The Spymaster's Lady (23 page)

When he loosed her, she floated in the water, dizzy with wanting him.

Something fitted into the tub next to her. Then, on the other side. He was above her, naked, and eager for her as a stallion after a mare. He lowered himself into the tub. His skin was solid and warm and shocking as it slid against her. Altogether unfamiliar. This might have frightened her if she had been capable of any emotion at all, except being entirely overwhelmed by this turn of events.

She held tight to the rim of the tub. “You cannot do this.”

“Watch me.”

“I mean, you cannot do this in any case, but it is also physically impossible. There is no room.”

“We'll find out. Hold on to me instead of the tub.” He put her hands on his shoulders. He made it seem sensible and natural. Water sloshed wildly as he circled her ribs and raised her up. Then he was underneath her, lifting her smoothly, and she was above him.

He smiled. “We fit just fine. See? Relax a bit, and I'll…Yes. That's right.” He centered her body upon his, and her legs parted. He guided her hips down upon him as if he had done this a thousand times with her. “Damn, that feels good.”

It was…extraordinary. She straddled him, riding him in the water, her legs wedged tight against the side of the tub. She was open. The maleness of him knew exactly where it belonged. It nudged at her, wanting to go in. Entirely ready to do so.

Time jogged to a stop. Nothing—no preconception, no advice—had prepared her for this.

His eyes were level with hers, inches away, filling the universe. “You're still bruised.” He barely touched her ribs. “Here and here. I'll be careful with you.”

He was a fighter with fists as hard as stone. He would be gentle with her. There could be nothing more devastating to her senses than that alliance. “It is not fair that you do this to me when I am a prisoner.”

“Is that what you're telling yourself? That you're doing this because you're a prisoner?” He picked up soap from the dish on the little table and turned it over and over between his palms. “Then you just climb out of this tub and start yelling. Galba will be down in two minutes to rescue you. Hawker will cut out my liver and Doyle will stomp it into the ground. Or you can lay me out with one of those pokers over there by the fire. That should appeal to you.” He spread soap on her shoulder, taking his time. There were plans for her seduction in every small movement. He was a man of many successful plans. “You want this.”

“I do not…” She felt him draw the line of her collarbone with one soapy fingertip. “I do not want this. I will not.” When he returned to her shoulder, he made small circles there, playing among the nerves. He was barely touching. Was there anything in the world except his eyes? “I should not.”

“You keep working on that and let me know.” He smiled. “Did you ever have long hair, Annique?”

“When I lived with the Rom. It grew very long, all down my back.”

“I'd like to see your hair long.” He traced curvy lines on her chest, in the foam of soap. The prickle and slide wiped her mind utterly clean of thought. “It would flow down like this.” He showed the path long hair would fall. Down her shoulder and over her breast. Just the way it would flow down her, his skillful, slippery fingers flowed. “You have midnight hair, full of silk and hidden stars. You snare me past redemption.”

She had been told many times that she was beautiful, generally by men who then asked her price. This was different. It was Grey who found her beautiful. She had never cared before. “This is not wise. Not for either of us.”

“I know. We're about to be very, very stupid.”

“We should stop.”

“You do that. I'm not going to.” He shifted in the water. Hard, male warmth slid against the parts of her that were secret and sensitive and not used to this irrational business. Hunger blossomed and burned. It spread everywhere inside her.

“I cannot think when you do this.”

“You don't need to think. You already figured this out. Remember Plato? I'm the other half of your egg. We're getting back together.”

“Maybe. I do not know. It was easier to talk about Plato when your hands were tied.” He explored her breasts, drawing trails of fire with little explosions of surprise at the peak. She swallowed hard. “It is beautiful, what you do to me. When I look at you, it is so beautiful it hurts. Like the curve of a wave or a leaf falling. Have I told you that?”

“Not in so many words.” He brought a nipple toward him so he could kiss it. “I like the way you nubble up here, all pink. Shows you like what I'm doing. You taste good.” Another kiss. “Soapy but good. I think I'll do this for a while. Stop me when you stop liking it.”

She did not stop him. She let his mouth lead her through shock after shock into a spinning wildness. Heat burned in pulses. She groaned and threw her shoulders back and leaned toward him, yes, with all of her body. It was a yielding of everything.

