The Heart That Wins (Regency Spies Book 3) Page 15

  “He’s injured her!” John was angry that neither Sophia nor Edmund seemed to understand how serious this was. “He was careless and she can barely walk.”

  “There’s no one else I can send.” Edmund raised his voice to match John’s.

  “Then you abdicate your rôle as protector.”

  “John, you’re here because you couldn’t persuade Sophia to leave with you.”

  John had not mentioned that he had tried to get Sophia to leave. He had not expected to see Edmund reflect his own feeling of helplessness.

  “She has sacrificed quite as much as you in this war,” the other man continued.

  “You expect me to sit by and do nothing while her life is in danger?”

  “No, I expect you to go and make a nuisance of yourself at Sint Stefaan.”

  Edmund sounded weary.

  “You are worried about her, then?”

  “Worried? I’ve barely slept since I sent her there. If it were not so important, I would ride out there now and bring her away myself.”

  John dropped into the nearest chair.

  “I’ll kill Franz if any harm comes to her,” he said.

  “Only if you get to him before I do.”

  Edmund appeared to be examining his injured hand. John grew angry again; he could not allow Sophia to be tortured. Each time he caught sight of Edmund’s left hand these days his blood ran cold. It was a reminder of the price that Sophia might pay for her involvement in this game.

  “She loves me,” said John.

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I’ve known since she knew it.”

  John had not thought their friendship was this deep.

  “Does she know the truth?” asked Edmund.

  “Yes.”

  “And she loves you still?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are a bigger fool than I thought you.”

  John could not deny this.

  “I’m going back now to bring her away,” he said.

  He should have done so this morning.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “How could I forgive myself...? How could I forgive you...?”

  He rose.

  “John, wait. Please.” Edmund drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair while he thought. “I’ll write a letter for you to take.”

  “I don’t need a letter. I’ll carry her out if I have to.”

  “My way is easier and quicker.”

  John had to acknowledge that this was probably true, impatient though he was to be gone. Who knew what might be happening in Sint Stefaan?

  “But you must think about what you’re doing to her and why,” added Edmund.

  He went to the writing table in the corner of the room and wrote quickly. John stood behind him and read over his shoulder. Edmund glanced up.

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I’m just wondering what you’re writing that will encourage her to come back.”

  “I’m ordering her.”

  “Oh.”

  Sophia had not gone to bed when John left, but remained on the sofa. Jeanne found her there when she brought up breakfast. Even if their raised voices had not told the entire household that Louis Macquard and his mistress had quarrelled the night before, Sophia’s tear-stained face told its own story.

  Refusing Jeanne’s offer to help her undress and put on a fresh gown, Sophia had picked at her breakfast and waited.

  John knew everything now; she had no secrets from him. There was no need to hide anything from him, for it had made no difference.

  After Jeanne had removed the remains of breakfast, Sophia sat on the sofa and cried. Things should have gone differently. John should have seen that what she was suggesting made sense. Instead, he had woken that morning and threatened to carry her out of the house and back to Brussels. Had she not made it clear that she was doing this for him? What was the point of it all if she could not save him?

  She must have slept again, for the sun was now shining weakly through the windows of the sitting-room. Washing her face in the bedroom she assessed her options. Coming to a decision, she packed her bag and sat on the sofa to wait. Then she got up and checked her pistols.

  It was not yet midday when she heard a horse in the street below. She looked out of the window; it was Franz. Putting all thoughts of John out of her mind, she waited for Jeanne to show him up. He must have important news; he usually came in the early evening.

  “My dear,” he said in German as he entered.

  He never bowed when Jeanne showed him in, saying that a man arrogant enough to share another man’s mistress would not bother. Although it suited the fiction they had created about Leutnant Weber, Sophia did not believe him. It was far more likely that he wanted to show that he was easy enough in her company not to find it necessary.

  They were both impatient as they waited for Jeanne to leave.

  “We were right,” he said when they were finally alone. “The army is to move into Belgium the day after tomorrow.”

  “Go to Brussels,” she said. “Go to Brussels and tell Edmund.”

  “But you…”

  “John is coming back for me.”

  Of this she was completely sure. The only reason he had not carried her out with him earlier was because she would have fought him. “And you will go faster alone. My bag is packed.”

  She nodded towards her bedroom.

  “You could not have known…”

  “It was my ankle. John knew it was too dangerous for me to remain.”

  If Franz heard his own lack of understanding condemned by her words, he gave no sign. His failure in that regard was more than enough to confirm that he was not the man that John was. Almost as soon as John had left she had seen that she should have gone with him.

  “He will not make you happy, Sophia.”

  “I would rather be unhappy with him than happy with anyone else.”

  “Then I shall go to Brussels with my news.”

  He left her.

  He had not been gone long before she heard footsteps on the stairs. Thinking that Franz had returned to persuade her to leave with him, she went out onto the landing.

  It was not Franz, however, who came up the stairs towards her, but an unknown man.

