The Spymaster's Lady (6 page)

Doyle poked around the tray and helped himself to a flaky square of pastry. “You can read print through some of those dresses. It's going to be distracting.”

“She could wear sackcloth and be distracting.” When he put Annique in this, she'd look like what she was—an expensive courtesan, a woman born to entice men. She sold those sweet little breasts like apples in the market. “I watched her take Henri Bréval down with a cosh she slid behind her skirt. These won't hide a toothpick.”

“You're making a mistake, Robert. She's one of us. One of the best. She's been in the Game since she was a child. You don't take one of the great players and treat her like a doxy. You put her in that nightgown or one of these flimsy dresses, and you're going to start thinking she's a whore.”

“She's not. For one thing,” Adrian chased vegetables around the bottom of the bowl, “she can kill you with the odd bit she finds lying around the house.”

“She's probably stropping something down to a sharp edge right now.” Doyle scratched the scar on his cheek. It was a clever fake. When he wore it a long time, it itched. “She's not really safe, left alone for any length of time. I do wish that girl worked for us.”

“No, you don't.” Grey crossed the room, hunkered down at the hearth, and set a thin log of beechwood on the fire. They'd need more wood in here. Adrian would feel the chill if his fever came back. The flames teased him with images, flickering and writhing. In tongues of fire, a dozen Anniques danced Gypsy dances, gleaming with sweat, sleek with scented oil. “She was at Bruges.”

He could feel the change in the room.

“Bruges,” Doyle said.

“I was in the market square, in the café by the tower, waiting to be met. On the other side of the square was a half-grown Gypsy boy, juggling. He had four or five knives in the air, laughing. Enjoying himself the whole time.”

“Annique,” Doyle said.

“Annique.”

“I've heard she makes a reasonably convincing boy.”

“I didn't know she was a woman till I saw her at Leblanc's.”

He'd nursed a cup of coffee, there in the square at Bruges, letting himself soak in some of that joy and brightness, letting it seep through the tense watch he was keeping. He'd remembered, later, that he'd been glad to see that boy. “He made a game of it, throwing 'em, hitting small, exact targets. Collected a fair capful of coins before he wandered off.”

“She's good with knives. Not up to the Hawker's standard, but good.”

“Nobody's up to my standards,” Adrian said.

There were pinecones in the box on the hearth. Grey lay a few on the fire and shifted logs with his fingers, coaxing a draft in. “An hour later Fletch came to tell me they'd been ambushed, and the gold was gone. McGill, Wainwright, and Tenn's brother were dead.”

Adrian put his bowl on the table. “I served with Wainwright in Paris.”

“Tenn's brother was one of mine,” Doyle said. “That was his second mission. Stephen Tennant. I took it hard when I heard.” He hooked his thumb into the boy's bowl, tilted it, and looked in. “You going to finish this?”

“No.”

“Drink the wine, then.” Doyle stacked plate and bowl with big, tough hands. “It was supposed to be an easy exchange. The Albion plans for the gold.”

The Albion plans were the tactical details for Napoleon's invasion of England: the exhaustive accounting of troops, supplies, ships, routes, timetables; the date of the invasion; the landing points and the routes inland; the alternate dates for bad weather.

With the plans, the English could turn back the invasion. Or they could ambush the incoming French fleet and blow it from the water. The plans were a priceless mine of intelligence about France: the strength of every ship, the soldiers of every company, the production of every factory. They could turn the balance of power.

Thirty-six complete copies had been made. One copy, rumor said, had gone missing. When the offer came, he should have smelled treachery. The asking price was a handful of gold. Nothing. He'd have paid a hundred times that.

He'd jumped at the chance to buy the plans and led his men into a trap and let them die. His mistake. His responsibility. “She was in Bruges. I've been looking for that Gypsy for six months.”

Doyle said, “You think she did it? Because it was knife work?”

“They died from single, exact hits to the neck. Expert throws, made from ambush. The French meant to kill us, right from the beginning.”

Doyle was already shaking his head. “It's not her. The girl was trained by Vauban, for God's sake. That was a bloody, clumsy business at Bruges. Vauban wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole.”

“Bloody, not clumsy,” Grey said. “Three neat, identical wounds. How many people throw like that? And she was there.”

“It's not her. Hawker?”

