“This is the Spectre you speak of?” Kent said tersely. “He’s blackmailing you?”
Pompeia gave a dull nod.
“What hold does he have over you?” the duchess said.
“You know what I was. You have to ask?” Pompeia’s smile conveyed the opposite of mirth. “He is threatening to provide my husband and thetonwith a document outlining in explicit detail my actions during the war. The men I killed, the men I… was associated with.”
Gabriel hadn’t expected to feel empathy for his old comrade, but the anguish and self-hatred in her eyes… it was like staring into his own looking glass. She might have abandoned them during their last mission and escaped the beatings that he, Tiberius, and Cicero had been subjected to. Yet it seemed even she hadn’t emerged unscathed.
“We all do things we regret, my lady.” The husky words came from Mrs. Kent, who sat with her husband on an adjacent loveseat. “You were working in service of your country, and in a time of war, right is not always clear from wrong—”
“It is to my husband. Blackwood is an honorable man and knows nothing of my true past. He thinks that I come from a good family, that I was raised abroad until I returned to London that Season when we met. But I’ve lied to him from the start. From the very beginning, I’ve deceived Blackwood,”—Pompeia’s voice cracked—“and he will never be able to forgive me.”
Silence blanketed the room. Gabriel thought Pompeia’s assessment was dead on. Chances were slim that her husband—that any man—could forgive such deception.
“When did the Spectre first contact you?” Kent said quietly.
Pompeia’s face was bone-white. “Two months ago. An unmarked letter appeared at the top of my correspondence, and I recall opening it at breakfast. I could hardly fathom what I was seeing: Spectre’s code and handwriting in front of me… as Blackwood sat not three feet away.” Her lips gave a betraying tremble. “The letter named names from my past and threatened to expose me if I didn’t bring five thousand pounds to a park near Russell Square three days later.”
“You gave the blackmailer money?” Gabriel said.
“A sapphire bracelet to be precise. I didn’t have that sort of money lying around and couldn’t raise it without Blackwood noticing. But I wasn’t about to be bled dry. I went that day prepared to silence our old foe if need be,” she said with the ruthlessness he remembered, “but the Spectre never showed. He sent a street urchin to collect, and I tried to follow him, but my skills had gone rusty. The sprat lost me in the rookery.” Her lips twisted. “When I received the second blackmail note, I was informed that my disregard of the instructions would cost me. For this next payment, he demanded ten thousand dollars. That is why I had to give him the necklace.”
“Forgive me for asking,” the duchess said, “but wouldn’t Lord Blackwood notice the absence of such expensive jewelry?”
“I had replicas made to wear. High quality glass. My husband is generous but not a connoisseur of jewels,” Pompeia said dully.
“But the Spectre didn’t get the necklace today.” Thea nibbled her lower lip. “How will you prevent him from following through on his threat?”
Helplessness glimmered in Pompeia’s eyes even as her hands balled. “I don’t know. But I would do anything—anything at all—to protect my husband from my past.”
“We will help you,” Thea said.
What?
“We have a common enemy, after all, and thus would benefit from working together,” she went on brightly. “Don’t you agree, Tremont?”
“No,” he said.
The fact that he had a twinge of sympathy for Pompeia didn’t mean that he trusted her. Even if he believed that she wasn’t the Spectre, years of antipathy didn’t vanish in an instant. He couldn’t forget that her actions had indirectly led to the fiasco in Normandy. To his torture and the death of Marius.
As if reading his thoughts, Pompeia said coolly, “You never were the trusting type, were you, Trajan?”
“I prefer to stay alive,” he said.
Pompeia rose. Good manners prompted the men in the room to follow.
“You’re the one who brought me here,” she said in biting tones. “I never asked for your interference. I can handle the Spectre myself.”
“No, you can’t,” Thea said.
Precisely. Gabriel couldn’t agree more. Even though he didn’t trust Pompeia, he didn’t want her off on her own, potentially scaring off the true prey. It was best to keep her under close watch.
“And neither can Tremont,” Thea added.
He scowled at her. “I bloody can and will.”
“Is it a rule of espionage that agents must be stubborn?” she said mildly. “The fact is that the both of you need to work together in order to capture this spymaster.”
