Beauty Like the Night Read online

  Praise for

  ROGUE SPY

  “Rogue Spy is so many things: puzzles within puzzles, a race against time to prevent a disaster that will leave many people dead in its wake, an exploration of friendships, the meaning of family, and personal trials, but at its heart it explores a love that did not and will not fade over time.”

  —Heroes and Heartbreakers.com

  “Bourne is an extraordinary storyteller . . . [She is] in the same league with Mary Jo Putney and Mary Balogh. Readers won’t be disappointed with this latest powerhouse installment.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Praise for Joanna Bourne and Her Novels

  “Joanna Bourne’s voice is distinct, fresh, and engaging.”

  —Madeline Hunter, New York Times bestselling author

  “What a terrific story! One of the most unusual, resourceful, and humorous heroines I’ve ever met; a spy to swoon for; and a great twisty plot with a sense of genuine danger.”

  —Diana Gabaldon, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Love, love, LOVED it!”

  —Julia Quinn, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Bourne is a master wordsmith, able to charm, excite, or break a reader’s heart with the stroke of her pen . . . My opinion is this is the best novel she has written and destined to be a classic in the romance genre.”

  —Dear Author

  “A breathtaking adventure that kept me turning pages with breathless anticipation. Joanna Bourne is a master of romance and suspense! I can’t wait to read her next book!”

  —Teresa Medeiros, New York Times bestselling author

  Berkley Sensation titles by Joanna Bourne

  THE SPYMASTER’S LADY

  MY LORD AND SPYMASTER

  THE FORBIDDEN ROSE

  THE BLACK HAWK

  ROGUE SPY

  BEAUTY LIKE THE NIGHT

  BERKLEY SENSATION

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Joanna Watkins Bourne

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and BERKLEY SENSATION are registered trademarks and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698188648

  First Edition: August 2017

  Cover art by Jon Paul

  Cover design by Katie Anderson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Rosemary

  Contents

  Praise for Joanna Bourne and Her Novels

  Berkley Sensation Titles by Joanna Bourne

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Beauty Like the Night was written with the generosity of so many kindly folks.

  Writing buddies Madeline Iva and Adriana Anders stuck around week after week, being patient with me, helping me over the rough patches in the story and in real life. Margaret Staeben, Courtney Milan, Vicki Parsons, Isobel Carr, Kate Worth, and Ashley McConnell all took time from their own work to read, comment, and be knowledgeable and wise in my direction. I cannot thank them enough. Mary Ann Clark has been endlessly helpful, tactfully pointing out problems great and small. Supereditor Deniz Bevan gave her weekends to my panicked pleas for up-to-the-last-minute copyediting. My sister Rosemary has been a warm constant in my life, always, through this story and so many others.

  Thanks y’all.

  One

  SHE slid out of sleep and knew there was a man in her room.

  He stood between her and the faint square of night sky in the window. Just stood, which was threat enough for all practical purposes. Any man who wheedled his way so silently through a window on the second floor was no amateur in the craft of housebreaking.

  This was the way death arrived. Uninvited. Unobtrusive. An almost trivial break in the expected.

  Séverine de Cabrillac, orphan of the French Revolution, fashionable lady of the ton, sometime spy, drew herself together under the blankets, preparing to fight for her life. She was very afraid.

  He must have heard her move. He came slowly, smoothly, quiet on his feet, toward her. He was a tall column of shadow, lit on one side with red light from the fire, pure darkness on the other. He carried a knife in his right hand, being competent about it. He said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  That’s why you’re pointing ten inches of steel at me. “What do you want?”

  Her pistol was loaded and ready, neatly under her pillow. Even in Buckinghamshire, at the Shield and Staff, the familiar, friendly inn halfway between London and home, she took precautions. But she couldn’t get to her gun before he used that knife. It was never about having the best weapon. It was always about being able to lay your hand on it.

  “I want the girl,” he said. “Keep the amulet. Just give me the girl.”

  Her mind opened all its cabinets and turned out all its drawers and none of them held anything about lost girls or stolen girls or any sort of girl whatsoever. “There’s no one here. Look around.” Maybe he’d broken into the wrong room. Maybe she could send him off to menace somebody else.

  “You don’t have
her tied up under the bed, but you know where she is.” In complete silence, he took the last step that brought him to her side. His knee touched the coverlet and the mattress made the smallest tremor.

