The Spymaster's Lady (22 page)

S
HE SLEPT, HELD IN STRONG ARMS, WHILE
Robert and the horse Harding brought them the last of the way to London. He was taking her where she would be safe, he said, and she was content to let him do so.

She had awakened in the dawn to the sound of wagons on cobblestones and women in white kerchiefs selling ladles of milk from the huge cans on the back of their carts. The sky was still pink when he brought her past the Covent Garden, which was not a garden at all but instead a market of incredible size, full of flowers and vegetables and chickens in cages, complaining. He bought buns there, from a street seller who handed one up to her, still on Harding's back, and spoke an English she could not understand at all. It was sweet and had raisins and cinnamon in it.

Beyond the market, the streets were quieter. Robert guided Harding into a long, well-tended alley between houses now, little more than a walkway, that angled into a mews, a passageway behind the houses where carriages and horses were kept. Then through alleys again. She could match none of this with the map she carried in her head, which did not mention such small lanes. They were going west and north, away from the rising sun. In the green square they crossed, the windows of every house were still shuttered and the curtains drawn. The only people in the square were two maidservants carrying baskets piled with bread, who looked at them curiously as they rode by.

“Your friends are bourgeois.” She assessed the neat, stuccoed facades. “They will not want such guests as we are, even in their kitchen, I think.”

“They'll take us in.”

He imposed her upon his family, then—an uncle or cousin. Only with family would he be so certain of a welcome. She regretted the lack of a family of her own from time to time. Maman had said quite absolutely nothing about her past or Papa's, not even the town they came from. Now she would never know.

Another alley led them to the middle of a self-satisfied street with linden trees trapped in fences. Dull and respectable was written on every door. She had spent little time in places like this. She did not expect to be comfortable here. Whatever he believed, his respectable relatives would not welcome a questionable and not-so-clean woman to their home.

“Here we are.” Robert slid from the horse across the rump. He had great skill in riding for a man of the sea, she thought. He must be as stiff and tired as she was, but the arms that lifted her down were steady and strong as tree limbs. He held her even after she had gained her footing.

It was a large, white, solidly built house…a rich one, on this quiet street. He tied the reins to a post, and they went to the front door, like guests, up seven stone steps. Stern, unamused-looking iron barred the windows. A careful and suspicious householder, then. She was cautious herself, as a rule, but she did not think she would like people who barricaded themselves in such a determined fashion against the hazards of the world. The knocker was in the form of a curled rose—brass, richly detailed, highly polished.

Robert knocked loudly. After a minute a boy opened the door. He was expensively dressed, but in shirtsleeves. Not a servant then, but perhaps a member of the household. He was taller than she was but perhaps three years younger. Though it was early, he did not look in the least sleepy. He began to smile in a way that said Monsieur Robert was indeed welcome here.

The bars on the windows plucked at the back of her mind. None of the other houses upon this street had bars on them. Odd. Even this early there should have been a servant at the door, not a young boy in a fine linen shirt who examined the street so alertly and stepped back at once to let them in.

Robert pushed her rapidly across the threshold into the house, into a dull, tasteless parlor, stiff with disuse. The door that closed behind her had strong locks on it. Expensive locks. Very faint, below the smells of cooking and beeswax, the house held the scent of gunpowder. A house should not smell that way.

“Robert…” She tried to turn, and his hands tightened and did not allow it. “I have decided not to stay here. I do not…Stop it, Robert.” But he was very strong.

The boy locked the door behind them. “The others made it back safely. All of them. We didn't expect you till later.” He went to unlock the other door on the far side of the parlor.

What others? Robert was expected. But he had not told her he was going to London. Robert was not a man who told light and easy lies.

“I do not understand. I don't like this…” It did not matter what she said. Robert thrust her ahead of him through the second door, into the house.

The boy followed and locked it behind them. “Galba wants to see you.”

Her mind splintered, brittle as shattered ice. Galba? No. She was confounded, utterly, at what was happening and at the change in Robert. He forced her swiftly, firmly forward, down a wide hall with a bare wood floor and the strong smell of fresh bread and eggs and ham coming from behind one of its closed doors. He didn't say anything at all.

