Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

“Not a day or two. Now! And tell these dolts to obey my orders.”

As if men would leap to do the bidding of a woman. It wasn’t even the blind arrogance of the aristocracy. Marie-Claire Gresset had almost forgotten she’d ever been a Besançon. She was petite bourgeoisie now, with all the pushing, busy vulgarity of the class. The aristocrat lived inside her only as a residue of resentment, a certainty that she should be better treated than she was.

Even now, she believed no one would dare to hurt her.

He patted her shoulder. Like all women, she was gentled with a few strokes. “I wish only to keep you safe. Be patient.”

“I am done being patient. This is intolerable. You keep me prisoner in this hovel where the coffee is pigswill.”

“I share your annoyance. These pigs of Englishmen should not be allowed in the kitchen. They know nothing of the art of cooking. Let me send for tea.”

“The tea is worse. You complete all your tiresome business. You hire wagons. You buy horses. You receive shipments. But you never take me to my aunts!”

“Soon.” He gave no sign of impatience. He did not resent the expenditure of time necessary to soothe this idiot to complacency. “I promise you, by this time next week you will be in the beautiful chateau of your ancestors. I swear it. You will take your place as Lady Camille de Leylands. You will attend the opera wearing the Leyland jewels. There is a parure of rubies red as blood and every stone bigger than your thumbnail.”

Ridiculous fairy tales for a gullible, greedy child. He spun the pretty story for her because it was easier to deal with a docile woman than to keep her trussed in a closet. Either way, she would serve her purpose.

She said, “Now. Today. Take me to my aunts now!”

“Soon. They are ready to alter their will in your favor, but the impostor who has stolen your place is very clever. Very dangerous. We must meet with them in secret. We must proceed carefully.” He constructed a gentle smile. “In a very few days we will celebrate your return to your proper place.”

Under the blade. That is your proper place. We guillotined your kind.

He made more murmurs and vague promises. Then he motioned Gaspard to engage her in conversation and retreated across the room to the peace to be found on the rough benches that flanked the hearth.

Her complaint continued like dripping water and was no more important. Sensible discussion with Jacques became possible. “Édouard has not returned?”

Jacques shook his head.

“I set him to following the Caché woman. He will be busy with that. And we have a small success. This.” The paper he’d taken from the Caché bitch was still faintly damp in his coat pocket. He didn’t hide his distaste as he dropped it on the bench. “English code, or something that is a good counterfeit of it, written in her own hand.”

Jacques unrolled the half sheet, flat on the bench, holding it from index finger to index finger. “Useful. I’ll drop pieces of this along Semple Street the night before.”

“Burn the edges, just a little. It will be more convincing.” The scraps would be found. More proofs for the British press, in an assemblage of many small proofs.

“It is a nice addition. You’ve eaten?”

“Not yet.”

A pot warmed on the hob. Jacques scraped to the bottom of the pot and filled a bowl he took from the mantel. “The meeting with the woman? It went well?”

“There was one complication that resolved itself. Nothing important.” He accepted the bowl and a pewter spoon and put them on the bench beside him. “You were right about her. She’s gone soft and stupid. She’s forgotten everything she learned in the Coach House.”

Jacques fetched the stub end of a loaf of bread under his arm and the wine bottle and two glasses. The bread he tore in half and set both pieces next to the bowl. The wineglasses took the last of the space on the bench. “She lived in a household of women. Books everywhere. Tea parties.”

“The vaporing of the female intellectual is universal. Their salons and their politeness and the endless, pointless arguments were the curse of the Revolution. They destroyed more good men than bullets. Come. Sit with me. We must talk.” And he took up his soup and began to eat.

A year ago, when he first planned this operation, he knew he’d need an expendable agent. Best would be an unquestionable French spy, known to the British Service, easily identifiable, eminently expendable. The Cachés came to mind. There were dozens left up and down England, hidden, weak, self-indulgent men and women who’d abandoned their loyalty to France. They were deserters as surely as if they’d run from the battlefield. They were traitors to the ideals of the Revolution.

He was, perhaps, the only man left who knew where they were. If he had not had other concerns, he would have arranged the assassination of each one.

