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Once she’d started living with him, he’d done his best to turn her into a proper lady, but Evie wanted to do whathedid. What her cousins did. She made a very good spy, even if neither her uncle nor cousins wanted to admit it.
Perhaps saving the captain’s life would help her prove otherwise. Though her uncle was likely to lose his temper when she admitted what she’d done with her time in Paris.
Moving through the crowd with practiced ease, dodging groping hands on the way, Evie replaced Birgitte at the captain’s side as she left to get him a drink—at least, Evie assumed that was what he’d tasked the other woman with by the end of their conversation.
His eyes drifted over the tops of her breasts before rising to meet Evie’s eyes, and she smiled at him. She could tell from the expression on his face, he was about to dismiss her, thinking her one of the usual lightskirts.
Evie leaned down, so her ample cleavage was directly in front of his gaze and spoke low in his ear. The din of the crowd around them would keep them from being overheard, but Evie had learned that caution was never a wasted effort.
“Have you put your wager on the north wind yet?” she asked in French.
“Excuse me…” It seemed to take a moment for him to understand her words, then he froze.
Blinked.
Looked up at her far more carefully.
Evie met his gaze and smiled.
To anyone else in the room, it would appear as though they were flirting. To the captain, she had just revealed herself to be a fellow agent of the Crown, with a dire message for him. Her uncle’s agents used individual code phrases for each mission, but there were some that could be used at any time, and the emergency phrase was one of those.
“I had ten francs on the west wind,” he replied, his gaze now cautious and wary, though he tipped his head back and appeared as though he was studying her lips and face, perhaps deciding if she appealed. He was good at this.
Good enough, Evie felt her pulse quicken in interest under his intent gaze. The way his eyes roved over her made her skin tingle. She cursed inwardly, but there was nothing she could do about her body’s inconvenient response to him except try to ignore it.
“The south wind is going to take the win.” Straightening, Evie crooked her finger at him and turned to go, her hips moving and skirts swaying to show off her ankles where they were hiked up on either side. Across the room, she saw Birgitte and nodded her thanks.
Birgitte was one of the many young women Evie had cultivated for information. Men overlooked women in general, their ladybirds and tarts in particular. Sex loosened a man’s tongue even more efficiently than alcohol, especially among men who were trained to watch what they said. For some reason, they held their tongue among other men, but what they held back came out during pillow talk.
That was how she’d learned of the trap for the captain. The general had boasted to Melody, who had told Birgitte, who had informed Madame Dupont, who had sent a note to Evie.
A year ago, Evie had saved Birgitte from an importuning lord who had decided she was going to be his personal courtesan—whether she willed it or not. He’d been attempting to kidnap her from the street when Evie had intervened. That had led to their friendship and Evie’s introduction to Madame Dupont’s. None of them knew who Evie really was, of course, but they accepted her as one of their own.
As she swept up the stairs, she could feel the captain’s presence behind her without looking to check if he was there. What was it about him? No man had ever affected her the same way he did.
Evie was no chaste virgin. Between her time on the streets and in Madame Dupont’s, there was very little she did not know about sexual relations, even in the areas where she did not have experience, but she had never feltthisbefore.
She did not like it one bit.
* * *
Anthony
Glancing over his shoulder at the room, the woman who had originally met him had already moved on to flirting with another man. She didn’t seem at all upset at her apparent loss of income. He had caught the look exchanged between her and the woman he was now following—the woman who, somehow, had known the emergency phrases for English spies.
What the bloody hell was going on?
As far as he knew, there were no female agents. Not really. Not any that Camden would send into hostile territory like this. At most, he garnered information from diplomats’ wives or daughters, learning what they overheard in ballrooms and salons.
Which meant this was either a trap, or Camden had been keeping secrets. Either seemed possible, but Anthony remained wary.
They passed through the hallway, and the sounds coming from behind the closed doors made it clear what the activities were within. What was a female agent doing in a brothel? While she was exceptionally attractive and could likely attract high-end clientele, Anthony would have expected someone with her looks and bearing to be an exclusive courtesan—not reside in a common brothel in one of the worst parts of Paris.
The woman opened a door and walked through it. Anthony followed warily, but the room was sparsely furnished. The biggest danger would be someone hiding in the wardrobe.
Hurrying over to the window, the woman glanced outside, then turned around to face him.
Again, he was struck by her beauty in a way none of the other women downstairs had stirred him. It was something more than her physical beauty. There was an attraction between them that fairly sizzled in the air. In another place, at another time, his only interest would have been exploring that attraction.
