The Spymaster's Lady

by Joanna Bourne

  She faced Galba. Grey’s hold tightened upon her, perhaps because of what she had said, perhaps because he felt the change in her. For she was angry now, instead of wholly abashed with fear. “You speak of choices. Why do you tease me with what I would do if I were free? There is a game children play here—button, button, who has the button? The English have the button. What will you do with it?”

  She thought Galba was pleased. He preferred it when she was not afraid.

  He finished his coffee and set down his cup. “I propose an exchange. What I require is the knowledge stored in your brain. What I offer is a way out of the trap you are in.”

  She said nothing, waiting.

  “Give the Albion plans to England. I will spread the mantle of my protection between you and Fouché. I will crush Leblanc. I have the power to do this. I will give you a new name and a home, anonymous and safe, where no one can pursue you.” Piercing blue eyes fixed on her face. “Give me the plans, and you will be free of the weight of the thousands of deaths that are coming with this invasion. Whatever happens, it will no longer be your responsibility.”

  It was as if Galba lifted the lid to her soul. It chilled her to know she could be tempted with a few well-chosen words. She wished to be free of this heavy choice so very much. Almost, she wished to close her eyes to the damage England could do to her country with those plans, and give them away and be rid of them. Galba saw that cowardice in her, and she was shamed.

  “This is an equitable bargain, Annique. Will you accept it?”

  Doyle and the others looked elsewhere, pretending to be concerned with their coffee or a spot on the wall. The fire crackled in the fireplace. She had glanced into that chimney earlier. It was guarded halfway up by crossed iron bars set in the bricks. Every mouse hole in this house was closed. There was no way out.

  They would free her from this terrible choice. They were so wise and cunning. They knew precisely what to offer.

  She folded her hands into her lap and looked at him, straight. “Monsieur Galba, I do not wish to be questioned by any of the men who haunt your doorstep. I do not wish to return to Fouché, who is not a gentle master. But I will go to Paris and whore for him as my mother did, before I will turn traitor for a fat, white, sly old English spy like you.”

  Adrian gave a crack of laughter and was up, striding to the window. On the other side of the room the woman Maggie smothered a giggle. Grey found a new hold upon her shoulder. A firm one.

  The flowers woven into the rug were of a sort she did not recognize or which perhaps did not exist. She considered those flowers closely, since there was nothing and no one in that room she felt like seeing at that moment.

  “A French patriot,” Galba said. “The very essence of irrationality. At least we are clear where we stand.” When she risked a glance upward, it was extraordinarily difficult to read his face. He might even have been amused. Cats probably were amused when the mouse squeaked at them and struggled.

  “The conversation becomes predictable from this point. Giles…” The boy was stacking cups on the silver tray. He, too, laughed and was impudent enough he made no attempt to hide it. “Giles, take Mademoiselle—No. We will stop this Frenchified nonsense and give her thoughts a better direction. Take Miss Annique and introduce her to Tiny as a guest. Then put her in Grey’s bedroom and leave her.”

  Grey pulled her upright, helping her to stand, taking care of her.

  Galba stood. “Good night. We will talk again. We have much to discuss.”

  They knew she held the Albion plans. They intended to take them from her. Under all the cordiality, that was what had been said. It was best to establish this reality between them.

  “Good night, Monsieur Galba.” She curtsied, as a girl of good family would, to an old man. “We will hold all the discussions you wish. But I shall not eat or drink while I am in this house. You have only a short time to set about subverting me.”

  Twenty-eight

  “AN IMPRESSIVE WOMAN,” PAXTON SAID WHEN the door closed behind her. “I congratulate you on bringing her out of France.”

  “Maybe Fouché planted her on us to drive Grey insane.” Adrian was still chuckling.

  “Could be,” Doyle said. “She’s that good, we’d never know.”

  “I’d know.” Damn, but he was proud of her.

