The Spymaster's Lady

“I won’t let it come to that.” He picked up Annique’s wineglass and rotated it softly. The wine made a circle, a whirlpool of spinning red lights with a dimple in the center.

“She has been preparing for this eventuality all her life,” Galba said softly. “We are her enemies, Marguerite, and we have her cornered. She is desperate and passionate and, most especially, she is very young.”

…And bloody careless with her life. He set the glass down impatiently. “Damn Socrates, anyway.”

Adrian started to speak, then stalked over to help Giles clear away the cups.

Galba tapped the carved panel inset in the arms of his chair. “The Albion plans are a grave responsibility for one so young. Eventually, we will relieve her of that. In the meantime, we must present her with alternate methods of confronting us.”

“I should take her home with me before you end up killing her in your stupid Game with your stupid secrets.” Maggie scowled. “You will be satisfied, I suppose, if she suicides herself to escape you.”

“We won’t let her do that, Maggie. It ain’t dead simple getting hold of pretty French girls this side of the Channel.” Doyle pulled his wife back against him and wrapped her in bearlike arms. “And Robert wouldn’t like it.”

“Then Robert should not push her to desperation,” she said tartly.

“We’re all in on it.” Adrian retrieved Paxton’s empty glass. “Grey takes her to bed. The rest of us slink around being friendly and insidious. We’re so wily it makes me sick.”

“Wily,” Doyle agreed. “That’s us.”

Adrian expressed his opinion by picking up Doyle’s coffee cup, still half full, and walking off with it.

“Hawker.” Grey got a tight-lipped, angry glare from Adrian. “Don’t make her less than she is. She’s not just friendly, pretty Annique. Remember that. She’s the Fox Cub and this is the Game.”

“With points about even, so far,” Doyle said. “So I don’t feel as brilliant as I generally do. Also, I don’t like Reams breathing down our neck. He’s got jurisdiction, when it comes right down to it.”

Reams wasn’t going to touch Annique. “There’re ways around that.” Grey clenched and unclenched his fists. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t get to use them on Reams.

“The colonel could fall off his horse, I suppose.” Adrian stopped stacking dishes to think. “Or eat something that disagrees with him. Or find a cobra in his bed.”

“There’s a lot of that happens,” Doyle agreed.

“Or he could cut his throat, shaving.”

“We will not call upon your peculiar expertise, Adrian.” Galba rose heavily and walked across the room to the large walnut desk. He fished in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a key. “Nor is that her best protection from the colonel.” He frowned. “Pax, I have information to disclose that I do not wish to burden you with, where you must go.”

Paxton gave his slow, deceptively gentle smile. “I need to pack. And sleep, if I can.” He collected the bottle of Bordeaux from the sideboard as he walked by. “Good night, all. As for you, young man…”

“I know. I know. Ferguson needs me in the kitchen.” Giles took it good-naturedly. He clattered the last of the dishes into the dumbwaiter, closed the hatch, and followed.

“I shall find something to do as well, I suppose.” Maggie brushed her skirts and prepared to stand.

“I’d like you to stay, if you will.” Galba fitted his key into the side drawer of the desk. “I value your insight, Marguerite. It will also save Will the trouble of repeating this conversation to you, later.”

“I admit nothing.” But she smiled as she approached the desk where Galba was laying out file folders. “What is this, then?”

Grey stood. These would be the files about Annique, the ones that had never passed through his office. He’d wondered why there was a skilled, important agent, with no file on her, anywhere. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

Two of the three thick files Galba laid on the blotter were old. The original buff had darkened to a dull brown. On the opening lip of all three was a long, crimson line. That meant they were to be opened only in the presence of a Head of Section.

Grave-faced, Galba picked the topmost. “What is in these files has been the most closely guarded secret of the British Service for twenty years. The time for such secrecy is past. It ended six weeks ago.” He pushed the folder across the desk. “In extremis, you may use any of this. It will trump Military Intelligence.”

It was Annique’s file. The one Grey had never seen. The name, Annique Villiers, was the third of twelve aliases scripted in bold ink on the upper right corner. The folder was three inches thick, filled with close-written reports in many hands. Most of the papers, even the faded ones, were crisp and unwrinkled. They hadn’t had much handling. Not many people had read this file.

He hesitated, then flipped it open. Summary notes were always inside the left cover. The first line told him everything. Adrian was reading upside down. He drew his breath in sharply. “Ye gods.” Doyle, leaning over his shoulder, took it in with a single glance and cursed.

He kept reading. No wonder this was secret. No wonder.

Doyle took a lumbering step toward Galba. “I should have been told.”

“Nobody was told.”

“They were operating in Vienna. My fief. Damn it, I should have been told.”

Galba said, “You know the privileges of detached status. Will, you made those rules.”

“You don’t use ’em against me. I came close to…Good God, why didn’t you tell me? One word would have been enough. One word.”

“Your actions and your enmity were part of her protection.”

Annique’s file. Grey turned over page after page, feeling the anger twist in his chest. This is going to break her heart. “She doesn’t know. Why the goddamned hell doesn’t she know?”

“I do not deny culpability.” Face grim, Galba relocked the drawer and pocketed the key. “I disapproved, but I sanctioned it. The simple fact is, her mother chose not to tell her.”

Unbelievable. “I understand it when she was a child. But when she was grown— how could she not tell her?”

“There are no excuses. She never told Annique. Now we must.”

“We tell her everything. Every damn thing.” He slapped the file. “We give her this. Complete. Every word. She has the right to know.”

“She has the right.” Galba sank heavily into the wing chair by the fire. “I knew this was coming. I pity her profoundly, but I cannot take this cup from her.”

“Tomorrow.” Not tonight. Let me give her one night, before I have to do this to her.

Adrian was flipping angrily through the second folder, page by page. “Twenty years of lies. We haven’t left you a rag against the wind, have we, ma pauvre?”

“It was wrong.” Doyle rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t care how valuable she was to us. This was wrong. And we did it.”

Maggie wasn’t familiar with Service files. It took her longer to read notations and decipher the story. “I cannot believe this. How could a woman do such a thing to her child? They were close, Annique and her mother?”

“Very close,” Doyle said.

“You will hurt her unbearably. With her mother newly dead…”

“I know, Maggie luv. It’s bad enough what we’re doing to that girl. Now we kick her in the guts with this.”

“We’re not going to drop it in her lap and yell, ‘Surprise!’ We’ll go slow…” Adrian, for once, looked unsure. “We’ll…we’ll what? How do you say something like this?”

“She will not believe you,” Maggie said. “Even before you hurt her so badly, you must convince her.”

“The proof’s in her own mind,” Doyle said. “Her mother must have slipped up once or twice in all those years.”

Once she was told, Annique would remember. She’d lie awake at night and remember every lie she’d been told.