“Dress for dinner.” He chose the pale green dress with an embroidery of flowers upon the bodice. “This one, I think.”
The gowns were beautifully cut, the apparel of a woman of taste and refinement. The boxes at her feet held shifts and pantalets, all completely new and as delicately immodest as any she had ever seen in Paris. It was not usual for a prisoner to wear such clothing to dinner. She had been a prisoner several times, and she knew.
“These are given to me by a friend of yours? That is kind.” She did not like it that he knew a woman of whom he could ask such favors. “When one considers how many respectable women there are in the world, it is remarkable I am not sometimes presented with more modest underclothing.”
“Isn’t it?” His expression was hungry and knowing. She was entirely sure he looked forward to seeing her wear these silk and lace nothings. He already pictured himself taking them off of her and laying her down upon his bed. He was Head of Section for England, assuredly, but he was also a man.
She found she was not at all in the mood to lie back and make love upon that big bed with the blue covers. She wanted to hit him with something, not in a lethal manner, but hard.
She picked up a shift and turned away before she loosed the robe. It fell to the floor, and she pulled the shift on, all in one movement, so quickly he would have only a glimpse of her being naked. That was her reply to the look in his eyes. He would comprehend. He was a man given to subtleties.
“This is an agreeable room.” She pulled the green dress over her head and smoothed it down her hips. It fit well. His woman friend was almost precisely of a size with her, except with a larger bosom. A lovely and womanly bosom. “I notice it contains a great many deadly things. I would not trust me here if I were you. I would keep me in your dungeon, which you insist you do not have.”
“No dungeons. I have a comfortable, boring room I put dangerous people in. I won’t show it to you because I don’t want to frighten you out of your wits. I promised Galba you’d behave sensibly.”
“At least I shall not attack you with any of these tempting objects you have left strewn about. Not at this moment.” She tried to reach the buttons on her back, but he nudged her gently around and did them up for her. “Thank you. It is difficult to dress in fashionable clothing, unaided. One would expect life to be better managed.”
He watched her as if he were trying to take her heart apart like a puzzle box. As he was her interrogator, it would be his task, for a time, to take her apart piece by piece. It is inexpressibly frightening to be the puzzle box in these cases.
He did the last button. “Maggie bought a comb. It’s on the dresser.”
“The Maggie of Doyle? Do you tell me these are her clothings? I am very surprised.” She thought about Doyle, who had been to Cambridge and bought his wife such dresses. And such underthings. “I think she is not at all as I pictured her.”
Grey did not wait for her to take the comb but picked it up himself and began to use it in her hair. He combed and smoothed after it with his hand. It was a common action, strong and simple as a sunset or standing in the sea. A man did such things for a woman who belonged to him.
In the mirror, her mouth was ripe as fruit, and her eyes were soft and foolish. She looked altogether like a woman who had just given her virginity to someone. The bathtub part of it was no longer obvious, since she was not dressed in a long white robe. Grey had transformed himself into a gentleman, here in the heart of his power. He wore an evening jacket that was the blue black of midnight and a waistcoat with thin stripes of burgundy and white. A heavy signet ring gleamed dull gold as it slid in and out of her hair with each stroke of the comb. He was not handsome. Men such as Grey ate handsome dandies for breakfast twice a week. If she had been a foolish young girl, she would have been dazzled.
“When I escape from this prison,” she said, “I shall find a boy of the Rom, younger and darker and handsomer than you. I shall make love to him in barns and haystacks until I do not feel this way for you.” She said it to hurt him and to free herself from him. She did not like what she saw in her own eyes in the mirror.
“I hope you enjoy yourself. You won’t change what’s between us, Annique, not with fifty Gypsy boys.”
She wished he did not speak so many excellent truths to her. She stepped from his hold and began to straighten the clutter upon his dresser, lining everything up. “One does not love one’s jailer. It is a fallacy jailers have, that their prisoners like them, but it is never true. If you had not trapped me, I would have walked away by now. In a week I would have forgotten you altogether.” Or in a month, or a year. Or never. “There is nothing between us except a hunger of bodies.”
