The Bravest Hour (Verity Kent Mysteries #9)

Chapter 1

Níor chaill fear an mhisnigh riamh.

Never has a man of courage lost.

—Irish proverb

Dublin, Ireland

If I’d thought the sight of Dublin Castle was alarming on my previous visits, I discovered that entering it as a prisoner was infinitely more terrifying.

Its stark, imposing stone edifice draped with barbed wire and topped with meshwork meant to deflect bombs, and canvas screens supposed to hinder snipers, may have seemed intimidating before, but now I could barely summon the saliva to swallow as I eyed the cast-iron gates reinforced by steel plates before me.

They were flanked, as usual, by guards and policemen with guns at the ready, all of whom stared at me with rampant curiosity where I sat stiff-backed in the rear of the open-topped British Army’s Crossley tender, a woman surrounded by no less than eight soldiers in full kit.

I knew it was too much to hope that none of the guards had recognized me, either from my previous unescorted visits to the Castle, or because my image had been plastered across the pages of newspapers countless times over the past few years, be it posing in my glad rags for the society columns or reporting my exploits with my war-hero husband, foiling murderers and treasonous plots.

I wondered how long it would be before someone leaked to the press that I was now the one being held under suspicion of treason.

I forced myself to take deep, calming breaths even as my heart pounded wildly in my chest as the Crossley was cleared to continue through the Palace Street gate.

It was the first time I’d entered the “Dread Bastille,” as some of the Irish called it, via the main archway rather than the small pedestrian side door, and I decided I would have been quite content never to have had the experience.

Especially when the Crossley rolled to a halt only a short distance inside and a rifle butt was thrust unceremoniously into my side by one of the Auxiliaries seated next to me. “Move!”

I winced in pain, as much from the blow as the clatter of the castle gate slamming shut behind us.

“Now, now,” an officer who had emerged from the narrow passage leading off to the right admonished the Auxie.

“That’s no way to treat a lady.” He offered me his hand, and while I accepted his help in climbing out of the Crossley, I didn’t trust it.

Or his smile. His teeth were straight, albeit yellow, and his brown mustache neatly trimmed, but his grin held little sincerity.

His courtesy was merely a tactic. The men who had detained me had been rough and frightening, and so he would be solicitous and gentle, coaxing my trust. It would be the simplest thing to unburden myself to him and plead my case. It would certainly be the most painless option. For now.

But I knew that anything I said would be twisted and used against me. O would make sure of that. And Ardmore, if he’d managed to escape accountability, as I feared.

I still couldn’t help but be suspicious of how rapidly the Castle had moved to have me detained.

Less than three hours had passed since my husband, Sidney, and I had left the Crown Forces to sort out the muddle outside the gates of Mountjoy Jail.

Since we’d returned home and ordered our staff to pack while we tied off a few loose ends.

Another hour and we would have been safely away.

Though there was every chance we might still have been prevented from boarding the ferry to England at Kingstown that evening.

But in my experience, bureaucracy never moved that swiftly.

Not unless measures had already been put in place.

Anger spiked through my veins, sharp and hot.

For there was no doubt in my mind who was behind my arrest. Colonel Ormonde de l’épée Winter, otherwise known as O, had been appointed director of intelligence in Ireland and deputy advisor to the police by his boss, Sir Basil Thomson, director of intelligence at the Home Office and ostensibly head of all British intelligence agencies.

Neither man was enamored of me or my abilities.

Though to be fair, I wasn’t entirely certain how much of my service during the war and after they were aware of.

My superior, C, the Chief of the newly christened Secret Intelligence Service—the foreign division of British military intelligence—was rather prone to keeping matters close to the vest, particularly when it came to his agency.

And for good reason! The safety of his agents and the sanctity of their missions were reliant on secrecy and discretion.

Which was not to say that C’s stubbornness in functioning as if he answered to no one wasn’t also driven by his ego and delight in the clandestine nature of intelligence work, but the main principle still applied.