He’d remembered the Gresset girl was still alive in Lyon. The genuine Besançon would be a threat or a lure or a bribe for the Caché who’d taken her place. The aristocrat and the traitor Caché would, at last, make themselves useful.

He’d sent Jacques and Charles to Brodemere to study the Caché planted in the Leyland household.

“She’ll do, then, this Caché?” Jacques poured sour wine for both of them, then pulled a rush-bottomed chair near the hearth and sat in it.

“Admirably. As you said, she’s soft as a new cheese. Promise her imprisonment and death, she’ll obey from fear. Threaten the old women, she’ll obey from a sickly, puerile sentimentality. Offer her a chance to dispose of the proof of her imposture, and she will shed the trappings of morality like a scratchy coat.” His eyes slipped to the Besançon. “They’re alike, those two, the spoiled aristocrat and the failed spy. One fool is lured to England by promises of rich old aunts. The other will do anything, including murder, to stay in her fat, safe, comfortable life in Cambridgeshire.”

“The Caché . . .” Jacques drank and wiped his lips on the sleeve of his coat. “If Édouard finds where she’s staying, can we just reach out and take her? We could hold her here with this other one. Or keep her in the cabinet shop, in the basement.” He topped off his glass. “Why not?”

Jacques could ask this. They had survived, mission after mission, because every one of his men felt free to sit with him like this and speak to him as an equal.

Sometimes it was good, in the quiet leading up to an operation, to explain plans and the reason for decisions. “We are six. One must stay here with the Besançon. One at the cabinet shop. One driver. That leaves only three men to subdue a Caché who is armed and must not be killed at that time and must not escape. That is too few.”

Jacques drank more wine. After a minute, he said, “You’re right. It is a chance we cannot take.”

“She has obeyed me so far. She came to London on my orders. She met me at the time and place designated.”

“True.”

“Those are good indications she will come to Semple Street. When we find her hiding place, we will keep watch. On the appointed day, if she disobeys orders, you may kill her then.”

Jacques nodded. “That’s good, then. Good. There is always the possibility that—”

The Besançon raised her voice. “No, I tell you. No and no and no! I will not be trapped in this room another day. If you try, I will—”

He rose and went to her. “But of course you are not trapped. Did you think that? Then I have been remiss in my care of you.” He made one of the graceful, meaningless half-bows men made in homage to women. “Tomorrow we will amuse ourselves. Do you know, I saw a delightful hat in a shop window today. Only a short walk. A delightful walk. We will go shopping tomorrow, you and I.”

She simpered. Now they would discuss hats. He settled himself beside her and pretended to listen.

Jacques retrieved the bowl of soup and dry, tasteless bread for him. English food. It did not make him homesick for Norfolk. A true revolutionary has no country but the Revolution.

Perhaps I made mistakes. Cami considered this possibility while she picked the lock. She worked by touch because it was midnight and the moon had no chance against this wet fog.

Her mistake—if it was a mistake—lay not in letting Mr. Smith’s minion trail after her. That was according to her plan. What she’d done next was not. It had been self-indulgent to return to Fetter Lane when she had all of London at her disposal. It had been an error in judgment.

She’d gone to make certain Devoir was up and cursing, snarling, furious with her . . . able to see. She couldn’t walk away and not know.

It was a very Baldoni decision. Nothing is more important than friendship. Baldoni do not haggle like shopkeepers over the cost.

Devoir . . . oh, Devoir was all he’d been at the Coach House, and more. Coughs racked him, he gasped for breath, but he got stubbornly to is feet. Half-blind, surrounded by bumbling confusion, he’d spotted her thirty feet away. She’d seen him do it. She’d seen him catch the sleeve of that dark-haired man and give chopped, vehement orders.

Devoir had attached himself to her like a cocklebur and followed her up and down London all afternoon and evening. In the end, though, it had turned out well enough. Here she was where she’d always intended to be, breaking into Braid’s Bookshop.

London is ungenerous. The night does not willingly offer up free lodging. Every park, every thin alley, every backyard shed, even the protected overhang of a front doorway, is locked and watched. The shop owners and householders of London no more wish to shelter people who walk at night than the landholders of Cambridgeshire wish to provide coverts for foxes.