The Heart That Wins (Regency Spies Book 3) (17 page)

“I have been watching you for some time, Miss Arbuthnot, along with your other lover, Mr Finch. What a strange household you have there.”

Suddenly Sophia really could neither move nor speak; surely this was Joude, the man who had told Louise Favelle to pursue Edmund, the man who had tortured him and arranged the kidnap of his son. For two years they had been trying to find him. Edmund had suspected that using his own name again would draw him out, but it had not been part of their current enterprise.

“It took me a while to realise that you did not come here just to be with another lover,” he said. “I thought you really had been whisked away by the very handsome young man for his own use. That was a rare mistake on my part.”

By now he was near the top of the stairs. He brought out a pistol.

“Step back, please. I should hate to fall down these stairs.”

Sophia took a step back onto the landing. She had enough wits left to limp more than was necessary to spare her pain. Anything to gain an advantage, no matter how slight, over this confident man.

She cursed their stupidity in looking for the man in the portrait at Louise Favelle’s house. That had obviously been a joke on the Frenchwoman’s part, for this man bore no resemblance to it. He had nothing about his appearance to attract notice. He was neither tall nor short, dark nor fair, handsome nor ugly. There was nothing remarkable about him. She had probably passed him in the street many times. His power was in his voice. It was almost impossible not to do what he ordered. A woman like Louise Favelle must have given herself up to him immediately without a second thought. Sophia remembered the letters they had found in the Frenchwoman’s house from him, ordering her to do unspeakable things and was afraid.

“You are a beautiful woman, Mademoiselle, and beautifully dressed. I think I shall leave your face untouched so that Finch will recognise you, but your body, yes, I think your body will suffer great pain before you die. And you will die, do not doubt it. I have no other use for you.” He pretended to think. “But I will use your body before I inflict pain on it,”

Sophia could not stop the shiver of fear, even though she knew that his purpose was to make her afraid. This was a man who enjoyed torturing others, not for the information they gave him but for the pleasure of inflicting pain. She could bear even this if it would help John, but she was not sure now that it would.

Still she said nothing. Pushing her fear away, she knew she had nothing to lose. Hoping there were no more than the three of them she had seen, she kicked out at Joude, who fell to the floor doubled up in pain. His scream was high pitched and startling. She wanted to scream, too. The pain in her ankle was intense, for she had not spared it when she had kicked him. Picking up the fallen pistol, she shot the other man who was coming up the stairs to his aid. Catching up her own pistol, which was hidden in a drawer on the landing, she went down the stairs, but it was slow and painful going and she almost ran into the other man, who already had a pistol trained on her. Before she had time to aim her own pistol there was a shot and the man almost fell onto her.

“John!”

He was standing behind the fallen man, a smoking pistol in his hand.

“Come on.” He reached out his other hand to her. “Franz is dead. Is that loaded?” She nodded. “Good. I saw no one else, but they could be anywhere.”

Sophia tried to pull her hand away.

“I have to go back.”

“What?”

“He’s still alive.”

“Who?"

“At the top of the stairs.”

John started moving towards the door.

“I have no idea if there are others,” he said. “We have one shot between us.”

“But...”

She looked towards the stairs.

“Bonaparte will cross the border the day after tomorrow. One of us at least must get the news to Edmund.”

“We will both go to Edmund.”

John took the pistol, picked her up, put her over his shoulder and set off at a run. Sophia let him.

John had left his horse outside the church. No one tried to stop them as they crossed the square, but Sophia expected someone to shoot at them from one of the houses at any moment. John only put her down in order to mount the horse.

He made to pull her up onto the horse in front of him, but Sophia swung herself up behind him, gasping as she put her left foot on his for leverage. She put her arms around him, for her ankle hurt her so much now that it gave her no support.

John spurred the horse on and neither of them spoke until they were in Brussels.

“I’m sorry about Franz,” said John, when he had slowed the horse to a walk through the busy streets “I know you were fond of him.”

