Page 93 of The Avenging Angel and the Spy
As Belle handled the thick length of rope, she could almost hear Sinclair’s voice that long-ago rainy afternoon in the apartment, his laughing comment, “Never let your captive dictate his own bindings. The thick heavy kind is easiest undone.”
A hope stirred inside her. If she could get Lazare away from here, if Sinclair regained consciousness, she had no doubt hewould be able to free himself. It was a forlorn hope, but all that she had.
As she struggled to pull Sinclair’s hand behind his back, she noticed a scrap of white trapped beneath his body—one of the letters that he had been reading. It had escaped Lazare’s notice. As she wound the rope about Sinclair’s hands, she deftly slipped the scrap of vellum up her sleeve.
Looping the rope about Sinclair’s wrists, she tried to make it as loose as she dared.
“Tighter,” Lazare snarled. “I know you can do better than that.”
Gritting her teeth, she complied. Sinclair seemed so cold, so still, but she had to pull the knots snug with Lazare’s narrowed eyes tracking her every move. With his free hand, Lazare tugged a dirty tricolor scarf from around his neck and flung it down at her.
“Gag him with this.”
“He won’t be able to breathe,” Belle protested.
“He’ll breathe less easy with a pistol ball through his lungs. Gag him, Isabelle. Now!”
With a heavy sigh, Belle forced the scarf between Sinclair’s lips. As she did so, she detected a slight fluttering of his eyes. Dear God, he showed signs of stirring to life. Relief mingled with terror. She had no idea what action that might provoke from Lazare. She risked an anxious glance up at the Frenchman, but he appeared to have noticed nothing.
She stood slowly, trying to shield Sinclair’s face from Lazare’s sight as much as possible. But he shoved her aside.
“Adequate,” Lazare said, regarding Belle’s handiwork with a satisfied grunt. “Now let us be going. I understand the first consul does not like to be kept waiting.”
He grabbed her roughly by the arm, pressing the muzzle of his weapon against the base of her spine. “I trust there need beno reminders of what will happen if you are tempted to call out for help once we gain the street.”
“I am as eager to get on with our mission as you,” she lied. Her chief desire was to get Lazare from this room. She had seen Sinclair shift his head.
As she marched toward the door, it occurred to her that this might be the last time she ever saw Sinclair, and she dared not even glance back. Her anger and her unwillingness to forgive his deception now seemed so incredibly foolish, so petty. Why did one always see matters with such appalling clarity when it might be too late?
As Lazare shoved her out onto the landing, it was as though he sensed some of her feelings, for he taunted her, “This is so touching, Isabelle. All this concern you have shown for Carrington. One might suppose you had fallen in love with the man.”
One might indeed suppose that, Belle thought, a lump rising to her throat.
But then Lazare smiled and said something that drove all other thoughts out of her head.
You have proved to be distressingly inconstant, ma there. What about Jean-Claude?”
The darknessthat seemed to be suffocating Sinclair’s senses was lifting, bringing forth a throbbing pain that felt likely to split his head in twain.
He would have been grateful to sink back into the peaceful realms of oblivion, but some sense of urgency nagged at him, denying him the release.
And then there were the voices, Belle’s and Lazare’s. But what they were saying seemed to make little sense:
“… be going … first consul kept waiting … as eager to get this mission over as you.”
Belle was going somewhere with Lazare. Sinclair needed to cry out a warning, to tell her she should not. Yet when he moved his lips to speak, something thick and dry pressed against his tongue, felt like it was choking him.
He heard a click as though a door had been closed. With great effort he forced his eyes to open. Even that caused his head to swim with pain, made him feel as though he would be ill. He fought down the sensation of nausea, fought to stop the room around him from continuing in a dizzying whirl.
Gradually he could bring the room into focus, but he stared blankly at the fading plaster walls, unable to place his surroundings. If only the throbbing in his head would cease so he could think. If only he could move. He realized with another sharp stabbing pain that his arms were bound behind his back and the thickness suffocating him was a gag.
What the devil had happened! Although the pain shooting through his head threatened to spin him back into blackness, Sinclair forced himself to concentrate.
He and Belle had gone to find Lazare. Yes, that was where he was—Lazare’s lodgings above the confectioner’s shop. He and Belle had been searching the place. Belle had gone into the other room while he had examined the trunk and found the letters.
The letters! Memory came back to Sinclair in a searing flood. Those writings that had clearly revealed to him Lazare’s treachery—even worse, the treachery of that damned Merchant, who had sent them on this mission. And Jean-Claude Varens! Sinclair’s suspicions about the fool had been right all along. Lazare had the idiot duped, was using him in an effort to destroy Belle.
Sinclair had to warn her. He groaned softly, remembering that had been what he had been about to do when she had criedout to him. He had caught the barest glimpse of Lazare when—Sinclair flinched, the dull pain in his head telling him clearly what had happened next.