“It's not her style.” Adrian took a sip of watered wine and grimaced. “We get reputations in the Game—you, me, Doyle, all of us. Annique Villiers is playful and wise and stealthy. Slip in, slip out, and you never know she's been there. If she killed anybody, I never heard about it.”

“That just means she's good enough not to get caught.” Grey poked the fire a last time and stood up. “Leblanc says Vauban had the Albion plans.”

Adrian snorted. “Leblanc's an idiot.”

“A truth widely known.” Doyle fingered the stubble on his chin. “But Vauban, meddling with treason? That incorruptible old revolutionary? I don't believe it. Easy to accuse him now he's dead, but—”

“Vauban's dead?” Adrian moved incautiously and winced and put his hand up to the bandage.

“You hadn't heard? The news is slow making the rounds. He died in his sleep. Ah…I guess it was six weeks ago. He was the last of the old guard. We won't see his like again.” Doyle dropped the napkin on the tray. “I can tell you this, though—Vauban would chop off his own ballocks before he'd sell French secrets. That girl's been with him since she was a pup. She's made of the same steel he was.”

Annique was in it up to her pretty eyebrows. Grey could see that, even if Doyle and Adrian didn't. He'd know for sure once he got her behind the bars at Meeks Street. He'd find out where she stashed the Albion plans. Give him a few weeks, and he'd know the color of her bedroom walls when she was seven. “You need me anymore? Adrian?”

“I'll manage. You're wrong about her, you know.”

“I'll find out, won't I? I'll go eat and wash, then get her settled in.” He had control of his voice, but the latch clanked savagely in his hand as he opened the door.

Damned if he'd fight her again. Or maybe this time she'd play the whore and offer to part those sweet thighs for him. If she offered, maybe he'd just take her. They could wrap themselves around each other and tussle that way for a change. He'd use her and roll aside and forget her. There'd be no magic to the woman when she was slick and sweaty underneath him. She'd be just another warm, willing body.

That was a damned unprofessional way to think about a prisoner. “And maybe I'll just chain her to the bed.” He didn't glance back.

Doyle said, “Robert…”

Adrian said quietly. “Let him go. It's between them, now.”

“I
T'S DARK IN HERE.”
G
REY'S VOICE WAS A RASP
of sandpaper and velvet. He spoke in the familiar form, as one speaks to the most intimate of friends or to children or animals or servants. Or prostitutes.

“Light candles if you wish. It makes no difference to me.” She spoke in the formal mode of speaking, which is how one talks to foreign spies who have kidnapped you.

“I thought Doyle told you to get into the nightgown.”

“He did, most certainly. I will let you know if ever I begin taking orders from Monsieur Doyle.” She faced the window, the nightgown twisted between her hands, and did not turn toward him. The night ahead would be one of immeasurable difficulty.

Wind came to her off the fields, smelling of cows and the earth and apples. She felt a longing, sharp as a physical pain, to see the fields and the stars above them. It never left her in all these months, that ache.

The shirt she wore billowed loose, then flattened possessively over her breasts and her hips, then blew loose again. Grey's shirt. She had some wide knowledge of men. There were those who would find her alluring, so incongruously within a man's shirt, with her feet bare on the floor and her hair
farouche
and uncombed about her face. In the so-obvious silk rag she held in her fingers, she would look the whore. Wearing a man's shirt, she appeared the wise and subtle courtesan. There were no right choices for her tonight.

She heard him lock the door behind him.

“You've decked yourself out in my shirt. Well, well, well.” He was never without that undercurrent of incomprehensible anger when he spoke to her. “Maybe I should have expected that. The nightgown is blatant. Nobody could accuse you of being blatant.”

“Have you not tormented me enough for the sin of being French and a spy? This is the middle of France, Monsieur Grey. I am not your lawful prey. Let me go. It is the only sensible answer for any of us.”

“After you give me the Albion plans. We'll pay, you know, if that sort of thing matters to you. Extravagantly.”

Oh, but Leblanc had much to answer for. It was the final straw among great heaps of straw that his words should set this English upon her, demanding the Albion plans.

How much she would like to say, “You desire the Albion plans? But yes, I have them tucked here in my garter, you see? Take them away and stop Monsieur Napoleon from making this stupid invasion of your island, which will kill many thousand French soldiers and countless English and will not succeed at all.”

It was not that simple. It had never been that simple.

She lied, immediately and convincingly. “I do not have these plans. Never, not once, have I laid eyes upon them.”

