Elizabeth Boyle (71 page)

Lily looked from one to the other. “Why would the Americans or the Dutch care about Henri’s journals?”

“They wouldn’t care in the least about the journals, for Henri never told them that story. He had other ways to keep his employers paying him for his information.”

“
Employers
?” Lily wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Henri was an agent for more than just the British?”

Costard blushed. “Our master spied for anyone with gold.”

Lily was glad she was sitting down, though she felt as if she were perched on a powder keg. “For how long?”

The man shrugged. “Off and on for as long as I’ve served him. And that’s been forty years.”

“Oh my,” she whispered.

Mme. Costard leaned forward. “It has made our lives interesting, what with the last few years and all. Why I remember a few times—”

Costard nudged his wife, putting an abrupt halt to her reminiscing. “We had thought, or hoped,” he said, “that you and Monsieur Milne intended to step in and continue the master’s work. We figured we’d let you get started, see how you worked out and for whom you worked before we told you about the extent of his ventures. A trial period so to say.”

Lily shook her head. “You want me to stay?”

“Oh, yes,” they both said.

Lily slumped back in her chair. What had happened to her life in just these few months? She’d gone from being a plain widow to an international spy.

“Mademoiselle, there is nothing to worry about,” Costard assured her. “No one could beat our master, a real smart one he was, and he kept his business matters well hidden— where no one would find them. For truly they died with him. He carried all his secrets in his head.”

“But that’s not true,” Lily said. “He kept journals. Extensive journals of his activities.”

Again Costard laughed. “Our master was too smart to ever keep something so damaging. Journals? They would have been his death, and ours, if such a thing had ever been found in the house. No, the master never kept any journals. He only told the British he did because they were so slow in paying. One reminder about them and
voilá
, the gold would arrive. The Dutch were never so difficult. They always paid quite promptly.”

She couldn’t quite believe it. No journals? And yet it made sense. Why would someone of Henri’s obvious intelligence and cunning ever do something so foolish as to keep journals?

“If you need proof, I have a letter that I was supposed to send to the British. He wrote it in the event he was captured or died. He didn’t want anyone to come fetch the journals and get caught as well, but I never sent it.”

He rose and went to the newly hung portrait of the Comtesse de Chevenoy and retrieved it from its nail. Sliding his fingers under the silk backing, he retrieved a letter and placed it in Lily’s hands. She looked down at the sealed missive, the wax bearing the de Chevenoy crest.

“I had hoped,” he said, smiling slightly at his wife, “well, we hoped that someone would come and take Adelaide’s place. To come and live here, so we could continue to live here as well.”

She smiled at the kindly couple.

Encouraged, Costard continued. “We can help you start anew with his work and then life will go on as it has for all these years.”

“I wasn’t sent here to be Adelaide de Chevenoy for the rest of my life. I’m not even a real spy.”

Costard looked crestfallen. “Then who are you?”

She owed the couple some measure of truth since they had been so honest with her. “My name is Lily. My mother, who was English, was a friend of the comtesse. Since I favor Adelaide, the British recruited me.”

She glanced over at Mme. Costard. “And I have lived in America for the better part of the last eight years, so I don’t think you owe the bottle of wine, just the roast chicken.”

They all laughed and then fell into an uneasy silence.

Lily didn’t know what to say. The entire mission as much a sorry tale of fiction as the de Chevenoy journals themselves.

Now she had the unfortunate duty to tell this elderly couple, the mythical life they had tried to create around Henri’s lies was about to come to an end.

As chance would have it, she didn’t have to break that news to them right away because the salon door swung open. Lily expected to turn and find Celeste in the open doorway, or perhaps even Webb, but instead, there stood a grinning Armand Latour.

If that wasn’t bad enough, in his hand he brandished a large pistol.

“Do you mind if I continue to call you Adelaide,
ma chérie
? I think having a wife with two names would be so confusing.” With a flourishing wave of his hand, he snatched the precious letter out of her hands.

Webb left Amelia’s apartment intent on going straight to the de Chevenoy house to straighten out his errant partner. If Amelia was right and Lily did believe the two of them had renewed their affair, she would be more than just angry, she’d be dangerous to the mission.

