Hid beneath layer upon layer of soft and foolish Harlot, she waited. Her fist, holding the cosh, never wavered. She would not allow herself to be afraid. It was another role she had crafted; the Brave Spy. She had played this one so long it fit like her skin.
Probably, at the center of her being, under all the pretense, the real Annique was a quivering mouse. She would not go prying in there and find out.
THE grilled window in the door glowed ghostly pale, then brightened as a lantern came closer. Grey could see again. The details of his cell emerged. Rough blocks of stone, a table, two chairs. And the girl.
She faced the door, stiff and silent and totally intent upon the man out in the corridor. Not a move out of her. Not the twitch of a fingernail. Her eyes, set in deep smudges of exhaustion, were half-closed and unfocused. She didn’t once glance in his direction.
He watched her draw a deep breath, never taking her attention from that small barred window in the door. Her lips shaped words silently, praying or talking to herself. Maybe cursing. Again, she combed her fingers through her hair in staccato, purposeful, elegant flicks that left wild elflocks hanging across her face.
She was totally feminine in every movement, indefinably French. With her coloring—black hair, pale skin, eyes of that dark indigo blue—she had to be pure Celt. She’d be from the west of France. Brittany, maybe. Annique was a Breton name. She carried the magic of the Celt in her, used it to weave that fascination the great courtesans created. Even as he watched, she licked her lips again and wriggled deliberately, sensually. A man couldn’t look away.
She’d torn her own dress. The curve of her breast showed white against the dark fabric—a whore, bringing out her wares. She was a whore, a liar, and a killer…and his life depended on her. “Good luck,” he whispered.
She didn’t turn. She gave one quick, dismissive shake of her head. “Be still. You are not part of this.”
That was the final twist of the knife. He was helpless. He measured out his twenty inches of chain, picturing just how far a fast kick could reach. But Henri wasn’t going to wander that close. She’d have to subdue Henri Bréval on her own, without even a toothpick to fight with.
There were red marks on her skin where Leblanc had been tormenting her and the tracks of tears on her cheeks. She couldn’t have looked more harmless. That was another lie, of course.
He knew this woman. He’d recognized her the moment Leblanc pushed her stumbling into this cell. Feature by feature, that face was etched in his memory. He’d seen her the day he found his men, ambushed, twisted and bloody, dead in a cornfield near Bruges. If he’d had any doubt, the mention of the Albion plans would have convinced him. The Albion plans had been used to lure them to Bruges.
He’d been tracking this spy across Europe for the last six months. What bloody irony to meet her here.
He’d have his revenge. Leblanc was an artist in human degradation. Pretty Annique wouldn’t die easily or cleanly or with any of that beauty intact. His men would be avenged.
If he got out of here…No, when he got out of here, Annique would come with him. He’d take her to England. He’d find out every damn thing she knew about what happened at Bruges. He’d get the Albion plans from her. Then he’d take his own vengeance.
She’d be supremely useful to British intelligence. Besides, he wouldn’t leave a rabid hyena to Leblanc.
The peephole went bright as Henri held the lantern up. His heavy, florid face pressed to the grill. “Leblanc is furious with you.”
“Please.” The girl wilted visibly, leaning on the table for support, a sweet, succulent curve of entrapped femininity. “Oh, please.” The drab blue of her dress and the crude cut of the garment marked her as a servant and accessible. Somehow her disheveled hair, falling forward over her face, had become sensuality itself. “This is all a mistake. A mistake. I swear…”
Henri laced fingers through the bars. “You’ll talk to him in the end, Annique. You’ll beg to talk. You know what he’ll do to you.”
There was a sniffle. “Leblanc…He does not believe me. He will hurt me terribly. Tell him I know nothing more. Please, Henri. Tell him.” Her voice had changed completely. She sounded younger, subtly less refined, and very frightened. It was a masterful performance.
“He’ll hurt you no matter what I tell him.” Henri gloated.
The girl’s face sank into her upturned palm. Her hair spilled in dark rivers through her fingers. “I cannot bear it. He will use me…like a grunting animal. I am not meant to be used by peasants.”
Clever. Clever. He saw what she was doing. Henri’s voice marked him as Parisian, a man of the city streets. Leblanc, for all his surface polish, was the son of a pig farmer. And Henri worked for Leblanc.
Henri’s spite snaked out into the cell. “You were always Vauban’s pet—Vauban and his elite cadre. Vauban and his important missions. You were too good for the rest of us. But tonight the so-special Annique that nobody could touch becomes a blind puppet for Leblanc to play with. If you’d been kind to me before, maybe I’d help you now.”
“Leblanc has become Fouché’s favorite. With the head of the Secret Police behind him, he can do anything. You cannot help me. You would not dare defy him.” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I will do whatever he wishes. I have no choice.”
“I’ll have you when he’s through with you.”
She went on speaking. She might not have heard Henri. “He will make me oil my body and do the Gypsy dances I learned when I was a child. I will dance in the firelight for him with nothing but a thin bit of silken cloth upon me. Red silk. He…he prefers red. He has told me.”
Grey wrapped the chain around his hand, gripping tight, seized by the image of a slim body writhing naked, silhouetted in the golden glow of fire. He wasn’t the only one. Henri gripped the crossed bars of the grill and pressed his face close, salivating.
Annique, eyes downcast, swayed as if she were already undulating in the sensual dance she described. “I will draw the crimson silk from my body and caress him with it. The silk will be warm and damp with the heat of the dance. With my heat.” Her left hand stroked down her body, intimately.
Grey ached from a dozen beatings, thirst was a torment every second, and he knew exactly what she was doing. He still went hard as a rock. He was helpless to stop it. God, but she was good.
Huskily, dreamily, she continued. “He will lie upon his bed and call me to him. At first, only to touch. Then to put my mouth upon him, wherever he directs. I have been trained to be skillful with my mouth. I will have no choice, you see, but to do as he demands of me.”
Henri clanked and fumbled with the lock. In a great hurry, was Henri. If the Frenchman was half as aroused by Annique’s little act as Grey was, it was a wonder he could get the door open at all.
The door banged back against the stone wall. “You must not come in here, Henri,” she said softly, not moving, “or touch me in any way without the permission of Leblanc.”
“Damn Leblanc.” Henri slapped the lantern down and cornered her against the table. His fist twisted into her skirt and pulled it up. He grabbed the white shift beneath.
“You should not…You must not…” She struggled, pushing futilely at his hands with no more strength than a tiny, captured bird.
“No.” He threw himself at Henri. And jerked short on his iron leash. The circle of pain at his wrist brought him back to reality. He couldn’t get to her. He couldn’t fight Henri for her. There wasn’t a bloody thing he could do but watch.
“Do not…” Her flailing arm hit the lantern. It tilted and skidded off the table and clattered to the floor and extinguished. Darkness was instant and absolute.