“You lie well. I suppose I'm not the first man to tell you that.”

She hit the windowsill with her fist. “No and no! I am sick of this folly. Leblanc spits poison like a toad and you believe him for reasons wholly incomprehensible. You kidnap me into Normandy for nothing. You endanger me and yourself with this mad insistence to—”

“Turn around and look at me. I'm damned tired of talking to your back.”

“You, I do not find attractive or interesting. In fact, I wish you would go away altogether.”

Adamant hands gripped her and turned her, without pain, but very, very firmly. She kept her head lowered, concealing her face from him in the dark.

“You're thinking about fighting me. Don't. Believe me, little fox, you wouldn't like what I'd do to you. Don't make me show you how thoroughly you're trapped.”

“Trapped? But yes, I admit it freely. I am easy to snare these days. A dolt like Henri can do it.”

“I haven't found it particularly easy. I'm changing the rules of this game we play.”

“I do not play games against Grey of the British Service. I would not dare.”

“You're playing one now.”

Where the many nerves ran in the joining at her shoulder, his fingers explored, drawing idle, poignant circles, which entirely paralyzed her. Then he slid, smooth and slow, down her arm. How powerless it made her feel to learn his hands could secure themselves around her upper arm like large bracelets. At her elbow he found a great sensitivity.

Fighting points. He caressed the fighting points, lingering till she shivered with it. She had never thought of this obvious truth. At the weak places where one strikes an opponent, the nerves run exposed and vulnerable and receptive. Receptive to any touch. He knew that. It was disheartening to encounter so much admirable expertise in an opponent.

She squeezed her eyes closed and wished for the hundredth time she could see his expression and guess what he was going to do to her. Nothing so simple as to hurt her.

The rumble of his voice vibrated across her skin. “That shirt's more erotic than I would have believed possible. To see my shirt wrapped around you and know there's nothing…but you…underneath it.” He plucked at the fabric, considering it with his fingertips. “You take the prerogatives of a longtime lover when you help yourself to my clothes. I should be disarmed. Clever Annique.”

“I am not so clever,” she muttered, being sincere.

His hand traveled to rest over her heart. “You have exactly the right number of buttons undone. I congratulate you. One less, and you'd be playing the timid virgin.” He slipped two fingers into the shirt, tugged briefly, and left the top button loosed behind him. “Virgin isn't a convincing role for you.”

He could say such things to a woman he was going to take to his bed. She could not reason with him when he was like this. She could do nothing but stand and listen to him and tremble everywhere.

He stroked downward and found the next button. “Too many unfastened, and there's no challenge to it.” He slid it open. “Men enjoy challenges.”

The beat of her heart shook her whole body. Did he know she was growing excited for him, at that place between her legs where he would want to pleasure himself? It was most probable he did.

He set another button free. He would have her naked soon. Her plan of reasoning with him did not seem to be working.

“A man itches to peel you, veil by veil, laying your secrets bare, opening you up to reveal mysteries.”

Her body was not mysterious in that place he so poetically discussed, merely hot and anxious. She squeezed herself together, which did not help, but indeed made things worse. She could not stop herself doing it either, again and again, so matters grew progressively more complicated for her. “Me, I have no mysteries. You delude yourself.”

“It would be so easy to lure the honey out of you. All I have to do is this…” His fingers grazed her breast, through the shirt. “…and two sweet little berries come nudging up against the cloth, begging to be tasted. Like that. Yes. That's honest enough. It might be the only kind of honesty you have in you.”

“Do not be superior. You know nothing about me.”

“I know you like your work. Not every woman would. You give us exactly what we want, don't you, pretty Annique? Leblanc. Henri. Me. You become every man's private fantasy. What he dreams of, alone at midnight. You're doing it now. Before I realize what I want, you're offering it to me. I never knew a woman could do that. A man touches you in peril of his soul.”

“You may keep your soul. I do not want it.”

“I don't give a damn what you want, Annique Villiers. You're good, though. That sound you make in your throat, that buzzing like a hive of contented bees. That's perfect. I felt it through my whole body when you did that.”

His muscles were dense with tension, shaking. That was his anger, which she had not yet earned, and his hunger for her, which would have been obvious to an idiot. How she was to ride these twin beasts to her advantage she could not at all imagine.

“You like to set the puppets dancing, don't you? Tweak a string here. Tweak a string there. Be soft and vulnerable and…responsive. I don't think there's a man on earth who could resist you.”

