bloody mess.” Fortesque set his glass down. “As it turns out, the bullet grazed him; Moreau has him locked up in one of the infirmary cells.”

  “Which cellblock?” Sylvain joined her.

  The chargé d’affaires tilted his head. “E as in escapade, Monsieur Robideaux. I take it you and the young lady are planning yet another breakout?”

  Cate nodded. “Can we count on your assistance?”

  “Insofar as a valuable operative is safely away and making his way back to London, my assignment has been—completed.” Fortesque stood abruptly and walked to the vestibule table near a set of double doors.

  “But what about Finn?” Cate protested. “Surely the British government would encourage you to assist us?”

  He collected a number of messages off the entry table. “I am going to read these missives, have another brandy, and retire for the evening.” Fortesque opened the door to his suite, and raised a brow.

  As Cate walked past, she stopped. “Won’t you please help us?”

  Fortesque unfolded a wire envelope marked urgent. “Out”—he barely looked up from the telegram—“of my hands.”

  * * *

  SHE AND SYLVAIN dipped in and out of the deeper shadows of the palace grounds and into the back alleys of town. Cate crouched behind the trimmed yew hedge. “Now what do we do?”

  “I have a friend, an artisan clockmaker by the name of Périgot. He makes his living as a forger and a fence. Come, we will wake him.”

  A man with thinning gray hair and a wiry build answered Sylvain’s knock at the door and set them down at a table in his back room. He poured them each a glass of Bergerac rouge—“From the land of the gods”—and listened patiently to their story without interruption. When they were done, he cleaned his spectacles with a threadbare pocket square. “The injured agent, were you able to share any information with him about the compound?” Périgot poured another glass. “The two underground passages?”

  Sylvain nodded. “Oui, as much as I could explain from the balcony of the Richelieu.”

  “And you, Miss Willoughby.” There was a gentle focus to his gaze, as though every detail of life must be carefully examined. “Is there anything you might wish to add? A fine point that might aid us—”

  “I am a thief—a well-trained second-story cat burglar.” In the dim light of the workshop, the soft patter of a hundred clocks ticking filled the air. The slightest twitch tugged up one side of Périgot’s mouth.

  Cate shook her head, partly out of disbelief. “I’ve never spoken of this to anyone.”

  The clockmaker’s gaze shifted to a faraway place. “I knew a man once—a Spaniard. Worked the resort towns from time to time—mostly, when things got too heated in Barcelona. Here in France he went by the name Chat de Saint.”

  Cate lifted her gaze from her glass. “My grandfather.”

  Sylvain clapped his open mouth shut. “Does Finn know this?”

  Cate swiveled the stem of her wineglass. “He has suspicions.” She swallowed a velvet mouthful of wine. “I can scale those fortress walls.” She reached into her trouser pocket and placed a key on the table. “And I have this.”

  Sylvain leaned closer and shrugged. “A skeleton key?”

  Périgot’s eyes twinkled. “Look a bit closer.”

  * * *

  FINN’S HEAD FELT as though it had been set on fire. The burn traveled along the bullet path that grazed his skull. From time to time the pain faded, leaving him with the warden’s words echoing in his head. “Get some rest, Agent Curzon, for you will need it.” Moreau stood on the safe side of his cell: outside. “You and I will talk in the morning. I will send my guards for you—the ones with the black eyes and bruised faces.”

  His cell was walled on two sides with a grid of iron bars across the front. Above his bed, a single barred window let in a stream of moonlight between drifts of fog. Finn craned his neck to look out. Almost large enough to crawl out, but not quite. He had gone over and over the escape routes he and Sylvain discussed. He thought he could find his way out, if he could just get rid of these—he yanked on his leg irons. They had also chained o
ne of his arms to the bed rail. The bed, in turn, was bolted to the floor.

  He pushed a finger under the bandage that wound around his head, and scratched an itch. Sweat trickled out from under the gauze dressing. He suspected his heart rate was elevated. And that dreadful, crushing sense of impending doom had returned. His head injury would mend quickly, just like his wounds had in the Northern Territories. But he wondered, frankly, if his nerves would ever fully recover.