  The point of his knife waited quietly, an eloquent eighteen inches from her throat. He said, “I dislike violence. I abhor it. Let’s see if we can get through this interview without resorting to force.”

  Some situations call for great cleverness. Some for lies. She settled on blunt honesty. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “How forgetful of you,” he said softly. “Her name is Pilar. She’s a schoolgirl, twelve years old, living in London. Three months ago her mother died in their front parlor. No one’s seen the girl since.”

  He was anonymous in the dark, but she thought she’d know him again, if she survived the night and went hunting for him. There would not be many men who carried such a silent and deliberate presence. Who moved like a cat. His voice sounded like a cat had decided to talk.

  He wore his coat—black or some shade close to it—buttoned up to hide his shirt. No cravat. No hat. Dark hair. Skin that showed swarthy rather than pale where firelight lay on him. His eyes held a flicker of reflection.

  She would have liked to see his face more clearly. Along with not wanting to be stabbed, she did not want to be stabbed by a man she hadn’t seen.

  “I’m sorry for this schoolgirl,” she said softly. “It’s sad and terrible, but it’s nothing to do with—”

  “If she’s still alive, she’s alone and terrified, a prisoner at the mercy of strangers. Do you know how it feels to be trapped and alone in the hands of an enemy?” The knife inscribed a small circle in the air. “This is how it feels.”

  He was wrong to think she didn’t know what it was like to be alone and afraid and trapped. Her earliest memories were exactly that. The Revolution had not spared children.

  “London’s a sink of crime,” she said. “But it’s not my crime. Not my brutality. I’m not in the business of killing.”

  “You gave orders for death in Spain.”

  Very few people knew what she’d been in Spain. This man was not here by accident. This was no mistaken identity. He knew who and what she was. She said, “That was far away and long ago. That was war.”

  “This is London, at peace, and you’re still playing the same games. But the girl isn’t part of it. She’s useless to you. Let her go.”

  She was sadly familiar with threats and the knife and a man who crept through the dark. She’d been part of the Great Game of spies and lies once upon a time when she’d been young and a fool. Now Napoleon was in exile on St. Helena, the battlefields were empty, and the Great Game had not ended. Three years after the last charge at Waterloo, spies still delved for secrets and spun their plots. Only she had changed.

  If this man had come for her, knowing who and what she’d been, he was desperate or a fool or very dangerous. Or all three. She said, “I retired a long time ago.”

  “Innocent as a nestling harpy,” he murmured. “All soft down and razor claws.”

  “I see myself as a battlefield crow. Retired, with a perch and a cup of fruits and nuts in the salon and a covered cage in the schoolroom. Do you mind if I sit up?”

  “Not at all. Take this.” The shadow of his body rippled. Something glinted. A soft weight landed on the blankets. He stepped back and went still again.

  She wriggled out from under the covers and took up the shape he’d tossed in her direction. It was the knife, a fairly heavy example of its kind, the blade cold to the touch. The hilt was bone or wood, smooth and very slightly damp, as if it had recently been washed.

  “A knife,” she said.

  “Right you are. I thought it might reassure you.”

  She became slightly less terrified and considerably more angry. She gripped the hilt. “Strangely, it doesn’t.”

  Smooth as poured cream, he sank to sit on the bed beside her. His weight tilted the mattress. His body fitted next to her with only the quibble of a sheet and blanket between them. He was a solid presence now, as he’d been a shadow before. He was also empty-handed, which made no sense at all.

  No one surrenders an advantage so easily. Therefore, this knife is not an advantage.

  She didn’t like his thigh close to hers. Didn’t like to feel his breath stirring on her face. A stranger in her bed was profoundly disturbing. A man this close to her should be a lover.

  She pushed her way out from under the blanket, fitted her back to the bedstead, and brought the knife up between them. I hate not understanding this. She was dealing with a man who didn’t consider a knife important. Either he thought she wasn’t dangerous or he knew he was, himself, incomparably lethal.

  A deep game indeed. She said, “You break in here at midnight and give me a knife. Why?”

  “To stab me with, of course.”

  “Always a possibility.”

  “Or to keep your hands sufficiently busy that they don’t go after your pistol. You are exactly the sort of woman who’d keep a gun under her pillow.”

