Page 53 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
Five months away, and nothing had changed.
She’d hated Boston at the beginning. Hated feeling like she was trapped and couldn’t run. But somewhere between her morning briefings with Vale and the evening teas, she’d found a rhythm. A peace. A sense of safety that she hadn’t felt since she was a child still ignorant of the ways the world broke girls.
It had been nice.
“You’re quiet,” Vale said, not looking up from her book.
“Just admiring the scenery.”
That earned her a snort. Portia Vale wasn’t a woman who bothered with pleasantries or lies. It was what she’d come to appreciate most about her handler – the brutal honesty between them. She never looked at Isabel like she was damaged goods. They weren’t friends, but they’d become colleagues, of a sort. Vale, after all, had heard every deep, dark secret by now. Every job, every name, every drop of blood spilled. She knew about where Isabel’s scars came from. About Favreau’s knife games.
Things she hadn’t even told Callahan.
“He’ll be there,” Vale said, as if she read Isabel’s mind.
Her face went hot. “Who?”
Vale just looked at her.
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do.”
Yes, she did.
The carriage hit a rut, jostling them both. Isabel braced herself against the wall, her heart giving a stupid, foolish lurch at the thought of seeing Callahan again.
Somewhere in this city, he was going about his day, unaware she’d returned.
For months, she’d waited for him to appear at Vale’s door with some excuse, some pretence. For him to show up on one of her walks with some bumbling American accent. To climb through her window, maybe. But he never did. Because she was a captured asset now rather than a target, and she gave him no excuse to hunt her down.
After years, Ronan Callahan had finally brought the notorious Spectre to heel – and then washed his hands of her.
“You never answered my question on the steamer,” Isabel said. “Did Wentworth give any actual reason for dragging me back here? You told him I wanted to stay in America?”
Vale flipped a page. “I told him. He said no.”
“Of course,” Isabel muttered. “And the information I gave you? Has he done anything with it?”
“We wouldn’t be in this miserable city if he hadn’t.”
*
Isabel shifted her suitcase in her hands as she followed Vale into the nondescript government building. Their boots clicked against the marble floor as they proceeded down the hall to a door labelled MATTIAS WENTWORTH.
Vale rapped twice.
“Enter.” The voice from inside was deep, clipped.
The office was smaller than she expected. No grandeur, no display of wealth or power. Nothing to say,Look how important I am. Just functionality – a desk, three chairs, some bookshelves against one wall.
And him.
Mattias Wentworth wasn’t what she’d pictured. Not some severe, grey-bearded official with liver spots, but a handsome, rugged man sprawled almost insolently in his chair. He was younger than she’d anticipated, perhaps only a handful of years past thirty. He had keen blue eyes and close-cropped brown hair. When he reached for a file, his forearm muscles flexed beneath his pushed-up sleeves.
Those weren’t the arms of someone who shuffled papers for a living. He looked like he’d learned to fight before he learned to read; this was a man who broke things.
“That will be all, Vale,” he said without taking his eyes off Isabel. “You can go.”