“There’s that, too.”
“I do not want to feel anything for you. Do you understand? Can you imagine what it is to have not even a shift to wear? To be so dependent upon a man that I must ask him for clothing? This is not a good basis for friendship.”
“I know. It makes it harder. Will you sleep with me tonight?”
He would ask. Not demand. Just ask. She did not know how to fight such cunning. “Can I say no?”
“Of course you can. There are five or six empty bedrooms, one right across the hall. I can put you in there.” He took back the space between them till they were almost touching. “I’ll leave my door unlocked. Will you come to me?”
“I am very stupid.”
“I think that means yes.” He was smiling.
She gave him his victory. “I would come to you sometime in the night, tiptoeing down the hall, and open the door and crawl in beside you. Already, I am listening to the argument your body makes to mine. If you carried me to that bed, even without taking a moment to be persuasive, I would want you like flames.”
“The hall gets chilly. Sleep with me tonight, in that bed.”
He cradled her cheek into the warm hardness of his palm. He was so aware of her…even the infinitesimal nod of her head, he felt.
“You have to say it.”
“Yes.” She was without shame.
“I’ll hold you to that.” He drew her against him, body to body, and nuzzled into her hair, breathing the scent, making a growl deep in his throat. It grappled at her heart, that he desired even her smell.
His hands also hungered for her. They molded the soft dress to her buttocks, stroking, taking pleasure in the shape of her body. She closed her eyes to be in the darkness with the strength of him, and his hunger, and the massive beating heart. There was nothing but sensation. Heat ignited between her legs and spread sweetly. She glowed inside her skin, in ripples. She was drunk with it. She was…
She was Annique Villiers, and this man was her enemy.
She pushed away from him, breathing hard. She had been moaning little noises and not realized. Truly, she was a fool.
“I make…” She had to start again. “I make mistakes with you. I lose myself.”
“You’re not used to being confused.”
“Do not patronize me, monsieur. I have gone ever so slightly mad where you are concerned. It could happen to anyone.” She stomped across the room, barefoot, to sit on the edge of the chair. The Maggie of Doyle had provided her silk stockings with a white pattern. Exquisite. She would wear exquisite stockings to go mad in. “Perhaps I shall regain my senses and sleep alone tonight. Who knows? You cannot bemuse me and entangle me forever.”
“We’re entangling each other.”
“But one of us is the jailer. You want me to forget that. That is why you are so gentle. Me, I would rather you were sincere and badgered me with questions. Then I would remember I am a prisoner. If I had any pride, I would not crawl into your bed and play the whore.”
Silence struck, forceful as any bolt of lightning. Tension crackled in the air between them. She felt his anger like hot sparks on her skin. “Is that what you’re doing? Playing the whore?”
She would not look at him. “I have been taught to do that, if captured.”
The man who gazed do
wn at her was entirely Grey. Not one speck of Robert. “Prisoner and jailer? If that’s all we are, then let’s get down to a little badgering. Tell me about the Albion plans. Who gave them to you? Ah. That’s almost perfect. You look surprised and offended. Very good.”
Chill wrapped her suddenly, because he was angry at her and because he was a man who could see through lies. She had nothing, really, that belonged to her now but her lies. She tied her garter and secured the stocking into place. “I have never seen these plans everyone is so fond of believing I carry around with me like a cat her kittens. I do not know why—”
“You carry them in your head.”
Cold covered her. Froze her heart. She could not move. He cannot know that. He cannot. No one knows that. “I do not understand what you mean.”
“Every page, every list, every map. It’s all in there in your memory, knocking up against Racine and Voltaire and Tacitus. That’s why Leblanc’s never going to find them. He doesn’t know where to look.”
Slowly, she slipped on the shoes he had brought for her from somewhere. She must keep moving. Her brain would not work, not even one tiny bit. He knows. He knows. How can he know?