At the end of the hall a door stood half-open. Inside, a man sat behind a large, cluttered desk. On every side of him, papers and folders and binders were stacked in bookshelves. One high shelf held a violin case. The barred window showed the garden at the back of the house. The man stopped writing and looked up as Robert impelled her into the room before him.

She already knew. She could not understand or believe, but she knew where she was. The number beside the door had been seven. This was Number Seven Meeks Street. This was the innermost stronghold of the British Service.

The man set his quill neatly back into the pot of ink. He was perhaps sixty, solid and square, pale-skinned, his hair gone stark white with age. He had eyes bright and pitiless and intelligent as a crow's, but intensely blue, the only color in that face. His gaze fixed upon her as if she were an object of the greatest interest to him, and he had been awaiting delivery for a long time.

This was Galba, unmistakably Galba, who was master of all English spies.

“Did anyone get hurt, coming home?” Robert held her pressed against his chest, surrounded by the brute strength of his muscles as she shook uncontrollably. Now at last, when it was too late, she recognized him. The knowledge of who he must be swept across her and the hopelessness of it all and the fear.

“Adrian did minor damage to his wound,” Galba said, “climbing in and out of boats. Doyle showed up yesterday. He was in a French lockup for a while. No harm done.”

“We've been lucky.” Robert pushed her, stiff and unwilling, forward. “Sir, may I present Mademoiselle Annique Villiers. Annique, this, as you no doubt have already guessed, is Galba.”

“Mademoiselle, I am very glad to meet you at last.”

“She'd better sit down.” Robert pushed her into the cushioned chair that faced the desk and stood behind her. He kept a warm, large, remorseless hold upon her shoulder. “She's scared.”

How had this happened? The world had turned upside down so suddenly. How did she come to be here, defenseless and trapped, in this quiet, secret house?

It was Grey who held her, and it was Robert. Grey had only ruthlessness within him where other men carried hearts. Not one thing she knew of Robert was true or real. She was being held by Grey's hands, which had fought with her and comforted her and knew all there was to know about every part of her body. They were Robert's hands, whose image was graven in her memory as if chiseled there. The same man. She did not think she could hold this knowledge in her soul and not be destroyed by it.

Someone slid into the room behind Grey and took up a station at the side of the room, leaning negligently against the wall. He was thin and young, black-haired, wearing the clothing of a London dandy. She did not know him until she saw his eyes. Then she knew. It would be years before the rest of him caught up with the age of those eyes. He smiled at her, rueful and a little pitying. Adrian.

Doyle also would be somewhere in this house. She had the most formidable enemies ranged against her. There was no role she could play, no fabrication she could create, that would fool these hard-eyed, patient men. She was the mouse in a houseful of cats. Not a chance for her.

Galba tapped lightly on the desk to draw her attention. “Mademoiselle, I want you to believe we wish you well. I will do you no hurt whatsoever, not under any circumstances. You're understandably frightened. We will give you time to get used to the situation.”

It would begin now, the questioning. They would be courteous for a while.

“It is not so new to me, this situation.” Her voice did not break, thank the good God. “I have been before in the hands of men who want things from me, Monsieur Galba. I do not fool myself. It will hurt eventually.”

Behind her, she heard Grey mutter, “For God's sake.”

Galba opened a book on the side of his desk, flipped past a few pages, then closed it with a snap. “I cannot believe your mother let you grow up thinking the British Service tortures people in this house. It is inconceivable to me.”

“I do not think my mother said anything at all about the British Service. She did not work against you directly, ever. Nor have I.”

“Has anyone, anywhere, ever made such an accusation against my service?” There was anger underneath Galba's voice.

The methods of interrogation of the British Service had become a matter of some urgency at this moment. She prodded and prodded at her brain until it could work a little. The Military Intelligence of the British had a bad reputation. But Galba's people…? In the field there were deaths and violence—these were not the games of children they played, after all—but nothing in her vast store of memory spoke of torture.

“I have not heard of it,” she admitted.

“Then don't prate foolishness at me. Even terrified, your mother's daughter should have more sense.” Then, immediately, he shook his head and made a wiping-away gesture across the desk. “I retract that. You're exhausted and shocked, and you've been dealing with barbarians like Leblanc. It undermines your judgment. And in one way you are correct. I intend that you will cooperate with me in the end.”

Her skin was cold everywhere except where Grey touched. She wondered if she might possibly faint.

