To Tame the Wind (Agents of the Crown Book 0) Read Online Free PDF

the messages I
retrieved from the Scribe’s tree.” The seaman shoved a packet of paper toward
him on his desk, then took his pipe out of his waistcoat pocket and packed it
with tobacco. The two men sat in the chairs facing his desk.
    “And the other item of business that has you smiling?”
    “Aye, we got lucky there, Cap’n,” said Elijah, looking to
Giles to explain.
    Giles was prepared. “Seems the villagers in Saint-Denis
remember well a convent student whose father, Jean Donet de Saintonge, the son
of the comte de Saintonge”—he paused and raised his brows—“is a wealthy
benefactor of the convent.”
    Though Simon was aware Donet had turned pirate some years
ago, he had no idea the Frenchman possessed noble blood. The why of it made the
man all the more intriguing. “That is most interesting. I can only wonder why a
comte’s son would deny his heritage to become a pirate.”
    “Perhaps he was bored,” suggested Giles.
    “Must be more than that,” Simon conjectured. But the subject
was not his primary concern. “Did you get a description of the girl?”
    “Aye, we did,” said Elijah. “Had a chat with the butcher in
Saint-Denis. Man rambled on about an older girl, one who stayed on when others
left. Talked about her hair as black as the nuns’ habits. Said she often
accompanies the sisters when they come to the village on errands. The butcher
couldn’t leave off talkin’ about her strikin’ blue eyes. ‘A clever girl’ he
said.”
    “And that’s not all, Cap’n,” said Giles. “Once I learned
that the nuns were customers of the butcher, in the guise of delivering fresh
meat to the convent, I gained entry. Took no time at all to learn the layout of
the place and the location of the students’ sleeping chambers and the one
Donet’s daughter shares with some older girls. I marked their window that leads
from the garden.”
    “You have a knack for intrigue, Giles.” Simon smiled,
satisfied he now had all he needed. Rising, he strode through the open cabin
door, followed by the two men, and ascended the ladder to the weather deck.
There, he announced to his first mate and his assembled crew, “We leave with
the tide for Dieppe and thence to Paris.” To Jordan he handed the packet from
the Scribe. “See that these messages get to London.”
    Much to Simon’s satisfaction, the wind and the tide were
with them. Not long after, he set a southerly course and they sailed that
evening. The long summer days gave them light for many hours.
    The pale light of dawn saw them anchored off the port of
Dieppe, the Fairwinds now flying the flag of an American privateer.
    Though the wind had favored them, the weather on the north
coast of France was less than agreeable. The scattered rain had not impaired
their progress as they dropped anchor and let down the skiff, but it was enough
to concern him for the mission ahead and the carriage ride to Paris. He did not
look forward to muddy roads that would slow their progress south.
    Wasting no time, Simon departed the ship, climbing down the
Jacob’s ladder to where four of his men waited in the skiff. He sat in the
stern with his tricorne hat pulled down over his forehead to ward off the rain
while the crew he’d handpicked for the mission pulled at the oars bringing them
ashore.
    The cliffs of Dieppe loomed ahead in brooding shades of
black and ochre flecked with occasional patches of rust, made more somber by
the rain. Hundreds of feet high, they hemmed in the port like a setting for a
dark jewel, a forbidding wall that urged caution. It was familiar ground to
Simon. He’d anchored off Dieppe many times whilst on missions for England to
retrieve messages from the Scribe and pay calls on his contacts for news of
French supply ships. He smiled to himself, remembering the masquerade he’d
attended two years before to spy on one of his targets. There had been the
diversion of his amour dressed as a trousered hussar. And the young chit he’d
mistaken for