Pierre said with amusement, “I didn’t know English spies collected mongrels.”

“Monsieur Sommers is not a spy,” Cassie said wearily. “He was a young Englishman who bedded the wrong woman, and spent ten years in solitary confinement.”

The captain’s brows arched. “I hope she was worth it.”

“She wasn’t,” Grey muttered.

Pierre gave a very French shrug. “One never knows until it’s too late. But now we need to make haste or we will miss the tide.”

Cassie could barely support Grey as they moved toward the door, so Pierre moved in to take her place. As soon as they stepped outside, Régine galloped up and began twisting around her master’s legs, very nearly tripping Grey.

“Are you sure you can make it down to the pier?” Cassie asked worriedly. “You can be carried if necessary.”

“Would … walk … on water …” he panted, “… to get back to England.”

Cassie drew Régine away from Grey so they could proceed down the rocky path to the cove. At least Grey now had one possession to bring home from France.

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made …

Shakespeare’s words floated through Grey’s misery. Drowning and suffering the ultimate sea change sounded rather good about now. He wasn’t usually seasick, but he’d never crossed the channel in a small boat with two bullet holes in him, either. He wasn’t sure which was worse: the pain, the nausea, or the fact that the boat was saturated with the stench of fish.

His stomach had been fairly empty to begin with, but that didn’t stop the violent nausea and dry retching. He slid in and out of consciousness. Awareness was bad because he’d never felt so ghastly in his life.

Grey, Cassie, and Régine were huddled in the bow of the vessel under an oilcloth sheet, which helped keep off splashes of water, but wasn’t much help against the biting cold. Sometime during the endless night, he rasped, “Toss me overboard, Cassie. I think I’d rather be dead.”

“Nonsense.” Her voice was brisk but her touch gentle as she wiped his damp face with a cloth. “You have to stay alive until I turn you over to Kirkland. After that, you may drown yourself if you like.”

It hurt to laugh, but he did anyhow. “My ever practical vixen. No need to worry. I haven’t the strength to cast myself into the sea without help, and once I’m on dry land, the impulse will surely fade.”

“Not long now,” Cassie said quietly. She pulled him closer so that the unwounded side of his head rested on her soft breasts. “You’re warm. Feverish, I think, but it makes you useful on a cold, wet night.”

“Don’t worry about fever,” he mumbled. “I heal very well, or I wouldn’t have lasted this long.” His mind veering in another direction, he asked, “What’s your real name? Before you became Cassie the Fox?”

After a long silence, she replied, “Once I was Catherine.”

Catherine. It suited her, but in a very different way from how Cassie suited her. Catherine was a gentle lady. Cassie the Fox was quick, clever, and dangerous. Perhaps Catherine was who Cassie would have been if war and catastrophe hadn’t intervened.

He sought her hand and held it, thinking how lucky he was to have this extraordinary woman, even if only for a while.

But God in heaven, how would he ever be able to let her go?

It was not the most comfortable channel crossing Cassie had ever made, but it was one of the fastest, with a hard wind pushing the fishing boat north. Pierre and his crew would have a much slower journey home against the wind. They were inured to the sea and its vagaries, though. Grey and Cassie were creatures of the land, and the sooner they returned to solid ground, the better.

After endless miserable hours, she saw a faint white line gradually forming on the horizon. She waited until she was sure before saying softly, “The white cliffs of Dover, Grey. Home.”

He jerked out of his doze and pushed himself up to stare over the gunwale. “Home,” he said in a husky voice. “I never thought I’d see England again.”

His eyes glinted with unshed tears. She blinked back some of her own. Even after all these years, the sight always moved her.

Together they watched the approaching shore, the white cliffs a beckoning ribbon of hope. Dawn was breaking when Pierre brought them into a sheltered cove with a weathered pier. The cove belonged to an English seafaring family named Nash, and there was a long and profitable relationship between them and Pierre’s family. Cassie knew both families well.

Pierre sent a man to the nearby Nash house to gather help in unloading the illicit cargo. He personally helped Cassie get Grey out of the boat and onto land.

Grey was weaving but grimly determined. Once they were ashore, he shook off his helpers, then alarmed Cassie by falling to the ground.

Her heart clenched until she saw what he was doing. Incredulous, she asked, “Lord Wyndham, are you kissing the ground?”

