The Spy's Reward by Abrams Nita

Author:Abrams, Nita [Abrams, Nita]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2006-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Abigail heard the explosion very clearly. She would have heard it even if she had still been in the farmhouse, but she was actually pacing back and forth outside the barn, rehearsing the fourth version of an impassioned speech she planned to deliver as soon as the perfidious, lying, arrogant, ruthless Nathan Meyer returned from whatever criminal mission had taken him away this time. She did not know who was more despicable: Meyer, for using her and deceiving her, or herself, for being so gullible. She had known there was something odd going on right from the start, from that first meeting at the inn in Barrême, when he had pretended to defer to her preferences and had pushed her—she could see that now clearly—into choosing this northern route. But she had ignored her own intuition.

Every day had witnessed some new act of folly on her part. Why had she let him keep her papers? How could she have failed to see that he was staggering with fatigue nearly every morning, that he had been out all night? He had even stumbled into her room and she had still failed to comprehend the obvious. And then he had let her make a complete fool of herself, with her dramatic little story of the smuggled gold. She remembered his face, during that sudden, fraught silence in the alcove. He had been about to kiss her, and she had been about to let him do it—her own daughter’s suitor! His feelings had seemed so genuine—the mixture of confusion, desire, and tenderness in his dark eyes so plausible to someone who was feeling all those things herself. But it was a sham, a fraud, like the mask of the Spanish partisan he had put on at the blockade.

The explosion was the last straw. It had come from the woods below the farmhouse, and she would wager her entire fortune that Meyer was involved. She would not go to her bedchamber like a dutiful female and wait for the next lie. She wanted answers, right now.

The brush was very thick once she left the farmyard, and after untangling her skirts twice she conceded reluctantly that even in the moonlight she would need a lantern. She returned to the barn and took one that was hanging inside the door already lit. With a sense of deep resentment, she saw that not only was Meyer’s horse gone, but the servant’s as well. She had thought Rodrigo was her friend.

Even with the lantern, it was slow going. She could hear a stream below. She wondered what she would do if she reached the stream and had not found him. Would she wade across? Give up? She stopped, and almost turned back, but then caught—faint but unmistakable—a thread of scent. Sulphur. She closed her eyes and breathed. It was coming from the bottom of the hill.

Two minutes later she found unmistakable signs of the recent presence of at least two horses. And one minute after that, she found the flattened brush, the oilcloth, and the blackened stump of clay pipe.

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