“I don’t know what you mean.” Leblanc’s gaze slid away. His pupils jerked in tiny twitches. He was guilty. Guilty and afraid.
He gagged as her hands closed on his throat. She would tear him apart. Rip his flesh to pieces. She fought the guards who pulled Leblanc away. She fought Grey when he held her arms behind her back and did not let her sink her claws into Leblanc.
“
“I will kill him.” She kicked Grey, who kept her from Leblanc. “I will kill him fifty times. Murderer! Assassin. Animal!” She would shred him to bits.
“She lies. Do not listen to her. It is all lies.”
“So far, she merely promises to kill you,” Soulier said. “I am almost inclined to allow it. But we will hear what she has to say first. Calm her, Monsieur Grey. She will hurt herself.”
She would wipe this piece of filth from the universe. She would grind him to suet. “Son of a maggot. Murderer.”
“Annique, stop.” Grey’s strength closed around her, and she could not move. “Tell me.”
The smell of Grey, the steadiness of him, filled her senses. Fury trickled away. She was empty. She slumped against him, chilled and sick, panting for air.
Vauban was dead. He would never again fold together the pages of her report and nod, all gruff, and say, “Good work,” in front of everyone. He would never pour water in her wine as if she were still a child. Never. Never. Never again for Vauban. For Maman. Everything was gone. Tears burned in her eyes, and the pain choked her. Grey held her to him so she was hidden.
Soulier said, “Child, there is no time for this. Set it aside.”
She clung one minute to Grey’s jacket. The rage had passed, leaving her hollow. It was as if her heart and mind had been scooped out of her altogether. She was nothing but a cold wind wrapped in a woman’s skin.
She tried to push away from Grey and found herself still held—warmly, carefully, firmly. He did not let her go. He turned her within his arms so that she faced Soulier. It seemed she would have the comfort of his body whether she wished for it or not.
“I am composed,” she said.
“Good. I must deal with Leblanc,” Soulier said. “Give me the truth of this matter.”
Truth. How strange that she could tell the simple truth in this company. There was no old man in his stone house in Normandy, depending upon her silence. Vauban was dead. Nothing could hurt him.
She said, “Vauban stole the Albion plans,” and she watched the words stab to the heart of Soulier.
“That is impossible.”
Behind her, Grey stiffened, deep in his muscles.
“He stole them to pass to the British. Not for the money. It was never for the money.” She could not clear the lump from her throat. “It was…With gold as payment, even a small amount of gold, no one would suspect Vauban.”
“No one would believe that of him.” Soulier sank heavily into the chair. “He conceived a faultless operation. As always.”
“He planned for months, alone, in secret.” Her feelings were chaotic, even after so many months. “I think…I think Vauban went a little mad when his sons died in Egypt.”
Soulier looked away, his lips tight. “Other men have lost sons.”
“His sons died for nothing. Napoleon sailed home to hold parades and put sphinxes upon the feet of his tables. Émile and Philippe died in the fever and stink of Cairo, deserted by the man who led them there. They died for a Corsican’s vanity, Vauban said.”
How could Soulier not understand? He had been Vauban’s friend. How could he look like that, shocked and condemning? “He was old and tired and sick. He lived his whole life in the service of France. He lost everything in the Terror—his home, his family, his wife.”
“My child, I was there. I know.”
“Only his boys were left. Then Napoleon threw their lives away on a grandiose whim to rule the East.”
She shook herself free of Grey and began to pace the room. She could not stay still. The Frenchmen, Soulier’s agents, followed her with their eyes, waiting for what she would say. Soulier’s pain whipped at her with silent lashes.
She steadied her voice. “And now Napoleon planned another vast expedition. To England. That is why Vauban stole the plans. He said Napoleon had betrayed the Revolution.”
Soulier passed his hand over his forehead. “Always, he was the dreamer among us. The idealist. But this…”
“There would be no more pointless battles overseas, Vauban said. No more French armies abandoned. He would prevent it.”
Soulier lifted his eyes to her. “You were under his orders, Annique. If he told you to help him in this…”
Did he think Vauban would lay that upon her? “But no. He told me nothing. He brought me to Bruges to run the small errands, as always. To watch for the British. But Leblanc…”
Leblanc fought the men who held him, knowing what she would say next. Hatred washed over her in tides. She took shaking, hot breaths before she could speak. “Leblanc’s small worm in the Military Intelligence of England, Tillman, told Leblanc where the British would deliver the gold. The Englishmen were betrayed, first, by an English.”
She turned to Grey. He remained expressionless, his eyes level and cold. It was to him she spoke. “Leblanc lay in wait. And killed. And took the gold. He has done endless murder for that gold.”
When she said that, he nodded, just a fraction. Leblanc was dead from this moment. He might still walk and talk for an hour or a week, but he was dead. Soulier saw this. She did not think Leblanc yet realized.
“She lies. I swear, Soulier, this is lies.” Leblanc writhed in fury and fear. Long scratches showed red on his face. “It was Vauban. Only Vauban. I know nothing of this.”
She did not bother to look upon Leblanc. “I was with Vauban. Leblanc came to the inn with the blood of those murdered men still upon his clothing.” She remembered the shock and the sickness. Vauban’s incredulous anger. “Leblanc knew Vauban must have the plans. He demanded them, as the price of his silence.”
“The bitch lies. She lies in her teeth. I was in Paris that day. I can bring a dozen men to swear this.”
“He was there. He hid in the farmhouse of Paul Drouet that night, in Brésanne. No.” She snapped, “Be silent, maggot. Your men, Plaçais and Vachelard, are dead by your secret order. The family Drouet burned in their beds. It has been unhealthy to know this thing about you, Leblanc. But one daughter escaped and lives. There is a witness.”
The willingness of Yves and the other guards to keep violent hands upon Leblanc increased by the minute.
“You will not listen to this whore, this bitch in heat, who sweats and grunts under an English dog.”
“You killed Maman when I was blinded and useless. And three Englishmen in Bruges. And two of your own men. And the family Drouet at their farm,” she stared into Leblanc’s eyes, and her voice cracked, “even the children. The good God alone knows how many others. All for gold…” She could no longer speak.
Leblanc was a cornered rat, teeth bared. “You will regret this, Soulier. Fouché will crush you like an ant when I tell him this.”
Soulier had become like ancient ice in the mountains, frigid and blue and glittering. “You are a greedy man, Jacques. Greedy enough that I believe this atrocity of you. It is the answer to some questions that have occurred to me this last year. And why else would you try to kill Annique?
“She lies,” Leblanc hissed.
“You are stupid beyond belief to think you can attack in my own house someone I have given sanctuary. To do this to a woman Grey chooses to protect…Do you not realize, you idiot, that he has a dozen men outside? That this is his trap for you? That he has come for you tonight to hang you?”
Grey was at her back, and she could not see his expression. Leblanc did. He paled to the color of a fish belly. He did not like to look upon his own death, for all the death he had meted out to others.
Soulier threaded the thin sword cane into its concealing scabbard and secured it with a quick, vicious twist. “I
