Joanna Bourne - The Spymaster’s Lady

The Head of Section for England stripped himself to his soul in front of her. He was easy to love. “I do not want to hear the end of that story. I would rather go back to dancing on the green.”

“Or making love on the forest floor. That’s a good part, don’t you think?” He bent to her breasts, breathing upon them. If he expected her to talk with him, he should not do such things. Her hands wrapped themselves around his forearm where the tendons and muscles were tough as leather. He was a stern man in every way. Except with her, sometimes.

His breath moved across her face, across her closed eyelids. “If we were in Littledean, you’d wake up with bits of flowers in your hair. You wouldn’t want to run anywhere at all. You might even fall in love.”

“I was a little in love with Robert, when I knew him, before he turned into you and locked me up.”

“I can’t let you loose. Leblanc would kill you.”

“Perhaps.” It was not possible to shrug, lying down.

“What do you know about him? What’s this secret he’s going to kill you for?”

She had the Head of the British Section in bed with her suddenly. She hated it when that happened. “You are persistent.” She dropped her hands from him. “Let us discuss gun emplacements in Toulon instead. I can be extremely witty about the gun emplacements of Toulon.”

The next instant the spymaster was gone, and it was Robert who smiled down at her hungrily. “Later.” He nuzzled her breast, sucking, and the pang of it came between her legs. She wanted to groan and curl around the sharp longing that struck her there. “We’ll get to gun emplacements later. I have a whole list of secrets I’ll seduce out of you.”

“You. You do not seduce anything out of me. You do not talk politics at all, not even when I become entirely mindless, and you could make me agree to a theocracy ruled by mice.”

He laughed at that, her so-serious Grey, whom she could make laugh. “Galba’s the one for political theory. I’m a practical man, and you have a very pretty belly button. Have I told you that? Like an acorn cup. Just the right size.”

“The right size for what? Oh, for doing that with. But that is not erotic, that only tickles.” She began to breathe fast. “I keep expecting you to corrupt me with argument, and you do not.”

He kissed his way down and down her belly. “I’ll get around to corrupting you.”

“What was I speaking of?”

“Politics. No. Lie back a bit. We’re not in a hurry. I’ll see if I can change your opinion about belly buttons. More important than politics anyway.”

“It is a fault in you to be of such cynicism. You are…You…I have decided it is, after all, erotic, what you are doing.”

“Mmmm…?”

She trembled because Grey kissed the soft skin in the inner curve of her thigh. “I will tell you…I am abjectly susceptible to this particular thing…you are about to do.”

“Are you now?”

“I did not think I would be, when this was described to me. It sounded…rather silly…at the time.”

“Silly. Well then.” He began to kiss between her legs.

She could no longer speak. He transformed her to a creature of liquid fire, all desire. Her hips thrust in rhythmic, shuddering motion. She became only a hunger, only the need to be joined with this man.

She heard herself whispering, “So beautiful. You are for me, beautiful. Only you…” When he made her like this, her mouth was not sufficiently connected to her brain. It said more than she meant to say.

He waited until her breath sobbed in and out, until she clutched at him, at the bedclothes. Then he loomed above her, looking down.

“We can talk politics, if you’d like.”

She gasped. “I do not…No. Let us not.”

“Sure about that?”

She needed him, such need that she shook with it. The skin of his chest was slick and salty on her lips. It was impossible not to taste, not to draw her tongue over harsh, curling hairs, over sweaty skin, over the flat, dark, alien nipple. He shuddered when she did that. She felt it. They had such power, each over the other. “You, Monsieur Grey, are the devil.”

He smiled, slow and complacent. He had forgotten with whom he dealt.

She employed one of the wrestling tricks René had taught her all those years ago. Grey was not expecting it. He flipped over most satisfactorily onto his back, and she climbed on top, straddling him.

“The women of my family,” she bent to whisper in his ear, “know exactly how to deal with cunning foreign spies like you.”

He did not look disconcerted. Perhaps he had known that trick, after all. His hands enclosed her hips, one side and the other, deep and strong against her flesh, and he thrust upward. Between clenched teeth he breathed out, “Yes. Just like that. That’s right. Yes.”

