your wit.’
‘None of the gentlemen at Bow Street has my inside information. Is it too personal? I will understand if you don’t wish to say any more.’
Elliot drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. His instincts were to confide in her, though common sense told him that by doing so he was taking an unwarrantable risk. Not of deliberate exposure, she would not do that, but an inadvertent comment, a remark let slip in the wrong company—how could he be sure she would not do that?
He just knew. She was as close as a clam and, of her own admission, she lived like a hermit. Besides, he wanted to tell her. He wanted her to know. ‘You were right about my victims,’ he said. ‘They are very carefully selected. All of them were at some point responsible for the supply chain—or lack of it—to the army. Medical supplies, orderlies and doctors, boots, basic rations, horses. Most of all horses. They kept us short of all of those things, because after all, what does an army need to fight except guns? Even if you can’t get the guns to the battlefield. Even if you can’t get the men wounded by those guns misfiring back to a field hospital. What do they care? They don’t,’ he said flatly. ‘I know they don’t because all my letters and protests and reports fell on deaf ears at the time, and now—well, now it is done and everyone wants to forget all about it, so there is even less point in letters and reports and protests.’
‘So you take what will hurt them instead.’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I do.’
‘Did you lose many men because of such shortages?’
‘Yes.’
‘Friends, too? Forgive me, but it seems to me such a very personal thing you are doing, there must have been someone …’
‘There was. My best friend.’ Elliot gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles showed white.
‘Henry,’ Deborah said gently. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Elliot nodded curtly.
‘I truly am sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you; you don’t need to say any more.’
‘I want to,’ Elliot said, surprising both of them. ‘I want to tell you.’ He swallowed repeatedly, cleared his throat. ‘We joined up together, Henry and I, I told you that already. We worked our way through the ranks together, though he was much too ill-disciplined to keep his stripes for long. He made it to captain once, but it only lasted about six months. He was a first-class soldier. We always looked out for each other. When I needed an extra pair of hands, I always turned to Henry. He was quick with his fists, but he knew the importance of keeping other things close, which was important in my—my alternative line of business.’
He paused. Across from him, Deborah was gazing at him intently. Would she be shocked? He doubted it, somehow. More likely excited, as she was by the Peacock. That decided him. ‘The thing is, I wasn’t just a fighting man. There’s a reason why the Peacock is so able.’ He grinned. ‘Actually, it’s ironic that the very skills I learned in order to steal secrets are the same ones I use to steal their property now. Most of which, I hasten to add, was stolen in the first place.’
Deborah stared at him in utter astonishment. ‘You mean—what you’re saying is that you—you stole? At our Government’s behest? But why? What did you—oh! My God, you were a spy?’
He should have known how she would react. Her eyes were sparkling. Elliot laughed. ‘Yes, I was.’
‘Good grief! No wonder civilian life bores you. You must tell me—I wish you will tell me—I don’t know—anything, all of it—no, I don’t expect you can tell me all of it. Goodness, what secrets you must know.’ Deborah chuckled. ‘How horrified the likes of Jacob would be if they knew. You are quite right, Elliot, it is irony past price. Can you tell me more? Were you a master of subterfuge?’
Danger, even if it was vicarious, certainly brought her to life. ‘I’m afraid it was rather more mundane than that. If anything, I was a master of patience.’ He told her a few choice stories because he liked to see her laugh, because he found her laughter infectious, and he told her a few more because returning to the subject in hand was too painful, but he underestimated her.
‘He must have been more like a brother than a friend. Henry, I mean,’ Deborah said suddenly, interrupting him in the middle of a story. ‘What happened?’
‘He was wounded in the Pyrenees during the siege on San Sebastian. He took a bullet in the leg, above the knee. It smashed the bone—he’d have lost his leg, but it shouldn’t have been fatal. Only they couldn’t reach him because there were no carts and no mules.’
‘Oh God.’ Deborah covered her mouth, her eyes wide with horror.
Elliot’s knuckles were white. ‘For more than a week, he lay in agony in the blistering sun with his wound festering. He died of a fever a few days after they finally got him to the field hospital. I was with him, at the end, though he hardly recognised me. He died for want of a mule. A mule!’ He thumped his fist down hard on the chair. ‘But what do those bastards in the War Office with their lists and their budgets know of that? What does it matter, when a man with one leg would have been no bloody use to them anyway? What do they know of the suffering, the agonies that Henry and thousands like him went through, and what do they care now for the survivors?’
‘But you care,’ Deborah said, shaken by the cold rage. ‘You care enough to steal from them, to make reparations for them, is that it?’
‘The money goes to a charity which helps the survivors.’ Now that he had opened the floodgates his bitter anger, so long pent-up, demanded expression. ‘Someone has to help them,’ Elliot said furiously. ‘While they fought for their country, their country learned how to do very well without them. Now that the Government no longer needs them to surrender their lives, their limbs and their hearts on the battlefield, it has decided it has no need to reward them with employment, back pay, pensions. It is not just the men, it is their widows and children who suffer.’
‘I didn’t realise,’ Deborah said falteringly.
‘Few people do. All they see is a beggar. Just another beggar. Proud men, reduced to holding out a cup for alms! Can you imagine what that does to them? No wonder so many cannot face their families. And they are portrayed as deserters, drunkards, criminals.’
The scar which bisected his eyebrow stood out white against his tan. The other one, which followed the hairline of his forehead, seemed to pulse. How many other, invisible scars did he bear? His suffering made hers seem so trite in comparison. The grooves at the side of his mouth were etched deep. His eyes were fierce, hard. Deborah trembled at the sorrow and pain they hid, such depths, which made shallows of her own suffering. ‘I just didn’t know,’ she said simply. ‘I am quite ashamed.’ The truth was so awful, it made her conscience seem like a paltry consideration. ‘I wish now that we had taken more from that house in Grosvenor Square.’
Her vehemence drew a bark of laughter from Elliot. ‘Believe me, over the last two years, the Peacock has taken a great deal more.’
‘So it is a war of attrition that the Peacock is waging, is that it? And of vengeance?’
Deborah’s perception made Elliot deeply uncomfortable. He was not accustomed to thinking about his motivations, never mind discussing them. ‘What do you know of vengeance?’ he asked roughly.
Enough to recognise it. Deborah hesitated, surprised at the strength of her urge to confide, but the very idea of comparing their causes appalled her. Besides, his voice held an undertone of aggression that warned her to tread lightly. He obviously thought he had said too much already. She could easily empathise with that. ‘The painting that we stole,’ she said, seeking to lighten the subject, ‘you knew about it because of your spying, didn’t you?’
‘You’ve no idea how much ransacking and looting goes on in the higher echelons in wartime. That painting was a bribe.’
To Deborah’s