The Spymaster's Lady (9 page)

G
REY SLIPPED
A
NNIQUE INTO A CHAIR ACROSS
from Adrian, guiding her with a light, invisible touch she hardly needed. She was expert at the deception. If Leblanc's men came asking after a blind woman, no one would think of the dark-haired lass who'd had breakfast so openly on the terrace in front of the inn, carefree in the early morning sun.

She sat, eyes demurely lowered. Her fingers skimmed the edge of the table till she found the napkin. She shook it out across her lap.

He saw the exact moment Adrian looked into Annique's beautiful blank eyes. Saw the snap of assessment. Shock. Instant comprehension. “She can't see.”

“Keep her inconspicuous,” Grey ordered.

“My pleasure. Oh my, I do like a surprise, first thing in the morning.” The boy was in pain, but alert. He'd do for a while.

“You're on display.” He said the obvious, so Annique would know. “Twenty minutes, and I'll get you out of here. Hold out that long. Eat.” That was for both of them.

Across the courtyard, Will Doyle was playing coachman, pacing the off-side horse, a big piebald mare, in a wide circle around the innyard, watching its gait. He made a first-rate coachman. He also made an excellent German count, merchant banker, Cockney pimp, and vicar of the Church of England.

Doyle rounded one last time and brought the mare to a stop. “Nobody's sniffing around yet.”

“They'll think we've gone to ground in Paris. Gives us a head start.” But men on horseback could always outrun them.

“We amble along, slow and innocent, and we'll do.”

With luck. Lots and lots of luck. “I want that bullet out as soon as we can. Look for a likely spot past St. Richier. You have everything we need?”

“Whole surgeon's kit. I stole it from a naval surgeon in Neuilly. This here's his horse, too.” He patted the mare's flank. “Wish I'd thought to kidnap that sawbones.”

“So do I. I don't suppose you've ever dug a bullet out of anybody in that long, varied career of yours?” He turned his back to the inn. Adrian could read lips. “I'm going to kill him. I don't know dammitall about pulling bullets out of people. Sure you don't want to try your hand?”

“He'll do better if it's you digs into him. He trusts you. That helps.” Doyle knelt and ran his hands up and down the horse's leg, being a coachman. “He ain't going to die of a bullet or two. Born to hang, our Hawker. How'd it go with the girl?”

“She's not what I expected.” He realized he'd turned to watch her. He hadn't noticed himself doing it.

They were a fine matched pair, Hawker and Annique, sitting next to each other at the cozy table on the broad terrace under the trees. Coin-sized patches of sun streamed down through the trees and danced across them. They were the same age, with the same spare, compact grace of body. Black hair, glossy in the sunlight, tumbled forward across faces that were eerily alike—not in feature; there was no real resemblance—but in expression. The same faint air of wicked mirth clung to them, as if they were imps on temporary reprieve from one of the minor hells. They ate, leaning together, intent on a flow of low-voiced conversation.

“He likes her.” Doyle was watching, too. “Hope she don't try to scamper out on his watch. Shape he's in, he'd have to hurt her to stop her.”

“We're safe as long as it's daylight. Will, she's stone blind.”

Doyle's face didn't change—he wouldn't blink at the announcement that Annique was empress of the Chinese—but some signal of surprise leaked through. The mare shuffled nervously. Doyle made an odd whistling sound between his teeth, and the animal quieted.

“Crikey. Blind?”

“She took a saber cut to the skull, five months ago. There's a scar hid up in her hair, if you go feeling for it.”

“Cats in hip boots.” Doyle fetched a little ivory pick out of his waistcoat pocket and began a ruminative exploration of his back teeth. “Why don't I know this? I heard she was in Marseilles with the mother. Never heard a whisper about the Cub being out of commission. Not from any of my sources. Not a syllable.”

“She's good at hiding it. She must've spent months practicing.” How long had it taken her to learn to fight in the dark?

“That's why we got her so easy. Blind and on the dodge.”

