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"By God, Dupree, look what we have here. Two whores a-prowlin'! And in the daylight, too! Bags I the blue-eyed 'un!"

"Take your friend away, sir," Hoare said to the second redcoat. "I'll overlook his remarks. He's drunk."

"Come along, Pargeter. He's right." The friend took Pargeter by the arm.

Pargeter, like Hoare, shook himself free. "Not too drunk to know whores when I see 'em," he said.

A small crowd had collected, so Hoare had no choice. Knowing what was about to happen, Selene Prettyman released his right arm, and he knocked the man down.

He swiftly ran through his own list of friends who might be ready to serve as his own second. At first, he thought of Mr. Clay, but his Lieutenant was still a stranger. Bennett had served as his second once before, and he would again, Hoare was sure.

"Have your man's friend call on Mr. Francis Bennett at Admiralty House, if he wishes to pursue this matter," he whispered to the redcoat still on his feet. Now he recognized the cherry-colored facings. They were officers of Walter Spurrier's regiment, the Fourteenth Hussars.

Mrs. Prettyman took his arm again, and they continued on their way. Nothing was said between them about the encounter; to mention it until the matter had been resolved would not be at all the thing.

The Three Suns, with its eponymous hanging sign- the three coins of the Medici, borrowed without permission of that family-bore the reputation of housing only Britain's highest and their very good friends, when those friends were not such as to be announced to the world. Hoare's only previous visits there had been when he had Admiralty business with these personages. But after suppressing a raised eyebrow upon sighting him, the porter flung the door open with a flourish. He greeted Selene Prettyman properly and added, "Good morning, Captain 'Oare. And a fine, brisk morning it is, Captain 'Oare."

"Good morning, Pollard."

Pollard's eyes and ears were always open wide, and his mouth as well-at least for those who paid him to open them and for those, like Hoare, of whom he walked in dread. To Pollard and his cronies, Hoare was the Whispering Ferret.

Selene Prettyman led the way upstairs to the front suite. The place was already familiar to Hoare, who had been entertained there on two earlier occasions by two very different women.

Mrs. Prettyman excused herself for a moment, leaving him in the anteroom. In a few minutes, an ugly little maidservant appeared. After relieving him of his outer garments, she ushered him into the inn's second-best withdrawing room, the selfsame chamber in which Katerina Hay had received him. Earlier that year. His present hostess's gray-blue wool gown, like her pelisse, brought out the color of her eyes, while its fashionable high waist, set just under her admirable bosom, proclaimed it to just the right degree. Yet somehow the ensemble gave her a peculiarly sexless, countinghouse quality, as though she should be wearing demilune spectacles. She was not.

A tea service was already laid out behind her, the ugly little maidservant hovering alongside it. As he advanced into the salon, Hoare was struck by a paradoxical similarity between this hostess and the last one to receive him in this room. The resemblance was paradoxical since this woman was slim, ivory of skin, and raven-haired, while the other had been a rosy, opulent strawberry blonde. Both, however, were nearly his own height; both were blue-eyed. And, Hoare felt, the virtue of both might be negotiable. The previous occupant had required no recompense. In Selene Prettyman's case, however, the price would surely be beyond his means.

Selene Prettyman took her place on a chaise longue- the selfsame chaise longue where Katerina Hay had once entertained him so instructively.

"Pray be seated, sir." She patted the space beside her. "Tea for Captain Hoare and myself, Angelique." Angelique obediently offered tea, then biscuits and small sandwiches, and returned to her post behind her mistress.

"I have matters of state to discuss with you, Captain," Selene Prettyman went on without ado. In some surprise, Hoare glanced over his hostess's shoulder at Angelique.

"Angelique enjoys my fullest confidence," she said. "In fact, she is also in the fullest confidence-in the pay, I should say rather-of both H. R. H. the Duke of Cumberland and Colonel Prettyman. If I did not permit her to remain in the room, she would convey to either or both of her other employers the most interesting and destructive fables that you can imagine, about our encounter today. It is part of the understanding we have with each other. Since she has a vivid and highly improper imagination, she would almost certainly tell each of them a different one. She is a modern-day Scheherazade.

"But she would die before she shared secrets with one of Bonaparte's agents. More to the point, the two or three of them who have tried to suborn her are now underground with their necks broken.

"Est-ce que j'ai raison, Angelique?" she asked over her shoulder.

Seeing that both Hoare and her mistress were looking at her, the maid gave a little bob but replied, "Pas tout a fait, madame. Souvenez-vous qu'il y reste Monsieur Charbonnier."

"Of course. We-Mr. Goldthwait and I-decided it was best to keep Charbonnier alive and well, by feeding him tidbits to report to Joseph Fouche of the Surete. As you would expect, Captain, the true ones are trivial, while the others are false. In return, M. Charbonnier feeds Angelique with gold and… other favors. N'est-ce pas, Angelique?"

"Oui, madame."

"That way, I am not out of pocket. Now to business. I know that you find speech uncomfortable, so I shall not take offense if you use gestures instead."

"Not quite so, ma'am," Hoare whispered. "In quiet surroundings such as these, I can generally make myself understood quite well."

"All the better," the lady said. "Now: You have never met Mr. Goldthwait, I believe, Captain."

"On the contrary, ma'am, I have, but only once-here in Portsmouth last summer, in the company of the Duke of Clarence."

"Of course. Tell me, did you find his excessive weight disturbing?"

"When I saw him, Mr. Goldthwait was underweight, if anything," Hoare said. "Perhaps, ma'am, you are thinking of Sir Hugh Abercrombie. Or else your claim to know Mr. Goldthwait is, er, exaggerated."

"Not at all, Captain Hoare. I merely wished to learn whether you were telling the truth and whether Mr. Goldthwait was doing so. I learned that both of you were, which is not always the case with Mr. Goldthwait. With him, the truth is only one of many cards in his hand, to be played or discarded as he judges best for his purposes. Do not play cards with Mr. Goldthwait, sir. But I wander.

"What I wish to convey, Captain Hoare, is that you may not know you are dealing these days with several unusual persons. Each of them, or all of them, may be what they seem, or more, or less, or all three. In that, they are much like Angelique here."

"Merci, madame," the maid said in a subdued voice.

Selene Prettyman did not reply to Angelique in words but nodded to her. At the nod, the maid ducked into the adjoining room. Her mistress continued to address Hoare.

"I speak, sir, of Sir Thomas Frobisher, of his children Martin and Lydia and his minion Walter Spurrier, indeed, I sometimes fear, of Mr. Goldthwait himself-even, perhaps, of his Royal Highness Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. It is far from certain that these persons and their cronies of either sex are friends of the Crown."

"How am I to know, ma'am, that you yourself are a 'friend of the Crown'?"

Angelique reentered, carrying a folded document that she handed to Mrs. Prettyman.

"I would have been disappointed in you, Captain Hoare, had you made any other reply. This may reassure you, sir. You recognize the seal?"

"Let me look at it more closely, if you please," Hoare said.

The document told "all persons having interest" that the bearer was, indeed, Selene Prettyman and that her instructions to persons under Naval discipline were to be obeyed as if they emanated from the Admiralty Board itself. It bore three signatures and the Admiralty seal.