Regency Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 5) Read Online Free Page B
Author: Gene Doucette
the only one who doesn’t understand what any of it means. What did you have in mind?”
“I have quarters nearby. They should be sufficiently private.”
* * *
Gaining access to a young unmarried woman’s private boudoir is always a challenge, whether the purpose behind that access is innocent, or very much not.
Anna was staying in a boarding house run by a battle-axe of a woman called The Frau. This Frau had a moral compass that placed her somewhere above the Pope, and a tendency to eject tenants who disagreed with her minimum standards of chastity.
Or so I was told. I didn’t get an opportunity to meet her, which was fortunate. Equally fortunate, for this particular devising, the women of the house had an entire system established to spirit visitors into the apartments undetected. It was a coordinated effort that required no fewer than four residents acting in concert to redirect The Frau’s attentions, hold open the rear entrance, and act as lookout. Considering how efficient the entire process was, I had to think the building’s tenants entertained a large retinue of men on a semi-regular basis. The Frau was probably losing a lot of money by not charging the male visitors.
The quarters were small, but very clean and plush, and much more girlish than its resident. I ended up in a chair in the sitting room on the other side of a portable screen behind which Anna was changing.
“I must apologize,” she said before disappearing, “ but I can only wear a corset for so long. I feel as if I’m being squeezed to death.”
“As a gentleman, I feel honor-bound to offer my assistance in freeing you from this horrible experience.”
“I’m sure you do,” she said, with a gentle laugh that led me to think it wasn’t completely out of the question. “I can hear you perfectly well from the other side of the screen, and I know how to undress myself. Read the whole letter. Let’s see if we can figure this out together.”
So I did. And when I was finished I read it through again. Then we started attacking it sentence-by-sentence to work out why it was important enough for someone to be killed over the contents.
The obscure dialect the drafter used was only one problem. There was also the matter of the abbreviations. As far as I could tell, the letter contained minutes from a meeting, which made it possibly the most boring piece of espionage imaginable. But this meeting involved people with names that—if written out—would have been easily recognizable to anyone looking at the page, regardless of their familiarity with the rest of the words. Their solution was to abbreviate the names. The only other way around it would have been to use a language that employed different alphabet, which is what I would have done.
“Who do you suppose RSVC is?” I asked.
Her initial response was a loud clatter. She must have had so many knives hidden in the dress she couldn’t easily locate each of them, because this was the third time I’d heard one fall to the floor.
“Probably the Viscount Castlereagh. Robert Stewart.”
“And he is?”
A sigh, the slap of a knife on a wood countertop, the slip of lace through an eyehole. Audio-only striptease.
“The foreign secretary of Britain,” she said. She stepped out from behind the screen, wearing only a turquoise bustier and a white lace slip. She either forgot that this didn’t constitute acceptable public clothing or didn’t much care if I saw her in her underthings. “Please tell me you do know what Britain is?”
I couldn’t really speak right away. Anna had untied her hair, which cascaded over her naked shoulders and framed her face in a way that was far more fetching than I would have expected. She had high cheekbones and striking eyes, and those two things in combination generally made for a very attractive woman when her hair was pulled back. This was true as well for Anna, but with the
“I have quarters nearby. They should be sufficiently private.”
* * *
Gaining access to a young unmarried woman’s private boudoir is always a challenge, whether the purpose behind that access is innocent, or very much not.
Anna was staying in a boarding house run by a battle-axe of a woman called The Frau. This Frau had a moral compass that placed her somewhere above the Pope, and a tendency to eject tenants who disagreed with her minimum standards of chastity.
Or so I was told. I didn’t get an opportunity to meet her, which was fortunate. Equally fortunate, for this particular devising, the women of the house had an entire system established to spirit visitors into the apartments undetected. It was a coordinated effort that required no fewer than four residents acting in concert to redirect The Frau’s attentions, hold open the rear entrance, and act as lookout. Considering how efficient the entire process was, I had to think the building’s tenants entertained a large retinue of men on a semi-regular basis. The Frau was probably losing a lot of money by not charging the male visitors.
The quarters were small, but very clean and plush, and much more girlish than its resident. I ended up in a chair in the sitting room on the other side of a portable screen behind which Anna was changing.
“I must apologize,” she said before disappearing, “ but I can only wear a corset for so long. I feel as if I’m being squeezed to death.”
“As a gentleman, I feel honor-bound to offer my assistance in freeing you from this horrible experience.”
“I’m sure you do,” she said, with a gentle laugh that led me to think it wasn’t completely out of the question. “I can hear you perfectly well from the other side of the screen, and I know how to undress myself. Read the whole letter. Let’s see if we can figure this out together.”
So I did. And when I was finished I read it through again. Then we started attacking it sentence-by-sentence to work out why it was important enough for someone to be killed over the contents.
The obscure dialect the drafter used was only one problem. There was also the matter of the abbreviations. As far as I could tell, the letter contained minutes from a meeting, which made it possibly the most boring piece of espionage imaginable. But this meeting involved people with names that—if written out—would have been easily recognizable to anyone looking at the page, regardless of their familiarity with the rest of the words. Their solution was to abbreviate the names. The only other way around it would have been to use a language that employed different alphabet, which is what I would have done.
“Who do you suppose RSVC is?” I asked.
Her initial response was a loud clatter. She must have had so many knives hidden in the dress she couldn’t easily locate each of them, because this was the third time I’d heard one fall to the floor.
“Probably the Viscount Castlereagh. Robert Stewart.”
“And he is?”
A sigh, the slap of a knife on a wood countertop, the slip of lace through an eyehole. Audio-only striptease.
“The foreign secretary of Britain,” she said. She stepped out from behind the screen, wearing only a turquoise bustier and a white lace slip. She either forgot that this didn’t constitute acceptable public clothing or didn’t much care if I saw her in her underthings. “Please tell me you do know what Britain is?”
I couldn’t really speak right away. Anna had untied her hair, which cascaded over her naked shoulders and framed her face in a way that was far more fetching than I would have expected. She had high cheekbones and striking eyes, and those two things in combination generally made for a very attractive woman when her hair was pulled back. This was true as well for Anna, but with the