A sharp crash broke the peace. Outside and nearby. Doyle froze. Adrian’s eyes snapped to the window.
My gun’s in my bag, on top, loaded. There’s another in Hawker’s. Doyle carries his on him. The stairs are defensible. They’d—
Masculine laughter rumbled over the sound of a woman’s rueful giggle. Chairs scraped on the stone. A dozen low-voiced conversations resumed. It was some kitchen mishap. Not Leblanc’s men. Not yet.
Grey took his hand off the valise. “I’ve been out of action too long.”
Adrian slid a dark, thin-bladed knife back under the covers.
“We’re all on edge,” Doyle said, “not least from having that damned dangerous woman locked up in the next room. Are we going to get rid of her any time in the foreseeable future?”
“He’s going to drag her all the way to Meeks Street. I’d lay money on it. Any brandy on that tray?”
“For you, wine.” Doyle uncorked the jug with his teeth. “I gave her that indecent nightgown, Robert. She weren’t best pleased.”
“I’m not trying to please her.”
Doyle slopped wine into a glass, then added water till the deep red went pale. “I don’t like what you’re planning for that girl.”
“I’m listening.”
“First off, I don’t like dressing Annique Villiers in some whore’s castoffs.” Doyle nodded to the bright dresses heaped on the table. “That’s what Roussel had in the storeroom—the leavings of some ladybird who flew off without paying. It’ll fit her, but it’s brothel wear.”
“She’s worn less in the service of France.” He picked up a dress. The complex, enigmatic blue was the color of her eyes. Thin, soft cotton clung to his fingers. Brothel wear. “Very nice. Paris work.”
“Not the garb to blend into a Normandy village, is it? She won’t get far if she gets loose.” Adrian took the glass. “There’s a bench in hell reserved for men who water good wine.”
Doyle poked around the tray and helped himself to a flaky square of pastry. “You can read print through some of those dresses. It’s going to be distracting.”
“She could wear sackcloth and be distracting.” When he put Annique in this, she’d look like what she was—an expensive courtesan, a woman born to entice men. She sold those sweet little breasts like apples in the market. “I watched her take Henri Bréval down with a cosh she slid behind her skirt. These won’t hide a toothpick.”
“You’re making a mistake, Robert. She’s one of us. One of the best. She’s been in the Game since she was a child. You don’t take one of the great players and treat her like a doxy. You put her in that nightgown or one of these flimsy dresses, and you’re going to start thinking she’s a whore.”
“She’s not. For one thing,” Adrian chased vegetables around the bottom of the bowl, “she can kill you with the odd bit she finds lying around the house.”
“She’s probably stropping something down to a sharp edge right now.” Doyle scratched the scar on his cheek. It was a clever fake. When he wore it a long time, it itched. “She’s not really safe, left alone for any length of time. I do wish that girl worked for us.”
“No, you don’t.” Grey crossed the room, hunkered down at the hearth, and set a thin log of beechwood on the fire. They’d need more wood in here. Adrian would feel the chill if his fever came back. The flames teased him with images, flickering and writhing. In tongues of fire, a dozen Anniques danced Gypsy dances, gleaming with sweat, sleek with scented oil. “She was at Bruges.”
He could feel the change in the room.
“Bruges,” Doyle said.
“I was in the market square, in the café by the tower, waiting to be met. On the other side of the square was a half-grown Gypsy boy, juggling. He had four or five knives in the air, laughing. Enjoying himself the whole time.”
“Annique,” Doyle said.
“Annique.”
“I’ve heard she makes a reasonably convincing boy.”
“I didn’t know she was a woman till I saw her at Leblanc’s.”
He’d nursed a cup of coffee, there in the square at Bruges, letting himself soak in some of that joy and brightness, letting it seep through the tense watch he was keeping. He’d remembered, later, that he’d been glad to see that boy. “He made a game of it, throwing ’em, hitting small, exact targets. Collected a fair capful of coins before he wandered off.”
“She’s good with knives. Not up to the Hawker’s standard, but good.”
“Nobody’s up to my standards,” Adrian said.
There were pinecones in the box on the hearth. Grey lay a few on the fire and shifted logs with his fingers, coaxing a draft in. “An hour later Fletch came to tell me they’d been ambushed, and the gold was gone. McGill, Wainwright, and Tenn’s brother were dead.”
Adrian put his bowl on the table. “I served with Wainwright in Paris.”
“Tenn’s brother was one of mine,” Doyle said. “That was his second mission. Stephen Tennant. I took it hard when I heard.” He hooked his thumb into the boy’s bowl, tilted it, and looked in. “You going to finish this?”
“No.”
“Drink the wine, then.” Doyle stacked plate and bowl with big, tough hands. “It was supposed to be an easy exchange. The Albion plans for the gold.”
The Albion plans were the tactical details for Napoleon’s invasion of England: the exhaustive accounting of troops, supplies, ships, routes, timetables; the date of the invasion; the landing points and the routes inland; the alternate dates for bad weather.
With the plans, the English could turn back the invasion. Or they could ambush the incoming French fleet and blow it from the water. The plans were a priceless mine of intelligence about France: the strength of every ship, the soldiers of every company, the production of every factory. They could turn the balance of power.
Thirty-six complete copies had been made. One copy, rumor said, had gone missing. When the offer came, he should have smelled treachery. The asking price was a handful of gold. Nothing. He’d have paid a hundred times that.
He’d jumped at the chance to buy the plans and led his men into a trap and let them die. His mistake. His responsibility. “She was in Bruges. I’ve been looking for that Gypsy for six months.”
Doyle said, “You think she did it? Because it was knife work?”
“They died from single, exact hits to the neck. Expert throws, made from ambush. The French meant to kill us, right from the beginning.”
Doyle was already shaking his head. “It’s not her. The girl was trained by Vauban, for God’s sake. That was a bloody, clumsy business at Bruges. Vauban wouldn’t have touched it with a barge pole.”
“Bloody, not clumsy,” Grey said. “Three neat, identical wounds. How many people throw like that? And she was there.”
“It’s not her. Hawker?”
“It’s not her style.” Adrian took a sip of watered wine and grimaced. “We get reputations in the Game—you, me, Doyle, all of us. Annique Villiers is playful and wise and stealthy. Slip in, slip out, and you never know she’s been there. If she killed anybody, I never heard about it.”
“That just means she’s good enough not to get caught.” Grey poked the fire a last time and stood up. “Leblanc says Vauban had the Albion plans.”
Adrian snorted. “Leblanc’s an idiot.”
“A truth widely known.” Doyle fingered the stubble on his chin. “But Vauban, meddling with treason? That incorruptible old revolutionary? I don’t believe it. Easy to accuse him now he’s dead, but—”
“Vauban’s dead?” Adrian moved incautiously and winced and put his hand up to the bandage.
“You hadn’t heard? The news is slow making the rounds. He died in his sleep. Ah…I guess it was six weeks ago. He was the last of the old guard. We won’t see his like again.” Doyle dropped the napkin on the tray. “I can tell you this, though—Vauban would chop off his own ballocks before he’d sell French secrets. That girl’s been with him since she was a pup. She’s made of the same steel he was.”
Annique was in it up to her pretty eyebrows. Grey could see that, even if Doyle and Adrian didn’t. He’d know for sure once he got her behind the bars at Meeks Street. He’d find out where she stashed the Albion plans. Give him a few weeks, and he’d know the color of her bedroom walls when she was seven. “You need me anymore? Adrian?”