Charming a Spy (19 page)

Last night. Oh Lord. Last night he was lying. Geoff didn’t make love to her because he cared for her or even in exchange for him helping her find her brother. All along she thought she was using him to find Luke, but it was the opposite. Geoff had been using her to get information about her brother.

He’d been lying to her the whole time. He said so himself.

How could she have been so blind? Kat thought back to when they first met. The break-in. The kiss. He didn’t chase after her because he probably already knew exactly who she was and what she was doing.

Then when Geoff came to her house to deliver the invitation to his ball. It made no sense at the time that a duke would convey his own correspondence, but she was so excited at the thought of him, so hopeful he might help her, she didn’t question it. Now it all made perfect sense. He was doing reconnaissance.

How she wished she could take it all back. If she knew Geoff was looking for Luke as a traitor, she would never have spoken a word to him. Instead she’d done more than speak to him. She’d given him everything he could have wanted, sought him out at every opportunity, and told him everything he wanted to know. How could she have played into his plan better than he’d ever anticipated?

What if she said something leading Geoff straight to Luke? Was it possible she was the reason her brother was going to be found by people who believed him a traitor? But no, she could not have said anything. She didn’t know where he was. That was the whole reason she got into this whole mess, trading her body for Geoff’s secrets.

A tightness in her chest caused her insides to be wrenched from their walls, then crushed by an invisible vice, over and over.
This is what people must mean by heartbreak.
Her heart was truly breaking.

Bollocks. She’d fallen in love.

Only what she thought was love was actually lies. Every minute of their time together was carefully planned deceit. Their talks, the midnight meetings, those wonderful kisses. Lovemaking. It was all a lie.

Kat was sick to her stomach again and heaving when her Aunt Ellie walked in.

“Kat are you alright, my love? The maid woke me to tell me she saw you in the hallway and you did not look well. Oh. You do look dreadful… so pale.”

“I think I am sick,” she answered.

“We must get you home at once,” Aunt Ellie exclaimed. “I will call the coach and have the staff pack immediately.”

“Thank you, Aunt Ellie. I’m sorry we will miss the last day of the party.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, my girl. We need to get you well immediately.”

If only Aunt Ellie knew, this sickness couldn’t be cured.

‡

L
uke knew he’d
been in prison too long when his stomach stopped revolting at the slightly sour milk they gave him once a day with his portion of bread. According to the scratches he’d dug into the packed dirt floor, he’d been sitting in this hellhole for 787 days.

All those days spent living in a freezing cold chamber so small when he lay down with his arms outstretched, he could touch both walls… 787 days eating only sour milk and tiny bits of bread… 787 days without seeing the sky.

He would do anything to have one bit of humanity back. To drink one sip of cold ale. One bite of a lemon tart. One touch of a woman’s flesh.

Luke shook his head and reminded himself not to think about what he missed, not to think about home. The contrast of his memories to the present was so stark it made all of this harder. Luke was sure he would lose the last thread of his sanity if he dwelled on it too long.

Besides, home was a place he would never know again. Even if the war ended and he was released or miraculously managed to escape, he could never go back. All of England would have heard the news by now that Luke Dubois was a traitor. He had no doubt Rafe Grier would make sure of that.

Luke often wondered what his friends must have thought when they read the story in the newspapers. At first, maybe they gave him the benefit of the doubt, tried to come up with some other plausible explanation. They probably wouldn’t have taken the story at face value and blindly believed he was the person who’d sold secrets to the French because they were his friends, after all. But with no alternative story, no one to quell the rumors, soon they would have no choice but to believe Grier. Grier was a trustworthy, upstanding gentleman. At least that’s what everyone thought.

Yes, all his friends undoubtedly hated Luke. Reviled. Christ, they were probably using his name as an insult at the gaming hells these days. “Don’t Dubois me,” they would shout as they demanded satisfaction when someone wronged them.

Honestly, Luke couldn’t bring himself to care about his reputation anymore. They could drag his name and honor through the mud all they wanted. He knew better than most, honor didn’t mean anything when teetering on the edge of death.

The only thing he cared about was Katherine and Aunt Ellie. He knew implicitly they would never believe Luke turned on his country. They knew him and how much he loved England and serving as a soldier. No matter what, they would never believe he would do something so awful. It gave him some comfort, regardless of what the rest of the world thought, his family would always believe the truth. Still they would certainly be ostracized from the rest of society for being related to a traitor.

Poor Kat. How old was she now? Twenty? Twenty-one? The poor girl would have just come out in society, when it was all ripped away from her. How many waltzes did she get to dance before he had ruined her life? She wouldn’t have had a chance to meet many suitors. No man would marry her now.