In any case, I’d been demobilized along with most of the women who had worked for the various military intelligence agencies during the war, operating in only an unofficial capacity for C since then.

My main objective had been to gather evidence to expose Lord Ardmore as the traitor and murderer he was.

Unfortunately, he was too crafty and devious to ever leave admissible evidence directly tying him to any of the dastardly plots we knew he was responsible for, and his friends were so highly placed in the government—Thomson among them—that they refused to entertain such a besmirchment on his character and theirs by association.

Most recently, he had attempted to trick the British Army into deploying a batch of deadly phosgene cylinders on the crowd of protestors gathered outside Mountjoy Jail that morning as Kevin Barry, a young Irish rebel, was executed.

The poisonous gas cylinders had been disguised to look like a simple lachrymatory agent—a tear gas.

Sidney and I had risked much when we’d interceded to stop the soldiers tasked with crowd control outside the prison just as they were preparing to utilize the gas.

Not only had we saved countless numbers of Irish civilians’ lives, but we’d prevented the damage such an act would have caused to Britain’s reputation around the globe.

A reputation that was already badly damaged from the government’s handling of the Irish rebellion.

Among the risks we’d taken had been our being seen in the company of some of those known Irish rebels.

Rebels we had convinced to help us, also at great personal risk to themselves, when our own British Intelligence connections had failed to assist us, and indeed, had even accused us of wasting their time when they had been the ones whose dithering had allowed the phosgene to slip through our fingers during an earlier attempt to confiscate it.

An operation that the F Company of Auxiliaries based here at the Castle was perfectly aware of, for some of them had joined us in that raid.

But I knew none of that would matter to O.

Not if he could prove that I had been in contact with the Irish rebels and failed to report what I’d learned.

Never mind that any report I tried to file would have been dismissed as feminine nonsense and all but ignored.

The fact of the matter for him would be that if he could demonstrate I’d corroborated with known enemies of the state, then he could discredit me and my sex.

To O and many of the men within British Intelligence, women were seen as unreliable and inherently inferior agents, no matter what my record and those of the other female agents I’d worked with demonstrated to the contrary.

If he could see me brandished as a traitor, he and others like him would see it as confirmation of all of their prejudices against the fairer sex.

No. Better to remain silent, I decided as I accepted the officer’s proffered arm and allowed him to lead me through the narrow alley. At least until I knew which way the wind blew and what tack they intended to take. Sidney would find a way to get in touch with C.

Unless he was detained, too.

The probability was strong. Though the fact that he was a well-known war hero and a recipient of the Victoria Cross gave me hope that the government would wish to avoid such an embarrassment.

It also gave me hope that, as his wife, they would realize they couldn’t hold me for long either.

Not when such news was bound to be splashed all over the papers.

Unfortunately, that only heightened the danger I would be under for the duration. Desperate men took desperate measures.

Nevertheless, even if Sidney and our staff were also arrested, surely C must discover our plight sooner than later.

After all, Nimble, my husband’s valet, had sent off my telegram to C just that morning before my detention, letting him know we’d foiled Ardmore by preventing the phosgene from being deployed and that we would give him a full report upon our return to London the following morning.

Surely, he would realize something was wrong when we didn’t turn up.

Our friends Max and George, who I’d also sent telegrams to, would realize the same.

My stomach churned with anxiety, knowing there was every chance C might also refuse to interfere.

After all, Sidney and I had been sent to Dublin in an unofficial capacity.

In addition to locating the missing phosgene, we’d been tasked with finding an intelligence colleague who had been sent to infiltrate the Irish Republican Army and then disappeared.

However, C had made it clear when he sent us that we were on our own.

British Intelligence here would not be made aware of our assignment so as to keep us from being discovered by one of the informants we knew that Michael Collins, the director of intelligence for the IRA, had recruited within the Castle, and to keep Thomson from interfering.