Page 88 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
“Wentworth is keeping word of tonight’s unpleasantness at the Crimson Veil contained for now. One of his men is watching the house to keep Ramsgate secure. We’ll need to search the room before the symposium concludes.”
He paused, waiting for her response. But there was only the rasp of his own breath.
“Isabel?”
“Right. Tomorrow.” The words were hollow. As if some vital spark had gone out of her. “One day left to accomplish our mission. I haven’t forgotten.”
To anyone else, the words might have seemed ordinary. Unremarkable. But Callahan knew that voice – all its shades and permutations.
Every instinct clamoured a warning.
He closed the distance to the washroom, pushed through the door, and went utterly still.
There was blood in the bathwater.
Isabel sat huddled in the tub, knees hugged tight to her chest. Blonde hair clung to her face and throat in damp tendrils, water droplets glistening against her skin.
She looked impossibly young. Unbearably fragile in a way someone so fierce had no right to be.
“Isabel,” he said. Tentative. As if the slightest misstep might shatter her into pieces too small to gather. “What happened?”
Gently, gently. The way you’d coax a wild thing closer. Isabel Dumont had endured a lifetime’s worth of cruelties and careless brutalities by men who sought to break her. He would not add to it now.
For a long, airless moment, she said nothing. Callahan barely breathed.
Then, so quietly he almost missed it: “It was Favreau.” Three words. Toneless. Devoid of inflection. “He knew Wentworth was intercepting intelligence on Ramsgate. He planted them deliberately to draw me to London.”
He didn’t give a damn about that. She was bleeding.
“Let me see.”
Their gazes locked. The armour of the Spectre fell away to reveal the shattered woman beneath. Slowly, she leaned back.
And Callahan saw it – jagged letters carved between her breasts.
L.F.
The ugly scrawl of possession. Of ownership.
He sucked in a breath. “Christ fucking God.”
“He gave me all of them. Every scar.” Distant, detached. Almost cold. Her fingers skimmed over the silvered slashes – the violence etched into her flesh. “Favreau liked to cut me. Liked to see me bleed while he—” A sharp, hitching inhale. “While he—”
“Stop.” Callahan gentled his voice. “You don’t need to say it. I know.”
He sank to his knees beside the tub. This close, he could count every bruise, every scrape. The delicate fan of her lashes against too-pale cheeks, the purple smudges exhaustion had thumbed beneath her eyes.
And Callahan opened his arms.
“Come here,” he murmured.
She leaned into him without protest. It terrified him, this sudden malleability. As if Favreau had reached into her chest and scooped out all her spark and fire.
“I have you,” he told her. “I have you.”
Her fingers dug into his shoulders. A shudder rippled through her. “In the alleyway . . . it felt like before. Before I left him in Hong Kong. I felt like that woman again. Letting him—Letting him—”
“Shhh.” Callahan tightened his hold. “He hurt you, Isabel. He tortured you.”
