Perhaps he knew who she was. Or perhaps he was one of those earnest men who go about spying in total seriousness. He would die for his country in a straightforward English fashion in this musty place and hate her because she was French. To see the world so simply was undoubtedly an English trait.

So be it. As it happened, she was not an amicable friend of big English spies. A French trait, doubtless.

She shrugged, which he would not see, and began working her way around the rest of the cell, inspecting the floor and every inch of the wall as high as she could reach. “In your time here, has Henri Bréval visited the cell?”

“He came twice with Leblanc, once alone, asking questions.”

“He has the key? He himself? That is good then.”

“You think so?”

“I have some hopes of Henri.” There was not a rusted nail, not a shard of glass. There was nothing useful anywhere. She must place her hope in Henri’s stupidity, which was nearly limitless. “If Fouché is indeed upstairs drinking wine and playing cards, Leblanc will not leave his side. One does not neglect the head of the Secret Police to disport oneself with a woman. But Henri, who takes note of him? He may seize the moment. He wishes to use me, you understand, and he has had no chance yet.”

“I see.” They were most noncommittal words.

Was it possible he believed she would welcome Henri? What dreadful taste he thought she had. “Leblanc does not let many people know about this room. It is very secret what he does here.”

“So Henri may come sneaking down alone. You plan to take him.” He said it calmly, as if it were not remarkable that she should attack a man like Henri Bréval. She was almost certain he knew what she was.

“I can’t help you,” the chain that bound him rattled, “unless you get him close.”

“Henri is not so stupid. Not quite. But I have a small plan.”

“Then all I can do is wish you well.”

He seemed a man with an excellent grasp of essentials. He would be useful to her if she could get his chains off. That she would accomplish once those pigs became like the proverb and grew wings and went flying.

Exploring the cell further, she stubbed her toe upon a table, empty of even a spoon. There were also chairs, which presented more opportunity. She was working at the pegs that held a chair together when she heard footsteps.

“We have a visitor,” the big English said.

“I hear.” One man descended the steps into the cellar. Henri. It must be Henri. She set the chair upright, out of her way, and drew her cosh into her hand and turned toward the sound of footsteps. A shudder ran along her spine, but it was only the cold of the room. It was not fear. She could not afford to be afraid. “It is one man. Alone.”

“Leblanc or Henri, do you think?”

“It is Henri. He walks more heavily. Now you will shut up quietly and not distract me.” She prayed it was Henri. Not Leblanc. She had no chance against Leblanc.

The Englishman was perfectly still, but he charged the air with a hungry, controlled rage. It was as if she had a wolf chained to that wall behind her. His presence tugged and tugged at her attention when it was desperately important to keep her mind on Henri.

Henri. She licked her lips and grimly concentrated on Henri, an unpleasant subject, but one of great immediacy. There were twenty steps on the small curved staircase that led from kitchen to cellar. She counted the last of them, footstep by footstep. Then he was in the corridor that led to the cell.

Henri had always thought her reputation inflated. When he had brought her the long way to Paris to turn her over to Leblanc, she had played the spineless fool for him, begging humbly for food and water, stumbling, making him feel powerful. She was so diminished in her darkness he thought her completely harmless. He had become contemptuous.

Let him come just a little close, and he would discover how harmless she was. Most surely he would.

She knew the honey to trap him. She would portray for him the Silly Young Harlot. It was an old favorite role of hers. She had acted it a hundred times.

She licked her lips and let them pout, open and loose. What else? She pulled strands of hair down around her face. Her dress was already torn at the neckline. She found the spot and ripped the tear wider. Good. He would see only that bare skin. She could hold a dozen coshes and he would never notice.

Quickly. Quickly. He was coming closer. She took another deep breath and let the role close around her like a familiar garment. She became the Harlot. Yielding, easy to daunt, out of her depth in this game of intrigue and lies. Henri liked victims. She would set the most perfect victim before him and hope he took the bait.

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.”