There was no telling what she would do if she was as furious as Amelia suggested.

But halfway there he ran into an old friend, Dr. Alexander McTaggart. Though born in France where his parents had fled after the Jacobean Revolt, the man looked as though he had just stepped off the curb in Edinburgh and not the
Rue Saint Honoré
.

“My friend,” McTaggart said, setting aside his black medical box and clapping Webb heartily on the back. “I didn’t know you were in Paris. How have you been?” He grabbed Webb’s hand and pumped it energetically.

“Better before I bumped into you,” he said, shaking his throbbing fingers.

McTaggart caught Webb’s chin and turned his head to one side then the other. “That is quite a black eye. What does the other fellow look like?”

“Unfortunately, he is unscratched.”

The amiable Scot laughed. “You must tell me everything. I’m on my way to join a few friends for a Christmas feast, but before I settle in to stuff myself with goose, let me buy you a drink. I know a place not far that carries a decent Highland whisky, one I know you will like.”

Webb knew McTaggart meant a place where they could talk in private and not have to continue this conversation on one of the busiest streets in Paris.

The man may have lived his entire life in France, but he was a Scot first and foremost. He’d served Webb and countless other British operatives over the years, performing minor and sometimes major surgeries on their wounds, and opening his home to them as a place to hide and recuperate if they were unable to get to the coast and across the Channel with their injuries.

Webb knew the man did this not only out of the kindness of his heart, but because he also wanted the McTaggart name cleared so he could reclaim his family lands.

His father’s support of Bonnie Prince Charlie had left the family destitute, branded as outlaws and stripped of their property.

“I’d love to, Alex, but I haven’t the time. I’ve got business to attend to with a lady,” he said with a wink.

“Would that lady happen to be a certain heiress all of Paris is agog over?”

Webb eyed his friend. “You’ve heard of her?”

“Aye, and if you have business with her, I am sure you have a few moments to listen to what I’ve heard. That is, if you’re of a mind to keep your head on your shoulders.”

Webb nodded, and they walked to a nearby café where McTaggart greeted the owner by name. The bustling man wiped his hands on his greasy apron and showed the pair to a back room, far from the street and far from eavesdroppers.

Once they were settled in the comfortable chairs, a bottle of whisky between them, McTaggart eyed Webb with a sharp, measured glance.

“That shoulder and leg healing up? I noticed you still have a bit of a limp.”

“I probably wouldn’t if I had gone to a real doctor.”

McTaggart laughed at the insult. “I’ll remember you said that, my friend, the next time I’m stitching up your miserable hide.”

Webb declined McTaggart’s offer of a drink.

The man shrugged and poured himself a double measure.

“So what have you heard about this heiress?” Webb asked.

“This is Adelaide de Chevenoy we’re talking about it, isn’t it?” the doctor asked. When Webb nodded, he continued. “I thought as much. Since I know Henri was a friend of yours, I assume you are here to pay your respects to the lady.”

Webb made no comment and allowed the man to come to his own conclusions.

“Just as I suspected,” McTaggart said. “Well, stay clear of her. I can fix your broken bones and a hole here or there, but I cannot reattach your head if that Corsican decides to separate it.”

“And why would anyone care if I pay my respects to this chit?”

“She’s under suspicion for treason.”

“I know,” Webb told him. “I brought her here.”

This brought McTaggart’s thick eyebrows up in a sharp arch. “That explains why she is in so much trouble.”

Webb grinned.

“I’ve heard tell she’s betrothed to two men,” the doctor said, studying the amber liquid in his tumbler. “You wouldn’t happen to be one of the lucky gentlemen?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Though after today I’m about ready to let her other beau have the little minx. She’s a handful and a half—and she’ll put her Armand Latour in an early grave for sure.”

McTaggart’s eyes narrowed. “Did you say Latour?”

“Yes. Armand Latour.”

The man scratched his chin. “Any relation to the Comte Latour?”

“Yes, his only son. Why do you ask?”