“Have you fed her at all today?” Galba was looking at Grey. He continued without waiting for an answer. “I'm stupid to ask. Of course you have, knowing what awaited her.” He made the same impatient gesture. “But you haven't let her wash or given her decent clothing. Take her away and let her compose herself. She can't think when she's in this state, and I can't concentrate, seeing her like this.” Beneath bushy white eyebrows, piercing blue eyes studied her. “Mademoiselle Villiers, we will not talk seriously until you have recovered your equanimity. Not until tonight, or perhaps tomorrow. You will need time for lengthy reflection.”

She sat, numb and unmoving, till Grey took her under the arm and levered her out of the chair.

“One thing more…” Galba had become grave. He moved the inkwell upon his desk a finger's breadth to the left and stared at it, his lips compressed and twisted at the corner, as if the inkwell had blighted many hopes. “We heard of your mother's death, but not how it happened. Will you tell me?”

Pain rang within her like a bell, cold and sharp. After weeks, the hurt was not less, thinking of Maman's death. “Her carriage fell from the cliffs. Into the sea. And she was lost.” Maman, who had dared so much and escaped so many evil chances, had died because some stone rolled from the crest of a hill. A pointless death. It was an irony of the gods. “Near Marseilles.”

“You are sure she is dead? Beyond doubt?”

She nodded.

“I'm very sorry,” Galba said quietly. “Go now. We will talk later.”

Grey led her away. Her exit was followed by Adrian's wry gaze, but Galba sat looking down at the book in his hands, his face set and utterly still.

It was Robert who walked beside her down the hall and opened the door to the stairwell that led to the basement. It was Robert, looking as he always did, who smiled reassuringly at her, as if all were correct and excellent with the world. But it was Grey's grip on her the whole way.

I
F ONE WISHES TO DO SECRET AND UNPLEASANT
things to people, Annique thought, cellars are the logical place. It was not altogether surprising Grey should take her to one. It was not damp or sinister, being one of those basements half in, half above, the ground. The corridor was carpeted, the walls papered in a delicate pattern of blue flowers. All was deceptively ordinary. But the arched windows, high in the wall, were barred with iron grills that sank deep into the brick.

No escape. How thorough they are.
She and the knowledge she carried were wholly at the disposal of the British Service. Doors, closed and threatening, waited on either side of the hall. He would take her behind one of them.

“They aren't torture chambers.” Grey was annoyed. “Left side is workshops. Storage rooms on the other side. That one's full of papers. Not an oubliette in the house. I'm not Leblanc.”

“You are more subtle than he is. Infinitely, evilly more subtle.” She wrapped her arms around her to control the shaking. He opened the last door on the right and went in before her. She did not know what would happen next, but she could not imagine Grey hurting her. Or Robert. Whichever one he was.

“You are not real.” She stood in the empty hallway. There was nowhere to run, after all. “I have been tearing my heart to pieces for a mountebank scarecrow. A puppet. I am the girl in the story who falls in love with a clockwork figure in the tower. I have thought myself very clever from time to time, but I am more stupid than dirt.”

Grey came back to the door. He had Robert's face, but he was not Robert. “I'm not made of clockwork.”

“You. You do not exist at all. You are a nothing, Monsieur Grey. You are a shadow and a cloth flapping in the wind.”

“I am Robert Greyson Montclaire Fordham. Everything I told you is the truth—my parents, my brothers, the house in Somerset, the trout pond, the pony I taught to do tricks. I was Robert Fordham for twenty-six years before Grey ever existed.”

“You
lied
to me. You are nothing but lies to your back teeth.”

His grin showed exactly those teeth at her. “Then we're well matched. Are you still afraid?”

“Of course I am afraid. I would be an imbecile not to be afraid.”

“You're already over it. I won't hurt a hair on your head and you know it. Come.” He took her hand and pulled her with him into the room which was, amazingly, a bath. It was shining clean and luxurious and surprised her considerably more than a dungeon would have.

“This is a bath,” she said stupidly.

“So it is. I hope you find that endlessly reassuring.”

“I do not want to be reassured. I want to escape.”

He laughed. He had betrayed her and decoyed her into this house and captured her and now he laughed at her. He was most definitely coldhearted as a clockwork.

