Georges Lavalle stood in the rain overlooking Raven’s empty dock and swore with impressive Gallic fluency.
“Fils de putain!”
Not only was his colleague dead, but the bungling amateur had failed to kill the English code-breaking bitch. Now he, Georges, had been sent to the far ends of this miserable, rain-sodden country to track down some scarred nitwit of a girl. Except she’d managed to escape, and it was no coincidence that it had happened at the property of her neighbor, Lord Ravenwood, the English spy known as Hades.
Georges knew Raven. They’d crossed paths on a handful of occasions in Europe over the past decade, never close enough to engage, but close enough to recognize each other by sight. The world of spying was relatively small. All the major European players had a reputation in the field, and Raven was no exception. His code name was appropriate. He was rumored to be a devil in a fight, unforgiving and merciless. Much like Georges himself.
He almost admired the bastard.
It had felt good cutting the throat of that London scholar, Edward Lamb. Georges smiled. Such a stupid name; he’d truly been like a lamb to the slaughter—he’d barely even put up a fight. The little lamb hadn’t bleated though. He’d stubbornly refused to reveal the location of their senior code-breaker in Spain.
Georges detested such pointless heroism. These stupid English, with their mad German king and their corpulent prince. They should have risen up and lopped off their ruler’s head years ago, as his brothers in France had done.
Georges sighed and huddled deeper into his greatcoat. Defeat left a bitter taste in his mouth and there wasn’t even a decent bottle of wine to be had in this piece-of-shit country to drown it out. It would be a pleasure to return to France, even if he’d have to tell Savary about his failure to find the Hampden bitch.
It took Heloise another few hours to translate the remaining coded messages, but they were no more helpful than the others, and she returned to her room and sank onto the bed, battling an overwhelming sensation of anticlimax. She plucked at the fringed cover of the bedspread. If only she could have done more, discovered where Kit was being held. But life was never that convenient, or that kind.
According to Scovell, Raven had gone to try to locate a contact who might have heard of the man called Alvarez. She had little hope that talking to his informants would yield any results. Alvarez was surely an extremely common Spanish name.
He hadn’t needed to be so bossy, either. Her irritation grew as she thought of his high-handed order to stay. As if she were a good little dog. Now that there were no more codes to read, she’d outlived her usefulness. No doubt Raven was wishing he could send her packing, on the next ship home. But of course he wouldn’t do that, because of his own perverse, self-appointed role as her protector.
A whisper of defiance unfurled in her chest. Raven had no right to order her around. She’d done everything he’d asked of her. Come with him to this godforsaken place. Translated his codes. Faced her worst fears in order to cross that dratted river.
The rest of her staid, conservative life stretched ahead of her like a prison sentence, an eternity of dutiful acquiescence and good, proper behavior. The faces of Lord Collingham and Lord Wilton floated in her mind and her defiance coalesced into resolve. She was not under arrest. She’d come here of her own free will. Sort of.
This was her last chance for an adventure.
She found Scovell in his study, deep in a weighty tome on linguistics. He glanced up with an absentminded frown.
“Well then, my dear, what can I do for you?”
“I’ve been thinking I might visit the caves at Altamira. With your permission, I’d like to borrow some men to escort me.”
“Would Lord Ravenwood mind, do you think?”
Heloise tossed her head. “Lord Ravenwood has no interest in seeing the caves.” That, at least, was perfectly true. “Since there are no more messages to translate, I’ll be returning to England shortly, and I would like to see the caves before I go. I want to see whether there are any visual similarities between these pictograms and Egyptian hieroglyphs.”
Scovell gave a genial shrug. “What an interesting idea. Well, I suppose they aren’t too far. Only a few miles. If you leave now you’ll be back before sundown.” He gave her a twinkling, paternal smile. “And I’m sure the men would be more than happy to oblige you. Squiring a pretty lady around the place is bound to be far more popular than guard duty,” he chuckled.
Heloise’s escort turned out to be the skinny youth who’d served them tea, whose name was Private Canning, and his superior officer, an enormous Irishman with twinkling eyes and a nose that was permanently squashed to the side, called Sergeant Mullaney.