“Yes.”

There was nothing else to say.

“Was he careless?”

“No. The man you didn’t see, the one at the top of the stairs, he knows about Edmund. I’ve been watched.”

“Is that why Edmund came out of hiding even though he thought Bonaparte would return?”

“He’s the man who tortured Edmund, but it’s not revenge. Joude is a very daring spy. Who knows what he has found out while he’s been in Brussels?”

It was this thought and not Franz that had occupied her during their flight. Many in Brussels did not know how to keep a secret, fewer still understood the need for secrecy.

“So our ruse was useless.”

“Not entirely. He thought you and I really were lovers and we do have the information.”

She held onto him even more tightly.

“He frightened you.”

“He’s a man who enjoys the fear and pain of others.”

John stiffened against her and she guessed he was thinking about her being tortured. This was another secret she would not keep.

“He told me what he would do to me before he killed me.”

John’s thumb stroked the back of her hand. How had they come all this way without her noticing that he held it?

“He is a dead man,” he said.

“He won’t come back to Brussels. There’s no need.”

“Nonetheless he won’t survive this.”

They were in the courtyard of the Finches’ house and a groom came for the horse. Another servant came to show them into the house and Edmund ushered them into the drawing-room. John did not let go of her hand until the door closed behind them.

“You are earlier than I expected,” said Edmund.

“You were expecting me to come back?”

Sophia was confused.

“Yes, I... Sit down, both of you.” Edmund inspected them both carefully. “Have some brandy, then you can tell me what happened. Things obviously haven’t gone well.” 

“There’s no time,” said Sophia. “They’re crossing the border tomorrow.”

Edmund stopped on his way to the cupboard where the brandy decanter was kept.

“Do you know where?”

“No.”

Franz had not been able to find out.

Edmund left the room for a few minutes. Neither John nor Sophia moved or spoke during that time. When he returned Edmund went to the cupboard and poured out three glasses of brandy.

Sophia sat on the sofa, half-expecting John to join her, but he chose a chair from which he watched her.

“I went to the house to bring you back,” he started, as if Edmund had not left the room. “Edmund gave me a letter to persuade you.”

“Order,” amended Edmund. “I ordered you to return.”

Sophia took a sip of her brandy.

“You did not trust me to do my job properly.”

This hurt a great deal. After two years of study and hard work, she thought she had persuaded him she could live up to his initial faith in her.

“John described to me an injury that might prevent your escape should it become necessary.”

“It did hinder my escape,” she admitted, remembering the man John had killed. “I would be dead but for John.”

John took a sip of his own brandy. She noticed with some distress that his hand was shaking.

“On my way there,” continued John, “I considered the possibility that it was already too late and I decided to approach with caution, despite my desire to get Sophia out as quickly as possible. So I left my horse by the church and entered Madame Gilbert’s house by the kitchen garden. I’m sorry, Edmund, but I found Franz’s body there.”

Edmund nodded slowly, then his face changed, as if he had recognised that there was no need to hide his feelings from John. Sophia thought his grief must be all the greater since he and Franz were no longer friends.

“He was a good friend despite...”

He shook his head and John continued, “I heard a shot and rushed into the house. In the kitchen I found Madame Gilbert and Jeanne. They had been tied up and gagged. I left them there. I’m sure they’ve been found by now by the neighbours. In the hall I saw a man about to shoot Sophia, so I shot him first and brought her away.”

He swallowed some more brandy, needing both hands to raise the glass. Edmund turned his attention to her.

“It was Joude,” she said. “I’m sure it was him.”

“You recognised him.”

“He’s not the man in the portrait, but it was him. I’m sure it was.”

“It never made any sense to me that she showed me his portrait, even when I knew that she was in love with him. I only heard his voice, of course. I never saw him. I take it he’s not dead.”

Sophia shook her head.

He did not bother to hide his disappointment.