  “If you know her so well, tell me how we pushed her into this stupidity.” Adrian pushed the curtains closed, lapping them so there wasn’t even a strip of light out onto the side yard. He was dead serious again when he faced them, and angry. “She’s the one I should be hauling out of second-floor windows tonight. She’s wrong, you see.” He shot a look at Galba. “I’m not going to let you do ‘entirely horrible’ things to her.”

  “Nobody’s going to hurt the girl, unless Tiny takes a bite out of her on the way upstairs.” Doyle raised an eyebrow at Galba. “Did you expect that to work? Against a political idealist the age of that child?”

  “I had hoped to establish an extended dialogue and prevent exactly the sort of bravura performance we just enjoyed. Unfortunately, she had this farce planned before I even spoke to her.”

  “You think it’s a bluff?” Doyle asked. “I don’t.”

  Galba glanced in Grey’s direction. “Robert?”

  “Not a bluff.”

  “Adrian?”

  “Not a bluff. In fact, she’s calling ours.” Adrian jerked a thumb. “Grey’s.”

  Galba nodded. “That is my own opinion. I called it bravura, but it is, in fact, admirably rational. She will not eat. It’s the only conceivable weapon left her. I assume she will not even take water.”

  “No water. Nothing.” He closed his eyes, going over the conversation, trying to remember when he’d felt her resolve harden. “She was planning it when she refused the coffee. She made the decision when she heard your offer. For a minute, she wanted to say yes. She’s not going to let herself surrender that easily.”

  “So she has given us less than two days to persuade her by reasoned argument or demonstrate we are villains,” Galba said. “Captive and with no weapons, she has wrested control of the situation from our hands. Admirable.”

  Doyle sprawled in the big chair next to the fire with his feet up on the firedogs. Maggie was on the low ottoman, leaning against his knee, companionably close. She stirred and sat up. “Are you saying that girl means to starve herself to death if you don’t let her go?”

  “I won’t let it come to that.” He picked up Annique’s wineglass and rotated it softly. The wine made a circle, a whirlpool of spinning red lights with a dimple in the center.

  “She has been preparing for this eventuality all her life,” Galba said softly. “We are her enemies, Marguerite, and we have her cornered. She is desperate and passionate and, most especially, she is very young.”

  …And bloody careless with her life. He set the glass down impatiently. “Damn Socrates, anyway.”

  Adrian started to speak, then stalked over to help Giles clear away the cups.

  Galba tapped the carved panel inset in the arms of his chair. “The Albion plans are a grave responsibility for one so young. Eventually, we will relieve her of that. In the meantime, we must present her with alternate methods of confronting us.”

  “I should take her home with me before you end up killing her in your stupid Game with your stupid secrets.” Maggie scowled. “You will be satisfied, I suppose, if she suicides herself to escape you.”

  “We won’t let her do that, Maggie. It ain’t dead simple getting hold of pretty French girls this side of the Channel.” Doyle pulled his wife back against him and wrapped her in bearlike arms. “And Robert wouldn’t like it.”

  “Then Robert should not push her to desperation,” she said tartly.

  “We’re all in on it.” Adrian retrieved Paxton’s empty glass. “Grey takes her to bed. The rest of us slink around being friendly and insidious. We’re so wily it makes me sick.”

  “Wily,” Doyle agreed. “That’s us.” />
  Adrian expressed his opinion by picking up Doyle’s coffee cup, still half full, and walking off with it.

  “Hawker.” Grey got a tight-lipped, angry glare from Adrian. “Don’t make her less than she is. She’s not just friendly, pretty Annique. Remember that. She’s the Fox Cub and this is the Game.”

  “With points about even, so far,” Doyle said. “So I don’t feel as brilliant as I generally do. Also, I don’t like Reams breathing down our neck. He’s got jurisdiction, when it comes right down to it.”

  Reams wasn’t going to touch Annique. “There’re ways around that.” Grey clenched and unclenched his fists. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t get to use them on Reams.

  “The colonel could fall off his horse, I suppose.” Adrian stopped stacking dishes to think. “Or eat something that disagrees with him. Or find a cobra in his bed.”

  “There’s a lot of that happens,” Doyle agreed.

  “Or he could cut his throat, shaving.”