“…and hungry and hurt and exhausted. It only took three of us to haul her in.” She picked up the coffee cup, eyes demurely lowered, smiling. He'd been wrong about the blue dress. It didn't make her look like a whore. It made her look young and chic and carefree as a spring butterfly. “You ever hit a woman?”

Doyle eyed him. “Missed doing that somehow. Fun, would you say?”

“Not much. Makes you feel shabby as hell afterwards.”

“Accident, I imagine.”

“I was stupid. That doesn't make it an accident.” He was the officer in charge. She was his prisoner, and he'd hurt her. There were no excuses. “I punched her solar plexus so hard she stopped breathing for a while. I don't think I did any permanent damage, but keep an eye on her.”

“I keep an eye on everything.” Doyle squatted and curled the mare's hoof up against his thigh, matter-of-fact as any blacksmith. After a brief inspection, Doyle searched one-handed in his jacket pocket and fetched out a blunt probe. He scraped along the edge of the hoof, taking his time with it. A perfectionist, William Doyle. It'd saved their bacon a few times. “You going to talk about it?”

“I let her get a line around my neck.” He slid a finger inside his cravat and pulled it aside to show the red line. It still hurt to swallow.

“Now how the devil did she…?”

“That damned nightgown. The cord tying it.”

“The cord. Oh, hell. I should have spotted that. She made a garrote. Clever as a flock of jackdaws, that girl.”

“You could say I achieved my objective. She's stopped fighting. Do you know how much you have to hurt that woman before she gives up?”

Doyle released the hoof. “I've known you a good long while, Robert. What's it been?”

“Ten years, maybe.”

“All of that.” He moved on to the next hoof and picked it up. “Sometimes it shows, you coming in from the army instead of up through the ranks in the Service. If you'd spent even a year as a field agent, you'd know how dangerous our pretty little Annique is. You'd forget she's got breasts and do what you had to. Then you'd eat a hearty breakfast the next morning.”

“I did eat breakfast.” He sounded testy even to his own ears.

“But now you're brooding about it. Being a gentleman. Get yerself killed, doing that.” Doyle grunted and stepped back. “You stopped being a gentleman the day you joined the Service.”

“Fine. Next time, you kick her in the belly, and I'll hand out advice.” Across the courtyard, Annique chuckled at something Adrian said, a sound like water gurgling, sweet and easy, out of a china pitcher. Ordinary. Intimate. Relaxed.

It irritated the hell out of him. “Leblanc's men could ride into this courtyard any minute. She sits there giggling.”

Doyle followed his gaze. “That, my friend, is sheer, unmitigated guts. She's running for her life. There's not a rock in Europe that girl can hide under.”

“Leblanc's going to kill her. Nothing to do with the Albion plans. He's covering some private secret, something particularly damning. Any ideas?”

Doyle shook his head. “With Leblanc it could be anything. He's an evil bastard.”

“What's Fouché doing?”

“Right about now, he's probably wondering why one of his agents hasn't reported in.” Doyle gave his imitation of a man contemplating fetlocks. Nobody knew more about the workings of French intelligence. “She could go to him—to Fouché. He won't let Leblanc kill her, unless she's been dabbling in treason with the Albion plans, which I take leave to doubt. But she's useless to him, blind. That brothel the Secret Police keeps, the one in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He'll put her to work in that, with his other girls.”

The thought made a foul taste in Grey's mouth. “Decadent place. Does she know?”

“Bound to. He's been trying to use her as a whore since she turned fifteen. The mother's dead. Her old master, Vauban, is dead. Soulier would help her—he's senior enough, God knows, and she's been his pet since she was knee high—but he's sitting on our doorstep in London. Everybody who could protect the Cub is dead or out of France. Fouché's going to pimp her.”

“That's cold-blooded, even for the French.”

“No malice in it. He's old school, Fouché is. Don't much like a female agent working anywhere but on her back.” Doyle stooped to check the buckles on the girth straps. “There's men who'd enjoy bedding a blind girl.”

“Hell.”