She was part of the madness now. She was committed.

He knew the exact moment she gave in. He stirred strongly where they were nestled together between her legs. “I feel you enjoying it. You stir inside when I do this, down where we're touching. You'll like the rest of it, too.”

“I am…deciding.” Warm water lapped and eddied between them with every move. Hot shivers gripped and tugged at her. “Do not hurry me. I am still deciding whether…or not. Maybe not.”

“You keep thinking that. But it's late for you. You haven't been able to stop yourself for a while.”

He was right. She could not have drawn away from him to save her life.

He stroked down her belly to where she ached for him so much. He tangled his fingers in the small curls there. He did not touch within her. He could, at any moment. It was torment, knowing he would choose his own time to touch her there. Ribbons of longing spun through her, pulling and pulling. She moved upon him. “This is…I should not…”

“When you're ready.” The flat planes of his abdomen were hard, quivering with tension where she braced her palms against him. His voice had deepened. Gone hoarse. His eyes were the color of smoke, with flame beneath. Hot. Ravenous. “We'll wait till every part of you wants this.”

“No.” She could not stare into those eyes or she would be lost. She bent her head. Her hair hung in tendrils that swayed when she shook her head. “I…No.”

He took a deep breath and held still. He was ready beneath her, ready as iron. “What is it, Cub?” Careful, his hands shaking a little, he lifted her chin and searched her face. “I swear, I wouldn't have you like this if I didn't think you wanted it. What's the matter?”

“I do not…I do not do this with English spies…” It came out in short, frantic breaths. “…who do not give a fig for me. And who…confuse me.”

“You don't do this with anyone, according to the best available evidence. A man knows, at this point.” He lifted strands of her wet hair and pulled them back from her face, left and right. She had to look at him. Laughter and stark hunger and tenderness poured from him…and a shrewd understanding that scared her witless. “Give me a little credit, Cub. You want this. If you didn't, I sure as hell wouldn't be deflowering you in a bathtub.”

“I…”

“From the first, I've known. You. Only you. Inevitable.” His fingertips skimmed her cheek, then over her lips. She shuddered. They both knew what he was doing to her. “We'll make it work. Trust me. Do you want to talk for a while?”

“I cannot. You distract me.”

Oh, but he thought that was very funny. He made the water shake with his laughter. “I think I'll distract you some more.” He kissed one breast, then the other.

She ached. Already, she swayed in his hands, unable to stop herself. But he wanted the words of surrender also. He tormented them both with his foolish scruples. She was not so naïve to acquiesce to a man while he laughed at her.

She no longer cared whether it was wise or disastrous or merely inevitable.
I need him. I will have him.
He would see the surrender she made to him.

She gripped the side of the tub and rose up. He was ready. She thrust herself downward, hard.

A deep cry wrenched out of her. She felt tearing inside. The stab of pleasure hurt. It was honey sweet.

“Good…God.” Grey surged upward to meet her. “Wait.” He locked his hands to the bones of her hips and kept her tight to him, panting, face contorted. “Wait. Wait a damn minute.”

“Yes.” She held most totally motionless, stunned past thought.

“That was…That…” He sucked in a tremendous, shaky breath. “Annique, men like to be prepared for this sort of thing.” He held rigidly still, savage with need, shuddering with laughter. “You'll be the death of me, woman. Does it hurt?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Yes. Not exactly. It feels different.”

“I imagine it does.” His hands clenched. Released. Stroked the length of her body. Clenched around her again. “Don't move, or this is going to be remarkably…brief.” He took another deep, ragged breath. “I'd planned something slow and elaborate.”

Elaborate. He need not have worried. Inside her, things were extremely elaborate. She made some sound.

“I've been looking forward to this for a long time,” he said.

She wanted to tell him that she had, as well, waited for this. But she could not speak.

“Stay still now. I'll try to go slow.” His fingers slid down to open soft, sensitive parts of her. He eased gradually deeper into her. Pain by pain. Pleasure by pleasure. He was smooth as the water swirling past, compelling as the pull of tides.

Thought quenched. She gasped and started to move upon him.

“Softly, love. Wait.”

“I…I cannot.”

“You can. Gently with yourself.” He pressed her hips down to him, holding her still. His other hand caressed persuasively, building a restless anxiety within her. “We're in no hurry. See. It doesn't hurt when you hold still. I do this, and there's no pain at all.”