  And he wanted to fully recover. For her. Two nights ago he had confessed everything to Cate. The whole bloody story, at least most of it. And she still wanted him. And he wanted her more than any woman he had ever known.

  For a moment or two this evening, he had drifted to sleep and dreamed of his father. A conversation from years past. “Ye’ll know it when you meet her, son. The lass will rob ye of your breath and ye’ll not be able to eat or sleep well—’til ye wed her.” Father was wrong about a lot of things. In point of fact, Finn had never slept better and his appetite was ravenous. Until now.

  He had awoken gasping for air, his heart pounding like it was going to burst through his chest. Christ. And the shakes were back—which meant the sweats weren’t far off. Soon the walls would close in and he’d be back in that hole in Deh Koja village. When he closed his eyes and all he could see was their faces—each one of his men as their bodies shook from lack of air—and the moment when the spark of life left their eyes . . .

  For years after his capture, he would wake up in a fit of violence. The more extreme episodes had stopped, for the most part, but the night terrors still came and went. Finn lifted a shaky hand and placed a finger to one side of his nose, blocking off the air passage. He inhaled slowly from one open nostril. Switching sides, he exhaled from the opposite nostril. An odd exercise that Monty claimed regulated his breathing, which in turn slowed his heart rate. Finn laid a thumb over the inside of his wrist and felt for a pulse. One way or the other, he’d get out of here alive or dead. And if his Soldier’s Heart worsened any, he wasn’t sure it mattered which.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Cate emerged from the dense brush carrying several coils of rope over her shoulder. The looming fortress walls drifted in and out of sight with the fog. All the same, those ramparts taunted her as if to say, Just try it. Footsteps on stone echoed from above. A guard rounded a corner of the bastion that jutted out from the wall.

  Keeping her eye on the man above, she made her way around the curve of the bulwark and ran straight into a tall caped shadow.

  “Ah, Miss Willoughby. I was certain I’d run into you here.”

  Cate leaped back and nearly knocked over Sylvain, who followed close behind her. She held a finger up to her lips and flashed her eyes upward. They waited until the guard’s footsteps continued north, toward the next bastion that jutted seaward.

  She exhaled. “Mr. Fortesque—what are you doing here?”

  “After you left this evening, I received this from Naval Intelligence.” He didn’t bother handing her the wire, it was too dark to read it anyway. “I shall forgo the details, for now. Let’s just say . . . I have come to offer my services.”

  “I believe we have things well in hand.” Cate raised her chin. “We appreciate the—”

  “What can you offer?” Sylvain hissed, stepping closer.

  The chargé d’affaires’s mouth ticked upward. “The pasha’s steam yacht is in port. It seems the vessel makes its way to Glasgow to undergo a refitting. I have been offered return passage as a guest of the Egyptian government. They are aware I travel with staff.” The man backed away. “Quai de Rivaille at the west end of town. We sail at dawn.”

  “But if we are chased—” Cate broke off her speech and frowned. “Why should we risk an escape across town?”

  “Because once you are aboard, you are—technically speaking—on foreign soil.” She had never seen Fortesque grin as broadly. “Moreau can’t touch you.”

  * * *

  FINN’S SYMPTOMS WERE worse. Violent shaking—so bad his teeth chattered. Feelings of claustrophobia. Scattered thoughts, like he was losing his mind. A glimmering ghost crawled along the bars of his cell, yet no one was about.

  He thought perhaps he had begun to hallucinate.

  Every so often a guard strolled by his cell with barely a glance at him. The occasional snore or cough told Finn there were other men in the cells surrounding him. None of these observations could have caused the flicker of shadow from his cell window. There it was again. Finn craned his neck to look above. A bird perched on the window ledge, possibly?

  A scratching sound came next. Almost a whisper at first, then the scraping grew louder. Only it wasn’t scraping, exactly. It was more like a grinding sound. His heart leaped in his chest, in a good way. If he wasn’t mistaken, he was listening to the soft crush of a glass cutter.

