Joanna Bourne - The Spymaster's Lady

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?”