Raven grunted, and then his heart stopped in his chest as he caught a movement across the valley and spied a tumble of pale hair. Heloise’s face poked up from behind a bush. His temples pounded.Against his express orders.He was going to wring her neck. He sent her his most fearsome glare. She was about a hundred yards away, on her stomach under some low scrub, directly across the clearing. The cart was too close for him to risk shouting at her—he’d betray her presence to the approaching Spaniards.
Bloody hell.
Stay there!he mouthed, then schooled his face into an impassive blank as the entourage rolled up the hill and came to a stop in front of the church. Alejandro stepped out from underneath the porch.
“Alvarez?”
The Spaniard nodded warily and dismounted. “Yes.”
“It’s about bloody time. Step to it, my man.”
Raven almost laughed aloud at Alejandro’s impeccable English accent. When he’d taught him the language, lazing around the campfire all those years ago, Alejandro had been merciless in mimicking his upper-class vowels. Now the wily old devil sounded as though he’d just stepped out of White’s. Raven gave him a mental salute.
“You have our man?” Alvarez grunted.
Alejandro pulled Raven from the shadows of the porch and gave him an unfriendly shove forward. “Indeed. Here’s your damned ‘Baker.’ ”
Raven shuffled forward. Now was the moment. If Alvarez knew what the Baker looked like, he’d cry foul and all hell would break loose. But the Spaniard merely looked Raven up and down and grunted, apparently satisfied. Raven’s heart thumped hard in relief.
“Now let’s see our man,” Alejandro said.
Alvarez nodded. Two of his men let down the back of the cart and hauled their prisoner out. He fell to the floor, clearly too weak to stand, then groaned and rolled over in the dirt, exposing a face that had been beaten to a bloody pulp and a shock of blond hair, matted with dried blood.
Relief and fury welled up in Raven’s chest. Kit had been given the code name Apollo, god of the sun, for his guinea-gold mane. Raven and Richard used to tease him about it mercilessly. It was Kit. Alive, but only just.
Kit shielded his eyes from the sun, as if he’d spent too long in the dark. Every one of his ribs was visible on his too-thin frame. His once-muscular physique was little more than a skeleton. Even worse, when he rolled over, Raven could see that his back was a mass of stripes, from where he’d been repeatedly whipped. A murderous rage burned through his veins like acid.
Alvarez’s soldiers lifted Kit by the arms, half dragged him to the center of the clearing, and dropped him at Raven’s feet. Raven glanced down and caught his friend’s eye.
Kit blinked and his eyes widened in sudden recognition. Raven held his breath, fearful Kit might expose him, but he needn’t have worried. Kit was an agent to the core, no matter that he was half dead. His lips twitched in a tiny smile, even as he closed his eyes and feigned oblivion.
Alejandro unlocked Raven’s manacles with every evidence of loathing. They dropped to the ground with a dustythudand Raven heaved an inward sigh of relief.
“Thanks for the hospitality,” Raven said sweetly in French. He shot Alejandro a taunting smirk, stepped over Kit’s body, and sauntered forward. “Seems I’ve fared better than this one, eh?”
Alvarez sneered, apparently having no difficulty following his French. “Couple more days and we wouldn’t have had him to exchange,” he chuckled in the same language. “On death’s doorstep, that one. He’ll be lucky to make it back to England.” He slapped Raven on the back and shook his hand. “Come on, my friend. Let’s go.”
“One moment!”
Every head snapped toward the new voice and Raven’s blood froze as he recognized the man who emerged from behind the church, a gloating smile on his thin face: Georges Lavalle.
Raven did some swift mental calculation. Had Lavalle followed Heloise? No, that was impossible. The only reason for a French agent to be here would be to corroborate the Baker’s identity.
Shit.
Lavalle’s left arm was bandaged over his coat, tied at the biceps with a piece of cloth. So it had been him,up there in the hills.
Lavalle trained his rifle at Raven’s chest. “You’re being deceived, Monsieur Alvarez. That man,” he nodded at Raven, “is an impostor. Another British spy.”
“And who the hell are you?” Alvarez said.
“Lavalle. The Butcher. Savary sent me here himself.”
Alvarez glared at Raven as if for confirmation of his perfidy.
Raven shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he said. “I just want to get away from these pig-sucking bastards.” He tilted his head at Alejandro and Carlos, who made a fine show of pretending not to understand his French.
Alvarez’s guards were clearly confused. Two of them trained their rifles at Lavalle, the other two aimed them at Raven and Alejandro.