One Illicit Night. Sophia James

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СКАЧАТЬ began to form in the mass of chaos, though a capital letter threw him. The calibration had been changed and then changed again, the common combinations no longer locked into pattern. Transposing always had a point, though, and he looked for a letter that appeared the most frequently.

      R. He had it. Substituted for an E. Now he just had to find the system.

      He had been eighteen when he had started out on the dangerous road of espionage. A boy disenchanted with his family and alone at Cambridge. Easy pickings for Sir Roderick Smitherton, a professor who had been supplying the cream of the latest crop of undergraduates for years to the Foreign Office; Cristo had topped the new intake in every subject, his skill at languages sealing the bargain.

      When he started it had been like a game, the Power Politics of Europe under the fear-spell of the memory of Napoleon, a man who had won an empire by his skill of manoeuvre.

      Cristo had arrived in Paris the son of a Frenchwoman and the bequest of her château had given him a place to live. His father’s liaison and his mother’s shame had had a few points to recommend it, at least, and he had set up a spy ring that worked inside a restless Paris where priests and prostitutes had become the mainstay of his intelligence.

      He liked the hunt, those few hours that came between months of blinding boredom, for in them he found forgetfulness of everything, his life held in a reckless balance that was only the responsibility of others.

      Pull the trigger and end it all.

      He wondered at the resilience of the human condition every time his hands reached their own conclusion and reacted, the whirr of a bullet or the sharp, quick pull of a knife. Often in the moonlight and in the hidden corners of this city in spaces where people held secrets that might bring down a nation by a whisper of breath or a clink of coinage. Always counting. Not the lives that might fall on the toss of a dice or the shake of a head. Not that. Counting only the cost of what it took to stay in the game and one step ahead. And alive!

      He pulled out a cheroot from the silver tin he kept in his top drawer and tapped the end against the fine mahogany of his desk. Wrong and right depended on one’s point of view, though he suspected that his own moral compass had long since been tarnished by expediency, and the misguided idea that he might have once made a difference was only a distant memory in the dark labyrinth that was his life.

      The code before him blurred into nothingness and he stood and crossed to the window.

      His carriage had not yet returned and he wondered where it was that ‘Jeanne’ had wanted to be taken. He should have gone, of course, just to make certain that she arrived safely and that the destination was noted.

      ‘Mon Dieu!‘ The words were loud against the silence and his breath frosted the glass. With an unusual sense of poignancy he wrote a J in the mist and rubbed it out just as quickly, the regret in him surfacing.

      He could find her again. Or he could lose her for ever, in the wilderness of mirrors and shadows where nothing was fixed.

      Only grand deception and infinite loneliness—and if prostitution was the oldest profession in the world then surely the business of spying must have come in a close second.

      Too close for comfort were he to reconnect with a woman who might mean something!

      He watched as a few of the prostitutes walked from his house to be swallowed up by the traffic in the street, their gaudy nightdresses as out of place as a peacock in a farmyard barn. He hoped that one of them was Jeanne’s aunt and that something she had told him was true. Perhaps then they would laugh together about the night over a cup of tea and plan the evening’s frivolity.

      The thought annoyed him, but he had no dominion over his little whore’s body and to demand so would only be foolish. Still, the anger would not dissipate. Nor the want. His eyes strayed to the bed trussed up into disarray, the cover that had warmed her tangled into many folds, the tail of it sweeping the floor. Empty.

      Only the smell of her perfume remained, heavy in the air with the tang of alcohol! He drew in a breath to keep her closer and then stopped.

      No. Jeanne’s association with Beraud could only be dangerous for them both. Reaching for the tumbled sheets, he tossed them into the blazing fire at his hearth and watched as linen caught flame. Better to leave her in memory. Delightful. Innocent. Always young. He only wished that he had known her name.

      Dropping the medallion into a box of oddments in the bottom drawer of his desk, he had resolved to put her from his mind when his glance was caught by parchment flaring brighter than fabric.

      A letter. He could see the scrawled writing on the burning envelope was addressed to him. Quickly he reached for the brass poker and extracted the remnants, stamping on the flames as they refused to die.

      Only a few words remained on the sheet inside but they made his heart slow. Nigel. Murdered. Blame.

      No coincidence at all then, but the beginning of blackmail. Turning to the wall beside him, he punched his fist hard against it until every knuckle bled.

      Chapter Four

       London—June 1830

      Martin Westbury, the Earl of Dromorne, laid his newspaper down and looked across at his wife.

      ‘Now here is an interesting snippet, Eleanor. It seems the youngest Wellingham brother has returned from the Continent bearing both fortune and a foreign title to reside in London. They say he is looking for a home in the country. Perhaps he might find The Hall in Woburn to his liking? That is a property that might well suit such a man.’

      Eleanor considered her husband’s query. ‘I know only a little about the Wellinghams. Is the family seat near there?’

      ‘No, indeed not, for Falder Castle lies in Essex. I am surprised he would not acquire property around those parts instead. He runs bloodstock, according to the paper, and is quite an expert on the choosing of prime horse flesh.’

      The sounds of laughter interrupted their conversation as Martin’s nieces Margaret and Sophie came into the room. At seventeen and eighteen respectively they presented a picture of understated beauty, their gowns of matching yellow sprigged muslin floating in the breezy warmth of a new summer’s day. Their month-long sojourn in London with their mother, Diana, had made them full of energy.

      ‘We had a wonderful time last night at the Brownes’ ball.’ Sophie’s voice held such an edge of excitement that Eleanor was instantly curious. Looking across at her husband, she smiled.

      ‘Cristo Wellingham is the most handsome man to ever grace London, I swear it, and he dresses in clothes that have come straight from Paris. Did you ever meet him when you were there all those years ago, Lainie? I doubt that you could have missed him.’

      Eleanor froze, the lost night in the winter of 1825 leaving her momentarily speechless.

      ‘Oh, she was far too busy with me, Sophie.’ Martin easily deflected the conversation and pretended to look more than hurt when the girls laughed.

      ‘We know that you are her heart’s desire, Uncle Martin,’ Margaret teased, ‘but can’t a girl at least look?’

      Leaning СКАЧАТЬ