She was confronted by a small, paneled room. The two arched windows were barred with iron latticework. She couldn't see out of the milky glass, but, from the angle of the sun, she could tell the room faced south. A red rug from Turkey slanted across the black and white tile. A fire was just starting in the brick fireplace set in the wall. Beside the fire, a cheval glass reflected everything.

The bath was a huge, high-sided, oval tub of polished mahogany. Odd pipes emerged from the wall, with spigots upon them.

“This looks like an expensive brothel,” she said, knowing something of the matter, “except for that,” she gestured toward the pipes, “which looks like part of a brewery I saw in Munich once. What do you do with this?”

“It's a bathtub. What do you think I do—stew prisoners in boiling oil?” He stomped over and opened spigots. They gave out water, which was logical, though she did not see how it could be hot. “My official torturer takes Wednesday off to practice on small animals. You'll have to make do with me. If you're wondering about the water—the other side of the wall is the kitchen stove and a hot water tank. I have ingenious drainage instead of servants running around with pails.”

Servants who might be bribed. They have thought of everything.
“I see.”

“I thought you would. I'll have this full in a minute. You get your clothes off.” He thrummed with hungry tension. Inside her, an answering tension arose.

“Do you think it is this simple between us? That you will ask, and I will take off my clothing?”

“I think it's damn complicated between us. Always has been.” He shut the taps off and tested the water. “Not one bloody thing's been simple so far. Why should this be?” When he came to her, he took hold of her carefully, as if she were breakable. He turned her to face away from him, toward the mirror. “We'll take this one step at a time.” He set his hands to the shawl she was wearing and unwrapped it and dropped it on the floor. “This is the first step.”

“Why are you doing this? Why?”

“Taking your clothes off? Desperation. Madness. If you take a good look at me you'll see I'm about to break apart.” His voice was tight and fierce, deep as a growl, unsteady at the edges. “Now we take your dress off. That's the next step. Lots of knots to untie, aren't there? Stop me if you have any real objections.”

“I do not even know what you want with me.”

“You'll figure it out, clever girl that you are.”

“I do not mean at this moment, here. I mean…” She made the mistake of looking in the mirror. “I mean…” The mirror showed a perfect ragamuffin with parted lips and wide, staring eyes. Robert was in the mirror with her. His fingers were silk soft on her back, letting her dress loose.

“How can you be both of them?” Her voice came out young and bewildered. “Robert, how can you be Grey? I look at you and look at you, and you are both of them, and I think I will die of it.”

“Very unlikely.”

“I cannot do this with you when I do not even know who you are.” But she lied. It did not matter which man it was who made her feel this way.

“Let's see if you can.” He plucked away at the knots.

She did not want this. She desired it with all her heart. She managed to do both at once, very strongly, with her mind entirely empty of thought the whole time.

He undid the last knot. In the mirror, he opened her dress and folded the edges back like petals and pulled it downward. No hurry. No hurry at all. Her dress slid away from her, a long, dark column collapsing.

He said, “You can't imagine how much I hate this dress. I've wanted to rip it off you every minute of every day, morning till night. I've dreamed of doing this.”

“Robert did not want that.” Her voice had become husky. Her mind filled with imaginings so strong they were tongues of heat, lapping her thighs, licking inside her. She was melting like wax in his hands.

“Robert wanted it so much his teeth ached.” He lifted the pale shift from her shoulders and slid it off, uncovering her breasts, inch by inch. “I'm Robert. I know.”

Her hands clenched convulsively when the linen brushed by, falling. But she let it slip away. Let this happen to her.

She was naked and more naked. The brothels had mirrors like this. She had not known why. Now she did. It pulled at her mind, seeing herself naked with him. It made her only a woman with all her clothes off and the dark shape of a man behind her. Such elemental simplicity. It was obvious what she would soon do, that naked girl in the mirror.

She looked down so she would not see herself submitting in this idiotic way. The rug was rows of jewel-bright flowers. Around her feet spread the dark pool of her dress and her white shift. Grey knelt on the rug, on all those flowers, and unwrapped the rags that had held her knife, which she did not have, and had not once thought of using, anyway. Then her stockings fell, and she was stepping out of her shoes. His touch was velvet on her legs. She could not think at all.