She smiled in delight as they rode out of the city gates, reveling in the open air, and quashed a twinge of guilt at disobeying Raven’s orders. He’d been exaggerating the danger to frighten her into obedience, and besides, she had two strong, armed men with her.
She turned to her escorts, curious to learn more about people so far removed from her own usual social circle. “So, Private Canning? How long have you been in the army?”
The young man jumped in surprise at being directly addressed and she watched in amusement as a tide of red crept up his neck and over his cheeks. His voice cracked a little as he spoke.
“ ’Bout a year, miss. Joined up right after Waterloo, I did.”
His accent, she noted, was pure East London. “And what did you do before you were in the army?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I were a palmer, miss.”
Heloise frowned, mystified. “What’s that?”
Canning looked down sheepishly. “A pickpocket,” he mumbled.
Heloise laughed in delight. “Oh! Were you really? How fascinating! I’ve never met a pickpocket before.” She really should have included something like this on her list. Make disreputable acquaintances whenever possible.
Canning had clearly anticipated disapproval because he looked a little surprised at her enthusiasm. “I never stole from anyone who’d earned their money,” he defended quickly. “Only rich bucks too stupid to hide their cash. Flaunting it, come to town to blow their allowance. They could afford it. All they lost out on was a new cravat or an extra bottle of claret. I needed the blunt for the doctor, ’cause me mum was sick.”
Heloise bit back a smile. He was just like Raven, with his warped sense of morality. Both had dubious notions of right and wrong, but an oddly pure code of ethics. It was an intriguing contradiction. Besides, who was she to disapprove of someone trying to care for their sick family? She’d probably have done the same thing.
“I weren’t one of ’em sneeze lurkers, neither.” Canning wrinkled his nose in disdain. “That’s them wot throws snuff in a mark’s face. I had skills, me.” He held up one thin hand and wiggled his fingers. “Lightest touch in St. Giles.”
His cockney accent became more pronounced as he reminisced.
“What did you steal?”
“ ’Ankerchiefs mostly. They’re not attached to belcher chains, like watches, see. Easy to sell, too. Unless they got letters on.”
“Letters? Oh, you mean an embroidered monogram,” Heloise said. “How exactly do you go about it?”
“First you got to pick the right place. Somewhere there’s lots of jostlin’, like a fair or a market. Public executions were always good. Then you make one big contact with your mark—bump into ’im hard on the shoulder, say, or trip and fall up against ’im. He’ll be so busy concentratin’ on that, he won’t notice your ’and in ’is pocket. It’s misdirection, see?”
“I see,” Heloise said, enthralled.
“I got a good face for it, too. I look much younger than I am. All innocent, like.” Canning shot her a cheeky grin. “No one never suspected me. If they grabbed me, I’d just furrow my brows and act like I was scared, or about to cry, and suddenly I was the victim. Most of the marks ended up apologizing for bumping into me!” He chuckled, utterly unrepentant.
“So why did you stop?”
He shrugged his thin shoulders. “A few of me mates got nabbed and sent to the Clink. I realized it was only a matter of time before I ended up there, too. After Waterloo the army was cryin’ out for new recruits—they’d lost so many men, you see, and they was offerin’ regular pay and decent meals, so I signed up.” He sniffed eloquently. “It’s not so bad, really.”
Sergeant Mullaney’s hearty laugh interrupted him. “Young Canning thinks it’s deadly dull here.”
Canning scowled. “I didn’t join the army to sit around doin’ nothin’. I still ’aint never seen no action. Never even fired my gun, ’cept in practice.” He glumly patted the long-barreled rifle slung over his shoulder.
Mullaney shrugged. “Better peace than war. Give me dull over exciting any day.”
“ ’S all right for you. You’ve been in hundreds of battles.”
Mullaney leaned across and gave Canning’s hair an affectionate ruffle then he turned to Heloise. “A slight exaggeration. But I’ve seen some action, right enough.”
