Chapter Three
“I am glad Mr. Westwood could read the code. I was ever so surprised to find the note under my pillow when I woke. If it hadn’t been wash day, I might not have seen it.” Anne carefully set the edge of a kitchen knife on a peeled yellow onion.
Vivienne eyed the sturdy worktable and its stacks of bowls and partially completed dishes. Frightening. Terrifying, even. A knife was much easier to wield in combat than in the kitchen.
“Not like that, dear. The knife will take your fingers clean off.” Mrs. Asher, the housekeeper, repositioned Anne’s hands before looking up at Vivienne. “What did the note say?”
“Nothing of import.” So many lies. “The agent, he must have confused my room with Anne’s.”
Both heads jerked up. Two sets of eyes narrowed on Vivienne. She was being skewered by family, though Mrs. Asher was not a blood relative. Wisdom suggested she turn away and ignore both females so they could not guess what was happening.
Wisdom did not always follow love.
“I have been given two assignments this night. One of them will make Henri very angry.” Even now, with only Mrs. Asher and Anne, she used the French pronunciation. One small lapse might mean two, which might become three. “The other assignment will make someone else very angry.” Worry and dread hunched her shoulders so the knife tucked inside her stays pressed against her breastbone.
“What will you do?” Anne sawed at the onion, hacking off uneven bits. With luck that particular vegetable was not needed for dinner.
“I do not know.” Leaning against the table, Vivienne absently fingered the transparent, papery onion skin piled there. She felt stretched as thin as that peel. But transparent? She hoped not.
“You cannot risk your position, miss, if I may be so bold.” Mrs. Asher dropped a lump of dough onto the sturdy wooden table and began to work it. Forearms dusted with flour, she kneaded, pressing and turning the bread. “We have food and a roof because of what you do. Don’t risk that.”
Mrs. Asher was right. Without Vivienne’s position with Henri, they would have nothing—but Mrs. Asher and Anne did not know the whole of it. If she defied Henri, she might be deported or hanged. It had always been so. Even when the English declared the Flower their best spy, when the French raged because she could steal their secrets and elude them so easily, Henri still knew she was once a pickpocket and thief on the London streets.
I am all that stands between you and the gallows.
He had said those words, and she remembered each syllable as if he had spoken them yesterday. Could she still be sent to the gallows? She did not know, and there was no one to ask but Henri.
She was tied to him.
“Perhaps if you tell Lord Wycomb about the second assignment, he will let you do both,” Anne suggested. She sniffled and used her plain cotton sleeve to wipe away a tear.
“No, that I cannot do.” Vivienne was reminded why she did not slice onions as its pungency stung her eyes.
“I don’t understand why not.” Anne stopped cutting the onion and looked up with eyes amusingly red and teary, but Vivienne could not find the strength to smile.
“Henri is not—” Vivienne swallowed hard, lowered her voice. She must be careful. Walls had ears. “Henri provides for us, but it is not because he cares so much for us.”
“No, miss.” Mrs. Asher folded thick, work-reddened hands over her stomach, dough and all. She planted her feet squarely on the stone floor. “It is you who cares so much.”
Vivienne shook her head. It did not signify. These women, her sister and the woman who had cared for her until Vivienne could see Anne settled—they were her responsibility.
If she did as the French Vulture asked and was discovered, she would be hanged for treason against the English.
If she did as Henri required of her that evening, she would remain alive to protect Anne from the Vulture—and she would not have the whole of the English government out for her blood.
“Henri, then,” she murmured, looking about her. Gold autumn sunlight flickered into the room to illuminate the onions and bowls of pudding and flour, mocking their difficult subject. “I have made my choice.”
“Good.” Anne’s voice seemed strong in the quiet kitchen. “Mrs. Asher, I think this onion might be rotten. It’s making my eyes water.”
“Lud, girl. It’s not rotten, it’s supposed to do that.” Mrs. Asher peered over Anne’s shoulder. “The more you hack at it that way, the worse it will be. Let me show you. A woman needs good knife skills in the kitchen to land a husband or a position.”
Now Vivienne did find the strength to smile. Her sister, someday, might have a husband. Even children. She could see Anne as a woman, preparing a simple meal in a warm, comfortable kitchen in a sweet cottage somewhere green and open. Perhaps a child would be tugging at her skirts and a great, handsome man would kiss her cheek. Mrs. Asher might still be with them, knitting by the fire in a rocking chair or holding a new babe and helping Anne to care for it.
It was for this Vivienne fought so hard. Espionage was her life and it was good, but it was not for Anne. Mrs. Asher and Anne trusted her to protect them, sleeping each night secure in the knowledge they were safe because she was there.
She would do what was best for all of them.
The Vulture could go to hell.