The Spymaster's Lady

Three

SOMETIMES, ANNIQUE THOUGHT, ONE PAYS dearly for a tiny mistake. She should not have been tempted by the water.

It had been a short, inglorious fight. She had no chance against this English spy she had stupidly freed from Leblanc. They were both blind in this night, and she had practiced, endlessly, fighting without sight. But it gave her no advantage. She summoned up all the dirty tricks she had ever learned and pulled them out, one by one. The big man knew them all. He was much better at this business of fighting than she was.

It ended quickly. He flattened her hard against him and wrapped her up like a troublesome little parcel, and she could not escape. His muscles were iron and polished wood, invulnerable, endlessly strong. She could feel savage satisfaction coursing through his body. He was positively gleeful to trap her like this. She became very afraid of him.

An hour ago, she had set her hand against his heart and wanted nothing more than to stay beside him. She would now do exactly that. The universe had been treating her with great sarcasm lately.

She was dragged forward. The coachman—the English spy pretending to be a coachman—took her hair and looked at her face and said, “Annique Villiers.”

She had not expected to be known. Not this far north. Not by the English, with whom she had had so few dealings.

Then he said, “You collect the damnedest things, Grey.” The shock of that removed her breath.

Grey. The English spy was Grey? She was most definitely fighting above her station. By the good God, no wonder they had gathered her up in this way. She had stumbled into the disorderly tail end of some major British operation. For no other reason would Grey himself be in France.

It was the most astoundingly bad luck. The man called Grey was Head of the entire British Section, directly under the legendary Galba himself. Grey had no need to be wandering in Paris waylaying female spies. He was a man of many agents all across Europe and numberless important activities, all of them more complex and vital than provoking and tormenting her in this way. Grey should be—she tried angrily to decide what was appropriate—he should be plotting Napoleon’s downfall in an office at the Whitehall or in some other suitable place. It was altogether dangerous and stupid for him to be lurking about in France, where he was in great jeopardy and anyone at all might lock him into cellars at any time.

Grey was indisputably in France. Held pinioned in his arms, she felt weariness and thirst and the long weeks of running alone in the dark and this senior English spy defeat her all together. Her heart failed within her, and she lost whatever effectiveness she had ever possessed as a fighter. “Please do not do this to me.”

“Easy does it. Up with you.” Grey dragged her into the coach as if she were a trophy he had won by great cleverness. As she was. “No more fighting. I really wouldn’t try it.”

“Please. I will betray nothing of you. Not a whisper.” Her words were muffled against the cushions where he pinned her. He was made of perfectly solid muscle and extremely heavy.

“No, I don’t think you will,” he said.

He was content that she should thrash and kick beneath him until she wore herself out and became somewhat easier to manage. She saw at once what he intended, but it took her a long time to become wise and accept the inevitable and lay her forehead down on the cushions and give up, to be simply gasping and limp like a fish upon a bank.

She was in great trouble. She had not been trapped in this way because the English wished to collect minor and unimportant agents. It was Leblanc’s stupid words concerning the Albion plans that interested them. Every spy in Europe was looking for those plans. Leblanc might so easily have held his tongue. There was no good luck for her lately.

She considered what a man like Grey might do to discover the whereabouts of the Albion plans when he took a French agent away from Paris to somewhere solitary and she was alone with him. She could imagine how he might extract the information he wanted and then silence a French spy who knew many awkward secrets. She knelt in the iron grip of his hands, covered with sweat from fighting, but inside she was as cold as January.

“Finished?” Grey asked.

She could only nod.

“I’m glad you two finally settled that.” Adrian was upon the other seat. His voice was feeble but perfectly full of laughter. “You keep banging into me.”

“It’s settled,” Grey said, “except she’s going to bite me if I let go.”

Her terror diminished with those words, for the attitude of Grey was not that of a man about to do murder, and the boy Adrian was entirely lighthearted, which only a monster would be if she were to die in the environs of Paris at the hands of these English.

“I should have left you to rot with Leblanc,” she said. “I wish I had.”

“It’s a little late to wish that, mademoiselle,” Grey said.

“I beg to differ. It is never too late. I will probably wish it for the rest of my life. What is your intention to do with me?”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Annique.”

Yes, he would. Did he imagine she was stupid? “I have saved your life. This is no fit repayment, what you do to me.”

“You’re right. It isn’t.” Then there was some silence in which he did not at all amplify his response.