“My fault,” said John. “I wouldn’t let her go back. There might have been other men there, but we had one shot and we had news to bring back to you.”

There was a flash of anger in Edmund’s eyes, but when he spoke he was quite calm.

“I shall go and retrieve Franz’s body.”

He drained his glass and stood.

“Now?” asked John. “It will be dark before long.”

“I do my best work in the dark.”

“He knows you’re here. He’s been watching us,” said Sophia.

“At least that part of the plan worked.”

“Won’t he be expecting you to go there?” asked John.

“I shouldn’t think so. Would you expect the head of the intelligence service to go and collect an agent’s body, especially when that agent isn’t mine?”

“I would if I knew that agent was a friend who had been living with you for the last few months. I’ll go with you.”

“Thank you, John. I appreciate your offer, truly, but I’ll manage better on my own.”

“Take him,” said Sophia ignoring the fact that it would be John’s third trip to Sint Stefaan in twenty-four hours and her own desire to keep him with her. “Please, Edmund.”

She thought that even Edmund’s unnatural detachment when he was working might desert him at the sight of a friend’s body, despite their recent differences.

“I’ll go and tell Mary what I’m doing, then we’ll go.”

He left them alone.

“Please take care of him. He's very upset,” said Sophia.

“And what of you?”

John came to join her on the sofa.

“I shall be here when you return,” she said.

“But you know I cannot...”

“I know. Thank you for my life.”

Knowing he would reject her, she put her arms around him and laid her cheek against his chest.

“Sophia...”

“Just for a moment, please.”

“Look at me.”

Reluctantly, she raised her head. His arms went round her and he lowered his head to kiss her. He was still kissing her when Edmund returned.

15
th
June 1815

John was struggling into his jacket as he got to the door. By the time he and Edmund had returned with Franz’s body and Sophia’s belongings, and made sure that Madame Gilbert and Jeanne were safe, all without being seen, it had been light. Edmund had offered him a bed, but he had preferred to return to his lodgings. He had had very little sleep and his landlady’s announcement that a young woman wanted to see him had done nothing to put him into a better mood than he was in from having had to be woken to hear it.

Determined to give the young woman, whoever she was, a piece of his mind, he flung open the door.

“Sophia!”

It took him a moment to remember that she could not be here, then he was looking for her carriage. The sooner she got back into it and left the better.

“Good morning. I’ve come to talk to you.”

“I can see that, but you shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re here and I need to talk to you.”

He spared her a look now. Her face was pale and drawn. She had not slept much, either. She had waited up for him and Edmund and had only gone to bed when they had returned safely.

“Please, get back into your carriage and go home.”

“No. There’s not much time.”

“No, there isn’t. I’m expecting orders at any moment.”

This was not entirely true. It was only now that he realised that the news they had delivered last night should have had half the town on alert by now, but everything was quiet.

“They’re not coming. Wellington doesn’t believe our information.”

“What? Why not?”

“It conflicts with the information from his own sources.”

It was a surprise to John that Wellington had his own sources that he preferred to Edmund’s, but it was the man’s own choice, he supposed.

“You’d think he could rely on something that cost a man his life.”

Sophia flinched and he chastised himself for not considering her feelings.

“You almost lost your life,” she said. “If you’d come a few minutes earlier those men would still have been outside.”

John could not speak while he was trying to control himself at the thought of what might have happened to Sophia yesterday. He looked down at her. Sophia reached up to him and he took a step back to avoid the kiss.

“Are you mad? You can’t even be seen with me, let alone kiss me in public.”

“I don’t care anymore. I never cared. What’s the point of having a good reputation if I’m not going to need it?”

“You’d ruin yourself in order to force me to marry you?”

Sophia stepped back as if he had hit her.

“No,” she said. “I’m showing you that I don’t care about my reputation so that you’ll marry me.”