  For the second time this evening, he thought of his father—specifically his snore. Which he and Hardy could imitate perfectly. Finn opened his mouth and inhaled a deep, long rattle, and exhaled the rumble of a bear in hibernation. He strained against his irons and tried to see more of the window above. Several minutes passed before there was a brighter noise, more like—a clink.

  “Finn?” The breathless voice could have been the result of a gust of wind—except it was also a familiar voice. “Finn, are you there?”

  Good God, what was she doing here—risking life and limb . . .? His heart palpitated in his chest, then sank. “You shouldn’t have come back for me—go home, Cate.”

  “And what home would that be, Finn? Mine? Yours? Ours?”

  He quelled his chattering teeth long enough to answer. “Take care of your brother. See that he retires to write seditionist tracts and advocate civil disobedience instead of bombs. Leave me.”

  “Shhh!” the shadow in the window admonished. She was absolutely right, this whispered conversation was entirely too dangerous to be having. How could he convince her he wasn’t worth the risk without bringing the guards down on them?

  A metal object scraped against the stone wall of his cell. He strained to see in the dark; a string with a key tied to the end was being lowered down to him. Finn reached up with his one free hand, and his fingers barely touched the dangling key. He stole a glance up and down the corridor to each side of his cell. No guard. He reached up again, and this time he caught the key. “Got it!”

  His rescuer above released the string, and Finn went to work on the iron cuff around his wrist. The cuff released almost immediately. The leg irons proved a bit more difficult. “I can’t get past one of the wards,” he whispered.

  “Enter as far to the left of the hole as you can. Jiggle the key up and down until you feel it slip in deeper—rather like when you deflowered me.”

  Finn angled the key up and down, and he was damned if he didn’t feel it move farther inside. “Now what?”

  “Make your turn.” The key rotated.

  Finn shook off one leg iron, then the other. He slipped off the bed, and sidled over to the front of his cell. His vision momentarily went black and filled with stars. He held on to the bars until the light-headedness cleared. A good length down his cellblock one of the guards turned the corner and disappeared. They had some time, yet. Standing on the prison cot, he opened the lock on the sash and held up the window.

  “I’ve come to rescue you.” Cate adjusted a strange apparatus that extended across two of the iron window bars.

  “I believe that is my job, not yours.” Finn stared at her, only half believing it was really Cate, and yet knowing this dark beauty was alive and real. And lurking at the window of his prison cell.

  With her brows pressed together and her lips pursed in concentration, she screwed a crank handle onto the cast-iron apparatus—a jack of some sort. “You rescued me once this evening.” She looked up at him and smiled. “My turn.”

  “How did you—? What’s holding you up out there?” He was completely enthralled by her. Not only by her ingenuity, but by her cunning as well. “There�
�s a grappling hook above, and I made a sling from rope, which my bum isn’t so awfully happy about.” Cate gave the handle a crank and then another—gradually, the vertical bars separated.

  “I’m never going to fit through there,” he warned. After a number of turns, Cate removed the device and handed it through the bowed bars. She also tossed him her rucksack. She reached out to him. “Help me.” Moonlight beamed through a drift of mist, long enough for him to catch a glint in her sapphire eyes. The flexible ballerina folded her shoulders together and squeezed through the opening. Finn grabbed hold of her and pulled gently. “More!” she hissed. He gripped harder and yanked. The rest of her slipped through the opening rather easily, with only a slight delay at her sore bum.

  Finn held her in his arms off the ground. “I should be angry with you for putting yourself in such danger.”

  She placed her hands around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. “But you can’t, can you?”

  “I shall take issue with all this later—when I toss you over my knee.”

  “Promise?” Her lower lip protruded rather provocatively.

  “Fancy that . . . I had no idea your were into hot cockles and swivery. Had you mentioned it earlier I might have—spanked you, or—” He grinned, then shrugged. “For now, we move quickly. The guard will be back soon enough.”

  Cate removed something small and brass from her pocket. “Remember this?”

  He set her down and she placed the key in his palm. “How kind of you to bring Roger along.” He reset the teeth on the key shaft as wide as possible, then reached around the lock from between the bars. He angled the key past each of the lock’s wards, until he heard it scrape the back of the box. He looked at Cate. “Shall I give it go?” She nodded.