She pressed her fingers to her eyelids as though her head pained her. “To seek lodging on rue Cadran.”
“There is no one awaiting you there?”
“As I said before, there is no one waiting anywhere.”
A duplicitous person might say that when even as she spoke, confederates were searching out her location. A person with little concern for her own safety might be telling the truth.
“You are unconcerned that I know you are alone.”
“You imply, I think, that I ought to be alarmed.” Her gaze was direct, the striking blue color he’d noticed by daylight in Dover muted in the dim light. “Would I gain some extra degree of safety by claiming to have an army at my back? When you already have control of me? What do you hope to gain by intimidating me, M. Blackmore?”
Her French was Parisian, grammatically flawless, but in it he marked the traces of some other accent. There was a lilt on some words, an unexpectedly guttural inflection on others. What was it?
“Perhaps I find it curious that you trust me with the information.”
“I have little reason to believe you trustworthy in the slightest,” she said drily, “but the end result is the same.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I am here, where I do not choose to be, with no means of changing it. Painfully aware, after this past hour, of my current physical limitations. I gain no advantage by claiming otherwise.”
“Are you not afraid?”
“You asked me that once already. It cannot matter to you whether I am.”
It shouldn’t.He changed tactics. “You knew me as Lieutenant Blackmore.”
“Knew you as? Is it a secret, then? Not well-kept, if so. Your companion in the public room in Dover hailed you as Lieutenant Blackmore. You’ve the bearing of a career officer even were you nameless.”
Not Grady’s mistake, greeting Nate by name. He wasn’t an agent. He’d served under Nate on the Peninsula; now, he was a valuable source of information and more than happy to cooperate when his access to information at the London Docks was of use.
No, the mistake is mine. I should have been more cautious.Generally, meetings in public places attracted less scrutiny than those that had the appearance of secrecy, but not this time.
“Were you sent to follow me?”
“By whom? To where?” A slight frown marred her forehead. “Here? You’ve asked more than once if I’m alone or who is expecting me.”
He waited.
“No!” She struck the settle’s edge with the flat of her hand. “I did not know of your existence until Dover, nor had I any intention of listening to your conversation there. I was in the public room at the Gull’s Wing.Youchose the adjacent table, if you’llrecall; I was already seated. I caught your greetings to one another. A few phrases beyond that. I found it curious when you boarded the packet as Mr. Beaumont—again, not information I sought of my own accord. I was waiting my own turn to board as the harbormaster hailed you.” She took a deep breath. “Is it surprising I would find it curious?”
He was considering her accent along with her words. He’d been in France enough during these three years past to discern some of the subtle differences between various accents. “Do you always remember the names of strangers?”
“Before your voices dropped, I heard the name Compton, and it was that which caused me to commit to memory your name,Lieutenant Blackmore.”
Not a native of France despite her fluency. “So your interest is with Compton?”
Her gaze was no less penetrating than his. “Is yours?”
Rather than answer, he asked in Flemish, “Are you perhaps from Wallonia? Or Flanders?”
Her face registered no surprise at either the change in topic or its content.“Non.”A hesitation and she added, still in French, “I did live in Brussels and Antwerp for some months.”
He considered the implications of her understanding both query and subtext but not responding in Flemish. “Was this during the Hundred Days?”
He’d asked the last in English; she answered likewise. “During and after.”
“Are you a widow in truth?”
Her mouth tightened. “My husband died at Waterloo.”
“You followed your husband to the Continent?”