  She turned the blade and watched a line of light slip along the sharp edge. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “I meant it as one.” He shifted to make himself more comfortable on the bed. “Will you kill me or talk to me? That sweet choice has hung in the balance every moment since I entered your room.”

  “I’m still deciding.” Every word they exchanged and many more they didn’t say out loud waited like land mines on the counterpane between them. He was not in the least worried the knife was now pointed toward him.

  Those who played spy games were generally more cautious. Perhaps she was dealing with a madman. Not the most reassuring thought. Who wants to share a small bedchamber with a madman?

  He said, “Let me change the situation and see what happens. Do not, I beg you, cut this pretty face of mine. I’m fond of it.” Slow as smoke rising, he stretched his left hand toward her, past the knife she held, and touched her cheek. A shock—a spot of uneasy fire—sparked where his fingertip met her skin.

  “Don’t.” She brought the knife up and set the point to his wrist, to the best spot for jabbing straight into the pulse.

  “One question answered. Many more raised.” He withdrew his hand, carefully. “I congratulate you. You’re completely convincing as a woman who knows nothing about a stolen girl.”

  They paused, unevenly armed, both of them thinking hard. Under the silence, she heard the tick and rumble of the fire and the tiny noises of the night outside the window.

  His eyes weren’t as dark as she’d thought. They were green-brown or gray. She’d need better light to tell. She could see his eyes were attentive on her, cool, utterly self-possessed. He said, “The problem with beautiful spies—one of several problems with spies—is they lie so well there’s no way of discerning the truth.” He stood in one single, smooth, unexpected moment. The bed sagged and sprang back. “You aren’t going to say anything useful tonight, are you? We’ll meet again.”

  He retraced his steps to the window. The darkness parted soundlessly around him.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees, knife carefully ready, and didn’t follow him across the room. If he left without bloodshed, all to the good. She’d seen enough confused, useless battles in her life. “Why did you come here? Why not stop me on the street and ask the same question?”

  “So I could hand you that knife and see if you’d kill me with it.”

  “And if I’d killed you?”

  “Then I’d have my answer, wouldn’t I?”

  She’d held a number of conversations in the dark. Never one this odd. “You’d be dead.”

  “Sometimes that’s the answer.”

  This man didn’t expect to die. He stood in a fighter’s easy stance, one so practiced he made it look casual. If she reached for the gun under her
pillow, he’d be on top of her before she could shoot. Or gone out the window.

  She supposed it revealed a good deal about her that she wasn’t stupid enough or bloodthirsty enough to introduce firearms into the evening. “Why did you touch me?”

  He stood in the square of the window, against the diffuse glow of moon and stars. “I apologize. The impulse to know the texture of your skin became irresistible.”

  He was gone, out the window. It was a fifteen-foot drop but she didn’t hear any noise of landing.

  She grabbed her pistol. When she got to the window there was no one below and no sound of running. The black was unbroken except by the faint suggestion of outlying buildings.

  She’d chosen not to fight. Now she chose not to shoot blind into the night. In most situations she preferred negotiation to putting bullets into people. She had not the least doubt she’d see him again.

  She pulled her head in from the window and went to sit cross-legged on the bed, her gun across her lap, the useless and misleading knife beside her, going over every word the man had left behind.

  A schoolgirl had disappeared. An amulet of some sort was missing. He’d played that down. Said he didn’t need it. Whenever anybody said something was unimportant she assumed exactly the opposite. What else? He’d talked of the war in Spain. Orders given—orders she’d given—for someone’s death. She hadn’t given that sort of order. A mistake on his part.

  As she’d been trained to do, she considered what he hadn’t said and what he hadn’t done. Not a word about Bristol or the assassin O’Grady. No mention of Wellington. No search of her luggage for informative tidbits about the turbulent Irish. You’d think he’d never learned the rudiments of espionage.

  In this tangle of puzzlement, that swift, single touch on her cheek was more disturbing than anything else. Why had he done that? She’d worked hard to become the quintessence of dull, well-born spinsterhood. Maybe she hadn’t quite succeeded.

  After half an hour of pointless speculation she got dressed and went out to the stable to yell MacDonald awake and get the horses saddled. They’d ride out at first light. Some nights are not made for sleeping.