The Spymaster's Lady

HER face was wet, which confused her utterly. She was in the coach, and Grey was slapping her. Why was she so wet?

“I wish you would not do that.” She tried to fight his hands off. “It is not at all necessary and very impolite.”

“Wake up.” He slapped her again. It was not painful exactly, but it was not a light tap on the cheek either.

“I am awake.” She took hold of his wrist so he could not strike her again. Everything was confused inside her brain, as if it were foggy in there. This was Grey. Grey was in the coach with her and wanted her to wake up. Where were they? She could not at all remember. “You do not need to keep hitting me. I am awake.”

“Good. I need you to be awake. Annique, the gendarmes are going to stop the coach. No, don’t you dare go to sleep on me. You’re going to stay awake and talk to them. Can you do that?”

She pushed the heels of her hands against her temples. Gendarmes. She was in France. Grey…Grey was the English spy. Leblanc was chasing her, hungry for her death. He had set the gendarmes after her.

She couldn’t think. “Gendarmes?”

Grey switched to German. “Can you be Bavarian? We have to speak German. Can you do that?”

Terror peeled the layers of sleep off her. This was not Grey. This clipped, precise, intellectual voice. This German voice. Beside her in the coach was a man with Grey’s shape and his smell and his warmth and his clothing…who was not Grey.

“Annique. Wake up and talk to me. Now.”

She put her hand to his mouth and felt his breath move with the words. The feeling of Grey was there, the shape of his lips, the stubble of his cheek, his smell. But it wasn’t his voice.

“What is it?” His words, but not his voice. Grey, speaking German.

It was horrible and bewildering to hear a different voice come from Grey’s mouth. It was inconceivably wrong. She was alone in the dark and she had lost the familiarity of his voice.

“No. I am awake now.” She shook her head.

She should not have shaken her head. It made her dizzy, and she could not think. His voice has changed. That is all. He is still Grey. She heard the ominous jangling that was armed men—leather and horse bits and guns slung across shoulders. Dreams and unreality clung to everything. She must wake up. He is still Grey. Do not panic like a silly schoolgirl.

Grey knew what must be done. He was the still point in chaos. She would do what he said, and trust him, and think later. “I will speak German.” That was the easy part. She matched her accent to his. To a village she had lived in, a little farther east, midway between Munich and Salzburg. The lilting speech of hills and green valleys.

“Only German from now on, Annique. Your name is Adelina Grau. I’m your husband Karl. We’ve been married six months. Adrian is your brother, Fritz Adler. Your twin brother. You come from Grafing. I’m a professor at the University of Munich, going to London to give a series of lectures at the Royal Academy.” He slipped something onto her finger. A ring. It was too large for her, with a smooth cabochon stone. Adrian had been wearing that. She knew its feel. She turned it inward so the gold of the ring appeared a plain wedding band.

“Adelina. Karl. My brother, Fritz.” A hundred times she had done this. A hundred stories. A hundred different people she had been. Already she was trying to think in German. She could do all that was required of her. “The driver?”

“Blast. Yes. Josef Heilig. He’s worked for me for ten years.”

“Josef,” she repeated. Grey was holding her upright in the seat as if he were afraid she would collapse. She would not, not in the middle of her work. Never in all her years had she given way when there was work to do.

The coach rolled to a stop with much jangling of harness and Doyle telling the horses Germanic things. Grey started huffing away, complaining. She should probably have asked what he was a professor of, but it did not matter. If anyone questioned her, or even looked at her closely, they were lost anyway.

“They are naturally officious, the French,” Grey said in his crisp, citified accent. “It was not this bad in the old days. I tell you, Fritz, the French have changed, and not for the better. No one in Paris appreciates my work. Here’s another crew of dolts in uniforms, come to impede our progress.” All the time, his arm surrounded her, infusing her with the stubborn, indomitable strength of his.

When they were stopped, Grey gave her shoulder a last squeeze and flung the door of the carriage open. “Gentlemen, how may I help you?” His French was now Parisian, heavily accented with German, and he did not sound like Grey in that voice either.

Adrian touched her arm, letting her know where he was so she had one less thing to worry about. “We’ll only stop a minute. Karl will take care of it, Adelina.” His German was every bit as flawless as her own, the accent close enough. He spoke low, into her ear, “Trust him. He’ll pull us out of this. He never fails.”

Adrian was feeling better, she thought. His voice was strong. The arm that steadied her wasn’t hot with fever. He was like a tough, wild animal, this one. He would live, if it happened the gendarmes did not kill them all. She wished saving Adrian’s life was not such an ephemeral achievement.

Adrian continued in a whisper. A German whisper. “They’re not suspicious. This looks like a routine document check. Seven men. Local troops, all of them with the weapons slung. Slouching in the saddle. Bored. We’re safe enough unless they spot something. Nobody’s going to offend Bavarians right now. They’ve just finished lunch, looks like. They’ll be in a good mood.”

How many times she had done this, assessing soldiers, holding out forged papers with a confident smile? In her Vauban days she had been part of a team like this. She remembered how it felt, five or six of them becoming a single organism, depending on each other’s wit and skill. The old feeling came back to her now. She could sense Doyle, up on the box, and Adrian, beside her. All their attention was centered upon Grey as he strolled toward the soldiers. They waited to take their cue from him.

It was good to be part of such things again. She felt every perception stretched toward Grey.

Some of the gendarmes had dismounted to talk to him. She heard boots on the dirt of the road. In the midst of the shuffling of horses, Grey managed to sound very much the stiff, patronizing professor, a pompous man, important in his own small world. “Papers? Of course you may see our papers. Josef, hand me down the red case, the Cordoba. I see no reason for stopping travelers in the middle of—”

There was a courteous explanation from one of the gendarmes. He spoke slowly, as one does to people who have not the good fortune to be French.

Grey said, “We hardly look like smugglers, my good man. Let me tell you, we don’t have smugglers at all in Munich, and if you would only…Yes, Josef, that one.”

Adrian said quietly, “You’re too pretty, Adelina. The lieutenant’s seen you. He’s coming this way, and he’s very admiring. Trouble.”

“If Grey does not want lieutenants to look upon me, he should not put me in this dress. I must be out of the carriage so I am below his eye level. Can you do this?”

“Natürlich,” Adrian said at once. She didn’t know whether this was easy or not. It didn’t matter. The important thing was that this gendarme did not realize she was blind.

Adrian played his part skillfully, of course. They would see him being solicitous as he helped her from the carriage. They would not notice that he shielded her from view with his body and found her a place to stand where she could just touch the coach, where no one could come up behind her. It was useful, too, that young women of family were treated like idiots, so it did not seem unusual he should hover over her. He leaned upon the carriage beside her. For support, she thought. He would be weak, so soon after the bullet was dug from him. Three days, four…She did not know how long it had been.

“The subprefect in Rouen signed the laissez-passer himself,” Grey was saying. “A pleasant man. He was most interested in my calculations upon the refraction of light in liquids. I gave him a copy of a lecture I delivered at Würzburg on the subject. He sealed my documents with his own hand. It is impossible that all is not in order.”

“It is not that your papers are not in order,” the gendarme said, very patient. “There is not the travel stamp from Marley-le-Grand.”

“Travel stamp? What is this travel stamp? I was told of no travel stamps.”

A pair of boots, no doubt carrying the admiring lieutenant, came closer. She kept her eyes down to the road and put her palm flat on the middle of her belly. “I think I will be sick.” She spoke German in a firm, carrying voice. “I was better when the carriage was moving. At least there was a little wind.”