Page 5 of Bargaining with the Devil

He steeled himself. “The Foreign Office wasn’t much interested at the time in a few minor players who slipped away, not with the masterminds taken down. But one of those minor players is making a move himself now, has both them and the excisemen riled up.”

Her knuckles were white, fingers gripping her skirt. “I don’t see how that has anything to do with me. Or my safety.”

’Twas here now, the moment. “’Tis to do with Jeremiah Compton.”

Her face blanched as the name knifed through her. “He’s dead.”

“Aye. But his brother isn’t.”

“His—brother?” Her voice broke. “I didn’t know he had a brother. It wasn’t that sort of . . . relationship.”

“Half brother, properly. Different fathers, same mother.” And same criminal tendencies, only Stephen Lymington had kept his shady interests confined squarely to Britain until his brother’s death two years ago.

“I told Nathaniel—told Nathaniel everything. When I was still in France.” She was pale yet but visibly more composed, her features a cold mask. Although ’twasn’t purely composure. She’d gone a bit vacant behind the eyes again. “I told him everything I could think of that might be of any use at all. Everything I knew.” She took a shuddering breath and looked straight at him. “You were in the room.”

Aye, he’d been there, all right, one of the agents involved in setting a torch to an entire British operation to free her from Compton’s snare.

Chapter 3

Two years earlier . . .

November 1816

Île-de-France

Lucy was dizzy, heart racing and breath shallow. She closed her left hand hard over the first finger of her right hand, where Maman’s ring glinted. The ring was real. She’d believe the rest real too only once she and her sister were in one another’s arms.

Isobel’s vehement words asking her to come home repeated like a refrain in her mind: You are and will forever be my sister. My Lucy. Will you come home?

Except she wasn’t the Lucy her sister remembered.

Oh, how very little she’d understood of life eight months ago when she’d left London with Theodore Garnewood, naïvely secure in her adoration for him. How quickly girlish dreams turned to unspeakable nightmares when he abandoned her. No, worse—all but sold her to pay off a debt, leaving her friendless on a ship bound for France. And how quickly that bitter lesson in heartbreak, that betrayal, was succeeded by far harsher tutelage in Jeremiah Compton’s merciless hands.

She’d made such a terrible mess of things. But yes, she wanted to go home, whether she deserved it or not. Impossible as that outcome seemed.

Isobel assured her during their unexpected, all-too-brief encounter that these men were trustworthy, but Issy’s confidence was the thinnest of lifelines. Other than Isobel, she hadn’t an abundance of faith in anyone anymore.

The man currently beside her, hand on her elbow, had sought her out at the Théâtre de la Gaîté during the second intermission, just as planned. He’d whispered to her in Spanish-flavored English that his name was Pereira. Maman’s ring, the very ring she’d seen for herself on Isobel’s finger three nights before, was the token, the sign to follow whomever held it. Even so, she didn’t fully trust him. She must trust Isobel’s judgment instead.

How Isobel had found her, she didn’t yet know. Only that she’d come to Dubois’s depraved club in the company of Mr. Beaumont three nights before. His apparent licentiousness was an act on his part, Issy had quickly explained, allowing him to infiltrate Compton’s illegal activities with the goal of ending them. Isobel had somehow come to pose as his mistress.

Isobel had come to Paris to find her. She must take this chance then, for herself and for Isobel.

They’d made it through the ornate doors now. The slanting late afternoon sun hit her eyes; she blinked, adjusting to the piercing brightness.

The grand stone stairway in front of the theater now, descended one careful step at a time.

Now stepping onto the pavement that bordered the boulevard du Temple, an inch nearer freedom with every footfall.

She drew a full breath, the first time in weeks, surely. No, months.

It was almost over. These harrowing months in Paris would soon be only a memory—if these men succeeded in escorting her safely away from the theater.

Pereira shifted to walk a half step behind her, hand on the small of her back. “There’s a fiacre waiting just down the boulevard,” he murmured. “Another of our men, Quinn, waits there. You will ride inside with him while I drive.”

Nerves desiccated her mouth. She jerked a nod in confirmation, not trusting her voice.

A commotion of some sort erupted behind her. She turned her head just as a pistol cracked.