The Lure of the Moonflower Read Online Free PDF Page B

perhaps, one. That locket.”
    The woman’s hand closed over the bauble, a small but telling gesture. “Very nice, Mr. Reid. You are quite perceptive.”
    Jack smiled lazily. “That’s what they pay me for, princess. Now, do I go on—or are you going to tell me who you are?”
    He half expected her to demur. Any other woman would have. Any other woman would have teased and played.
    Instead, this woman, with her elaborate rings and plain locket, looked him in the eye and said simply, “You may know me as the Carnation. The Pink Carnation.”
    Jack stared at her for a moment, and then he broke out in a laugh. “Pull the other one, sweetheart.”

Chapter Two
    L aughter wasn’t quite the reaction that Jane Wooliston had expected.
    Napoleon Bonaparte was said to break crockery at the mere mention of the name of the Pink Carnation. Hardened soldiers quailed; courtiers checked beneath their pillows for notes with the telltale pink flower; even Fouché, Napoleon’s Minister of Police, was rumored to look over his shoulder and walk a little faster when there was a hint of floral scent in the air.
    Some of it, Jane knew, was a reflection of her own skill, of knowing when to strike and when to retreat and, most of all, how to remain in the game. There was something to be said for longevity. Other spies, the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian, had been unmasked, their leagues unraveled. Still others, Petunias and Orchids and a regular blight of Begonias, had hardly made it across the channel to France before being unceremoniously nabbed and dropped into the darker regions of the Temple prison.
    But the Pink Carnation remained at liberty. And, by remaining so, acquired a reputation that owed a little to the truth and far more to the power of imagination. Any French reversal, from Napoleon’s failure to launch his fleet to the burning of his breakfast croissants, was laid at her door. The Imperial Guard heard her in every shutter that creaked in the night; they looked for her under the bed. Without intending to, Jane had become something greater than herself. She had become a myth, larger than life, cloaked in mystery.
    There were times when she caught sight of herself in the mirror, of her own familiar face, just a face when it came down to it, eyes and nose and lips and skin pale from the protection of bonnets and hoods, and wondered at the absurdity of it all.
    There were other times, however, when it was rather convenient to be a myth. Particularly when dealing with insubordinate agents. From everything she had read in his file, insubordination was Jack Reid’s middle name.
    Or if it wasn’t, it should be.
    Whatever Jack Reid did, one could be sure it was what he wasn’t meant to be doing. Sent as an apprentice to a printer, he ran away and hired himself out as a mercenary. Offered a permanent position in a prince’s retinue, he accepted a job spying for the French. When the French promoted him to a position of trust, he began feeding information to the English. Jack Reid had a talent for defying expectation, and, not so incidentally, orders.
    He also happened to be very good at what he did. Everyone agreed on that. He had a knack for languages, an instinct for operating unseen. And Jane was in uncertain territory, in a country where she knew only as much of the language as could be crammed into five days of study, about to embark on a mission that would take her deep into a countryside well removed from her usual networks of agents and informers.
    Like it or not, she needed Jack Reid. More than that, she needed his cooperation. She needed him to follow her lead without argument, without question. In their line of work, a moment’s hesitation could mean the difference between life and death.
    It had been a calculated risk, revealing her nom de guerre. The more prudent course would have been to identify herself as the Moonflower’s contact, nothing more. But while a man might quibble at the orders of a fellow