“God, you're beautiful.” His breath feathered across her skin as he stood. “Let's put you in the tub while the water's hot.” He pushed her gently in that direction, fingers on her bare back. “That's right. Off you go.”

Maman would tell me to do what he asks. That is the path of the clever spy…to use her body to entice and control.
But she was the one enticed. She did not become naked before Grey to be devious.

She stepped into the bath. Water steamed around her. All the little waves stroked at her as she lowered herself in. She slid down far into the water, sinking in it to her chin, and kept an eye on Grey.

Grey sat on the carved bench at the side of the room and untied his cravat. The bench had griffins on its arms and he hung his cravat over one of them, across its nose. He laid his jacket beside him on the bench. “We'll wash your hair.”

“If you go away, I will wash anything you want me to.” All her many years as an agent had not prepared her for this. A decade cavorting with lions and demons in hell would not prepare one for this.

He smiled Robert's smile, slow and warm. “Do you know that you become a complete vagabond the minute you set foot on the road—grimy and rumpled and chewing grass stems? I watched you get dirtier and more disreputable every ten paces. You have the most amazing protective coloration.”

She swallowed. “When one is a vagabond it is necessary to look and act like one and smell like one. I learned that before I could talk.”

“You're not a vagabond now. You need your hair washed.” He thumbed the studs out of his cuffs and set them aside on top of his jacket. Then he began working on the buttons of his shirt, going from the collar downwards.

He would make love to her here. Would he carry her to the rug by the fire and lay her down in front of that mirror? She would see him twice—in truth and in the mirror. Would it feel like two men making love to her, Grey and Robert? She was completely daunted by this entire situation. She decided to spend a long time in the bathtub, thinking it over.

He tugged his shirt free from the band of his trousers and pulled it over his head. For the first time, she saw him unclothed.

He had the body of a soldier. The thin, white line on his ribs was a saber cut. The pitted marks were shrapnel, four or five pieces. There were other scars. Men had tried and tried to kill him. They had all failed because Grey was tough, right to the fiber, and also smarter than they were.

He jerked a boot off and shied it across the room to thump on the bricks of the hearth. Then he did the same to the other and stood and stretched. A hundred muscles slid under his skin. He was very beautiful. She wanted to rub across him everywhere with her mouth and the sensitive skin of her face. It was not fair that he should do this to her.

He strolled toward her. She would have sworn, without the smallest lie, that his eyes glowed like hot coals.

She huddled further into the water which was not a substance useful to hide in. When he leaned against the tub, his bare chest was so close she could have straightened and touched him with her lips, without the smallest difficulty. He cupped water with both hands. Drops spilled down through his fingers, silver and sparkling.

“My advice is, close your eyes,” he said.

She had not quite worked out what he meant before he dumped water upon her.

He said, “Not good at taking advice, are you?”

“I have been told that.” She sputtered water out of her mouth and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.

When he dipped another handful, she was more ready. Water poured in sheets across her face, again and again, until she was most thoroughly wet. She waited and dripped while he made lather in his hands from a soap that smelled of bay leaves. That was Robert's smell, not Grey's. She would smell like Robert when he made love to her.

When they made love…“You do not need to do this. I have been washing my hair entirely by myself for years and years.”

“It'll be a change then. Keep your eyes shut when I put the soap on. I'm out of practice.”

She did not resist, but sat like a dolt while he scrubbed her hair efficiently. It was useless to reason with him. He was, as she knew, a man of unending ruthlessness.

“Hold your breath,” he ordered.

This time, she was wise. She grabbed a lungful of air before he pushed her down, under the water.

“
Espèce de chien.
You drown me.” She shook her head fiercely, getting water everywhere. Upon him too. “You had only to ask and I would…”

His fingers wove into her hair to hold her still. The first kiss, fierce as fire, was to silence her. Then he began little kisses, one after the other, along her lips…demanding and demanding till she kissed back. This was the only safe way to deal with a man of unending ruthlessness.

“I want you so damn much,” he whispered into her mouth. “It hasn't stopped, not for a minute, since I saw you in Leblanc's cellar. For days I've thought of nothing but stripping you naked. I'm nine-tenths mad with it.”

He tasted of cinnamon. It was ironic that a man like Grey should taste ordinary and domestic. It let him slip, somehow, through her defenses.