Page 9

Three

T he rain had turned to a fine mist by the time Sinclair wended his way toward the house where he had rented lodgings—a two-story stucco building with black roof tiles glazed to withstand the buffets of winds blowing off the sea.

He walked slowly, in no hurry to return to his empty rooms, especially when he saw the figure lurking beneath the narrow portico of the front door.

It appeared to be a man of medium height, the collar of his coat pulled up to his ears, obscuring his face.

Sinclair hooked his umbrella over his arm and approached with deliberate casualness. Pausing a few yards down the street, he pretended to grope in the pocket of his boxcoat for his room key while he stole a glance at the bedraggled figure.

As he studied the blond curls plastered to ruddy cheeks, the wet cloak clinging to a familiar stocky frame, Sinclair swore, the tension between his shoulder blades relaxing.

In civilian dress, soaked to the skin, the man looked not in the least like Lieutenant Charles Carr of the Ninth Cavalry, but very much like Chuff, Sinclair’s nuisance of a younger brother, his junior by eight years.

Sinclair covered the distance between them in four great strides. “Chuff! What the devil are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” Charles said in a disgruntled voice.

“At the age of three and twenty I’d think you would at least have the sense to get in out of the rain. Why are you here in Portsmouth? I told you not—” Sinclair broke off his tirade when Charles erupted into a fit of sneezing.

Sinclair gave vent to an exasperated sigh. “Well, don’t continue to stand there. Get inside. If you caught your death on my doorstep, the entire family would be sure to blame me.”

Sinclair opened the front door. Motioning Charles to follow, Sinclair led the way up a narrow stair to the second floor. Unlocking the first door at the head of the steps, he shoved it open and impatiently pulled the shivering Charles past him.

“Damnation!” Charles said, coming to a dead halt on the threshold. Sinclair pushed him the rest of the way inside, closing the door after them.

Charles’s mouth hung open in dismay at the sight of the small floral-papered chamber that served as both sitting room and study to Sinclair.

A battered oak desk was littered with papers spilling over onto the floor.

Remains of last night’s supper were stacked on a tray in front of the brick fireplace.

One could scarce take a step without treading upon boots, stockings, and sundry other articles of clothing strewn over the carpet.

A door stood ajar, revealing that the bedchamber beyond was in little better state.

Charles shook his head. “How can you live this way, Sinclair? If any of Merchant’s people decided to ransack your rooms, you’d never know it.”

“It is a little difficult to pose as a spy with a valet and chambermaid in tow.” Impervious to his brother’s horror, Sinclair added his cloak, hat, and umbrella to the heap upon the desk. “Besides, Merchant’s people have no reason to search my room. They have all accepted me as one of them.”

Or almost all, Sinclair amended to himself as he thought of golden silk-spun hair, a face so delicate, so fine-boned, it could have been sculpted from ivory, eyes that flashed blue fire.

Isabelle Varens might detest her nickname, but if only she knew exactly how like an avenging angel she had appeared when she struck him.

Wincing at the memory, Sinclair touched his cheek.

It would not surprise him if he sported a bruise.

For such a fragile-looking lady, she could land a man quite a facer:

Sinclair turned, forcing his attention back to his brother. “Take off that wet coat, Chuff,” he said. “And I’ll get the fire going again. I think you might find a bottle of indifferent port behind that stack of books in the corner.”

“That’s quite all right.” Charles sniffed. “I am sure I would never be able to locate a clean glass as well.”

Sinclair stepped past him to stir up the embers of the fire he had built that morning.

Tossing on a few more logs and using the bellows, he soon had a blaze crackling.

By that time Charles had peeled off his cloak and arranged it carefully over a wall peg whose existence Sinclair had never noticed before.

Sinclair shoved his dressing gown and a copy of last week’s London Times off a faded wing-backed chair and invited Charles to sit down.

“I’d offer you a change of clothes, but spies don’t appear to eat as well as cavalry officers.” Sinclair patted Charles’s stomach straining beneath his waistcoat.

Charles self-consciously splayed his fingers across his slight paunch.

“That will all disappear once I see some action again. Plague take this peace treaty. It won’t hold for long, I tell you that.

Not that our side will start anything, but old Boney will never rest quiet.

