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Nate blinked. “Ten years? Christ, you must have been a child! How in the name of God did you fall in with him then?”

“I was eighteen, hardly a child.”

“Hardly a seasoned killer,” he retorted. “Why?”

“I didn’t start with him as a killer,” she said, fighting to keep her tone even. “First I was merely to spy and report back. Then to follow people, from time to time. Then…” She sighed. “It just crept in.”

“Ten years,” he repeated, sounding dazed still. “How does an eighteen-year-old young lady get involved with the likes of him?”

She laughed bitterly. “Lady? I am not a lady. One needs money to be a lady, and family, and a name. I was an alien orphan, raised by my mother’s maid who was too afraid to use my real name for fear French partisans might come after us, even years after they killed my parents. The Terror, monsieur, had a strong effect on Mélanie.”

Some of the anger and shock faded from him. “Have you no other family at all?”

Angelique shrugged. “Only distant. My mother’s cousin married an Englishman and she gave us money for a few years. Then she died, and her husband had no desire to continue paying. We had some hard years, Mélanie and I. I had to work as soon as I could, and a dressmaker took me young because I spoke French and Russian.”

“Where did you learn Russian?” he exclaimed, looking startled again. “And why?”

“There was a servant boy who lived near us, in the home of a Russian emigre.” She smiled, remembering dragging her feet through chores until she saw Kostya’s pale, narrow face, pinched with strain from the loads of coal he had to carry up and down the stairs to heat the house. Despite that, he was always ready to laugh. “He was my friend. I was good with languages. Kostya taught me his language, and I taught him mine. Our English we learned together.” She shrugged, the smile fading. “By then, Russia was a French ally, and the English were nervous the two would turn on them. I was recruited to eavesdrop on several Russian ladies, wives of diplomats, who patronized the dressmaker shop where I worked. It was nothing much in the beginning, just listening while I fitted them and reporting what they talked of. Then…” She spread her hands. “It grew. I did more and more.” Nate said nothing, just looked at her with dark, somber eyes. “I needed money, if you must know,” she added sharply. “Mélanie had met Mr. Carswell by then and wished to marry him, but she would not do so as long as I lived with her. Mélanie gave up everything for me—for my mother—and I could not keep her from her own happiness.”

“No,” he murmured. “Of course not.”

“The British paid me well, and they kept revolution and war away from England. Not that England was untouched, but there were no armies marching in the streets and no killing in the fields. After Napoleon was no longer a threat, there were others, within London itself, malcontents who wanted to overthrow the government and start anew. Faugh!” She swept out one hand. “They have forgotten how easily that could become a bloodbath. My parents and thousands of others died because malcontents ran unchecked over a country, killing everyone in their path who opposed them. Even killing a king was not enough for them. I could not stop that, but I could prevent it from happening again.”

“You stopped a revolution from a dressmaker’s shop,” he repeated. “With the gossip of ladies.”

She breathed deeply, hardening herself against what was to come. “No. By then I worked only for Stafford. He is the spymaster, you see, and his people are everywhere. He and his master, Lord Sidmouth, trust no one. If they deem someone a danger, that person will be sure to suffer some terrible, deadly accident. I am good at causing accidents.”

“How is a cut throat an accident?”

She shrugged again. “Footpads. Thieves. Leave a body in the right place and people will ascribe all manner of sins and perversions to him. They will think he reaped his proper reward. London is not a kind and gentle city.”

He gave her a keen glance. “Well, neither is New York, to be honest.” His shock seemed to be wearing off. “But why would you prefer a knife, when a pistol would be so much more to your advantage?”

“It makes too much noise. I have killed a man in a hackney carriage and removed his body without the driver ever suspecting.”

“Why?” Nate’s eyes glittered. “What did he do?”

“Conspired to assassinate Lord Bathurst, who directed the governor of St. Helena,” she said shortly. “He was a Frenchman still loyal to Bonaparte and felt Bathurst was responsible for his emperor’s ill treatment. Stafford wanted no opportunity for him to rally supporters yet again.”

Again he looked thunderstruck. “And you just reached out and slashed him?” he demanded incredulously. “No, that wouldn’t kill him. It must be a hard, deep cut to kill before he could fight back.”

“No,” she said, a little surprised he knew that. “I let him open my bodice, and while he was feeling my breasts I put my knife into his throat.” She touched the hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse beat a tocsin. “Place the tip of the knife here and drive forward with all your weight. It pierces the throat fatally, and requires little strength.”

The silence was deafening. Angelique waited calmly, hiding behind a placid face. He looked as shocked as if she’d put a knife into his throat, gutted him and betrayed him. Her stomach roiled until she tasted bile in the back of her throat. This was why she’d tried to avoid becoming entangled with him; this was why she’d tried to push him away. She had known this was inevitable, and oh God, how it hurt.

“Good Lord,” said Nate quietly, his face pale. “At least the fellow died happy.”

It was so incongruous, so unexpected, her mouth dropped open.

“And then you probably just dragged him out of the carriage by holding his arms around your neck,” he went on, as if thinking it through. “On a dark night, in an unlit street, the driver would see a man embracing a pretty girl and never notice the blood.”

She swallowed. “He had a long cloak,” she whispered. “That, and a generous douse of gin, concealed a great deal.”

He crossed the room, lifting her chin until she looked at him. “He was the first, wasn’t he?” She gave a jerky nod. “And a Frenchman. Ah, damn. My deadly darling.” He pulled her into his arms, resting his cheek against her temple.

Angelique clutched at him, unnerved by how much she wanted his comfort. Her hands shook with remembered terror of that first kill; she had drunk almost as much gin as she splashed on her victim, to keep her nerve from breaking. He’d been French and handsome, a slim, clever fellow who wanted to kill an earl and rescue Bonaparte to lead a vengeful sack of London. She’d only agreed to kill him after she became convinced he might succeed, terrorizing the city and leading to hundreds, even thousands, of needless deaths. He’d been so easily persuaded she wanted the same revenge on the English, the same anarchy and upheaval, because she was a Frenchwoman. After shoving his body into the river, she’d thrown up all that gin and not eaten again for two days.

“So,” Nate mused, “Stafford chose you because he wants Dixon dead—with presumably no trace left of him. I always wondered… But that means he lied to me as well. How did he plan to trundle me out of England without Jacob Dixon, since I was perfectly explicit that my orders were to take him home for trial?”