Chapter Ten
The body hit the Thames with a splash that made Maximilian’s skin crawl.
“I should have stayed at home.” He shuddered as the dead Frenchman bobbed along the surface of the river. Turning away, Maximilian gritted his teeth and breathed through his mouth. God’s eyes, the very air by the docks was ripe with rotting…something. “I should have stepped back into the carriage when I saw your windows were dark.”
“Yes, I suppose your papers and brandy are most important,” Mademoiselle La Fleur said testily.
“I beg your pardon?” He sounded like a cur beginning to bristle and knew it. Turning sharply, Maximilian aimed his feet in the direction of the carriage. Not far, it sat like a specter on the street, the lame footman perched on top.
The Flower fell into step beside him. She sighed, rubbed a hand over her face, and tugged at the cap bundling up her hair. “My apologies, Monsieur Westwood. I am tired and a little sick, I think.” She tapped a hand against her chest. “Here.”
“Anyone would be after killing a man, even if you are a spy.” He must remember the man was a French spy and the Flower had acted to save an innocent. If he let himself forget that, his body would surely rebel.
“It is not the man, or not only him.” Her voice was barely audible, but he heard sadness there.
“Then what?” He wished he could smell her instead of this other stench. Whatever clean scent she used was lost among the garbage and sewage and heaven knew what else in this part of London. At least no one would question someone dumping a body into the river. Happened all the time down here, he suspected, which meant they should leave the area. Quickly.
“Monsieur, I cannot do what comes next alone.” The clear tones of her voice broke, and she coughed before she spoke again.
Please, no tears. Crying women were, well, frightening. There was no logic to female tears that he could see. His mother regularly had hysterics—though he couldn’t imagine the Flower having anything resembling hysterics, which was a point in her favor.
“Please.” Her voice was very, very soft. Embarrassment, even desperation, colored the word. “I need your assistance.”
“Well, damn.” Sometimes being a gentleman was the very devil. Not to mention that little matter of the Vulture, which had sent him to her doorstep in the first place.
“Monsieur?”
He sighed. “What assistance do you require?”
She, too, sighed, though it was more like letting out a breath she’d been holding for too long. “It is complicated and requires privacy. Come.” She jerked her head toward the carriage.
Maximilian found himself inside the vehicle as the carriage lumbered away from the docks. Mademoiselle La Fleur sat stiffly in the seat across from him, hands gripping each other. She didn’t appear as if she would to cry at the moment, but he did not intend let down his guard. If she did cry, he must be prepared to find his handkerchief quickly.
“What trouble have you gotten yourself into?”
Her brows snapped together beneath her cap. “The trouble—it was not started by me.”
“But it is trouble.” Of course. “Marchand.”
Her breath was short and angry now. “You know of Marchand?”
“The vulture is his signature. I decoded one of his messages a few years ago during the war. My assistant records everything and was able to locate it.”
“Ah. The inimitable Daggett.” She shook her head, apparently as resigned to Daggett’s ways as Maximilian was himself. “I had hoped you would not recognize it. If you know, you may die. Do you see?”
Of course he could see—in the same manner he could see through the muddy, brown water of the Thames. “It’s still quite unclear,” he said carefully.
“It is complicated. Most complicated.” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, as any man might have done during a difficult explanation. If she’d been wearing a gown, her breasts would have popped right out of her bodice.
Closing his eyes against the thought, Maximilian forced the image from his mind. He had promised himself years before that he would not treat women as Highchester did.
“What is important now is that one of Marchand’s men is dead,” the Flower continued, not bothered by any possible fantasy. “The Vulture will know I killed him.”
Right. The Vulture. Not that quickening in Maximilian’s veins or the pulse beating in his belly. Setting his mind back to the issue at hand, he shifted his body on the cushioned seat.
“Did Marchand order your death? Is that why the Frenchman was in your town house?” Perhaps her disguise had been penetrated. He imagined the French would be brutal to a Frenchwoman working for England—which made him wonder what ideology caused her to be an English spy and not a French one. She was a fascinating mix of truth and secrets.
“Marchand is not going to kill me, as I am still of use to him, but it was not me he wanted this night.” The narrow shoulders, normally so straight and square, slumped. “If he wanted me dead, I would be.”
“The girl.” He remembered the hurried, panicked conversation with the housekeeper. “Marchand wanted the servant girl.”
“If I do not do what Marchand asks, they will kill her.” Jagged words pierced the air, as if something had torn in her heart.
God help him. She was going to cry. What should he do? He fumbled for his handkerchief.
Unbearably grateful when Mademoiselle La Fleur did not cry, he let out a breath as her shoulders straightened again.
“Anne cannot die.” Her tone was harsh, words echoing with conviction. “I will not tolerate her death. She is innocent.”
Maximilian studied her face, shadowed beneath the cap she wore. Her eyes were hidden, but the small, pointed chin he could see clearly enough in the light from the carriage lamps. It was angled up, her mouth set in a determined line.
He understood a part of her, he supposed, despite the many unreadable layers of her character. Mademoiselle La Fleur was likely responsible for many deaths, directly or indirectly, but the death of a girl with no ties to espionage was a different matter than killing a spy. A life was a life, but there was a difference between innocence and war.