“We all know the risks, being in the Game.” Doyle dusted his hands, nothing in particular on his face. “But it's worse for women.”

It could be a lot worse for women. He hated sending his female agents out into the field.

The innyard gates stood open to the road. High cirrus streamers and a gray haze shimmered on the horizon to the west. That was tomorrow's weather, and the next day. It'd be raining when they ran the final gauntlet down to the coast. Leblanc's men would be waiting for them. “She was running for England when she left Marseilles. I'm sure of it. It's the only place she's safe from Leblanc.”

“Makes sense. Leblanc on one side, Fouché on the other. No refuge in France. She was headed for Soulier, in London, for help.”

“And she runs into us instead. She's ours.”
Mine
.

“We got ourselves one little French agent.” Doyle smiled. “I'll bet she's just packed with secrets. She'll deal with us. She's got no choice at all.”

“She'll realize it, after a while.” He'd take her to Meeks Street, to his headquarters. She'd be safe there, and he'd have all the time in the world to delve into that clever, complicated mind. She'd tell him everything he wanted to know. He was good at what he did. “She's already getting used to the idea. Making accommodation.”

“Is she now? Then I don't have to worry about choking me lungs out on some spare bit o' string she picks up, do I?”

“If you don't turn your back on her.”

Doyle turned his frown to the horse. “I'll be careful. Blind. Stone the crows.”

At the rustic table, between coffee cup and a basket of rolls, Adrian lounged on his elbows, looking like he'd had a hard night of it, drinking. Annique kept her eyes downcast, looking slightly abstracted. She had a way of sweeping her fingers out before her when she reached for things, a slow, graceful gesture without hesitation or clumsiness. Adrian didn't look wounded. Annique didn't look blind.

“Grand, ain't they?” Doyle gave no sign he was looking at them, but, of course, he was. He worked his way along the reins, slipping them back and forth in the terrets, laying them grain side up, checking for wear. “Professionals. It's a pure pleasure watching 'em work. Wish we could recruit her. I could use that girl, even blind as a bat.”

The wind had kicked up a bit, tugging tree shadows back and forth across the terrace. Annique smiled down into her coffee like it was a treat Adrian had invented just for her. That smile was like a stroke down his groin. Madness. He wanted to stomp across the courtyard and drag the girl upstairs and show her why she shouldn't go smiling like that in public.

He made himself stop watching her. “Tell me about Annique Villiers. There's no folder on her in London for some reason.”

“Odd. Well, they don't use her against the British. What do you want to know? She's Pierre Lalumière's natural daughter, for one thing.”

“Lalumière? The one who wrote
The Ten Questions
?”

“And
Natural Justice and the Law
, and
Essays on Equality
, and the rest.” Doyle gave that a chance to sink in.

Pierre Lalumière. He'd read every word that man had ever written. At Harrow, they'd sat up late in the common room, arguing passionately about those books. He'd come away half a revolutionary, reading Lalumière.

“The mother used a couple names. Lucille Villiers. Lucille Van Clef. She and Lalumière popped up out of nowhere about twenty years ago, working for the radicals. Lots of the old radicals were discreet about their origins. The king's justice had a way of falling on the whole family, back in those days.” Doyle began checking harness, running his fingers inside every strap that touched the horse. “Lalumière got hung one night in Lyon, and Lucille ended up working for the French Secret Police. Arguably the most beautiful woman in Europe. I could give you a list of men she slept with.”

“And Annique?”

“Annique.” Doyle sucked at his teeth. “Well. Been in the Game all her life. Raised by the Secret Police, really. Started at seven or eight, running errands for Soulier, back when he was Section Chief for the south of Europe. Couple years later they sent her out as a field observer. That's when they dressed her up like a boy. She was one of Vauban's inner circle, one of his five or six special ones. That's how good she is.” He wiped his hands against his jacket. “I ran into her a few times in Vienna. Lovely thing, of course, but it's more than that. You'd notice her if she was plain as a rug. She's about twice as alive as anyone else. You can see it in her even now.”