Rendezvous (9781301288946) (7 page)

"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.

Reserving any further judgment on
Merchant, Sinclair moved to the next name on the list: Quentin
Crawley. Well, Quentin certainly traveled about enough to qualify.
But a smile tugged at Sinclair's lips. He did not often trust
merely his intuition, but he would be astonished if Crawley turned
out to be the one he sought. As Mrs. Varens had pointed out,
Quentin very much enjoyed ‘playing spy,’ but to involve himself in
any real danger, the precarious position of being a
counteragent-Sinclair doubted that Crawley possessed the steady
nerves such a deception would require.

On the other hand, Sinclair thought,
his gaze resting on the last name, there was Isabelle Varens
herself, cool, sophisticated, obviously intelligent. Sinclair did
not doubt that Isabelle had the courage to take such a risk. One
didn't earn a sobriquet like Avenging Angel from one's peers for
being a timid soul. And Isabelle traveled freely on both sides of
the channel. She had balked at the notion of working with Sinclair,
declaring her intention of telling Merchant he must make other
arrangements. That, of course, Sinclair did not intend to let
happen. Isabelle could have been genuinely angry about the kiss, or
she could have a more sinister motive. It would not be easy for her
to contact Napoleon with Sinclair tagging after her. Thus far, of
all the names on the list, she seemed most likely to be Bonaparte's
spy. Sinclair dipped his quill pen into the ink-pot and underscored
her name with a thick line, only to frown and follow it up with a
question mark.

He kept remembering how soft and
enticing she had felt in his arms, how warm and sweet her lips. Yet
he had had no business attempting to kiss her. He felt almost
grateful that she had slapped him, bringing him to his senses. He
knew some men might consider seduction a good method for gaining
information, but Sinclair had his own code. He did not bed women in
order to learn their secrets and then betray them.

In truth, he had not been thinking of
information at all when he had held Isabelle, only the flaring of
his own desire. That disturbed Sinclair more than anything else. He
was no saint by any means. He had a keen appreciation for beautiful
women, but he had always known how to check his passions until the
appropriate place and time. What was it about Isabelle Varens that
overrode his natural caution? Beautiful, she certainly was, but he
had known many beautiful women before. Perhaps it was Isabelle's
more elusive qualities. An aura of mystery seemed to cling to her,
her fine sculpted features touched by a deep sadness even when she
smiled.

When he had asked about her husband, he
had seen the haunted expression in her eyes, as though some specter
from her past had risen to torment her. Sinclair rarely felt
protective impulses toward women, but he had had an astonishing
urge to cradle Isabelle Varens against him, lay all her ghosts to
rest.

A loud clatter from the region of the
fireplace disrupted his wandering thoughts. Startled, he glanced
up, having all but forgotten his brother's presence in the room.
Charles, in the act of removing his boots, had accidently kicked up
against the fire irons.

"Sorry," Charles muttered. "Are you
nearly finished, Sinclair?"

"Another minute or two," Sinclair said
with a grimace. Chuff never could sit still for more than five
minutes at a time.

Sinclair set the list aside and dragged
his attention back to Colonel Darlington's letter.

“This will be your last contact with
headquarters. All further information will be provided to you by
our agent in Paris. From this time on, I advise no further
communication with your family, especially your father.”

A wry chuckle escaped
Sinclair.

Charles was warming his stockinged feet
by the fire. But he paused to peer round the side of his chair at
Sinclair. "I never knew old Darlington was given to cracking
jests."

"An unintentional one," Sinclair said.
"He tells me not to communicate with Father. Apparently he doesn't
heed the gossip in the officers' mess or he would know that the
general and I have not been communicating for years."

Charles looked unhappy and cleared his
throat. "You know, Sinclair, that if there was any message you
wished to send him, I have a few days' leave coming. I will be
seeing Father. . . ." Charles's words trailed off and he seemed to
be holding his breath, awaiting Sinclair's reply.

An unendearing image of General Daniel
Carr rose to Sinclair's mind—a ramrod-stiff bearing, steel-gray
hair, and cold green eyes. A handsome man despite his advancing
years, Daniel Carr’s features were so rigid, he might well have
been an effigy carved from stone. Sometimes, when glancing into a
mirror, Sinclair wondered if he would look like his father in
thirty years' time. The thought scared all hell out of
him.