“Damned right I am.” Grey struggled to rise again. “Both because it’s solid land, and because it’s England.”

The French captain asked with interest, “What does English sand taste like?”

“Much like French sand, I suspect.” He turned to Cassie, his face ablaze with joy under his bloodstained bandage. “I’m never leaving England again!”

“Won’t you want to travel to Rome or Greece or some such place when the wars are over?” she asked.

“I reserve the right to be inconsistent.” Grey wrapped an arm around Cassie’s shoulders, sagging against her. “What next, milady vixen?”

Several Nashes were heading down to the cove to help with the contraband. Cassie said, “We go to the house and ask Mrs. Nash if she has any broth to feed you. Then we hire one of their sons to drive us to Dover, where we’ll find an inn and call a surgeon for you.”

“Please,” he said in a rough whisper. “Take me home.” She frowned. “Your family seat is in Dorsetshire, isn’t it? That’s too far. You need treatment before then.”

“Not Summerhill,” he said with effort. “The Westerfield Academy. It’s not far, just off the London road.”

She hesitated, thinking it would still be several hours of travel, and the sooner she got him into a clean bed and called a surgeon, the better.

“Please!” he said, his voice raw.

The school had been his home for years, she realized. A place where he’d made lasting friendships, and where Lady Agnes welcomed all her wandering boys, no matter what sort of trouble they’d been in.

“Very well,” she said. “We’ll go to Westerfield.”

The coach Cassie had hired in Dover rumbled to a wet stop in front of Westerfield Manor. Grey had been silent on the ride, suffering stoically. As the coach driver opened the door and let down the steps, Cassie said quietly, “We’re here. Are you awake?”

As he ground out an affirmative, Régine leaped out, ready for a new adventure. She’d put on weight even better than Grey had.

Cassie descended and helped Grey out of the coach into a rainy and very English night. “Can you manage him, ma’am?” the driver asked.

“We’re fine,” Grey mumbled. As Cassie paid the coachman with the last of her money, Grey headed unerringly toward Lady Agnes’s door. He’d told Cassie that Lady Agnes used one wing of the sprawling manor-turned-school as her private quarters, so there should be room for unexpected visitors.

Saddlebags over one arm, Cassie caught up with him as he wielded the large brass knocker. Grey swayed while they waited for the door to open, so she moved beside him, an arm around his waist. The end of this mad adventure had arrived.

The door was opened by Lady Agnes herself. She wore a practical but elegant gown that was perfectly suited to a headmistress of noble blood.

Her brows arched when she saw the ragamuffins on her steps. “If you go around to the kitchen door in the back of the house, someone will give you food.”

“What, no fatted calf?” Grey said unevenly. When Lady Agnes gasped, he said with a crooked smile, “The prodigal has returned.”

Durand reached Boulogne to find the district commandant wondering what had happened to a squad of his gendarmes. Five experienced men, all former soldiers, had been patrolling the coast looking for smugglers as well as Durand’s runaway spies.

The patrol had vanished without a trace. It was hard to know how far they’d traveled on their route since the folk who lived along the coast were a closemouthed lot whether they were farmers, fishermen, or smugglers.

Perhaps the gendarmes had run afoul of smugglers and their bodies were now feeding fishes in the channel. But Durand’s intuition said that that devil Wyndham had had something to do with the disappearance. By now, he was probably back in England, beyond Durand’s reach.

If ever Wyndham returned to France, he was a dead man. And Durand had come up with a plan to lure the bastard back to France.


Chapter 22

“Dear God in heaven,” Lady Agnes whispered. “Grey, it really is you!” Ignoring his wet, filthy, and bloodstained garments, she gave him a bone-bruising embrace.

Régine waited politely on the doorstep and Cassie stayed in the background, the unremitting tension and wariness of the last weeks dissolving in a rush of relief. Grey was home, back in the arms of those who loved him. Cassie would spend a fortnight or so in London recovering, then be off to France again.

She hoped her next mission wasn’t a rescue. The strain was much greater when she was responsible for people beyond herself.

Tears running unabashedly down her cheeks, Lady Agnes stepped back and waved them inside. Surveying her prodigal, she said, “It looks like you’ve had a rough passage, my lad, but you can tell me about it later. For now, you need a bath and a bed.”