Without warning, he twisted his fist into the shirt and pulled tight. She was jerked and dragged forward, up onto her toes. She gasped and grabbed to hold on to him. “Don't try this again.” He shook her, once, briskly. “Not with me.”

“I do not—”

“No more games. Go shuck yourself out of this damned teasing shirt. Put on the silk I sent in or slither into bed naked. I don't care which.”

“I will not wear that indecent thing. I am not—” She stopped herself and swallowed and made herself say, “I am not some woman of the streets to be bought for the price of a hot meal. I do not—”

“For God's sake, don't be so bloody dramatic.” She was set upon her feet. His grip loosened slowly and released. “And damn your nonexistent modesty. From now on you wear clothes you can't hide weapons in. That's all. Get in bed and sleep.”

“I will sleep as the mouse sleeps beside the cat. Do not lie to me, English. I have no patience with it.”

“I don't have a hell of a lot of patience myself right now. So unless you're offering me a poke at this…” The deep vee of her shirt flipped open. Cool air rushed in. “…experienced, devious little body, get into that nightgown and get to bed.”

“Monsieur, do not do this to me.”

“Not a damn thing's going to happen to you if you behave. You follow orders, and you'll be treated well. Fight me one more time, and I swear I'll tie you to the bedpost. Accept it.”

Accept it,
he said. But he lied to her and to himself, too, if he thought he would lay her down in that soft bed and not take her.

He was no monster. He would not force her. But he wanted her fiercely, and he thought she was of light morals, and willing. Tonight, in the long quiet hours, he would put his hands upon her and confuse her until she made the answers he wished, softly, in the intimacy of the covers. In the end he might make her want what he did to her. She was not strong and sensible when it came to this man.

That was yet another reason she must escape.

When all other weapons are gone, one must depend upon cunning and lies and terrible schemes. Vauban had taught her that. Maman had taught her. René and Françoise and wise, cynical old Soulier had taught her that—all her old friends in the spying Game. She had known this since she was a child. Sometimes one must do things one does not exactly like.

She could not commit despicable acts as Annique. She must be someone of greater resolution. There were roles within her…She took a steadying breath and chose. She would be the Worldly Courtesan. Had she not played this role often in Vienna?

She crossed her arms over her breasts and bowed her head and let the role of the Courtesan settle across her spirit. It wrapped round her like a thick, protective cloak. The Worldly Courtesan was years older than Annique, knowing and cynical. She did not give a fig whatsoever about an enemy English. The Courtesan would not worry about wearing that obscene scrap of cloth…or whatever else it might become necessary to do.

She raised her chin. The Courtesan was not dismayed because a man desired her. It gave her power.

She shrugged. “You have won this futile small victory of yours.” Being the Courtesan, she could push past Grey, impatient and contemptuous, and saunter across the room. It was three long steps from the window to the table; she had counted after dinner. She turned her back on him and tossed the slippery silk of the nightgown across the table, next to the candlestick. She touched that one last time. Her bones and muscles would remember where it was when all was in disorder. The scene was set. Everything was prepared.

“Go away. I will dress in this vulgar garment. But I will not strip naked in front of you.” Her voice was cool and patrician, heavy with ennui. The Courtesan's voice. She set two fingers on the tabletop to keep her body oriented exactly as she wanted it. “Whatever you think, I am not a woman of light amusements with strangers.”

“It's too dark to see much. Do it now, before I strip you down and toss you into bed myself.”

“How alluring you make it sound.” The Courtesan she had molded around her mind could say that. “With the women of England you are a great success with such methods, no?” Playing the Courtesan, she could reach nonchalantly for the hem of the shirt, as if she undressed every night in some man's company. “If you will not leave, at least turn your back.”

“To preserve your modesty?”

“It is not such a large favor to ask. I am less accustomed to humiliation than you seem to think.” The shell of her role cracked, and a quaver of her shame and fear showed through. She could not have done better if she'd practiced a week.

“That much I can do.”

She heard the rustle of his movement. Now she must undress. It was hard, playing the whore, the first of several difficult acts. She lifted the shirt up over her head and revealed her nakedness. Perhaps the room was dark enough that he would see nothing. Perhaps he had turned his back as he said. If not, she must hope he would be distracted, as men always were by her body, and not notice exactly what she was doing.