She did not try to answer. She had misplaced the ability to translate between French and English. An overmastering rhythm gripped her. She was frantic to ride upon him. It was impossible to keep still. He would make her insane. She made fists and hit upon his chest in great strokes, like a bell tolling, as she rocked. Upward. Down. He opened his hold and let her move upon him, deeply. He gasped each time.

Again. Again. A wall, solid and heavy as bricks, but made of burning light, grew around her. And crashed down. Over her. Everywhere.

He must have felt what happened within her. He thrust upward, deep inside. Yes. And yes. She threw her head back and cried out, altogether lost. Except that she must hold him, tight, tight to her.

It did not hurt. Nothing could hurt when she was like this.

Pleasure rushed in. Filled her. Jolts of it hit, spaced by the moans she made. It was limitless pleasure, orbed and blazing, that glowed and burned inside her. She felt herself closing over him again and again.

Time flowed once more. The edge of that glory slid across her and away. She collapsed, inch by inch, shaking and pulsing, onto him.

His arms wrapped around her. She lay her head upon his heart. It beat like a horse running, strong and even.

“I am glad I did this,” she whispered in French, “whatever comes after.”

She felt everywhere light as feathers, but when she tried to move, she found she was, on the contrary, heavy as lead. It was a good thing she had someone beneath her or she would probably have drowned.

H
E CLOSED THE DOOR SOFTLY BEHIND HIM.
Anaique slept on the couch in the study, wrapped in a white Turkish robe—his damp, sweet, vulnerable, and deadly French agent, exhausted from making love with him.

Miraculously and at last, she was his. He could solve everything else, now that he'd got that right. He wanted to grin like a fool and caper around the halls. Pity a Head of Section couldn't do that.

“There's nineteen beds in this house,” Doyle was waiting for him, leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest, his ugly face set in lines of amusement, “if you count the cots in back of the kitchen. None of 'em's good enough for you. You do it in the bathtub. God's cat.”

That was the trouble, living with spies. They figured out every damn thing. No privacy. “We need to get her some clothes. I can't keep her in a bathrobe.”

“Maggie'll bring over some bits and pieces. They're close enough in size.”

“Except Annique is what I'd call plum-size, very tasteful and understated.” Adrian came up, light on his feet. He wore his gentleman's togs—charcoal jacket, dove-colored waistcoat, ruby stickpin in his cravat. He didn't look like a man who'd had a bullet picked out of him ten days ago. “Maggie, on the other hand, is more—”

“And you, me lad, can stop right there,” Doyle said.

Grey needed a look at Tacitus and Montaigne. One final confirmation. They'd be on the shelves in the library. He started upstairs. “Where's Giles?”

“I sent him to mop up.” Doyle allowed a short, innocent pause. “Seems the bathroom's an inch deep in water somehow.”

“Send him to the office when he's done. I shot a man in Kent. We have to notify a magistrate.”

“This spree of lawlessness you've embarked upon…” Adrian trailed them upstairs, shaking his head. “Fletch sends his compliments and suggests you return his nag. I take it the beast is tied outside.”

“Right. More work for Giles. And remind Ferguson to serve coffee at dinner, not tea. Annique doesn't like tea. I'm glad you two made it out of France.”

“I'm glad she didn't crack your skull on the way up from Dover,” Doyle said equitably. “For one thing, you can sort this mess that piled up while you were depopulating the countryside. First off, Military Intelligence knows we got Annique. They want her.”

“They can go to hell.”

“With bells on. However, Colonel Reams has invited himself to dinner. A conference, he calls it.”

“Then I'll tell him to go to hell myself.”'

Doyle and Adrian followed Grey down the hall and into the big front room. Sun poured through the curtains, glinting off the collection of blades Service agents had hung up on racks over the years. Big leather chairs faced the fireplace. The
Times
lay open on one table, a deck of cards and a long clay pipe on another. Hundreds of books were jammed and stacked in bookcases that covered two walls.

Grey said, “I need Montaigne and Tacitus.”

“Who are…?” Adrian said.