  “We will not call upon your peculiar expertise, Adrian.” Galba rose heavily and walked across the room to the large walnut desk. He fished in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a key. “Nor is that her best protection from the colonel.” He frowned. “Pax, I have information to disclose that I do not wish to burden you with, where you must go.”

  Paxton gave his slow, deceptively gentle smile. “I need to pack. And sleep, if I can.” He collected the bottle of Bordeaux from the sideboard as he walked by. “Good night, all. As for you, young man…”

  “I know. I know. Ferguson needs me in the kitchen.” Giles took it good-naturedly. He clattered the last of the dishes into the dumbwaiter, closed the hatch, and followed.

  “I shall find something to do as well, I suppose.” Maggie brushed her skirts and prepared to stand.

  “I’d like you to stay, if you will.” Galba fitted his key into the side drawer of the desk. “I value your insight, Marguerite. It will also save Will the trouble of repeating this conversation to you, later.”

  “I admit nothing.” But she smiled as she approached the desk where Galba was laying out file folders. “What is this, then?”

  Grey stood. These would be the files about Annique, the ones that had never passed through his office. He’d wondered why there was a skilled, important agent, with no file on her, anywhere. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

  Two of the three thick files Galba laid on the blotter were old. The original buff had darkened to a dull brown. On the opening lip of all three was a long, crimson line. That meant they were to be opened only in the presence of a Head of Section.

  Grave-faced, Galba picked the topmost. “What is in these files has been the most closely guarded secret of the British Service for twenty years. The time for such secrecy is past. It ended six weeks ago.” He pushed the folder across the desk. “In extremis, you may use any of this. It will trump Military Intelligence.”

  It was Annique’s file. The one Grey had never seen. The name, Annique Villiers, was the third of twelve aliases scripted in bold ink on the upper right corner. The folder was three inches thick, filled with close-written reports in many hands. Most of the papers, even the faded ones, were crisp and unwrinkled. They hadn’t had much handling. Not many people had read this file.

  He hesitated, then flipped it open. Summary notes were always inside the left cover. The first line told him everything. Adrian was reading upside down. He drew his breath in sharply. “Ye gods.” Doyle, leaning over his shoulder, took it in with a single glance and cursed.

  He kept reading. No wonder this was secret. No wonder.

  Doyle took a lumbering step toward Galba. “I should have been told.”

  “Nobody was told.”

  “They were operating in Vienna. My fief. Damn it, I should have been told.”

  Galba said, “You know the privileges of detached status. Will, you made those rules.”

  “You don’t use ’em against me. I came close to…Good God, why didn’t you tell me? One word would have been enough. One word.”

  “Your actions and your enmity were part of her protection.”

  Annique’s file. Grey turned over page after page, feeling the anger twist in his chest. This is going to break her heart. “She doesn’t know. Why the goddamned hell doesn’t she know?”

  “I do not deny culpability.” Face grim, Galba relocked the drawer and pocketed the key. “I disapproved, but I sanctioned it. The simple fact is, her mother chose not to tell her.”

  Unbelievable. “I understand it when she was a child. But when she was grown—how could she not tell her?”

  “There are no excuses. She never told Annique. Now we must.”

  “We tell her everything. Every damn thing.” He slapped the file. “We give her this. Complete. Every word. She has the right to know.”

  “She has the right.” Galba sank heavily into the wing chair by the fire. “I knew this was coming. I pity her profoundly, but I cannot take this cup from her.”

  “Tomorrow.” Not tonight. Let me give her one night, before I have to do this to her.

  Adrian was flipping angrily through the second folder, page by page. “Twenty years of lies. We haven’t left you a rag against the wind, have we, ma pauvre?”

  “It was wrong.” Doyle rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t care how valuable she was to us. This was wrong. And we did it.”

  Maggie wasn’t familiar with Service files. It took her longer to read notations and decipher the story. “I cannot believe this. How could a woman do such a thing to her child? They were close, Annique and her mother?”

  “Very close,” Doyle said.