The irony didn’t escape Luke. He’d spent his whole life trying to protect Kat, wanting everything to be perfect for his little sister. Their parents had passed when they were still children, so he’d thought of her as his responsibility. He was the man of the family. Buying a commission was his way to help ensure her future.

Instead, he took it away from her.

She must be a miserable woman now, a shadow of the giggling girl he remembered.

‡

G
eoff wasn’t sure
which was worse—the smell of his surroundings or himself. He was perched on top of a pile of street trash in a French vegetable market, dressed in rags soaked in whiskey, dirt, and bits of horse manure. He looked and smelled exactly like a guttersnipe. No one would pay him any attention.

Despite the stink, Geoff actually preferred playing someone else for once. He was frankly sick of his assigned role, the Duke of Stamwell, lady charmer. This last assignment wasn’t sitting well with him. He despised lying to Katherine. Of course, he’d enjoyed having her in his bed, but he no longer wanted it to be because she thought he was someone or something he wasn’t.

When Geoff had entered her, felt her innocence dissipating, he changed. Kat wasn’t lying to him. She wasn’t in the league with Rafe Grier or her brother, betraying her country. She was an honest, brave, and loyal woman who would go to any extreme to help her family. Geoff wanted to be with her again, but this time with no secrets between them. He wanted to give himself as freely to her as she did to him. Truthfully.

Geoff knew he would have a lot to explain to win her trust. But, hopefully, when she saw her brother alive and realized Geoff was the one who saved him, she would forgive him. He couldn’t wait to tell her that she was right about Luke all along. Then he would make everything right between them. Plenty of time to work through it out together later. For now, he had to keep his head focused.

A French soldier broke away from two comrades to stop and examine the apples on the cart next to Geoff. The man was tall and trim, with straight blonde hair, cut in the military fashion. He appeared to be an average soldier, except for the scar on his upper lip. He was the perfect match to Pennington’s description of Asby.

“A coin, sir?” Geoff asked in fluent French, holding out his tin cup. The man looked annoyed and for a second Geoff wondered if he erred thinking this was Asby, but then the soldier dug in his pocket and dropped something into Geoff’s cup. He heard a
tink
sound of a coin hitting the tin bottom. When the soldier walked away in a hurry, Geoff peered into the cup and saw a tiny slip of paper next to the coin. It read:
Wet Toad Tavern in Dunkirk. 20:00 tonight.

So it was Asby. After several months of searching and hundreds of inquiries, Pennington received word from one of Wickham’s men. Asby had been undercover in a French military prison in Lille for almost five years. He was so deeply embedded it had taken quite a while for him to get correspondence out, but eventually the last morning of the house party they’d received the letter confirming Luke Dubois was being held in the same jail. By eight o’clock tonight, Geoff would know where exactly Luke was.

*

The next morning at the Lille military prison

“Laurent’s replacement, reporting
for duty,” Geoff said loudly and confidently to the Lieutenant Colonel. Asby, or rather Laurent, drilled his undercover surname into Geoff’s brain last night along with everything else he needed to know. Asby taught him what to wear, what to say and the layout of the prison including where Luke’s cellblock was located. He’d warned Geoff it was going to be difficult getting past the Lieutenant Colonel. Luckily Asby uncovered a useful fact about the Lieutenant Colonel; he had a very weak constitution.

“Who are you?” the Lieutenant Colonel demanded. He stormed around his desk, coming so close to Geoff’s face their noses practically touched.

Geoff looked straight into the man’s eyes and gave him the answer he’d rehearsed, “Officer Roux, Monsieur. I received orders to replace Laurent this morning, Monsieur.”

“Where’s Laurent?”

“He’s sick, Monsieur.”

The Lieutenant Colonel didn’t say anything for a few moments. He just kept staring into Geoff’s eyes. Geoff made every attempt not to blink.

“What happened to Laurent?”

“He ate some bad fish last night, Monsieur. I think it was a cod. At least that’s what it looked like when he was chucking it up this morning. And it sure did smell like cod. But I’m not sure exactly because it was more the color or asparagus, green and a little bit chunky. Perhaps it was…”

“Enough!” Weak constitution indeed. He already appeared slightly peekish. “Get to work,” he ordered, dismissing Geoff. Geoff didn’t hesitate. He turned on his heel and marched to his post which thankfully was exactly where Asby described it would be.

Geoff stood with his back against a cold stone wall, still as a statue for several hours staring straight ahead. Finally, when he was sure other guards were not close by, he decided it was time.

He walked up and down the cellblock calling out “Dubois” in an intimidating shout. Finally, he heard a man’s voice speaking barely above a whisper, “
Oui
.” Geoff stopped in front of the cell where the tiny voice came from.

Luke was crammed into a stone cell not big enough for a rat let alone a man. No bed, no furniture at all. A small crack in the ceiling let in a ray of light and a steady stream of dripping water. At least he hoped it was water.