Ambitious fellow, that Napoleon. Bound to stir up something. ”

“You need not try to convince me, Chuff. I am not arguing with you.” Sinclair brushed the knees of his breeches clear of the dust that had clung when he had knelt to start the fire. “It would be more to the point, little brother, if you would tell me what you are doing here.”

“Colonel Darlington sent a message for you.”

Sinclair stiffened at the mention of the British officer highly placed in army intelligence.

“The courier chosen was Tobias Reed, an old friend of mine.” Charles flushed guiltily, unable to meet Sinclair’s stern gaze. “So I persuaded Toby to let me bring the message instead.”

Sinclair scowled. “You could get both yourself and your friend in deep trouble. This was not the wisest course of action, Chuff.”

“Wise be damned! II had to see you again before you disappear to parts unknown.” He glanced up, coaxing, “Come now, Sinclair. You can’t be angry with me.”

With that pleading look on his face, Charles reminded Sinclair of nothing so much as a wistful puppy. Would his brother never mature?

“Hand over the message,” Sinclair said wearily.

Charles brightened. Reaching inside his waistcoat, he drew forth a sealed, slightly damp square of parchment. “You’re to burn it after you read it.”

“No!” Sinclair arched his brows in mock astonishment. “I thought I was supposed to publish it in the Times.”

Charles made a face and tossed the letter at him. “Sorry. I forgot you’re not exactly a greenhorn at all of this.”

Sinclair caught the letter and broke the wax seal. The message was in code, of course.

“Excuse me for a moment,” he murmured to his brother.

Sinclair strode over to the desk. Tumbling his coat, hat, and most of the papers aside, he finally located a quill, a half-dried pot of ink, and a blank sheet of vellum.

Drawing up a chair, he began to decode the message.

It was not a simple code, but Sinclair had worked with this particular one enough that he was able to accomplish his task with reasonable swiftness.

Darlington’s letter began with a word of congratulations to Sinclair for having successfully insinuated himself into Merchant’s group.

Many French èmigres had fled to England during the Reign of Terror, most of them royalists dreaming and plotting to restore the French monarchy.

But none of these French royalists were so well organized and so well funded as Merchant’s Society for the Preservation of Ancient Relics.

The British army, bearing no fondness for Napoleon, applauded Merchant’s efforts to overturn the Corsican upstart’s government.

At least, the army had done so until recently. Evidence from British spies operating in Paris revealed that one or more of Merchant’s little band, possibly Merchant himself, was really working for Bonaparte.

Under the guise of being a royalist plotter, this counteragent was drawing maps of the English coastline and fortifications, passing the information back to Napoleon for use in a possible invasion.

It was Sinclair’s task to expose Bonaparte’s spy and put a halt to these activities, an assignment which Sinclair understood well enough.

There was no need for Darlington to elaborate further upon it.

Consequently, the rest of the colonel’s message was brief.

“Eliminate the name Feydeau from your list. Now beyond suspicion. The man died last week in a coaching accident.

Sinclair paused in his decoding to reach for his umbrella.

He unscrewed the top and then slipped a scroll of paper from inside the hollowed-out bone handle.

Unrolling the parchment, Sinclair read down the list of names and brief notes he had jotted about the agents known to work for Merchant.

Laurent Coterin had already been scratched out.

After dipping his quill into the ink, Sinclair put a line through the name of Simon Feydeau.

With two of the eight names thus eliminated, it made Sinclair’s task that much easier. Thoughtfully stroking his chin, Sinclair studied the ones remaining. Baptiste Renois, Paulette Beauvais. Marcellus Crecy-Sinclair could form no conjectures about these people, for he had yet to meet any of them.

Victor Merchant—here, Sinclair had the advantage of one meeting and some sketchy background information.

Merchant, once known as the Baron de Nerac, had fled France shortly after the execution of the late Louis XVI.

He had arrived in England, possessing scarcely more than the shirt on his back, and yet in the intervening years, Merchant had somehow acquired seemingly limitless funds with which to finance the activities of his society.

Funds that could be coming from Bonaparte, Sinclair thought. Yet if Merchant was the counteragent, someone else had to be doing the actual spying for him, for Merchant rarely strayed far from his townhouse in London.