  “You will hurt her unbearably. With her mother newly dead…”

  “I know, Maggie luv. It’s bad enough what we’re doing to that girl. Now we kick her in the guts with this.”

  “We’re not going to drop it in her lap and yell, ‘Surprise!’ We’ll go slow…” Adrian, for once, looked unsure. “We’ll…we’ll what? How do you say something like this?”

  “She will not believe you,” Maggie said. “Even before you hurt her so badly, you must convince her.”

  “The proof’s in her own mind,” Doyle said. “Her mother must have slipped up once or twice in all those years.”

  Once she was told, Annique would remember. She’d lie awake at night and remember every lie she’d been told.

  And he had to decide how to tell her. “Maggie’s right. We have to convince her that it’s true.” He took the file Adrian was looking at and extracted a single sheet. He smoothed it flat for everyone to see. “Here. We start at the beginning. Tomorrow we take her to St. Odran’s and show her the original of this in the parish record. Can we do that with Leblanc loose?”

  Doyle hesitated, then nodded. “It’s a small risk. But we have enough men to keep her safe for that long.”

  “Good. We show her the parish record, then bring her back and give her the files. We explain.” He looked up. Galba’s shrewd, deep-set eyes met his. “You explain. I sure as hell can’t.”

  “I have been considering the proper words for ten years. Perhaps I’ll find them tomorrow.”

  Twenty-nine

  ANNIQUE WAS WAITING FOR HIM IN HIS BEDROOM, on his bed, on her belly. She was on top of the covers, reading a book. She was naked.

  She looked at him through her eyelashes. “I am glad you were not devoured by that animal which has draped itself across the doorway. What is it, that thing?”

  In all England, all France, all the world, there was no other woman for him. Only Annique. He had her naked in his bed. One of life’s perfect moments.

  “We think it’s part wolfhound. Doyle found it down by the docks, likely off some ship or other.”

  “I would say it is rather wolf and possibly also part elephant. It does not like me.”

  “Good. Then you won’t go wandering around the halls after dark. Maggie brought some nightclothes.”

  “I saw them. They are very lovely, of course, but I tho
ught you would prefer to see that I am totally harmless when you approach me. It is necessary, as I understand these things, that a man not be nervous at such times.” She propped herself up, her breasts just brushing the crimson leather cover. Her smile was knowing, and her eyes were shy. Men would kill to possess this woman.

  He came to her, unwinding his cravat, sliding it out of his collar, tossing it onto the chair in passing. He felt infinitely powerful. She made him feel that way. “I’m glad you’re so willing. I suppose you’re preparing for one last beautiful night of lovemaking…”

  Her eyes widened slightly. “Perhaps.”

  “…before you start dying of thirst.”

  Her brows contracted in annoyance. “I had not intended to bring that up. Such matters are not conducive to romantic behavior.”

  “Casts a damper over everything, doesn’t it, all that dire nobility of yours.”

  “I have changed nothing with my decision. I merely strip away the veneer of civility. I do not need to justify my behavior to a—”

  “Then don’t. The best minds in the British spy service are going to talk you out of it tomorrow. We spent the last hour plotting. We have plans.”

  “Oh.” She looked stubborn and apprehensive. Also relieved. Nine-tenths of her was hoping to be persuaded out of that idiocy.

  He said, “I have plans, too.” She had only to look at him to see what he had in mind.

  He jerked the last button loose and pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor, then stripped his trousers off. She started to sit up, but he set his hand on her shoulder to keep her as she was. He liked her this way…naked, laid out on her belly. She was exquisitely lovely, and she couldn’t attack. “Have I mentioned you’re the most beautiful woman in the world?”

  “From one cause and another we have missed saying such things to each other.”

  Those sleek cat muscles of hers told him how nervous she was. Willing, but nervous. He could use that nervousness. He could make it explode inside her like foam in a keg. He’d send her wild tonight. Beyond thought. Beyond restraint. “I like the curve here…” He ran his hand down the long, taut muscles that paralleled her spine. “It’s like the countryside back home. Long and rolling.”