The Hunger (24 page)

The woman with the kohl around her eyes was probably the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, including Lady Lente. Even in the large receiving room of the Emperor Bonaparte, among the flower of the French Empire and against a backdrop of lace and silk and gold braid, she put them all to shame with her air of the exotic. She even smelled exotic. It was somehow familiar. Around the room, eyes secretly followed her. She was the toast of Paris, a curiosity, if you will, who had taken the town by storm. He could imagine this woman getting whatever she wanted. But a mastermind of French intelligence? It hardly seemed possible. He wondered if Dupré had left him false information to lead him a merry dance.

“You are too kind.” Her smile was brittle. The Comte de Fanueille claimed her as wife, whether or not she actually was. “But I hear you are far from poor, Monsieur Presset.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment. Barlow had chosen his cover well. John was supposed to be patriotic, extremely wealthy, and enamored of young boys; in short, a pigeon with weaknesses, ripe for the plucking. Barlow said Asharti and her comte could always use money. But just because she was greedy, it did not prove she was a mastermind of spies. “There are many kinds of riches,” he said. “Beauty, for one.”

“You are wise, monsieur, and politic.” She surveyed the room. “I know what you want. Let me introduce you to the emperor.” John was very glad that he had consorted with the man’s sister in Sicily rather than in Paris. Yet it made him uneasy. He hoped Pauline was still in Italy.

The emperor wore heeled shoes that only emphasized the fact that he was extremely short. John could see his scalp through thin hair and he was roughly pear-shaped—altogether unimpressive. It was difficult to imagine this man ruling all of Europe, having risen from obscurity in a backwater like Corsica. Fanueille was the one who looked like an emperor. He glanced at the comte, tall and straight in regimentals overdecorated with gold and medals. He had very fine mustachios, but seemed . . . staid, workmanlike, probably pliable; just the man “the comtesse” needed to front her ambitions. Not the center of an intelligence operation.

“Monsieur Presset has been supplying cloth from England in his ships for our soldiers’ uniforms. Isn’t that brave of him?” Asharti asked rhetorically.

“But yes,” the emperor said, sipping champagne.

John’s heart contracted, in spite of his best intentions. Beatrix always drank champagne. He forced his attention to the emperor and a vacuous smile to his face. “The least I can do,” he deprecated. “You must tell me when I can do more.” That should give them the opening they needed. But Asharti was smart enough not to jump upon the first opportunity.

“I had a report today from Champollion. He is almost done with translating that stone they found in Rashid, or Rosetta as the English call it,” she remarked to her emperor.

“So you will be able to read that strange picture writing so in evidence in North Africa, my dear.” Bonaparte patted her hand. It was not quite avuncular. “Though what you expect to gain from knowing what all those people long dead were saying to each other, I cannot hope to guess. Probably bills from their tailors.”

“Perhaps.” The woman’s eyes became hooded. There was something more she wanted from reading those stones. “I have sent Fedeyah on ahead to scout likely locations.”

“And you will be pestering me for louis by the cartload for expeditions, I expect.”

Ah, this was an innocuous opportunity. “I might have an interest in funding such expeditions. Ancient treasures are all the rage. That could be lucrative.”

There were secrets in her eyes as she said, “Oh, yes.”

“Then perhaps my lady could spare some time to fill me in on the details?” He raised a glass of champagne to his lips, held with three fingers only.

She looked him over. The tiniest hint of amusement lurked in her eyes. Did she enjoy his impudence, or had she smoked out his ruse? His cover was carefully designed so that if she sensed he was dissembling she would first imagine that his reputation as one who liked his own sex best was the deception and that his purpose was to invade her bed under the noses of her comte and the emperor. “Delighted. Shall we say at sunset tomorrow? Twenty-seven Rue Bonaparte.”

He nodded seriously. He had his private meeting with her.

The emperor smirked. “You have saved my treasury for the war effort,” he remarked. “I cannot seem to tell that woman no. Beware, Presset.”

Oh, he was very likely to beware.

