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Joanna Bourne: My Lord and Spymaster

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Joanna Bourne My Lord and Spymaster

My Lord and Spymaster: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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After her father is wrongly accused of selling secrets to Napoleon, lovely Jess Whitby infiltrates the London underworld for the real traitor — only to end up naked in the bed of a rude merchant captain. Not only is she falling in love with him, but he may be the scoundrel she's looking for.

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No tears, no screams. Pluck to the backbone. She was also damnably in his way. He shoved her behind him, between him and Adrian. Protected as she could be.

If this lasts long, she’ll get killed. “Mine on the right.” He threw, and his blade hit badly and glanced off a collarbone. One man down. One wounded. That would have been two dead if he’d had the sense to stay sober. “Waste of a knife. Damn.”

His last knife was in his boot. Not for throwing. This one was for killing up close.

He forced his mind to the pattern the attackers wove, trying to spot the leader. Kill the leader, and the others might scatter. Adrian danced a path through the bullyboys, breaking bones with that lead-weighted cane of his.

No way to get the woman to safety. She stayed in his shadow, using him as a shield, white-faced. She’s been in street fights before.

Then he didn’t think about her at all. Chain whistled past. He grabbed it and jerked the man off balance and drove his knife through a gap in the leather waistcoat, up under the breastbone, to the heart.

For an instant he stood locked, face-to-face, with the man he’d just killed, a redhead with pale skin and vicious, gleeful, mad blue eyes. Outrage and disbelief pulsed out at him . . . and drained away. The eyes went blank.

Then the dead bastard thrashed, rolled with the knife, and took it down with him as he fell.

No time to get it back. A crowbar cracked down on his shoulder with a bright, sour, copper pain. He fell, dodged a boot, and rolled away as Adrian took down his attacker.

The girl screamed.

Up. He had to get up. He was on his feet, shaking his head, trying to see through a black haze. The girl was stretched between two men, being dragged away. He staggered through madness and confusion, fog and pain. Adrian was swearing a blue streak.

Under the chaos he heard a monstrous racket of wheels on cobblestone. A goods wagon turned the corner.

The girl tore loose, leaving her cloak behind. She reeled straight into the path of the horses and slipped on wet cobbles. She had a split second to look up and see hooves. Her face was a mask of raw terror.

He launched himself toward her. Too late. He knew he’d be too late.

The driver wrenched on the reins. Horses reared and squealed. Frantic, she jackknifed away from the striking hooves. She was so close to scrambling to safety . . .

She slipped on the rain-slick cobbles. The wagon skidded. Iron rims shrieked on the stone. The wheel hit the side of her head with a soft, horrible thud. She whipped around, and wavered upright for an instant, and slumped to the dirty stones of the street.

Gaelic broke out. Limping, dragging their wounded with them, the gang retreated.

He stepped over a body and ran to the girl.

She huddled on her side, as if sleeping, covered with blood and mud, her pretty dress torn halfway off her. Her hand lay upcurled on the cobbles, open to the falling rain. For a sick moment he thought she was dead.

Adrian knelt beside him. “Gods. The dear gods. It is her.”

She was breathing. Sebastian ran his hands across her face and up into her hair.

She opened her eyes, but she didn’t see him. “Who?”

“You’re safe.”

“Hurt. I need . . .” She slipped out of consciousness with her eyes still open.

“How bad is it?” Adrian said.

“The wheel just glanced the side of her head.” He pushed her hair aside to show Adrian. “Here. Any harder and she’d have cracked like a melon.”

“There’s blood all over her.” Adrian dug out a handkerchief.

“Scalp wound. All flash and no fire.” He touched his way across her skull, trying to sense wrongness, any give that shouldn’t be there. In his years at sea he’d seen enough accidents to know what to look for. “Pupils the same size. Ears . . . nose . . . no bleeding. I can’t feel a break in her head. I’m drunk, Adrian. They wouldn’t have got to her if I hadn’t been drunk. Too drunk to do this.”

“I trust you, drunk, better than most doctors sober.”

She tried to roll. He kept her still. “I need more light.”

“Where? That tavern back there?”

She was soaked to the skin, lying in a puddle of water, losing the heat of her body into the ground. She was getting cold . . . a dangerous, clammy cold. “Not here. They might come back and bring friends.” He pulled his greatcoat off and wrapped it around her. When he gathered her up, she didn’t weigh anything at all.

She struggled when she felt herself be lifted. “Lemme down. I can walk.” Before she’d quite finished saying it, her head lolled against his chest.

“Right. You can walk. Bloody likely.” He shifted her in his hold so the rain didn’t hit her face. “Get me a knife. I’m unarmed. I’ll take her to the Flighty.”

“I’ll find you there.” Adrian was already wiping a knife on a dead man’s shirt. He slipped it into the sheath in Sebastian’s jacket. “I have to go. I have to find out who sent them. Take care of her for me, Bastian.”

Adrian wasn’t just a friend. He was a power in the shadow world of political spies, Head of Section for the British Intelligence Service. It wasn’t the first time Adrian had tangled him in his professional disputes. Fair enough. But sometimes innocents, like this poor girl, got hurt.

“You have some nasty enemies in this town.”

“I do indeed.” Adrian checked thugs as he passed, flopping them faceup, finding them dead. “Didn’t you see?” His dark, cynical face twisted in anger. “They weren’t after me. It’s her. She’s the one they want.”

Three

The Flighty Dancer

“GET THE DOOR,” SEBASTIAN ORDERED. THE CABIN boy scurried ahead, his bare feet slapping the planks.

When he laid her down on the bed, she mumbled, “Where . . . ?”

“She’s bleeding, Captain.”

“I see that, boy. Get me hot water.” The sharp tone sent Tom scrambling from the cabin.

Her braids sprawled in loops over his pillow. Hard to believe this little mite of a girl had armed men chasing her through alleys. What the devil had she got herself mixed up in?

Half-conscious, she rolled away, slapping at him feebly, trying to sit up. “Lemme be . . .”

“Softly, girl.” He was gentle when he pushed her to the mattress. “Softly. There’s no place you have to go. Lie still.”

Did she see him when she looked at him? Probably not. Her eyes were blank. “It’s dark. It . . . hurts. Hurts. I can’t get out.”

“You’re safe. Where does it hurt?”

“Don’t be stupid. Hurts everywhere.” She decided to black out for a while. Her eyes slid shut, and she went limp.

“I imagine it does.” He eased her down flat. “Let’s hope you haven’t cracked anything important in your head. I’m damned if I can fix it.” There was nothing to do for her but wait. The best doctor in London couldn’t do more.

His fault she’d been hurt. The one day in the year he let himself get drunk, this woman needed him. There didn’t seem to be enough inventive ways to call himself an idiot.

He unwrapped her from his coat and pulled her shoes off. She wasn’t bleeding much anywhere, but she was soaking wet, shivering with shock and cold. That, at least, he could fix. All that filthy, soaked clothing had to come off.

He hesitated, then drew his knife. He set the point under the gilt locket she wore and turned the back of the blade and cupped his hand to shield her skin and cut. Lace snicked apart. That was Alençon lace, seven and sixpence a handspan these days, smuggled goods and illegal. And this was a very expensive whore.

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