The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne Page A

whine in an unmanly fashion.”
    â€œI’ll keep that in mind.”
    There were towels stacked beside the basin. Grey tried to remember what they did in the medical tents, after battle. There’d been wounds soaking under hot cloths. That worked with horses, too. He’d try it. He wet linen in the steaming water and wrung it out gingerly. “This is hot.”
    â€œAch!” The boy jerked. “Hot. Yes. Right you are.” He took a slow, tight breath between clenched teeth. “Oh, that’s toasty hot. Listen…Carruthers has my last report. That’s safe. Tell Giles to take what he wants from my room at Meeks Street. George gets the watch in my dresser drawer. I promised it to him if I didn’t make it back from some jaunt.”
    â€œYou’re making it back from this one.” Grey lifted the cloth and looked at the wound.
    â€œOrders. You know how I am about obeying orders. Are you going to keep gawking at the bullet hole? Grotesque, if you want my opinion.” Adrian fixed his eyes on the crack that ran across the plaster ceiling. “Grey, if the fever comes back…Don’t let me talk.”
    The Hawker had more than his fair share of secrets. “I won’t.”
    â€œThanks.” He took a deep breath. “Oh. Money. There’s a pile of it at Hoare’s Bank under the name Adrian Hawker. And some deeds.” He winced as the cloth lifted. “Find Black John. I’m godfather, if you can believe it, to his oldest son. The money goes to the boy.” Another deep breath. “I think I owe the tailor. Pay it off for me, will you.”
    â€œYou sound like Socrates over a mug of hemlock.” He squeezed the cloth in hot water again and laid it back on the wound.
    â€œWho’s…ach…Who’s Socrates?”
    â€œA dead Greek. Annique admires him.”
    â€œWasted on him, if he’s dead. That is a woman born to be appreciated by some man who’s warm and alive.” Adrian’s thin, dark face was a dozen shades paler than it should have been, but he managed an unconvincing leer. “Me, probably. She doesn’t care for you at all, mon vieux .”
    â€œShe’s not supposed to like me. She’s supposed to be afraid of me and stop trying to escape. She can like you.” Grey worked awhile in silence, swabbing blood off the rest of the boy’s chest. “I’m going to sit you up. Don’t help. Let me do the work.”
    â€œRight.”
    The boy felt light, and brittle as glass, when Grey lifted him. He stuffed pillows to prop him up. “Rest a minute.”
    He tipped the dirty water out the window, down into the pawlike ivy that climbed the stone walls. It was a warm night. On the terrace below, men lingered late around the tables. They were local farmers mostly, but a few were travelers carrying the accents of Paris or Normandy. A pair of men playing cards chatted softly in the patois of the Brittany coast. Candles flickered on the tables, illuminating a peasant cap, a fashionable chapeau, and a shock of fair hair. One of Roussel’s plump, dark-haired daughters sidled between the men, collecting glasses. Beyond the innyard gate, the shadowed fields were full of the trill of crickets.
    They’d be safe tonight, in this tiny village, in this obscure inn, which was a waystation of the British spy network in France. Tomorrow was going to be hell.
    The bed creaked. “You’re handling her wrong,” Adrian said. “She’s battering herself to bits against you. It’s sickening.”
    â€œTell me something I don’t know. It’s like wrestling a starved cat.”
    But he lied. It was wrestling lightning wrapped in silk. Annique Villiers wouldn’t admit she was beaten. Desperately, madly, she kept throwing herself against him, trying to get out of the coach. Again and again, he’d trapped a kicking, writhing, squirming body beneath him. Every