There is a transition to be made in the mind. To admit one is beaten. She admitted defeat most privately to herself and felt weakness and despair flow throughout her muscles. Grey, who held her pinned most effectively, would feel it also. He relaxed his hold somewhat. She muttered, “It was said by Socrates that no evil can befall the good, either in life or after death. I am not so sure of this as I once was. What do you want from me?”

“Your company. For a time.” There was deep satisfaction in his voice.

“How long will you keep me?”

“Until I let you go.”

“Oh, but you are witty, monsieur. Forgive me if I do not laugh. I am not in good humor tonight.” She let her cheek lie against the seat, against the cool leather, unutterably exhausted and beaten. Fox Cub they called her, her friends and her enemies in the little world of spying. No fox’s trick would free her this time. Nonetheless, she tried one last time to pretend to be stupider than she was. “You waste your time with me. I am the small agent, the quiet mouse in the wall, the messenger. I hold no secrets of interest to the English.”

And thus she pretended to know not a thimbleful about Albion plans or the invasion of England or what had happened all those months ago in Bruges, or much else either. She did not expect to fool him.

“Is that so?” He did not sound very interested.

“Most certainly. You have heard Leblanc say otherwise, but he is a fool.” When he said nothing, she clarified, “He speaks of the Albion plans, of which I know not the least morsel. Leblanc makes the old quarrel, you understand. He has hated Vauban since the days of the Revolution, when they were both young and ambitious agents, and my mother also. She is dead now, which frustrates him utterly, so he invents plots that never were. He destroys the daughter because he cannot have the mother. It is small-minded of him.”

“You, of course, are innocent.”

“It pleases you to be ironic. It is not that I am innocent. I am only innocent of these particular matters. That is the truth, English.”

“Your truth has more layers than an onion. We’ll see what happens when we will peel off a few of those layers.”

She did not like the sound of that.

The English did not believe her. He would hold on to her like grim death, no matter what convincing lies she told. Soon, the questioning would begin.

She was tired beyond measure of these stupid and intransigent plans, which kept trying to cause her death and had no resting place anywhere. They were the most sharp of two-edged swords, those plans: deadly to the land of England if they remained hidden, perilous to France if given to the English. It was foolish beyond measure that Napoleon should have ordered them made and she was entirely disgusted with the whole business.

The driver hitched the horses, backing them with a shuffle of hooves, harnessing them with jingling reins. That was no trivial job for one man, alone, in the dark of night. But Grey would not descend to help him. He stayed where he was, holding her arm behind her back in that clever way that did not hurt and did not allow her to move. It was like being constrained by a stone statue or some other object impervious to argument.

He said, “Let’s put an end to this. Are you tired of crouching on the floor, Mademoiselle Villiers?”

“Extremely, Monsieur Grey.”

“Then I suggest we make an agreement. You will promise to sit quietly and stop kicking me. I will let you sit up and give you something to eat and drink. Do you agree?”

So. They would begin thus. She recognized the first of many little compromises he would force upon her. Each “yes” made the next one easier until, as he hoped, it would seem wholly natural to do exactly as he told her in all things.

“Leblanc uses such methods,” she said. “You would make me accept this kidnapping in return for a few ounces of water. It is profoundly discouraging how similar spies are everywhere.”

“Very philosophic. Do I have your agreement?”

“I make you no agreements. It is indifferent to me whether I sit on the seat or lie tied on the floor, unless the carriage is infested with fleas, which is of course a possibility. The question of water will resolve itself, I think, in another day.”

The driver could be heard, walking a circuit of the coach, kicking stones away from the wheels. The carriage rocked as he climbed up to the box. They lurched forward, up the hill, past the ditch that marked the old gate, jouncing on ruts in the Rue des Orphelines, clattering on the cobbles of the Rue Bérenger. They turned right. West. Toward England.

Toward Soulier, who was posted to London, serving the Secret Police and France. Soulier, who would give her sanctuary from Leblanc. With Soulier’s protection, she might even live long enough to deal with the Albion plans. These men were taking her ever so swiftly in the direction she wished to go. Of a certainty, there was an evil, humorous angel in charge of her own particular heavens.

“I wonder whether I should call your bluff.” Grey’s hands tightened. “Shall we—”

From the other side of the carriage, Adrian spoke, “For the gods’ sake, Grey, leave the girl be.”

“It’s not your teeth she’s trying to kick in.”

“I was not aiming for your teeth, monsieur,” she said.