“A Frenchman and one of them Romans, respectively.” Doyle wandered to the shelves beside the fireplace. “Dead a good while, which makes me wonder why I'm looking for them. Now Montaigne…when last seen he was somewhere around here.” He stretched a spatulate hand across books. “Try over there for Tacitus. Bound in red, if I remember. Fletch told us about Annique's eyes. There's a doctor with a cartload of degrees wants a look at her. His report's on your desk. The good news is that it's probably permanent. And some news that's not so good. Leblanc's in England.”

“We met. He tried to knife Annique in an alley in Dover.”

“Old news then. He brought twenty men across the Channel, give or take. The military's been rounding 'em up along the south coast since Monday, which is how they found out about Annique.”

“Soulier's spitting tacks, bless his devious French heart.” Adrian propped himself on the arm of a chair and pulled out an eight-inch throwing knife and began to pare his nails. “Leblanc has come to our fair shores without orders and without reporting to Soulier. Much fluttering in the dovecotes of French intelligence.”

“An' wouldn't it be nice if Soulier killed Leblanc for us.” Doyle worked his way down the shelf. “No love lost there.”

“You can pass this along—Leblanc's wounded, upper right arm. Henri Bréval's cut across the knuckles. I may have cracked his collarbone. The rest is Annique's work.”

“Lethal chit,” Adrian said. “And you've brought her here to wreak havoc upon Service personnel. How exciting.”

Doyle grunted, looking amused.

“Speaking of our lethal chit.” Adrian inspected his nails. “I ask myself…Why the tub? She's agile as a little eel, of course, but you don't want to go taking the first poke at a virgin in a couple feet of water. Makes 'em nervous. With a virgin, what you do is pick a flat spot. Dry, for one thing. Soft, if you can manage it. Then you—”

“I can do without your expert advice on deflowering virgins.” Grey felt his face get hot. “This isn't a topic for discussion.”

Doyle slid a lazy glance. “You been told off, lad.”

“And…” an edge came into Adrian's voice, “…you don't leave the girl to sleep it off alone. You stick around to be there when she wakes up.”

“God's chickens,” Doyle muttered.

Hawker didn't like the way he was treating Annique. Fair enough. He didn't like it much, himself. “She needs to dig away at the bars for a while to convince herself I've got her trapped. Then she'll take some time getting used to the idea. She won't want me there while she does it.”

“And you don't get kicked in the guts if she gets testy,” Adrian said dryly.

“That, too.” Mostly, he wouldn't be tempted to make love with her again while she was still sore.

Tacitus was on the bottom shelf, bound in red, in three volumes. It was in Volume One. When he paged through, the passage leaped out at him. “…deformed by clouds and frequent rains, but the cold is never extremely rigorous.” She'd got it right, word for word. That was the positive proof, if he needed it. But he already knew what he dragged into Meeks Street this morning. He slid the book back into the shelf. “We lock up the house, double-lock it. Every key turned.”

“Already done,” Doyle said, “the minute she walked in.”

This might be the safest place in England. It still wasn't safe enough, not for what Annique was carrying. “Leblanc has men and money. He wants her dead. How does he get to her?”

Hawker's knife stilled. “There's the old standby…snipers.”

Doyle moved along the shelf, checking titles. “We put on extra guards. We watch the neighborhood. She stays away from windows.”

“Then there's setting the place on fire. Land mines in the garden. Rockets.”

Rockets. He massaged the bridge of his nose. “How hard is it to get rockets in London?”

“Not easy,” Doyle said. “Could be done.”

“Artillery through the front door. Prussic acid in the next shipment of coffee beans.” The knife disappeared into Hawker's sleeve. He pushed himself to his feet and started pacing the Bokhara rug. “Satchel bomb over the wall. Cobras down the chimney. Poison darts. Tunneling in from the basement. Armed thugs at the back door. Your standard mysterious package delivery.”

No one more inventive than the Hawker. “You can't get cobras in England, for God's sake. Talk to Ferguson about the food, though. That's a possibility.”

“I know where to get cobras,” Adrian said.

“You would.” Doyle pulled out a book. “And here's our old friend Montaigne. Why are we looking at Montaigne?”

“I want a reference. The man at Delphos who could tell eggs apart. Where is it?”

“Crikey. Well, you picked one I know. ‘Essay on Experience.' About in the middle. I had to copy it out once, at Eton. Forget what I did to earn that particular punishment.”

