Page 102 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
Vicious satisfaction lanced through her. She bared her teeth in a savage grin.
“What’s the matter, Louis?” The words were knives, honed to draw blood. “Don’t like seeing another man’s claim on your belongings? I begged him for it, you know. And he obliged. Beautiful work, isn’t it?”
A truth chosen for maximum hurt and to grind salt in the wounds. To carve away his smug superiority and leave him wild and bleeding.
No escape now. Just his body looming over her, caging her beneath him. His eyes incandescent with fury.
“You think you’re so clever. But it changes nothing.” A shift of muscle, his free hand delving into a pocket. He extracted his dagger. “I’ll just have to remind you of your place, won’t I?”
He paused, studying her through narrowed eyes, searching for some tell. Some flinch or fracture.
Isabel breathed through the panic. She’d endure this. Endure him. Outlast his rage and emerge on the other side. She had before.
He caressed the blade down her torso, tracing idle patterns. Teasing. Torturing. Intimately familiar with how to unmake her. How to inject the maximum of malice into the lightest touch.
“I’ll peel his marks from you until not a single letter remains. Until all that’s left . . .” His dagger traced the elegant swoop of an R, the curve of the L. “. . . is me.”
“Louis,” she whispered, almost tenderly. “You have to know that this time will be different. Tie me up, make me bleed. But this time, we end with you dead at my feet.”
Then she bent forwards and sank her teeth into his bottom lip. Blood flooded her mouth. She gulped it down and bit harder, until he jerked away with a curse.
His chest heaved as he stared down at her. Without a word, he raised a hand and wiped the blood from his mouth. Then he smiled.
“Yes,” he said. Reverent. Trembling with a perverse sort of joy. “There it is. That wildness is why I had to have you. That’s why no other woman satisfies me.”
Favreau pushed off her. He hid his knife, adjusted his cuffs and smoothed his shirt. Donning civilisation like a mask, the monster subsumed beneath a veneer of cool refinement.
“I have a few minor arrangements to make before our departure. Should you get it into your head to try something foolish that involves a knife anywhere on my body, it won’t end well for you. I’ll have your agent taken apart, and you’ll stay strapped to my bed until you submit. Cling to that, hm? During the lonely hours ahead.”
And then he left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
Isabel counted breaths. Heartbeats.
She shifted, the movement sending bright sparks of pain lancing up her arms as the knotwork constricted. Already she could feel the trickle of blood, the sticky damp of torn flesh.
But now was not the time for weakness. Now was the time to wait. She had plans to make, a weapon to find. No matter what happened to her, Favreau’s life ended tonight.
Now was the time to put the monster’s lessons to good use.
Isabel got to work on the ropes.
29
Callahan hadn’t slept more than two hours. The safe house bed felt too big, too empty. And every minute Isabel spent with Favreau made his hands shake.
He trudged through Whitechapel. The rain had stopped, and puddles reflected the lamplight as he approached the Brimstone’s back entrance. Brock and Clive, Nick’s guards, huddled against the brick wall, sharing a pipe.
Brock pushed off the wall. “Well, fuck me. Look who decided to grace us with his presence. Thought you’d found yourself better company up in Whitehall.”
“Missed you too, Brock.” He nodded at the door. “Nicky in?”
“Aye. In his office.”
Callahan moved to pass, but Brock’s hand gripped his arm. “He’s busy. Important folk waiting.”
He looked down at the hand, then up at Brock’s face. He didn’t blink. Didn’t speak. Just stared until something in his expression made Brock shift uncomfortably.
The other man released him with a grunt. “Your funeral.”
