The mother, Vauban, and Soulier. The three of them using her to pass secrets around. She was the perfect hiding place. Somebody—Vauban probably, back in Bruges, for some god-awful reason—had decided to use her to store the ultimate secret. “She has the Albion plans.”
“Will you stop that?” Adrian swung around and confronted him. “I don’t give a damn what Leblanc said. I don’t give a damn she was in Bruges. She didn’t kill our men in cold blood.”
“I agr—”
“Vauban wouldn’t send that girl out to kill under any conceivable circumstances. No chance. Not the remotest. She wouldn’t stick a knife in somebody’s throat for a pile of gold. How could you spend two weeks with her and not know that? I saw it in six minutes.”
“I agree. It isn’t in her.”
“She…You agree?”
Nice to catch Hawker off guard for a change. “I watched her not kill four men between Paris and London when they were doing their damnedest to kill her. Very convincing. There is no murder in the woman.”
“Oh. Well then.” Adrian tugged his jacket straight. “Sweet reason prevails.”
“But she is carrying the Albion plans.” He held his hand up. “No, listen to me. I’ve seen them inside her. She gave herself away fifty times, walking up from the coast. She knows the invasion route, foot by foot.” She hadn’t thought to hide that knowledge from a sailor she’d trusted, who’d saved her life, who had nothing to do with spies and secrets. “At least some of the troops will be taking the Dover Road. I watched her figure out exactly where people are going to die when Napoleon invades, which streets, which hillsides. I saw the villages burning in her eyes. She has the plans.”
Adrian was mutinous but silent.
“A heavy weight for someone like her,” Doyle said.
“It’s eating her alive. She could be that Spartan boy with a fox hid under his shirt, gnawing away.”
“We don’t have any choice, of course.” Doyle picked the stack of playing cards from the table and began shuffling them from one big hand to the other. “We take the plans from her. She’s lucky it’s us doing it and not Military Intelligence. Reams isn’t above using torture.” He spread the cards in a fan and closed them up again.
“Is that a problem?” Adrian flung it over his shoulder and started pacing again. “We haven’t misplaced the thumbscrews, have we? Myself, I like a heated knife and that thin skin between the toes. Sensitive spot on women. I always say there’s nothing a clever man can’t do with a knife.”
“You’re annoying Robert,” Doyle observed mildly.
“Duly noted.”
Annique had recruited a pair of strong protectors. Good.
No sound came from the study downstairs. She’d be awake by now, exploring the edges of the box he’d locked her in, soft-footing around the room with her robe knotted over that miraculous white body and her mind all sharp-edged and racing. She’d be scared. He couldn’t do this to her and not scare her. Even if she was just standing there, part of her would be battering against the bars, frantic to escape. It was his job to keep those bars in place.
“No force. No pain.” But they already knew that. “No threat. No coercion. We don’t even have to argue hard. She’s going to talk herself into doing what we want. Why do you think she’s in England? She’s about to give us what we want. Freely.”
Doyle turned the idea over. “She didn’t just come to hide. She didn’t come here looking for safety. She’s here to stop the French fleet from sailing.”
“Being what she is, she can’t do anything else. She’s going to weigh the damage those plans can do to France against the hell that the invasion will be. She’ll give us the plans. When it comes down to another one of Napoleon’s bloodbaths, or helping England, she’s going to go with England. Whoever gave her the plans must have known that.”
That was something else he’d find out. What the hell had happened in Bruges, that Annique ended up with the Albion plans? “I almost wish we were using coercion. Then she could hate me, instead of herself.”
“Oh, that’s deep, that is,” Hawker muttered.
Doyle said, “Waste o’ breath, warning you. Always was.”
Twenty-five
THE TWO MEN PUSHED BRUSQUELY PAST IDLERS at the tavern door. Henri limped, keeping up with Leblanc. “…watching Meeks Street. They report she entered the house with Grey himself. Grey of the British Service. It is disaster.”
“You should have killed her in Dover. Why am I surrounded by idiots?”
“Do you not see? The man we held in Paris…it was this same Grey. Sans doute. The description is unmistakable. The one who attacked me in Dover—it is Grey. He has been with her since Paris. Since you put them in the same cell.” Henri clenched his fist and flinched. “Bougre de Dieu. I am crippled by that man.”
“You are worse than crippled. You are an imbecile. There is no proof the man was Grey.” Leblanc kicked at a black dog that sniffed along the gutter edge.
“We held the Head of the British Section in our chateau and did not inform Fouché. We let him get away. If this comes out, I do not want to face Fouché.”
“You will not face Fouché.” Leblanc’s gaze flicked across Henri. He slipped his hand under his jacket, to the knife that rested there. “You have brought the men up from the south? The money? All is prepared?”
“Done. All done. It is always a mistake to use women. You all trusted that bitch, and now she spreads herself for this Grey and squeals our secrets. It must be stopped.”
“Not by you. You are useless to me with a broken shoulder. I need men who can shoot a gun.” Leblanc looked up and down the deserted street. An alley opened to one side, shaded and crooked and private. “Come. We will take this shorter way.”
Twenty-six
“BUT THESE ARE LOVELY CLOTHES.” SHE HELD up a walking dress of figured silk. “And you say they are English. Life is very strange, I find.”
She still wore the white bathrobe that reached almost to her feet and was large enough to surround her twice. It belonged to Grey. He had enjoyed wrapping her in something of his.
His bedroom was a snug place, with blue brocade curtains and a very large bed. It was untidy with his things in a pleasant way. The lovely clothing was spread out across the bedspread.
“Dress for dinner.” He chose the pale green dress with an embroidery of flowers upon the bodice. “This one, I think.”
The gowns were beautifully cut, the apparel of a woman of taste and refinement. The boxes at her feet held shifts and pantalets, all completely new and as delicately immodest as any she had ever seen in Paris. It was not usual for a prisoner to wear such clothing to dinner. She had been a prisoner several times, and she knew.
“These are given to me by a friend of yours? That is kind.” She did not like it that he knew a woman of whom he could ask such favors. “When one considers how many respectable women there are in the world, it is remarkable I am not sometimes presented with more modest underclothing.”
“Isn’t it?” His expression was hungry and knowing. She was entirely sure he looked forward to seeing her wear these silk and lace nothings. He already pictured himself taking them off of her and laying her down upon his bed. He was Head of Section for England, assuredly, but he was also a man.
She found she was not at all in the mood to lie back and make love upon that big bed with the blue covers. She wanted to hit him with something, not in a lethal manner, but hard.
She picked up a shift and turned away before she loosed the robe. It fell to the floor, and she pulled the shift on, all in one movement, so quickly he would have only a glimpse of her being naked. That was her reply to the look in his eyes. He would comprehend. He was a man given to subtleties.