Chapter 1
?le-de-France
For the past half hour, Nate’s attention had been split between the brothel and the veiled woman two doors down.
“I do not know why I bother to play with you, Beaumont,” étienne Baudelaire said glumly as Nate captured his bishop.
“You enjoy the challenge.” It was checkmate in five moves, which Baudelaire had just realized.
For several hours they’d played chess in the front window of the café opposite Les Moineaux, covertly watching for anyone who showed an interest in the brothel. Les Moineaux was not open to customers on this Sunday afternoon, and general foot traffic had been light owing to the persistent drizzle.
“I do not enjoy this torture, truly.” Baudelaire studied the board. “We must consider some different manner in which you may torment me. Already I know better than to try you at cards.”
The woman pushed aside her veil as the grey afternoon steadily dimmed. He was increasingly certain she watched for something—or someone.
He’d recognized at once the combination of masculine greatcoat and dark bonnet.
With a small satchel in hand—the same one from the Dover packet, it appeared—she’d exited the bookstore two doors down from the café and stood now beneath the eaves of an adjacent business.
She might be invisible to most passersby.
Anyone from England might now cross to Calais without suspicion with peace declared.
Many travellers had done so this past year, eager to once again travel freely around the Continent, but there was no overlooking that this particular woman had come into his sphere in Paris twice in as many days—and that after travelling from Dover to Calais on the same packet boat.
In his line of work, there were no chance encounters, sometimes with deadly consequences.
Yesterday he had seen her on Pont Neuf as he waited, surreptitiously, for Jeremiah Compton to meet Guillaume Dubois’s man.
Now outside Les Moineaux. There were a handful of plausible explanations: She was involved in Jeremiah Compton’s operations, she was an independent agent collecting information about Compton or Dubois, or she was trailing Nate himself.
If it was the latter, she had done a poor job of concealing herself, but one couldn’t afford to make assumptions unless one was courting death, which he was not.
Discreetly he pointed her out. “Do you recognize her?”
Baudelaire squinted at her and shrugged. “The mademoiselle who has this past half hour been lingering somewhat conspicuously? I do not think so, although I cannot be sure. Her face is too much in the shadows.”
“I’ve seen her before. The crossing from Dover and twice now in Paris.”
“You suspect she is involved?”
“You know as well as I how rare genuine coincidences are.” In his and Baudelaire’s world anyway.
“Oui. So I will follow our man Corbin in Les Moineaux when he emerges, if he does so and does not amuse himself into the night, and you will follow the woman. But look, she is already now leaving. And I have lost this game anyway.” Baudelaire tipped over his king.
Disgustedly, loud for the benefit of other patrons, he exclaimed, “You have beaten me once more, Monsieur. Perhaps I will find more congenial play with another.”
“Or perhaps you will learn to play decently before we attempt a rematch,” Nate returned. Quietly he added, “I will send a note tomorrow when I may.”
“I will do the same, mon ami.” Baudelaire began to replace the pieces on the board, his attention back on Les Moineaux, as Nate tossed down a few coins for his share of the wine.
In the gathering darkness, the woman walked slowly in the direction of the église Saint-Eustache, keeping to the street’s shadowed margins.
She gave no indication she was aware of his pursuit.
When she reached the square, she sat on the steps despite the damp, gazing upwards at the church.
After several minutes, she rose and continued onto rue Montmartre, slowly. Wearily.
The rain began to fall again, light at first, and then more steadily. When she paused in the shadows of another building, he made a quick perusal of the street: No one else was nearby at present. Decision made to apprehend her, he paced silently towards her.
When he was only a step behind, he reached out and spun her against the building, bringing a hand quickly to her mouth as he leaned his weight across her chest. Her arms were trapped at her sides, her valise between them.
Her eyes went wide, and she tried ineffectually beneath her satchel’s bulk and his body’s weight to catch him between the legs with a raised knee.
He anticipated it, leaning more weight on her, and the fight abruptly left her.
“I have questions only, Madame,” he hissed in French. “I do not have designs on your person.”
She was trembling. If she was an operative, she was either poorly trained or very new.
“If you do not struggle or call attention to us, I will not need to hurt you. Do you understand me?” She nodded slowly, and he removed the hand from her mouth.
“Drop your valise.” Once she complied, his hands went immediately to her wrists, pinning them at her sides against the brick behind her, but he eased slightly backwards so that his weight no longer crushed her.
“Why came you to be in quartier des Marchés this evening?” he asked her.
Her eyes travelled over his face. An expression passed over her features, surprise and something else fleeting and indecipherable. “Vous êtes Lieutenant Blackmore,” she said just before her body sagged forward.
With an oath, he caught her by the shoulders. A genuine faint: Her body was limp in every muscle, her eyes shut. The bloodless cast to her face was apparent even in the dim light; she couldn’t have manufactured that on command.
He eased her to the ground. Her breathing was shallow but regular. When she did not immediately revive, he searched quickly for any items of interest on her person. The valise could wait for better light and a less public situation.
Concealed in the greatcoat’s inner left pocket was a dirk; in one boot, a small stiletto knife.
Unfriendly blades, those, for an innocent person.
He had a similar knife in his own boot. Touching down her limbs revealed no further weaponry.
The coat’s right inner pocket contained a small purse with a few silver and bronze coins.
He would search the greatcoat’s seams once he moved her, but barring anything surprising there, she had nothing of interest on her person, nothing conspicuous to reveal either identity or intent.
Nothing save a pair of knives a woman was unlikely to carry unless she was fully prepared to use them.
“You know who I am,” he muttered, looking at her face, “but who the devil are you?”
