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“Don’t look so surprised,” Marie said. “I knew you had every intention of betraying us, just as I intend to betray your countrymen.”
“How do you know?”
Marie smirked. “Morton is a fool, and he trusts entirely too easily. But I had my suspicions about you from nearly the moment he told me about you,” she explained. “He just saw you as the perfect scapegoat, blinding him from the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That you are Lord Hawthorne,” she said. “I followed you one night out of the rookeries to Hawthorne House. I doubt you ever suspected a woman was following you.”
“I did not,” he replied, keeping his gaze on the street.
“Women are often overlooked here, are they not?” she asked. “The British don’t seem to think women make very good spies, but France has been using women for years in subterfuge.”
Marie tilted her head. “Although, you may have noticed me following you, if you hadn’t been so distracted by Mademoiselle Dowding.”
He clenched his jaw so tightly that a muscle below his ear began to pulsate. “Did you abduct her?” he growled.
“I did,” she replied unabashed, “but I have no intention of killing her, assuming you move forward with our plan.”
“Where is she?”
“In the outbuilding behind the orphanage,” she answered.
Baldwin glanced over at her. “You are lying,” he declared. “That building was searched by a teacher at the school.”
Marie smiled victoriously. “That would be me.”
“You worked at the orphanage?”
“I was the French teacher,” she shared. “Mademoiselle Dowding’s solicitor helped arrange the job for me so we had a place where I could build a bomb without causing suspicion.”
“Am I to assume you were the one who abducted and killed Miss Hardy?”
With a shake of her head, Marie replied, “I don’t know why you sound so surprised. Miss Hardy started asking too many questions, and she became a liability. You, of all people, should understand that.”
“You didn’t need to kill her.”
“But I did,” Marie said. “I don’t like having too many loose ends.”
Adjusting his grip on the reins, Baldwin asked, “Why did you betray Morton?”
“I have no doubt that your agents raided the Blue Boar the moment we drove away,” Marie said. “I could have warned him, but I found him rather irksome.”
Baldwin slowed the wagon as a street urchin ran into the street, passing right in front of the horses.
“I was sent by a group of radicals in France that wanted to ignite a revolution in Britain,” Marie continued. “But I decided I would much rather seek revenge on Lord Desmond. After all, he was one of the agents that betrayed my father.”
“I had no idea that Lord Desmond was even an agent.”
“Soon, it won’t matter,” Marie said. “After the machine infernale blows up Fieldstone Square, Lord Desmond will be dead.”
“If your entire plan revolves around killing Lord Desmond, why do you intend to kill all those innocent people?”
“No one is truly innocent,” Marie spat out. “Your people are fools for living under the oppression of the mad King George and his worthless son, Prinny.”
“Your logic is faulty.”
“Perhaps, but at the end of the day, I will still be alive, and you won’t.”