He escaped to his hotel. He lay in his bed, hearing the small sounds of night in a hotel wind down. What a shame to kill such a creature! He must do it himself, of course. He had to know it was done. And it would take two deaths. He would arrange it to look like Fanueille found her in bed with a lover—some ready groom or footman. An innocent, in fact. She would lose her life, the innocent would be slaughtered, Fanueille would be imprisoned, and Boney’s intelligence would have lost its mastermind without anyone knowing that England engineered it.

If he did not escape, he must take Barlow’s way out. He knew far too much. God forbid he should give them Barlow’s name. What could the French not do with Barlow’s knowledge? He liked to think he would stand firm under any circumstance, no matter how dire. But he feared in his soul that Barlow was right. He might break.

He had no illusion his country would thank him, even if he brought this off. He would be lucky if they did not murder him in his bed as a preventive measure. Barlow might regret it, but Barlow was a practical man. He lay listening to the staccato rain on the windows of his room. Paris in the spring. A longing for a simpler time came over him. Nothing was clean anymore, not Barlow, not himself, not his country. All he could cling to was that men, virtuous or not, deserved the right to be free. England was free and he would do his soiled best to keep her so.

She
would never know if he died here. What would Barlow say about his death? Put it about that he had gone to the Continent to avoid debtors, renounced the title? The estate would go to his second cousin, Grinley, who would find it in better form than he expected. But Beatrix would never know. God, couldn’t he get her out of his mind? She cared nothing for him. Wasn’t that enough to cauterize his wounded heart?

Apparently not. He glanced to the window. The sky had grown perceptibly lighter. He would hide here in his lair until his appointment with the comtesse. And put Beatrix Lisse out of his thoughts. This very evening he would kill a woman and an innocent, and ensure that another man stood trial for it. Oh, the glory of serving one’s country.

“So, my patriotic merchant,” Asharti, Comtesse de Fanueille, purred as she lounged on a delicate Louis XIV chaise upholstered in red brocade. “You are come to make me a proposition.”

They were alone in her boudoir of red and cream and gold at Twenty-seven Rue Bonaparte. John had counted on her receiving him in private, in her boudoir. It confirmed what she might suspect of his role. It would also make hiding what he was about to do easier. A fresh-faced young man with doe eyes had led him to the boudoir and now stood ready outside to answer the bell pull. He looked to be a secretary. How convenient. The only one who had seen him enter the house would be first into the room at the sound of a shot and would be the second victim. Was the young man really a secretary? He seemed slightly too . . . self-satisfied somehow. John pressed his lips together. It did not matter what he was. He would be dead shortly.

The comtesse looked . . . dangerous. Her eyes snapped beneath the feigned languor. Her supple limbs were disposed in careful disarray. She was dressed in old gold and Brussels lace, her breasts pale with a faint olive undertone in the square-cut neckline. It was cut so low her nipples might show their aureoles at any moment. Her eyes were not so dramatically lined with black tonight, but the eyelids were smudged with it and her lashes darkened, too. Her nails were longer than was fashionable and painted with gilt. She looked the picture of an exotic lioness, all
tawny strength and cunning. For the first time, John believed she was the first of spies.

“Or hear a proposition,” he said, sitting negligently in a dainty chair next to her. Over the mantel a water clock chimed eight. He had a small pistol tucked into the band of his trousers underneath his coat. It had only two shots, but that would be enough. One for the comtesse and one for the secretary. “I would know more of your expeditions. Do you expect to bring home treasures like the Elgin marbles?”

“I expect to find treasure beyond belief,” she said, pouring a brandy for him and one for herself. She drank like a man. “A legend of my people tells of a temple with a fountain made all of jewels. And that is not the real treasure, only a signal of the true riches within.”

“And you know where this treasure is?” He let himself sound skeptical.

“No. That is why we need the stone of Rosetta. I have hired scholars to translate the ancient texts and search out the location of the temple.”

“That could take years.”

“But as we search, we will find more than enough to fill one of your ships with ancient trinkets to sell to the idle upper classes for unconscionable sums.”

