Read Online One Night With a Spy by Celeste Bradley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Celeste Bradley
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rousing bed play. Unfortunately, Julia wasn't so sure any longer that she would enjoy being with Elliot. His reaction when she'd outlined her proposal had been rather lukewarm. He'd begun to seem a bit… depleted, somehow. As if he were half a man—
As if he were half the man that Marcus Blythe-Goodman is.
She slapped away that annoying thought the way she would a gnat. Marcus was a boor and a lout and a great deal too distracting—
Marcus, eh?
Damn, she was doing it again.
And who said the man was even pursuing her? He had called on her, just like all the others, yet he'd scarcely spoken until she had addressed him first, never joined in with the social chatter, done nothing but watch her with those eyes…
She shivered. Sometimes she had felt as though he hated her, then she would catch a glimpse of heat shimmering like the green light in a jungle—
Ridiculous. The man was simply not to be borne. She had much more important things to think about.
Before Aldus's death, she had been running her own investigation into the man the Liar's Club called the Chimera. The Liars were very good, but she had sources in a world that they could not touch.
No one could penetrate the tight, nomadic society of the fair folk unless one was one of them.
There was no way to infiltrate, investigate, or otherwise gain access to the traveling fair folk. Not the finest of the Liars could pass in that world… but she could.
From the center of her web at Barrowby, the strands of her intelligence-gathering spread out over England and all of Europe—for what did festival players care for wars and borders? Her information came fast and fresh, spread like lightning through the ranks of the showmen, the accuracy preserved in the long-standing oral tradition of the "Say."
As there was nothing to do now but wait for the final decision of the Three, she might as well take up the threads of her latest investigation once again.
The Chimera had last been seen on Cheltenham lands in Durham County and she knew the Liars and the Three considered the man to have drowned beneath the wheel of a crumbling mill.
Julia was not so sure.
The Chimera had slipped through their defenses again and again. He'd assumed the guise of a young bag man of the streets and insinuated himself into the household of the previous spymaster, Sir Simon Raines. He'd then been passed from household to household among the more highborn Liars as a valet until Rose Tremayne, the first lady Liar—and Julia had been very interested in the career of the young housemaid Rose Lacey from the beginning—had become suspicious of him.
Trust a woman to see through the man's disguise.
In addition, it had been the Falcon's operative, his cousin Lady Jane Pennington, who had been the one to realize that the uneducated young valet, Denny, was in fact the French spymaster, the Chimera. The fellow was a brilliant master of disguise and seemed to have an eerie ability to sense and recruit England's dissatisfied and aimless for Napoleon's cause.
Yet such a man had died beneath a mill wheel? Julia didn't think so.
The body had never floated to the surface—something the Lion had explained away by the fact that the bottom was riddled with years of accumulated grasping sunken branches.
The Liars were making inquiries, she knew, but the fact remained that the Liars were still undermanned from the Chimera's attacks and only the first class of new trainees had graduated from the Liar's Academy. With man—and woman!—power so short, Julia somehow doubted that the Liars were expending their energies searching for a dead man.
Enter the traveling players.
In every corner of England and Europe, a "Say" was being spread about an evil man who could change his face and manner at will, a man of small stature, who might even now be ill from a near-drowning. The showmen loved such a tale and even the tiniest child would soon be on the lookout for such a man as they played the last of the harvest
As if he were half the man that Marcus Blythe-Goodman is.
She slapped away that annoying thought the way she would a gnat. Marcus was a boor and a lout and a great deal too distracting—
Marcus, eh?
Damn, she was doing it again.
And who said the man was even pursuing her? He had called on her, just like all the others, yet he'd scarcely spoken until she had addressed him first, never joined in with the social chatter, done nothing but watch her with those eyes…
She shivered. Sometimes she had felt as though he hated her, then she would catch a glimpse of heat shimmering like the green light in a jungle—
Ridiculous. The man was simply not to be borne. She had much more important things to think about.
Before Aldus's death, she had been running her own investigation into the man the Liar's Club called the Chimera. The Liars were very good, but she had sources in a world that they could not touch.
No one could penetrate the tight, nomadic society of the fair folk unless one was one of them.
There was no way to infiltrate, investigate, or otherwise gain access to the traveling fair folk. Not the finest of the Liars could pass in that world… but she could.
From the center of her web at Barrowby, the strands of her intelligence-gathering spread out over England and all of Europe—for what did festival players care for wars and borders? Her information came fast and fresh, spread like lightning through the ranks of the showmen, the accuracy preserved in the long-standing oral tradition of the "Say."
As there was nothing to do now but wait for the final decision of the Three, she might as well take up the threads of her latest investigation once again.
The Chimera had last been seen on Cheltenham lands in Durham County and she knew the Liars and the Three considered the man to have drowned beneath the wheel of a crumbling mill.
Julia was not so sure.
The Chimera had slipped through their defenses again and again. He'd assumed the guise of a young bag man of the streets and insinuated himself into the household of the previous spymaster, Sir Simon Raines. He'd then been passed from household to household among the more highborn Liars as a valet until Rose Tremayne, the first lady Liar—and Julia had been very interested in the career of the young housemaid Rose Lacey from the beginning—had become suspicious of him.
Trust a woman to see through the man's disguise.
In addition, it had been the Falcon's operative, his cousin Lady Jane Pennington, who had been the one to realize that the uneducated young valet, Denny, was in fact the French spymaster, the Chimera. The fellow was a brilliant master of disguise and seemed to have an eerie ability to sense and recruit England's dissatisfied and aimless for Napoleon's cause.
Yet such a man had died beneath a mill wheel? Julia didn't think so.
The body had never floated to the surface—something the Lion had explained away by the fact that the bottom was riddled with years of accumulated grasping sunken branches.
The Liars were making inquiries, she knew, but the fact remained that the Liars were still undermanned from the Chimera's attacks and only the first class of new trainees had graduated from the Liar's Academy. With man—and woman!—power so short, Julia somehow doubted that the Liars were expending their energies searching for a dead man.
Enter the traveling players.
In every corner of England and Europe, a "Say" was being spread about an evil man who could change his face and manner at will, a man of small stature, who might even now be ill from a near-drowning. The showmen loved such a tale and even the tiniest child would soon be on the lookout for such a man as they played the last of the harvest
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