“Because I treated Armand Latour once. I can tell you this without breaking any patient confidentiality, because a month or two after I treated Armand Latour in the Abbaye, he was guillotined.”

Guillotined? Then that meant Lily’s Armand was … an imposter, and more than likely, Fouché’s agent.

It would have been a very funny situation, a fake heiress and her bogus betrothed, if it didn’t mean that Lily was in danger.

He rose abruptly from his chair. As long as Lily still considered Armand harmless, Fouché’s agent had unlimited access to her. And now that the court had given Lily complete control of the de Chevenoy estates, Fouché would be only that much more anxious to find a way to steal the de Chevenoy fortune.

“I must go, sir,” Webb said. “This is very grave news.”

As he turned to leave, McTaggart caught him by the arm. “You may well lose your heiress, you realize that?”

Webb shook his head. “Not if I have any say in the matter.”

“Then you had best hear the rest of what I have to say.”

Taking a deep breath, Webb nodded for him to continue.

“I was visiting a patient this morning, a rather significant patient, who claimed he would soon be living at the de Chevenoy address. He’d been promised it, since it seems the little heiress will no longer need a house.”

“Did he say when he was going to take up this new residence?”

Again McTaggart’s cool, assessing gaze looked him up and down. “This heiress, she’s important to you?”

“She’s my life.”

“Then I would see to her safety, my friend. My patient asked if I knew a reliable man with wagons to help his servants start packing and moving. To hear him, he’d be in the de Chevenoy house tomorrow if everyone wasn’t taking a holiday for Christmas.”

Amelia knew it had been rude of her not to offer Webb the use of her carriage to see him back to the
Rue de Renard
, but she wanted him to take the time walking to give some thought to what she had told him.

To tell Lily the truth about his feelings.

And in the meantime, Webb’s lingering pace gave her the time to get there before him and finish her work in Paris.

She settled back in the leather seat of her carriage and thought about how to deal with the interview to come. She knew Webb would never approve of her interfering in his relationship with Lily, but this time she had to intervene.

The last time she’d seen Lily D’Artiers, before the court hearing this afternoon, was at Byrnewood Manor over five years ago. She and Webb were leaving for their mission, and for some reason she’d looked back at the ivy-covered walls of Byrnewood as they’d left the house.

This in itself was a strange occurrence, as Amelia prided herself on never looking back, neither for a fine view nor to face regrets.

Life, she felt, should only be faced head-on.

But this once, she’d looked back and she’d regretted it ever since—for there in the second-story window of Byrnewood stood a skinny, forlorn creature.

Lily.

Amelia knew the girl was crying, for she saw the young woman mopping her eyes and cheeks with her sleeves. And she knew why the girl was crying. Because her heart was broken.

Hadn’t she done the same at fifteen when her own father had told her of her impending marriage to Lord Marston?

The sight of Lily that day had been a feeling too close to her own personal sorrows, so she’d looked away and sworn to purge the forlorn image from her mind.

But it hadn’t been so simple. She was the source of Lily’s pain and heartbreak. She’d done her best to encourage Webb in his horrible treatment of Lily. She’d all but flaunted their relationship in front of the love-struck adolescent. And she’d done the worst thing of all.

As she’d looked up and seen Lily standing in the window, she’d chosen that moment to laugh. Heartily and thoroughly, as if she were laughing at Lily.

It was not a day she was proud of, but now was the time to redeem herself and perhaps even give Lily what Amelia suspected she still wanted: Webb Dryden.

The carriage bounced off the main street onto the
Rue du Renard
. Amelia took a deep breath as the horses stopped before the quaint little house at Number 8.

“Wait for me, Hamid,” she said to her Mameluke driver. “I don’t know how long I will be.”

If Lily D’Artiers slammed the de Chevenoy door in her face, Amelia wouldn’t blame her. But perhaps, “her superior skills of persuasion,” as Webb liked to call them, would at least get her past the threshold.

“You seem surprised to see me,
ma chérie
,” Armand said to Lily. “Didn’t you think that after your stellar victory this afternoon in court, your betrothed would want to be at your side to celebrate?”