He studied her and waited. “I didn’t mean to strike you dumb.”
You have stood before gunfire. You have stolen dispatches from under the very noses of the Prussian high command. You are the Fox Cub. Do not sit like the tonguetied idiot. It was great fortitude that allowed her to shrug. “You theorize. That is sloppy. And it is a very silly theory.”
“What are you going to do with the plans, Annique? Stand on the shore and wave when the French fleet sails in? You know where they’re landing, of course.”
Her mouth was dry as sand. “I do not say I know nothing, because I am a woman of unparalleled intelligence, but certainly I know nothing of invasions. You have fallen into a great pit of nonsense.”
“You hate Bonaparte. You’ve probably hated him since the Vendée. You came to England to stop the invasion. You walked from Marseilles, blind and alone, because you know what’s coming.”
“I tell you again, I know nothing of those plans. I am a loyal Frenchwoman.”
He let it lie between them for a while before he said, very gently, “In the end, when you have no other choice, you’ll give me the Albion plans. You can’t do anything else.”
Something within her cracked and crumbled. Her courage, perhaps. Grey knew. He had added so many little pieces together—Leblanc’s malice and her incautious words—and he discerned everything. One sniff, and he knew all that was in the kitchen. The secret of her memory. The choice that confronted her and tortured her. The decision she must make. He knew even what she would decide. He was one of the great spies, the equal of a Soulier and a Vauban.
He saw when her courage broke. There was nothing he could not see inside her.
“Damn.” He crossed at once to where she sat and lifted her and held her. “I’ve scared you. I promised myself I wasn’t going to do that.” Her cheek pressed the lines of his brocaded waistcoat. He pulled her to him, and his arms became iron. “We’ll talk. We’ll just talk. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to. But Bonaparte’s scheme is madness. We both know it. It’s going to hurt France as much as England.”
He was so wise about her. He would gnaw away at the foundations of her spirit like a mouse at the wainscoting. She had no defenses against him. “I do not wish to speak of French politics. It is an intricate and depressing topic.”
“Fine. We’re not talking.” He set his chin on top of her head. “Just hold on to me for a while.”
With her eyes closed, in darkness, it was like being back in France, being blind, knowing Grey by the touch and smell of him. After a time, a clock sounded in one of the rooms along the hall. Seven strokes. His back muscles tightened under her hands, and she knew the little truce between them was over. Truces were of that nature. They ended, sooner or later.
He let her go. “I shouldn’t have made love to you this afternoon. I’ve made you doubt your own judgment. You’d trust me better if your body weren’t hungry for me.” He looked down and traced the shell of her ear with his fingertip. “See? When you feel even that much, you pull back, thinking I’m trying to manipulate you.”
“Are you not?”
He opened his hand, as if he released something. “I don’t know how to convince you. I want you so much I can’t think clearly.”
“What will you do with me when I will not become the traitor for you?” She let her arms drop away from him.
“It’s not going to happen that way.”
“That is a comfortable belief for you, surely.”
“Do you want promises? I have a few. Whatever happens, I’ll protect you from Leblanc and Fouché. I’m not going to hurt you, even if I keep scaring the bloody hell out of you.”
“I am desolated to disappoint you, but you are an amateur in this business of frightening me. I have met experts.”
“And it just gets worse from here on in. You are so bloody complex. I wouldn’t love you if you were stupid, but it’d be a lot easier on both of us.” He took a deep breath. “Come downstairs and eat. They’ve already started.”
Twenty-seven
IT WAS A WHOLLY MASCULINE DÉCOR, THIS HOUSE at Meeks Street. The halls were hung with antique maps and architectural drawings in dark frames. The tables she passed held file folders and empty coffee cups and men’s gloves tossed carelessly into a wide bowl. There was no clutter of flowers, no potpourris, no bibelots.
The dining room was next to that study where Grey had let her sleep this afternoon. She was learning her way around the house which was her prison. Eventually she would know it extremely well.
