“No surprise there. The Whigs are a right mess.”
“Well, one powerful Tory got it into his head that one couldn’t be too sure.”
“And?”
“And started running an operation in various hells and brothels about London.”
“What sort of operation?” A lightning quick rush of anticipation preceding a revelation flashed through Percy’s veins. How many years had he lived for this feeling?
“Of creating situations where lords might feel compelled to vote a certain way, if said situations were kept quiet. You know the sort. Ones involving gaming debts. Pious lords with young girls, virgins even. The sort of situation the Savior of St. Giles recently stumbled into.”
Of course. “A political blackmail scheme.”
“And I suppose you know who’s behind it?”
“Montfort.”
Even in the near dark, Hortense’s jaw gave a reflexive clench and release. “You know his line, the one that justifies all his actions.”
“For the good of England.”
“He’s stopped influencing governments on the Continent and now has started in at home.”
“Using old spy games to destroy the opposition.”
“But now Montfort has a new game afoot. A bigger fish on the hook.”
“A bigger fish than a future marquess?” Even as Percy asked the question, dread curled in his gut. Montfort had all but explicitly told Percy that he was coming after him. This wasn’t new. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that Hortense was about to tell him something new, and ugly.
“In a way.” She paused a beat. “To him.” Another beat. “Of late, an upstart folk hero has been interfering with Montfort’s operation.”
“He knows I’m the Savior of St. Giles.”
“It seems you were effective in gaining his attention, except for one problem. You weren’t hitting him in his bank account. The first cheap hell you shut down, he shrugged off as no big loss, but put him on the alert. The second had him planning how to handle the situation. But Number 9 took him by surprise. It was the step too far. Neither he nor his conspirators at Whitehall could tolerate further interference after their scheme to secure the vote of the future Marquess of Clare was frustrated.”
“What does he plan on doing about it?”
“Funny you should ask. You see, the son of a powerful English duke is a rather big fish, particularly when that son has already garnered a significant amount of notoriety. However, Montfort has assured his inner circle in Whitehall that he is very close to getting the situation under control.”
The dread in Percy’s stomach curdled into a hard knot. The new and ugly had arrived. “How?”
“He has an agent placed very close. Intimately was the word used. It’s only a matter of a day or two.”
There it was. Isabel. He’d lost track of her during this conversation. He’d known from the beginning she was under Montfort’s control.
Blast.
He’d offered to help her, even vowed his protection, and she’d rejected him. Now, he understood why. She’d been playing the game on a different plane from his all along.
Percy had known Montfort was coming for him, and he knew Isabel to be beholden to Montfort in some way. But he hadn’t considered Isabel would be Montfort’s weapon against him. A pretty face had played him for a fool, the oldest story in the espionage book, a fact Montfort understood well.
“What do you know about Isabel Galante?” Hortense asked. She understood precisely who Montfort’s intimately placed agent was. And she didn’t have time for Percy’s self-recrimination.
“A bit,” he ground out. Too much . . . Not near enough.
“But not that you were her mark,” Hortense stated.
“No.”
Hortense had known Percy for years. She would see he was affected. “We have options.”
“Options?” The moment he asked the question, Percy felt like a nodcock. Hortense was the one thinking like a spy, not him. He was thinking like a jilted lover.
“First, we need to find the missing piece of this puzzle.”
“Which is?”
“What is her motive? It would be folly to assume it aligns with Montfort’s.”
It didn’t. Even as Percy experienced the betrayal he had no right to, he understood.
“It is our family’s problem. What affects one, affects all.”
Isabel hadn’t betrayed him, because her allegiance had never been to him. It was to her sister, her nephew, and her father. They were everything to her. She would do anything to protect them. Even align with Montfort.
Oblivious to his inner turmoil—or unsympathetic to it, more like—Hortense stayed on task. “Let it play out a little longer. Perhaps we can—”
“Use her,” Percy finished. Hortense’s business-like tone had begun to grate on his nerves. “I won’t allow it.”
Incredulity spread across Hortense’s face. “You won’t allow it?”
She did rather have a point. Those years on the Continent, she and he had been foot soldiers in Lord Nicholas Asquith’s little spy army, equals. It would appear that, lately, he’d grown damned comfortable in his status as the son of a duke. Hortense happened to be one of the few people in the world who didn’t give a good goddamn about that.
“We can’t trust her.”
“Bretagne, it defies belief that she would have an ounce of loyalty to Montfort. She is a pawn. Bring her in.”
“Her reasons have naught to do with loyalty to Montfort.”
It was only the truth. It became clear to Percy that Isabel was as much his enemy as Montfort. The woman was on a mission to save her family. Nothing and no one was going to stand in her way. Alongside the anger and frustration sheered the pang of loss, another emotion he had no right to.
For his sanity, Percy needed to redirect this conversation away from Isabel. He needed to think like a spy, not like a heart-sick lover. “Hortense, dig deeper into who Montfort’s conspirators at Whitehall are. We can bring them all down.”