the least of her talents. At any rate, the ploy worked well enough until another émigré recognized him for who he was. He then fixed his mind on returning to France and retaking possession of his various business enterprises. In order to do that, the French royalty had to be reinstalled on the throne. Zoé decided to help him by volunteering to work for the Crown.”
“A woman? And so young? That’s insane.”
Max crossed one long leg over his knee. “Yes, thank you. I totally agree. Except for one thing—she’s damn good at what she does, especially with languages, which was how she managed to be taken on in the first place. But they soon knew the treasure they had. She’d already been active for over a year before I was paired with her, very much against my wishes I might add, as I was considered to be the student, and her the mentor.”
“I can see the reasoning, however,” Gideon interrupted. “A man and woman, traveling together, don’t raise as much suspicion as a man, or men, traveling together.”
Max nodded his agreement. “She’s a piece of work, brother, and raised to the blade, I suppose you’d say. Fences, shoots better than most men, the way she handles a knife should make any prudent man nervous and she’s killed more than once when the situation called for violence. She can play the lady with the best of them, probably ten times better than Kate, but she’s solid steel beneath that fetching exterior. Cold, hard steel. And she’s deadly smart.”
“With all these unique, commendable charms to lure you, there was no question you’d become lovers,” Gideon said flatly, ignoring the rest.
“Good on you, as Valentine would say. Yes, we became lovers. Together day and night. She’s beautiful, I’m a man. We were in a dangerous business, never knowing if we’d live another day. It was inevitable.” Max took a deep breath. “And then she decided working with the French was more profitable than a pittance from the Crown and the chance to save the world, one might say.”
Gideon frowned. “Let me make an assumption here. The father died.”
“Even with the return of the monarchy, Zoé could never lay claim to her father’s possessions and property, not as a female. Did I mention she’s also practical?”
“You knew about the father’s death?”
Max avoided his brother’s gaze, instead watching his own movements as he turned back his unbuttoned cuffs. That had always bothered him, that she hadn’t told him. Damn, he could do with a drink. “Only afterwards.”
“After what, Max?” Gideon asked quietly.
“After three agents she betrayed had been lined up outside the cottage where we’d occasionally rendezvous, trussed up like animals bound for market and shot in the head. Two Englishmen, the third French. All good men. I could have been lying there with them, but I’d spent the night meeting with a courier bound for London after gathering information from the other agents I’d summoned to the cottage, and didn’t return until the next morning to find— I told you what I found.”
“You won’t mind if I say I prefer you alive.”
“Thank you. Before you ask, yes, Zoé had been at the cottage when I left, but she was gone. The only one still alive was another late arrival, Anton Boucher, one of our French agents. He handed me the letter Zoé left behind.”
“Not surprising. Women always feel this overweening need to explain, especially when their hearts are involved,” Gideon said, nodding. “What did she write?”
“What I’ve already told you. Her father was dead and she’d sold her talents to the French. She would be miles away before I returned in the morning, and it would please her if I didn’t follow her, hoping to change her mind.”
‘Did she admit to killing the other agents?”
“She never mentioned them, but what better way to prove herself to the French than to turn over names and locations to them? Was she there when it happened, or already on her way to Paris? I don’t know. But one way or another, those deaths are on her head. Oh, there was something else in her note about how, as much as she’d cared for me, the time had come for her to take care of herself, as being a country wife would never suit her.”
“Cared for you? Jesus, that’s cold. No wonder you’ve been such a bear these past months, so much so that Val supposed you’d sworn off women or some such thing. Quite a blow to your pride, amid everything else, being cared for by the woman you love. My sympathies, brother, on the whole of it.”
“Again, thank you,” Max said shortly, feeling his cheeks go hot. “Look, I don’t want to go over this and over this. Boucher and I buried the bodies to hide them before both of us raced off to warn our other agents for fear Zoé had exposed them, as well, traded names I may have inadvertently told her for whatever the French had promised her. I had no secrets from her—as you pointed out, I loved her. I trusted her with my life. And before you ask, of the two dozen or so agents we had in place, five more died before we could successfully locate and warn them.”
“Eight agents suddenly out of the field. That must have been quite the blow to Perceval. And to you, of course.”
“None of this is about me, Gideon, and clearly never was. As for Zoé, she’d miscalculated, badly. It would appear the French weren’t about to trust her to be loyal to them any more than she had been to England, something she might have learned from England’s own Benedict Arnold. The last I’d heard, she’d been locked up in some Paris prison. Now may I be excused, your lordship?”
“I don’t think so, no,” Gideon said. “You can be a bit of a hothead, Max, much as I love you, not to mention having more than your fair share of pride. Dead agents, spurned by your lover—hoodwinked by your lover? I can understand your reaction, but do you still feel the same way eight months later? How do you know she wasn’t forced to write that letter? How do you know she wasn’t betrayed by someone, as well, even this other supposed late arrival, this Boucher fellow?”
“You should pen novels. To be truthful, I’d been concerned about him for some time—we’d been having a few too many more failures than successes, I thought—although I had no real facts. Just my suspicions, which I’d included with my other intelligence sent off with the courier. He would have been the first I’d suspected, save for one thing, one indisputable fact.”
“I’d be interested in hearing that one fact, if you could indulge me.”
We’d laughed together, cried together... “Anton’s nephew Georges was one of the executed agents. The boy was barely eighteen, his dead sister’s only child and the apple of Anton’s eye. That left only Zoé, for nobody else knew of our rendezvous spot. Nobody. Boucher didn’t betray us. It was all on Zoé. The only reason I can think of that she’s still alive is that people like us are commodities, often to be traded, exploited, which makes me doubly curious about how and why she was released.”
“Or escaped.” Gideon got to his feet, turning the chair around, placing it carefully. “You’re in a dirty business, brother, and I can’t say I’m pleased with the Max standing before me now. It may be time you left his majesty’s service. It may have been time eight months ago.”
Max bristled. “We were suddenly rather short on agents, and then you came to me about the Society and we decided it would be best if I worked the thread from the Continent.”
“And God forbid you could have told me the truth, or I never would have asked that of you.” Gideon looked at him for long moments and then nodded his head almost imperceptibly. “Water already passed beneath the bridge, leaving us with that creature upstairs. I know you’re full of questions, as I am myself. If she was offered her freedom in exchange for selling her talents to someone—well, let’s just say it and have it out in the open, shall we? Is it too large a leap of conjecture to believe she’s now found employment with the Society?”
Max didn’t bother to deny he’d already wondered the same thing. “Very good, brother. I told