At the mirror in the main hall she stopped to inspect her toilette one last time.
“The dress is good on you. Sweet. Innocent.” Grey scowled. Not at her. She was merely in the line of fire as he considered his own thoughts. “You’re harmless as a Bengal tiger, thank God. How much do you know about Colonel Joseph Reams of British Military Intelligence?”
Her face betrayed nothing, but her stomach clenched. Françoise, who had been one of Vauban’s own, and her friend, and a spy of great skill, had been questioned once by Reams—taken and questioned only on flimsy suspicion. She had needed months to heal. “I have heard of him. One or two small things.”
“Then you know what we’re dealing with. You’ll have to meet him.”
It was well known that Reams of the Military Intelligence tortured women like her, spies, and took pleasure in it. She had let Grey lull her into complacency. Now she was wisely terrified again. “He comes because I am here. The Military Intelligence takes interest in me. I should have thought of that.”
“Do you trust me?”
“No. That is…perhaps. In some ways.” Could he not see she was frightened into idiocy and leave her in peace? “That is a strange question.”
“Trust me this much. Reams can’t touch you. He has no power under this roof. I will not let anyone hurt you.”
“That is what Galba said. I would believe it more if it were not said so often.”
“You have my word.” For him, that settled matters. He had been an English officer before he was put in charge of many spies. Perhaps she did trust him.
He opened the door to a gem of a room, perfectly proportioned, papered with Chinese scenes of pagodas and distant mountains. Curtains of white jacquard silk were drawn close so one could not see the bars. A simple dinner had been laid upon the table. She gave her attention to the men, and the one woman, who sat there.
“…avoid a confrontation,” Adrian was saying as she walked into the room. “Lazarus may even be hoping—”
He stopped speaking and sprang to his feet. The other men rose too—Galba, at the head of the table; Monsieur Doyle, whom she recognized easily from years ago in Vienna; the boy Giles, who had opened the door to this house for her; a thin, brown-haired man she did not know. Grudgingly and at the last min
ute, the last of them stood, a short, pink-faced man. That was Colonel Reams, she thought.
“Mademoiselle, I hope you are rested.” Galba drew her to the table and made a great show of introducing her to Doyle, who was calling himself Viscount Markham, and his wife, Lady Markham, who did not look like a woman named Maggie. She was, amazingly, French, with the accent of an aristo, which is not a thing expected of a Maggie. The thin man with the aspect of a librarian—most certainly a spy of considerable deadliness—was the Honorable Thomas Paxton. Next, Galba presented Colonel Reams, who did not look at her, but sneered rudely. Galba then allowed her to meet Adrian and Giles.
Grey put her into the chair between Galba and Adrian and went himself to the left side of the colonel, which is the weaker side of an opponent and advantageous for attack. “Colonel,” he said, sitting down.
“Major.” A terse and unfriendly acknowledgment from Reams.
They hated each other, Grey and the Colonel Reams. The others were also not fond of the colonel. She, who had been trained to notice such things, saw that Doyle and Adrian and the scholarly Paxton sat as men sit in an unfamiliar tavern, loose in their chairs, their arms upon the table, their feet planted, ready to spring up. Every man in the room watched Colonel Reams carefully, though they did not seem to do so. It was a dinner party awash in well-practiced stratagems.
Adrian murmured that she was not to worry as Grey had matters entirely in his hands. He served upon her plate chicken and potatoes and green beans, pretending to consult with her but in fact paying no attention whatsoever when she said she wanted nothing.
Galba resumed the conversation where it had left off. “Your culpability will be known, Adrian. Lazarus is no fool. Have you considered the consequences?”
“If we don’t intervene, Whitechapel will be knee-deep in bodies by the end of the week. What I want to do is—”
“You need to keep yer nose out of it, is my opinion,” Colonel Reams interrupted. “Let ’em bite each other’s buggering cocks off and choke on ’em. Since we’re shut of that nonsense—”
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