Page 67 of The Secret Librarian
‘Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are, Avery?’
She blushed, about to remind him that they were supposed to be friends, and that she’d only come up to pass the time and have a drink with him. But William took her hand, and his fingers were soft as they stroked her skin. When his gaze lowered to her mouth, she faltered.
‘May I kiss you?’ he asked.
Avery nodded, just the slightest incline of her head, and his lips crushed against hers within seconds, moving softly then more firmly, kissing her passionately until she pulled away, gasping for breath. William smiled down at her, running his fingers along her jawline and then slowly down the soft skin of her neck, sending shivers through every part of her.
‘I realised while you were in the bathroom that I’m out of Scotch or anything else for us to drink,’ he said, his voice low and almost raspy, as if he’d been smoking too many cigarettes. ‘I’m going to go down to rustle up a bottle of champagne for us, if you don’t mind being left alone for a moment?’
Avery dabbed at her mouth, hoping her lipstick wasn’t all over her face. ‘Of course.’ She was happy to have a moment alone to right herself, and to try to make sense of what had just happened.
‘I’ll be back shortly, don’t go anywhere,’ he said, taking her hand and pressing a quick kiss there before taking a few steps backwards and then disappearing out of the door. ‘And then dinner, I promise!’
Avery dashed into the bathroom and checked her appearance again, righting her smudged lip colour, before going back out into the room. She sat on the bed and then promptly stood again, not wanting to be on the bed when he came back into the room in case that gavehim any ideas. So for something to do, she opened his closet, took out a spare coat-hanger, and picked up his jacket to hang it up for him. But something fluttered from the pocket and she bent to collect it, wondering what he had in there, expecting it to be a letter.
It was a map, crudely drawn and folded down to roughly the size of her palm, and when she turned it over she saw names written there. But it was when she saw the nameCamillethat a shiver ran through her. Avery had no idea what she was looking at, or why he’d have her friend’s name on there, but she knew that something wasn’t right, that it wasn’t something he should have in his possession. And then she turned cold, as if ice was trickling its way down her spine.
It always pays to ask the doorman on the way in who’s ordered champagne. You see, whoever orders a celebratory drink was the winner of today’s battle.
She swallowed, still gripping the coat-hanger in one hand as she dropped the jacket to the floor, James’s words echoing in her mind. He’d told her that night at the hotel, when he was teasing her about becoming a good spy, and it was something she’d never forgotten. The Germans were the ones drinking champagne downstairs in the hotel bar – she’d seen Camille walking past them and recognised them as Kiefer’s Nazi friends. And when she and William had passed them to reach the hotel lobby, she’d noticed multiple empty bottles discarded on the table.
So why was William so insistent on them drinking champagne? What success could he have possibly had, if it hadn’t been a good day for the Allies?
Avery bent down and picked up his jacket again, feeling all the pockets, and this time she found a receipt for a large amount of money, dated today, as well as a small handful of loose diamonds. Why would he have diamonds on him?
She set them on the table as the truth dawned on her, as everything slowly fell into place in her mind. Suddenly nothingabout William added up, and she realised that the only reason a man like him would have loose diamonds in his pocket would be if he had been paid for something with them.
The double agent wasn’t James. It had never been James. The double agent was the man ordering champagne when the other Allied men in the bar were drinking whisky, the man who seemed too good to be true, who’d slipped past Camille’s defences and convinced both of them that he was nothing more than a charming Brit.
She knew that it was him, just as she knew her original instincts about James had been right, too. William was the traitor, and instead of trusting her gut, she’d turned her back on James and blindly followed the real double agent all the way to his room.To his lair.
William is the British man responsible for the death of Camille’s husband. It’s been William all long!
But Avery didn’t have long to think about her discovery, as just then she heard footsteps and the sound of the doorknob turning. She considered leaping across the room and trying to lock it, but she didn’t know where the key was and she wanted to avoid a confrontation at all costs. She could plead a sore stomach or a headache, she could dash past him as soon as it opened, anything but try to barricade the door and let him know that she knew.
But when the door opened, it was clear that William did know. His eyes scanned the room, taking in the fallen jacket, the coat-hanger dangling from her fingers, the table and, she imagined, the fear reflected in her gaze.
He was holding a champagne bottle in one hand, two glasses in the other, but the second his eyes met hers, he kicked the door shut behind him and calmly set the glasses on the table. He was still holding the neck of the champagne bottle as he began to slowly stalk towards her, and even if she’d wanted to scream, the lump in her throat stole her voice and left her powerless to make a sound.
Chapter Twenty-One
Camille
Camille reached into her bag as she walked through the hotel, placing her hand on the pistol and wrapping her fingers around it. She felt calm, as if every step of the past year had been building up to this moment, and she was ready for it. She’d made peace with the fact that it might not make her feel any better, that it would do nothing to ease the pain that ached so deeply inside of her, but at least she’d know that she’d done everything she could to avenge her husband’s death. And to stop anyone else being deceived – to prevent more lives being lost.
When she neared the bar, Camille slowly and steadily took the gun from her bag and pressed it into the man’s back, snug against his spine.
‘Hello James,’ she murmured.
He stilled and she didn’t move, careful to keep her body tucked close to his so that no one could see what she was holding. But the men in the hotel bar were too busy drinking and smoking to notice a woman with a gun, anyway – she may as well have been invisible. All they saw was a pretty face – beyond that, they didn’t seem toregister a thing. She might have been amused if the situation were different.
‘Turn around. Slowly,’ she said, taking the pressure off a little but still keeping the pistol closely trained on him.
‘Camille, what are you doing?’ he asked, staring steadily into her eyes when he turned.
She was surprised by how calm he was, but then she supposed that a man like him was used to talking his way out of tricky situations, of deceiving those around him. But she wasn’t going to let him talk his way out of this one, and she most definitely wasn’t going to let him do anything that took her attention off the gun in her hand.
‘I know who you are, James. I know that you’re a double agent, that you’ve been working for the Nazis,’ she said, keeping her voice low as she glared at him. ‘I know you’ve been in France.’
