Chapter One
Margaret Vaughn knewshe was being watched. She sat in a public house, taking tea. She always sat by the window so she could use the light to read. Now, her book was open and her tea still reasonably warm.
And the man behind her was watching her.
Not because she was anything to look at. Margaret knew she was no beauty. She was unusually tall and, due to a very sensitive stomach, thin. She wore spectacles and freckles, and her red hair formed a halo of corkscrew curls about her head. At the moment, those curls were pulled back into a twist and then secured under a bonnet, but she had felt them loosening and springing free one by one as the day went on.
She didn’t know why the man was watching her, but as an agent of the Royal Saboteurs, she had been trained to note such things. Margaret sighed. All she had wanted to do was sip her plain tea and read her book until dark, when she could slip into Seven Dials unseen. Any sane person wouldn’t go near Seven Dials after dark, but Margaret had chosen a life as an agent for the Crown. Clearly, she was not sane. And, as a counterpoint to the question of her sanity, she was less likely to be seen after dark by any who might be tracking the same quarry as she.
Unless the man watching her knew who she was and who she sought.
A chair leg screeched behind her, and the man stumbled to her table. “What’s a pretty girl like you doing here?” the man asked.
At least that’s what Margaret thought he said. His words were slurred and his accent practically unrecognizable. But the question of who he was had been answered. He was not another agent. He was a drunken lout.
Ablinddrunken lout if he was callingherpretty.
Margaret looked up at the man, pushing her spectacles higher on her nose. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said in her characteristically quiet voice. “I think you have me mistaken for someone else.”
“Oh, ho, now!” the man said—or some similar exclamation. “She reads a book and talks like one too.”
Margaret looked over her shoulder to see whom the blind drunken lout—she would call himLout—addressed. Unfortunately, a table of other loutish sorts were laughing and jeering at him.
Margaret knew a lost cause when she saw one. She pushed her tea aside, marked her page, closed her book, and stood. She was a good three inches taller than Lout. “Sir,” she said generously, “if you will excuse me.”
Lout stepped in front of her and said something she took to mean, “Where are you off to in such a hurry? I want to talk to you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have the time at present. I have an appointment. If you will excuse me.” She tried to push past him, but he blocked her way and grabbed her arm.
Margaret went very still.
“Come on now, sweetheart. Don’t be like that.”
Margaret used her free hand to remove her spectacles. She closed the temples using her hand and her chin, then set her book and the spectacles on the table. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said quietly so his friends would not hear. “Unhand me, and we can both pretend this didn’t happen.”
Lout didn’t unhand her. He wouldn’t be Lout if he had. Instead, he laughed at her and called over to his friends to tell them what she said. At least, that’s what he intended to do. As soon as he turned his head, she reversed his grip so she was holding him, stepped close to him—which was a most unpleasant experience—and, using the momentum she’d gained with her speed, bent and flipped him over her back and onto the floor with a hardthwack.
Margaret stepped back and looked down at Lout. He blinked up at her, uncomprehendingly. She waited to see if he would rise, but he didn’t move.
No one moved.
The public house had gone eerily silent.
Not a clink of silver. Not a thump of metal tankards.
Margaret took a breath, lifted her spectacles, and donned them. She didn’t need them to see everyone was looking at her. Women didn’t typically best men, especially women who looked like her. Like a bluestocking.
And she was a bluestocking. She just happened to have extensive training in evasive maneuvers. Margaret lifted her book, and keeping her gaze down, walked quickly out of the public house.
No one stopped her, but that didn’t mean no one would come for her. For the moment, everyone was shocked. Lout’s friends would recover and want retribution. This public house being so close to Seven Dials, others inside might enjoy chasing and beating her for sport. So much for her plan to creep into the rookeries unnoticed. She might as well go now.
Slipping her book into her reticule, she walked hastily away from the public house, quickly losing her way in a warren of narrow streets and back alleys. She didn’t know exactly where she was, but she was good at directions and could sense she was headed the right way. When she finally emerged, it was into a street thronged with people. On one corner, a group of men stood in a tight circle and shouted at whatever was inside their ring. On another corner, three women dressed as though they should be indoors loitered and called out at the men. Several children ran about, some looking as though they had purpose and others playing what appeared to be a game of catch-me-if-you-can. Dusk was falling and shopkeepers were closing their doors and shooing beggars off their stoops one last time. Margaret kept her head down as she passed it all, ignoring the stink and the noise and the strain practically vibrating off the streets.
That hum of tension was the feeling she always associated with places like this. At any moment, violence was possible. The tinder was everywhere, and all it took was one spark. She’d spent a great deal of time in places like this—not in London but on the Continent. Before going to the Farm to train with the Royal Saboteurs, she’d been stationed in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in Paris. It had been the center of the uprising during the French revolution of the last century, and when she’d left there had been stirrings of another revolution. Now it was June and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine had risen up and fought tooth and nail, despite artillery shelling from the Bastille area and taking heavy casualties.
This was if the newspapers were to be believed.
Margaret believed them. Her reports had predicted all of it.