“No, you weren’t, were you?”

“So entertaining.” Adrian’s voice was a satiric croak. “Why don’t we torture her later…when she’s stronger. So much more fun.”

“Hell.” Grey hoisted her to the seat. She was free to turn away from him and huddle in a corner.

“Harmony is restored.” The boy Adrian adjusted himself on the seat with creakings of leather and the swish of cloth.

“Easy for you to talk. You’re not the one she’s planning to emasculate,” Grey said sourly.

“That’s the entertainment…I was talking about.”

“You should save your chivalry. You don’t know her. This is a beautiful little snake.”

“But I do know her, by reputation, at least. The Fox Cub and I are old rivals…from the days in Italy. We snakes have to…stick together.”

She knew then who this Adrian must be, though he had used a different name in Italy. Such stories were told of him. Certainly she had fallen among deadly company this night.

Grey did not leave her to digest this new information in silence. He leaned across and brushed her hair back, settling it around her ear, uncovering her face, nudging her chin up. The outside lanterns would reveal her completely. She kept her eyes shut.

Adrian must have been looking her over, too. “She’s afraid of you, if that’s what you wanted. It comes and it goes. She’s afraid now.”

“I want her afraid. I want her too afraid to give me any trouble. Annique, just how afraid of me are you?”

“Immensely, monsieur. As much as you could wish.” Her voice broke. Dieu. Was there any way on earth she had not betrayed herself in these last minutes? “Entirely terrified, in fact.”

“What do you think?” Grey asked Adrian. “Real or just playacting?”

“Real enough. I saw many frightened women in my interesting youth. You’re very easy to be scared of. Believe me, I know.”

“Maybe she’ll behave herself. In deference to your delicate sensibilities, however, I’ll beat and starve her later.” He let her go.

This was infinitely comforting. She had known several men who tortured people, and not one of them had the least trace of humor.

She turned to the corner and put her hands up as if she were rubbing her eyes for the headache. She had been so very, very stupid to be caught like this. How Vauban would scold when he heard. He had trained her better than this. She had been so stupid. It was no doubt possible to be more shamed than she felt right at this moment, but she could not imagine how. Her hands shook where she held them tightly against her eyes.

“I’m not that easy to manipulate, mademoiselle,” Grey said. “You’ll find I have a singular lack of pity. And don’t even think of fighting me. Take this.”

“This” was a flask, half full. The water was stale and tasted of metal, but it was lovely as the finest wine on her tongue. Despite her boasting, he could have demanded many things from her in exchange for this water he tossed to her so casually. He must know that.

He dropped a loaf of bread into her lap. It was the same one he had used to trap her with, dusty from landing on the ground.

She brushed off the sand and tore a piece of the good bread and ate it slowly, alternating bites of bread with pulls of water. After a time, she no longer wanted to cry. It was magic, this bread and water, and it gave her heart again. Escape seemed possible once more. Now, perhaps.

Deliberately, she leaned back on the cushions, eyes still closed, her body slack and weary. The carriage lamps outside burned with a thick, oily smell. In that flicker of light, they were certainly watching her with all attention. The least tensing of a muscle would give her away.

She filled her voice with discouragement, of which she had any amount handy. “I think you win. See—I take your food, and I no longer fight you.” She lifted the bread as if it were heavy and took another bite and chewed and swallowed. They would not expect her to escape while she was in the middle of chewing. “It is no huge triumph to defeat me. I have not eaten for several days. You are not so clever, Monsieur Grey.”

Adrian snickered from his place on the opposite seat. Grey said nothing at all. The carriage rocked and jolted. They made some speed through the silent countryside, heading uphill, away from Paris. This road—she knew it well—wound through a region of compact stone villages and fields and grand houses surrounded by huge gardens. She could smell the late-blooming roses of the gardens and the country grasses. Occasionally there was the smell of apples. Everywhere the smoke of hearth fires filled the air, burning to keep the night chill out of the little stone houses.

It was the perfect place to run, the perfect time.

She had reached an accommodation with darkness months ago. She knew a thousand tricks of moving without sight that these men had never dreamed of. The night was her friendly kingdom, ready to hide her. None of them could outrun her in the dark.

She swallowed the bite of bread and pretended to take another. Now. This was the moment. It is not good to plan such things too much. The opponent feels it.

She twisted sideways in the seat and kicked Grey with all her strength. This time, for variety’s sake, she kicked him in the belly.