“What assistance do you need from me?” he asked.
“The messages from Marchand may be coded, like the one I brought to you a few days ago. If so, I will need you to decode them.”
“The last message was a simple substitution code.” He shook his head and shifted against the carriage seat. “If I gave you the substitution parameters, you could do it yourself.”
“I do not think so.” By the light of carriage lamps he saw that her face was blank, even the determination wiped away. There was no emotion or expression on her fine-boned features or in her words, nothing he could translate to an expression he could understand. “I might be wrong.”
Confound her, she was right. The code might change. Or she might decode it incorrectly. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “What does Marchand want?”
“A double agent.”
He had been afraid of that. Leaning forward, he propped his hands on his knees in a mirror image of her stance. He could clearly see her face beneath the cap now. “I will report you if you become a double agent,” he said carefully.
Her eyes glittered when she met his gaze, two dark obsidian shards. “And the girl?” she asked softly. “If I do not do what they ask, she will die. She was taken because I did not do what they asked the first time.”
“Ah. The first message I decoded.”
“Yes.” She straightened, then spread open her gloved hands so that they rested palm up on top of her thighs. She stared at them, as if they held the answer to some mysterious question. “It might have been stolen English documents that would be useful to the French. Or it might have been nothing but a simple message. Whatever it was, I was to take it to Marchand.”
“You did not,” he finished for her, suddenly understanding what had happened. She had gone to Prinny’s soiree instead of acting on behalf of the French and had not betrayed England. “Now the girl’s life is at stake.”
The carriage slowed, and he noticed the stench of the Thames had dissipated. They were back in the semifashionable area of town where the mademoiselle lived.
“What will you do?” he asked.
The carriage rolled to a stop at a soft whoa from the coachman above. Neither of them moved to get out. Silence stretched between the seats, thin and taut.
Finally, she whispered, “I don’t know.”
The carriage door opened, letting in night tinged with gray light. Dawn was closing in. The lame footman poked his head through the door. “Miss Vivienne, we’re home.”
“I will be out in a moment.” Mademoiselle La Fleur did not look at the footman but kept her gaze steady on Maximilian, eyes dark and wary. “What do you suggest I do?” she asked when the footman’s round face disappeared from view.
“Hell. I have no idea.” He ran both hands through his hair, gripped it, tugged. “I cannot let you spy for France.”
“I will not let her die.”
“Why can’t you speak with your commander? You must have a commander. A spymaster.”
She was so quiet he could hear the swish of the horses’ tails outside. It was not cold enough that her breath was visible, but he imagined it was nearly so. The damn carriage was frigid with the door hanging open in that manner.
“I cannot approach my commander,” she finally said. “Marchand does not want the English coming after him, and my commander would do so. If he did, the Vulture would not hesitate to kill the girl and find another double agent.”
Confound the woman, she was right again. Marchand would simply find another spy without the Flower’s scruples—such as they were.
“What if we find her?” she asked suddenly, leaning forward again. “If we find the girl and bring her back, she will not be leverage. Everyone can be told. The Vulture can be stopped without the girl dying.”
“We find her?” He did not like the way that sounded. “I am not a spy, mademoiselle, and I have no desire to engage in espionage.”
“You are the only person I can rely on to assist me. I cannot approach an official code breaker, as he would be required to report it and Anne would die. Yet Marchand must be stopped.”
Maximilian narrowed his eyes and studied her delicate features, wondering just what he was setting himself up for. Spies were tricky sorts. One minute a man was studying languages at university with dreams of scholarly accolades, and the next he’s in a muddy field breaking codes for Wellington. Except the Flower was difficult to resist, even when asking him to do all manner of unsavory things. There he’d been, working on a simple Russian translation. Without warning he was decoding messages from French spies and dumping a dead man into the Thames.
Hell and damnation and all of God’s teeth. If he didn’t help the Flower, the girl would die. Maximilian had a sudden image of a pretty little girl huddled in a filthy room while Frenchmen taunted her. Or worse. No, that he could not tolerate, and the image would haunt him now that it was lodged in his brain.
“I’m not killing anyone,” he said. He had to draw a line somewhere. “Not even for an abducted girl.”
“I would not ask you to kill anyone.” She shook her head, and he watched, fascinated, as a long curl tumbled from beneath the cap to float around her face. By all that was holy, did she plan such things to torment men? “Only decoding messages, monsieur. That is all.”
“Well, we better locate her quickly, before your commander finds out or Marchand kills her. Now, can we leave this carriage so I can come inside and get warm before I walk home?”
“Thank you, Monsieur Westwood, but you cannot come into my town house.” She slipped from her seat and moved toward the opening, her body making not the slightest noise. “Henri will be arriving soon, and he cannot find you here.”
“Your protector.” The word made his stomach twist. What occurred between them was not his affair, but that did not stop him from wondering if the man treated her well.
The Flower’s eyes met his, as difficult to read as Persian.
“The carriage will take you home.” She stepped from the vehicle, turned around, and shut the door without another word.