He was a man who controlled sternly the passion that lived at his heart. In bed, he set it free. It was not his practiced skill or his huge, hard body that drove her to madness. It was the fierceness of him.

She felt it now, gathering like the wildness of a thunderstorm. He was not slow and careful, but a fury like a beast. No more thought. No questions or answers. She wrapped her legs about him and rode the storm. Rode the thunder. Masculine power jolted through her. Power unending. She took indescribable pleasure from him and arched back and cried out into the night.

MUCH later, when they were quietly side by side, snuggled against the cold that came in from the window, she lay her head upon his arm. Her last hours with him were slipping away. He would sleep soon. Then she must go.

He said, “I could protect you from Leblanc if you’d tell me what’s going on.”

She did not even bother to answer, just shook her head. Outside, a mist rose over the city, glowing in the distant streetlamps. The cobbles would be damp and slippery when she had to run.

She stretched so her lips were next to his ear. It was, after all, the last time. “I will tell you a truth, Grey. What I have for you is love, deep to my heart. Only love could hurt this much. I wanted you to know that.”

“You’re saying good-bye to me again. I wish you’d stop that. I’m not going to let Leblanc get to you.”

“I just wanted to tell you.”

“Go to sleep, Annique.

“Leblanc will kill someone in this house if he is not stopped. He knows where I am, and he is very dangerous. It would be far better if you let me go, to face him on my own.”

“Never. Go to sleep.”

SHE SLIPPED DOWN THE STAIRS LIKE A SHADOW, naked, wearing only shoes, her clothing bundled under her arm. It would be ten or fifteen minutes before Grey stirred in his sleep and felt for her and realized she was gone from his bed. She had that long.

At the end of the hall, a single yellow flame burned in a glass chimney. But she had counted these steps. She could have walked this path blind. Surprises of glass crunched in the carpet under her feet. Ferguson had not been able to sweep it all up. For this one night the monster dog was not stalking the halls, slavering and famished, seeking human flesh.

The door to the front parlor was closed, locked with its expensive Bramah lock. But Grey had opened this door from the other side with a hidden lever. In this devious house, doubtless there was a release on this side as well.

There is a truth of locks and hidden places. If the same mind contrives two, they are alike in flavor. In the parlor, the release was a sconce on the wall. Here…? The mirror at the end of the hall flickered with the shadow of her pale, naked body, as she made her silent search. A narrow mar-quetry table clung tightly against the wall, so tightly she could not squeeze her fingers behind it.

It was the back left leg that lifted to the side. A hidden bolt snicked. The door to the parlor clicked. Cool air touched her face, blowing in from the glassless windows.

Ferguson’s broom leaned against the wall. She brought it with her. Two minutes had passed since she arose from bed.

She did not pause to congratulate herself. Softly, she picked her way across the parlor. The floor had been roughly swept. She made no sound, walking through. Broken furniture was pushed back against the walls. The hideous sideboard was unscathed. It was typical of battles that the ugliest things emerged unharmed. The piano was a ruin of twisted wire and splintered wood. No scales would ever again be practiced upon it. One heartening thought amid much destruction.

How many broken rooms had she walked through when she lived among armies? She had seen houses as wealthy as this, shelled and looted and left open to the weather. This parlor had the smell of a battle ruin—gunpowder and plaster dust and, faintly at the edges, blood.

One image filled her mind, plucked from the confusion and fear this afternoon. An image of the window.

The bars were lines of solid black against the gray fog, lit by the streetlamp outside. She slid her fingers along the sill. Yes. She’d seen shotgun blasts hit here again and again. In the deep crevice, the middle bar shifted in its mooring.

She would bend this bar. This birdcage would open, and the bird would fly free.

Ferguson’s broomstick was still in her hand. She wedged it hard against the metal and pried. Pried again, panting with effort. The lead that secured iron into marble rattled and crumbled. It was moving.

Another try. She set her foot against the wall and racked herself, calling on every muscle, on desperation, on all the strength of her will. With agonizing slowness, the bar bent.

Again. Gasping, she set a new hold. This was not the first obstacle she had approached. Like many others, it was convinced, reluctantly, to move aside.