John looked about. Mercifully there was no one in sight. He saw Edmund’s carriage. An unhappy-looking groom was standing by the closed door. It was only then that John saw that it was raining.

“Get into the carriage and go home.”

In response Sophia simply put her arms around him and held him, her head resting on his chest.

“Sophia, please.”

“Get into the carriage with me and I’ll go.”

John complied; anything to get her off the street where they might be seen. Once in the carriage Sophia kissed him, as he had expected. He did not resist, but returned the kiss. Eventually she broke away and rested her head on his shoulder.

“That wasn’t my main purpose in coming to you,” she said.

John was surprised she could speak. He could barely breathe and was certain that the beating of his heart would drown out any words he could say.

Sophia continued talking.

“We both know that there will be fighting soon and…”

“I want you to go away,” he interrupted her, his voice shaking with the effort to speak. “I want you to get as far away as possible and to go back to your father as soon as possible.”

She lifted her head and smiled up at him, then caressed his cheek. When had she taken her glove off?

“I’m not leaving you. I know you want me to be safe, but I’m not even going to lie to you and say that I’ll go. Even that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

She put her head back on his chest. It must be something terrible if she could not look him in the eye as she spoke.

“I don’t want you to die,” she said.

John did not even think of protesting that it was not something over which he had much control; that was not what she meant. He pulled her onto his lap and put his arms around her. She sighed and he almost did the same.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“Since the day I heard you had joined the army.”

He had hoped that she might not have understood his intention in joining the army, but his parents had and she knew him at least as well as they did.

“I found I could not. Other men depended on me and I couldn’t let them down. I couldn’t waste their lives and I discovered that my life was worth something. I imagined that I was the only thing that stood between the French armies and you.”

“You are,” she said.

He kissed the top of her head.

“I won’t deny that I still think about it sometimes. If something happened to you, I would just give up.”

“Please, don’t.”

“If I had arrived too late last night…” He had thought about this while he and Edmund were retrieving Franz’s body. “I think those dark thoughts are part of me now. Before every battle I read your letter asking me to come back and I make the decision that I will defend you and that I will live to defend you again, but there would be no point if… Please go somewhere safe, my love.”

Sophia lifted her face to his and kissed him again. He felt the wetness of tears as she did so, but could not tell if they were hers or his or both.

Eventually Sophia pulled away and eased herself off his lap so that she was sitting on the other side of the carriage. She started to pull on her gloves.

“Edmund says it’s too dangerous for you to live here anymore. He wants you to move into the house.”

John had been expecting this. Sophia had explained that they were all known to Joude. He did not think Edmund had the resources to protect him as well. Moving into the house would suit him if Sophia was not to go back to England.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

She smiled at him, then, and made to move back beside him, but he shook his head. He would sit here all day and kiss her if he did not go back into the rain.

“Paul will take me back to the house and come back for you… unless you need some help with the child.”

“Agathe? No, she is well enough to undertake a short journey.”

As he stepped down from the carriage he turned back to her.

“Tell Edmund that if he thinks to force my hand, he is too late.”

It had not taken John long to pack up and leave his lodgings. Barely an hour had passed before the carriage drew up outside the house and John stepped down from it. Servants rushed out into the rain to collect his bags and John turned back into the carriage to lift out the young girl, Agathe.

She was small; Sophia guessed she might be eight or nine years old. When John joined her by the door she could see that the child’s face was covered in slowly healing bruises and cuts. Sophia tried not to let her horror show in her face but suspected she failed. She did not know how someone could deliberately hurt a child so badly.

“Come in,” she said. “Mary has found just the right person to help.”

He followed her into the house.

“Mister John!”

“Lizzie?”

The small maid dashed across the entrance hall, placed a hand on one of his and kissed it. Then she pulled away, meeting the eyes of the girl in John’s arm. There were tears on her face and Sophia saw that John’s own eyes were wet at the sight of the first girl he had saved.

“I would not have recognised you,” he said.