“Mullaney was in the division.” Canning whispered the words with reverence, his face worshipful.
Heloise frowned. “And, ah, what’s that?”
“The light division,” Canning explained with a touch of asperity.
Mullaney nodded. “Seven years in the 52nd Light Infantry, I was. Under Colonel Colborne.”
“Goodness. You must have seen a lot of fighting.”
“Yes, ma’am. Corunna was my first taste of it, back in ’09. Got nicked on my arm at Ciudad Rodrigo in 1812.” He rolled up his sleeve to show a long, jagged scar. “But I was good for Toulouse and Bayonne, and then of course Waterloo, this time last year.”
Heloise regarded him with new respect. “What was it like? Waterloo?”
Canning nodded, his face eager. “It must have felt pretty fine to give Boney ’is last good thrashing.”
Mullaney’s eyes took on a faraway look, as if he’d turned his gaze inward. Heloise recognized that expression. Raven had it sometimes, when he spoke about his imprisonment.
“I was at the farm at Quatre Bras.” Grim lines bracketed Mullaney’s mouth. “That first French cannonade lasted for two hours. Then came the cavalry. Lads were dropping like flies. The ground was churned up, all trampled crops and corpses of men and horses.”
He shook his head. “Three days we were at it. Back and forth, advance and retreat. The French had double the guns we had, but they got stuck in the mud. Old Boney would try with the cavalry and we’d push ’em back. We lost over half our men.” Mullaney’s face held the haunted look of a man recalling countless horrors. “Just when we thought it was all over, that we were done for, the Prussians under Blücher came round the right of the enemy’s line. That was when we knew we had ’em.”
Heloise found herself leaning forward in the saddle, straining to hear the story.
“The Imperial Guard came at us and we went in with our bayonets. It was a mud bath. You could hardly see for the smoke, hardly hear for the screams and the crack of the shot. A Frenchie came at me and made a thrust at my groin with his bayonet. I parried, and cut him down through the head with my sabre. Then a lancer had a go. I threw off the lance to my right and cut him up through the chin.” He demonstrated the move with an imaginary sword, so lost in his memories he seemed unaware of how unsuitable such gruesome detail was for a lady’s ears.
“When the Imperial Guard broke ranks the whole French army turned tail and ran.” Mullaney looked a little dazed. “There was such an odd silence when the firing suddenly stopped.”
He shook himself out of his reverie and turned to Heloise. “Didn’t realize I’d been wounded till it was all over.” He lifted his shirt to reveal a hideous slash to his side. The puckered skin ran in an angry welt from his hip to his ribs and Heloise winced in sympathy. It made her own scar look like the tiniest of scratches. She shuddered and glanced over at Private Canning. His eyes were wide in his pale face. He looked like he was about to vomit.
Mullaney turned to him. “They say it was a great victory.” He snorted. “But Wellington understood; he said there’s nothing worse than a victory, saving a defeat.” He patted Canning’s shoulder. “Don’t go wishing yourself into battle, son. There’s no glory in bloodshed.”
Heloise decided it was time to lighten the mood. “And what did you do before you joined the army, Sergeant Mullaney?”
“Me? I’m an emperor of the pugilistic arts. A lad of the fancy.”
“A boxer,” Canning translated. “A prizefighter.”
Ah. That explained the broken nose.
“I went nine rounds against Gentleman Jackson, once, at Tom Belcher’s place in Holborn.” Mullaney’s chest puffed out proudly. “He gave me a right blinker that time, but I still beat him.” He chuckled at the memory. “That’s how I ended up in the army. Jackson became a recruiting sergeant. The sneaky blighter convinced me to sign up one evening after I’d had a few too many pints.”
They came to a fork in the road and Mullaney turned his horse to the right. “Nearly there, miss. The caves are just along here.”
Heloise let out a relieved sigh. If she could see the caves and get back before Raven, he’d be none the wiser. And if he happened to get back first, well, there was still nothing he could do about it, was there? What was the worst he could do? Send her home? He was going to do that, anyway.