The Spymaster's Lady 2 by Joanna Bourne

Author:Joanna Bourne [Bourne, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance, General, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780425236215
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2008-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

GREY CAUGHT UP WITH FLETCH WELL OUTSIDE Dover on an open, uphill stretch of the Canterbury Road. The sea was a flat, blue line on the horizon. Fletch had hitched a ride in a vegetable cart, keeping a good ways back, curled up in the cabbage leaves with a pocket spyglass. Imaginative man, Fletcher.

It was Fletch’s horse under him. No point in being Head of Section if you couldn’t borrow a horse now and then.

He pantomimed scissors as he passed the wagon, cutting Fletch loose from following Annique. Being the peaceable man he was, he ignored Fletch’s return gesture. Fletch would get his bloody horse back, eventually. He clucked the gelding to a brisk walk.

He saw the moment she spotted him. Awareness slid across the distant figure, like the stillness of a deer scenting its stalker. Half a second, and she relaxed, just as subtly. She’d figured out who he had to be. She did it all without turning back to look. A hell of an agent, Annique Villiers.

When he came up level with her, she said, “You are following me.”

“No, I’m not. I’m right beside you.” He dismounted and strolled along, holding the reins.

He’d never been more impressed by her. In that dull homespun, with the shawl pulled up over her head, she blended into the brown and dun countryside like a quail. She’d become a dusty farm woman. A man could ride right past and never get a glimpse of her beauty.

“That is sophistry, Robert Fordham. Why are you following me?”

“To protect you. Until you get to London.”

“The problem is that I talk too much.” She sighed and kept walking, looking straight ahead. “If I would keep my mouth closed, I would not get in these situations. You are all that is kind, monsieur, but I do not need your protection.”

She’d called him “monsieur” in France. He didn’t want to rouse those memories. “Robert.”

“Robert,” she agreed readily. With every minute that passed, to her every sense, he was becoming “Robert.” He was becoming familiar. Soon it’d be impossible for her to see him as anything but Robert. “Robert…” His name, in her mouth, was a caress with a long, warm roll of the r at both ends. “I have played dangerous games all my life, and no one has succeeded in killing me yet, not even Monsieur Leblanc, who is strenuous and resolved. I would very much rather you left me alone.”

Never in this world. “No.”

“No? That is all you will say? Eh bien, if I talked as little as you do, I would be in considerably less trouble.”

She stopped to pick one stalk from the long grasses that grew beside the road, carefully selecting it from among the others. She started off again, peeled away at the stem with a thumbnail. “I will explain something, Mr. Fordham. I am beyond measure grateful to you for saving my life, but I will not sleep with you.”

He’d had a taste of this devastating directness while he held her prisoner in France.

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