“I’ve grown.”

Sophia had not paid much attention to the little maid before today. The happy smiling girl must once have looked even worse than the child in John’s arms, who shrank back against him as if he were her anchor in a stormy sea.

“So you have,” he replied. “You must be doing very well if Mrs Finch brought you with her.”

“I look after the babies,” boasted Lizzie.

“And Claire,” added Sophia.

“And now Agatha,” said Lizzie.

“Agathe,” corrected John. “Her name is all she has.”

“Agatta,” tried Lizzie with a frown.

“You can practise. Can you show me to her bed?”

“Mrs Finch said she should be with me and Claire, because we’ll know to be quiet.”

“That’s exactly what she needs,” agreed John.

They set off up the stairs with Sophia following slowly behind. John stopped and looked back at her.

“Carry on,” she said. “When you’re ready, come back down the last flight of stairs and I’ll show you to your room.”

“There must be…”

“There are plenty of servants,” she interrupted him, “but I’m going to do it.”

He nodded and set off up the stairs again.

As he and Lizzie walked along the landing to the next flight of stairs the maid was telling him that she had learned to sew and read and write.

John had done a wonderful thing for her and for all the other girls, but Sophia had already made plans for him to help more, if he could only be persuaded.

She did not have to wait long before he returned. He missed the last step and she steadied him. He put his arms around her and kissed her forehead.

“You had no idea what you’d really done had you?” she said.

“No.”

“Claire and Agathe will be like that one day.”

“Perhaps. Sophia, the chances are that Claire will never talk again and never learn to trust. Harriet, the last girl before I left England still lives in my parents’ house. She is too frightened to leave it and scared of everyone in it. Her life is more comfortable than it was before, but she is still afraid.”

“Then it is even more important that you saw Lizzie today.”

“I have done some good in my sorry life.”

“You’ve done a lot of good.”

Sophia reached up to kiss him.

“Yes, perhaps I have.”

“Let me show you to your room.”

“I would rather sit and look at you.”

“I would rather that too, but you will be on a battlefield soon and you must rest.”

She heard the tremble in her voice and bit her lip. John brushed his lips across her cheek.

“Lead on,” he said, releasing her.

He took her hand in his as they walked, matching his stride to her limp.

She led him along the landing.

“This is your room. It is next to mine.”

It had not been too difficult to convince Mary to arrange the rooms in this way.

“I shall be in my sitting-room when you wake. It’s on the other side of my room.”

“And you will sleep?”

“For a while.”

He kissed her forehead.

“I love you, Sophia.”

It was like a benediction, but Sophia knew she could not let it be a farewell.

When John came into the sitting-room he was carrying something. Sophia had been napping on the sofa, but she had heard him leave his room and was sitting up when he entered.

He sat beside her, took her hand and brushed his lips across her fingers.

“You look rested,” she said.

“I slept a little. I have a present for you.”

He turned her hand palm upward and placed the object he was carrying on it. It was a book wrapped in a square of silk. Sophia recognised it immediately as she unwound it. It was the book of Shakespeare sonnets that John’s father had given to him on his seventh birthday. She looked up at him in dismay.

“You can’t give me this.”

John carried it with him everywhere. They had both learned to love the sonnets as he had read them aloud to her and they had explored their meaning. At first the poems had meant little, but they had become part of her and various lines came to her whenever she thought of John.

He blinked, then he frowned.

“It’s not a parting gift. I do intend to come back from the battle.”

Sophia started to breathe again, realising only then that she had stopped. She touched his cheek briefly before smoothing her hand across the cover of the book.

“This is the most precious thing that I have, but not just because my father gave it to me. Look inside. It’s for you. It’s always been for you.”

Sophia opened the book. John had never even allowed her to hold it before. The first thing she saw was the inscription John’s father had made in his very precise writing. “To my beloved son, John, on his seventh birthday, in the hope that these words will show him his heart before he is a man.”