Prologue

Rue St. Jacques, Paris

October, 1809





Mélanie Lescaut slid out from the weight of the sleeping man's arm. The air sliced into her bare flesh, but she sat stock still while she counted out three minutes. The fire in the grate had burned down to acrid embers. The sheets--fine linen from Provence--lay tangled about her legs, damp with sweat and the other raw remnants of the acts she and the man in the bed had engaged in.

A half-full glass of cognac stood on the night-table. A single candle (he'd insisted on leaving one lit) guttered in its chased silver candlestick. The clean beeswax light flickered over the man's wide cheekbones, his sleep-slackened lips, the puckered scar on his collarbone. He'd blackened his lashes to match his dyed hair. Traces of the blacking had smeared in the purple-shadowed creases round his eyes, but only someone trained to look would notice.

Julien St. Juste, the man lying in the bed beside her, was a legend among spies. Deadly with any weapon from poison to a blade, a master of disguise, so skilled at deception even his fellow spies couldn’t see through him. And she, an untried agent on her first mission, was going to try to outwit him.

Just the thought sent her heart hammering in her throat. She drew a breath. One step at a time. That was the only way she would get through this.

Three minutes and the even rise and fall of his chest hadn't altered. She pushed herself up so she had a better view of the room. The sheet slid over her skin, bringing the memory of trailing fingers. She suppressed a shiver and shifted her gaze round the room. Where might he have hidden a paper that was so valuable? The calfskin binding of the books on the low shelf against the wall? The frame of the oil (Fragonard or a good imitation) that hung over the writing desk? A secret drawer in the desk itself? Or somewhere at once more obvious and less obtrusive…

She looked back at the bed. Had he moved? Cold terror washed over her. But his hand was still curled the same fraction of an inch away from the water spot on the damask coverlet. She watched him a moment longer, willing her heartbeat to slow, then forced herself to look for more hiding places. The fluted walnut bedposts, still looped round with crimson silk cords. (She rubbed her wrist where the cord had bitten into her skin. No, she couldn’t afford to think about that). The thick goose feather mattress (not that please, how the devil would she manage to slit it open without waking him?).

Below the bed, a Turkey rug in indigo and blood red covered the floorboards. Surely a secret compartment beneath the floorboards was too unimaginative for a man of Julien St. Juste’s talents. And yet he had taken care to cover the floor with their tangle of discarded clothes. She remembered him tossing them about, while his fingers drifted over her skin, stirring feelings she had had no intention of letting herself indulge in.

The second glass of cognac lay tipped on its side amid the garments. The candlelight made hills and valleys of light and shadow out of the peacock blue silk of her gown, the white linen of his shirt and her chemise, the gleaming black cassimere of his coat and the silk of his pantaloons. Her satin-ribboned slippers had somehow landed halfway across the carpet, but his silver-buckled shoes stood neatly beside the bed, along with his walking stick. Her gaze moved on to the crumpled velvet of her opera cloak, littered with a jumble of jeweled hairpins that he’d removed one by one. She looked back at the walking stick. It had an elaborate handle of carved ivory. She'd assumed it was a swordstick. But--

Her gaze darted back to St. Juste. His blackened lashes still rested against his pale skin. His hand still lay, slack-fingered, beside the water spot on the coverlet. His chest still moved in the same even rhythm. She watched him a moment longer, putting off the inevitable. If he woke now, she could explain it away. Once she reached for the walking stick--

She squeezed her eyes shut, calling on reserves she hadn’t known she possessed. After one last glance at the sleeping St Juste, she reached down and grasped the cool wood of the stick. She twisted the ivory handle. It moved with the ease of frequent use. She gave another twist. If it was this easy--

Fingers closed on her arm. She spun round, still gripping the walking stick, and felt the press of cold steel at her throat. A glass-sharp blue gaze pinned her where she sat.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" he said in a voice that would have turned raw spirits to ice.