“You're looking up one of Annique's clever sayings?” Adrian had taken himself over to the window. He was studying Meeks Street, probably working out ways to kill somebody.

“One of mine.”

“Here it is.” Doyle read, “‘…yet there have been men, particularly one at Delphos, who could distinguish marks of difference amongst eggs so well that he never mistook one for another, and having many hens, could tell which had laid it.' Is that what you want? Why are we interested in French philosophy?”

“She knows that line.”

“She's an educated woman. I suppose she—”

“I offered her three words, and she came back with the rest. I picked a bit out of Tacitus about the weather, obscure as hell. She knew that one, too. I'll bet I could open any of these books, anywhere, and she'd recite the page for me. She has them by heart. When did she do that?”

Doyle flipped the pages under his thumb and closed the book and set it down. “It shouldn't be. You're right.”

“She's been traipsing around Europe, following armies. When did she go to school and sit down and learn these books word for word?”

“She didn't. I should have seen this.” Doyle looked disgusted with himself. “She has one of those trick memories. I've heard about them. Never actually met one.”

Adrian slammed the wall with the flat of his hand. “Maps. She told me she had maps in her head. I wasn't listening.”

“That's why they sent a ten-year-old into army camps.” Doyle's eyes narrowed over a hard expression. His oldest girl was ten. “They couldn't pass up the chance to use that trick memory. They dressed her as a boy and put her to work in those hellholes the first minute she could survive on her own.”

She'd survived. What was it like to live like that, remembering every freezing night, every forced march, every death? Never forgetting. No wonder she filled her brain with philosophers. “She's carrying it all,” he circled his hands as if he were holding her, the smooth forehead, the soft, dark hair, “inside her head.”

They stood, looking at each other, absorbing the implications.

“Do the French know what she is?” Doyle answered himself. “Not Fouché. He'd have her locked in a cage. Or dead. Probably dead. Who knows about this?”

“The mother had to know.” Adrian was pacing again, crossing between the long windows and the fireplace. “And Vauban. Both of them dead now. It's likely Soulier knows. He picked her up and put her to work when she was half grown. What do you wager they used her as a courier—Soulier and Vauban—back and forth across France, keeping messages in her head?” He tapped his fingers as he walked, one by one, against his thumb. “Not Leblanc. He doesn't know.”

The mother, Vauban, and Soulier. The three of them using her to pass secrets around. She was the perfect hiding place. Somebody—Vauban probably, back in Bruges, for some god-awful reason—had decided to use her to store the ultimate secret. “She has the Albion plans.”

“Will you stop that?” Adrian swung around and confronted him. “I don't give a damn what Leblanc said. I don't give a damn she was in Bruges. She didn't kill our men in cold blood.”

“I agr—”

“Vauban wouldn't send that girl out to kill under any conceivable circumstances. No chance. Not the remotest. She wouldn't stick a knife in somebody's throat for a pile of gold. How could you spend two weeks with her and not know that? I saw it in six minutes.”

“I agree. It isn't in her.”

“She…You agree?”

Nice to catch Hawker off guard for a change. “I watched her not kill four men between Paris and London when they were doing their damnedest to kill her. Very convincing. There is no murder in the woman.”

“Oh. Well then.” Adrian tugged his jacket straight. “Sweet reason prevails.”

“But she is carrying the Albion plans.” He held his hand up. “No, listen to me. I've seen them inside her. She gave herself away fifty times, walking up from the coast. She knows the invasion route, foot by foot.” She hadn't thought to hide that knowledge from a sailor she'd trusted, who'd saved her life, who had nothing to do with spies and secrets. “At least some of the troops will be taking the Dover Road. I watched her figure out exactly where people are going to die when Napoleon invades, which streets, which hillsides. I saw the villages burning in her eyes. She has the plans.”

Adrian was mutinous but silent.

“A heavy weight for someone like her,” Doyle said.

“It's eating her alive. She could be that Spartan boy with a fox hid under his shirt, gnawing away.”

“We don't have any choice, of course.” Doyle picked the stack of playing cards from the table and began shuffling them from one big hand to the other. “We take the plans from her. She's lucky it's us doing it and not Military Intelligence. Reams isn't above using torture.” He spread the cards in a fan and closed them up again.