“Ahhh.” He flashed an expression of avarice, then frowned. “But we must take precautions. There is a disease abroad that has apparently afflicted several ships’ crews in the British Navy. The symptoms are quite disturbing.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Not to disturb your sensibilities, but you should know what we are up against. Drained blood.”

The comtesse’s smile turned into chuckles.

“You may laugh, my lady, but we will have trouble crewing ships when this leaks out” John managed indignation.

“I think I can guarantee that any ships we use will not be so afflicted.” She still could not suppress a smile. “I will provide the ship’s crew myself.”

So she knew what it was. “But the loss of a ship . . . the cost . . . Without knowing what is causing the phenomenon, how could we possibly . . .?”

She considered. “Actually, I know what causes the drained blood. It is no threat to us.”

He put on the skeptical look again.

“Curious? Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”

Dangerous ground. She suspected his motives. But what did it matter? She would be dead soon. She either told him what it was or she didn’t. He plunged ahead, drawing himself up with some hauteur. “I am a man of business, Comtesse, who risks his fortune in the service of our emperor. Have I not earned the right to a certain amount of confidence?”

She gave him a measuring look. “Vampires.”

“What?” The word jerked from his lips.

“The drained blood is caused by vampires, let loose upon the crew to suck their blood.”

Was she serious? “You mean the South American bat?”

“I mean men who have drunk the blood of a vampire and must drink blood themselves to survive. They have other unusual qualities, quite useful in our cause.”

She told him a fairy tale to make him angry. He couldn’t let his anger show. Time to cut his losses and complete his main mission. “Very well.” He rose and approached her. The butt of the pistol tapped against his side. He gathered himself. Now was the time. She lay back, contemplating him through half-closed, mocking eyes.

John pulled out the pistol in one smooth movement, aimed and shot her, straight through her lovely left breast and into her heart. The report was deafening in the boudoir. Her eyes went wide. A burgundy flower bloomed on the old gold of her dress. Acrid smoke hung in the air. She blinked where she lay on the chaise. The door crashed open and the young secretary stumbled in crying out, “My lady!” John turned the gun on him. The secretary
crumpled. John turned to the comtesse, or Asharti—whoever she was. He must get her to the bed, arrange her limbs (and the secretary’s too) in a tableau of interrupted passion and make his escape before the rest of the household rushed in.

She was still aware as he reached for her arm to pull her over his shoulder. He dared not hesitate, even for decency’s sake. The moment he pulled her up, he knew something was wrong. She was not limp at all. She stood, set her feet, and with incredible, startling strength, she pulled his arm, turned him about, and clasped both his hands behind his back in a grip that was more binding than the shackles of the hulk. He tried to twist away. A roar of anger filled the room and he felt a blow across the back of his head that blurred his vision. He staggered.

“Quintoc,” she called sharply. “Pull down that bell rope.”

John’s sight swam back toward normal, and he saw the pink-cheeked secretary stagger up, though his olive-colored coat sported a dark and spreading stain. How was this happening?

“Mistress,” Quintoc acknowledged, ducking his head, and grinning in a way that was very unlike a secretary. He jerked the bell pull from the wall with a single snap. John saw what was coming. He struggled against the grip that held both wrists again now. Could he not break free from a mere woman?

They bound his wrists so tightly he would lose feeling shortly in his hands.

“I have friends, madam,” he gasped. His senses reeled. “You cannot hold me.” Asharti pushed him to his knees. A servant peeked into the room, looked about, and then withdrew. Had not the man seen John, tied and kneeling? Did he not see the blood everywhere?

“Go change, Quintoc, and order up the barouche,” she barked. “I think we will take this one up to Chantilly.”
The secretary bowed and exited as though John had not shot him through the heart at point-blank range. She turned back to him. “Brave words, but pointless,” she sneered at John. “I am very powerful. No, my fine assassin, you will bend to my will now.”

John was stunned, not only by the blow to the head, but by the fact that he had been disposed of so easily. He refused to think how that had happened. Escape. He must focus on escape. With hands securely tied he would be reduced to head-butting his captress or kicking her. The door was closed and he had no hands to open it. He must wait for his chance. In the street. When they were bundling him into the carriage, perhaps he could wrench away.