The Heart That Wins (Regency Spies Book 3) Read Free Page A

her ‘Miss Arbuthnot’ it seemed wrong to allow someone she had known for less than an hour to use her name.
    “I have known Edmund for many years, but it is only recently that I have learned that he has another name, so I must use the one with which I am familiar.”
    “I have many names, Franz, as have you,” said Edmund. “One evening we will tell one another the tales about how we gathered them, but it seems that that evening must be in Brussels.”
    “Brussels?”
    Sophia had thought that he meant to return to England. Brussels was the last place she wanted to go. Her mother lived there with her lover and Sophia’s two half-brothers.
    “That’s where the largest army in Europe is stationed,” said Edmund. “Bonaparte must either take the risk of engaging the allies in the Low Countries or he must allow them to invade France.”
    Mary crossed the room to take Sophia’s hands in hers, but Sophia barely noticed. She was not sure which frightened her more: the idea of seeing her mother again or of John going back to fight.
    Sophia did not think Edmund would let her return to England if she wanted to go. He was her commanding officer and she had sworn obedience to him. Smiling weakly at Mary, she stood straighter. She had already faced worse things than her mother for the love of John.
    “There will be work for us, then,” she said.
    “There will indeed be work for us,” said Edmund.
    Sophia made an effort to turn her thoughts away from John and back to what should have been her main concern.
    “If you want to know where an army is, you should have someone in it,” she said.
    She had learned this from Edmund himself and from the Earl of Meldon, who had fought in Spain, in the days when following the war had been an intellectual exercise for her and not a matter of life and death.
    “Surely the difficulty is communicating that information,” said Mary.
    Sophia was used to her friend joining in discussions of this nature, but Franz was surprised. Sophia wondered if he had forgotten she was there. It was a mistake people often made. Unlike her husband, Mary was dark, plain and quiet. She preferred listening to conversations to participating in them. Before they had married, Edmund had made the decision to share everything with her. Sophia had wondered at first whether this had just been pragmatism, as Mary was intelligent and would work out that he was a spy. A better understanding of his character, however, showed her that, as he was not an habitual liar. lying did not come easily to him and he lied only when he must. It was important to him that he tell his wife the truth. Mary knew more of Edmund’s plans than Sophia did.
    “That is why there must be two of us,” said Sophia. “One to get the information and the other to bring it back.”
    The three of them had discussed this often and Sophia had her own ideas about how this might be achieved.
    “Perhaps you and I could be a French soldier and his wife,” suggested Franz.
    Sophia bit her tongue to prevent herself telling him exactly what she thought of that idea.
    “Your French is terrible,” muttered Edmund.
    “There are enough German speakers in the French army...” He paused and looked at Sophia, with that smile back on his face. “No, I’m afraid you could not convince anyone that you belong among the camp followers. You are right, however, that the only way to know where an army is is to be in it.”
    Edmund shrugged. He had never been a soldier and had a surprisingly limited understanding of what an army did. His service had been covert and mainly concerned with the removal of key people, the provision of misinformation or the gathering of information about strategic plans. Presented with a prospective battlefield, he could not identify which features made it defensible or not. All he could say was that certain parts of it made good hiding places for living men and other parts were good places to hide the dead so that they would never be