  “Good day, Monsieur. Are you a new tenant of Madame Gilbert?”

  He could not be, for Madame’s other tenant was an elderly woman to whom Sophia had been introduced on her second day in the house.

  “No, Madame, I am a spy-catcher and you are a spy.”

  Sophia heard shouts from the courtyard and the sound of steel on steel. Franz must be fighting someone. This man was not alone. Sophia’s mind was racing.

  “I am many things, Monsieur, but I am not a spy.”

  “Now that I see you, I understand that Herr Schröder’s motives for visiting you so frequently might not entirely have to do with the information he brings you.”

  Silence fell and Sophia heard others enter the house.

  “Your colleague is dead.”

  “Not my colleague, a lover.”

  She was surprised at how steady her voice was, since Franz must be dead and she was alone.

  Two men stood behind the stranger at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Perhaps both, then.” He turned to one of the men. “Make sure we are not disturbed. Do not kill unless it is necessary.”

  Had Sophia brought death on Madame Gilbert and Jeanne? She had not considered that at all.

  The first man mounted the stairs towards her. Sophia did not move; her plan depended on the enemy believing she was paralysed with fear. This was near enough to the truth anyway. There were three of them and they had already shown that they were prepared to kill.

  “I have been watching you for some time, Miss Arbuthnot, along with your other lover, Mr Finch. What a strange household you have there.”

  Suddenly Sophia really could neither move nor speak; surely this was Joude, the man who
had told Louise Favelle to pursue Edmund, the man who had tortured him and arranged the kidnap of his son. For two years they had been trying to find him. Edmund had suspected that using his own name again would draw him out, but it had not been part of their current enterprise.

  “It took me a while to realise that you did not come here just to be with another lover,” he said. “I thought you really had been whisked away by the very handsome young man for his own use. That was a rare mistake on my part.”

  By now he was near the top of the stairs. He brought out a pistol.

  “Step back, please. I should hate to fall down these stairs.”

  Sophia took a step back onto the landing. She had enough wits left to limp more than was necessary to spare her pain. Anything to gain an advantage, no matter how slight, over this confident man.

  She cursed their stupidity in looking for the man in the portrait at Louise Favelle’s house. That had obviously been a joke on the Frenchwoman’s part, for this man bore no resemblance to it. He had nothing about his appearance to attract notice. He was neither tall nor short, dark nor fair, handsome nor ugly. There was nothing remarkable about him. She had probably passed him in the street many times. His power was in his voice. It was almost impossible not to do what he ordered. A woman like Louise Favelle must have given herself up to him immediately without a second thought. Sophia remembered the letters they had found in the Frenchwoman’s house from him, ordering her to do unspeakable things and was afraid.

  “You are a beautiful woman, Mademoiselle, and beautifully dressed. I think I shall leave your face untouched so that Finch will recognise you, but your body, yes, I think your body will suffer great pain before you die. And you will die, do not doubt it. I have no other use for you.” He pretended to think. “But I will use your body before I inflict pain on it,”

  Sophia could not stop the shiver of fear, even though she knew that his purpose was to make her afraid. This was a man who enjoyed torturing others, not for the information they gave him but for the pleasure of inflicting pain. She could bear even this if it would help John, but she was not sure now that it would.

  Still she said nothing. Pushing her fear away, she knew she had nothing to lose. Hoping there were no more than the three of them she had seen, she kicked out at Joude, who fell to the floor doubled up in pain. His scream was high pitched and startling. She wanted to scream, too. The pain in her ankle was intense, for she had not spared it when she had kicked him. Picking up the fallen pistol, she shot the other man who was coming up the stairs to his aid. Catching up her own pistol, which was hidden in a drawer on the landing, she went down the stairs, but it was slow and painful going and she almost ran into the other man, who already had a pistol trained on her. Before she had time to aim her own pistol there was a shot and the man almost fell onto her.

  “John!”

  He was standing behind the fallen man, a smoking pistol in his hand.

  “Come on.” He reached out his other hand to her. “Franz is dead. Is that loaded?” She nodded. “Good. I saw no one else, but they could be anywhere.”

  Sophia tried to pull her hand away.

  “I have to go back.”

  “What?”

  “He’s still alive.”

  “Who?"

  “At the top of the stairs.”

  John started moving towards the door.

  “I have no idea if there are others,” he said. “We have one shot between us.”

  “But...”

  She looked towards the stairs.

  “Bonaparte will cross the border the day after tomorrow. One of us at least must get the news to Edmund.”

  “We will both go to Edmund.”

  John took the pistol, picked her up, put her over his shoulder and set off at a run. Sophia let him.

  John had left his horse outside the church. No one tried to stop them as they crossed the square, but Sophia expected someone to shoot at them from one of the houses at any moment. John only put her down in order to mount the horse.

  He made to pull her up onto the horse in front of him, but Sophia swung herself up behind him, gasping as she put her left foot on his for leverage. She put her arms around him, for her ankle hurt her so much now that it gave her no support.

