Read Chapter 9: The List of Names

The morning light crept through the shutters like a thief, and Élodie had been awake to watch it arrive. She had not slept. The floorboards of the inn had creaked all night under the weight of her own pacing, and now, with the first gray hour settling over Paris, she sat at the kitchen table with cold coffee before her, staring at the wall as if it might offer a solution.

The problem was not Lefèvre. The problem was that she no longer knew whether she wanted to find the list at all.

She heard the knock at the servant's door at half past eight—three sharp raps, the signal used by the street urchins who ran messages between the embassy quarter and the innkeepers who served the police. Marie was already moving toward it, but Élodie rose first, waving her back.

"I'll take it," she said.

Marie's eyes narrowed, but she stepped aside.

The boy on the step was no older than twelve, his cap pulled low against the drizzle. He held out a folded letter sealed with wax the color of dried blood. "For the English gentleman," he said. "From the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré."

The British embassy. Élodie's heart kicked against her ribs.

"Give it to me." She pressed a coin into his palm and he vanished into the rain.

The seal was unbroken. She turned the letter over in her hands, feeling the weight of it, the crackle of good paper. Whatever was inside could be nothing—a dinner invitation, a note from a friend. But the color of the seal, the direction of its origin, and the timing, with Lefèvre's deadline now two days out, told her otherwise.

Marie stood in the doorway of the kitchen, watching. "You shouldn't," she said quietly.

Élodie did not answer. She carried the letter to her room, locked the door, and broke the seal with a knife.

The handwriting was small and neat, the hand of a clerk. It was addressed to Ashworth by name, confirming what she already suspected: that he was known to the British embassy, that he moved in official circles. But the body of the letter made her breath catch.

It was a list. Not of codes, not of shipping routes, but of names. French names. And beside each one, a notation: *Lyon, artillery, discontent with the Emperor's conscription. Bordeaux, naval engineer, family ruined by the Continental blockade. Amiens, former royalist, willing to serve if passage is assured.*

Six names in total. Élodie read them twice, then a third time, her finger moving down the page until it stopped at the fifth entry.

*Mathieu Moreau. Age twenty. Ensign, second regiment of light infantry. Currently stationed at Vincennes. Son of Colonel Moreau. Recruitable—his father's loyalty to the Emperor is wavering since the Spanish campaign.*

The coffee turned to acid in her stomach.

Mathieu Moreau. The young soldier who had come to the inn three weeks ago, bearing a letter of introduction from his father, Colonel Moreau of the engineering corps. The colonel had served with Mathieu—with her Mathieu—in Egypt. He had written to Élodie after her husband's death, a long, kind letter full of memories. He had called her *ma fille.* He had sent his son to Paris with instructions to pay his respects to his fallen comrade's widow.

And now his boy's name sat on a list of potential defectors.

Élodie lowered the letter to the table. Her hands were shaking.

Ashworth was not here to steal state secrets. He was here to recruit. To pull French soldiers and engineers and artisans across the Channel, to drain France of the men who kept her armies fed and her fortresses standing. A slow war, a war of attrition fought in ink and whispers.

It was clever. It was devastating. And it made her mission—find the list, give it to Lefèvre—feel suddenly, horribly real.

The young Moreau had sat in this very kitchen two weeks ago, drinking her soup and talking about his father's orchards in Anjou. He had laughed at her jokes. He had called her *madame* with the deference of a boy who had been raised well. And now, if Ashworth succeeded, he would be an enemy of France by spring.

She folded the letter and tucked it into the pocket of her apron. Then she sat very still for a long moment, listening to the rain against the window, feeling the weight of what she had just done.

She could not give this to Lefèvre. Not this. Not the boy.

But she could not destroy it either. The other names mattered. The engineer from Bordeaux, the artilleryman from Lyon—these were men Lefèvre would want to know about. Men who could be watched, questioned, turned back from the brink.

The problem was that she could not keep one name without keeping them all.

She heard footsteps in the hallway. She shoved the letter deeper into her pocket and smoothed her apron, composing her face just as the knock came at her door.

"Madame Marchand." It was Marie's voice, low and urgent. "The Englishman is asking for his correspondence."

Élodie opened the door. Marie stood there, her face unreadable. Behind her, in the hallway that led to the guest rooms, she could see Ashworth's door standing open.

"He asked me if a letter had arrived," Marie said. "From the embassy."

Élodie's throat tightened. "Tell him nothing has come."

Marie looked at her for a long moment. Then she said, very quietly, "He knows it came. The boy was seen."

Damn.

Élodie closed her eyes. Of course Ashworth would have arranged to be notified. He had been playing this game far longer than she had.

"Where is he now?" she asked.

"His room. He has locked the door again."

Élodie considered her options. She could deny everything, claim the boy came to the wrong address, that she had sent him away. But Marie had already said the boy was seen, and Ashworth was not a man who believed in coincidence.

She would have to brazen it out. Or she would have to face him.

The rest of the day passed in a haze. Élodie went about her duties—scrubbing the pots, airing the linens, preparing the evening meal—but her mind was elsewhere, circling the letter in her pocket like a trapped bird. Twice she took it out, meaning to copy the names onto a separate sheet so that she could return the original, but both times she stopped. The wax seal was broken. Ashworth would know it had been read regardless.

The safe play was to admit nothing. To hold the letter and wait for Lefèvre's deadline, then present it whole, with the young Moreau's name carefully excised. But the letter was a single sheet. There was no excising without destroying the whole.

She was still wrestling with the problem when dusk fell and the lamps were lit.

She was in the pantry when she heard the footsteps. Measured, deliberate, coming down the main stair into the common room. Ashworth.

She stayed where she was, holding a sack of flour, willing herself to breathe. The footsteps stopped.

"I know you have it."

His voice was calm. That was what struck her. Not angry, not accusatory. Just stating a fact, the way a man might tell you it was raining.

Élodie set down the flour and stepped out of the pantry. He was standing in the middle of the common room, dressed in his usual dark coat, his face half in shadow. He looked tired—there were circles under his eyes that had not been there a week ago—but his gaze was steady.

"I received no letter this morning," she said.

"No. You received it." He stepped closer. "The boy was seen leaving your kitchen. My contact at the embassy confirms the message was sent. So either it has been lost, misplaced, or stolen." He stopped three paces from her. "Which is it, Élodie?"

She felt the letter burning against her hip. The name of the young Moreau burned with it.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

He watched her for a long moment. Then he reached into his own pocket and drew out a sheet of paper, folded and creased. He held it up between two fingers.

"Then perhaps you can explain this." He unfolded it, and she saw her own handwriting—her report to Lefèvre, the one she had written last week, detailing his movements and his guests. "I found this in the desk drawer of my room. The one you were searching. It appears to be your work."

The floor seemed to tilt beneath her.

"You've made your choice," he said, folding the paper away. "You have my letter. You have my name. You have, I suspect, my purpose in Paris." He took another step closer, and now his voice dropped so low that only she could hear it. "So I'll make you an offer, madame. Give me back the letter, and I will give you back yours. We will call it an even trade, and I will leave Paris by morning."

"And if I don't?"

He looked at her. In the lamplight, his eyes were the color of winter sea.

"Then I will walk to the prefecture of police myself, and I will tell them that the widow Marchand has been withholding information from Captain Lefèvre. That she has been protecting a British agent. And that the report she has been sending him is a fabrication designed to protect her own secrets."

She felt the blood drain from her face.

"You wouldn't," she said. "Lefèvre would hang you."

"He would try." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "But he would hang you first."