Cushioning beneath her . . . but the world moved around her. Or perhaps it was the world around her moving . . .
Scratchy cloth against her cheek, containing myriad odors: cologne, pipe tobacco, things less pleasant.
The muffled clop of hooves.
Am I in a vehicle?
There was also a quiet tapping close by her ear, nearly rhythmic. Isobel opened her eyes. A tall, masculine boot across a black-clad knee was very near her face. Long fingers moved restlessly against the boot.
Memory flooded her.
It is all over, she’d thought when she recognized the grim-looking, dark-haired man pinning her to the wall. Alarm colluding with stress and deprivation produced an ocean within her ears; her vision dimmed and narrowed before she fell headlong into nothingness.
But she was no longer in that nothingness. She was in a vehicle with a man she neither knew nor trusted. She flattened her palms against the seat and attempted to push herself upright. A wave of dizziness assailed her at once. Briefly she closed her eyes again.
“Do not try to sit up too soon. You’ve been unconscious for some time.” Lieutenant Blackmore’s French accent was that of a scholar. He had spoken English in Dover at the Gull’s Wing.
She likewise replied in French, “You have moved me.” Her mind was clouded. “Why?”
“The alternative was waiting for you to regain consciousness on the street as night fell, in the cold and rain. We were near a fiacre stand.” Reasonable words delivered in a voice without inflection.
She would not show fear despite the frisson it raised.
He was not overly tall, but he had apparently carried her with ease to this vehicle. And yes, there too was her valise. Testament to the strength in his lean frame that he managed it all so handily.
“Do you not care more about our destination than why I moved you?” He clearly meant his words to alarm her.
She might almost have laughed were this a situation that invited any levity . . . and had she been less frightened.
I will not show fear. “What do you mean to do with me?” She levered herself slowly upright. She was still lightheaded but not so much as before, and it seemed better to face him sitting.
“I intend to learn what occupies you in Paris. I suppose that will determine what is to be done with you.” His face was mostly in shadow. What she could see of his expression in the dim light supplied by the oil lamp hung outside the fiacre did nothing to alleviate her fear.
She knew nothing of this man save what little she had overheard in Dover: Compton interested him, and at least one of his identities was a lie.
Lieutenant Blackmore—he’d given another name boarding the packet—had stripped her of bonnet and coat. The air was chill, even in the fiacre’s enclosed cab. She shivered.
“My purpose concerns no one but myself. If you will set me down on the street, I will trouble you no further.” She did not expect him to do so, of course. “I am no one of interest to you,” she added softly.
“On the contrary.” His voice still lacked inflection. “The frequent overlap of our paths troubles me. And you’ve called me Lieutenant Blackmore.”
It was unwise of me to say it aloud. She barely recalled doing so. What response to make? He was a dangerous, possibly lethal, man. She recognized that much, however little else she understood.
“It hardly inspires me to trust you with my own motives, knowing you’ve had reason yourself to be in each of those locations.” He had her greatcoat and thus the dirk in its pocket. She inched a hand in the direction of her boot. It would be something, at least.
His eyes missed nothing despite the dark. “I’ve confiscated the boot knife.” Matter-of-fact. Still flat.
“You searched me before I woke.” The futility of her situation overtook her. She couldn’t manufacture any outrage, nor had she energy to care. She could not, in fact, identify within herself emotion of any sort. Even fear was ebbing, replaced by . . . nothing.
“The fact of you reaching for a knife rather confirms my foresight.” Dry now, his voice. “Who are you?”
Rather than answer, she returned the question with one of her own. “I ask you again, Lieutenant: What do you mean to do with me?” She let her head fall back against the cushions and closed her eyes. She was so very tired. She should care more than she did, how he might answer that question.
Truly, why had she believed she could navigate the ever-widening circles of corruption and vice surrounding Compton on her own?
With lack of experience in such matters, with meager resources and no practical help?
Without detection—or worse? This conversation certainly suggested the possibility of worse.
Even had I run Compton to ground, what would I have done then? She had not allowed herself to think much beyond finding Lucy’s trail. It hardly mattered now.
“I am taking you somewhere more private and rather less damp than rue Montmartre. We will talk there. And you will drop the Lieutenant, if you please. Plain Blackmore will suffice for the moment.”
He could play at being plain Blackmore, but it was abundantly obvious there was nothing simple about him. She pressed fingers to eyelids, willing dizziness to subside. Truly, how had she ever believed she might succeed?
“You’ve nothing to say?” His voice suggested amusement, but she did not believe him amused.
“What would you have me say, Monsieur?” She felt entirely detached. “You outmatch me physically. You have confiscated my knives. If I reach for the door, I do not doubt you will immobilize me immediately. What recourse is left me at present?”
“None. Are you not afraid?”
She sighed and opened her eyes to find him studying her.
“Of course I am. But I do not think I was your intended target regardless of our paths intersecting once more. Thus far, despite apprehending and overpowering me, you have neither wounded nor molested me. I am not even restrained. Have you any plans to take any of those actions?”
“Not at present.” Curt now. Odd that such a question would perturb him, but it had, just a little. Possibly telling the truth, not that she’d be wise to take it as such.
“So long as you remain cooperative,” he added.
For several minutes they rode in silence, unbroken save by street noises beyond the fiacre’s confines.
“With whom are you working?” he asked after a time.
“No one.”
“There is no one awaiting your return from quartier des Marchés? No one anxious for your safety?”
“They are all dead.” They were, those who had once cared for her security. Dead . . . or lost, likely forever.
Blackmore’s voice sharpened. “Who is dead?”
She made no response.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
She turned her face to the window and closed her eyes. “Naught but a shade.”