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

Cockle Lane, Soho

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.

“This is an agreeable room.” She pulled the green dress over her head and smoothed it down her hips. It fit well. His woman friend was almost precisely of a size with her, except with a larger bosom. A lovely and womanly bosom. “I notice it contains a great many deadly things. I would not trust me here if I were you. I would keep me in your dungeon, which you insist you do not have.”

“No dungeons. I have a comfortable, boring room I put dangerous people in. I won’t show it to you because I don’t want to frighten you out of your wits. I promised Galba you’d behave sensibly.”

“At least I shall not attack you with any of these tempting objects you have left strewn about. Not at this moment.” She tried to reach the buttons on her back, but he nudged her gently around and did them up for her. “Thank you. It is difficult to dress in fashionable clothing, unaided. One would expect life to be better managed.”

He watched her as if he were trying to take her heart apart like a puzzle box. As he was her interrogator, it would be his task, for a time, to take her apart piece by piece. It is inexpressibly frightening to be the puzzle box in these cases.

He did the last button. “Maggie bought a comb. It’s on the dresser.”

“The Maggie of Doyle? Do you tell me these are her clothings? I am very surprised.” She thought about Doyle, who had been to Cambridge and bought his wife such dresses. And such underthings. “I think she is not at all as I pictured her.”

Grey did not wait for her to take the comb but picked it up himself and began to use it in her hair. He combed and smoothed after it with his hand. It was a common action, strong and simple as a sunset or standing in the sea. A man did such things for a woman who belonged to him.

In the mirror, her mouth was ripe as fruit, and her eyes were soft and foolish. She looked altogether like a woman who had just given her virginity to someone. The bathtub part of it was no longer obvious, since she was not dressed in a long white robe. Grey had transformed himself into a gentleman, here in the heart of his power. He wore an evening jacket that was the blue black of midnight and a waistcoat with thin stripes of burgundy and white. A heavy signet ring gleamed dull gold as it slid in and out of her hair with each stroke of the comb. He was not handsome. Men such as Grey ate handsome dandies for breakfast twice a week. If she had been a foolish young girl, she would have been dazzled.

“When I escape from this prison,” she said, “I shall find a boy of the Rom, younger and darker and handsomer than you. I shall make love to him in barns and haystacks until I do not feel this way for you.” She said it to hurt him and to free herself from him. She did not like what she saw in her own eyes in the mirror.

“I hope you enjoy yourself. You won’t change what’s between us, Annique, not with fifty Gypsy boys.”

She wished he did not speak so many excellent truths to her. She stepped from his hold and began to straighten the clutter upon his dresser, lining everything up. “One does not love one’s jailer. It is a fallacy jailers have, that their prisoners like them, but it is never true. If you had not trapped me, I would have walked away by now. In a week I would have forgotten you altogether.” Or in a month, or a year. Or never. “There is nothing between us except a hunger of bodies.”

“There’s that, too.”

“I do not want to feel anything for you. Do you understand? Can you imagine what it is to have not even a shift to wear? To be so dependent upon a man that I must ask him for clothing? This is not a good basis for friendship.”

“I know. It makes it harder. Will you sleep with me tonight?”

He would ask. Not demand. Just ask. She did not know how to fight such cunning. “Can I say no?”

“Of course you can. There are five or six empty bedrooms, one right across the hall. I can put you in there.” He took back the space between them till they were almost touching. “I’ll leave my door unlocked. Will you come to me?”

“I am very stupid.”

“I think that means yes.” He was smiling.

She gave him his victory. “I would come to you sometime in the night, tiptoeing down the hall, and open the door and crawl in beside you. Already, I am listening to the argument your body makes to mine. If you carried me to that bed, even without taking a moment to be persuasive, I would want you like flames.”

“The hall gets chilly. Sleep with me tonight, in that bed.”

He cradled her cheek into the warm hardness of his palm. He was so aware of her…even the infinitesimal nod of her head, he felt.

“You have to say it.”

“Yes.” She was without shame.

“I’ll hold you to that.” He drew her against him, body to body, and nuzzled into her hair, breathing the scent, making a growl deep in his throat. It grappled at her heart, that he desired even her smell.

His hands also hungered for her. They molded the soft dress to her buttocks, stroking, taking pleasure in the shape of her body. She closed her eyes to be in the darkness with the strength of him, and his hunger, and the massive beating heart. There was nothing but sensation. Heat ignited between her legs and spread sweetly. She glowed inside her skin, in ripples. She was drunk with it. She was…