Gabrielle lay back in the hip bath before the fire and closed her eyes on an exhalation of pure joy as her aching limbs relaxed in the warmth. What were Nathaniel and Jake doing at this moment? It was a safe bet they weren't luxuriating in hot water before a blazing fire.

Nathaniel had directed the chaise to the flower market on the ile de la Cite in the shadow of Notre Dame. There he'd dismounted and lifted Jake from the carriage.

"Here we say good-bye."

"But where are you going?" Gabrielle hadn't expected to part so abruptly in this bustle.

"You'll be contacted," he said. "At rue d'Anjou."

"But when?"

"When the time is right." His response had been implacable and his eyes were already roving the marketplace, assessing, speculating, on the watch. Gabrielle recognized what was happening. She knew what it was like.

"Very well," she said calmly, and then leaned out of the window, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Jake, you're going on a big adventure with Papa. You have to be his helper and not say anything unless he says you can. No one must know anything about us, where we come from, or anything at all. It's a big secret and it's our secret. All right?"

Jake, perched on his father's hip, gazed at her, his eyes wide. He'd become accustomed to the fact that Gabby and his father spoke to each other only in French on this journey. He didn't understand what they said to each other, but he could always tell the mood they were in, and now that the strangeness of this journey was wearing off, he was beginning to regain his equable nature.

"Where are you going?"

"That's a secret too," she said.

Jake thought about this, then he nodded. "We'll pretend we're invisible and no one can see us, an' we can walk down the street and no one knows us, an' we can watch them and listen to them and they can't hear us."

"Except when you and Papa are alone," Gabrielle said.

Jake's eyes shone. "Then we can talk like ordinary. When no one's listening."

"Exactly."

"We have to go," Nathaniel said, his voice curt with anxiety. He held Jake closer to the window so Gabrielle could kiss him good-bye. Then he turned and strode off through the crowded marketplace, and was soon lost to view.

The post boy, already instructed, had mounted the riding horse and they'd continued to rue d'Anjou, where Gabrielle had paid off the coachman and the post boy, who'd conveyed them from the changing post at Neuilly into Paris.

And how long was she to wait here, lapped in luxury, before Nathaniel made contact? Jake's presence obviously meant an end to whatever spying plans Nathaniel had had… something to do with an agent in Toulouse, he'd said. Would he expect her to work alone in that case?

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In the dark back room of a small stone house on rue Bude on the ile St. Louis, three men sat around a table where the stains of old wine were so ingrained as to give the oak a rich patina. Tallow candles cast a dim light over the remnants of a meal of garlic sausage and ripe cheese.

Jake idly picked up bread crumbs from the table with a moistened forefinger and yawned. He was bored. It had been exciting when they'd first arrived at this funny dark house. There were lots of chddren who'd stared at him and nudged each other and whispered among themselves. One of them had thrust a piece of cake at him, and they'd all giggled when he'd taken a big bite. He'd wanted to play with them, but Papa had said he couldn't today and had hurried him upstairs to a small room under the eaves.

Now the adventure seemed to have lost its novelty. Papa had given him some bread and some of that horrible greasy sausage, but he wasn't hungry enough to eat it. He'd really like some more cake, and milk from the brown cows on the home farm in his china mug with the rabbits on it.

Papa and the two men were speaking French in low voices, and the room smelled of tallow and garlic and ancient damp stone. It was warmed by a charcoal brazier, but it was a stuffy, airless warmth that made Jake even sleepier. He folded his arms on the table and rested his head on his forearms, closing his eyes.

Nathaniel gave him a distracted glance, a worried frown corrugating his brow. The child should be in bed, but the bed he would share with his father was at the far end of a warren of passages that wound its way through the row of stone houses lining the narrow medieval street. Jake couldn't be left alone there, but he looked wretchedly uncomfortable where he was.

He pushed back his chair and stood up, scooping the child into his arms. Jake's eyes opened in startlement, then closed again as his father sat down, settling him into his lap. He pushed his thumb into his mouth and sighed like an exhausted puppy as his body went limp in sleep. Nathaniel, vaguely feeling he should, tried to remove the thumb but gave up as the sleeping child fiercely resisted.

"Poor little devil," one of the two men observed with some sympathy. "He's tired out."

"Yes," Nathaniel agreed shortly, and returned brusquely to the original topic. "One of you will have to go to Toulouse and see what the hell's going on with Seven. I haven't heard from him in weeks. If he'd been captured, we'd have discovered by now, so someone had better track him down. I'd intended to go myself, with the woman, but in the circumstances…"

"I'll go."

"Thanks, Lucas." Nathaniel nodded at the fiercely bearded man at the end of the table. Careful not to disturb the sleeping child, he refilled his glass and pushed the wine bottle across.

"So, how are you going to use the woman?" The second man took a deep gulp from his glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I'm not too keen on meeting a double agent, myself." He grinned, showing a mouth from which two front teeth were missing.

"Oh, don't worry, I'll keep her well away from you." Nathaniel sipped his wine and cut a slice of sausage. "We'll establish a channel of communication and you will feed her what we believe she needs to know. I want to flush out their people in England. She'll be told of a meeting to take place with our key agents there. It's to be presumed Fouche won't pass up the opportunity to infiltrate… send an observer or two. We'll scoop 'em up."

"And presumably, whatever information she provides us with is suspect."

"Of course. You'll act on nothing without consultation."

"D'accord." The two men drained their glasses and rose. "You will stay with the Farmiers'"

"For the moment. It provides cover for the child. One more brat among their brood isn't going to draw much notice."

Nathaniel remained at the table a; his companions wrapped themselves in cloaks and mufflers and slipped out into the bitter night. The candle flared under a gust of wind as the door closed. Jake stirred and mumbled something.

Nathaniel stood up carefully and extinguished all but one of the tallow candles. He hitched the child up against his shoulder and took the last candle, leaving the room. In the narrow passage outside he pressed a stone in the rough-hewn wall and a slab eased back. He stepped through into another room just like the one he'd left at the back of the neighboring house. He progressed in this manner halfway along rue Bude until he entered a room where a narrow bedstead stood against the far wall and a rickety dresser leaned askew against the wall beneath a tiny shuttered window overlooking the narrow street at the back of the house.

It was the house of one Monsieur Farmier, a baker with a large and ever-increasing family who had a nose for an easy profit and a blind eye when it came to the clandestine comings and goings of his various lodgers. They were quiet, unassuming men in laborer's clothes who spoke his own language with perfect fluency and paid handsomely and regularly. He asked no questions and was vouchsafed no information. In the event of a raid, he would have only descriptions to offer Monsieur Fouche's policemen.