  John spurred the horse on and neither of them spoke until they were in Brussels.

  “I’m sorry about Franz,” said John, when he had slowed the horse to a walk through the busy streets “I know you were fond of him.”

  “Yes.”

  There was nothing else to say.

  “Was he careless?”

  “No. The man you didn’t see, the one at the top of the stairs, he knows about Edmund. I’ve been watched.”

  “Is that why Edmund came out of hiding even though he thought Bonaparte would return?”

  “He’s the man who tortured Edmund, but it’s not revenge. Joude is a very daring spy. Who knows what he has found out while he’s been in Brussels?”

  It was this thought and not Franz that had occupied her during their flight. Many in Brussels did not know how to keep a secret, fewer still understood the need for secrecy.

  “So our ruse was useless.”

  “Not entirely. He thought you and I really were lovers and we do have the information.”

  She held onto him even more tightly.

  “He frightened you.”

  “He’s a man who enjoys the fear and pain of others.”

  John stiffened against her and she guessed he was thinking about her being tortured. This was another secret she would not keep.

  “He told me what he would do to me before he killed me.”

  John’s thumb stroked the back of her hand. How had they come all this way without her noticing that he held it?

  “He is a dead man,” he said.

  “He won’t come back to Brussels. There’s no need.”

  “Nonetheless he won’t survive this.”

  They were in the courtyard of the Finches’ house and a groom came for the horse. Another servant came to show them into the house and Edmund ushered them into the drawing-room. John did not let go of her hand until the door closed behind them.

  “You are earlier than I expected,” said Edmund.

  “You were expecting me to come back?”

  Sophia was confused.

  “Yes, I... Sit down, both of you.” Edmund inspected them both carefully. “Have some brandy, then you can tell me what happened. Things obviously haven’t gone well.”

  “There’s no time,” said Sophia. “They’re crossing the border tomorrow.”

  Edmund stopped on his way to the cupboard where the brandy decanter was kept.

  “Do you know where?”

  “No.”

  Franz had not been able to find out.

  Edmund left the room for a few minutes. Neither John nor Sophia moved or spoke during that time. When he returned Edmund went to the cupboard and poured out three glasses of brandy.

  Sophia sat on the sofa, half-expecting John to join her, but he chose a chair from which he watched her.

  “I went to the house to bring you back,” he started, as if Edmund had not left the room. “Edmund gave me a letter to persuade you.”

  “Order,” amended Edmund. “I ordered you to return.”

  Sophia took a sip of her brandy.

  “You did not trust me to do my job properly.”

  This hurt a great deal. After two years of study and hard work, she thought she had persuaded him she could live up to his initial faith in her.

  “John described to me an injury that might prevent your escape should it become necessary.”

  “It did hinder my escape,” she admitted, remembering the man John had killed. “I would be dead but for John.”

  John took a sip of his own brandy. She noticed with some distress that his hand was shaking.

  “On my way there,” continued John, “I considered the possibility that it was already too late and I decided to approach with ca
ution, despite my desire to get Sophia out as quickly as possible. So I left my horse by the church and entered Madame Gilbert’s house by the kitchen garden. I’m sorry, Edmund, but I found Franz’s body there.”

  Edmund nodded slowly, then his face changed, as if he had recognised that there was no need to hide his feelings from John. Sophia thought his grief must be all the greater since he and Franz were no longer friends.

  “He was a good friend despite...”

  He shook his head and John continued, “I heard a shot and rushed into the house. In the kitchen I found Madame Gilbert and Jeanne. They had been tied up and gagged. I left them there. I’m sure they’ve been found by now by the neighbours. In the hall I saw a man about to shoot Sophia, so I shot him first and brought her away.”

  He swallowed some more brandy, needing both hands to raise the glass. Edmund turned his attention to her.

  “It was Joude,” she said. “I’m sure it was him.”

  “You recognised him.”

  “He’s not the man in the portrait, but it was him. I’m sure it was.”

  “It never made any sense to me that she showed me his portrait, even when I knew that she was in love with him. I only heard his voice, of course. I never saw him. I take it he’s not dead.”

  Sophia shook her head.

  He did not bother to hide his disappointment.

  “My fault,” said John. “I wouldn’t let her go back. There might have been other men there, but we had one shot and we had news to bring back to you.”

  There was a flash of anger in Edmund’s eyes, but when he spoke he was quite calm.

  “I shall go and retrieve Franz’s body.”

  He drained his glass and stood.

  “Now?” asked John. “It will be dark before long.”

  “I do my best work in the dark.”

  “He knows you’re here. He’s been watching us,” said Sophia.

  “At least that part of the plan worked.”

  “Won’t he be expecting you to go there?” asked John.

  “I shouldn’t think so. Would you expect the head of the intelligence service to go and collect an agent’s body, especially when that agent isn’t mine?”

  “I would if I knew that agent was a friend who had been living with you for the last few months. I’ll go with you.”