Read Online The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne - Free Book Online

Robert. She weren’t best pleased.”
    â€œI’m not trying to please her.”
    Doyle slopped wine into a glass, then added water till the deep red went pale. “I don’t like what you’re planning for that girl.”
    â€œI’m listening.”
    â€œFirst off, I don’t like dressing Annique Villiers in some whore’s castoffs.” Doyle nodded to the bright dresses heaped on the table. “That’s what Roussel had in the storeroom—the leavings of some ladybird who flew off without paying. It’ll fit her, but it’s brothel wear.”
    â€œShe’s worn less in the service of France.” He picked up a dress. The complex, enigmatic blue was the color of her eyes. Thin, soft cotton clung to his fingers. Brothel wear. “Very nice. Paris work.”
    â€œNot the garb to blend into a Normandy village, is it? She won’t get far if she gets loose.” Adrian took the glass. “There’s a bench in hell reserved for men who water good wine.”
    Doyle poked around the tray and helped himself to a flaky square of pastry. “You can read print through some of those dresses. It’s going to be distracting.”
    â€œShe could wear sackcloth and be distracting.” When he put Annique in this, she’d look like what she was—an expensive courtesan, a woman born to entice men. She sold those sweet little breasts like apples in the market. “I watched her take Henri Bréval down with a cosh she slid behind her skirt. These won’t hide a toothpick.”
    â€œYou’re making a mistake, Robert. She’s one of us. One of the best. She’s been in the Game since she was a child. You don’t take one of the great players and treat her like a doxy. You put her in that nightgown or one of these flimsy dresses, and you’re going to start thinking she’s a whore.”
    â€œShe’s not. For one thing,” Adrian chased vegetables around the bottom of the bowl, “she can kill you with the odd bit she finds lying around the house.”
    â€œShe’s probably stropping something down to a sharp edge right now.” Doyle scratched the scar on his cheek. It was a clever fake. When he wore it a long time, it itched. “She’s not really safe, left alone for any length of time. I do wish that girl worked for us.”
    â€œNo, you don’t.” Grey crossed the room, hunkered down at the hearth, and set a thin log of beechwood on the fire. They’d need more wood in here. Adrian would feel the chill if his fever came back. The flames teased him with images, flickering and writhing. In tongues of fire, a dozen Anniques danced Gypsy dances, gleaming with sweat, sleek with scented oil. “She was at Bruges.”
    He could feel the change in the room.
    â€œBruges,” Doyle said.
    â€œI was in the market square, in the café by the tower, waiting to be met. On the other side of the square was a half-grown Gypsy boy, juggling. He had four or five knives in the air, laughing. Enjoying himself the whole time.”
    â€œAnnique,” Doyle said.
    â€œAnnique.”
    â€œI’ve heard she makes a reasonably convincing boy.”
    â€œI didn’t know she was a woman till I saw her at Leblanc’s.”
    He’d nursed a cup of coffee, there in the square at Bruges, letting himself soak in some of that joy and brightness, letting it seep through the tense watch he was keeping. He’d remembered, later, that he’d been glad to see that boy. “He made a game of it, throwing ’em, hitting small, exact targets. Collected a fair capful of coins before he wandered off.”
    â€œShe’s good with knives. Not up to the Hawker’s standard, but good.”
    â€œNobody’s up to my standards,” Adrian said.
    There were pinecones in the box on the hearth. Grey lay a few on the fire and shifted logs with his fingers, coaxing a draft in. “An